[Whirlygigs] [Editorial] Modernize hyphenation and spelling
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-blackjack-bargainer" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Blackjack Bargainer</h2>
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<p>The most disreputable thing in Yancey Goree’s law office was Goree himself, sprawled in his creaky old arm-chair. The rickety little office, built of red brick, was set flush with the street—the main street of the town of Bethel.</p>
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<p>Bethel rested upon the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge. Above it the mountains were piled to the sky. Far below it the turbid Catawba gleamed yellow along its disconsolate valley.</p>
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<p>The June day was at its sultriest hour. Bethel dozed in the tepid shade. Trade was not. It was so still that Goree, reclining in his chair, distinctly heard the clicking of the chips in the grand-jury room, where the “court-house gang” was playing poker. From the open back door of the office a well-worn path meandered across the grassy lot to the court-house. The treading out of that path had cost Goree all he ever had—first inheritance of a few thousand dollars, next the old family home, and, latterly the last shreds of his self-respect and manhood. The “gang” had cleaned him out. The broken gambler had turned drunkard and parasite; he had lived to see this day come when the men who had stripped him denied him a seat at the game. His word was no longer to be taken. The daily bouts at cards had arranged itself accordingly, and to him was assigned the ignoble part of the onlooker. The sheriff, the county clerk, a sportive deputy, a gay attorney, and a chalk-faced man hailing “from the valley,” sat at table, and the sheared one was thus tacitly advised to go and grow more wool.</p>
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<p>The most disreputable thing in Yancey Goree’s law office was Goree himself, sprawled in his creaky old armchair. The rickety little office, built of red brick, was set flush with the street—the main street of the town of Bethel.</p>
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<p>Bethel rested upon the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Above it the mountains were piled to the sky. Far below it the turbid Catawba gleamed yellow along its disconsolate valley.</p>
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<p>The June day was at its sultriest hour. Bethel dozed in the tepid shade. Trade was not. It was so still that Goree, reclining in his chair, distinctly heard the clicking of the chips in the grand-jury room, where the “courthouse gang” was playing poker. From the open back door of the office a well-worn path meandered across the grassy lot to the courthouse. The treading out of that path had cost Goree all he ever had—first inheritance of a few thousand dollars, next the old family home, and, latterly the last shreds of his self-respect and manhood. The “gang” had cleaned him out. The broken gambler had turned drunkard and parasite; he had lived to see this day come when the men who had stripped him denied him a seat at the game. His word was no longer to be taken. The daily bouts at cards had arranged itself accordingly, and to him was assigned the ignoble part of the onlooker. The sheriff, the county clerk, a sportive deputy, a gay attorney, and a chalk-faced man hailing “from the valley,” sat at table, and the sheared one was thus tacitly advised to go and grow more wool.</p>
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<p>Soon wearying of his ostracism, Goree had departed for his office, muttering to himself as he unsteadily traversed the unlucky pathway. After a drink of corn whiskey from a demijohn under the table, he had flung himself into the chair, staring, in a sort of maudlin apathy, out at the mountains immersed in the summer haze. The little white patch he saw away up on the side of Blackjack was Laurel, the village near which he had been born and bred. There, also, was the birthplace of the feud between the Gorees and the Coltranes. Now no direct heir of the Gorees survived except this plucked and singed bird of misfortune. To the Coltranes, also, but one male supporter was left—Colonel Abner Coltrane, a man of substance and standing, a member of the State Legislature, and a contemporary with Goree’s father. The feud had been a typical one of the region; it had left a red record of hate, wrong and slaughter.</p>
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<p>But Yancey Goree was not thinking of feuds. His befuddled brain was hopelessly attacking the problem of the future maintenance of himself and his favourite follies. Of late, old friends of the family had seen to it that he had whereof to eat and a place to sleep—but whiskey they would not buy for him, and he must have whiskey. His law business was extinct; no case had been intrusted to him in two years. He had been a borrower and a sponge, and it seemed that if he fell no lower it would be from lack of opportunity. One more chance—he was saying to himself—if he had one more stake at the game, he thought he could win; but he had nothing left to sell, and his credit was more than exhausted.</p>
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<p>But Yancey Goree was not thinking of feuds. His befuddled brain was hopelessly attacking the problem of the future maintenance of himself and his favourite follies. Of late, old friends of the family had seen to it that he had whereof to eat and a place to sleep—but whiskey they would not buy for him, and he must have whiskey. His law business was extinct; no case had been entrusted to him in two years. He had been a borrower and a sponge, and it seemed that if he fell no lower it would be from lack of opportunity. One more chance—he was saying to himself—if he had one more stake at the game, he thought he could win; but he had nothing left to sell, and his credit was more than exhausted.</p>
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<p>He could not help smiling, even in his misery, as he thought of the man to whom, six months before, he had sold the old Goree homestead. There had come from “back yan’ ” in the mountains two of the strangest creatures, a man named Pike Garvey and his wife. “Back yan’,” with a wave of the hand toward the hills, was understood among the mountaineers to designate the remotest fastnesses, the unplumbed gorges, the haunts of lawbreakers, the wolf’s den, and the boudoir of the bear. In the cabin far up on Blackjack’s shoulder, in the wildest part of these retreats, this odd couple had lived for twenty years. They had neither dog nor children to mitigate the heavy silence of the hills. Pike Garvey was little known in the settlements, but all who had dealt with him pronounced him “crazy as a loon.” He acknowledged no occupation save that of a squirrel hunter, but he “moonshined” occasionally by way of diversion. Once the “revenues” had dragged him from his lair, fighting silently and desperately like a terrier, and he had been sent to state’s prison for two years. Released, he popped back into his hole like an angry weasel.</p>
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<p>Fortune, passing over many anxious wooers, made a freakish flight into Blackjack’s bosky pockets to smile upon Pike and his faithful partner.</p>
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<p>One day a party of spectacled, knickerbockered, and altogether absurd prospectors invaded the vicinity of the Garvey’s cabin. Pike lifted his squirrel rifle off the hooks and took a shot at them at long range on the chance of their being revenues. Happily he missed, and the unconscious agents of good luck drew nearer, disclosing their innocence of anything resembling law or justice. Later on, they offered the Garveys an enormous quantity of ready, green, crisp money for their thirty-acre patch of cleared land, mentioning, as an excuse for such a mad action, some irrelevant and inadequate nonsense about a bed of mica underlying the said property.</p>
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<p>When the Garveys became possessed of so many dollars that they faltered in computing them, the deficiencies of life on Blackjack began to grow prominent. Pike began to talk of new shoes, a hogshead of tobacco to set in the corner, a new lock to his rifle; and, leading Martella to a certain spot on the mountain-side, he pointed out to her how a small cannon—doubtless a thing not beyond the scope of their fortune in price—might be planted so as to command and defend the sole accessible trail to the cabin, to the confusion of revenues and meddling strangers forever.</p>
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<p>When the Garveys became possessed of so many dollars that they faltered in computing them, the deficiencies of life on Blackjack began to grow prominent. Pike began to talk of new shoes, a hogshead of tobacco to set in the corner, a new lock to his rifle; and, leading Martella to a certain spot on the mountainside, he pointed out to her how a small cannon—doubtless a thing not beyond the scope of their fortune in price—might be planted so as to command and defend the sole accessible trail to the cabin, to the confusion of revenues and meddling strangers forever.</p>
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<p>But Adam reckoned without his Eve. These things represented to him the applied power of wealth, but there slumbered in his dingy cabin an ambition that soared far above his primitive wants. Somewhere in <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Garvey’s bosom still survived a spot of femininity unstarved by twenty years of Blackjack. For so long a time the sounds in her ears had been the scaly-barks dropping in the woods at noon, and the wolves singing among the rocks at night, and it was enough to have purged her of vanities. She had grown fat and sad and yellow and dull. But when the means came, she felt a rekindled desire to assume the perquisites of her sex—to sit at tea tables; to buy futile things; to whitewash the hideous veracity of life with a little form and ceremony. So she coldly vetoed Pike’s proposed system of fortifications, and announced that they would descend upon the world, and gyrate socially.</p>
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<p>And thus, at length, it was decided, and the thing done. The village of Laurel was their compromise between <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Garvey’s preference for one of the large valley towns and Pike’s hankering for primeval solitudes. Laurel yielded a halting round of feeble social distractions comportable with Martella’s ambitions, and was not entirely without recommendation to Pike, its contiguity to the mountains presenting advantages for sudden retreat in case fashionable society should make it advisable.</p>
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<p>Their descent upon Laurel had been coincident with Yancey Goree’s feverish desire to convert property into cash, and they bought the old Goree homestead, paying four thousand dollars ready money into the spendthrift’s shaking hands.</p>
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<p>Thus it happened that while the disreputable last of the Gorees sprawled in his disreputable office, at the end of his row, spurned by the cronies whom he had gorged, strangers dwelt in the halls of his fathers.</p>
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<p>A cloud of dust was rolling, slowly up the parched street, with something travelling in the midst of it. A little breeze wafted the cloud to one side, and a new, brightly painted carryall, drawn by a slothful gray horse, became visible. The vehicle deflected from the middle of the street as it neared Goree’s office, and stopped in the gutter directly in front of his door.</p>
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<p>On the front seat sat a gaunt, tall man, dressed in black broadcloth, his rigid hands incarcerated in yellow kid gloves. On the back seat was a lady who triumphed over the June heat. Her stout form was armoured in a skin-tight silk dress of the description known as “changeable,” being a gorgeous combination of shifting hues. She sat erect, waving a much-ornamented fan, with her eyes fixed stonily far down the street. However Martella Garvey’s heart might be rejoicing at the pleasures of her new life, Blackjack had done his work with her exterior. He had carved her countenance to the image of emptiness and inanity; had imbued her with the stolidity of his crags, and the reserve of his hushed interiors. She always seemed to hear, whatever her surroundings were, the scaly-barks falling and pattering down the mountain-side. She could always hear the awful silence of Blackjack sounding through the stillest of nights.</p>
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<p>On the front seat sat a gaunt, tall man, dressed in black broadcloth, his rigid hands incarcerated in yellow kid gloves. On the back seat was a lady who triumphed over the June heat. Her stout form was armoured in a skintight silk dress of the description known as “changeable,” being a gorgeous combination of shifting hues. She sat erect, waving a much-ornamented fan, with her eyes fixed stonily far down the street. However Martella Garvey’s heart might be rejoicing at the pleasures of her new life, Blackjack had done his work with her exterior. He had carved her countenance to the image of emptiness and inanity; had imbued her with the stolidity of his crags, and the reserve of his hushed interiors. She always seemed to hear, whatever her surroundings were, the scaly-barks falling and pattering down the mountainside. She could always hear the awful silence of Blackjack sounding through the stillest of nights.</p>
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<p>Goree watched this solemn equipage, as it drove to his door, with only faint interest; but when the lank driver wrapped the reins about his whip, awkwardly descended, and stepped into the office, he rose unsteadily to receive him, recognizing Pike Garvey, the new, the transformed, the recently civilized.</p>
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<p>The mountaineer took the chair Goree offered him. They who cast doubts upon Garvey’s soundness of mind had a strong witness in the man’s countenance. His face was too long, a dull saffron in hue, and immobile as a statue’s. Pale-blue, unwinking round eyes without lashes added to the singularity of his gruesome visage. Goree was at a loss to account for the visit.</p>
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<p>“Everything all right at Laurel, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Garvey?” he inquired.</p>
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<p>“Na offense,” he went on “but purely in the way of business. Missis Garvey hev studied all about feuds. Most of the quality folks in the mountains hev ’em. The Settles and the Goforths, the Rankins and the Boyds, the Silers and the Galloways, hev all been cyarin’ on feuds f’om twenty to a hundred year. The last man to drap was when yo’ uncle, Jedge Paisley Goree, ‘journed co’t and shot Len Coltrane f’om the bench. Missis Garvey and me, we come f’om the po’ white trash. Nobody wouldn’t pick a feud with we ‘uns, no mo’n with a fam’ly of tree-toads. Quality people everywhar, says Missis Garvey, has feuds. We ‘uns ain’t quality, but we’re buyin’ into it as fur as we can. ‘Take the money, then,’ says Missis Garvey, ‘and buy <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Goree’s feud, fa’r and squar’.’ ”</p>
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<p>The squirrel hunter straightened a leg half across the room, drew a roll of bills from his pocket, and threw them on the table.</p>
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<p>“Thar’s two hundred dollars, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Goree; what you would call a fa’r price for a feud that’s been ‘lowed to run down like yourn hev. Thar’s only you left to cyar’ on yo’ side of it, and you’d make mighty po’ killin’. I’ll take it off yo’ hands, and it’ll set me and Missis Garvey up among the quality. Thar’s the money.”</p>
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<p>The little roll of currency on the table slowly untwisted itself, writhing and jumping as its folds relaxed. In the silence that followed Garvey’s last speech the rattling of the poker chips in the court-house could be plainly heard. Goree knew that the sheriff had just won a pot, for the subdued whoop with which he always greeted a victory floated across the square upon the crinkly heat waves. Beads of moisture stood on Goree’s brow. Stooping, he drew the wicker-covered demijohn from under the table, and filled a tumbler from it.</p>
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<p>The little roll of currency on the table slowly untwisted itself, writhing and jumping as its folds relaxed. In the silence that followed Garvey’s last speech the rattling of the poker chips in the courthouse could be plainly heard. Goree knew that the sheriff had just won a pot, for the subdued whoop with which he always greeted a victory floated across the square upon the crinkly heat waves. Beads of moisture stood on Goree’s brow. Stooping, he drew the wicker-covered demijohn from under the table, and filled a tumbler from it.</p>
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<p>“A little corn liquor, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Garvey? Of course you are joking about—what you spoke of? Opens quite a new market, doesn’t it? Feuds. Prime, two-fifty to three. Feuds, slightly damaged—two hundred, I believe you said, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Garvey?”</p>
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<p>Goree laughed self-consciously.</p>
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<p>The mountaineer took the glass Goree handed him, and drank the whisky without a tremor of the lids of his staring eyes. The lawyer applauded the feat by a look of envious admiration. He poured his own drink, and took it like a drunkard, by gulps, and with shudders at the smell and taste.</p>
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<p>“He used to be district attorney,” said Goree carelessly. “And, by the way, he’s a first-class shot.”</p>
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<p>“I kin hit a squirrel’s eye at a hundred yard,” said Garvey. “So that thar’s Coltrane! I made a better trade than I was thinkin’. I’ll take keer ov this feud, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Goree, better’n you ever did!”</p>
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<p>He moved toward the door, but lingered there, betraying a slight perplexity.</p>
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<p>“Anything else to-day?” inquired Goree with frothy sarcasm. “Any family traditions, ancestral ghosts, or skeletons in the closet? Prices as low as the lowest.”</p>
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<p>“Anything else today?” inquired Goree with frothy sarcasm. “Any family traditions, ancestral ghosts, or skeletons in the closet? Prices as low as the lowest.”</p>
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<p>“Thar was another thing,” replied the unmoved squirrel hunter, “that Missis Garvey was thinkin’ of. ‘Tain’t so much in my line as t’other, but she wanted partic’lar that I should inquire, and ef you was willin’, ‘pay fur it,’ she says, ‘fa’r and squar’.’ Thar’s a buryin’ groun’, as you know, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Goree, in the yard of yo’ old place, under the cedars. Them that lies thar is yo’ folks what was killed by the Coltranes. The monyments has the names on ’em. Missis Garvey says a fam’ly buryin’ groun’ is a sho’ sign of quality. She says ef we git the feud, thar’s somethin’ else ought to go with it. The names on them monyments is ‘Goree,’ but they can be changed to ourn by—”</p>
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<p>“Go! Go!” screamed Goree, his face turning purple. He stretched out both hands toward the mountaineer, his fingers hooked and shaking. “Go, you ghoul! Even a Ch-Chinaman protects the g-graves of his ancestors—go!”</p>
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<p>The squirrel hunter slouched out of the door to his carryall. While he was climbing over the wheel Goree was collecting, with feverish celerity, the money that had fallen from his hand to the floor. As the vehicle slowly turned about, the sheep, with a coat of newly grown wool, was hurrying, in indecent haste, along the path to the court-house.</p>
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<p>The squirrel hunter slouched out of the door to his carryall. While he was climbing over the wheel Goree was collecting, with feverish celerity, the money that had fallen from his hand to the floor. As the vehicle slowly turned about, the sheep, with a coat of newly grown wool, was hurrying, in indecent haste, along the path to the courthouse.</p>
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<p>At three o’clock in the morning they brought him back to his office, shorn and unconscious. The sheriff, the sportive deputy, the county clerk, and the gay attorney carried him, the chalk-faced man “from the valley” acting as escort.</p>
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<p>“On the table,” said one of them, and they deposited him there among the litter of his unprofitable books and papers.</p>
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<p>“Yance thinks a lot of a pair of deuces when he’s liquored up,” sighed the sheriff reflectively.</p>
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<p>“Too much,” said the gay attorney. “A man has no business to play poker who drinks as much as he does. I wonder how much he dropped to-night.”</p>
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<p>“Too much,” said the gay attorney. “A man has no business to play poker who drinks as much as he does. I wonder how much he dropped tonight.”</p>
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<p>“Close to two hundred. What I wonder is whar he got it. Yance ain’t had a cent fur over a month, I know.”</p>
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<p>“Struck a client, maybe. Well, let’s get home before daylight. He’ll be all right when he wakes up, except for a sort of beehive about the cranium.”</p>
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<p>The gang slipped away through the early morning twilight. The next eye to gaze upon the miserable Goree was the orb of day. He peered through the uncurtained window, first deluging the sleeper in a flood of faint gold, but soon pouring upon the mottled red of his flesh a searching, white, summer heat. Goree stirred, half unconsciously, among the table’s débris, and turned his face from the window. His movement dislodged a heavy law book, which crashed upon the floor. Opening his eyes, he saw, bending over him, a man in a black frock coat. Looking higher, he discovered a well-worn silk hat, and beneath it the kindly, smooth face of Colonel Abner Coltrane.</p>
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<p>“A little while ago, Yancey,” he began, “you asked me if I had brought Stella and Lucy over to play. You weren’t quite awake then, and must have been dreaming you were a boy again. You are awake now, and I want you to listen to me. I have come from Stella and Lucy to their old playmate, and to my old friend’s son. They know that I am going to bring you home with me, and you will find them as ready with a welcome as they were in the old days. I want you to come to my house and stay until you are yourself again, and as much longer as you will. We heard of your being down in the world, and in the midst of temptation, and we agreed that you should come over and play at our house once more. Will you come, my boy? Will you drop our old family trouble and come with me?”</p>
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<p>“Trouble!” said Goree, opening his eyes wide. “There was never any trouble between us that I know of. I’m sure we’ve always been the best friends. But, good Lord, Colonel, how could I go to your home as I am—a drunken wretch, a miserable, degraded spendthrift and gambler—”</p>
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<p>He lurched from the table into his armchair, and began to weep maudlin tears, mingled with genuine drops of remorse and shame. Coltrane talked to him persistently and reasonably, reminding him of the simple mountain pleasures of which he had once been so fond, and insisting upon the genuineness of the invitation.</p>
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<p>Finally he landed Goree by telling him he was counting upon his help in the engineering and transportation of a large amount of felled timber from a high mountain-side to a waterway. He knew that Goree had once invented a device for this purpose—a series of slides and chutes upon which he had justly prided himself. In an instant the poor fellow, delighted at the idea of his being of use to any one, had paper spread upon the table, and was drawing rapid but pitifully shaky lines in demonstration of what he could and would do.</p>
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<p>Finally he landed Goree by telling him he was counting upon his help in the engineering and transportation of a large amount of felled timber from a high mountainside to a waterway. He knew that Goree had once invented a device for this purpose—a series of slides and chutes upon which he had justly prided himself. In an instant the poor fellow, delighted at the idea of his being of use to any one, had paper spread upon the table, and was drawing rapid but pitifully shaky lines in demonstration of what he could and would do.</p>
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<p>The man was sickened of the husks; his prodigal heart was turning again toward the mountains. His mind was yet strangely clogged, and his thoughts and memories were returning to his brain one by one, like carrier pigeons over a stormy sea. But Coltrane was satisfied with the progress he had made.</p>
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<p>Bethel received the surprise of its existence that afternoon when a Coltrane and a Goree rode amicably together through the town. Side by side they rode, out from the dusty streets and gaping townspeople, down across the creek bridge, and up toward the mountain. The prodigal had brushed and washed and combed himself to a more decent figure, but he was unsteady in the saddle, and he seemed to be deep in the contemplation of some vexing problem. Coltrane left him in his mood, relying upon the influence of changed surroundings to restore his equilibrium.</p>
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<p>Once Goree was seized with a shaking fit, and almost came to a collapse. He had to dismount and rest at the side of the road. The colonel, foreseeing such a condition, had provided a small flask of whisky for the journey but when it was offered to him Goree refused it almost with violence, declaring he would never touch it again. By and by he was recovered, and went quietly enough for a mile or two. Then he pulled up his horse suddenly, and said:</p>
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<p>Evidently the colonel did not believe the story of his lost wealth; so Goree retired again into brooding silence.</p>
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<p>By late Afternoon they had travelled ten of the twelve miles between Bethel and Laurel. Half a mile this side of Laurel lay the old Goree place; a mile or two beyond the village lived the Coltranes. The road was now steep and laborious, but the compensations were many. The tilted aisles of the forest were opulent with leaf and bird and bloom. The tonic air put to shame the pharmacopæia. The glades were dark with mossy shade, and bright with shy rivulets winking from the ferns and laurels. On the lower side they viewed, framed in the near foliage, exquisite sketches of the far valley swooning in its opal haze.</p>
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<p>Coltrane was pleased to see that his companion was yielding to the spell of the hills and woods. For now they had but to skirt the base of Painter’s Cliff; to cross Elder Branch and mount the hill beyond, and Goree would have to face the squandered home of his fathers. Every rock he passed, every tree, every foot of the rocky way, was familiar to him. Though he had forgotten the woods, they thrilled him like the music of “Home, Sweet Home.”</p>
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<p>They rounded the cliff, descended into Elder Branch, and paused there to let the horses drink and splash in the swift water. On the right was a rail fence that cornered there, and followed the road and stream. Inclosed by it was the old apple orchard of the home place; the house was yet concealed by the brow of the steep hill. Inside and along the fence, pokeberries, elders, sassafras, and sumac grew high and dense. At a rustle of their branches, both Goree and Coltrane glanced up, and saw a long, yellow, wolfish face above the fence, staring at them with pale, unwinking eyes. The head quickly disappeared; there was a violent swaying of the bushes, and an ungainly figure ran up through the apple orchard in the direction of the house, zig-zagging among the trees.</p>
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<p>They rounded the cliff, descended into Elder Branch, and paused there to let the horses drink and splash in the swift water. On the right was a rail fence that cornered there, and followed the road and stream. Inclosed by it was the old apple orchard of the home place; the house was yet concealed by the brow of the steep hill. Inside and along the fence, pokeberries, elders, sassafras, and sumac grew high and dense. At a rustle of their branches, both Goree and Coltrane glanced up, and saw a long, yellow, wolfish face above the fence, staring at them with pale, unwinking eyes. The head quickly disappeared; there was a violent swaying of the bushes, and an ungainly figure ran up through the apple orchard in the direction of the house, zigzagging among the trees.</p>
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<p>“That’s Garvey,” said Coltrane; “the man you sold out to. There’s no doubt but he’s considerably cracked. I had to send him up for moonshining once, several years ago, in spite of the fact that I believed him irresponsible. Why, what’s the matter, Yancey?”</p>
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<p>Goree was wiping his forehead, and his face had lost its colour. “Do I look queer, too?” he asked, trying to smile. “I’m just remembering a few more things.” Some of the alcohol had evaporated from his brain. “I recollect now where I got that two hundred dollars.”</p>
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<p>“Don’t think of it,” said Coltrane cheerfully. “Later on we’ll figure it all out together.”</p>
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<p>Carson, the sheepman, spurred on to attempt further exploits by the success of his plate-throwing, was first to reach the door. McRoy’s bullet from the darkness laid him low.</p>
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<p>The cattlemen then swept out upon him, calling for vengeance, for, while the slaughter of a sheepman has not always lacked condonement, it was a decided misdemeanour in this instance. Carson was innocent; he was no accomplice at the matrimonial proceedings; nor had any one heard him quote the line “Christmas comes but once a year” to the guests.</p>
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<p>But the sortie failed in its vengeance. McRoy was on his horse and away, shouting back curses and threats as he galloped into the concealing chaparral.</p>
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<p>That night was the birthnight of the Frio Kid. He became the “bad man” of that portion of the State. The rejection of his suit by Miss McMullen turned him to a dangerous man. When officers went after him for the shooting of Carson, he killed two of them, and entered upon the life of an outlaw. He became a marvellous shot with either hand. He would turn up in towns and settlements, raise a quarrel at the slightest opportunity, pick off his man and laugh at the officers of the law. He was so cool, so deadly, so rapid, so inhumanly blood-thirsty that none but faint attempts were ever made to capture him. When he was at last shot and killed by a little one-armed Mexican who was nearly dead himself from fright, the Frio Kid had the deaths of eighteen men on his head. About half of these were killed in fair duels depending upon the quickness of the draw. The other half were men whom he assassinated from absolute wantonness and cruelty.</p>
|
||||
<p>That night was the birthnight of the Frio Kid. He became the “bad man” of that portion of the State. The rejection of his suit by Miss McMullen turned him to a dangerous man. When officers went after him for the shooting of Carson, he killed two of them, and entered upon the life of an outlaw. He became a marvellous shot with either hand. He would turn up in towns and settlements, raise a quarrel at the slightest opportunity, pick off his man and laugh at the officers of the law. He was so cool, so deadly, so rapid, so inhumanly bloodthirsty that none but faint attempts were ever made to capture him. When he was at last shot and killed by a little one-armed Mexican who was nearly dead himself from fright, the Frio Kid had the deaths of eighteen men on his head. About half of these were killed in fair duels depending upon the quickness of the draw. The other half were men whom he assassinated from absolute wantonness and cruelty.</p>
|
||||
<p>Many tales are told along the border of his impudent courage and daring. But he was not one of the breed of desperadoes who have seasons of generosity and even of softness. They say he never had mercy on the object of his anger. Yet at this and every Christmastide it is well to give each one credit, if it can be done, for whatever speck of good he may have possessed. If the Frio Kid ever did a kindly act or felt a throb of generosity in his heart it was once at such a time and season, and this is the way it happened.</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>One who has been crossed in love should never breathe the odour from the blossoms of the ratama tree. It stirs the memory to a dangerous degree.</p>
|
||||
<p>One December in the Frio country there was a ratama tree in full bloom, for the winter had been as warm as springtime. That way rode the Frio Kid and his satellite and co-murderer, Mexican Frank. The kid reined in his mustang, and sat in his saddle, thoughtful and grim, with dangerously narrowing eyes. The rich, sweet scent touched him somewhere beneath his ice and iron.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I don’t know what I’ve been thinking about, Mex,” he remarked in his usual mild drawl, “to have forgot all about a Christmas present I got to give. I’m going to ride over to-morrow night and shoot Madison Lane in his own house. He got my girl—Rosita would have had me if he hadn’t cut into the game. I wonder why I happened to overlook it up to now?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ah, shucks, Kid,” said Mexican, “don’t talk foolishness. You know you can’t get within a mile of Mad Lane’s house to-morrow night. I see old man Allen day before yesterday, and he says Mad is going to have Christmas doings at his house. You remember how you shot up the festivities when Mad was married, and about the threats you made? Don’t you suppose Mad Lane’ll kind of keep his eye open for a certain <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Kid? You plumb make me tired, Kid, with such remarks.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I don’t know what I’ve been thinking about, Mex,” he remarked in his usual mild drawl, “to have forgot all about a Christmas present I got to give. I’m going to ride over tomorrow night and shoot Madison Lane in his own house. He got my girl—Rosita would have had me if he hadn’t cut into the game. I wonder why I happened to overlook it up to now?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ah, shucks, Kid,” said Mexican, “don’t talk foolishness. You know you can’t get within a mile of Mad Lane’s house tomorrow night. I see old man Allen day before yesterday, and he says Mad is going to have Christmas doings at his house. You remember how you shot up the festivities when Mad was married, and about the threats you made? Don’t you suppose Mad Lane’ll kind of keep his eye open for a certain <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Kid? You plumb make me tired, Kid, with such remarks.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’m going,” repeated the Frio Kid, without heat, “to go to Madison Lane’s Christmas doings, and kill him. I ought to have done it a long time ago. Why, Mex, just two weeks ago I dreamed me and Rosita was married instead of her and him; and we was living in a house, and I could see her smiling at me, and—oh! h––––l, Mex, he got her; and I’ll get him—yes, sir, on Christmas Eve he got her, and then’s when I’ll get him.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“There’s other ways of committing suicide,” advised Mexican. “Why don’t you go and surrender to the sheriff?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ll get him,” said the Kid.</p>
|
||||
<p>Christmas Eve fell as balmy as April. Perhaps there was a hint of far-away frostiness in the air, but it tingles like seltzer, perfumed faintly with late prairie blossoms and the mesquite grass.</p>
|
||||
<p>Christmas Eve fell as balmy as April. Perhaps there was a hint of faraway frostiness in the air, but it tingles like seltzer, perfumed faintly with late prairie blossoms and the mesquite grass.</p>
|
||||
<p>When night came the five or six rooms of the ranch-house were brightly lit. In one room was a Christmas tree, for the Lanes had a boy of three, and a dozen or more guests were expected from the nearer ranches.</p>
|
||||
<p>At nightfall Madison Lane called aside Jim Belcher and three other cowboys employed on his ranch.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now, boys,” said Lane, “keep your eyes open. Walk around the house and watch the road well. All of you know the ‘Frio Kid,’ as they call him now, and if you see him, open fire on him without asking any questions. I’m not afraid of his coming around, but Rosita is. She’s been afraid he’d come in on us every Christmas since we were married.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
|
||||
<p>So I dined with Rivington pleasantly at his club, in Forty-eleventh street, and then we set forth in pursuit of the elusive tincture of affairs.</p>
|
||||
<p>As we came out of the club there stood two men on the sidewalk near the steps in earnest conversation.</p>
|
||||
<p>“And by what process of ratiocination,” said one of them, “do you arrive at the conclusion that the division of society into producing and non-possessing classes predicates failure when compared with competitive systems that are monopolizing in tendency and result inimically to industrial evolution?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, come off your perch!” said the other man, who wore glasses. “Your premises won’t come out in the wash. You wind-jammers who apply bandy-legged theories to concrete categorical syllogisms send logical conclusions skallybootin’ into the infinitesimal ragbag. You can’t pull my leg with an old sophism with whiskers on it. You quote Marx and Hyndman and Kautsky—what are they?—shines! Tolstoi?—his garret is full of rats. I put it to you over the home-plate that the idea of a cooperative commonwealth and an abolishment of competitive systems simply takes the rag off the bush and gives me hyperesthesia of the roopteetoop! The skookum house for yours!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, come off your perch!” said the other man, who wore glasses. “Your premises won’t come out in the wash. You windjammers who apply bandy-legged theories to concrete categorical syllogisms send logical conclusions skallybootin’ into the infinitesimal ragbag. You can’t pull my leg with an old sophism with whiskers on it. You quote Marx and Hyndman and Kautsky—what are they?—shines! Tolstoy?—his garret is full of rats. I put it to you over the home-plate that the idea of a cooperative commonwealth and an abolishment of competitive systems simply takes the rag off the bush and gives me hyperesthesia of the roopteetoop! The skookum house for yours!”</p>
|
||||
<p>I stopped a few yards away and took out my little notebook.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, come ahead,” said Rivington, somewhat nervously; “you don’t want to listen to that.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why, man,” I whispered, “this is just what I do want to hear. These slang types are among your city’s most distinguishing features. Is this the Bowery variety? I really must hear more of it.”</p>
|
||||
@ -48,7 +48,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“This is the goods,” whispered Rivington, nudging me with his elbow. “Look at his jaw!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Say, cull,” said Rivington, pushing back his hat, “wot’s doin’? Me and my friend’s taking a look down de old line—see? De copper tipped us off dat you was wise to de bowery. Is dat right?”</p>
|
||||
<p>I could not help admiring Rivington’s power of adapting himself to his surroundings.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Donahue was right,” said the young man, frankly; “I was brought up on the Bowery. I have been news-boy, teamster, pugilist, member of an organized band of ‘toughs,’ bartender, and a ‘sport’ in various meanings of the word. The experience certainly warrants the supposition that I have at least a passing acquaintance with a few phases of Bowery life. I will be pleased to place whatever knowledge and experience I have at the service of my friend Donahue’s friends.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Donahue was right,” said the young man, frankly; “I was brought up on the Bowery. I have been newsboy, teamster, pugilist, member of an organized band of ‘toughs,’ bartender, and a ‘sport’ in various meanings of the word. The experience certainly warrants the supposition that I have at least a passing acquaintance with a few phases of Bowery life. I will be pleased to place whatever knowledge and experience I have at the service of my friend Donahue’s friends.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Rivington seemed ill at ease.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I say,” he said—somewhat entreatingly, “I thought—you’re not stringing us, are you? It isn’t just the kind of talk we expected. You haven’t even said ‘Hully gee!’ once. Do you really belong on the Bowery?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I am afraid,” said the Bowery boy, smilingly, “that at some time you have been enticed into one of the dives of literature and had the counterfeit coin of the Bowery passed upon you. The ‘argot’ to which you doubtless refer was the invention of certain of your literary ‘discoverers’ who invaded the unknown wilds below Third avenue and put strange sounds into the mouths of the inhabitants. Safe in their homes far to the north and west, the credulous readers who were beguiled by this new ‘dialect’ perused and believed. Like Marco Polo and Mungo Park—pioneers indeed, but ambitious souls who could not draw the line of demarcation between discovery and invention—the literary bones of these explorers are dotting the trackless wastes of the subway. While it is true that after the publication of the mythical language attributed to the dwellers along the Bowery certain of its pat phrases and apt metaphors were adopted and, to a limited extent, used in this locality, it was because our people are prompt in assimilating whatever is to their commercial advantage. To the tourists who visited our newly discovered clime, and who expected a realization of their literary guide books, they supplied the demands of the market.</p>
|
||||
@ -59,7 +59,7 @@
|
||||
<p>I was afraid to look at Rivington except with one eye.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Thanks,” said Rivington. “We were looking up … that is … my friend … confound it; it’s against all precedent, you know … awfully obliged … just the same.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“In case,” said our friend, “you would like to meet some of our Bowery young men I would be pleased to have you visit the quarters of our East Side Kappa Delta Phi Society, only two blocks east of here.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Awfully sorry,” said Rivington, “but my friend’s got me on the jump to-night. He’s a terror when he’s out after local colour. Now, there’s nothing I would like better than to drop in at the Kappa Delta Phi, but—some other time!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Awfully sorry,” said Rivington, “but my friend’s got me on the jump tonight. He’s a terror when he’s out after local colour. Now, there’s nothing I would like better than to drop in at the Kappa Delta Phi, but—some other time!”</p>
|
||||
<p>We said our farewells and boarded a home-bound car. We had a rabbit on upper Broadway, and then I parted with Rivington on a street corner.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, anyhow,” said he, braced and recovered, “it couldn’t have happened anywhere but in little old New York.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Which to say the least, was typical of Rivington.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -24,8 +24,8 @@
|
||||
<p>Armstrong stood on the narrow sidewalk, exchanging garbled Spanish with old Peralto, the rich native merchant who had just charged him four prices for half a gross of pot-metal hatchets, and abridged English with Rucker, the little German who was Consul for the United States.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Take with you, señor,” said Peralto, “the blessings of the saints upon your journey.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Better try quinine,” growled Rucker through his pipe. “Take two grains every night. And don’t make your trip too long, Johnny, because we haf needs of you. It is ein villainous game dot Melville play of whist, and dere is no oder substitute. Auf wiedersehen, und keep your eyes dot mule’s ears between when you on der edge of der brecipices ride.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The bells of Luis’s mule jingled and the pack train filed after the warning note. Armstrong, waved a good-bye and took his place at the tail of the procession. Up the narrow street they turned, and passed the two-story wooden Hotel Ingles, where Ives and Dawson and Richards and the rest of the chaps were dawdling on the broad piazza, reading week-old newspapers. They crowded to the railing and shouted many friendly and wise and foolish farewells after him. Across the plaza they trotted slowly past the bronze statue of Guzman Blanco, within its fence of bayoneted rifles captured from revolutionists, and out of the town between the rows of thatched huts swarming with the unclothed youth of Macuto. They plunged into the damp coolness of banana groves at length to emerge upon a bright stream, where brown women in scant raiment laundered clothes destructively upon the rocks. Then the pack train, fording the stream, attacked the sudden ascent, and bade adieu to such civilization as the coast afforded.</p>
|
||||
<p>For weeks Armstrong, guided by Luis, followed his regular route among the mountains. After he had collected an arroba of the precious metal, winning a profit of nearly $5,000, the heads of the lightened mules were turned down-trail again. Where the head of the Guarico River springs from a great gash in the mountain-side, Luis halted the train.</p>
|
||||
<p>The bells of Luis’s mule jingled and the pack train filed after the warning note. Armstrong, waved a goodbye and took his place at the tail of the procession. Up the narrow street they turned, and passed the two-story wooden Hotel Ingles, where Ives and Dawson and Richards and the rest of the chaps were dawdling on the broad piazza, reading week-old newspapers. They crowded to the railing and shouted many friendly and wise and foolish farewells after him. Across the plaza they trotted slowly past the bronze statue of Guzman Blanco, within its fence of bayoneted rifles captured from revolutionists, and out of the town between the rows of thatched huts swarming with the unclothed youth of Macuto. They plunged into the damp coolness of banana groves at length to emerge upon a bright stream, where brown women in scant raiment laundered clothes destructively upon the rocks. Then the pack train, fording the stream, attacked the sudden ascent, and bade adieu to such civilization as the coast afforded.</p>
|
||||
<p>For weeks Armstrong, guided by Luis, followed his regular route among the mountains. After he had collected an arroba of the precious metal, winning a profit of nearly $5,000, the heads of the lightened mules were turned down-trail again. Where the head of the Guarico River springs from a great gash in the mountainside, Luis halted the train.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Half a day’s journey from here, Señor,” said he, “is the village of Tacuzama, which we have never visited. I think many ounces of gold may be procured there. It is worth the trial.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Armstrong concurred, and they turned again upward toward Tacuzama. The trail was abrupt and precipitous, mounting through a dense forest. As night fell, dark and gloomy, Luis once more halted. Before them was a black chasm, bisecting the path as far as they could see.</p>
|
||||
<p>Luis dismounted. “There should be a bridge,” he called, and ran along the cleft a distance. “It is here,” he cried, and remounting, led the way. In a few moments Armstrong, heard a sound as though a thunderous drum were beating somewhere in the dark. It was the falling of the mules’ hoofs upon the bridge made of strong hides lashed to poles and stretched across the chasm. Half a mile further was Tacuzama. The village was a congregation of rock and mud huts set in the profundity of an obscure wood. As they rode in a sound inconsistent with that brooding solitude met their ears. From a long, low mud hut that they were nearing rose the glorious voice of a woman in song. The words were English, the air familiar to Armstrong’s memory, but not to his musical knowledge.</p>
|
||||
@ -41,14 +41,14 @@
|
||||
<p>Never yet since her rescue had she smiled. Over her dress she still wore the robe of leopard skins, for the mountain air was cold. She looked to be some splendid princess belonging to those wild and awesome altitudes. The spirit of the region chimed with hers. Her eyes were always turned upon the sombre cliffs, the blue gorges and the snow-clad turrets, looking a sublime melancholy equal to their own. At times on the journey she sang thrilling te deums and misereres that struck the true note of the hills, and made their route seem like a solemn march down a cathedral aisle. The rescued one spoke but seldom, her mood partaking of the hush of nature that surrounded them. Armstrong looked upon her as an angel. He could not bring himself to the sacrilege of attempting to woo her as other women may be wooed.</p>
|
||||
<p>On the third day they had descended as far as the tierra templada, the zona of the table lands and foot hills. The mountains were receding in their rear, but still towered, exhibiting yet impressively their formidable heads. Here they met signs of man. They saw the white houses of coffee plantations gleam across the clearings. They struck into a road where they met travellers and pack-mules. Cattle were grazing on the slopes. They passed a little village where the round-eyed niños shrieked and called at sight of them.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mlle.</abbr> Giraud laid aside her leopard-skin robe. It seemed to be a trifle incongruous now. In the mountains it had appeared fitting and natural. And if Armstrong was not mistaken she laid aside with it something of the high dignity of her demeanour. As the country became more populous and significant of comfortable life he saw, with a feeling of joy, that the exalted princess and priestess of the Andean peaks was changing to a woman—an earth woman, but no less enticing. A little colour crept to the surface of her marble cheek. She arranged the conventional dress that the removal of the robe now disclosed with the solicitous touch of one who is conscious of the eyes of others. She smoothed the careless sweep of her hair. A mundane interest, long latent in the chilling atmosphere of the ascetic peaks, showed in her eyes.</p>
|
||||
<p>This thaw in his divinity sent Armstrong’s heart going faster. So might an Arctic explorer thrill at his first ken of green fields and liquescent waters. They were on a lower plane of earth and life and were succumbing to its peculiar, subtle influence. The austerity of the hills no longer thinned the air they breathed. About them was the breath of fruit and corn and builded homes, the comfortable smell of smoke and warm earth and the consolations man has placed between himself and the dust of his brother earth from which he sprung. While traversing those awful mountains, Mile. Giraud had seemed to be wrapped in their spirit of reverent reserve. Was this that same woman—now palpitating, warm, eager, throbbing with conscious life and charm, feminine to her finger-tips? Pondering over this, Armstrong felt certain misgivings intrude upon his thoughts. He wished he could stop there with this changing creature, descending no farther. Here was the elevation and environment to which her nature seemed to respond with its best. He feared to go down upon the man-dominated levels. Would her spirit not yield still further in that artificial zone to which they were descending?</p>
|
||||
<p>This thaw in his divinity sent Armstrong’s heart going faster. So might an Arctic explorer thrill at his first ken of green fields and liquescent waters. They were on a lower plane of earth and life and were succumbing to its peculiar, subtle influence. The austerity of the hills no longer thinned the air they breathed. About them was the breath of fruit and corn and builded homes, the comfortable smell of smoke and warm earth and the consolations man has placed between himself and the dust of his brother earth from which he sprung. While traversing those awful mountains, Mile. Giraud had seemed to be wrapped in their spirit of reverent reserve. Was this that same woman—now palpitating, warm, eager, throbbing with conscious life and charm, feminine to her fingertips? Pondering over this, Armstrong felt certain misgivings intrude upon his thoughts. He wished he could stop there with this changing creature, descending no farther. Here was the elevation and environment to which her nature seemed to respond with its best. He feared to go down upon the man-dominated levels. Would her spirit not yield still further in that artificial zone to which they were descending?</p>
|
||||
<p>Now from a little plateau they saw the sea flash at the edge of the green lowlands. Mile. Giraud gave a little, catching sigh.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh! look, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Armstrong, there is the sea! Isn’t it lovely? I’m so tired of mountains.” She heaved a pretty shoulder in a gesture of repugnance. “Those horrid Indians! Just think of what I suffered! Although I suppose I attained my ambition of becoming a stellar attraction, I wouldn’t care to repeat the engagement. It was very nice of you to bring me away. Tell me, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Armstrong—honestly, now—do I look such an awful, awful fright? I haven’t looked into a mirror, you know, for months.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Armstrong made answer according to his changed moods. Also he laid his hand upon hers as it rested upon the horn of her saddle. Luis was at the head of the pack train and could not see. She allowed it to remain there, and her eyes smiled frankly into his.</p>
|
||||
<p>Then at sundown they dropped upon the coast level under the palms and lemons among the vivid greens and scarlets and ochres of the tierra caliente. They rode into Macuto, and saw the line of volatile bathers frolicking in the surf. The mountains were very far away.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mlle.</abbr> Giraud’s eyes were shining with a joy that could not have existed under the chaperonage of the mountain-tops. There were other spirits calling to her—nymphs of the orange groves, pixies from the chattering surf, imps, born of the music, the perfumes, colours and the insinuating presence of humanity. She laughed aloud, musically, at a sudden thought.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Won’t there be a sensation?” she called to Armstrong. “Don’t I wish I had an engagement just now, though! What a picnic the press agent would have! ‘Held a prisoner by a band of savage Indians subdued by the spell of her wonderful voice’—wouldn’t that make great stuff? But I guess I quit the game winner, anyhow—there ought to be a couple of thousand dollars in that sack of gold dust I collected as encores, don’t you think?”</p>
|
||||
<p>He left her at the door of the little Hotel de Buen Descansar, where she had stopped before. Two hours later he returned to the hotel. He glanced in at the open door of the little combined reception room and cafe.</p>
|
||||
<p>He left her at the door of the little Hotel de Buen Descansar, where she had stopped before. Two hours later he returned to the hotel. He glanced in at the open door of the little combined reception room and café.</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>Half a dozen of Macuto’s representative social and official caballeros were distributed about the room. Señor Villablanca, the wealthy rubber concessionist, reposed his fat figure on two chairs, with an emollient smile beaming upon his chocolate-coloured face. Guilbert, the French mining engineer, leered through his polished nose-glasses. Colonel Mendez, of the regular army, in gold-laced uniform and fatuous grin, was busily extracting corks from champagne bottles. Other patterns of Macutian gallantry and fashion pranced and posed. The air was hazy with cigarette smoke. Wine dripped upon the floor.</p>
|
||||
<p>Perched upon a table in the centre of the room in an attitude of easy preëminence was <abbr>Mlle.</abbr> Giraud. A chic costume of white lawn and cherry ribbons supplanted her travelling garb. There was a suggestion of lace, and a frill or two, with a discreet, small implication of hand-embroidered pink hosiery. Upon her lap rested a guitar. In her face was the light of resurrection, the peace of elysium attained through fire and suffering. She was singing to a lively accompaniment a little song:</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-newspaper-story" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Newspaper Story</h2>
|
||||
<p>At 8 <abbr class="time">a.m.</abbr> it lay on Giuseppi’s news-stand, still damp from the presses. Giuseppi, with the cunning of his ilk, philandered on the opposite corner, leaving his patrons to help themselves, no doubt on a theory related to the hypothesis of the watched pot.</p>
|
||||
<p>At 8 <abbr class="time">a.m.</abbr> it lay on Giuseppi’s newsstand, still damp from the presses. Giuseppi, with the cunning of his ilk, philandered on the opposite corner, leaving his patrons to help themselves, no doubt on a theory related to the hypothesis of the watched pot.</p>
|
||||
<p>This particular newspaper was, according to its custom and design, an educator, a guide, a monitor, a champion and a household counsellor and vade mecum.</p>
|
||||
<p>From its many excellencies might be selected three editorials. One was in simple and chaste but illuminating language directed to parents and teachers, deprecating corporal punishment for children.</p>
|
||||
<p>Another was an accusive and significant warning addressed to a notorious labour leader who was on the point of instigating his clients to a troublesome strike.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -8,13 +8,13 @@
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-sacrifice-hit" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Sacrifice Hit</h2>
|
||||
<p>The editor of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone Magazine</i> has his own ideas about the selection of manuscript for his publication. His theory is no secret; in fact, he will expound it to you willingly sitting at his mahogany desk, smiling benignantly and tapping his knee gently with his gold-rimmed eye-glasses.</p>
|
||||
<p>The editor of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone Magazine</i> has his own ideas about the selection of manuscript for his publication. His theory is no secret; in fact, he will expound it to you willingly sitting at his mahogany desk, smiling benignantly and tapping his knee gently with his gold-rimmed eyeglasses.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i>,” he will say, “does not employ a staff of readers. We obtain opinions of the manuscripts submitted to us directly from types of the various classes of our readers.”</p>
|
||||
<p>That is the editor’s theory; and this is the way he carries it out:</p>
|
||||
<p>When a batch of MSS. is received the editor stuffs every one of his pockets full of them and distributes them as he goes about during the day. The office employees, the hall porter, the janitor, the elevator man, messenger boys, the waiters at the café where the editor has luncheon, the man at the news-stand where he buys his evening paper, the grocer and milkman, the guard on the 5.30 uptown elevated train, the ticket-chopper at Sixty ⸻th street, the cook and maid at his home—these are the readers who pass upon MSS. sent in to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone Magazine</i>. If his pockets are not entirely emptied by the time he reaches the bosom of his family the remaining ones are handed over to his wife to read after the baby goes to sleep. A few days later the editor gathers in the MSS. during his regular rounds and considers the verdict of his assorted readers.</p>
|
||||
<p>When a batch of MSS. is received the editor stuffs every one of his pockets full of them and distributes them as he goes about during the day. The office employees, the hall porter, the janitor, the elevator man, messenger boys, the waiters at the café where the editor has luncheon, the man at the newsstand where he buys his evening paper, the grocer and milkman, the guard on the 5.30 uptown elevated train, the ticket-chopper at Sixty ⸻th street, the cook and maid at his home—these are the readers who pass upon MSS. sent in to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone Magazine</i>. If his pockets are not entirely emptied by the time he reaches the bosom of his family the remaining ones are handed over to his wife to read after the baby goes to sleep. A few days later the editor gathers in the MSS. during his regular rounds and considers the verdict of his assorted readers.</p>
|
||||
<p>This system of making up a magazine has been very successful; and the circulation, paced by the advertising rates, is making a wonderful record of speed.</p>
|
||||
<p>The <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> Company also publishes books, and its imprint is to be found on several successful works—all recommended, says the editor, by the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone’s</i> army of volunteer readers. Now and then (according to talkative members of the editorial staff) the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> has allowed manuscripts to slip through its fingers on the advice of its heterogeneous readers, that afterward proved to be famous sellers when brought out by other houses.</p>
|
||||
<p>For instance (the gossips say), “The Rise and Fall of Silas Latham” was unfavourably passed upon by the elevator-man; the office-boy unanimously rejected “The Boss”; “In the Bishop’s Carriage” was contemptuously looked upon by the street-car conductor; “The Deliverance” was turned down by a clerk in the subscription department whose wife’s mother had just begun a two-months’ visit at his home; “The Queen’s Quair” came back from the janitor with the comment: “So is the book.”</p>
|
||||
<p>For instance (the gossips say), “The Rise and Fall of Silas Latham” was unfavourably passed upon by the elevator-man; the office-boy unanimously rejected “The Boss”; “In the Bishop’s Carriage” was contemptuously looked upon by the streetcar conductor; “The Deliverance” was turned down by a clerk in the subscription department whose wife’s mother had just begun a two-months’ visit at his home; “The Queen’s Quair” came back from the janitor with the comment: “So is the book.”</p>
|
||||
<p>But nevertheless the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> adheres to its theory and system, and it will never lack volunteer readers; for each one of the widely scattered staff, from the young lady stenographer in the editorial office to the man who shovels in coal (whose adverse decision lost to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> Company the manuscript of “The Under World”), has expectations of becoming editor of the magazine some day.</p>
|
||||
<p>This method of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> was well known to Allen Slayton when he wrote his novelette entitled “Love Is All.” Slayton had hung about the editorial offices of all the magazines so persistently that he was acquainted with the inner workings of every one in Gotham.</p>
|
||||
<p>He knew not only that the editor of the Hearthstone handed his MSS. around among different types of people for reading, but that the stories of sentimental love-interest went to Miss Puffkin, the editor’s stenographer. Another of the editor’s peculiar customs was to conceal invariably the name of the writer from his readers of MSS. so that a glittering name might not influence the sincerity of their reports.</p>
|
||||
@ -27,10 +27,10 @@
|
||||
<p>Slayton formulated his great winning scheme on his way down. It struck him with one brilliant flash, and he could not refrain from admiring his own genius in conceiving the idea. That very night he set about carrying it into execution.</p>
|
||||
<p>Miss Puffkin, the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> stenographer, boarded in the same house with the author. She was an oldish, thin, exclusive, languishing, sentimental maid; and Slayton had been introduced to her some time before.</p>
|
||||
<p>The writer’s daring and self-sacrificing project was this: He knew that the editor of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> relied strongly upon Miss Puffkin’s judgment in the manuscript of romantic and sentimental fiction. Her taste represented the immense average of mediocre women who devour novels and stories of that type. The central idea and keynote of “Love Is All” was love at first sight—the enrapturing,</p>
|
||||
<p>irresistible, soul-thrilling feeling that compels a man or a woman to recognize his or her spirit-mate as soon as heart speaks to heart. Suppose he should impress this divine truth upon Miss Puffkin personally!—would she not surely indorse her new and rapturous sensations by recommending highly to the editor of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> the novelette “Love Is All”?</p>
|
||||
<p>Slayton thought so. And that night he took Miss Puffkin to the theatre. The next night he made vehement love to her in the dim parlour of the boarding-house. He quoted freely from “Love Is All”; and he wound up with Miss Puffkin’s head on his shoulder, and visions of literary fame dancing in his head.</p>
|
||||
<p>But Slayton did not stop at love-making. This, he said to himself, was the turning point of his life; and, like a true sportsman, he “went the limit.” On Thursday night he and Miss Puffkin walked over to the Big Church in the Middle of the Block and were married.</p>
|
||||
<p>Brave Slayton! Châteaubriand died in a garret, Byron courted a widow, Keats starved to death, Poe mixed his drinks, De Quincey hit the pipe, Ade lived in Chicago, James kept on doing it, Dickens wore white socks, De Maupassant wore a strait-jacket, Tom Watson became a Populist, Jeremiah wept, all these authors did these things for the sake of literature, but thou didst cap them all; thou marriedst a wife for to carve for thyself a niche in the temple of fame!</p>
|
||||
<p>irresistible, soul-thrilling feeling that compels a man or a woman to recognize his or her spirit-mate as soon as heart speaks to heart. Suppose he should impress this divine truth upon Miss Puffkin personally!—would she not surely endorse her new and rapturous sensations by recommending highly to the editor of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> the novelette “Love Is All”?</p>
|
||||
<p>Slayton thought so. And that night he took Miss Puffkin to the theatre. The next night he made vehement love to her in the dim parlour of the boardinghouse. He quoted freely from “Love Is All”; and he wound up with Miss Puffkin’s head on his shoulder, and visions of literary fame dancing in his head.</p>
|
||||
<p>But Slayton did not stop at lovemaking. This, he said to himself, was the turning point of his life; and, like a true sportsman, he “went the limit.” On Thursday night he and Miss Puffkin walked over to the Big Church in the Middle of the Block and were married.</p>
|
||||
<p>Brave Slayton! Châteaubriand died in a garret, Byron courted a widow, Keats starved to death, Poe mixed his drinks, De Quincey hit the pipe, Ade lived in Chicago, James kept on doing it, Dickens wore white socks, De Maupassant wore a straitjacket, Tom Watson became a Populist, Jeremiah wept, all these authors did these things for the sake of literature, but thou didst cap them all; thou marriedst a wife for to carve for thyself a niche in the temple of fame!</p>
|
||||
<p>On Friday morning <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Slayton said she would go over to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> office, hand in one or two manuscripts that the editor had given to her to read, and resign her position as stenographer.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Was there anything—er—that—er—you particularly fancied in the stories you are going to turn in?” asked Slayton with a thumping heart.</p>
|
||||
<p>“There was one—a novelette, that I liked so much,” said his wife. “I haven’t read anything in years that I thought was half as nice and true to life.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -38,11 +38,11 @@
|
||||
<p>“You don’t want no—assistance, as you might say?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Not any, thanks.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I didn’t think you would. Well, so long!”</p>
|
||||
<p>Sam took out and opened a bone-handled pocket-knife and scraped a dried piece of mud from his left boot. I thought at first he was going to swear a vendetta on the blade of it, or recite “The Gipsy’s Curse.” The few feuds I had ever seen or read about usually opened that way. This one seemed to be presented with a new treatment. Thus offered on the stage, it would have been hissed off, and one of Belasco’s thrilling melodramas demanded instead.</p>
|
||||
<p>Sam took out and opened a bone-handled pocketknife and scraped a dried piece of mud from his left boot. I thought at first he was going to swear a vendetta on the blade of it, or recite “The Gipsy’s Curse.” The few feuds I had ever seen or read about usually opened that way. This one seemed to be presented with a new treatment. Thus offered on the stage, it would have been hissed off, and one of Belasco’s thrilling melodramas demanded instead.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I wonder,” said Sam, with a profoundly thoughtful expression, “if the cook has any cold beans left over!”</p>
|
||||
<p>He called Wash, the Negro cook, and finding that he had some, ordered him to heat up the pot and make some strong coffee. Then we went into Sam’s private room, where he slept, and kept his armoury, dogs, and the saddles of his favourite mounts. He took three or four six-shooters out of a bookcase and began to look them over, whistling “The Cowboy’s Lament” abstractedly. Afterward he ordered the two best horses on the ranch saddled and tied to the hitching-post.</p>
|
||||
<p>Now, in the feud business, in all sections of the country, I have observed that in one particular there is a delicate but strict etiquette belonging. You must not mention the word or refer to the subject in the presence of a feudist. It would be more reprehensible than commenting upon the mole on the chin of your rich aunt. I found, later on, that there is another unwritten rule, but I think that belongs solely to the West.</p>
|
||||
<p>It yet lacked two hours to supper-time; but in twenty minutes Sam and I were plunging deep into the reheated beans, hot coffee, and cold beef.</p>
|
||||
<p>It yet lacked two hours to suppertime; but in twenty minutes Sam and I were plunging deep into the reheated beans, hot coffee, and cold beef.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Nothing like a good meal before a long ride,” said Sam. “Eat hearty.”</p>
|
||||
<p>I had a sudden suspicion.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why did you have two horses saddled?” I asked.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Man is too thoroughly an egoist not to be also an egotist; if he love, the object shall know it. During a lifetime he may conceal it through stress of expediency and honour, but it shall bubble from his dying lips, though it disrupt a neighbourhood. It is known, however, that most men do not wait so long to disclose their passion. In the case of Lorison, his particular ethics positively forbade him to declare his sentiments, but he must needs dally with the subject, and woo by innuendo at least.</p>
|
||||
<p>On this night, after the usual meal at the Carabine d’Or, he strolled with his companion down the dim old street toward the river.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Rue Chartres perishes in the old Place d’Armes. The ancient Cabildo, where Spanish justice fell like hail, faces it, and the Cathedral, another provincial ghost, overlooks it. Its centre is a little, iron-railed park of flowers and immaculate gravelled walks, where citizens take the air of evenings. Pedestalled high above it, the general sits his cavorting steed, with his face turned stonily down the river toward English Turn, whence come no more Britons to bombard his cotton bales.</p>
|
||||
<p>Often the two sat in this square, but to-night Lorison guided her past the stone-stepped gate, and still riverward. As they walked, he smiled to himself to think that all he knew of her—except that be loved her—was her name, Norah Greenway, and that she lived with her brother. They had talked about everything except themselves. Perhaps her reticence had been caused by his.</p>
|
||||
<p>Often the two sat in this square, but tonight Lorison guided her past the stone-stepped gate, and still riverward. As they walked, he smiled to himself to think that all he knew of her—except that be loved her—was her name, Norah Greenway, and that she lived with her brother. They had talked about everything except themselves. Perhaps her reticence had been caused by his.</p>
|
||||
<p>They came, at length, upon the levee, and sat upon a great, prostrate beam. The air was pungent with the dust of commerce. The great river slipped yellowly past. Across it Algiers lay, a longitudinous black bulk against a vibrant electric haze sprinkled with exact stars.</p>
|
||||
<p>The girl was young and of the piquant order. A certain bright melancholy pervaded her; she possessed an untarnished, pale prettiness doomed to please. Her voice, when she spoke, dwarfed her theme. It was the voice capable of investing little subjects with a large interest. She sat at ease, bestowing her skirts with the little womanly touch, serene as if the begrimed pier were a summer garden. Lorison poked the rotting boards with his cane.</p>
|
||||
<p>He began by telling her that he was in love with some one to whom he durst not speak of it. “And why not?” she asked, accepting swiftly his fatuous presentation of a third person of straw. “My place in the world,” he answered, “is none to ask a woman to share. I am an outcast from honest people; I am wrongly accused of one crime, and am, I believe, guilty of another.”</p>
|
||||
@ -57,7 +57,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“No,” he interrupted; “I would never have let you know I loved you. I would never have asked you this—Norah, will you be my wife?”</p>
|
||||
<p>She wept again.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, believe me; I am good now—I am no longer wicked! I will be the best wife in the world. Don’t think I am—bad any more. If you do I shall die, I shall die!”</p>
|
||||
<p>While he was consoling, her, she brightened up, eager and impetuous. “Will you marry me to-night?” she said. “Will you prove it that way. I have a reason for wishing it to be to-night. Will you?”</p>
|
||||
<p>While he was consoling, her, she brightened up, eager and impetuous. “Will you marry me tonight?” she said. “Will you prove it that way. I have a reason for wishing it to be tonight. Will you?”</p>
|
||||
<p>Of one of two things was this exceeding frankness the outcome: either of importunate brazenness or of utter innocence. The lover’s perspective contained only the one.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The sooner,” said Lorison, “the happier I shall be.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“What is there to do?” she asked. “What do you have to get? Come! You should know.”</p>
|
||||
@ -77,14 +77,14 @@
|
||||
<p>At last she was reassured.</p>
|
||||
<p>At the first light they reached upon the street, she asked the time, just as she had each night. Lorison looked at his watch. Half-past eight.</p>
|
||||
<p>Lorison thought it was from habit that she guided their steps toward the corner where they always parted. But, arrived there, she hesitated, and then released his arm. A drug store stood on the corner; its bright, soft light shone upon them.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Please leave me here as usual to-night,” said Norah, sweetly. “I must—I would rather you would. You will not object? At six to-morrow evening I will meet you at Antonio’s. I want to sit with you there once more. And then—I will go where you say.” She gave him a bewildering, bright smile, and walked swiftly away.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Please leave me here as usual tonight,” said Norah, sweetly. “I must—I would rather you would. You will not object? At six tomorrow evening I will meet you at Antonio’s. I want to sit with you there once more. And then—I will go where you say.” She gave him a bewildering, bright smile, and walked swiftly away.</p>
|
||||
<p>Surely it needed all the strength of her charm to carry off this astounding behaviour. It was no discredit to Lorison’s strength of mind that his head began to whirl. Pocketing his hands, he rambled vacuously over to the druggist’s windows, and began assiduously to spell over the names of the patent medicines therein displayed.</p>
|
||||
<p>As soon as be had recovered his wits, he proceeded along the street in an aimless fashion. After drifting for two or three squares, he flowed into a somewhat more pretentious thoroughfare, a way much frequented by him in his solitary ramblings. For here was a row of shops devoted to traffic in goods of the widest range of choice—handiworks of art, skill and fancy, products of nature and labour from every zone.</p>
|
||||
<p>Here, for a time, he loitered among the conspicuous windows, where was set, emphasized by congested floods of light, the cunningest spoil of the interiors. There were few passers, and of this Lorison was glad. He was not of the world. For a long time he had touched his fellow man only at the gear of a levelled cog-wheel—at right angles, and upon a different axis. He had dropped into a distinctly new orbit. The stroke of ill fortune had acted upon him, in effect, as a blow delivered upon the apex of a certain ingenious toy, the musical top, which, when thus buffeted while spinning, gives forth, with scarcely retarded motion, a complete change of key and chord.</p>
|
||||
<p>Here, for a time, he loitered among the conspicuous windows, where was set, emphasized by congested floods of light, the cunningest spoil of the interiors. There were few passers, and of this Lorison was glad. He was not of the world. For a long time he had touched his fellow man only at the gear of a levelled cogwheel—at right angles, and upon a different axis. He had dropped into a distinctly new orbit. The stroke of ill fortune had acted upon him, in effect, as a blow delivered upon the apex of a certain ingenious toy, the musical top, which, when thus buffeted while spinning, gives forth, with scarcely retarded motion, a complete change of key and chord.</p>
|
||||
<p>Strolling along the pacific avenue, he experienced singular, supernatural calm, accompanied by an unusual a activity of brain. Reflecting upon recent affairs, he assured himself of his happiness in having won for a bride the one he had so greatly desired, yet he wondered mildly at his dearth of active emotion. Her strange behaviour in abandoning him without valid excuse on his bridal eve aroused in him only a vague and curious speculation. Again, he found himself contemplating, with complaisant serenity, the incidents of her somewhat lively career. His perspective seemed to have been queerly shifted.</p>
|
||||
<p>As he stood before a window near a corner, his ears were assailed by a waxing clamour and commotion. He stood close to the window to allow passage to the cause of the hubbub—a procession of human beings, which rounded the corner and headed in his direction. He perceived a salient hue of blue and a glitter of brass about a central figure of dazzling white and silver, and a ragged wake of black, bobbing figures.</p>
|
||||
<p>Two ponderous policemen were conducting between them a woman dressed as if for the stage, in a short, white, satiny skirt reaching to the knees, pink stockings, and a sort of sleeveless bodice bright with relucent, armour-like scales. Upon her curly, light hair was perched, at a rollicking angle, a shining tin helmet. The costume was to be instantly recognized as one of those amazing conceptions to which competition has harried the inventors of the spectacular ballet. One of the officers bore a long cloak upon his arm, which, doubtless, had been intended to veil the I candid attractions of their effulgent prisoner, but, for some reason, it had not been called into use, to the vociferous delight of the tail of the procession.</p>
|
||||
<p>Compelled by a sudden and vigorous movement of the woman, the parade halted before the window by which Lorison stood. He saw that she was young, and, at the first glance, was deceived by a sophistical prettiness of her face, which waned before a more judicious scrutiny. Her look was bold and reckless, and upon her countenance, where yet the contours of youth survived, were the finger-marks of old age’s credentialed courier, Late Hours.</p>
|
||||
<p>Compelled by a sudden and vigorous movement of the woman, the parade halted before the window by which Lorison stood. He saw that she was young, and, at the first glance, was deceived by a sophistical prettiness of her face, which waned before a more judicious scrutiny. Her look was bold and reckless, and upon her countenance, where yet the contours of youth survived, were the fingermarks of old age’s credentialed courier, Late Hours.</p>
|
||||
<p>The young woman fixed her unshrinking gaze upon Lorison, and called to him in the voice of the wronged heroine in straits:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Say! You look like a good fellow; come and put up the bail, won’t you? I’ve done nothing to get pinched for. It’s all a mistake. See how they’re treating me! You won’t be sorry, if you’ll help me out of this. Think of your sister or your girl being dragged along the streets this way! I say, come along now, like a good fellow.”</p>
|
||||
<p>It may be that Lorison, in spite of the unconvincing bathos of this appeal, showed a sympathetic face, for one of the officers left the woman’s side, and went over to him.</p>
|
||||
@ -92,7 +92,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“What is the charge?” asked Lorison.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Grand larceny. Diamonds. Her husband is a jeweller in Chicago. She cleaned his show case of the sparklers, and skipped with a comic-opera troupe.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The policeman, perceiving that the interest of the entire group of spectators was centred upon himself and Lorison—their conference being regarded as a possible new complication—was fain to prolong the situation—which reflected his own importance—by a little afterpiece of philosophical comment.</p>
|
||||
<p>“A gentleman like you, Sir,” he went on affably, “would never notice it, but it comes in my line to observe what an immense amount of trouble is made by that combination—I mean the stage, diamonds and light-headed women who aren’t satisfied with good homes. I tell you, Sir, a man these days and nights wants to know what his women folks are up to.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“A gentleman like you, Sir,” he went on affably, “would never notice it, but it comes in my line to observe what an immense amount of trouble is made by that combination—I mean the stage, diamonds and lightheaded women who aren’t satisfied with good homes. I tell you, Sir, a man these days and nights wants to know what his women folks are up to.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The policeman smiled a good night, and returned to the side of his charge, who had been intently watching Lorison’s face during the conversation, no doubt for some indication of his intention to render succour. Now, at the failure of the sign, and at the movement made to continue the ignominious progress, she abandoned hope, and addressed him thus, pointedly:</p>
|
||||
<p>“You damn chalk-faced quitter! You was thinking of giving me a hand, but you let the cop talk you out of it the first word. You’re a dandy to tie to. Say, if you ever get a girl, she’ll have a picnic. Won’t she work you to the queen’s taste! Oh, my!” She concluded with a taunting, shrill laugh that rasped Lorison like a saw. The policemen urged her forward; the delighted train of gaping followers closed up the rear; and the captive Amazon, accepting her fate, extended the scope of her maledictions so that none in hearing might seem to be slighted.</p>
|
||||
<p>Then there came upon Lorison an overwhelming revulsion of his perspective. It may be that he had been ripe for it, that the abnormal condition of mind in which he had for so long existed was already about to revert to its balance; however, it is certain that the events of the last few minutes had furnished the channel, if not the impetus, for the change.</p>
|
||||
@ -107,7 +107,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Lorison entered the room and took the chair offered him. The priest’s eyes looked a courteous interrogation.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I must apologize again,” said the young man, “for so soon intruding upon you with my marital infelicities, but, as my wife has neglected to furnish me with her address, I am deprived of the legitimate recourse of a family row.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I am quite a plain man,” said Father Rogan, pleasantly; “but I do not see how I am to ask you questions.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Pardon my indirectness,” said Lorison; “I will ask one. In this room to-night you pronounced me to be a husband. You afterward spoke of additional rites or performances that either should or could be effected. I paid little attention to your words then, but I am hungry to hear them repeated now. As matters stand, am I married past all help?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Pardon my indirectness,” said Lorison; “I will ask one. In this room tonight you pronounced me to be a husband. You afterward spoke of additional rites or performances that either should or could be effected. I paid little attention to your words then, but I am hungry to hear them repeated now. As matters stand, am I married past all help?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You are as legally and as firmly bound,” said the priest, “as though it had been done in a cathedral, in the presence of thousands. The additional observances I referred to are not necessary to the strictest legality of the act, but were advised as a precaution for the future—for convenience of proof in such contingencies as wills, inheritances and the like.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Lorison laughed harshly.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Many thanks,” he said. “Then there is no mistake, and I am the happy benedict. I suppose I should go stand upon the bridal corner, and when my wife gets through walking the streets she will look me up.”</p>
|
||||
@ -162,9 +162,9 @@
|
||||
<p>“I am going to my wife,” said Lorison. “Let me pass.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Listen,” said the priest, holding him firmly by the arm. “I am about to put you in possession of a piece of knowledge of which, thus far, you have scarcely proved deserving. I do not think you ever will; but I will not dwell upon that. You see in that room the woman you married, working for a frugal living for herself, and a generous comfort for an idolized brother. This building belongs to the chief costumer of the city. For months the advance orders for the coming Mardi Gras festivals have kept the work going day and night. I myself secured employment here for Norah. She toils here each night from nine o’clock until daylight, and, besides, carries home with her some of the finer costumes, requiring more delicate needlework, and works there part of the day. Somehow, you two have remained strangely ignorant of each other’s lives. Are you convinced now that your wife is not walking the streets?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Let me go to her,” cried Lorison, again struggling, “and beg her forgiveness!’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sir,” said the priest, “do you owe me nothing? Be quiet. It seems so often that Heaven lets fall its choicest gifts into hands that must be taught to hold them. Listen again. You forgot that repentant sin must not compromise, but look up, for redemption, to the purest and best. You went to her with the fine-spun sophistry that peace could be found in a mutual guilt; and she, fearful of losing what her heart so craved, thought it worth the price to buy it with a desperate, pure, beautiful lie. I have known her since the day she was born; she is as innocent and unsullied in life and deed as a holy saint. In that lowly street where she dwells she first saw the light, and she has lived there ever since, spending her days in generous self-sacrifice for others. Och, ye spalpeen!” continued Father Rogan, raising his finger in kindly anger at Lorison. “What for, I wonder, could she be after making a fool of hersilf, and shamin’ her swate soul with lies, for the like of you!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sir,” said the priest, “do you owe me nothing? Be quiet. It seems so often that Heaven lets fall its choicest gifts into hands that must be taught to hold them. Listen again. You forgot that repentant sin must not compromise, but look up, for redemption, to the purest and best. You went to her with the finespun sophistry that peace could be found in a mutual guilt; and she, fearful of losing what her heart so craved, thought it worth the price to buy it with a desperate, pure, beautiful lie. I have known her since the day she was born; she is as innocent and unsullied in life and deed as a holy saint. In that lowly street where she dwells she first saw the light, and she has lived there ever since, spending her days in generous self-sacrifice for others. Och, ye spalpeen!” continued Father Rogan, raising his finger in kindly anger at Lorison. “What for, I wonder, could she be after making a fool of hersilf, and shamin’ her swate soul with lies, for the like of you!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sir,” said Lorison, trembling, “say what you please of me. Doubt it as you must, I will yet prove my gratitude to you, and my devotion to her. But let me speak to her once now, let me kneel for just one moment at her feet, and—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Tut, tut!” said the priest. “How many acts of a love drama do you think an old bookworm like me capable of witnessing? Besides, what kind of figures do we cut, spying upon the mysteries of midnight millinery! Go to meet your wife to-morrow, as she ordered you, and obey her thereafter, and maybe some time I shall get forgiveness for the part I have played in this night’s work. Off wid yez down the shtairs, now! ’Tis late, and an ould man like me should be takin’ his rest.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Tut, tut!” said the priest. “How many acts of a love drama do you think an old bookworm like me capable of witnessing? Besides, what kind of figures do we cut, spying upon the mysteries of midnight millinery! Go to meet your wife tomorrow, as she ordered you, and obey her thereafter, and maybe some time I shall get forgiveness for the part I have played in this night’s work. Off wid yez down the shtairs, now! ’Tis late, and an ould man like me should be takin’ his rest.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -18,7 +18,7 @@
|
||||
<p>So, there they were—Kuroki on one side of the Yalu with forty-two thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry, and one hundred and twenty-four guns. On the other side, Zassulitch waited for him with only twenty-three thousand men, and with a long stretch of river to guard. And Calloway had got hold of some important inside information that he knew would bring the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> staff around a cablegram as thick as flies around a Park Row lemonade stand. If he could only get that message past the censor—the new censor who had arrived and taken his post that day!</p>
|
||||
<p>Calloway did the obviously proper thing. He lit his pipe and sat down on a gun carriage to think it over. And there we must leave him; for the rest of the story belongs to Vesey, a sixteen-dollar-a-week reporter on the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i>.</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>Calloway’s cablegram was handed to the managing editor at four o’clock in the afternoon. He read it three times; and then drew a pocket mirror from a pigeon-hole in his desk, and looked at his reflection carefully. Then he went over to the desk of Boyd, his assistant (he usually called Boyd when he wanted him), and laid the cablegram before him.</p>
|
||||
<p>Calloway’s cablegram was handed to the managing editor at four o’clock in the afternoon. He read it three times; and then drew a pocket mirror from a pigeonhole in his desk, and looked at his reflection carefully. Then he went over to the desk of Boyd, his assistant (he usually called Boyd when he wanted him), and laid the cablegram before him.</p>
|
||||
<p>“It’s from Calloway,” he said. “See what you make of it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The message was dated at Wi-ju, and these were the words of it:</p>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
@ -41,7 +41,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Throughout the office of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> a dragnet was sent, hauling in such members of the staff as would be likely to know of a code, past or present, by reason of their wisdom, information, natural intelligence, or length of servitude. They got together in a group in the city room, with the m. e. in the centre. No one had heard of a code. All began to explain to the head investigator that newspapers never use a code, anyhow—that is, a cipher code. Of course the Associated Press stuff is a sort of code—an abbreviation, rather—but—</p>
|
||||
<p>The m. e. knew all that, and said so. He asked each man how long he had worked on the paper. Not one of them had drawn pay from an <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> envelope for longer than six years. Calloway had been on the paper twelve years.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Try old Heffelbauer,” said the m. e. “He was here when Park Row was a potato patch.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Heffelbauer was an institution. He was half janitor, half handy-man about the office, and half watchman—thus becoming the peer of thirteen and one-half tailors. Sent for, he came, radiating his nationality.</p>
|
||||
<p>Heffelbauer was an institution. He was half janitor, half handyman about the office, and half watchman—thus becoming the peer of thirteen and one-half tailors. Sent for, he came, radiating his nationality.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Heffelbauer,” said the m. e., “did you ever hear of a code belonging to the office a long time ago—a private code? You know what a code is, don’t you?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yah,” said Heffelbauer. “Sure I know vat a code is. Yah, apout dwelf or fifteen year ago der office had a code. Der reborters in der city-room haf it here.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ah!” said the m. e. “We’re getting on the trail now. Where was it kept, Heffelbauer? What do you know about it?”</p>
|
||||
@ -51,7 +51,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Oh, he’s talking about a goat,” said Boyd. “Get out, Heffelbauer.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Again discomfited, the concerted wit and resource of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> huddled around Calloway’s puzzle, considering its mysterious words in vain.</p>
|
||||
<p>Then Vesey came in.</p>
|
||||
<p>Vesey was the youngest reporter. He had a thirty-two-inch chest and wore a number fourteen collar; but his bright Scotch plaid suit gave him presence and conferred no obscurity upon his whereabouts. He wore his hat in such a position that people followed him about to see him take it off, convinced that it must be hung upon a peg driven into the back of his head. He was never without an immense, knotted, hard-wood cane with a German-silver tip on its crooked handle. Vesey was the best photograph hustler in the office. Scott said it was because no living human being could resist the personal triumph it was to hand his picture over to Vesey. Vesey always wrote his own news stories, except the big ones, which were sent to the rewrite men. Add to this fact that among all the inhabitants, temples, and groves of the earth nothing existed that could abash Vesey, and his dim sketch is concluded.</p>
|
||||
<p>Vesey was the youngest reporter. He had a thirty-two-inch chest and wore a number fourteen collar; but his bright Scotch plaid suit gave him presence and conferred no obscurity upon his whereabouts. He wore his hat in such a position that people followed him about to see him take it off, convinced that it must be hung upon a peg driven into the back of his head. He was never without an immense, knotted, hardwood cane with a German-silver tip on its crooked handle. Vesey was the best photograph hustler in the office. Scott said it was because no living human being could resist the personal triumph it was to hand his picture over to Vesey. Vesey always wrote his own news stories, except the big ones, which were sent to the rewrite men. Add to this fact that among all the inhabitants, temples, and groves of the earth nothing existed that could abash Vesey, and his dim sketch is concluded.</p>
|
||||
<p>Vesey butted into the circle of cipher readers very much as Heffelbauer’s “code” would have done, and asked what was up. Some one explained, with the touch of half-familiar condescension that they always used toward him. Vesey reached out and took the cablegram from the m. e.’s hand. Under the protection of some special Providence, he was always doing appalling things like that, and coming, off unscathed.</p>
|
||||
<p>“It’s a code,” said Vesey. “Anybody got the key?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“The office has no code,” said Boyd, reaching for the message. Vesey held to it.</p>
|
||||
@ -59,7 +59,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Vesey sat down on a table corner and began to whistle softly, frowning at the cablegram.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Let’s have it, please,” said the m. e. “We’ve got to get to work on it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I believe I’ve got a line on it,” said Vesey. “Give me ten minutes.”</p>
|
||||
<p>He walked to his desk, threw his hat into a waste-basket, spread out flat on his chest like a gorgeous lizard, and started his pencil going. The wit and wisdom of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> remained in a loose group, and smiled at one another, nodding their heads toward Vesey. Then they began to exchange their theories about the cipher.</p>
|
||||
<p>He walked to his desk, threw his hat into a wastebasket, spread out flat on his chest like a gorgeous lizard, and started his pencil going. The wit and wisdom of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> remained in a loose group, and smiled at one another, nodding their heads toward Vesey. Then they began to exchange their theories about the cipher.</p>
|
||||
<p>It took Vesey exactly fifteen minutes. He brought to the m. e. a pad with the code-key written on it.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I felt the swing of it as soon as I saw it,” said Vesey. “Hurrah for old Calloway! He’s done the Japs and every paper in town that prints literature instead of news. Take a look at that.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Thus had Vesey set forth the reading of the code:</p>
|
||||
@ -117,9 +117,9 @@
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p>Concluded arrangement to act at hour of midnight without saying. Report hath it that a large body of cavalry and an overwhelming force of infantry will be thrown into the field. Conditions white. Way contested by only a small force. Question the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Times</i> description. Its correspondent is unaware of the facts.</p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>“Great stuff!” cried Boyd excitedly. “Kuroki crosses the Yalu to-night and attacks. Oh, we won’t do a thing to the sheets that make up with Addison’s essays, real estate transfers, and bowling scores!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Great stuff!” cried Boyd excitedly. “Kuroki crosses the Yalu tonight and attacks. Oh, we won’t do a thing to the sheets that make up with Addison’s essays, real estate transfers, and bowling scores!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vesey,” said the m. e., with his jollying-which-you-should-regard-as-a-favour manner, “you have cast a serious reflection upon the literary standards of the paper that employs you. You have also assisted materially in giving us the biggest ‘beat’ of the year. I will let you know in a day or two whether you are to be discharged or retained at a larger salary. Somebody send Ames to me.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Ames was the king-pin, the snowy-petalled Marguerite, the star-bright looloo of the rewrite men. He saw attempted murder in the pains of green-apple colic, cyclones in the summer zephyr, lost children in every top-spinning urchin, an uprising of the down-trodden masses in every hurling of a derelict potato at a passing automobile. When not rewriting, Ames sat on the porch of his Brooklyn villa playing checkers with his ten-year-old son.</p>
|
||||
<p>Ames was the kingpin, the snowy-petalled Marguerite, the star-bright looloo of the rewrite men. He saw attempted murder in the pains of green-apple colic, cyclones in the summer zephyr, lost children in every top-spinning urchin, an uprising of the downtrodden masses in every hurling of a derelict potato at a passing automobile. When not rewriting, Ames sat on the porch of his Brooklyn villa playing checkers with his ten-year-old son.</p>
|
||||
<p>Ames and the “war editor” shut themselves in a room. There was a map in there stuck full of little pins that represented armies and divisions. Their fingers had been itching for days to move those pins along the crooked line of the Yalu. They did so now; and in words of fire Ames translated Calloway’s brief message into a front page masterpiece that set the world talking. He told of the secret councils of the Japanese officers; gave Kuroki’s flaming speeches in full; counted the cavalry and infantry to a man and a horse; described the quick and silent building, of the bridge at Suikauchen, across which the Mikado’s legions were hurled upon the surprised Zassulitch, whose troops were widely scattered along the river. And the battle!—well, you know what Ames can do with a battle if you give him just one smell of smoke for a foundation. And in the same story, with seemingly supernatural knowledge, he gleefully scored the most profound and ponderous paper in England for the false and misleading account of the intended movements of the Japanese First Army printed in its issue of <em>the same date</em>.</p>
|
||||
<p>Only one error was made; and that was the fault of the cable operator at Wi-ju. Calloway pointed it out after he came back. The word “great” in his code should have been “gage,” and its complemental words “of battle.” But it went to Ames “conditions white,” and of course he took that to mean snow. His description of the Japanese army struggling through the snowstorm, blinded by the whirling flakes, was thrillingly vivid. The artists turned out some effective illustrations that made a hit as pictures of the artillery dragging their guns through the drifts. But, as the attack was made on the first day of May, “conditions white” excited some amusement. But it in made no difference to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i>, anyway.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was wonderful. And Calloway was wonderful in having made the new censor believe that his jargon of words meant no more than a complaint of the dearth of news and a petition for more expense money. And Vesey was wonderful. And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -11,7 +11,7 @@
|
||||
<p>If you should chance to visit the General Land Office, step into the draughtsmen’s room and ask to be shown the map of Salado County. A leisurely German—possibly old Kampfer himself—will bring it to you. It will be four feet square, on heavy drawing-cloth. The lettering and the figures will be beautifully clear and distinct. The title will be in splendid, undecipherable German text, ornamented with classic Teutonic designs—very likely Ceres or Pomona leaning against the initial letters with cornucopias venting grapes and wieners. You must tell him that this is not the map you wish to see; that he will kindly bring you its official predecessor. He will then say, “Ach, so!” and bring out a map half the size of the first, dim, old, tattered, and faded.</p>
|
||||
<p>By looking carefully near its northwest corner you will presently come upon the worn contours of Chiquito River, and, maybe, if your eyes are good, discern the silent witness to this story.</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>The Commissioner of the Land Office was of the old style; his antique courtesy was too formal for his day. He dressed in fine black, and there was a suggestion of Roman drapery in his long coat-skirts. His collars were “undetached” (blame haberdashery for the word); his tie was a narrow, funereal strip, tied in the same knot as were his shoe-strings. His gray hair was a trifle too long behind, but he kept it smooth and orderly. His face was clean-shaven, like the old statesmen’s. Most people thought it a stern face, but when its official expression was off, a few had seen altogether a different countenance. Especially tender and gentle it had appeared to those who were about him during the last illness of his only child.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Commissioner of the Land Office was of the old style; his antique courtesy was too formal for his day. He dressed in fine black, and there was a suggestion of Roman drapery in his long coat-skirts. His collars were “undetached” (blame haberdashery for the word); his tie was a narrow, funereal strip, tied in the same knot as were his shoestrings. His gray hair was a trifle too long behind, but he kept it smooth and orderly. His face was clean-shaven, like the old statesmen’s. Most people thought it a stern face, but when its official expression was off, a few had seen altogether a different countenance. Especially tender and gentle it had appeared to those who were about him during the last illness of his only child.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Commissioner had been a widower for years, and his life, outside his official duties, had been so devoted to little Georgia that people spoke of it as a touching and admirable thing. He was a reserved man, and dignified almost to austerity, but the child had come below it all and rested upon his very heart, so that she scarcely missed the mother’s love that had been taken away. There was a wonderful companionship between them, for she had many of his own ways, being thoughtful and serious beyond her years.</p>
|
||||
<p>One day, while she was lying with the fever burning brightly in her checks, she said suddenly:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Papa, I wish I could do something good for a whole lot of children!”</p>
|
||||
@ -26,10 +26,10 @@
|
||||
<p>The Commissioner went to work silently and obstinately, putting back his grief as far as possible, forcing his mind to attack the complicated and important business of his office. On the second day after his return he called the porter, pointed to a leather-covered chair that stood near his own, and ordered it removed to a lumber-room at the top of the building. In that chair Georgia would always sit when she came to the office for him of afternoons.</p>
|
||||
<p>As time passed, the Commissioner seemed to grow more silent, solitary, and reserved. A new phase of mind developed in him. He could not endure the presence of a child. Often when a clattering youngster belonging to one of the clerks would come chattering into the big business-room adjoining his little apartment, the Commissioner would steal softly and close the door. He would always cross the street to avoid meeting the school-children when they came dancing along in happy groups upon the sidewalk, and his firm mouth would close into a mere line.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was nearly three months after the rains had washed the last dead flower-petals from the mound above little Georgia when the “land-shark” firm of Hamlin and Avery filed papers upon what they considered the “fattest” vacancy of the year.</p>
|
||||
<p>It should not be supposed that all who were termed “land-sharks” deserved the name. Many of them were reputable men of good business character. Some of them could walk into the most august councils of the State and say: “Gentlemen, we would like to have this, and that, and matters go thus.” But, next to a three years’ drought and the boll-worm, the Actual Settler hated the Land-shark. The land-shark haunted the Land Office, where all the land records were kept, and hunted “vacancies”—that is, tracts of unappropriated public domain, generally invisible upon the official maps, but actually existing “upon the ground.” The law entitled any one possessing certain State scrip to file by virtue of same upon any land not previously legally appropriated. Most of the scrip was now in the hands of the land-sharks. Thus, at the cost of a few hundred dollars, they often secured lands worth as many thousands. Naturally, the search for “vacancies” was lively.</p>
|
||||
<p>It should not be supposed that all who were termed “land-sharks” deserved the name. Many of them were reputable men of good business character. Some of them could walk into the most august councils of the State and say: “Gentlemen, we would like to have this, and that, and matters go thus.” But, next to a three years’ drought and the bollworm, the Actual Settler hated the Land-shark. The land-shark haunted the Land Office, where all the land records were kept, and hunted “vacancies”—that is, tracts of unappropriated public domain, generally invisible upon the official maps, but actually existing “upon the ground.” The law entitled any one possessing certain State scrip to file by virtue of same upon any land not previously legally appropriated. Most of the scrip was now in the hands of the land-sharks. Thus, at the cost of a few hundred dollars, they often secured lands worth as many thousands. Naturally, the search for “vacancies” was lively.</p>
|
||||
<p>But often—very often—the land they thus secured, though legally “unappropriated,” would be occupied by happy and contented settlers, who had laboured for years to build up their homes, only to discover that their titles were worthless, and to receive peremptory notice to quit. Thus came about the bitter and not unjustifiable hatred felt by the toiling settlers toward the shrewd and seldom merciful speculators who so often turned them forth destitute and homeless from their fruitless labours. The history of the state teems with their antagonism. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Land-shark seldom showed his face on “locations” from which he should have to eject the unfortunate victims of a monstrously tangled land system, but let his emissaries do the work. There was lead in every cabin, moulded into balls for him; many of his brothers had enriched the grass with their blood. The fault of it all lay far back.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the state was young, she felt the need of attracting newcomers, and of rewarding those pioneers already within her borders. Year after year she issued land scrip—Headrights, Bounties, Veteran Donations, Confederates; and to railroads, irrigation companies, colonies, and tillers of the soil galore. All required of the grantee was that he or it should have the scrip properly surveyed upon the public domain by the county or district surveyor, and the land thus appropriated became the property of him or it, or his or its heirs and assigns, forever.</p>
|
||||
<p>In those days—and here is where the trouble began—the state’s domain was practically inexhaustible, and the old surveyors, with princely—yea, even Western American—liberality, gave good measure and over-flowing. Often the jovial man of metes and bounds would dispense altogether with the tripod and chain. Mounted on a pony that could cover something near a “vara” at a step, with a pocket compass to direct his course, he would trot out a survey by counting the beat of his pony’s hoofs, mark his corners, and write out his field notes with the complacency produced by an act of duty well performed. Sometimes—and who could blame the surveyor?—when the pony was “feeling his oats,” he might step a little higher and farther, and in that case the beneficiary of the scrip might get a thousand or two more acres in his survey than the scrip called for. But look at the boundless leagues the state had to spare! However, no one ever had to complain of the pony under-stepping. Nearly every old survey in the state contained an excess of land.</p>
|
||||
<p>In those days—and here is where the trouble began—the state’s domain was practically inexhaustible, and the old surveyors, with princely—yea, even Western American—liberality, gave good measure and overflowing. Often the jovial man of metes and bounds would dispense altogether with the tripod and chain. Mounted on a pony that could cover something near a “vara” at a step, with a pocket compass to direct his course, he would trot out a survey by counting the beat of his pony’s hoofs, mark his corners, and write out his field notes with the complacency produced by an act of duty well performed. Sometimes—and who could blame the surveyor?—when the pony was “feeling his oats,” he might step a little higher and farther, and in that case the beneficiary of the scrip might get a thousand or two more acres in his survey than the scrip called for. But look at the boundless leagues the state had to spare! However, no one ever had to complain of the pony under-stepping. Nearly every old survey in the state contained an excess of land.</p>
|
||||
<p>In later years, when the state became more populous, and land values increased, this careless work entailed incalculable trouble, endless litigation, a period of riotous land-grabbing, and no little bloodshed. The land-sharks voraciously attacked these excesses in the old surveys, and filed upon such portions with new scrip as unappropriated public domain. Wherever the identifications of the old tracts were vague, and the corners were not to be clearly established, the Land Office would recognize the newer locations as valid, and issue title to the locators. Here was the greatest hardship to be found. These old surveys, taken from the pick of the land, were already nearly all occupied by unsuspecting and peaceful settlers, and thus their titles were demolished, and the choice was placed before them either to buy their land over at a double price or to vacate it, with their families and personal belongings, immediately. Land locators sprang up by hundreds. The country was held up and searched for “vacancies” at the point of a compass. Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of splendid acres were wrested from their innocent purchasers and holders. There began a vast hegira of evicted settlers in tattered wagons; going nowhere, cursing injustice, stunned, purposeless, homeless, hopeless. Their children began to look up to them for bread, and cry.</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>It was in consequence of these conditions that Hamilton and Avery had filed upon a strip of land about a mile wide and three miles long, comprising about two thousand acres, it being the excess over complement of the Elias Denny three-league survey on Chiquito River, in one of the middle-western counties. This two-thousand-acre body of land was asserted by them to be vacant land, and improperly considered a part of the Denny survey. They based this assertion and their claim upon the land upon the demonstrated facts that the beginning corner of the Denny survey was plainly identified; that its field notes called to run west 5,760 varas, and then called for Chiquito River; thence it ran south, with the meanders—and so on—and that the Chiquito River was, on the ground, fully a mile farther west from the point reached by course and distance. To sum up: there were two thousand acres of vacant land between the Denny survey proper and Chiquito River.</p>
|
||||
@ -54,15 +54,15 @@
|
||||
<p>The spirit of the Actual Settler beamed in Ashe’s face.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Beautiful,” he said, with enthusiasm. “Valley as level as this floor, with just a little swell on, like the sea, and rich as cream. Just enough brakes to shelter the cattle in winter. Black loamy soil for six feet, and then clay. Holds water. A dozen nice little houses on it, with windmills and gardens. People pretty poor, I guess—too far from market—but comfortable. Never saw so many kids in my life.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“They raise flocks?” inquired the Commissioner.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ho, ho! I mean two-legged kids,” laughed the surveyor; “two-legged, and bare-legged, and tow-headed.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ho, ho! I mean two-legged kids,” laughed the surveyor; “two-legged, and barelegged, and towheaded.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Children! oh, children!” mused the Commissioner, as though a new view had opened to him; “they raise children!</p>
|
||||
<p>“It’s a lonesome country, Commissioner,” said the surveyor. “Can you blame ’em?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I suppose,” continued the Commissioner, slowly, as one carefully pursues deductions from a new, stupendous theory, “not all of them are tow-headed. It would not be unreasonable, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ashe, I conjecture, to believe that a portion of them have brown, or even black, hair.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I suppose,” continued the Commissioner, slowly, as one carefully pursues deductions from a new, stupendous theory, “not all of them are towheaded. It would not be unreasonable, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ashe, I conjecture, to believe that a portion of them have brown, or even black, hair.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Brown and black, sure,” said Ashe; “also red.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“No doubt,” said the Commissioner. “Well, I thank you for your courtesy in informing me, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ashe. I will not detain you any longer from your duties.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Later, in the afternoon, came Hamlin and Avery, big, handsome, genial, sauntering men, clothed in white duck and low-cut shoes. They permeated the whole office with an aura of debonair prosperity. They passed among the clerks and left a wake of abbreviated given names and fat brown cigars.</p>
|
||||
<p>These were the aristocracy of the land-sharks, who went in for big things. Full of serene confidence in themselves, there was no corporation, no syndicate, no railroad company or attorney general too big for them to tackle. The peculiar smoke of their rare, fat brown cigars was to be perceived in the sanctum of every department of state, in every committee-room of the Legislature, in every bank parlour and every private caucus-room in the state Capital. Always pleasant, never in a hurry, in seeming to possess unlimited leisure, people wondered when they gave their attention to the many audacious enterprises in which they were known to be engaged.</p>
|
||||
<p>By and by the two dropped carelessly into the Commissioner’s room and reclined lazily in the big, leather-upholstered arm-chairs. They drawled a good-natured complaint of the weather, and Hamlin told the Commissioner an excellent story he had amassed that morning from the Secretary of State.</p>
|
||||
<p>By and by the two dropped carelessly into the Commissioner’s room and reclined lazily in the big, leather-upholstered armchairs. They drawled a good-natured complaint of the weather, and Hamlin told the Commissioner an excellent story he had amassed that morning from the Secretary of State.</p>
|
||||
<p>But the Commissioner knew why they were there. He had half promised to render a decision that day upon their location.</p>
|
||||
<p>The chief clerk now brought in a batch of duplicate certificates for the Commissioner to sign. As he traced his sprawling signature, “Hollis Summerfield, Comr. Genl. Land Office,” on each one, the chief clerk stood, deftly removing them and applying the blotter.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I notice,” said the chief clerk, “you’ve been going through that Salado County location. Kampfer is making a new map of Salado, and I believe is platting in that section of the county now.”</p>
|
||||
@ -75,15 +75,15 @@
|
||||
<p>When his mind at length came to inquire into the reason of it, he saw that it must have been, as Kampfer had said, unpremeditated. The old draughtsman had been platting in the Elias Denny survey, and Georgia’s likeness, striking though it was, was formed by nothing more than the meanders of Chiquito River. Indeed, Kampfer’s blotter, whereon his preliminary work was done, showed the laborious tracings of the calls and the countless pricks of the compasses. Then, over his faint pencilling, Kampfer had drawn in India ink with a full, firm pen the similitude of Chiquito River, and forth had blossomed mysteriously the dainty, pathetic profile of the child.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Commissioner sat for half an hour with his face in his hands, gazing downward, and none dared approach him. Then he arose and walked out. In the business office he paused long enough to ask that the Denny file be brought to his desk.</p>
|
||||
<p>He found Hamlin and Avery still reclining in their chairs, apparently oblivious of business. They were lazily discussing summer opera, it being, their habit—perhaps their pride also—to appear supernaturally indifferent whenever they stood with large interests imperilled. And they stood to win more on this stake than most people knew. They possessed inside information to the effect that a new railroad would, within a year, split this very Chiquito River valley and send land values ballooning all along its route. A dollar under thirty thousand profit on this location, if it should hold good, would be a loss to their expectations. So, while they chatted lightly and waited for the Commissioner to open the subject, there was a quick, sidelong sparkle in their eyes, evincing a desire to read their title clear to those fair acres on the Chiquito.</p>
|
||||
<p>A clerk brought in the file. The Commissioner seated himself and wrote upon it in red ink. Then he rose to his feet and stood for a while looking straight out of the window. The Land Office capped the summit of a bold hill. The eyes of the Commissioner passed over the roofs of many houses set in a packing of deep green, the whole checkered by strips of blinding white streets. The horizon, where his gaze was focussed, swelled to a fair wooded eminence flecked with faint dots of shining white. There was the cemetery, where lay many who were forgotten, and a few who had not lived in vain. And one lay there, occupying very small space, whose childish heart had been large enough to desire, while near its last beats, good to others. The Commissioner’s lips moved slightly as he whispered to himself: “It was her last will and testament, and I have neglected it so long!”</p>
|
||||
<p>A clerk brought in the file. The Commissioner seated himself and wrote upon it in red ink. Then he rose to his feet and stood for a while looking straight out of the window. The Land Office capped the summit of a bold hill. The eyes of the Commissioner passed over the roofs of many houses set in a packing of deep green, the whole checkered by strips of blinding white streets. The horizon, where his gaze was focused, swelled to a fair wooded eminence flecked with faint dots of shining white. There was the cemetery, where lay many who were forgotten, and a few who had not lived in vain. And one lay there, occupying very small space, whose childish heart had been large enough to desire, while near its last beats, good to others. The Commissioner’s lips moved slightly as he whispered to himself: “It was her last will and testament, and I have neglected it so long!”</p>
|
||||
<p>The big brown cigars of Hamlin and Avery were fireless, but they still gripped them between their teeth and waited, while they marvelled at the absent expression upon the Commissioner’s face.</p>
|
||||
<p>By and by he spoke suddenly and promptly.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Gentlemen, I have just indorsed the Elias Denny survey for patenting. This office will not regard your location upon a part of it as legal.” He paused a moment, and then, extending his hand as those dear old-time ones used to do in debate, he enunciated the spirit of that Ruling that subsequently drove the land-sharks to the wall, and placed the seal of peace and security over the doors of ten thousand homes.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Gentlemen, I have just endorsed the Elias Denny survey for patenting. This office will not regard your location upon a part of it as legal.” He paused a moment, and then, extending his hand as those dear old-time ones used to do in debate, he enunciated the spirit of that Ruling that subsequently drove the land-sharks to the wall, and placed the seal of peace and security over the doors of ten thousand homes.</p>
|
||||
<p>“And, furthermore,” he continued, with a clear, soft light upon his face, “it may interest you to know that from this time on this office will consider that when a survey of land made by virtue of a certificate granted by this state to the men who wrested it from the wilderness and the savage—made in good faith, settled in good faith, and left in good faith to their children or innocent purchasers—when such a survey, although overrunning its complement, shall call for any natural object visible to the eye of man, to that object it shall hold, and be good and valid. And the children of this state shall lie down to sleep at night, and rumours of disturbers of title shall not disquiet them. For,” concluded the Commissioner, “of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”</p>
|
||||
<p>In the silence that followed, a laugh floated up from the patent-room below. The man who carried down the Denny file was exhibiting it among the clerks.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Look here,” he said, delightedly, “the old man has forgotten his name. He’s written ‘Patent to original grantee,’ and signed it ‘Georgia Summerfield, Comr.” ’</p>
|
||||
<p>The speech of the Commissioner rebounded lightly from the impregnable Hamlin and Avery. They smiled, rose gracefully, spoke of the baseball team, and argued feelingly that quite a perceptible breeze had arisen from the east. They lit fresh fat brown cigars, and drifted courteously away. But later they made another tiger-spring for their quarry in the courts. But the courts, according to reports in the papers, “coolly roasted them” (a remarkable performance, suggestive of liquid-air didoes), and sustained the Commissioner’s Ruling.</p>
|
||||
<p>And this Ruling itself grew to be a Precedent, and the Actual Settler framed it, and taught his children to spell from it, and there was sound sleep o’ nights from the pines to the sage-brush, and from the chaparral to the great brown river of the north.</p>
|
||||
<p>And this Ruling itself grew to be a Precedent, and the Actual Settler framed it, and taught his children to spell from it, and there was sound sleep o’ nights from the pines to the sagebrush, and from the chaparral to the great brown river of the north.</p>
|
||||
<p>But I think, and I am sure the Commissioner never thought otherwise, that whether Kampfer was a snuffy old instrument of destiny, or whether the meanders of the Chiquito accidentally platted themselves into that memorable sweet profile or not, there was brought about “something good for a whole lot of children,” and the result ought to be called “Georgia’s Ruling.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">“Girl”</h2>
|
||||
<p>In gilt letters on the ground glass of the door of room <abbr>No.</abbr> 962 were the words: “Robbins & Hartley, Brokers.” The clerks had gone. It was past five, and with the solid tramp of a drove of prize Percherons, scrub-women were invading the cloud-capped twenty-story office building. A puff of red-hot air flavoured with lemon peelings, soft-coal smoke and train oil came in through the half-open windows.</p>
|
||||
<p>Robbins, fifty, something of an overweight beau, and addicted to first nights and hotel palm-rooms, pretended to be envious of his partner’s commuter’s joys.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Going to be something doing in the humidity line to-night,” he said. “You out-of-town chaps will be the people, with your katydids and moonlight and long drinks and things out on the front porch.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Going to be something doing in the humidity line tonight,” he said. “You out-of-town chaps will be the people, with your katydids and moonlight and long drinks and things out on the front porch.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Hartley, twenty-nine, serious, thin, good-looking, nervous, sighed and frowned a little.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yes,” said he, “we always have cool nights in Floralhurst, especially in the winter.”</p>
|
||||
<p>A man with an air of mystery came in the door and went up to Hartley.</p>
|
||||
@ -42,7 +42,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“His name?” demanded Hartley, sternly.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Townsend.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Rafford Townsend!” exclaimed Hartley, with a grim tightening of his jaw. “How did that man come to know you? After all I’ve done for him—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“His auto has just stopped below,” said Vivienne, bending over the window-sill. “He’s coming for his answer. Oh I don’t know what to do!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“His auto has just stopped below,” said Vivienne, bending over the windowsill. “He’s coming for his answer. Oh I don’t know what to do!”</p>
|
||||
<p>The bell in the flat kitchen whirred. Vivienne hurried to press the latch button.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Stay here,” said Hartley. “I will meet him in the hall.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Townsend, looking like a Spanish grandee in his light tweeds, Panama hat and curling black mustache, came up the stairs three at a time. He stopped at sight of Hartley and looked foolish.</p>
|
||||
@ -51,7 +51,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Go back,” repeated Hartley, inflexibly. “The Law of the Jungle. Do you want the Pack to tear you in pieces? The kill is mine.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I came here to see a plumber about the bathroom connections,” said Townsend, bravely.</p>
|
||||
<p>“All right,” said Hartley. “You shall have that lying plaster to stick upon your traitorous soul. But, go back.” Townsend went downstairs, leaving a bitter word to be wafted up the draught of the staircase. Hartley went back to his wooing.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Vivienne,” said he, masterfully. “I have got to have you. I will take no more refusals or dilly-dallying.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Vivienne,” said he, masterfully. “I have got to have you. I will take no more refusals or dillydallying.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“When do you want me?” she asked.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now. As soon as you can get ready.”</p>
|
||||
<p>She stood calmly before him and looked him in the eye.</p>
|
||||
@ -60,14 +60,14 @@
|
||||
<p>“She shall go,” he declared grimly. Drops stood upon his brow. “Why should I let that woman make my life miserable? Never have I seen one day of freedom from trouble since I have known her. You are right, Vivienne. Héloise must be sent away before I can take you home. But she shall go. I have decided. I will turn her from my doors.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“When will you do this?” asked the girl.</p>
|
||||
<p>Hartley clinched his teeth and bent his brows together.</p>
|
||||
<p>“To-night,” he said, resolutely. “I will send her away to-night.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Tonight,” he said, resolutely. “I will send her away tonight.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Then,” said Vivienne, “my answer is ‘yes.’ Come for me when you will.”</p>
|
||||
<p>She looked into his eyes with a sweet, sincere light in her own. Hartley could scarcely believe that her surrender was true, it was so swift and complete.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Promise me,” he said feelingly, “on your word and honour.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“On my word and honour,” repeated Vivienne, softly.</p>
|
||||
<p>At the door he turned and gazed at her happily, but yet as one who scarcely trusts the foundations of his joy.</p>
|
||||
<p>“To-morrow,” he said, with a forefinger of reminder uplifted.</p>
|
||||
<p>“To-morrow,” she repeated with a smile of truth and candour.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Tomorrow,” he said, with a forefinger of reminder uplifted.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Tomorrow,” she repeated with a smile of truth and candour.</p>
|
||||
<p>In an hour and forty minutes Hartley stepped off the train at Floralhurst. A brisk walk of ten minutes brought him to the gate of a handsome two-story cottage set upon a wide and well-tended lawn. Halfway to the house he was met by a woman with jet-black braided hair and flowing white summer gown, who half strangled him without apparent cause.</p>
|
||||
<p>When they stepped into the hall she said:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Mamma’s here. The auto is coming for her in half an hour. She came to dinner, but there’s no dinner.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -11,12 +11,12 @@
|
||||
<p>“Aunt Ellen,” said Octavia, cheerfully, as she threw her black kid gloves carefully at the dignified Persian cat on the window-seat, “I’m a pauper.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You are so extreme in your statements, Octavia, dear,” said Aunt Ellen, mildly, looking up from her paper. “If you find yourself temporarily in need of some small change for bonbons, you will find my purse in the drawer of the writing desk.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Octavia Beaupree removed her hat and seated herself on a footstool near her aunt’s chair, clasping her hands about her knees. Her slim and flexible figure, clad in a modish mourning costume, accommodated itself easily and gracefully to the trying position. Her bright and youthful face, with its pair of sparkling, life-enamoured eyes, tried to compose itself to the seriousness that the occasion seemed to demand.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You good auntie, it isn’t a case of bonbons; it is abject, staring, unpicturesque poverty, with ready-made clothes, gasolined gloves, and probably one o’clock dinners all waiting with the traditional wolf at the door. I’ve just come from my lawyer, auntie, and, ‘Please, ma’am, I ain’t got nothink ‘t all. Flowers, lady? Buttonhole, gentleman? Pencils, sir, three for five, to help a poor widow?’ Do I do it nicely, auntie, or, as a bread-winner accomplishment, were my lessons in elocution entirely wasted?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You good auntie, it isn’t a case of bonbons; it is abject, staring, unpicturesque poverty, with ready-made clothes, gasolined gloves, and probably one o’clock dinners all waiting with the traditional wolf at the door. I’ve just come from my lawyer, auntie, and, ‘Please, ma’am, I ain’t got nothink ‘t all. Flowers, lady? Buttonhole, gentleman? Pencils, sir, three for five, to help a poor widow?’ Do I do it nicely, auntie, or, as a breadwinner accomplishment, were my lessons in elocution entirely wasted?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Do be serious, my dear,” said Aunt Ellen, letting her paper fall to the floor, “long enough to tell me what you mean. Colonel Beaupree’s estate—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Colonel Beaupree’s estate,” interrupted Octavia, emphasizing her words with appropriate dramatic gestures, “is of Spanish castellar architecture. Colonel Beaupree’s resources are—wind. Colonel Beaupree’s stocks are—water. Colonel Beaupree’s income is—all in. The statement lacks the legal technicalities to which I have been listening for an hour, but that is what it means when translated.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Octavia!” Aunt Ellen was now visibly possessed by consternation. “I can hardly believe it. And it was the impression that he was worth a million. And the De Peysters themselves introduced him!”</p>
|
||||
<p>Octavia rippled out a laugh, and then became properly grave.</p>
|
||||
<p>“De mortuis nil, auntie—not even the rest of it. The dear old colonel—what a gold brick he was, after all! I paid for my bargain fairly—I’m all here, am I not?—items: eyes, fingers, toes, youth, old family, unquestionable position in society as called for in the contract—no wild-cat stock here.” Octavia picked up the morning paper from the floor. “But I’m not going to ‘squeal’—isn’t that what they call it when you rail at Fortune because you’ve, lost the game?” She turned the pages of the paper calmly. “ ‘Stock market’—no use for that. ‘Society’s doings’—that’s done. Here is my page—the wish column. A Van Dresser could not be said to ‘want’ for anything, of course. ‘Chamber-maids, cooks, canvassers, stenographers—’ ”</p>
|
||||
<p>“De mortuis nil, auntie—not even the rest of it. The dear old colonel—what a gold brick he was, after all! I paid for my bargain fairly—I’m all here, am I not?—items: eyes, fingers, toes, youth, old family, unquestionable position in society as called for in the contract—no wildcat stock here.” Octavia picked up the morning paper from the floor. “But I’m not going to ‘squeal’—isn’t that what they call it when you rail at Fortune because you’ve, lost the game?” She turned the pages of the paper calmly. “ ‘Stock market’—no use for that. ‘Society’s doings’—that’s done. Here is my page—the wish column. A Van Dresser could not be said to ‘want’ for anything, of course. ‘Chambermaids, cooks, canvassers, stenographers—’ ”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Dear,” said Aunt Ellen, with a little tremor in her voice, “please do not talk in that way. Even if your affairs are in so unfortunate a condition, there is my three thousand—”</p>
|
||||
<p>Octavia sprang up lithely, and deposited a smart kiss on the delicate cheek of the prim little elderly maid.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Blessed auntie, your three thousand is just sufficient to insure your Hyson to be free from willow leaves and keep the Persian in sterilized cream. I know I’d be welcome, but I prefer to strike bottom like Beelzebub rather than hang around like the Peri listening to the music from the side entrance. I’m going to earn my own living. There’s nothing else to do. I’m a—Oh, oh, oh!—I had forgotten. There’s one thing saved from the wreck. It’s a corral—no, a ranch in—let me see—Texas: an asset, dear old <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bannister called it. How pleased he was to show me something he could describe as unencumbered! I’ve a description of it among those stupid papers he made me bring away with me from his office. I’ll try to find it.”</p>
|
||||
@ -28,7 +28,7 @@
|
||||
<p>When Octavia ceased reading, Aunt Ellen uttered something as near a sniff as her breeding permitted.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The prospectus,” she said, with uncompromising metropolitan suspicion, “doesn’t mention the centipedes, or the Indians. And you never did like mutton, Octavia. I don’t see what advantage you can derive from this—desert.”</p>
|
||||
<p>But Octavia was in a trance. Her eyes were steadily regarding something quite beyond their focus. Her lips were parted, and her face was lighted by the kindling furor of the explorer, the ardent, stirring disquiet of the adventurer. Suddenly she clasped her hands together exultantly.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The problem solves itself, auntie,” she cried. “I’m going to that ranch. I’m going to live on it. I’m going to learn to like mutton, and even concede the good qualities of centipedes—at a respectful distance. It’s just what I need. It’s a new life that comes when my old one is just ending. It’s a release, auntie; it isn’t a narrowing. Think of the gallops over those leagues of prairies, with the wind tugging at the roots of your hair, the coming close to the earth and learning over again the stories of the growing grass and the little wild flowers without names! Glorious is what it will be. Shall I be a shepherdess with a Watteau hat, and a crook to keep the bad wolves from the lambs, or a typical Western ranch girl, with short hair, like the pictures of her in the Sunday papers? I think the latter. And they’ll have my picture, too, with the wild-cats I’ve slain, single-handed, hanging from my saddle horn. ‘From the Four Hundred to the Flocks’ is the way they’ll headline it, and they’ll print photographs of the old Van Dresser mansion and the church where I was married. They won’t have my picture, but they’ll get an artist to draw it. I’ll be wild and woolly, and I’ll grow my own wool.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“The problem solves itself, auntie,” she cried. “I’m going to that ranch. I’m going to live on it. I’m going to learn to like mutton, and even concede the good qualities of centipedes—at a respectful distance. It’s just what I need. It’s a new life that comes when my old one is just ending. It’s a release, auntie; it isn’t a narrowing. Think of the gallops over those leagues of prairies, with the wind tugging at the roots of your hair, the coming close to the earth and learning over again the stories of the growing grass and the little wild flowers without names! Glorious is what it will be. Shall I be a shepherdess with a Watteau hat, and a crook to keep the bad wolves from the lambs, or a typical Western ranch girl, with short hair, like the pictures of her in the Sunday papers? I think the latter. And they’ll have my picture, too, with the wildcats I’ve slain, single-handed, hanging from my saddle horn. ‘From the Four Hundred to the Flocks’ is the way they’ll headline it, and they’ll print photographs of the old Van Dresser mansion and the church where I was married. They won’t have my picture, but they’ll get an artist to draw it. I’ll be wild and woolly, and I’ll grow my own wool.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Octavia!” Aunt Ellen condensed into the one word all the protests she was unable to utter.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Don’t say a word, auntie. I’m going. I’ll see the sky at night fit down on the world like a big butter-dish cover, and I’ll make friends again with the stars that I haven’t had a chat with since I was a wee child. I wish to go. I’m tired of all this. I’m glad I haven’t any money. I could bless Colonel Beaupree for that ranch, and forgive him for all his bubbles. What if the life will be rough and lonely! I—I deserve it. I shut my heart to everything except that miserable ambition. I—oh, I wish to go away, and forget—forget!”</p>
|
||||
<p>Octavia swerved suddenly to her knees, laid her flushed face in her aunt’s lap, and shook with turbulent sobs.</p>
|
||||
@ -38,7 +38,7 @@
|
||||
<p>When <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Octavia Beaupree, née Van Dresser, stepped from the train at Nopal, her manner lost, for the moment, some of that easy certitude which had always marked her movements. The town was of recent establishment, and seemed to have been hastily constructed of undressed lumber and flapping canvas. The element that had congregated about the station, though not offensively demonstrative, was clearly composed of citizens accustomed to and prepared for rude alarms.</p>
|
||||
<p>Octavia stood on the platform, against the telegraph office, and attempted to choose by intuition from the swaggering, straggling string of loungers, the manager of the Rancho de las Sombras, who had been instructed by <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bannister to meet her there. That tall, serious, looking, elderly man in the blue flannel shirt and white tie she thought must be he. But, no; he passed by, removing his gaze from the lady as hers rested on him, according to the Southern custom. The manager, she thought, with some impatience at being kept waiting, should have no difficulty in selecting her. Young women wearing the most recent thing in ash-coloured travelling suits were not so plentiful in Nopal!</p>
|
||||
<p>Thus keeping a speculative watch on all persons of possible managerial aspect, Octavia, with a catching breath and a start of surprise, suddenly became aware of Teddy Westlake hurrying along the platform in the direction of the train—of Teddy Westlake or his sun-browned ghost in cheviot, boots and leather-girdled hat—Theodore Westlake, Jr., amateur polo (almost) champion, all-round butterfly and cumberer of the soil; but a broader, surer, more emphasized and determined Teddy than the one she had known a year ago when last she saw him.</p>
|
||||
<p>He perceived Octavia at almost the same time, deflected his course, and steered for her in his old, straightforward way. Something like awe came upon her as the strangeness of his metamorphosis was brought into closer range; the rich, red-brown of his complexion brought out so vividly his straw-coloured mustache and steel-gray eyes. He seemed more grown-up, and, somehow, farther away. But, when he spoke, the old, boyish Teddy came back again. They had been friends from childhood.</p>
|
||||
<p>He perceived Octavia at almost the same time, deflected his course, and steered for her in his old, straightforward way. Something like awe came upon her as the strangeness of his metamorphosis was brought into closer range; the rich, red-brown of his complexion brought out so vividly his straw-coloured mustache and steel-gray eyes. He seemed more grownup, and, somehow, farther away. But, when he spoke, the old, boyish Teddy came back again. They had been friends from childhood.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why, ‘Tave!” he exclaimed, unable to reduce his perplexity to coherence. “How—what—when—where?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Train,” said Octavia; “necessity; ten minutes ago; home. Your complexion’s gone, Teddy. Now, how—what—when—where?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’m working down here,” said Teddy. He cast side glances about the station as one does who tries to combine politeness with duty.</p>
|
||||
@ -51,14 +51,14 @@
|
||||
<p>“Are you the manager of that ranch?” she asked weakly.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I am,” said Teddy, with pride.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I am <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Beaupree,” said Octavia faintly; “but my hair never would curl, and I was polite to the conductor.”</p>
|
||||
<p>For a moment that strange, grown-up look came back, and removed Teddy miles away from her.</p>
|
||||
<p>For a moment that strange, grownup look came back, and removed Teddy miles away from her.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I hope you’ll excuse me,” he said, rather awkwardly. “You see, I’ve been down here in the chaparral a year. I hadn’t heard. Give me your checks, please, and I’ll have your traps loaded into the wagon. José will follow with them. We travel ahead in the buckboard.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Seated by Teddy in a feather-weight buckboard, behind a pair of wild, cream-coloured Spanish ponies, Octavia abandoned all thought for the exhilaration of the present. They swept out of the little town and down the level road toward the south. Soon the road dwindled and disappeared, and they struck across a world carpeted with an endless reach of curly mesquite grass. The wheels made no sound. The tireless ponies bounded ahead at an unbroken gallop. The temperate wind, made fragrant by thousands of acres of blue and yellow wild flowers, roared gloriously in their ears. The motion was aërial, ecstatic, with a thrilling sense of perpetuity in its effect. Octavia sat silent, possessed by a feeling of elemental, sensual bliss. Teddy seemed to be wrestling with some internal problem.</p>
|
||||
<p>Seated by Teddy in a featherweight buckboard, behind a pair of wild, cream-coloured Spanish ponies, Octavia abandoned all thought for the exhilaration of the present. They swept out of the little town and down the level road toward the south. Soon the road dwindled and disappeared, and they struck across a world carpeted with an endless reach of curly mesquite grass. The wheels made no sound. The tireless ponies bounded ahead at an unbroken gallop. The temperate wind, made fragrant by thousands of acres of blue and yellow wild flowers, roared gloriously in their ears. The motion was aërial, ecstatic, with a thrilling sense of perpetuity in its effect. Octavia sat silent, possessed by a feeling of elemental, sensual bliss. Teddy seemed to be wrestling with some internal problem.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’m going to call you madama,” he announced as the result of his labours. “That is what the Mexicans will call you—they’re nearly all Mexicans on the ranch, you know. That seems to me about the proper thing.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Very well, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Westlake,” said Octavia, primly.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, now,” said Teddy, in some consternation, “that’s carrying the thing too far, isn’t it?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Don’t worry me with your beastly etiquette. I’m just beginning to live. Don’t remind me of anything artificial. If only this air could be bottled! This much alone is worth coming for. Oh, look I there goes a deer!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Jack-rabbit,” said Teddy, without turning his head.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Jackrabbit,” said Teddy, without turning his head.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Could I—might I drive?” suggested Octavia, panting, with rose-tinted cheeks and the eye of an eager child.</p>
|
||||
<p>“On one condition. Could I—might I smoke?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Forever!” cried Octavia, taking the lines with solemn joy. “How shall I know which way to drive?”</p>
|
||||
@ -85,21 +85,21 @@
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> MacIntyre, the housekeeper, as much a fixture on the place as the lake or the live-oaks, received the imputation of the ranch’s resources of refreshment with mild indignation, and was about to give it utterance when Octavia spoke.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> MacIntyre, don’t apologize for Teddy. Yes, I call him Teddy. So does every one whom he hasn’t duped into taking him seriously. You see, we used to cut paper dolls and play jackstraws together ages ago. No one minds what he says.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“No,” said Teddy, “no one minds what he says, just so he doesn’t do it again.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Octavia cast one of those subtle, sidelong glances toward him from beneath her lowered eyelids—a glance that Teddy used to describe as an upper-cut. But there was nothing in his ingenuous, weather-tanned face to warrant a suspicion that he was making an allusion—nothing. Beyond a doubt, thought Octavia, he had forgotten.</p>
|
||||
<p>Octavia cast one of those subtle, sidelong glances toward him from beneath her lowered eyelids—a glance that Teddy used to describe as an uppercut. But there was nothing in his ingenuous, weather-tanned face to warrant a suspicion that he was making an allusion—nothing. Beyond a doubt, thought Octavia, he had forgotten.</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Westlake likes his fun,” said <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Maclntyre, as she conducted Octavia to her rooms. “But,” she added, loyally, “people around here usually pay attention to what he says when he talks in earnest. I don’t know what would have become of this place without him.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Two rooms at the east end of the house had been arranged for the occupancy of the ranch’s mistress. When she entered them a slight dismay seized her at their bare appearance and the scantiness of their furniture; but she quickly reflected that the climate was a semi-tropical one, and was moved to appreciation of the well-conceived efforts to conform to it. The sashes had already been removed from the big windows, and white curtains waved in the Gulf breeze that streamed through the wide jalousies. The bare floor was amply strewn with cool rugs; the chairs were inviting, deep, dreamy willows; the walls were papered with a light, cheerful olive. One whole side of her sitting room was covered with books on smooth, unpainted pine shelves. She flew to these at once. Before her was a well-selected library. She caught glimpses of titles of volumes of fiction and travel not yet seasoned from the dampness of the press.</p>
|
||||
<p>Presently, recollecting that she was now in a wilderness given over to mutton, centipedes and privations, the incongruity of these luxuries struck her, and, with intuitive feminine suspicion, she began turning to the fly-leaves of volume after volume. Upon each one was inscribed in fluent characters the name of Theodore Westlake, Jr.</p>
|
||||
<p>Two rooms at the east end of the house had been arranged for the occupancy of the ranch’s mistress. When she entered them a slight dismay seized her at their bare appearance and the scantiness of their furniture; but she quickly reflected that the climate was a semitropical one, and was moved to appreciation of the well-conceived efforts to conform to it. The sashes had already been removed from the big windows, and white curtains waved in the Gulf breeze that streamed through the wide jalousies. The bare floor was amply strewn with cool rugs; the chairs were inviting, deep, dreamy willows; the walls were papered with a light, cheerful olive. One whole side of her sitting room was covered with books on smooth, unpainted pine shelves. She flew to these at once. Before her was a well-selected library. She caught glimpses of titles of volumes of fiction and travel not yet seasoned from the dampness of the press.</p>
|
||||
<p>Presently, recollecting that she was now in a wilderness given over to mutton, centipedes and privations, the incongruity of these luxuries struck her, and, with intuitive feminine suspicion, she began turning to the flyleaves of volume after volume. Upon each one was inscribed in fluent characters the name of Theodore Westlake, Jr.</p>
|
||||
<p>Octavia, fatigued by her long journey, retired early that night. Lying upon her white, cool bed, she rested deliciously, but sleep coquetted long with her. She listened to faint noises whose strangeness kept her faculties on the alert—the fractious yelping of the coyotes, the ceaseless, low symphony of the wind, the distant booming of the frogs about the lake, the lamentation of a concertina in the Mexicans’ quarters. There were many conflicting feelings in her heart—thankfulness and rebellion, peace and disquietude, loneliness and a sense of protecting care, happiness and an old, haunting pain.</p>
|
||||
<p>She did what any other woman would have done—sought relief in a wholesome tide of unreasonable tears, and her last words, murmured to herself before slumber, capitulating, came softly to woo her, were “He has forgotten.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The manager of the Rancho de las Sombras was no dilettante. He was a “hustler.” He was generally up, mounted, and away of mornings before the rest of the household were awake, making the rounds of the flocks and camps. This was the duty of the major-domo, a stately old Mexican with a princely air and manner, but Teddy seemed to have a great deal of confidence in his own eyesight. Except in the busy seasons, he nearly always returned to the ranch to breakfast at eight o’clock, with Octavia and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Maclntyre, at the little table set in the central hallway, bringing with him a tonic and breezy cheerfulness full of the health and flavour of the prairies.</p>
|
||||
<p>A few days after Octavia’s arrival he made her get out one of her riding skirts, and curtail it to a shortness demanded by the chaparral brakes.</p>
|
||||
<p>With some misgivings she donned this and the pair of buckskin leggings he prescribed in addition, and, mounted upon a dancing pony, rode with him to view her possessions. He showed her everything—the flocks of ewes, muttons and grazing lambs, the dipping vats, the shearing pens, the uncouth merino rams in their little pasture, the water-tanks prepared against the summer drought—giving account of his stewardship with a boyish enthusiasm that never flagged.</p>
|
||||
<p>Where was the old Teddy that she knew so well? This side of him was the same, and it was a side that pleased her; but this was all she ever saw of him now. Where was his sentimentality—those old, varying moods of impetuous love-making, of fanciful, quixotic devotion, of heart-breaking gloom, of alternating, absurd tenderness and haughty dignity? His nature had been a sensitive one, his temperament bordering closely on the artistic. She knew that, besides being a follower of fashion and its fads and sports, he had cultivated tastes of a finer nature. He had written things, he had tampered with colours, he was something of a student in certain branches of art, and once she had been admitted to all his aspirations and thoughts. But now—and she could not avoid the conclusion—Teddy had</p>
|
||||
<p>Where was the old Teddy that she knew so well? This side of him was the same, and it was a side that pleased her; but this was all she ever saw of him now. Where was his sentimentality—those old, varying moods of impetuous lovemaking, of fanciful, quixotic devotion, of heartbreaking gloom, of alternating, absurd tenderness and haughty dignity? His nature had been a sensitive one, his temperament bordering closely on the artistic. She knew that, besides being a follower of fashion and its fads and sports, he had cultivated tastes of a finer nature. He had written things, he had tampered with colours, he was something of a student in certain branches of art, and once she had been admitted to all his aspirations and thoughts. But now—and she could not avoid the conclusion—Teddy had</p>
|
||||
<p>barricaded against her every side of himself except one—the side that showed the manager of the Rancho de las Sombras and a jolly chum who had forgiven and forgotten. Queerly enough the words of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bannister’s description of her property came into her mind—“all inclosed within a strong barbed-wire fence.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Teddy’s fenced, too,” said Octavia to herself.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was not difficult for her to reason out the cause of his fortifications. It had originated one night at the Hammersmiths’ ball. It occurred at a time soon after she had decided to accept Colonel Beaupree and his million, which was no more than her looks and the entrée she held to the inner circles were worth. Teddy had proposed with all his impetuosity and fire, and she looked him straight in the eyes, an said, coldly and finally: “Never let me hear any such silly nonsense from you again.” “You won’t,” said Teddy, with an expression around his mouth, and—now Teddy was inclosed within a strong barbed-wire fence.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was on this first ride of inspection that Teddy was seized by the inspiration that suggested the name of Mother Goose’s heroine, and he at once bestowed it upon Octavia. The idea, supported by both a similarity of names and identity of occupations, seemed to strike him as a peculiarly happy one, and he never tired of using it. The Mexicans on the ranch also took up the name, adding another syllable to accommodate their lingual incapacity for the final “p,” gravely referring to her as “La Madama Bo-Peepy.” Eventually it spread, and “Madame Bo-Peep’s ranch” was as often mentioned as the “Rancho de las Sombras.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Came the long, hot season from May to September, when work is scarce on the ranches. Octavia passed the days in a kind of lotus-eater’s dream. Books, hammocks, correspondence with a few intimate friends, a renewed interest in her old water-colour box and easel—these disposed of the sultry hours of daylight. The evenings were always sure to bring enjoyment. Best of all were the rapturous horseback rides with Teddy, when the moon gave light over the wind-swept leagues, chaperoned by the wheeling night-hawk and the startled owl. Often the Mexicans would come up from their shacks with their guitars and sing the weirdest of heart-breaking songs. There were long, cosy chats on the breezy gallery, and an interminable warfare of wits between Teddy and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> MacIntyre, whose abundant Scotch shrewdness often more than overmatched the lighter humour in which she was lacking.</p>
|
||||
<p>Came the long, hot season from May to September, when work is scarce on the ranches. Octavia passed the days in a kind of lotus-eater’s dream. Books, hammocks, correspondence with a few intimate friends, a renewed interest in her old watercolour box and easel—these disposed of the sultry hours of daylight. The evenings were always sure to bring enjoyment. Best of all were the rapturous horseback rides with Teddy, when the moon gave light over the windswept leagues, chaperoned by the wheeling nighthawk and the startled owl. Often the Mexicans would come up from their shacks with their guitars and sing the weirdest of heartbreaking songs. There were long, cosy chats on the breezy gallery, and an interminable warfare of wits between Teddy and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> MacIntyre, whose abundant Scotch shrewdness often more than overmatched the lighter humour in which she was lacking.</p>
|
||||
<p>And the nights came, one after another, and were filed away by weeks and months—nights soft and languorous and fragrant, that should have driven Strephon to Chloe over wires however barbed, that might have drawn Cupid himself to hunt, lasso in hand, among those amorous pastures—but Teddy kept his fences up.</p>
|
||||
<p>One July night Madame Bo-Peep and her ranch manager were sitting on the east gallery. Teddy had been exhausting the science of prognostication as to the probabilities of a price of twenty-four cents for the autumn clip, and had then subsided into an anesthetic cloud of Havana smoke. Only as incompetent a judge as a woman would have failed to note long ago that at least a third of his salary must have gone up in the fumes of those imported Regalias.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Teddy,” said Octavia, suddenly, and rather sharply, “what are you working down here on a ranch for?”</p>
|
||||
@ -121,7 +121,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Eyes, I thought,” said Teddy, after some reflection; “and elbows.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Those Hammersmiths,” went on Octavia, in her sweetest society prattle, after subduing an intense desire to yank a handful of sunburnt, sandy hair from the head lying back contentedly against the canvas of the steamer chair, “had too much money. Mines, wasn’t it? It was something that paid something to the ton. You couldn’t get a glass of plain water in their house. Everything at that ball was dreadfully overdone.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“It was,” said Teddy.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Such a crowd there was!” Octavia continued, conscious that she was talking the rapid drivel of a school-girl describing her first dance. “The balconies were as warm as the rooms. I—lost—something at that ball.” The last sentence was uttered in a tone calculated to remove the barbs from miles of wire.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Such a crowd there was!” Octavia continued, conscious that she was talking the rapid drivel of a schoolgirl describing her first dance. “The balconies were as warm as the rooms. I—lost—something at that ball.” The last sentence was uttered in a tone calculated to remove the barbs from miles of wire.</p>
|
||||
<p>“So did I,” confessed Teddy, in a lower voice.</p>
|
||||
<p>“A glove,” said Octavia, falling back as the enemy approached her ditches.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Caste,” said Teddy, halting his firing line without loss. “I hobnobbed, half the evening with one of Hammersmith’s miners, a fellow who kept his hands in his pockets, and talked like an archangel about reduction plants and drifts and levels and sluice-boxes.”</p>
|
||||
@ -129,11 +129,11 @@
|
||||
<p>“A bang-up chap, that McArdle,” maintained Teddy approvingly. “A man who hated olives and elevators; a man who handled mountains as croquettes, and built tunnels in the air; a man who never uttered a word of silly nonsense in his life. Did you sign those lease-renewal applications yet, madama? They’ve got to be on file in the land office by the thirty-first.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Teddy turned his head lazily. Octavia’s chair was vacant.</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>A certain centipede, crawling along the lines marked out by fate, expounded the situation. It was early one morning while Octavia and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Maclntyre were trimming the honeysuckle on the west gallery. Teddy had risen and departed hastily before daylight in response to word that a flock of ewes had been scattered from their bedding ground during the night by a thunder-storm.</p>
|
||||
<p>A certain centipede, crawling along the lines marked out by fate, expounded the situation. It was early one morning while Octavia and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Maclntyre were trimming the honeysuckle on the west gallery. Teddy had risen and departed hastily before daylight in response to word that a flock of ewes had been scattered from their bedding ground during the night by a thunderstorm.</p>
|
||||
<p>The centipede, driven by destiny, showed himself on the floor of the gallery, and then, the screeches of the two women giving him his cue, he scuttled with all his yellow legs through the open door into the furthermost west room, which was Teddy’s. Arming themselves with domestic utensils selected with regard to their length, Octavia and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Maclntyre, with much clutching of skirts and skirmishing for the position of rear guard in the attacking force, followed.</p>
|
||||
<p>Once outside, the centipede seemed to have disappeared, and his prospective murderers began a thorough but cautious search for their victim.</p>
|
||||
<p>Even in the midst of such a dangerous and absorbing adventure Octavia was conscious of an awed curiosity on finding herself in Teddy’s sanctum. In that room he sat alone, silently communing with those secret thoughts that he now shared with no one, dreamed there whatever dreams he now called on no one to interpret.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was the room of a Spartan or a soldier. In one corner stood a wide, canvas-covered cot; in another, a small bookcase; in another, a grim stand of Winchesters and shotguns. An immense table, strewn with letters, papers and documents and surmounted by a set of pigeon-holes, occupied one side.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was the room of a Spartan or a soldier. In one corner stood a wide, canvas-covered cot; in another, a small bookcase; in another, a grim stand of Winchesters and shotguns. An immense table, strewn with letters, papers and documents and surmounted by a set of pigeonholes, occupied one side.</p>
|
||||
<p>The centipede showed genius in concealing himself in such bare quarters. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Maclntyre was poking a broom-handle behind the bookcase. Octavia approached Teddy’s cot. The room was just as the manager had left it in his hurry. The Mexican maid had not yet given it her attention. There was his big pillow with the imprint of his head still in the centre. She thought the horrid beast might have climbed the cot and hidden itself to bite Teddy. Centipedes were thus cruel and vindictive toward managers.</p>
|
||||
<p>She cautiously overturned the pillow, and then parted her lips to give the signal for reinforcements at sight of a long, slender, dark object lying there. But, repressing it in time, she caught up a glove, a pearl-gray glove, flattened—it might be conceived—by many, many months of nightly pressure beneath the pillow of the man who had forgotten the Hammersmiths’ ball. Teddy must have left so hurriedly that morning that he had, for once, forgotten to transfer it to its resting-place by day. Even managers, who are notoriously wily and cunning, are sometimes caught up with.</p>
|
||||
<p>Octavia slid the gray glove into the bosom of her summery morning gown. It was hers. Men who put themselves within a strong barbed-wire fence, and remember Hammersmith balls only by the talk of miners about sluice-boxes, should not be allowed to possess such articles.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -14,11 +14,11 @@
|
||||
<p>Judge Derwent threw the letter carelessly aside. It was nothing new to receive such epistles from desperate men whom he had been called upon to judge. He felt no alarm. Later on he showed the letter to Littlefield, the young district attorney, for Littlefield’s name was included in the threat, and the judge was punctilious in matters between himself and his fellow men.</p>
|
||||
<p>Littlefield honoured the rattle of the writer, as far as it concerned himself, with a smile of contempt; but he frowned a little over the reference to the Judge’s daughter, for he and Nancy Derwent were to be married in the fall.</p>
|
||||
<p>Littlefield went to the clerk of the court and looked over the records with him. They decided that the letter might have been sent by Mexico Sam, a half-breed border desperado who had been imprisoned for manslaughter four years before. Then official duties crowded the matter from his mind, and the rattle of the revengeful serpent was forgotten.</p>
|
||||
<p>Court was in session at Brownsville. Most of the cases to be tried were charges of smuggling, counterfeiting, post-office robberies, and violations of Federal laws along the border. One case was that of a young Mexican, Rafael Ortiz, who had been rounded up by a clever deputy marshal in the act of passing a counterfeit silver dollar. He had been suspected of many such deviations from rectitude, but this was the first time that anything provable had been fixed upon him. Ortiz languished cozily in jail, smoking brown cigarettes and waiting for trial. Kilpatrick, the deputy, brought the counterfeit dollar and handed it to the district attorney in his office in the court-house. The deputy and a reputable druggist were prepared to swear that Ortiz paid for a bottle of medicine with it. The coin was a poor counterfeit, soft, dull-looking, and made principally of lead. It was the day before the morning on which the docket would reach the case of Ortiz, and the district attorney was preparing himself for trial.</p>
|
||||
<p>Court was in session at Brownsville. Most of the cases to be tried were charges of smuggling, counterfeiting, post-office robberies, and violations of Federal laws along the border. One case was that of a young Mexican, Rafael Ortiz, who had been rounded up by a clever deputy marshal in the act of passing a counterfeit silver dollar. He had been suspected of many such deviations from rectitude, but this was the first time that anything provable had been fixed upon him. Ortiz languished cozily in jail, smoking brown cigarettes and waiting for trial. Kilpatrick, the deputy, brought the counterfeit dollar and handed it to the district attorney in his office in the courthouse. The deputy and a reputable druggist were prepared to swear that Ortiz paid for a bottle of medicine with it. The coin was a poor counterfeit, soft, dull-looking, and made principally of lead. It was the day before the morning on which the docket would reach the case of Ortiz, and the district attorney was preparing himself for trial.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Not much need of having in high-priced experts to prove the coin’s queer, is there, Kil?” smiled Littlefield, as he thumped the dollar down upon the table, where it fell with no more ring than would have come from a lump of putty.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I guess the Greaser’s as good as behind the bars,” said the deputy, easing up his holsters. “You’ve got him dead. If it had been just one time, these Mexicans can’t tell good money from bad; but this little yaller rascal belongs to a gang of counterfeiters, I know. This is the first time I’ve been able to catch him doing the trick. He’s got a girl down there in them Mexican jacals on the river bank. I seen her one day when I was watching him. She’s as pretty as a red heifer in a flower bed.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Littlefield shoved the counterfeit dollar into his pocket, and slipped his memoranda of the case into an envelope. Just then a bright, winsome face, as frank and jolly as a boy’s, appeared in the doorway, and in walked Nancy Derwent.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, Bob, didn’t court adjourn at twelve to-day until to-morrow?” she asked of Littlefield.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, Bob, didn’t court adjourn at twelve today until tomorrow?” she asked of Littlefield.</p>
|
||||
<p>“It did,” said the district attorney, “and I’m very glad of it. I’ve got a lot of rulings to look up, and—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now, that’s just like you. I wonder you and father don’t turn to law books or rulings or something! I want you to take me out plover-shooting this afternoon. Long Prairie is just alive with them. Don’t say no, please! I want to try my new twelve-bore hammerless. I’ve sent to the livery stable to engage Fly and Bess for the buckboard; they stand fire so nicely. I was sure you would go.”</p>
|
||||
<p>They were to be married in the fall. The glamour was at its height. The plovers won the day—or, rather, the afternoon—over the calf-bound authorities. Littlefield began to put his papers away.</p>
|
||||
@ -38,7 +38,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“It hasn’t a place in jurisprudence, Nan,” said Littlefield, “especially in re the district attorney’s duty. I’ll promise you that the prosecution will not be vindictive; but the man is as good as convicted when the case is called. Witnesses will swear to his passing the bad dollar which I have in my pocket at this moment as ‘Exhibit A.’ There are no Mexicans on the jury, and it will vote <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Greaser guilty without leaving the box.”</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>The plover-shooting was fine that afternoon, and in the excitement of the sport the case of Rafael and the grief of Joya Treviñas was forgotten. The district attorney and Nancy Derwent drove out from the town three miles along a smooth, grassy road, and then struck across a rolling prairie toward a heavy line of timber on Piedra Creek. Beyond this creek lay Long Prairie, the favourite haunt of the plover. As they were nearing the creek they heard the galloping of a horse to their right, and saw a man with black hair and a swarthy face riding toward the woods at a tangent, as if he had come up behind them.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ve seen that fellow somewhere,” said Littlefield, who had a memory for faces, “but I can’t exactly place him. Some ranchman, I suppose, taking a short cut home.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ve seen that fellow somewhere,” said Littlefield, who had a memory for faces, “but I can’t exactly place him. Some ranchman, I suppose, taking a shortcut home.”</p>
|
||||
<p>They spent an hour on Long Prairie, shooting from the buckboard. Nancy Derwent, an active, outdoor Western girl, was pleased with her twelve-bore. She had bagged within two brace of her companion’s score.</p>
|
||||
<p>They started homeward at a gentle trot. When within a hundred yards of Piedra Creek a man rode out of the timber directly toward them.</p>
|
||||
<p>“It looks like the man we saw coming over,” remarked Miss Derwent.</p>
|
||||
@ -46,20 +46,20 @@
|
||||
<p>“Now I know you, Mexico Sam!” muttered Littlefield to himself. “It was you who shook your rattles in that gentle epistle.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Mexico Sam did not leave things long in doubt. He had a nice eye in all matters relating to firearms, so when he was within good rifle range, but outside of danger from <abbr>No.</abbr> 8 shot, he threw up his Winchester and opened fire upon the occupants of the buckboard.</p>
|
||||
<p>The first shot cracked the back of the seat within the two-inch space between the shoulders of Littlefield and Miss Derwent. The next went through the dashboard and Littlefield’s trouser leg.</p>
|
||||
<p>The district attorney hustled Nancy out of the buck-board to the ground. She was a little pale, but asked no questions. She had the frontier instinct that accepts conditions in an emergency without superfluous argument. They kept their guns in hand, and Littlefield hastily gathered some handfuls of cartridges from the pasteboard box on the seat and crowded them into his pockets.</p>
|
||||
<p>The district attorney hustled Nancy out of the buckboard to the ground. She was a little pale, but asked no questions. She had the frontier instinct that accepts conditions in an emergency without superfluous argument. They kept their guns in hand, and Littlefield hastily gathered some handfuls of cartridges from the pasteboard box on the seat and crowded them into his pockets.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Keep behind the horses, Nan,” he commanded. “That fellow is a ruffian I sent to prison once. He’s trying to get even. He knows our shot won’t hurt him at that distance.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“All right, Bob,” said Nancy steadily. “I’m not afraid. But you come close, too. Whoa, Bess; stand still, now!”</p>
|
||||
<p>She stroked Bess’s mane. Littlefield stood with his gun ready, praying that the desperado would come within range.</p>
|
||||
<p>But Mexico Sam was playing his vendetta along safe lines. He was a bird of different feather from the plover. His accurate eye drew an imaginary line of circumference around the area of danger from bird-shot, and upon this line lie rode. His horse wheeled to the right, and as his victims rounded to the safe side of their equine breast-work he sent a ball through the district attorney’s hat. Once he miscalculated in making a détour, and over-stepped his margin. Littlefield’s gun flashed, and Mexico Sam ducked his head to the harmless patter of the shot. A few of them stung his horse, which pranced promptly back to the safety line.</p>
|
||||
<p>But Mexico Sam was playing his vendetta along safe lines. He was a bird of different feather from the plover. His accurate eye drew an imaginary line of circumference around the area of danger from bird-shot, and upon this line lie rode. His horse wheeled to the right, and as his victims rounded to the safe side of their equine breastwork he sent a ball through the district attorney’s hat. Once he miscalculated in making a détour, and overstepped his margin. Littlefield’s gun flashed, and Mexico Sam ducked his head to the harmless patter of the shot. A few of them stung his horse, which pranced promptly back to the safety line.</p>
|
||||
<p>The desperado fired again. A little cry came from Nancy Derwent. Littlefield whirled, with blazing eyes, and saw the blood trickling down her cheek.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’m not hurt, Bob—only a splinter struck me. I think he hit one of the wheel-spokes.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Lord!” groaned Littlefield. “If I only had a charge of buckshot!”</p>
|
||||
<p>The ruffian got his horse still, and took careful aim. Fly gave a snort and fell in the harness, struck in the neck. Bess, now disabused of the idea that plover were being fired at, broke her traces and galloped wildly away. Mexican Sam sent a ball neatly through the fulness of Nancy Derwent’s shooting jacket.</p>
|
||||
<p>The ruffian got his horse still, and took careful aim. Fly gave a snort and fell in the harness, struck in the neck. Bess, now disabused of the idea that plover were being fired at, broke her traces and galloped wildly away. Mexican Sam sent a ball neatly through the fullness of Nancy Derwent’s shooting jacket.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Lie down—lie down!” snapped Littlefield. “Close to the horse—flat on the ground—so.” He almost threw her upon the grass against the back of the recumbent Fly. Oddly enough, at that moment the words of the Mexican girl returned to his mind:</p>
|
||||
<p>“If the life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael Ortiz.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Littlefield uttered an exclamation.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Open fire on him, Nan, across the horse’s back. Fire as fast as you can! You can’t hurt him, but keep him dodging shot for one minute while I try to work a little scheme.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Nancy gave a quick glance at Littlefield, and saw him take out his pocket-knife and open it. Then she turned her face to obey orders, keeping up a rapid fire at the enemy.</p>
|
||||
<p>Nancy gave a quick glance at Littlefield, and saw him take out his pocketknife and open it. Then she turned her face to obey orders, keeping up a rapid fire at the enemy.</p>
|
||||
<p>Mexico Sam waited patiently until this innocuous fusillade ceased. He had plenty of time, and he did not care to risk the chance of a bird-shot in his eye when it could be avoided by a little caution. He pulled his heavy Stetson low down over his face until the shots ceased. Then he drew a little nearer, and fired with careful aim at what he could see of his victims above the fallen horse.</p>
|
||||
<p>Neither of them moved. He urged his horse a few steps nearer. He saw the district attorney rise to one knee and deliberately level his shotgun. He pulled his hat down and awaited the harmless rattle of the tiny pellets.</p>
|
||||
<p>The shotgun blazed with a heavy report. Mexico Sam sighed, turned limp all over, and slowly fell from his horse—a dead rattlesnake.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -12,21 +12,21 @@
|
||||
<p>Likely as not the world is flat. The wise men have tried to prove that it is round, with indifferent success. They pointed out to us a ship going to sea, and bade us observe that, at length, the convexity of the earth hid from our view all but the vessel’s topmast. But we picked up a telescope and looked, and saw the decks and hull again. Then the wise men said: “Oh, pshaw! anyhow, the variation of the intersection of the equator and the ecliptic proves it.” We could not see this through our telescope, so we remained silent. But it stands to reason that, if the world were round, the queues of Chinamen would stand straight up from their heads instead of hanging down their backs, as travellers assure us they do.</p>
|
||||
<p>Another hot-weather corroboration of the flat theory is the fact that all of life, as we know it, moves in little, unavailing circles. More justly than to anything else, it can be likened to the game of baseball. Crack! we hit the ball, and away we go. If we earn a run (in life we call it success) we get back to the home plate and sit upon a bench. If we are thrown out, we walk back to the home plate—and sit upon a bench.</p>
|
||||
<p>The circumnavigators of the alleged globe may have sailed the rim of a watery circle back to the same port again. The truly great return at the high tide of their attainments to the simplicity of a child. The billionaire sits down at his mahogany to his bowl of bread and milk. When you reach the end of your career, just take down the sign “Goal” and look at the other side of it. You will find “Beginning Point” there. It has been reversed while you were going around the track.</p>
|
||||
<p>But this is humour, and must be stopped. Let us get back to the serious questions that arise whenever Sociology turns summer boarder. You are invited to consider the scene of the story—wild, Atlantic waves, thundering against a wooded and rock-bound shore—in the Greater City of New York.</p>
|
||||
<p>But this is humour, and must be stopped. Let us get back to the serious questions that arise whenever Sociology turns summer boarder. You are invited to consider the scene of the story—wild, Atlantic waves, thundering against a wooded and rockbound shore—in the Greater City of New York.</p>
|
||||
<p>The town of Fishampton, on the south shore of Long Island, is noted for its clam fritters and the summer residence of the Van Plushvelts.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Van Plushvelts have a hundred million dollars, and their name is a household word with tradesmen and photographers.</p>
|
||||
<p>On the fifteenth of June the Van Plushvelts boarded up the front door of their city house, carefully deposited their cat on the sidewalk, instructed the caretaker not to allow it to eat any of the ivy on the walls, and whizzed away in a 40-horse-power to Fishampton to stray alone in the shade—Amaryllis not being in their class. If you are a subscriber to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Toadies’ Magazine</i>, you have often—You say you are not? Well, you buy it at a news-stand, thinking that the newsdealer is not wise to you. But he knows about it all. HE knows—HE knows! I say that you have often seen in the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Toadies’ Magazine</i> pictures of the Van Plushvelts’ summer home; so it will not be described here. Our business is with young Haywood Van Plushvelt, sixteen years old, heir to the century of millions, darling of the financial gods and great grandson of Peter Van Plushvelt, former owner of a particularly fine cabbage patch that has been ruined by an intrusive lot of downtown skyscrapers.</p>
|
||||
<p>On the fifteenth of June the Van Plushvelts boarded up the front door of their city house, carefully deposited their cat on the sidewalk, instructed the caretaker not to allow it to eat any of the ivy on the walls, and whizzed away in a 40-horsepower to Fishampton to stray alone in the shade—Amaryllis not being in their class. If you are a subscriber to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Toadies’ Magazine</i>, you have often—You say you are not? Well, you buy it at a newsstand, thinking that the newsdealer is not wise to you. But he knows about it all. HE knows—HE knows! I say that you have often seen in the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Toadies’ Magazine</i> pictures of the Van Plushvelts’ summer home; so it will not be described here. Our business is with young Haywood Van Plushvelt, sixteen years old, heir to the century of millions, darling of the financial gods and great grandson of Peter Van Plushvelt, former owner of a particularly fine cabbage patch that has been ruined by an intrusive lot of downtown skyscrapers.</p>
|
||||
<p>One afternoon young Haywood Van Plushvelt strolled out between the granite gate posts of “Dolce far Niente”—that’s what they called the place; and it was an improvement on dolce Far Rockaway, I can tell you.</p>
|
||||
<p>Haywood walked down into the village. He was human, after all, and his prospective millions weighed upon him. Wealth had wreaked upon him its direfullest. He was the product of private tutors. Even under his first hobby-horse had tan bark been strewn. He had been born with a gold spoon, lobster fork and fish-set in his mouth. For which I hope, later, to submit justification, I must ask your consideration of his haberdashery and tailoring.</p>
|
||||
<p>Haywood walked down into the village. He was human, after all, and his prospective millions weighed upon him. Wealth had wreaked upon him its direfullest. He was the product of private tutors. Even under his first hobbyhorse had tan bark been strewn. He had been born with a gold spoon, lobster fork and fish-set in his mouth. For which I hope, later, to submit justification, I must ask your consideration of his haberdashery and tailoring.</p>
|
||||
<p>Young Fortunatus was dressed in a neat suit of dark blue serge, a neat, white straw hat, neat low-cut tan shoes, of the well-known “immaculate” trade mark, a neat, narrow four-in-hand tie, and carried a slender, neat, bamboo cane.</p>
|
||||
<p>Down Persimmon Street (there’s never tree north of Hagerstown, Md.) came from the village “Smoky” Dodson, fifteen and a half, worst boy in Fishampton. “Smoky” was dressed in a ragged red sweater, wrecked and weather-worn golf cap, run-over shoes, and trousers of the “serviceable” brand. Dust, clinging to the moisture induced by free exercise, darkened wide areas of his face. “Smoky” carried a baseball bat, and a league ball that advertised itself in the rotundity of his trousers pocket. Haywood stopped and passed the time of day.</p>
|
||||
<p>Down Persimmon Street (there’s never tree north of Hagerstown, Md.) came from the village “Smoky” Dodson, fifteen and a half, worst boy in Fishampton. “Smoky” was dressed in a ragged red sweater, wrecked and weatherworn golf cap, run-over shoes, and trousers of the “serviceable” brand. Dust, clinging to the moisture induced by free exercise, darkened wide areas of his face. “Smoky” carried a baseball bat, and a league ball that advertised itself in the rotundity of his trousers pocket. Haywood stopped and passed the time of day.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Going to play ball?” he asked.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Smoky’s” eyes and countenance confronted him with a frank blue-and-freckled scrutiny.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Me?” he said, with deadly mildness; “sure not. Can’t you see I’ve got a divin’ suit on? I’m goin’ up in a submarine balloon to catch butterflies with a two-inch auger.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Excuse me,” said Haywood, with the insulting politeness of his caste, “for mistaking you for a gentleman. I might have known better.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“How might you have known better if you thought I was one?” said “Smoky,” unconsciously a logician.</p>
|
||||
<p>“By your appearance,” said Haywood. “No gentleman is dirty, ragged and a liar.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Smoky” hooted once like a ferry-boat, spat on his hand, got a firm grip on his baseball bat and then dropped it against the fence.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Smoky” hooted once like a ferryboat, spat on his hand, got a firm grip on his baseball bat and then dropped it against the fence.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Say,” said he, “I knows you. You’re the pup that belongs in that swell private summer sanitarium for city-guys over there. I seen you come out of the gate. You can’t bluff nobody because you’re rich. And because you got on swell clothes. Arabella! Yah!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ragamuffin!” said Haywood.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Smoky” picked up a fence-rail splinter and laid it on his shoulder.</p>
|
||||
@ -52,7 +52,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Haywood knocked him down.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Smoky” felt wronged. To thus deprive him of preliminary wrangle and objurgation was to send an armoured knight full tilt against a crashing lance without permitting him first to caracole around the list to the flourish of trumpets. But he scrambled up and fell upon his foe, head, feet and fists.</p>
|
||||
<p>The fight lasted one round of an hour and ten minutes. It was lengthened until it was more like a war or a family feud than a fight. Haywood had learned some of the science of boxing and wrestling from his tutors, but these he discarded for the more instinctive methods of battle handed down by the cave-dwelling Van Plushvelts.</p>
|
||||
<p>So, when he found himself, during the mêlée, seated upon the kicking and roaring “Smoky’s” chest, he improved the opportunity by vigorously kneading handfuls of sand and soil into his adversary’s ears, eyes and mouth, and when “Smoky” got the proper leg hold and “turned” him, he fastened both hands in the Plushvelt hair and pounded the Plushvelt head against the lap of mother earth. Of course, the strife was not incessantly active. There were seasons when one sat upon the other, holding him down, while each blew like a grampus, spat out the more inconveniently large sections of gravel and earth, and strove to subdue the spirit of his opponent with a frightful and soul-paralyzing glare.</p>
|
||||
<p>So, when he found himself, during the melee, seated upon the kicking and roaring “Smoky’s” chest, he improved the opportunity by vigorously kneading handfuls of sand and soil into his adversary’s ears, eyes and mouth, and when “Smoky” got the proper leg hold and “turned” him, he fastened both hands in the Plushvelt hair and pounded the Plushvelt head against the lap of mother earth. Of course, the strife was not incessantly active. There were seasons when one sat upon the other, holding him down, while each blew like a grampus, spat out the more inconveniently large sections of gravel and earth, and strove to subdue the spirit of his opponent with a frightful and soul-paralyzing glare.</p>
|
||||
<p>At last, it seemed that in the language of the ring, their efforts lacked steam. They broke away, and each disappeared in a cloud as he brushed away the dust of the conflict. As soon as his breath permitted, Haywood walked close to “Smoky” and said:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Going to play ball?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Smoky” looked pensively at the sky, at his bat lying on the ground, and at the “leaguer” rounding his pocket.</p>
|
||||
@ -64,13 +64,13 @@
|
||||
<p>“Never in my life,” said Haywood. “I’ve never known any fellows except one or two of my cousins.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Jer like to learn? We’re goin’ to have a practice-game before the match. Wanter come along? I’ll put yer in left-field, and yer won’t be long ketchin’ on.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’d like it bully,” said Haywood. “I’ve always wanted to play baseball.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The ladies’ maids of New York and the families of Western mine owners with social ambitions will remember well the sensation that was created by the report that the young multi-millionaire, Haywood Van Plushvelt, was playing ball with the village youths of Fishampton. It was conceded that the millennium of democracy had come. Reporters and photographers swarmed to the island. The papers printed half-page pictures of him as short-stop stopping a hot grounder. The <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Toadies’ Magazine</i> got out a Bat and Ball number that covered the subject historically, beginning with the vampire bat and ending with the Patriarchs’ ball—illustrated with interior views of the Van Plushvelt country seat. Ministers, educators and sociologists everywhere hailed the event as the tocsin call that proclaimed the universal brotherhood of man.</p>
|
||||
<p>The ladies’ maids of New York and the families of Western mine owners with social ambitions will remember well the sensation that was created by the report that the young multi-millionaire, Haywood Van Plushvelt, was playing ball with the village youths of Fishampton. It was conceded that the millennium of democracy had come. Reporters and photographers swarmed to the island. The papers printed half-page pictures of him as shortstop stopping a hot grounder. The <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Toadies’ Magazine</i> got out a Bat and Ball number that covered the subject historically, beginning with the vampire bat and ending with the Patriarchs’ ball—illustrated with interior views of the Van Plushvelt country seat. Ministers, educators and sociologists everywhere hailed the event as the tocsin call that proclaimed the universal brotherhood of man.</p>
|
||||
<p>One afternoon I was reclining under the trees near the shore at Fishampton in the esteemed company of an eminent, bald-headed young sociologist. By way of note it may be inserted that all sociologists are more or less bald, and exactly thirty-two. Look ’em over.</p>
|
||||
<p>The sociologist was citing the Van Plushvelt case as the most important “uplift” symptom of a generation, and as an excuse for his own existence.</p>
|
||||
<p>Immediately before us were the village baseball grounds. And now came the sportive youth of Fishampton and distributed themselves, shouting, about the diamond.</p>
|
||||
<p>“There,” said the sociologist, pointing, “there is young Van Plushvelt.”</p>
|
||||
<p>I raised myself (so far a cosycophant with Mary Ann) and gazed.</p>
|
||||
<p>Young Van Plushvelt sat upon the ground. He was dressed in a ragged red sweater, wrecked and weather-worn golf cap, run-over shoes, and trousers of the “serviceable” brand. Dust clinging to the moisture induced by free exercise, darkened wide areas of his face.</p>
|
||||
<p>Young Van Plushvelt sat upon the ground. He was dressed in a ragged red sweater, wrecked and weatherworn golf cap, run-over shoes, and trousers of the “serviceable” brand. Dust clinging to the moisture induced by free exercise, darkened wide areas of his face.</p>
|
||||
<p>“That is he,” repeated the sociologist. If he had said “him” I could have been less vindictive.</p>
|
||||
<p>On a bench, with an air, sat the young millionaire’s chum.</p>
|
||||
<p>He was dressed in a neat suit of dark blue serge, a neat white straw hat, neat low-cut tan shoes, linen of the well-known “immaculate” trade mark, a neat, narrow four-in-hand tie, and carried a slender, neat bamboo cane.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -8,12 +8,12 @@
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="suite-homes-and-their-romance" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Suite Homes and Their Romance</h2>
|
||||
<p>Few young couples in the Big-City-of-Bluff began their married existence with greater promise of happiness than did <abbr>Mr.</abbr> and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Claude Turpin. They felt no especial animosity toward each other; they were comfortably established in a handsome apartment house that had a name and accommodations like those of a sleeping-car; they were living as expensively as the couple on the next floor above who had twice their income; and their marriage had occurred on a wager, a ferry-boat and first acquaintance, thus securing a sensational newspaper notice with their names attached to pictures of the Queen of Roumania and M. Santos-Dumont.</p>
|
||||
<p>Few young couples in the Big-City-of-Bluff began their married existence with greater promise of happiness than did <abbr>Mr.</abbr> and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Claude Turpin. They felt no especial animosity toward each other; they were comfortably established in a handsome apartment house that had a name and accommodations like those of a sleeping-car; they were living as expensively as the couple on the next floor above who had twice their income; and their marriage had occurred on a wager, a ferryboat and first acquaintance, thus securing a sensational newspaper notice with their names attached to pictures of the Queen of Roumania and M. Santos-Dumont.</p>
|
||||
<p>Turpin’s income was $200 per month. On pay day, after calculating the amounts due for rent, instalments on furniture and piano, gas, and bills owed to the florist, confectioner, milliner, tailor, wine merchant and cab company, the Turpins would find that they still had $200 left to spend. How to do this is one of the secrets of metropolitan life.</p>
|
||||
<p>The domestic life of the Turpins was a beautiful picture to see. But you couldn’t gaze upon it as you could at an oleograph of “Don’t Wake Grandma,” or “Brooklyn by Moonlight.”</p>
|
||||
<p>You had to blink when looked at it; and you heard a fizzing sound just like the machine with a “scope” at the end of it. Yes; there wasn’t much repose about the picture of the Turpins’ domestic life. It was something like “Spearing Salmon in the Columbia River,” or “Japanese Artillery in Action.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Every day was just like another; as the days are in New York. In the morning Turpin would take bromo-seltzer, his pocket change from under the clock, his hat, no breakfast and his departure for the office. At noon <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Turpin would get out of bed and humour, put on a kimono, airs, and the water to boil for coffee.</p>
|
||||
<p>Turpin lunched downtown. He came home at 6 to dress for dinner. They always dined out. They strayed from the chop-house to chop-sueydom, from terrace to table d’hôte, from rathskeller to roadhouse, from café to casino, from Maria’s to the Martha Washington. Such is domestic life in the great city. Your vine is the mistletoe; your fig tree bears dates. Your household gods are Mercury and John Howard Payne. For the wedding march you now hear only “Come with the Gypsy Bride.” You rarely dine at the same place twice in succession. You tire of the food; and, besides, you want to give them time for the question of that souvenir silver sugar bowl to blow over.</p>
|
||||
<p>Turpin lunched downtown. He came home at 6 to dress for dinner. They always dined out. They strayed from the chophouse to chop-sueydom, from terrace to table d’hôte, from rathskeller to roadhouse, from café to casino, from Maria’s to the Martha Washington. Such is domestic life in the great city. Your vine is the mistletoe; your fig tree bears dates. Your household gods are Mercury and John Howard Payne. For the wedding march you now hear only “Come with the Gypsy Bride.” You rarely dine at the same place twice in succession. You tire of the food; and, besides, you want to give them time for the question of that souvenir silver sugar bowl to blow over.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Turpins were therefore happy. They made many warm and delightful friends, some of whom they remembered the next day. Their home life was an ideal one, according to the rules and regulations of the Book of Bluff.</p>
|
||||
<p>There came a time when it dawned upon Turpin that his wife was getting away with too much money. If you belong to the near-swell class in the Big City, and your income is $200 per month, and you find at the end of the month, after looking over the bills for current expenses, that you, yourself, have spent $150, you very naturally wonder what has become of the other $50. So you suspect your wife. And perhaps you give her a hint that something needs explanation.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I say, Vivien,” said Turpin, one afternoon when they were enjoying in rapt silence the peace and quiet of their cozy apartment, “you’ve been creating a hiatus big enough for a dog to crawl through in this month’s honorarium. You haven’t been paying your dressmaker anything on account, have you?”</p>
|
||||
@ -32,27 +32,27 @@
|
||||
<p>“You see,” said the captain to Turpin, “the value of an anonymous letter! No high-minded and self-respecting gentleman should consider one worthy of notice. Is your wife among this assembly, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Turpin?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“She is not,” said Turpin.</p>
|
||||
<p>“And if she was,” continued the captain, “would she be within the reach of the tongue of slander? These ladies constitute a Browning Society. They meet to discuss the meaning of the great poet. The telephone is connected with Boston, whence the parent society transmits frequently its interpretations of the poems. Be ashamed of yer suspicions, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Turpin.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Go soak your shield,” said Turpin. “Vivien knows how to take care of herself in a pool-room. She’s not dropping anything on the ponies. There must be something queer going on here.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Go soak your shield,” said Turpin. “Vivien knows how to take care of herself in a poolroom. She’s not dropping anything on the ponies. There must be something queer going on here.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Nothing but Browning,” said the captain. “Hear that?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Thanatopsis by a nose,” drawled the man at the telephone.</p>
|
||||
<p>“That’s not Browning; that’s Longfellow,” said Turpin, who sometimes read books.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Back to the pasture!” exclaimed the captain. “Longfellow made the pacing-to-wagon record of 7:53 ’way back in 1868.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I believe there’s something queer about this joint,” repeated Turpin.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I don’t see it,” said the captain.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I know it looks like a pool-room, all right,” persisted Turpin, “but that’s all a blind. Vivien has been dropping a lot of coin somewhere. I believe there’s some under-handed work going on here.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I know it looks like a poolroom, all right,” persisted Turpin, “but that’s all a blind. Vivien has been dropping a lot of coin somewhere. I believe there’s some underhanded work going on here.”</p>
|
||||
<p>A number of racing sheets were tacked close together, covering a large space on one of the walls. Turpin, suspicious, tore several of them down. A door, previously hidden, was revealed. Turpin placed an ear to the crack and listened intently. He heard the soft hum of many voices, low and guarded laughter, and a sharp, metallic clicking and scraping as if from a multitude of tiny but busy objects.</p>
|
||||
<p>“My God! It is as I feared!” whispered Turpin to himself. “Summon your men at once!” he called to the captain. “She is in there, I know.”</p>
|
||||
<p>At the blowing of the captain’s whistle the uniformed plain-clothes men rushed up the stairs into the pool-room. When they saw the betting paraphernalia distributed around they halted, surprised and puzzled to know why they had been summoned.</p>
|
||||
<p>At the blowing of the captain’s whistle the uniformed plain-clothes men rushed up the stairs into the poolroom. When they saw the betting paraphernalia distributed around they halted, surprised and puzzled to know why they had been summoned.</p>
|
||||
<p>But the captain pointed to the locked door and bade them break it down. In a few moments they demolished it with the axes they carried. Into the other room sprang Claude Turpin, with the captain at his heels.</p>
|
||||
<p>The scene was one that lingered long in Turpin’s mind. Nearly a score of women—women expensively and fashionably clothed, many beautiful and of refined appearance—had been seated at little marble-topped tables. When the police burst open the door they shrieked and ran here and there like gayly plumed birds that had been disturbed in a tropical grove. Some became hysterical; one or two fainted; several knelt at the feet of the officers and besought them for mercy on account of their families and social position.</p>
|
||||
<p>A man who had been seated behind a desk had seized a roll of currency as large as the ankle of a Paradise Roof Gardens chorus girl and jumped out of the window. Half a dozen attendants huddled at one end of the room, breathless from fear.</p>
|
||||
<p>Upon the tables remained the damning and incontrovertible evidences of the guilt of the habituées of that sinister room—dish after dish heaped high with ice cream, and surrounded by stacks of empty ones, scraped to the last spoonful.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ladies,” said the captain to his weeping circle of prisoners, “I’ll not hold any of yez. Some of yez I recognize as having fine houses and good standing in the community, with hard-working husbands and childer at home. But I’ll read ye a bit of a lecture before ye go. In the next room there’s a 20-to-1 shot just dropped in under the wire three lengths ahead of the field. Is this the way ye waste your husbands’ money instead of helping earn it? Home wid yez! The lid’s on the ice-cream freezer in this precinct.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ladies,” said the captain to his weeping circle of prisoners, “I’ll not hold any of yez. Some of yez I recognize as having fine houses and good standing in the community, with hardworking husbands and childer at home. But I’ll read ye a bit of a lecture before ye go. In the next room there’s a 20-to-1 shot just dropped in under the wire three lengths ahead of the field. Is this the way ye waste your husbands’ money instead of helping earn it? Home wid yez! The lid’s on the ice-cream freezer in this precinct.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Claude Turpin’s wife was among the patrons of the raided room. He led her to their apartment in stern silence. There she wept so remorsefully and besought his forgiveness so pleadingly that he forgot his just anger, and soon he gathered his penitent golden-haired Vivien in his arms and forgave her.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Darling,” she murmured, half sobbingly, as the moonlight drifted through the open window, glorifying her sweet, upturned face, “I know I done wrong. I will never touch ice cream again. I forgot you were not a millionaire. I used to go there every day. But to-day I felt some strange, sad presentiment of evil, and I was not myself. I ate only eleven saucers.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Darling,” she murmured, half sobbingly, as the moonlight drifted through the open window, glorifying her sweet, upturned face, “I know I done wrong. I will never touch ice cream again. I forgot you were not a millionaire. I used to go there every day. But today I felt some strange, sad presentiment of evil, and I was not myself. I ate only eleven saucers.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Say no more,” said Claude, gently as he fondly caressed her waving curls.</p>
|
||||
<p>“And you are sure that you fully forgive me?” asked Vivien, gazing at him entreatingly with dewy eyes of heavenly blue.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Almost sure, little one,” answered Claude, stooping and lightly touching her snowy forehead with his lips. “I’ll let you know later on. I’ve got a month’s salary down on Vanilla to win the three-year-old steeplechase to-morrow; and if the ice-cream hunch is to the good you are It again—see?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Almost sure, little one,” answered Claude, stooping and lightly touching her snowy forehead with his lips. “I’ll let you know later on. I’ve got a month’s salary down on Vanilla to win the three-year-old steeplechase tomorrow; and if the ice-cream hunch is to the good you are It again—see?”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
|
||||
<section id="the-hypotheses-of-failure" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Hypotheses of Failure</h2>
|
||||
<p>Lawyer Gooch bestowed his undivided attention upon the engrossing arts of his profession. But one flight of fancy did he allow his mind to entertain. He was fond of likening his suite of office rooms to the bottom of a ship. The rooms were three in number, with a door opening from one to another. These doors could also be closed.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ships,” Lawyer Gooch would say, “are constructed for safety, with separate, water-tight compartments in their bottoms. If one compartment springs a leak it fills with water; but the good ship goes on unhurt. Were it not for the separating bulkheads one leak would sink the vessel. Now it often happens that while I am occupied with clients, other clients with conflicting interests call. With the assistance of Archibald—an office boy with a future—I cause the dangerous influx to be diverted into separate compartments, while I sound with my legal plummet the depth of each. If necessary, they may be baled into the hallway and permitted to escape by way of the stairs, which we may term the lee scuppers. Thus the good ship of business is kept afloat; whereas if the element that supports her were allowed to mingle freely in her hold we might be swamped—ha, ha, ha!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ships,” Lawyer Gooch would say, “are constructed for safety, with separate, watertight compartments in their bottoms. If one compartment springs a leak it fills with water; but the good ship goes on unhurt. Were it not for the separating bulkheads one leak would sink the vessel. Now it often happens that while I am occupied with clients, other clients with conflicting interests call. With the assistance of Archibald—an office boy with a future—I cause the dangerous influx to be diverted into separate compartments, while I sound with my legal plummet the depth of each. If necessary, they may be baled into the hallway and permitted to escape by way of the stairs, which we may term the lee scuppers. Thus the good ship of business is kept afloat; whereas if the element that supports her were allowed to mingle freely in her hold we might be swamped—ha, ha, ha!”</p>
|
||||
<p>The law is dry. Good jokes are few. Surely it might be permitted Lawyer Gooch to mitigate the bore of briefs, the tedium of torts and the prosiness of processes with even so light a levy upon the good property of humour.</p>
|
||||
<p>Lawyer Gooch’s practice leaned largely to the settlement of marital infelicities. Did matrimony languish through complications, he mediated, soothed and arbitrated. Did it suffer from implications, he readjusted, defended and championed. Did it arrive at the extremity of duplications, he always got light sentences for his clients.</p>
|
||||
<p>But not always was Lawyer Gooch the keen, armed, wily belligerent, ready with his two-edged sword to lop off the shackles of Hymen. He had been known to build up instead of demolishing, to reunite instead of severing, to lead erring and foolish ones back into the fold instead of scattering the flock. Often had he by his eloquent and moving appeals sent husband and wife, weeping, back into each other’s arms. Frequently he had coached childhood so successfully that, at the psychological moment (and at a given signal) the plaintive pipe of “Papa, won’t you tum home adain to me and muvver?” had won the day and upheld the pillars of a tottering home.</p>
|
||||
@ -26,7 +26,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“You are a divorce lawyer,” said the cardless visitor. This time there was no interrogation in his voice. Nor did his words constitute a simple assertion. They formed a charge—a denunciation—as one would say to a dog: “You are a dog.” Lawyer Gooch was silent under the imputation.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You handle,” continued the visitor, “all the various ramifications of busted-up connubiality. You are a surgeon, we might saw, who extracts Cupid’s darts when he shoots ’em into the wrong parties. You furnish patent, incandescent lights for premises where the torch of Hymen has burned so low you can’t light a cigar at it. Am I right, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gooch?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I have undertaken cases,” said the lawyer, guardedly, “in the line to which your figurative speech seems to refer. Do you wish to consult me professionally, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> ––––” The lawyer paused, with significance.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Not yet,” said the other, with an arch wave of his cigar, “not just yet. Let us approach the subject with the caution that should have been used in the original act that makes this pow-wow necessary. There exists a matrimonial jumble to be straightened out. But before I give you names I want your honest—well, anyhow, your professional opinion on the merits of the mix-up. I want you to size up the catastrophe—abstractly—you understand? I’m <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Nobody; and I’ve got a story to tell you. Then you say what’s what. Do you get my wireless?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Not yet,” said the other, with an arch wave of his cigar, “not just yet. Let us approach the subject with the caution that should have been used in the original act that makes this powwow necessary. There exists a matrimonial jumble to be straightened out. But before I give you names I want your honest—well, anyhow, your professional opinion on the merits of the mix-up. I want you to size up the catastrophe—abstractly—you understand? I’m <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Nobody; and I’ve got a story to tell you. Then you say what’s what. Do you get my wireless?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You want to state a hypothetical case?” suggested Lawyer Gooch.</p>
|
||||
<p>“That’s the word I was after. ‘Apothecary’ was the best shot I could make at it in my mind. The hypothetical goes. I’ll state the case. Suppose there’s a woman—a deuced fine-looking woman—who has run away from her husband and home? She’s badly mashed on another man who went to her town to work up some real estate business. Now, we may as well call this woman’s husband Thomas R. Billings, for that’s his name. I’m giving you straight tips on the cognomens. The Lothario chap is Henry K. Jessup. The Billingses lived in a little town called Susanville—a good many miles from here. Now, Jessup leaves Susanville two weeks ago. The next day <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings follows him. She’s dead gone on this man Jessup; you can bet your law library on that.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Lawyer Gooch’s client said this with such unctuous satisfaction that even the callous lawyer experienced a slight ripple of repulsion. He now saw clearly in his fatuous visitor the conceit of the lady-killer, the egoistic complacency of the successful trifler.</p>
|
||||
@ -47,18 +47,18 @@
|
||||
<p>“I am,” answered Lawyer Gooch, without circumlocution. He never circumlocuted when dealing with a woman. Women circumlocute. Time is wasted when both sides in debate employ the same tactics.</p>
|
||||
<p>“As a lawyer, sir,” began the lady, “you may have acquired some knowledge of the human heart. Do you believe that the pusillanimous and petty conventions of our artificial social life should stand as an obstacle in the way of a noble and affectionate heart when it finds its true mate among the miserable and worthless wretches in the world that are called men?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Madam,” said Lawyer Gooch, in the tone that he used in curbing his female clients, “this is an office for conducting the practice of law. I am a lawyer, not a philosopher, nor the editor of an ‘Answers to the Lovelorn’ column of a newspaper. I have other clients waiting. I will ask you kindly to come to the point.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, you needn’t get so stiff around the gills about it,” said the lady, with a snap of her luminous eyes and a startling gyration of her umbrella. “Business is what I’ve come for. I want your opinion in the matter of a suit for divorce, as the vulgar would call it, but which is really only the readjustment of the false and ignoble conditions that the short-sighted laws of man have interposed between a loving—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, you needn’t get so stiff around the gills about it,” said the lady, with a snap of her luminous eyes and a startling gyration of her umbrella. “Business is what I’ve come for. I want your opinion in the matter of a suit for divorce, as the vulgar would call it, but which is really only the readjustment of the false and ignoble conditions that the shortsighted laws of man have interposed between a loving—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I beg your pardon, madam,” interrupted Lawyer Gooch, with some impatience, “for reminding you again that this is a law office. Perhaps <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Wilcox—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Wilcox is all right,” cut in the lady, with a hint of asperity. “And so are Tolstoi, and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Gertrude Atherton, and Omar Khayyam, and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Edward Bok. I’ve read ’em all. I would like to discuss with you the divine right of the soul as opposed to the freedom-destroying restrictions of a bigoted and narrow-minded society. But I will proceed to business. I would prefer to lay the matter before you in an impersonal way until you pass upon its merits. That is to describe it as a supposable instance, without—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Wilcox is all right,” cut in the lady, with a hint of asperity. “And so are Tolstoy, and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Gertrude Atherton, and Omar Khayyam, and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Edward Bok. I’ve read ’em all. I would like to discuss with you the divine right of the soul as opposed to the freedom-destroying restrictions of a bigoted and narrow-minded society. But I will proceed to business. I would prefer to lay the matter before you in an impersonal way until you pass upon its merits. That is to describe it as a supposable instance, without—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You wish to state a hypothetical case?” said Lawyer Gooch.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I was going to say that,” said the lady, sharply. “Now, suppose there is a woman who is all soul and heart and aspirations for a complete existence. This woman has a husband who is far below her in intellect, in taste—in everything. Bah! he is a brute. He despises literature. He sneers at the lofty thoughts of the world’s great thinkers. He thinks only of real estate and such sordid things. He is no mate for a woman with soul. We will say that this unfortunate wife one day meets with her ideal—a man with brain and heart and force. She loves him. Although this man feels the thrill of a new-found affinity he is too noble, too honourable to declare himself. He flies from the presence of his beloved. She flies after him, trampling, with superb indifference, upon the fetters with which an unenlightened social system would bind her. Now, what will a divorce cost? Eliza Ann Timmins, the poetess of Sycamore Gap, got one for three hundred and forty dollars. Can I—I mean can this lady I speak of get one that cheap?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I was going to say that,” said the lady, sharply. “Now, suppose there is a woman who is all soul and heart and aspirations for a complete existence. This woman has a husband who is far below her in intellect, in taste—in everything. Bah! he is a brute. He despises literature. He sneers at the lofty thoughts of the world’s great thinkers. He thinks only of real estate and such sordid things. He is no mate for a woman with soul. We will say that this unfortunate wife one day meets with her ideal—a man with brain and heart and force. She loves him. Although this man feels the thrill of a newfound affinity he is too noble, too honourable to declare himself. He flies from the presence of his beloved. She flies after him, trampling, with superb indifference, upon the fetters with which an unenlightened social system would bind her. Now, what will a divorce cost? Eliza Ann Timmins, the poetess of Sycamore Gap, got one for three hundred and forty dollars. Can I—I mean can this lady I speak of get one that cheap?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Madam,” said Lawyer Gooch, “your last two or three sentences delight me with their intelligence and clearness. Can we not now abandon the hypothetical and come down to names and business?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I should say so,” exclaimed the lady, adopting the practical with admirable readiness. “Thomas R. Billings is the name of the low brute who stands between the happiness of his legal—his legal, but not his spiritual—wife and Henry K. Jessup, the noble man whom nature intended for her mate. I,” concluded the client, with an air of dramatic revelation, “am <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Gentlemen to see you, sir,” shouted Archibald, invading the room almost at a handspring. Lawyer Gooch arose from his chair.</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings,” he said courteously, “allow me to conduct you into the adjoining office apartment for a few minutes. I am expecting a very wealthy old gentleman on business connected with a will. In a very short while I will join you, and continue our consultation.”</p>
|
||||
<p>With his accustomed chivalrous manner, Lawyer Gooch ushered his soulful client into the remaining unoccupied room, and came out, closing the door with circumspection.</p>
|
||||
<p>The next visitor introduced by Archibald was a thin, nervous, irritable-looking man of middle age, with a worried and apprehensive expression of countenance. He carried in one hand a small satchel, which he set down upon the floor beside the chair which the lawyer placed for him. His clothing was of good quality, but it was worn without regard to neatness or style, and appeared to be covered with the dust of travel.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You make a specialty of divorce cases,” he said, in, an agitated but business-like tone.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You make a specialty of divorce cases,” he said, in, an agitated but businesslike tone.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I may say,” began Lawyer Gooch, “that my practice has not altogether avoided—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I know you do,” interrupted client number three. “You needn’t tell me. I’ve heard all about you. I have a case to lay before you without necessarily disclosing any connection that I might have with it—that is—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You wish,” said Lawyer Gooch, “to state a hypothetical case.</p>
|
||||
@ -78,14 +78,14 @@
|
||||
<p>“Hey? No; for the whole job. It’s enough, ain’t it?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“My fee,” said Lawyer Gooch, “would be one thousand five hundred dollars. Five hundred dollars down, and the remainder upon issuance of the divorce.”</p>
|
||||
<p>A loud whistle came from client number one. His feet descended to the floor.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Guess we can’t close the deal,” he said, arising, “I cleaned up five hundred dollars in a little real estate dicker down in Susanville. I’d do anything I could to free the lady, but it out-sizes my pile.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Guess we can’t close the deal,” he said, arising, “I cleaned up five hundred dollars in a little real estate dicker down in Susanville. I’d do anything I could to free the lady, but it outsizes my pile.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Could you stand one thousand two hundred dollars?” asked the lawyer, insinuatingly.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Five hundred is my limit, I tell you. Guess I’ll have to hunt up a cheaper lawyer.” The client put on his hat.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Out this way, please,” said Lawyer Gooch, opening the door that led into the hallway.</p>
|
||||
<p>As the gentleman flowed out of the compartment and down the stairs, Lawyer Gooch smiled to himself. “Exit <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Jessup,” he murmured, as he fingered the Henry Clay tuft of hair at his ear. “And now for the forsaken husband.” He returned to the middle office, and assumed a businesslike manner.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I understand,” he said to client number three, “that you agree to pay one thousand dollars if I bring about, or am instrumental in bringing about, the return of <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings to her home, and her abandonment of her infatuated pursuit of the man for whom she has conceived such a violent fancy. Also that the case is now unreservedly in my hands on that basis. Is that correct?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Entirely,” said the other, eagerly. “And I can produce the cash any time at two hours’ notice.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Lawyer Gooch stood up at his full height. His thin figure seemed to expand. His thumbs sought the arm-holes of his vest. Upon his face was a look of sympathetic benignity that he always wore during such undertakings.</p>
|
||||
<p>Lawyer Gooch stood up at his full height. His thin figure seemed to expand. His thumbs sought the armholes of his vest. Upon his face was a look of sympathetic benignity that he always wore during such undertakings.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Then, sir,” he said, in kindly tones, “I think I can promise you an early relief from your troubles. I have that much confidence in my powers of argument and persuasion, in the natural impulses of the human heart toward good, and in the strong influence of a husband’s unfaltering love. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings, sir, is here—in that room—” the lawyer’s long arm pointed to the door. “I will call her in at once; and our united pleadings—”</p>
|
||||
<p>Lawyer Gooch paused, for client number three had leaped from his chair as if propelled by steel springs, and clutched his satchel.</p>
|
||||
<p>“What the devil,” he exclaimed, harshly, “do you mean? That woman in there! I thought I shook her off forty miles back.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -13,7 +13,7 @@
|
||||
<p>In May Cupid shoots blindfolded—millionaires marry stenographers; wise professors woo white-aproned gum-chewers behind quick-lunch counters; schoolma’ams make big bad boys remain after school; lads with ladders steal lightly over lawns where Juliet waits in her trellissed window with her telescope packed; young couples out for a walk come home married; old chaps put on white spats and promenade near the Normal School; even married men, grown unwontedly tender and sentimental, whack their spouses on the back and growl: “How goes it, old girl:”</p>
|
||||
<p>This May, who is no goddess, but Circe, masquerading at the dance given in honour of the fair débutante, Summer, puts the kibosh on us all.</p>
|
||||
<p>Old <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson groaned a little, and then sat up straight in his invalid’s chair. He had the gout very bad in one foot, a house near Gramercy Park, half a million dollars and a daughter. And he had a housekeeper, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup. The fact and the name deserve a sentence each. They have it.</p>
|
||||
<p>When May poked <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson he became elder brother to the turtle-dove. In the window near which he sat were boxes of jonquils, of hyacinths, geraniums and pansies. The breeze brought their odour into the room. Immediately there was a well-contested round between the breath of the flowers and the able and active effluvium from gout liniment. The liniment won easily; but not before the flowers got an uppercut to old <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson’s nose. The deadly work of the implacable, false enchantress May was done.</p>
|
||||
<p>When May poked <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson he became elder brother to the turtledove. In the window near which he sat were boxes of jonquils, of hyacinths, geraniums and pansies. The breeze brought their odour into the room. Immediately there was a well-contested round between the breath of the flowers and the able and active effluvium from gout liniment. The liniment won easily; but not before the flowers got an uppercut to old <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson’s nose. The deadly work of the implacable, false enchantress May was done.</p>
|
||||
<p>Across the park to the olfactories of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson came other unmistakable, characteristic, copyrighted smells of spring that belong to the-big-city-above-the-Subway, alone. The smells of hot asphalt, underground caverns, gasoline, patchouli, orange peel, sewer gas, Albany grabs, Egyptian cigarettes, mortar and the undried ink on newspapers. The inblowing air was sweet and mild. Sparrows wrangled happily everywhere outdoors. Never trust May.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson twisted the ends of his white mustache, cursed his foot, and pounded a bell on the table by his side.</p>
|
||||
<p>In came <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup. She was comely to the eye, fair, flustered, forty and foxy.</p>
|
||||
@ -37,7 +37,7 @@
|
||||
<p>The housekeeper retired, pink under the cool, inquiring stare of Miss Coulson.</p>
|
||||
<p>“This spring weather is lovely, isn’t it, daughter?” said the old man, consciously conscious.</p>
|
||||
<p>“That’s just it,” replied Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, somewhat obscurely. “When does <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup start on her vacation, papa?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I believe she said a week from to-day,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I believe she said a week from today,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson.</p>
|
||||
<p>Miss Van Meeker Constantia stood for a minute at the window gazing, toward the little park, flooded with the mellow afternoon sunlight. With the eye of a botanist she viewed the flowers—most potent weapons of insidious May. With the cool pulses of a virgin of Cologne she withstood the attack of the ethereal mildness. The arrows of the pleasant sunshine fell back, frostbitten, from the cold panoply of her unthrilled bosom. The odour of the flowers waked no soft sentiments in the unexplored recesses of her dormant heart. The chirp of the sparrows gave her a pain. She mocked at May.</p>
|
||||
<p>But although Miss Coulson was proof against the season, she was keen enough to estimate its power. She knew that elderly men and thick-waisted women jumped as educated fleas in the ridiculous train of May, the merry mocker of the months. She had heard of foolish old gentlemen marrying their housekeepers before. What a humiliating thing, after all, was this feeling called love!</p>
|
||||
<p>The next morning at 8 o’clock, when the iceman called, the cook told him that Miss Coulson wanted to see him in the basement.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -11,12 +11,12 @@
|
||||
<p>It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama—Bill Driscoll and myself—when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a moment of temporary mental apparition”; but we didn’t find that out till later.</p>
|
||||
<p>There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.</p>
|
||||
<p>Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities; therefore and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn’t get after us with anything stronger than constables and maybe some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Weekly Farmers’ Budget</i>. So, it looked good.</p>
|
||||
<p>We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the colour of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you.</p>
|
||||
<p>We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the colour of the cover of the magazine you buy at the newsstand when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you.</p>
|
||||
<p>About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions. One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset’s house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Hey, little boy!” says Bill, “would you like to have a bag of candy and a nice ride?”</p>
|
||||
<p>The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.</p>
|
||||
<p>“That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars,” says Bill, climbing over the wheel.</p>
|
||||
<p>That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at last, we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We took him up to the cave and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake. After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.</p>
|
||||
<p>That boy put up a fight like a welterweight cinnamon bear; but, at last, we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We took him up to the cave and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake. After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.</p>
|
||||
<p>Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his features. There was a fire burning behind the big rock at the entrance of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two buzzard tail-feathers stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me when I come up, and says:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the terror of the plains?</p>
|
||||
<p>“He’s all right now,” says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining some bruises on his shins. “We’re playing Indian. We’re making Buffalo Bill’s show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town hall. I’m Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief’s captive, and I’m to be scalped at daybreak. By Geronimo! that kid can kick hard.”</p>
|
||||
@ -31,18 +31,18 @@
|
||||
<p>We went to bed about eleven o’clock. We spread down some wide blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren’t afraid he’d run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: “Hist! pard,” in mine and Bill’s ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair.</p>
|
||||
<p>Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren’t yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you’d expect from a manly set of vocal organs—they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It’s an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.</p>
|
||||
<p>I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill’s chest, with one hand twined in Bill’s hair. In the other he had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing bacon; and he was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill’s scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before.</p>
|
||||
<p>I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But, from that moment, Bill’s spirit was broken. He laid down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn’t nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock.</p>
|
||||
<p>I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But, from that moment, Bill’s spirit was broken. He laid down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sunup I remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn’t nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock.</p>
|
||||
<p>“What you getting up so soon for, Sam?” asked Bill.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Me?” says I. “Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I thought sitting up would rest it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You’re a liar!” says Bill. “You’re afraid. You was to be burned at sunrise, and you was afraid he’d do it. And he would, too, if he could find a match. Ain’t it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out money to get a little imp like that back home?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sure,” said I. “A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that parents dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast, while I go up on the top of this mountain and reconnoitre.”</p>
|
||||
<p>I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the contiguous vicinity. Over toward Summit I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. “Perhaps,” says I to myself, “it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!” says I, and I went down the mountain to breakfast.</p>
|
||||
<p>When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half as big as a cocoanut.</p>
|
||||
<p>When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half as big as a coconut.</p>
|
||||
<p>“He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back,” explained Bill, “and then mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam?”</p>
|
||||
<p>I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument. “I’ll fix you,” says the kid to Bill. “No man ever yet struck the Red Chief but what he got paid for it. You better beware!”</p>
|
||||
<p>After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out of his pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it.</p>
|
||||
<p>“What’s he up to now?” says Bill, anxiously. “You don’t think he’ll run away, do you, Sam?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“No fear of it,” says I. “He don’t seem to be much of a home body. But we’ve got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don’t seem to be much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance; but maybe they haven’t realized yet that he’s gone. His folks may think he’s spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbours. Anyhow, he’ll be missed to-day. To-night we must get a message to his father demanding the two thousand dollars for his return.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“No fear of it,” says I. “He don’t seem to be much of a home body. But we’ve got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don’t seem to be much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance; but maybe they haven’t realized yet that he’s gone. His folks may think he’s spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbours. Anyhow, he’ll be missed today. Tonight we must get a message to his father demanding the two thousand dollars for his return.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Just then we heard a kind Of war-whoop, such as David might have emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around his head.</p>
|
||||
<p>I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A niggerhead rock the size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water on his head for half an hour.</p>
|
||||
<p>By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: “Sam, do you know who my favourite Biblical character is?”</p>
|
||||
@ -50,7 +50,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“King Herod,” says he. “You won’t go away and leave me here alone, will you, Sam?”</p>
|
||||
<p>I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled.</p>
|
||||
<p>“If you don’t behave,” says I, “I’ll take you straight home. Now, are you going to be good, or not?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I was only funning,” says he sullenly. “I didn’t mean to hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for? I’ll behave, Snake-eye, if you won’t send me home, and if you’ll let me play the Black Scout to-day.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I was only funning,” says he sullenly. “I didn’t mean to hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for? I’ll behave, Snake-eye, if you won’t send me home, and if you’ll let me play the Black Scout today.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I don’t know the game,” says I. “That’s for you and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bill to decide. He’s your playmate for the day. I’m going away for a while, on business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once.”</p>
|
||||
<p>I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been regarded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it should be paid.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You know, Sam,” says Bill, “I’ve stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood—in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He’s got me going. You won’t leave me long with him, will you, Sam?”</p>
|
||||
@ -59,7 +59,7 @@
|
||||
<p>So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran this way:</p>
|
||||
<blockquote epub:type="z3998:letter">
|
||||
<p epub:type="salutation">Ebenezer Dorset, <abbr>Esq.</abbr>:</p>
|
||||
<p>We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt to find him. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored to you are these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at the same spot and in the same box as your reply—as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger to-night at half-past eight o’clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard box.</p>
|
||||
<p>We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt to find him. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored to you are these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return; the money to be left at midnight tonight at the same spot and in the same box as your reply—as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger tonight at half-past eight o’clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard box.</p>
|
||||
<p>The messenger will place the answer in this box and return immediately to Summit.</p>
|
||||
<p>If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your boy again.</p>
|
||||
<p>If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not accede to them no further communication will be attempted.</p>
|
||||
@ -96,13 +96,13 @@
|
||||
<p>I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck the woods, and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the note, got near the lantern and read it to Bill. It was written with a pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance of it was this:</p>
|
||||
<blockquote epub:type="z3998:letter">
|
||||
<p epub:type="z3998:recipient">Two Desperate Men.</p>
|
||||
<p><span epub:type="salutation">Gentlemen</span>: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbours believe he is lost, and I couldn’t be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back. <span epub:type="valediction">Very respectfully</span>,</p>
|
||||
<p><span epub:type="salutation">Gentlemen</span>: I received your letter today by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbours believe he is lost, and I couldn’t be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back. <span epub:type="valediction">Very respectfully</span>,</p>
|
||||
<p epub:type="z3998:signature">Ebenezer Dorset.</p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>“Great pirates of Penzance!” says I; “of all the impudent—”</p>
|
||||
<p>But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking brute.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sam,” says he, “what’s two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We’ve got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain’t going to let the chance go, are you?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Tell you the truth, Bill,” says I, “this little he ewe lamb has somewhat got on my nerves too. We’ll take him home, pay the ransom and make our get-away.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Tell you the truth, Bill,” says I, “this little he ewe lamb has somewhat got on my nerves too. We’ll take him home, pay the ransom and make our getaway.”</p>
|
||||
<p>We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was just twelve o’clock when we knocked at Ebenezer’s front door. Just at the moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset’s hand.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill’s leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
|
||||
<p>While the fireman was lowering the feeding hose, Bob Tidball, “Shark” Dodson and a quarter-bred Creek Indian called John Big Dog climbed on the engine and showed the engineer three round orifices in pieces of ordnance that they carried. These orifices so impressed the engineer with their possibilities that he raised both hands in a gesture such as accompanies the ejaculation “Do tell!”</p>
|
||||
<p>At the crisp command of Shark Dodson, who was leader of the attacking force the engineer descended to the ground and uncoupled the engine and tender. Then John Big Dog, perched upon the coal, sportively held two guns upon the engine driver and the fireman, and suggested that they run the engine fifty yards away and there await further orders.</p>
|
||||
<p>Shark Dodson and Bob Tidball, scorning to put such low-grade ore as the passengers through the mill, struck out for the rich pocket of the express car. They found the messenger serene in the belief that the “Sunset Express” was taking on nothing more stimulating and dangerous than aqua pura. While Bob was knocking this idea out of his head with the butt-end of his six-shooter Shark Dodson was already dosing the express-car safe with dynamite.</p>
|
||||
<p>The safe exploded to the tune of $30,000, all gold and currency. The passengers thrust their heads casually out of the windows to look for the thunder-cloud. The conductor jerked at the bell-rope, which sagged down loose and unresisting, at his tug. Shark Dodson and Bob Tidball, with their booty in a stout canvas bag, tumbled out of the express car and ran awkwardly in their high-heeled boots to the engine.</p>
|
||||
<p>The safe exploded to the tune of $30,000, all gold and currency. The passengers thrust their heads casually out of the windows to look for the thundercloud. The conductor jerked at the bell-rope, which sagged down loose and unresisting, at his tug. Shark Dodson and Bob Tidball, with their booty in a stout canvas bag, tumbled out of the express car and ran awkwardly in their high-heeled boots to the engine.</p>
|
||||
<p>The engineer, sullenly angry but wise, ran the engine, according to orders, rapidly away from the inert train. But before this was accomplished the express messenger, recovered from Bob Tidball’s persuader to neutrality, jumped out of his car with a Winchester rifle and took a trick in the game. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> John Big Dog, sitting on the coal tender, unwittingly made a wrong lead by giving an imitation of a target, and the messenger trumped him. With a ball exactly between his shoulder blades the Creek chevalier of industry rolled off to the ground, thus increasing the share of his comrades in the loot by one-sixth each.</p>
|
||||
<p>Two miles from the tank the engineer was ordered to stop.</p>
|
||||
<p>The robbers waved a defiant adieu and plunged down the steep slope into the thick woods that lined the track. Five minutes of crashing through a thicket of chaparral brought them to open woods, where three horses were tied to low-hanging branches. One was waiting for John Big Dog, who would never ride by night or day again. This animal the robbers divested of saddle and bridle and set free. They mounted the other two with the bag across one pommel, and rode fast and with discretion through the forest and up a primeval, lonely gorge. Here the animal that bore Bob Tidball slipped on a mossy boulder and broke a foreleg. They shot him through the head at once and sat down to hold a council of flight. Made secure for the present by the tortuous trail they had travelled, the question of time was no longer so big. Many miles and hours lay between them and the spryest posse that could follow. Shark Dodson’s horse, with trailing rope and dropped bridle, panted and cropped thankfully of the grass along the stream in the gorge. Bob Tidball opened the sack, drew out double handfuls of the neat packages of currency and the one sack of gold and chuckled with the glee of a child.</p>
|
||||
@ -39,7 +39,7 @@
|
||||
<p>I am telling you that Dodson, of the firm of Dodson & Decker, Wall Street brokers, opened his eyes. Peabody, the confidential clerk, was standing by his chair, hesitating to speak. There was a confused hum of wheels below, and the sedative buzz of an electric fan.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ahem! Peabody,” said Dodson, blinking. “I must have fallen asleep. I had a most remarkable dream. What is it, Peabody?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Williams, sir, of Tracy & Williams, is outside. He has come to settle his deal in <span epub:type="z3998:roman">X</span>. Y. Z. The market caught him short, sir, if you remember.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yes, I remember. What is <span epub:type="z3998:roman">X</span>. Y. Z. quoted at to-day, Peabody?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yes, I remember. What is <span epub:type="z3998:roman">X</span>. Y. Z. quoted at today, Peabody?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“One eighty-five, sir.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Then that’s his price.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Excuse me,” said Peabody, rather nervously “for speaking of it, but I’ve been talking to Williams. He’s an old friend of yours, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Dodson, and you practically have a corner in <span epub:type="z3998:roman">X</span>. Y. Z. I thought you might—that is, I thought you might not remember that he sold you the stock at 98. If he settles at the market price it will take every cent he has in the world and his home too to deliver the shares.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -19,10 +19,10 @@
|
||||
<p>The author of “A Gay Coquette” stepped to the front. He wore nose-glasses and evening clothes, even if his shoes had been tans before they met the patent-leather-polish bottle.</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Sergeant,” said he, out of his throat, like Actor Irving, “I would like to protest against this arrest. The company of actors who are performing in a little play that I have written, in company with a friend and myself were having a little supper. We became deeply interested in the discussion as to which one of the cast is responsible for a scene in the sketch that lately has fallen so flat that the piece is about to become a failure. We may have been rather noisy and intolerant of interruption by the restaurant people; but the matter was of considerable importance to all of us. You see that we are sober and are not the kind of people who desire to raise disturbances. I hope that the case will not be pressed and that we may be allowed to go.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Who makes the charge?” asked the sergeant.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Me,” said a white-aproned voice in the rear. “De restaurant sent me to. De gang was raisin’ a rough-house and breakin’ dishes.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Me,” said a white-aproned voice in the rear. “De restaurant sent me to. De gang was raisin’ a roughhouse and breakin’ dishes.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“The dishes were paid for,” said the playwright. “They were not broken purposely. In her anger, because we remonstrated with her for spoiling the scene, Miss—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“It’s not true, sergeant,” cried the clear voice of Miss Clarice Carroll. In a long coat of tan silk and a red-plumed hat, she bounded before the desk.</p>
|
||||
<p>“It’s not my fault,” she cried indignantly. “How dare they say such a thing! I’ve played the title rôle ever since it was staged, and if you want to know who made it a success, ask the public—that’s all.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“It’s not my fault,” she cried indignantly. “How dare they say such a thing! I’ve played the title role ever since it was staged, and if you want to know who made it a success, ask the public—that’s all.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“What Miss Carroll says is true in part,” said the author. “For five months the comedietta was a drawing-card in the best houses. But during the last two weeks it has lost favour. There is one scene in it in which Miss Carroll made a big hit. Now she hardly gets a hand out of it. She spoils it by acting it entirely different from her old way.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“It is not my fault,” reiterated the actress.</p>
|
||||
<p>“There are only two of you on in the scene,” argued the playwright hotly, “you and Delmars, here—”</p>
|
||||
@ -48,17 +48,17 @@
|
||||
<p>“Eight minutes,” said the playwright. “The entire play consumes but thirty.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You may go ahead,” said the sergeant. “Most of you seem to side against the little lady. Maybe she had a right to crack up a saucer or two in that restaurant. We’ll see how she does the turn before we take that up.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The matron of the police station had been standing near, listening to the singular argument. She came nigher and stood near the sergeant’s chair. Two or three of the reserves strolled in, big and yawning.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Before beginning the scene,” said the playwright, “and assuming that you have not seen a production of ‘A Gay Coquette,’ I will make a brief but necessary explanation. It is a musical-farce-comedy—burlesque-comedietta. As the title implies, Miss Carroll’s rôle is that of a gay, rollicking, mischievous, heartless coquette. She sustains that character throughout the entire comedy part of the production. And I have designed the extravaganza features so that she may preserve and present the same coquettish idea.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Before beginning the scene,” said the playwright, “and assuming that you have not seen a production of ‘A Gay Coquette,’ I will make a brief but necessary explanation. It is a musical-farce-comedy—burlesque-comedietta. As the title implies, Miss Carroll’s role is that of a gay, rollicking, mischievous, heartless coquette. She sustains that character throughout the entire comedy part of the production. And I have designed the extravaganza features so that she may preserve and present the same coquettish idea.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now, the scene in which we take exception to Miss Carroll’s acting is called the ‘gorilla dance.’ She is costumed to represent a wood nymph, and there is a great song-and-dance scene with a gorilla—played by <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Delmars, the comedian. A tropical-forest stage is set.</p>
|
||||
<p>“That used to get four and five recalls. The main thing was the acting and the dance—it was the funniest thing in New York for five months. Delmars’s song, ‘I’ll Woo Thee to My Sylvan Home,’ while he and Miss Carroll were cutting hide-and-seek capers among the tropical plants, was a winner.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“What’s the trouble with the scene now?” asked the sergeant.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Miss Carroll spoils it right in the middle of it,” said the playwright wrathfully.</p>
|
||||
<p>With a wide gesture of her ever-moving arms the actress waved back the little group of spectators, leaving a space in front of the desk for the scene of her vindication or fall. Then she whipped off her long tan cloak and tossed it across the arm of the policeman who still stood officially among them.</p>
|
||||
<p>Miss Carroll had gone to supper well cloaked, but in the costume of the tropic wood nymph. A skirt of fern leaves touched her knee; she was like a humming-bird—green and golden and purple.</p>
|
||||
<p>Miss Carroll had gone to supper well cloaked, but in the costume of the tropic wood nymph. A skirt of fern leaves touched her knee; she was like a hummingbird—green and golden and purple.</p>
|
||||
<p>And then she danced a fluttering, fantastic dance, so agile and light and mazy in her steps that the other three members of the Carroll Comedy Company broke into applause at the art of it.</p>
|
||||
<p>And at the proper time Delmars leaped out at her side, mimicking the uncouth, hideous bounds of the gorilla so funnily that the grizzled sergeant himself gave a short laugh like the closing of a padlock. They danced together the gorilla dance, and won a hand from all.</p>
|
||||
<p>Then began the most fantastic part of the scene—the wooing of the nymph by the gorilla. It was a kind of dance itself—eccentric and prankish, with the nymph in coquettish and seductive retreat, followed by the gorilla as he sang “I’ll Woo Thee to My Sylvan Home.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The song was a lyric of merit. The words were non-sense, as befitted the play, but the music was worthy of something better. Delmars struck into it in a rich tenor that owned a quality that shamed the flippant words.</p>
|
||||
<p>The song was a lyric of merit. The words were nonsense, as befitted the play, but the music was worthy of something better. Delmars struck into it in a rich tenor that owned a quality that shamed the flippant words.</p>
|
||||
<p>During one verse of the song the wood nymph performed the grotesque evolutions designed for the scene. At the middle of the second verse she stood still, with a strange look on her face, seeming to gaze dreamily into the depths of the scenic forest. The gorilla’s last leap had brought him to her feet, and there he knelt, holding her hand, until he had finished the haunting-lyric that was set in the absurd comedy like a diamond in a piece of putty.</p>
|
||||
<p>When Delmars ceased Miss Carroll started, and covered a sudden flow of tears with both hands.</p>
|
||||
<p>“There!” cried the playwright, gesticulating with violence; “there you have it, sergeant. For two weeks she has spoiled that scene in just that manner at every performance. I have begged her to consider that it is not Ophelia or Juliet that she is playing. Do you wonder now at our impatience? Tears for the gorilla song! The play is lost!”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -16,25 +16,25 @@
|
||||
<p>And so I cornered Bridger in a place where they have artificial palms and wine; and he told me the story which is here in my words and on his responsibility.</p>
|
||||
<p>One afternoon at three o’clock, on the island of Ratona, a boy raced along the beach screaming, “<i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i>, ahoy!”</p>
|
||||
<p>Thus he made known the keenness of his hearing and the justice of his discrimination in pitch.</p>
|
||||
<p>He who first heard and made oral proclamation concerning the toot of an approaching steamer’s whistle, and correctly named the steamer, was a small hero in Ratona—until the next steamer came. Wherefore, there was rivalry among the barefoot youth of Ratona, and many fell victims to the softly blown conch shells of sloops which, as they enter harbour, sound surprisingly like a distant steamer’s signal. And some could name you the vessel when its call, in your duller ears, sounded no louder than the sigh of the wind through the branches of the cocoanut palms.</p>
|
||||
<p>But to-day he who proclaimed the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> gained his honours. Ratona bent its ear to listen; and soon the deep-tongued blast grew louder and nearer, and at length Ratona saw above the line of palms on the low “point” the two black funnels of the fruiter slowly creeping toward the mouth of the harbour.</p>
|
||||
<p>He who first heard and made oral proclamation concerning the toot of an approaching steamer’s whistle, and correctly named the steamer, was a small hero in Ratona—until the next steamer came. Wherefore, there was rivalry among the barefoot youth of Ratona, and many fell victims to the softly blown conch shells of sloops which, as they enter harbour, sound surprisingly like a distant steamer’s signal. And some could name you the vessel when its call, in your duller ears, sounded no louder than the sigh of the wind through the branches of the coconut palms.</p>
|
||||
<p>But today he who proclaimed the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> gained his honours. Ratona bent its ear to listen; and soon the deep-tongued blast grew louder and nearer, and at length Ratona saw above the line of palms on the low “point” the two black funnels of the fruiter slowly creeping toward the mouth of the harbour.</p>
|
||||
<p>You must know that Ratona is an island twenty miles off the south of a South American republic. It is a port of that republic; and it sleeps sweetly in a smiling sea, toiling not nor spinning; fed by the abundant tropics where all things “ripen, cease and fall toward the grave.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Eight hundred people dream life away in a green-embowered village that follows the horseshoe curve of its bijou harbour. They are mostly Spanish and Indian mestizos, with a shading of San Domingo Negroes, a lightening of pure-blood Spanish officials and a slight leavening of the froth of three or four pioneering white races. No steamers touch at Ratona save the fruit steamers which take on their banana inspectors there on their way to the coast. They leave Sunday newspapers, ice, quinine, bacon, watermelons and vaccine matter at the island and that is about all the touch Ratona gets with the world.</p>
|
||||
<p>The <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> paused at the mouth of the harbour, rolling heavily in the swell that sent the whitecaps racing beyond the smooth water inside. Already two dories from the village—one conveying fruit inspectors, the other going for what it could get—were halfway out to the steamer.</p>
|
||||
<p>The inspectors’ dory was taken on board with them, and the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> steamed away for the mainland for its load of fruit.</p>
|
||||
<p>The other boat returned to Ratona bearing a contribution from the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro’s</i> store of ice, the usual roll of newspapers and one passenger—Taylor Plunkett, sheriff of Chatham County, Kentucky.</p>
|
||||
<p>Bridger, the United States consul at Ratona, was cleaning his rifle in the official shanty under a bread-fruit tree twenty yards from the water of the harbour. The consul occupied a place somewhat near the tail of his political party’s procession. The music of the band wagon sounded very faintly to him in the distance. The plums of office went to others. Bridger’s share of the spoils—the consulship at Ratona—was little more than a prune—a dried prune from the boarding-house department of the public crib. But $900 yearly was opulence in Ratona. Besides, Bridger had contracted a passion for shooting alligators in the lagoons near his consulate, and was not unhappy.</p>
|
||||
<p>Bridger, the United States consul at Ratona, was cleaning his rifle in the official shanty under a breadfruit tree twenty yards from the water of the harbour. The consul occupied a place somewhat near the tail of his political party’s procession. The music of the band wagon sounded very faintly to him in the distance. The plums of office went to others. Bridger’s share of the spoils—the consulship at Ratona—was little more than a prune—a dried prune from the boardinghouse department of the public crib. But $900 yearly was opulence in Ratona. Besides, Bridger had contracted a passion for shooting alligators in the lagoons near his consulate, and was not unhappy.</p>
|
||||
<p>He looked up from a careful inspection of his rifle lock and saw a broad man filling his doorway. A broad, noiseless, slow-moving man, sunburned almost to the brown of Vandyke. A man of forty-five, neatly clothed in homespun, with scanty light hair, a close-clipped brown-and-gray beard and pale-blue eyes expressing mildness and simplicity.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You are <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bridger, the consul,” said the broad man. “They directed me here. Can you tell me what those big bunches of things like gourds are in those trees that look like feather dusters along the edge of the water?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Take that chair,” said the consul, reoiling his cleaning rag. “No, the other one—that bamboo thing won’t hold you. Why, they’re cocoanuts—green cocoanuts. The shell of ’em is always a light green before they’re ripe.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Much obliged,” said the other man, sitting down carefully. “I didn’t quite like to tell the folks at home they were olives unless I was sure about it. My name is Plunkett. I’m sheriff of Chatham County, Kentucky. I’ve got extradition papers in my pocket authorizing the arrest of a man on this island. They’ve been signed by the President of this country, and they’re in correct shape. The man’s name is Wade Williams. He’s in the cocoanut raising business. What he’s wanted for is the murder of his wife two years ago. Where can I find him?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Take that chair,” said the consul, reoiling his cleaning rag. “No, the other one—that bamboo thing won’t hold you. Why, they’re coconuts—green coconuts. The shell of ’em is always a light green before they’re ripe.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Much obliged,” said the other man, sitting down carefully. “I didn’t quite like to tell the folks at home they were olives unless I was sure about it. My name is Plunkett. I’m sheriff of Chatham County, Kentucky. I’ve got extradition papers in my pocket authorizing the arrest of a man on this island. They’ve been signed by the President of this country, and they’re in correct shape. The man’s name is Wade Williams. He’s in the coconut raising business. What he’s wanted for is the murder of his wife two years ago. Where can I find him?”</p>
|
||||
<p>The consul squinted an eye and looked through his rifle barrel.</p>
|
||||
<p>“There’s nobody on the island who calls himself ‘Williams,’ ” he remarked.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Didn’t suppose there was,” said Plunkett mildly. “He’ll do by any other name.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Besides myself,” said Bridger, “there are only two Americans on Ratona—Bob Reeves and Henry Morgan.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“The man I want sells cocoanuts,” suggested Plunkett.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You see that cocoanut walk extending up to the point?” said the consul, waving his hand toward the open door. “That belongs to Bob Reeves. Henry Morgan owns half the trees to loo’ard on the island.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“One, month ago,” said the sheriff, “Wade Williams wrote a confidential letter to a man in Chatham county, telling him where he was and how he was getting along. The letter was lost; and the person that found it gave it away. They sent me after him, and I’ve got the papers. I reckon he’s one of your cocoanut men for certain.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“The man I want sells coconuts,” suggested Plunkett.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You see that coconut walk extending up to the point?” said the consul, waving his hand toward the open door. “That belongs to Bob Reeves. Henry Morgan owns half the trees to loo’ard on the island.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“One, month ago,” said the sheriff, “Wade Williams wrote a confidential letter to a man in Chatham county, telling him where he was and how he was getting along. The letter was lost; and the person that found it gave it away. They sent me after him, and I’ve got the papers. I reckon he’s one of your coconut men for certain.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You’ve got his picture, of course,” said Bridger. “It might be Reeves or Morgan, but I’d hate to think it. They’re both as fine fellows as you’d meet in an all-day auto ride.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“No,” doubtfully answered Plunkett; “there wasn’t any picture of Williams to be had. And I never saw him myself. I’ve been sheriff only a year. But I’ve got a pretty accurate description of him. About 5 feet 11; dark-hair and eyes; nose inclined to be Roman; heavy about the shoulders; strong, white teeth, with none missing; laughs a good deal, talkative; drinks considerably but never to intoxication; looks you square in the eye when talking; age thirty-five. Which one of your men does that description fit?”</p>
|
||||
<p>The consul grinned broadly.</p>
|
||||
@ -43,14 +43,14 @@
|
||||
<p>Two men were in the room, about to sit down, in their shirt sleeves, to a table spread for dinner. They bore little resemblance one to the other in detail; but the general description given by Plunkett could have been justly applied to either. In height, colour of hair, shape of nose, build and manners each of them tallied with it. They were fair types of jovial, ready-witted, broad-gauged Americans who had gravitated together for companionship in an alien land.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Hello, Bridger” they called in unison at sight Of the consul. “Come and have dinner with us!” And then they noticed Plunkett at his heels, and came forward with hospitable curiosity.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Gentlemen,” said the consul, his voice taking on unaccustomed formality, “this is <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett—<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Reeves and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Morgan.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The cocoanut barons greeted the newcomer joyously. Reeves seemed about an inch taller than Morgan, but his laugh was not quite as loud. Morgan’s eyes were deep brown; Reeves’s were black. Reeves was the host and busied himself with fetching other chairs and calling to the Carib woman for supplemental table ware. It was explained that Morgan lived in a bamboo shack to “loo’ard,” but that every day the two friends dined together. Plunkett stood still during the preparations, looking about mildly with his pale-blue eyes. Bridger looked apologetic and uneasy.</p>
|
||||
<p>The coconut barons greeted the newcomer joyously. Reeves seemed about an inch taller than Morgan, but his laugh was not quite as loud. Morgan’s eyes were deep brown; Reeves’s were black. Reeves was the host and busied himself with fetching other chairs and calling to the Carib woman for supplemental table ware. It was explained that Morgan lived in a bamboo shack to “loo’ard,” but that every day the two friends dined together. Plunkett stood still during the preparations, looking about mildly with his pale-blue eyes. Bridger looked apologetic and uneasy.</p>
|
||||
<p>At length two other covers were laid and the company was assigned to places. Reeves and Morgan stood side by side across the table from the visitors. Reeves nodded genially as a signal for all to seat themselves. And then suddenly Plunkett raised his hand with a gesture of authority. He was looking straight between Reeves and Morgan.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Wade Williams,” he said quietly, “you are under arrest for murder.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Reeves and Morgan instantly exchanged a quick, bright glance, the quality of which was interrogation, with a seasoning of surprise. Then, simultaneously they turned to the speaker with a puzzled and frank deprecation in their gaze.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Can’t say that we understand you, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett,” said Morgan, cheerfully. “Did you say ‘Williams’?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“What’s the joke, Bridgy?” asked Reeves, turning, to the consul with a smile.</p>
|
||||
<p>Before Bridger could answer Plunkett spoke again.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ll explain,” he said, quietly. “One of you don’t need any explanation, but this is for the other one. One of you is Wade Williams of Chatham County, Kentucky. You murdered your wife on May 5, two years ago, after ill-treating and abusing her continually for five years. I have the proper papers in my pocket for taking you back with me, and you are going. We will return on the fruit steamer that comes back by this island to-morrow to leave its inspectors. I acknowledge, gentlemen, that I’m not quite sure which one of you is Williams. But Wade Williams goes back to Chatham County to-morrow. I want you to understand that.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ll explain,” he said, quietly. “One of you don’t need any explanation, but this is for the other one. One of you is Wade Williams of Chatham County, Kentucky. You murdered your wife on May 5, two years ago, after ill-treating and abusing her continually for five years. I have the proper papers in my pocket for taking you back with me, and you are going. We will return on the fruit steamer that comes back by this island tomorrow to leave its inspectors. I acknowledge, gentlemen, that I’m not quite sure which one of you is Williams. But Wade Williams goes back to Chatham County tomorrow. I want you to understand that.”</p>
|
||||
<p>A great sound of merry laughter from Morgan and Reeves went out over the still harbour. Two or three fishermen in the fleet of sloops anchored there looked up at the house of the diablos Americanos on the hill and wondered.</p>
|
||||
<p>“My dear <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett,” cried Morgan, conquering his mirth, “the dinner is getting, cold. Let us sit down and eat. I am anxious to get my spoon into that shark-fin soup. Business afterward.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sit down, gentlemen, if you please,” added Reeves, pleasantly. “I am sure <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett will not object. Perhaps a little time may be of advantage to him in identifying—the gentleman he wishes to arrest.”</p>
|
||||
@ -64,7 +64,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“See here,” he said, with some asperity, “my name’s Reeves, and I don’t want you to—” But the comedy of the thing came to his rescue, and he ended with a laugh.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I suppose, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett,” said Morgan, carefully seasoning an alligator pear, “that you are aware of the fact that you will import a good deal of trouble for yourself into Kentucky if you take back the wrong man—that is, of course, if you take anybody back?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Thank you for the salt,” said the sheriff. “Oh, I’ll take somebody back. It’ll be one of you two gentlemen. Yes, I know I’d get stuck for damages if I make a mistake. But I’m going to try to get the right man.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ll tell you what you do,” said Morgan, leaning forward with a jolly twinkle in his eyes. “You take me. I’ll go without any trouble. The cocoanut business hasn’t panned out well this year, and I’d like to make some extra money out of your bondsmen.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ll tell you what you do,” said Morgan, leaning forward with a jolly twinkle in his eyes. “You take me. I’ll go without any trouble. The coconut business hasn’t panned out well this year, and I’d like to make some extra money out of your bondsmen.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“That’s not fair,” chimed in Reeves. “I got only $16 a thousand for my last shipment. Take me, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ll take Wade Williams,” said the sheriff, patiently, “or I’ll come pretty close to it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“It’s like dining with a ghost,” remarked Morgan, with a pretended shiver. “The ghost of a murderer, too! Will somebody pass the toothpicks to the shade of the naughty <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Williams?”</p>
|
||||
@ -80,7 +80,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Plunkett turned his head and looked at the animal, which halted, confidently, within a few feet of his chair.</p>
|
||||
<p>Suddenly the sheriff, with a deep-mouthed oath, left his seat and, bestowed upon the dog a vicious and heavy kick, with his ponderous shoe.</p>
|
||||
<p>The hound, heartbroken, astonished, with flapping ears and incurved tail, uttered a piercing yelp of pain and surprise.</p>
|
||||
<p>Reeves and the consul remained in their chairs, saying nothing, but astonished at the unexpected show of intolerance from the easy-going man from Chatham county.</p>
|
||||
<p>Reeves and the consul remained in their chairs, saying nothing, but astonished at the unexpected show of intolerance from the easygoing man from Chatham county.</p>
|
||||
<p>But Morgan, with a suddenly purpling face, leaped, to his feet and raised a threatening arm above the guest.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You—brute!” he shouted, passionately; “why did you do that?”</p>
|
||||
<p>Quickly the amenities returned, Plunkett muttered some indistinct apology and regained his seat. Morgan with a decided effort controlled his indignation and also returned to his chair.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="the-whirligig-of-life" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Whirligig of Life</h2>
|
||||
<p>Justice-of-the-Peace Benaja Widdup sat in the door of his office smoking his elder-stem pipe. Half-way to the zenith the Cumberland range rose blue-gray in the afternoon haze. A speckled hen swaggered down the main street of the “settlement,” cackling foolishly.</p>
|
||||
<p>Justice-of-the-Peace Benaja Widdup sat in the door of his office smoking his elder-stem pipe. Halfway to the zenith the Cumberland range rose blue-gray in the afternoon haze. A speckled hen swaggered down the main street of the “settlement,” cackling foolishly.</p>
|
||||
<p>Up the road came a sound of creaking axles, and then a slow cloud of dust, and then a bull-cart bearing Ransie Bilbro and his wife. The cart stopped at the Justice’s door, and the two climbed down. Ransie was a narrow six feet of sallow brown skin and yellow hair. The imperturbability of the mountains hung upon him like a suit of armour. The woman was calicoed, angled, snuff-brushed, and weary with unknown desires. Through it all gleamed a faint protest of cheated youth unconscious of its loss.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Justice of the Peace slipped his feet into his shoes, for the sake of dignity, and moved to let them enter.</p>
|
||||
<p>“We-all,” said the woman, in a voice like the wind blowing through pine boughs, “wants a divo’ce.” She looked at Ransie to see if he noted any flaw or ambiguity or evasion or partiality or self-partisanship in her statement of their business.</p>
|
||||
@ -30,8 +30,8 @@
|
||||
<p>“The amount,” said the Justice, “air not onreasonable. Ransie Bilbro, you air ordered by the co’t to pay the plaintiff the sum of five dollars befo’ the decree of divo’ce air issued.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I hain’t no mo’ money,” breathed Ransie, heavily. “I done paid you all I had.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Otherwise,” said the Justice, looking severely over his spectacles, “you air in contempt of co’t.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I reckon if you gimme till to-morrow,” pleaded the husband, “I mout be able to rake or scrape it up somewhars. I never looked for to be a-payin’ no ali-money.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“The case air adjourned,” said Benaja Widdup, “till to-morrow, when you-all will present yo’selves and obey the order of the co’t. Followin’ of which the decrees of divo’ce will be delivered.” He sat down in the door and began to loosen a shoestring.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I reckon if you gimme till tomorrow,” pleaded the husband, “I mout be able to rake or scrape it up somewhars. I never looked for to be a-payin’ no ali-money.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“The case air adjourned,” said Benaja Widdup, “till tomorrow, when you-all will present yo’selves and obey the order of the co’t. Followin’ of which the decrees of divo’ce will be delivered.” He sat down in the door and began to loosen a shoestring.</p>
|
||||
<p>“We mout as well go down to Uncle Ziah’s,” decided Ransie, “and spend the night.” He climbed into the cart on one side, and Ariela climbed in on the other. Obeying the flap of his rope, the little red bull slowly came around on a tack, and the cart crawled away in the nimbus arising from its wheels.</p>
|
||||
<p>Justice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup smoked his elder-stem pipe. Late in the afternoon he got his weekly paper, and read it until the twilight dimmed its lines. Then he lit the tallow candle on his table, and read until the moon rose, marking the time for supper. He lived in the double log cabin on the slope near the girdled poplar. Going home to supper he crossed a little branch darkened by a laurel thicket. The dark figure of a man stepped from the laurels and pointed a rifle at his breast. His hat was pulled down low, and something covered most of his face.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I want yo’ money,” said the figure, “ ‘thout any talk. I’m gettin’ nervous, and my finger’s a-wabblin’ on this here trigger.”</p>
|
||||
@ -41,13 +41,13 @@
|
||||
<p>“Now I reckon you kin be goin’ along,” said the robber.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Justice lingered not on his way.</p>
|
||||
<p>The next day came the little red bull, drawing the cart to the office door. Justice Benaja Widdup had his shoes on, for he was expecting the visit. In his presence Ransie Bilbro handed to his wife a five-dollar bill. The official’s eye sharply viewed it. It seemed to curl up as though it had been rolled and inserted into the end of a gun-barrel. But the Justice refrained from comment. It is true that other bills might be inclined to curl. He handed each one a decree of divorce. Each stood awkwardly silent, slowly folding the guarantee of freedom. The woman cast a shy glance full of constraint at Ransie.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I reckon you’ll be goin’ back up to the cabin,” she said, along ‘ith the bull-cart. There’s bread in the tin box settin’ on the shelf. I put the bacon in the b’ilin’-pot to keep the hounds from gittin’ it. Don’t forget to wind the clock to-night.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I reckon you’ll be goin’ back up to the cabin,” she said, along ‘ith the bull-cart. There’s bread in the tin box settin’ on the shelf. I put the bacon in the b’ilin’-pot to keep the hounds from gittin’ it. Don’t forget to wind the clock tonight.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You air a-goin’ to your brother Ed’s?” asked Ransie, with fine unconcern.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I was ’lowin’ to get along up thar afore night. I ain’t sayin’ as they’ll pester theyselves any to make me welcome, but I hain’t nowhar else fur to go. It’s a right smart ways, and I reckon I better be goin’. I’ll be a-sayin’ good-bye, Ranse—that is, if you keer fur to say so.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I don’t know as anybody’s a hound dog,” said Ransie, in a martyr’s voice, “fur to not want to say good-bye—‘less you air so anxious to git away that you don’t want me to say it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I was ’lowin’ to get along up thar afore night. I ain’t sayin’ as they’ll pester theyselves any to make me welcome, but I hain’t nowhar else fur to go. It’s a right smart ways, and I reckon I better be goin’. I’ll be a-sayin’ goodbye, Ranse—that is, if you keer fur to say so.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I don’t know as anybody’s a hound dog,” said Ransie, in a martyr’s voice, “fur to not want to say goodbye—‘less you air so anxious to git away that you don’t want me to say it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Ariela was silent. She folded the five-dollar bill and her decree carefully, and placed them in the bosom of her dress. Benaja Widdup watched the money disappear with mournful eyes behind his spectacles.</p>
|
||||
<p>And then with his next words he achieved rank (as his thoughts ran) with either the great crowd of the world’s sympathizers or the little crowd of its great financiers.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Be kind o’ lonesome in the old cabin to-night, Ranse,” he said.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Be kind o’ lonesome in the old cabin tonight, Ranse,” he said.</p>
|
||||
<p>Ransie Bilbro stared out at the Cumberlands, clear blue now in the sunlight. He did not look at Ariela.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I ’low it might be lonesome,” he said; “but when folks gits mad and wants a divo’ce, you can’t make folks stay.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“There’s others wanted a divo’ce,” said Ariela, speaking to the wooden stool. “Besides, nobody don’t want nobody to stay.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -16,19 +16,19 @@
|
||||
<p>On the evening that the material allegation of facts begins, Hedges was bidding dull care begone in the company of five or six good fellows—acquaintances and friends who had gathered in his wake.</p>
|
||||
<p>Among them were two younger men—Ralph Merriam, a broker, and Wade, his friend.</p>
|
||||
<p>Two deep-sea cabmen were chartered. At Columbus Circle they hove to long enough to revile the statue of the great navigator, unpatriotically rebuking him for having voyaged in search of land instead of liquids. Midnight overtook the party marooned in the rear of a cheap café far uptown.</p>
|
||||
<p>Hedges was arrogant, overriding and quarrelsome. He was burly and tough, iron-gray but vigorous, “good” for the rest of the night. There was a dispute—about nothing that matters—and the five-fingered words were passed—the words that represent the glove cast into the lists. Merriam played the rôle of the verbal Hotspur.</p>
|
||||
<p>Hedges was arrogant, overriding and quarrelsome. He was burly and tough, iron-gray but vigorous, “good” for the rest of the night. There was a dispute—about nothing that matters—and the five-fingered words were passed—the words that represent the glove cast into the lists. Merriam played the role of the verbal Hotspur.</p>
|
||||
<p>Hedges rose quickly, seized his chair, swung it once and smashed wildly down at Merriam’s head. Merriam dodged, drew a small revolver and shot Hedges in the chest. The leading roysterer stumbled, fell in a wry heap, and lay still.</p>
|
||||
<p>Wade, a commuter, had formed that habit of promptness. He juggled Merriam out a side door, walked him to the corner, ran him a block and caught a hansom. They rode five minutes and then got out on a dark corner and dismissed the cab. Across the street the lights of a small saloon betrayed its hectic hospitality.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Go in the back room of that saloon,” said Wade, “and wait. I’ll go find out what’s doing and let you know. You may take two drinks while I am gone—no more.”</p>
|
||||
<p>At ten minutes to one o’clock Wade returned. “Brace up, old chap,” he said. “The ambulance got there just as I did. The doctor says he’s dead. You may have one more drink. You let me run this thing for you. You’ve got to skip. I don’t believe a chair is legally a deadly weapon. You’ve got to make tracks, that’s all there is to it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Merriam complained of the cold querulously, and asked for another drink. “Did you notice what big veins he had on the back of his hands?” he said. “I never could stand—I never could—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Take one more,” said Wade, “and then come on. I’ll see you through.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Wade kept his promise so well that at eleven o’clock the next morning Merriam, with a new suit case full of new clothes and hair-brushes, stepped quietly on board a little 500-ton fruit steamer at an East River pier. The vessel had brought the season’s first cargo of limes from Port Limon, and was homeward bound. Merriam had his bank balance of $2,800 in his pocket in large bills, and brief instructions to pile up as much water as he could between himself and New York. There was no time for anything more.</p>
|
||||
<p>Wade kept his promise so well that at eleven o’clock the next morning Merriam, with a new suit case full of new clothes and hairbrushes, stepped quietly on board a little 500-ton fruit steamer at an East River pier. The vessel had brought the season’s first cargo of limes from Port Limon, and was homeward bound. Merriam had his bank balance of $2,800 in his pocket in large bills, and brief instructions to pile up as much water as he could between himself and New York. There was no time for anything more.</p>
|
||||
<p>From Port Limon Merriam worked down the coast by schooner and sloop to Colon, thence across the isthmus to Panama, where he caught a tramp bound for Callao and such intermediate ports as might tempt the discursive skipper from his course.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was at La Paz that Merriam decided to land—La Paz the Beautiful, a little harbourless town smothered in a living green ribbon that banded the foot of a cloud-piercing mountain. Here the little steamer stopped to tread water while the captain’s dory took him ashore that he might feel the pulse of the cocoanut market. Merriam went too, with his suit case, and remained.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was at La Paz that Merriam decided to land—La Paz the Beautiful, a little harbourless town smothered in a living green ribbon that banded the foot of a cloud-piercing mountain. Here the little steamer stopped to tread water while the captain’s dory took him ashore that he might feel the pulse of the coconut market. Merriam went too, with his suit case, and remained.</p>
|
||||
<p>Kalb, the vice-consul, a Græco-Armenian citizen of the United States, born in Hessen-Darmstadt, and educated in Cincinnati ward primaries, considered all Americans his brothers and bankers. He attached himself to Merriam’s elbow, introduced him to every one in La Paz who wore shoes, borrowed ten dollars and went back to his hammock.</p>
|
||||
<p>There was a little wooden hotel in the edge of a banana grove, facing the sea, that catered to the tastes of the few foreigners that had dropped out of the world into the triste Peruvian town. At Kalb’s introductory: “Shake hands with––––,” he had obediently exchanged manual salutations with a German doctor, one French and two Italian merchants, and three or four Americans who were spoken of as gold men, rubber men, mahogany men—anything but men of living tissue.</p>
|
||||
<p>After dinner Merriam sat in a corner of the broad front <i xml:lang="es">galeria</i> with Bibb, a Vermonter interested in hydraulic mining, and smoked and drank Scotch “smoke.” The moonlit sea, spreading infinitely before him, seemed to separate him beyond all apprehension from his old life. The horrid tragedy in which he had played such a disastrous part now began, for the first time since he stole on board the fruiter, a wretched fugitive, to lose its sharper outlines. Distance lent assuagement to his view. Bibb had opened the flood-gates of a stream of long-dammed discourse, overjoyed to have captured an audience that had not suffered under a hundred repetitions of his views and theories.</p>
|
||||
<p>After dinner Merriam sat in a corner of the broad front <i xml:lang="es">galeria</i> with Bibb, a Vermonter interested in hydraulic mining, and smoked and drank Scotch “smoke.” The moonlit sea, spreading infinitely before him, seemed to separate him beyond all apprehension from his old life. The horrid tragedy in which he had played such a disastrous part now began, for the first time since he stole on board the fruiter, a wretched fugitive, to lose its sharper outlines. Distance lent assuagement to his view. Bibb had opened the floodgates of a stream of long-dammed discourse, overjoyed to have captured an audience that had not suffered under a hundred repetitions of his views and theories.</p>
|
||||
<p>“One year more,” said Bibb, “and I’ll go back to God’s country. Oh, I know it’s pretty here, and you get dolce far niente handed to you in chunks, but this country wasn’t made for a white man to live in. You’ve got to have to plug through snow now and then, and see a game of baseball and wear a stiff collar and have a policeman cuss you. Still, La Paz is a good sort of a pipe-dreamy old hole. And <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant is here. When any of us feels particularly like jumping into the sea we rush around to her house and propose. It’s nicer to be rejected by <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant than it is to be drowned. And they say drowning is a delightful sensation.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Many like her here?” asked Merriam.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Not anywhere,” said Bibb, with a comfortable sigh. She’s the only white woman in La Paz. The rest range from a dappled dun to the colour of a b-flat piano key. She’s been here a year. Comes from—well, you know how a woman can talk—ask ’em to say ‘string’ and they’ll say ‘crow’s foot’ or ‘cat’s cradle.’ Sometimes you’d think she was from Oshkosh, and again from Jacksonville, Florida, and the next day from Cape Cod.”</p>
|
||||
@ -43,7 +43,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“I suppose so,” she said, in low and oddly uneven tones; “but that depends upon you. I’ll be as honest as you were. I poisoned my husband. I am a self-made widow. A man cannot love a murderess. So I suppose that ends our acquaintance.”</p>
|
||||
<p>She looked up at him slowly. His face turned a little pale, and he stared at her blankly, like a deaf-and-dumb man who was wondering what it was all about.</p>
|
||||
<p>She took a swift step toward him, with stiffened arms and eyes blazing.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Don’t look at me like that!” she cried, as though she were in acute pain. “Curse me, or turn your back on me, but don’t look that way. Am I a woman to be beaten? If I could show you—here on my arms, and on my back are scars—and it has been more than a year—scars that he made in his brutal rages. A holy nun would have risen and struck the fiend down. Yes, I killed him. The foul and horrible words that he hurled at me that last day are repeated in my ears every night when I sleep. And then came his blows, and the end of my endurance. I got the poison that afternoon. It was his custom to drink every night in the library before going to bed a hot punch made of rum and wine. Only from my fair hands would he receive it—because he knew the fumes of spirits always sickened me. That night when the maid brought it to me I sent her downstairs on an errand. Before taking him his drink I went to my little private cabinet and poured into it more than a tea-spoonful of tincture of aconite—enough to kill three men, so I had learned. I had drawn $6,000 that I had in bank, and with that and a few things in a satchel I left the house without any one seeing me. As I passed the library I heard him stagger up and fall heavily on a couch. I took a night train for New Orleans, and from there I sailed to the Bermudas. I finally cast anchor in La Paz. And now what have you to say? Can you open your mouth?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Don’t look at me like that!” she cried, as though she were in acute pain. “Curse me, or turn your back on me, but don’t look that way. Am I a woman to be beaten? If I could show you—here on my arms, and on my back are scars—and it has been more than a year—scars that he made in his brutal rages. A holy nun would have risen and struck the fiend down. Yes, I killed him. The foul and horrible words that he hurled at me that last day are repeated in my ears every night when I sleep. And then came his blows, and the end of my endurance. I got the poison that afternoon. It was his custom to drink every night in the library before going to bed a hot punch made of rum and wine. Only from my fair hands would he receive it—because he knew the fumes of spirits always sickened me. That night when the maid brought it to me I sent her downstairs on an errand. Before taking him his drink I went to my little private cabinet and poured into it more than a teaspoonful of tincture of aconite—enough to kill three men, so I had learned. I had drawn $6,000 that I had in bank, and with that and a few things in a satchel I left the house without any one seeing me. As I passed the library I heard him stagger up and fall heavily on a couch. I took a night train for New Orleans, and from there I sailed to the Bermudas. I finally cast anchor in La Paz. And now what have you to say? Can you open your mouth?”</p>
|
||||
<p>Merriam came back to life.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Florence,” he said earnestly, “I want you. I don’t care what you’ve done. If the world—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ralph,” she interrupted, almost with a scream, “be my world!”</p>
|
||||
@ -51,7 +51,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Dear me! in such scenes how the talk runs into artificial prose. But it can’t be helped. It’s the subconscious smell of the footlights’ smoke that’s in all of us. Stir the depths of your cook’s soul sufficiently and she will discourse in Bulwer-Lyttonese.</p>
|
||||
<p>Merriam and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant were very happy. He announced their engagement at the Hotel Orilla del <abbr>Mar.</abbr> Eight foreigners and four native Astors pounded his back and shouted insincere congratulations at him. Pedrito, the Castilian-mannered barkeep, was goaded to extra duty until his agility would have turned a Boston cherry-phosphate clerk a pale lilac with envy.</p>
|
||||
<p>They were both very happy. According to the strange mathematics of the god of mutual affinity, the shadows that clouded their pasts when united became only half as dense instead of darker. They shut the world out and bolted the doors. Each was the other’s world. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant lived again. The remembering look left her eyes. Merriam was with her every moment that was possible. On a little plateau under a grove of palms and calabash trees they were going to build a fairy bungalow. They were to be married in two months. Many hours of the day they had their heads together over the house plans. Their joint capital would set up a business in fruit or woods that would yield a comfortable support. “Good night, my world,” would say <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant every evening when Merriam left her for his hotel. They were very happy. Their love had, circumstantially, that element of melancholy in it that it seems to require to attain its supremest elevation. And it seemed that their mutual great misfortune or sin was a bond that nothing could sever.</p>
|
||||
<p>One day a steamer hove in the offing. Bare-legged and bare-shouldered La Paz scampered down to the beach, for the arrival of a steamer was their loop-the-loop, circus, Emancipation Day and four-o’clock tea.</p>
|
||||
<p>One day a steamer hove in the offing. Barelegged and bare-shouldered La Paz scampered down to the beach, for the arrival of a steamer was their loop-the-loop, circus, Emancipation Day and four-o’clock tea.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the steamer was near enough, wise ones proclaimed that she was the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i>, bound up-coast from Callao to Panama.</p>
|
||||
<p>The <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> put on brakes a mile off shore. Soon a boat came bobbing shoreward. Merriam strolled down on the beach to look on. In the shallow water the Carib sailors sprang out and dragged the boat with a mighty rush to the firm shingle. Out climbed the purser, the captain and two passengers, ploughing their way through the deep sand toward the hotel. Merriam glanced toward them with the mild interest due to strangers. There was something familiar to him in the walk of one of the passengers. He looked again, and his blood seemed to turn to strawberry ice cream in his veins. Burly, arrogant, debonair as ever, H. Ferguson Hedges, the man he had killed, was coming toward him ten feet away.</p>
|
||||
<p>When Hedges saw Merriam his face flushed a dark red. Then he shouted in his old, bluff way: “Hello, Merriam. Glad to see you. Didn’t expect to find you out here. Quinby, this is my old friend Merriam, of New York—Merriam, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Quinby.”</p>
|
||||
@ -72,7 +72,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“<i xml:lang="es">Bien venido</i>,” said Tio Pancho. “This to Señora Conant; that to el Doctor S-S-Schlegel—<i xml:lang="es">Dios</i>! what a name to say!—that to Señor Davis—one for Don Alberto. These two for the <i xml:lang="es">Casa de Huespedes</i>, <i xml:lang="es">Numero 6</i>, <i xml:lang="es">en la calle de las Buenas Gracias</i>. And say to them all, muchacho, that the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> sails for Panama at three this afternoon. If any have letters to send by the post, let them come quickly, that they may first pass through the <i xml:lang="es">correo</i>.”</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant received her roll of newspapers at four o’clock. The boy was late in delivering them, because he had been deflected from his duty by an iguana that crossed his path and to which he immediately gave chase. But it made no hardship, for she had no letters to send.</p>
|
||||
<p>She was idling in a hammock in the patio of the house that she occupied, half awake, half happily dreaming of the paradise that she and Merriam had created out of the wrecks of their pasts. She was content now for the horizon of that shimmering sea to be the horizon of her life. They had shut out the world and closed the door.</p>
|
||||
<p>Merriam was coming to her house at seven, after his dinner at the hotel. She would put on a white dress and an apricot-coloured lace mantilla, and they would walk an hour under the cocoanut palms by the lagoon. She smiled contentedly, and chose a paper at random from the roll the boy had brought.</p>
|
||||
<p>Merriam was coming to her house at seven, after his dinner at the hotel. She would put on a white dress and an apricot-coloured lace mantilla, and they would walk an hour under the coconut palms by the lagoon. She smiled contentedly, and chose a paper at random from the roll the boy had brought.</p>
|
||||
<p>At first the words of a certain headline of a Sunday newspaper meant nothing to her; they conveyed only a visualized sense of familiarity. The largest type ran thus: “Lloyd B. Conant secures divorce.” And then the subheadings: “Well-known Saint Louis paint manufacturer wins suit, pleading one year’s absence of wife.” “Her mysterious disappearance recalled.” “Nothing has been heard of her since.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Twisting herself quickly out of the hammock, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant’s eye soon traversed the half-column of the “Recall.” It ended thus: “It will be remembered that <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant disappeared one evening in March of last year. It was freely rumoured that her marriage with Lloyd B. Conant resulted in much unhappiness. Stories were not wanting to the effect that his cruelty toward his wife had more than once taken the form of physical abuse. After her departure a full bottle of tincture of aconite, a deadly poison, was found in a small medicine cabinet in her bedroom. This might have been an indication that she meditated suicide. It is supposed that she abandoned such an intention if she possessed it, and left her home instead.”</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant slowly dropped the paper, and sat on a chair, clasping her hands tightly.</p>
|
||||
@ -82,10 +82,10 @@
|
||||
<p>She saw herself go into a department store and buy five spools of silk thread and three yards of gingham to make an apron for the cook. “Shall I charge it, ma’am?” asked the clerk. As she walked out a lady whom she met greeted her cordially. “Oh, where did you get the pattern for those sleeves, dear <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant?” she said. At the corner a policeman helped her across the street and touched his helmet. “Any callers?” she asked the maid when she reached home. “<abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Waldron,” answered the maid, “and the two Misses Jenkinson.” “Very well,” she said. “You may bring me a cup of tea, Maggie.”</p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant went to the door and called Angela, the old Peruvian woman. “If Mateo is there send him to me.” Mateo, a half-breed, shuffling and old but efficient, came.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Is there a steamer or a vessel of any kind leaving this coast to-night or to-morrow that I can get passage on?” she asked.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Is there a steamer or a vessel of any kind leaving this coast tonight or tomorrow that I can get passage on?” she asked.</p>
|
||||
<p>Mateo considered.</p>
|
||||
<p>“At Punta Reina, thirty miles down the coast, señora,” he answered, “there is a small steamer loading with cinchona and dyewoods. She sails for San Francisco to-morrow at sunrise. So says my brother, who arrived in his sloop to-day, passing by Punta Reina.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You must take me in that sloop to that steamer to-night. Will you do that?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“At Punta Reina, thirty miles down the coast, señora,” he answered, “there is a small steamer loading with cinchona and dyewoods. She sails for San Francisco tomorrow at sunrise. So says my brother, who arrived in his sloop today, passing by Punta Reina.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You must take me in that sloop to that steamer tonight. Will you do that?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Perhaps—” Mateo shrugged a suggestive shoulder. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant took a handful of money from a drawer and gave it to him.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Get the sloop ready behind the little point of land below the town,” she ordered. “Get sailors, and be ready to sail at six o’clock. In half an hour bring a cart partly filled with straw into the patio here, and take my trunk to the sloop. There is more money yet. Now, hurry.”</p>
|
||||
<p>For one time Mateo walked away without shuffling his feet.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -41,7 +41,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Have you ever fallen into the hands of the police?” asked Tommy.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I said ‘burglar,’ not ‘beggar,’ ” answered the cracksman.</p>
|
||||
<p>“After you finish your lunch,” said Tommy, “and experience the usual change of heart, how shall we wind up the story?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Suppose,” said the burglar, thoughtfully, “that Tony Pastor turns out earlier than usual to-night, and your father gets in from ‘Parsifal’ at 10.30. I am thoroughly repentant because you have made me think of my own little boy Bessie, and—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Suppose,” said the burglar, thoughtfully, “that Tony Pastor turns out earlier than usual tonight, and your father gets in from ‘Parsifal’ at 10.30. I am thoroughly repentant because you have made me think of my own little boy Bessie, and—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Say,” said Tommy, “haven’t you got that wrong?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Not on your coloured crayon drawings by B. Cory Kilvert,” said the burglar. “It’s always a Bessie that I have at home, artlessly prattling to the pale-cheeked burglar’s bride. As I was saying, your father opens the front door just as I am departing with admonitions and sandwiches that you have wrapped up for me. Upon recognizing me as an old Harvard classmate he starts back in—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Not in surprise?” interrupted Tommy, with wide, open eyes.</p>
|
||||
@ -57,7 +57,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“So’ve you,” said the burglar, rather glumly. “Instead of sitting here talking impudence and taking the bread out of a poor man’s mouth, what you’d like to be doing is hiding under the bed and screeching at the top of your voice.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You’re right, old man,” said Tommy, heartily. “I wonder what they make us do it for? I think the S. P. C. C. ought to interfere. I’m sure it’s neither agreeable nor usual for a kid of my age to butt in when a full-grown burglar is at work and offer him a red sled and a pair of skates not to awaken his sick mother. And look how they make the burglars act! You’d think editors would know—but what’s the use?”</p>
|
||||
<p>The burglar wiped his hands on the tablecloth and arose with a yawn.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, let’s get through with it,” he said. “God bless you, my little boy! you have saved a man from committing a crime this night. Bessie shall pray for you as soon as I get home and give her her orders. I shall never burglarize another house—at least not until the June magazines are out. It’ll be your little sister’s turn then to run in on me while I am abstracting the U. S. 4 per cent. from the tea urn and buy me off with her coral necklace and a falsetto kiss.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, let’s get through with it,” he said. “God bless you, my little boy! you have saved a man from committing a crime this night. Bessie shall pray for you as soon as I get home and give her her orders. I shall never burglarize another house—at least not until the June magazines are out. It’ll be your little sister’s turn then to run in on me while I am abstracting the U. S. 4 percent from the tea urn and buy me off with her coral necklace and a falsetto kiss.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You haven’t got all the kicks coming to you,” sighed Tommy, crawling out of his chair. “Think of the sleep I’m losing. But it’s tough on both of us, old man. I wish you could get out of the story and really rob somebody. Maybe you’ll have the chance if they dramatize us.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Never!” said the burglar, gloomily. “Between the box office and my better impulses that your leading juveniles are supposed to awaken and the magazines that pay on publication, I guess I’ll always be broke.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’m sorry,” said Tommy, sympathetically. “But I can’t help myself any more than you can. It’s one of the canons of household fiction that no burglar shall be successful. The burglar must be foiled by a kid like me, or by a young lady heroine, or at the last moment by his old pal, Red Mike, who recognizes the house as one in which he used to be the coachman. You have got the worst end of it in any kind of a story.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
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