1 files changed, 9237 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/1595-0.txt b/1595-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4778e9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1595-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9237 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Whirligigs, by O. Henry
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Whirligigs
+
+Author: O. Henry
+
+Release Date: January, 1999 [eBook #1595]
+[Most recently updated: June 28, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteers and Joseph E.
+Loewenstein, M.D.
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHIRLIGIGS ***
+
+
+
+
+Whirligigs
+
+by O. Henry
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I THE WORLD AND THE DOOR
+ CHAPTER II THE THEORY AND THE HOUND
+ CHAPTER III THE HYPOTHESES OF FAILURE
+ CHAPTER IV CALLOWAY’S CODE
+ CHAPTER V A MATTER OF MEAN ELEVATION
+ CHAPTER VI “GIRL”
+ CHAPTER VII SOCIOLOGY IN SERGE AND STRAW
+ CHAPTER VIII THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF
+ CHAPTER IX THE MARRY MONTH OF MAY
+ CHAPTER X A TECHNICAL ERROR
+ CHAPTER XI SUITE HOMES AND THEIR ROMANCE
+ CHAPTER XII THE WHIRLIGIG OF LIFE
+ CHAPTER XIII A SACRIFICE HIT
+ CHAPTER XIV THE ROADS WE TAKE
+ CHAPTER XV A BLACKJACK BARGAINER
+ CHAPTER XVI THE SONG AND THE SERGEANT
+ CHAPTER XVII ONE DOLLAR’S WORTH
+ CHAPTER XVIII A NEWSPAPER STORY
+ CHAPTER XIX TOMMY’S BURGLAR
+ CHAPTER XX A CHAPARRAL CHRISTMAS GIFT
+ CHAPTER XXI A LITTLE LOCAL COLOUR
+ CHAPTER XXII GEORGIA’S RULING
+ CHAPTER XXIII BLIND MAN’S HOLIDAY
+ CHAPTER XXIV MADAME BO-PEEP, OF THE RANCHES
+
+
+
+
+I
+THE WORLD AND THE DOOR
+
+
+A favourite dodge to get your story read by the public is to assert
+that it is true, and then add that Truth is stranger than Fiction. I do
+not know if the yarn I am anxious for you to read is true; but the
+Spanish purser of the fruit steamer _El Carrero_ swore to me by the
+shrine of Santa Guadalupe that he had the facts from the U. S.
+vice-consul at La Paz—a person who could not possibly have been
+cognizant of half of them.
+
+As for the adage quoted above, I take pleasure in puncturing it by
+affirming that I read in a purely fictional story the other day the
+line: “‘Be it so,’ said the policeman.” Nothing so strange has yet
+cropped out in Truth.
+
+When H. Ferguson Hedges, millionaire promoter, investor and
+man-about-New-York, turned his thoughts upon matters convivial, and
+word of it went “down the line,” bouncers took a precautionary turn at
+the Indian clubs, waiters put ironstone china on his favourite tables,
+cab drivers crowded close to the curbstone in front of all-night cafés,
+and careful cashiers in his regular haunts charged up a few bottles to
+his account by way of preface and introduction.
+
+As a money power a one-millionaire is of small account in a city where
+the man who cuts your slice of beef behind the free-lunch counter rides
+to work in his own automobile. But Hedges spent his money as lavishly,
+loudly and showily as though he were only a clerk squandering a week’s
+wages. And, after all, the bartender takes no interest in your reserve
+fund. He would rather look you up on his cash register than in
+Bradstreet.
+
+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.
+
+Among them were two younger men—Ralph Merriam, a broker, and Wade, his
+friend.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“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.”
+
+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.”
+
+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—”
+
+“Take one more,” said Wade, “and then come on. I’ll see you through.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+After dinner Merriam sat in a corner of the broad front _galeria_ 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.
+
+“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 Mrs. 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 Mrs.
+Conant than it is to be drowned. And they say drowning is a delightful
+sensation.”
+
+“Many like her here?” asked Merriam.
+
+“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.”
+
+“Mystery?” ventured Merriam.
+
+“M—well, she looks it; but her talk’s translucent enough. But that’s a
+woman. I suppose if the Sphinx were to begin talking she’d merely say:
+‘Goodness me! more visitors coming for dinner, and nothing to eat but
+the sand which is here.’ But you won’t think about that when you meet
+her, Merriam. You’ll propose to her too.”
+
+To make a hard story soft, Merriam did meet her and propose to her. He
+found her to be a woman in black with hair the colour of a bronze
+turkey’s wings, and mysterious, _remembering_ eyes that—well, that
+looked as if she might have been a trained nurse looking on when Eve
+was created. Her words and manner, though, were translucent, as Bibb
+had said. She spoke, vaguely, of friends in California and some of the
+lower parishes in Louisiana. The tropical climate and indolent life
+suited her; she had thought of buying an orange grove later on; La Paz,
+all in all, charmed her.
+
+Merriam’s courtship of the Sphinx lasted three months, although he did
+not know that he was courting her. He was using her as an antidote for
+remorse, until he found, too late, that he had acquired the habit.
+During that time he had received no news from home. Wade did not know
+where he was; and he was not sure of Wade’s exact address, and was
+afraid to write. He thought he had better let matters rest as they were
+for a while.
+
+One afternoon he and Mrs. Conant hired two ponies and rode out along
+the mountain trail as far as the little cold river that came tumbling
+down the foothills. There they stopped for a drink, and Merriam spoke
+his piece—he proposed, as Bibb had prophesied.
+
+Mrs. Conant gave him one glance of brilliant tenderness, and then her
+face took on such a strange, haggard look that Merriam was shaken out
+of his intoxication and back to his senses.
+
+“I beg your pardon, Florence,” he said, releasing her hand; “but I’ll
+have to hedge on part of what I said. I can’t ask you to marry me, of
+course. I killed a man in New York—a man who was my friend—shot him
+down—in quite a cowardly manner, I understand. Of course, the drinking
+didn’t excuse it. Well, I couldn’t resist having my say; and I’ll
+always mean it. I’m here as a fugitive from justice, and—I suppose that
+ends our acquaintance.”
+
+Mrs. Conant plucked little leaves assiduously from the low-hanging
+branch of a lime tree.
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+She took a swift step toward him, with stiffened arms and eyes blazing.
+
+“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?”
+
+Merriam came back to life.
+
+“Florence,” he said earnestly, “I want you. I don’t care what you’ve
+done. If the world—”
+
+“Ralph,” she interrupted, almost with a scream, “be my world!”
+
+Her eyes melted; she relaxed magnificently and swayed toward Merriam so
+suddenly that he had to jump to catch her.
+
+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.
+
+Merriam and Mrs. Conant were very happy. He announced their engagement
+at the Hotel Orilla del Mar. 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.
+
+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. Mrs. 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 Mrs. 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.
+
+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.
+
+When the steamer was near enough, wise ones proclaimed that she was the
+_Pajaro_, bound up-coast from Callao to Panama.
+
+The _Pajaro_ 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.
+
+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, Mr. Quinby.”
+
+Merriam gave Hedges and then Quinby an ice-cold hand. “Br-r-r-r!” said
+Hedges. “But you’ve got a frappéd flipper! Man, you’re not well. You’re
+as yellow as a Chinaman. Malarial here? Steer us to a bar if there is
+such a thing, and let’s take a prophylactic.”
+
+Merriam, still half comatose, led them toward the Hotel Orilla del Mar.
+
+“Quinby and I,” explained Hedges, puffing through the slippery sand,
+“are looking out along the coast for some investments. We’ve just come
+up from Concepción and Valparaiso and Lima. The captain of this
+subsidized ferry boat told us there was some good picking around here
+in silver mines. So we got off. Now, where is that café, Merriam? Oh,
+in this portable soda water pavilion?”
+
+Leaving Quinby at the bar, Hedges drew Merriam aside.
+
+“Now, what does this mean?” he said, with gruff kindness. “Are you
+sulking about that fool row we had?”
+
+“I thought,” stammered Merriam—“I heard—they told me you were—that I
+had—”
+
+“Well, you didn’t, and I’m not,” said Hedges. “That fool young
+ambulance surgeon told Wade I was a candidate for a coffin just because
+I’d got tired and quit breathing. I laid up in a private hospital for a
+month; but here I am, kicking as hard as ever. Wade and I tried to find
+you, but couldn’t. Now, Merriam, shake hands and forget it all. I was
+as much to blame as you were; and the shot really did me good—I came
+out of the hospital as healthy and fit as a cab horse. Come on; that
+drink’s waiting.”
+
+“Old man,” said Merriam, brokenly, “I don’t know how to thank
+you—I—well, you know—”
+
+“Oh, forget it,” boomed Hedges. “Quinby’ll die of thirst if we don’t
+join him.”
+
+Bibb was sitting on the shady side of the gallery waiting for the
+eleven-o’clock breakfast. Presently Merriam came out and joined him.
+His eye was strangely bright.
+
+“Bibb, my boy,” said he, slowly waving his hand, “do you see those
+mountains and that sea and sky and sunshine?—they’re mine, Bibbsy—all
+mine.”
+
+“You go in,” said Bibb, “and take eight grains of quinine, right away.
+It won’t do in this climate for a man to get to thinking he’s
+Rockefeller, or James O’Neill either.”
+
+Inside, the purser was untying a great roll of newspapers, many of them
+weeks old, gathered in the lower ports by the _Pajaro_ to be
+distributed at casual stopping-places. Thus do the beneficent voyagers
+scatter news and entertainment among the prisoners of sea and
+mountains.
+
+Tio Pancho, the hotel proprietor, set his great silver-rimmed
+_anteojos_ upon his nose and divided the papers into a number of
+smaller rolls. A barefooted _muchacho_ dashed in, desiring the post of
+messenger.
+
+“_Bien venido_,” said Tio Pancho. “This to Señora Conant; that to el
+Doctor S-S-Schlegel—_Dios_! what a name to say!—that to Señor Davis—one
+for Don Alberto. These two for the _Casa de Huespedes_, _Numero 6_, _en
+la calle de las Buenas Gracias_. And say to them all, _muchacho_, that
+the _Pajaro_ 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 _correo_.”
+
+Mrs. 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.”
+
+Twisting herself quickly out of the hammock, Mrs. Conant’s eye soon
+traversed the half-column of the “Recall.” It ended thus: “It will be
+remembered that Mrs. 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.”
+
+Mrs. Conant slowly dropped the paper, and sat on a chair, clasping her
+hands tightly.
+
+“Let me think—O God!—let me think,” she whispered. “I took the bottle
+with me . . . I threw it out of the window of the train . . . I— . . .
+there was another bottle in the cabinet . . . there were two, side by
+side—the aconite—and the valerian that I took when I could not sleep .
+. . If they found the aconite bottle full, why—but, he is alive, of
+course—I gave him only a harmless dose of valerian . . . I am not a
+murderess in fact . . . Ralph, I—O God, don’t let this be a dream!”
+
+She went into the part of the house that she rented from the old
+Peruvian man and his wife, shut the door, and walked up and down her
+room swiftly and feverishly for half an hour. Merriam’s photograph
+stood in a frame on a table. She picked it up, looked at it with a
+smile of exquisite tenderness, and—dropped four tears on it. And
+Merriam only twenty rods away! Then she stood still for ten minutes,
+looking into space. She looked into space through a slowly opening
+door. On her side of the door was the building material for a castle of
+Romance—love, an Arcady of waving palms, a lullaby of waves on the
+shore of a haven of rest, respite, peace, a lotus land of dreamy ease
+and security—a life of poetry and heart’s ease and refuge. Romanticist,
+will you tell me what Mrs. Conant saw on the other side of the door?
+You cannot?—that is, you will not? Very well; then listen.
+
+_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 Mrs. 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. “Mrs. Waldron,” answered the maid, “and
+the two Misses Jenkinson.” “Very well,” she said. “You may bring me a
+cup of tea, Maggie.”_
+
+Mrs. 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.
+
+“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.
+
+Mateo considered.
+
+“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.”
+
+“You must take me in that sloop to that steamer to-night. Will you do
+that?”
+
+“Perhaps—” Mateo shrugged a suggestive shoulder. Mrs. Conant took a
+handful of money from a drawer and gave it to him.
+
+“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.”
+
+For one time Mateo walked away without shuffling his feet.
+
+“Angela,” cried Mrs. Conant, almost fiercely, “come and help me pack. I
+am going away. Out with this trunk. My clothes first. Stir yourself.
+Those dark dresses first. Hurry.”
+
+From the first she did not waver from her decision. Her view was clear
+and final. Her door had opened and let the world in. Her love for
+Merriam was not lessened; but it now appeared a hopeless and
+unrealizable thing. The visions of their future that had seemed so
+blissful and complete had vanished. She tried to assure herself that
+her renunciation was rather for his sake than for her own. Now that she
+was cleared of her burden—at least, technically—would not his own weigh
+too heavily upon him? If she should cling to him, would not the
+difference forever silently mar and corrode their happiness? Thus she
+reasoned; but there were a thousand little voices calling to her that
+she could feel rather than hear, like the hum of distant, powerful
+machinery—the little voices of the world, that, when raised in unison,
+can send their insistent call through the thickest door.
+
+Once while packing, a brief shadow of the lotus dream came back to her.
+She held Merriam’s picture to her heart with one hand, while she threw
+a pair of shoes into the trunk with her other.
+
+At six o’clock Mateo returned and reported the sloop ready. He and his
+brother lifted the trunk into the cart, covered it with straw and
+conveyed it to the point of embarkation. From there they transferred it
+on board in the sloop’s dory. Then Mateo returned for additional
+orders.
+
+Mrs. Conant was ready. She had settled all business matters with
+Angela, and was impatiently waiting. She wore a long, loose black-silk
+duster that she often walked about in when the evenings were chilly. On
+her head was a small round hat, and over it the apricot-coloured lace
+mantilla.
+
+Dusk had quickly followed the short twilight. Mateo led her by dark and
+grass-grown streets toward the point behind which the sloop was
+anchored. On turning a corner they beheld the Hotel Orilla del Mar
+three streets away, nebulously aglow with its array of kerosene lamps.
+
+Mrs. Conant paused, with streaming eyes. “I must, I _must_ see him once
+before I go,” she murmured in anguish. But even then she did not falter
+in her decision. Quickly she invented a plan by which she might speak
+to him, and yet make her departure without his knowing. She would walk
+past the hotel, ask some one to call him out and talk a few moments on
+some trivial excuse, leaving him expecting to see her at her home at
+seven.
+
+She unpinned her hat and gave it to Mateo. “Keep this, and wait here
+till I come,” she ordered. Then she draped the mantilla over her head
+as she usually did when walking after sunset, and went straight to the
+Orilla del Mar.
+
+She was glad to see the bulky, white-clad figure of Tio Pancho standing
+alone on the gallery.
+
+“Tio Pancho,” she said, with a charming smile, “may I trouble you to
+ask Mr. Merriam to come out for just a few moments that I may speak
+with him?”
+
+Tio Pancho bowed as an elephant bows.
+
+“Buenas tardes, Señora Conant,” he said, as a cavalier talks. And then
+he went on, less at his ease:
+
+“But does not the señora know that Señor Merriam sailed on the _Pajaro_
+for Panama at three o’clock of this afternoon?”
+
+
+
+
+II
+THE THEORY AND THE HOUND
+
+
+Not many days ago my old friend from the tropics, J. P. Bridger, United
+States consul on the island of Ratona, was in the city. We had wassail
+and jubilee and saw the Flatiron building, and missed seeing the
+Bronxless menagerie by about a couple of nights. And then, at the ebb
+tide, we were walking up a street that parallels and parodies Broadway.
+
+A woman with a comely and mundane countenance passed us, holding in
+leash a wheezing, vicious, waddling, brute of a yellow pug. The dog
+entangled himself with Bridger’s legs and mumbled his ankles in a
+snarling, peevish, sulky bite. Bridger, with a happy smile, kicked the
+breath out of the brute; the woman showered us with a quick rain of
+well-conceived adjectives that left us in no doubt as to our place in
+her opinion, and we passed on. Ten yards farther an old woman with
+disordered white hair and her bankbook tucked well hidden beneath her
+tattered shawl begged. Bridger stopped and disinterred for her a
+quarter from his holiday waistcoat.
+
+On the next corner a quarter of a ton of well-clothed man with a
+rice-powdered, fat, white jowl, stood holding the chain of a devil-born
+bulldog whose forelegs were strangers by the length of a dachshund. A
+little woman in a last-season’s hat confronted him and wept, which was
+plainly all she could do, while he cursed her in low sweet, practised
+tones.
+
+Bridger smiled again—strictly to himself—and this time he took out a
+little memorandum book and made a note of it. This he had no right to
+do without due explanation, and I said so.
+
+“It’s a new theory,” said Bridger, “that I picked up down in Ratona.
+I’ve been gathering support for it as I knock about. The world isn’t
+ripe for it yet, but—well I’ll tell you; and then you run your mind
+back along the people you’ve known and see what you make of it.”
+
+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.
+
+One afternoon at three o’clock, on the island of Ratona, a boy raced
+along the beach screaming, “_Pajaro_, ahoy!”
+
+Thus he made known the keenness of his hearing and the justice of his
+discrimination in pitch.
+
+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.
+
+But to-day he who proclaimed the _Pajaro_ 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.
+
+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.”
+
+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.
+
+The _Pajaro_ 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.
+
+The inspectors’ dory was taken on board with them, and the _Pajaro_
+steamed away for the mainland for its load of fruit.
+
+The other boat returned to Ratona bearing a contribution from the
+_Pajaro’s_ store of ice, the usual roll of newspapers and one
+passenger—Taylor Plunkett, sheriff of Chatham County, Kentucky.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“You are Mr. 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?”
+
+“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.”
+
+“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?”
+
+The consul squinted an eye and looked through his rifle barrel.
+
+“There’s nobody on the island who calls himself ‘Williams,’” he
+remarked.
+
+“Didn’t suppose there was,” said Plunkett mildly. “He’ll do by any
+other name.”
+
+“Besides myself,” said Bridger, “there are only two Americans on
+Ratona—Bob Reeves and Henry Morgan.”
+
+“The man I want sells cocoanuts,” suggested Plunkett.
+
+“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.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“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?”
+
+The consul grinned broadly.
+
+“I’ll tell you what you do,” he said, laying down his rifle and
+slipping on his dingy black alpaca coat. “You come along, Mr. Plunkett,
+and I’ll take you up to see the boys. If you can tell which one of ’em
+your description fits better than it does the other you have the
+advantage of me.”
+
+Bridger conducted the sheriff out and along the hard beach close to
+which the tiny houses of the village were distributed. Immediately back
+of the town rose sudden, small, thickly wooded hills. Up one of these,
+by means of steps cut in the hard clay, the consul led Plunkett. On the
+very verge of an eminence was perched a two-room wooden cottage with a
+thatched roof. A Carib woman was washing clothes outside. The consul
+ushered the sheriff to the door of the room that overlooked the
+harbour.
+
+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.
+
+“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.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said the consul, his voice taking on unaccustomed
+formality, “this is Mr. Plunkett. Mr. Plunkett—Mr. Reeves and Mr.
+Morgan.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“Wade Williams,” he said quietly, “you are under arrest for murder.”
+
+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.
+
+“Can’t say that we understand you, Mr. Plunkett,” said Morgan,
+cheerfully. “Did you say ‘Williams’?”
+
+“What’s the joke, Bridgy?” asked Reeves, turning, to the consul with a
+smile.
+
+Before Bridger could answer Plunkett spoke again.
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+“My dear Mr. 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.”
+
+“Sit down, gentlemen, if you please,” added Reeves, pleasantly. “I am
+sure Mr. Plunkett will not object. Perhaps a little time may be of
+advantage to him in identifying—the gentleman he wishes to arrest.”
+
+“No objections, I’m sure,” said Plunkett, dropping into his chair
+heavily. “I’m hungry myself. I didn’t want to accept the hospitality of
+you folks without giving you notice; that’s all.”
+
+Reeves set bottles and glasses on the table.
+
+“There’s cognac,” he said, “and anisada, and Scotch ‘smoke,’ and rye.
+Take your choice.”
+
+Bridger chose rye, Reeves poured three fingers of Scotch for himself,
+Morgan took the same. The sheriff, against much protestation, filled
+his glass from the water bottle.
+
+“Here’s to the appetite,” said Reeves, raising his glass, “of Mr.
+Williams!” Morgan’s laugh and his drink encountering sent him into a
+choking splutter. All began to pay attention to the dinner, which was
+well cooked and palatable.
+
+“Williams!” called Plunkett, suddenly and sharply.
+
+All looked up wonderingly. Reeves found the sheriff’s mild eye resting
+upon him. He flushed a little.
+
+“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.
+
+“I suppose, Mr. 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?”
+
+“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.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“That’s not fair,” chimed in Reeves. “I got only $16 a thousand for my
+last shipment. Take me, Mr. Plunkett.”
+
+“I’ll take Wade Williams,” said the sheriff, patiently, “or I’ll come
+pretty close to it.”
+
+“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 Mr. Williams?”
+
+Plunkett seemed as unconcerned as if he were dining at his own table in
+Chatham County. He was a gallant trencherman, and the strange tropic
+viands tickled his palate. Heavy, commonplace, almost slothful in his
+movements, he appeared to be devoid of all the cunning and watchfulness
+of the sleuth. He even ceased to observe, with any sharpness or
+attempted discrimination, the two men, one of whom he had undertaken
+with surprising self-confidence, to drag away upon the serious charge
+of wife-murder. Here, indeed, was a problem set before him that if
+wrongly solved would have amounted to his serious discomfiture, yet
+there he sat puzzling his soul (to all appearances) over the novel
+flavour of a broiled iguana cutlet.
+
+The consul felt a decided discomfort. Reeves and Morgan were his
+friends and pals; yet the sheriff from Kentucky had a certain right to
+his official aid and moral support. So Bridger sat the silentest around
+the board and tried to estimate the peculiar situation. His conclusion
+was that both Reeves and Morgan, quickwitted, as he knew them to be,
+had conceived at the moment of Plunkett’s disclosure of his mission—and
+in the brief space of a lightning flash—the idea that the other might
+be the guilty Williams; and that each of them had decided in that
+moment loyally to protect his comrade against the doom that threatened
+him. This was the consul’s theory and if he had been a bookmaker at a
+race of wits for life and liberty he would have offered heavy odds
+against the plodding sheriff from Chatham County, Kentucky.
+
+When the meal was concluded the Carib woman came and removed the dishes
+and cloth. Reeves strewed the table with excellent cigars, and
+Plunkett, with the others, lighted one of these with evident
+gratification.
+
+“I may be dull,” said Morgan, with a grin and a wink at Bridger; “but I
+want to know if I am. Now, I say this is all a joke of Mr. Plunkett’s,
+concocted to frighten two babes-in-the-woods. Is this Williamson to be
+taken seriously or not?”
+
+“‘Williams,’” corrected Plunkett gravely. “I never got off any jokes in
+my life. I know I wouldn’t travel 2,000 miles to get off a poor one as
+this would be if I didn’t take Wade Williams back with me. Gentlemen!”
+continued the sheriff, now letting his mild eyes travel impartially
+from one of the company to another, “see if you can find any joke in
+this case. Wade Williams is listening to the words I utter now; but out
+of politeness, I will speak of him as a third person. For five years he
+made his wife lead the life of a dog—No; I’ll take that back. No dog in
+Kentucky was ever treated as she was. He spent the money that she
+brought him—spent it at races, at the card table and on horses and
+hunting. He was a good fellow to his friends, but a cold, sullen demon
+at home. He wound up the five years of neglect by striking her with his
+closed hand—a hand as hard as a stone—when she was ill and weak from
+suffering. She died the next day; and he skipped. That’s all there is
+to it. It’s enough. I never saw Williams; but I knew his wife. I’m not
+a man to tell half. She and I were keeping company when she met him.
+She went to Louisville on a visit and saw him there. I’ll admit that he
+spoilt my chances in no time. I lived then on the edge of the
+Cumberland mountains. I was elected sheriff of Chatham County a year
+after Wade Williams killed his wife. My official duty sends me out here
+after him; but I’ll admit that there’s personal feeling, too. And he’s
+going back with me. Mr.—er—Reeves, will you pass me a match?
+
+“Awfully imprudent of Williams,” said Morgan, putting his feet up
+against the wall, “to strike a Kentucky lady. Seems to me I’ve heard
+they were scrappers.”
+
+“Bad, bad Williams,” said Reeves, pouring out more Scotch.
+
+The two men spoke lightly, but the consul saw and felt the tension and
+the carefulness in their actions and words. “Good old fellows,” he said
+to himself; “they’re both all right. Each of ’em is standing by the
+other like a little brick church.”
+
+And then a dog walked into the room where they sat—a black-and-tan
+hound, long-eared, lazy, confident of welcome.
+
+Plunkett turned his head and looked at the animal, which halted,
+confidently, within a few feet of his chair.
+
+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.
+
+The hound, heartbroken, astonished, with flapping ears and incurved
+tail, uttered a piercing yelp of pain and surprise.
+
+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.
+
+But Morgan, with a suddenly purpling face, leaped, to his feet and
+raised a threatening arm above the guest.
+
+“You—brute!” he shouted, passionately; “why did you do that?”
+
+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.
+
+And then Plunkett with the spring of a tiger, leaped around the corner
+of the table and snapped handcuffs on the paralyzed Morgan’s wrists.
+
+“Hound-lover and woman-killer!” he cried; “get ready to meet your God.”
+
+When Bridger had finished I asked him:
+
+“Did he get the right man?”
+
+“He did,” said the Consul.
+
+“And how did he know?” I inquired, being in a kind of bewilderment.
+
+“When he put Morgan in the dory,” answered Bridger, “the next day to
+take him aboard the _Pajaro_, this man Plunkett stopped to shake hands
+with me and I asked him the same question.”
+
+“‘Mr. Bridger,’ said he, ‘I’m a Kentuckian, and I’ve seen a great deal
+of both men and animals. And I never yet saw a man that was overfond of
+horses and dogs but what was cruel to women.’”
+
+
+
+
+III
+THE HYPOTHESES OF FAILURE
+
+
+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.
+
+“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!”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Unprejudiced persons admitted that Lawyer Gooch received as big fees
+from these reyoked clients as would have been paid him had the cases
+been contested in court. Prejudiced ones intimated that his fees were
+doubled, because the penitent couples always came back later for the
+divorce, anyhow.
+
+There came a season in June when the legal ship of Lawyer Gooch (to
+borrow his own figure) was nearly becalmed. The divorce mill grinds
+slowly in June. It is the month of Cupid and Hymen.
+
+Lawyer Gooch, then, sat idle in the middle room of his clientless
+suite. A small anteroom connected—or rather separated—this apartment
+from the hallway. Here was stationed Archibald, who wrested from
+visitors their cards or oral nomenclature which he bore to his master
+while they waited.
+
+Suddenly, on this day, there came a great knocking at the outermost
+door.
+
+Archibald, opening it, was thrust aside as superfluous by the visitor,
+who without due reverence at once penetrated to the office of Lawyer
+Gooch and threw himself with good-natured insolence into a comfortable
+chair facing that gentlemen.
+
+“You are Phineas C. Gooch, attorney-at-law?” said the visitor, his tone
+of voice and inflection making his words at once a question, an
+assertion and an accusation.
+
+Before committing himself by a reply, the lawyer estimated his possible
+client in one of his brief but shrewd and calculating glances.
+
+The man was of the emphatic type—large-sized, active, bold and debonair
+in demeanour, vain beyond a doubt, slightly swaggering, ready and at
+ease. He was well-clothed, but with a shade too much ornateness. He was
+seeking a lawyer; but if that fact would seem to saddle him with
+troubles they were not patent in his beaming eye and courageous air.
+
+“My name is Gooch,” at length the lawyer admitted. Upon pressure he
+would also have confessed to the Phineas C. But he did not consider it
+good practice to volunteer information. “I did not receive your card,”
+he continued, by way of rebuke, “so I—”
+
+“I know you didn’t,” remarked the visitor, coolly; “And you won’t just
+yet. Light up?” He threw a leg over an arm of his chair, and tossed a
+handful of rich-hued cigars upon the table. Lawyer Gooch knew the
+brand. He thawed just enough to accept the invitation to smoke.
+
+“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.
+
+“You handle,” continued the visitor, “all the various ramifications of
+busted-up connubiality. You are a surgeon, we might say, 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, Mr. Gooch?”
+
+“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, Mr. ––––” The lawyer paused, with significance.
+
+“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 Mr. Nobody; and I’ve got a
+story to tell you. Then you say what’s what. Do you get my wireless?”
+
+“You want to state a hypothetical case?” suggested Lawyer Gooch.
+
+“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 Mrs. Billings follows him. She’s dead gone on this man
+Jessup; you can bet your law library on that.”
+
+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.
+
+“Now,” continued the visitor, “suppose this Mrs. Billings wasn’t happy
+at home? We’ll say she and her husband didn’t gee worth a cent. They’ve
+got incompatibility to burn. The things she likes, Billings wouldn’t
+have as a gift with trading-stamps. It’s Tabby and Rover with them all
+the time. She’s an educated woman in science and culture, and she reads
+things out loud at meetings. Billings is not on. He don’t appreciate
+progress and obelisks and ethics, and things of that sort. Old Billings
+is simply a blink when it comes to such things. The lady is out and out
+above his class. Now, lawyer, don’t it look like a fair equalization of
+rights and wrongs that a woman like that should be allowed to throw
+down Billings and take the man that can appreciate her?
+
+“Incompatibility,” said Lawyer Gooch, “is undoubtedly the source of
+much marital discord and unhappiness. Where it is positively proved,
+divorce would seem to be the equitable remedy. Are you—excuse me—is
+this man Jessup one to whom the lady may safely trust her future?”
+
+“Oh, you can bet on Jessup,” said the client, with a confident wag of
+his head. “Jessup’s all right. He’ll do the square thing. Why, he left
+Susanville just to keep people from talking about Mrs. Billings. But
+she followed him up, and now, of course, he’ll stick to her. When she
+gets a divorce, all legal and proper, Jessup will do the proper thing.”
+
+“And now,” said Lawyer Gooch, “continuing the hypothesis, if you
+prefer, and supposing that my services should be desired in the case,
+what—”
+
+The client rose impulsively to his feet.
+
+“Oh, dang the hypothetical business,” he exclaimed, impatiently. “Let’s
+let her drop, and get down to straight talk. You ought to know who I am
+by this time. I want that woman to have her divorce. I’ll pay for it.
+The day you set Mrs. Billings free I’ll pay you five hundred dollars.”
+
+Lawyer Gooch’s client banged his fist upon the table to punctuate his
+generosity.
+
+“If that is the case—” began the lawyer.
+
+“Lady to see you, sir,” bawled Archibald, bouncing in from his
+anteroom. He had orders to always announce immediately any client that
+might come. There was no sense in turning business away.
+
+Lawyer Gooch took client number one by the arm and led him suavely into
+one of the adjoining rooms. “Favour me by remaining here a few minutes,
+sir,” said he. “I will return and resume our consultation with the
+least possible delay. I am rather expecting a visit from a very wealthy
+old lady in connection with a will. I will not keep you waiting long.”
+
+The breezy gentleman seated himself with obliging acquiescence, and
+took up a magazine. The lawyer returned to the middle office, carefully
+closing behind him the connecting door.
+
+“Show the lady in, Archibald,” he said to the office boy, who was
+awaiting the order.
+
+A tall lady, of commanding presence and sternly handsome, entered the
+room. She wore robes—robes; not clothes—ample and fluent. In her eye
+could be perceived the lambent flame of genius and soul. In her hand
+was a green bag of the capacity of a bushel, and an umbrella that also
+seemed to wear a robe, ample and fluent. She accepted a chair.
+
+“Are you Mr. Phineas C. Gooch, the lawyer?” she asked, in formal and
+unconciliatory tones.
+
+“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.
+
+“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?”
+
+“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.”
+
+“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—”
+
+“I beg your pardon, madam,” interrupted Lawyer Gooch, with some
+impatience, “for reminding you again that this is a law office. Perhaps
+Mrs. Wilcox—”
+
+“Mrs. Wilcox is all right,” cut in the lady, with a hint of asperity.
+“And so are Tolstoi, and Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, and Omar Khayyam, and
+Mr. 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—”
+
+“You wish to state a hypothetical case?” said Lawyer Gooch.
+
+“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?”
+
+“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?”
+
+“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 Mrs. Billings!”
+
+“Gentlemen to see you, sir,” shouted Archibald, invading the room
+almost at a handspring. Lawyer Gooch arose from his chair.
+
+“Mrs. 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.”
+
+With his accustomed chivalrous manner, Lawyer Gooch ushered his soulful
+client into the remaining unoccupied room, and came out, closing the
+door with circumspection.
+
+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.
+
+“You make a specialty of divorce cases,” he said, in, an agitated but
+business-like tone.
+
+“I may say,” began Lawyer Gooch, “that my practice has not altogether
+avoided—”
+
+“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—”
+
+“You wish,” said Lawyer Gooch, “to state a hypothetical case.
+
+“You may call it that. I am a plain man of business. I will be as brief
+as possible. We will first take up hypothetical woman. We will say she
+is married uncongenially. In many ways she is a superior woman.
+Physically she is considered to be handsome. She is devoted to what she
+calls literature—poetry and prose, and such stuff. Her husband is a
+plain man in the business walks of life. Their home has not been happy,
+although the husband has tried to make it so. Some time ago a man—a
+stranger—came to the peaceful town in which they lived and engaged in
+some real estate operations. This woman met him, and became
+unaccountably infatuated with him. Her attentions became so open that
+the man felt the community to be no safe place for him, so he left it.
+She abandoned husband and home, and followed him. She forsook her home,
+where she was provided with every comfort, to follow this man who had
+inspired her with such a strange affection. Is there anything more to
+be deplored,” concluded the client, in a trembling voice, “than the
+wrecking of a home by a woman’s uncalculating folly?”
+
+Lawyer Gooch delivered the cautious opinion that there was not.
+
+“This man she has gone to join,” resumed the visitor, “is not the man
+to make her happy. It is a wild and foolish self-deception that makes
+her think he will. Her husband, in spite of their many disagreements,
+is the only one capable of dealing with her sensitive and peculiar
+nature. But this she does not realize now.”
+
+“Would you consider a divorce the logical cure in the case you
+present?” asked Lawyer Gooch, who felt that the conversation was
+wandering too far from the field of business.
+
+“A divorce!” exclaimed the client, feelingly—almost tearfully. “No,
+no—not that. I have read, Mr. Gooch, of many instances where your
+sympathy and kindly interest led you to act as a mediator between
+estranged husband and wife, and brought them together again. Let us
+drop the hypothetical case—I need conceal no longer that it is I who am
+the sufferer in this sad affair—the names you shall have—Thomas R.
+Billings and wife—and Henry K. Jessup, the man with whom she is
+infatuated.”
+
+Client number three laid his hand upon Mr. Gooch’s arm. Deep emotion
+was written upon his careworn face. “For Heaven’s sake”, he said
+fervently, “help me in this hour of trouble. Seek out Mrs. Billings,
+and persuade her to abandon this distressing pursuit of her lamentable
+folly. Tell her, Mr. Gooch, that her husband is willing to receive her
+back to his heart and home—promise her anything that will induce her to
+return. I have heard of your success in these matters. Mrs. Billings
+cannot be very far away. I am worn out with travel and weariness. Twice
+during the pursuit I saw her, but various circumstances prevented our
+having an interview. Will you undertake this mission for me, Mr. Gooch,
+and earn my everlasting gratitude?”
+
+“It is true,” said Lawyer Gooch, frowning slightly at the other’s last
+words, but immediately calling up an expression of virtuous
+benevolence, “that on a number of occasions I have been successful in
+persuading couples who sought the severing of their matrimonial bonds
+to think better of their rash intentions and return to their homes
+reconciled. But I assure you that the work is often exceedingly
+difficult. The amount of argument, perseverance, and, if I may be
+allowed to say it, eloquence that it requires would astonish you. But
+this is a case in which my sympathies would be wholly enlisted. I feel
+deeply for you sir, and I would be most happy to see husband and wife
+reunited. But my time,” concluded the lawyer, looking at his watch as
+if suddenly reminded of the fact, “is valuable.”
+
+“I am aware of that,” said the client, “and if you will take the case
+and persuade Mrs. Billings to return home and leave the man alone that
+she is following—on that day I will pay you the sum of one thousand
+dollars. I have made a little money in real estate during the recent
+boom in Susanville, and I will not begrudge that amount.”
+
+“Retain your seat for a few moments, please,” said Lawyer Gooch,
+arising, and again consulting his watch. “I have another client waiting
+in an adjoining room whom I had very nearly forgotten. I will return in
+the briefest possible space.”
+
+The situation was now one that fully satisfied Lawyer Gooch’s love of
+intricacy and complication. He revelled in cases that presented such
+subtle problems and possibilities. It pleased him to think that he was
+master of the happiness and fate of the three individuals who sat,
+unconscious of one another’s presence, within his reach. His old figure
+of the ship glided into his mind. But now the figure failed, for to
+have filled every compartment of an actual vessel would have been to
+endanger her safety; with his compartments full, his ship of affairs
+could but sail on to the advantageous port of a fine, fat fee. The
+thing for him to do, of course, was to wring the best bargain he could
+from some one of his anxious cargo.
+
+First he called to the office boy: “Lock the outer door, Archibald, and
+admit no one.” Then he moved, with long, silent strides into the room
+in which client number one waited. That gentleman sat, patiently
+scanning the pictures in the magazine, with a cigar in his mouth and
+his feet upon a table.
+
+“Well,” he remarked, cheerfully, as the lawyer entered, “have you made
+up your mind? Does five hundred dollars go for getting the fair lady a
+divorce?”
+
+“You mean that as a retainer?” asked Lawyer Gooch, softly
+interrogative.
+
+“Hey? No; for the whole job. It’s enough, ain’t it?”
+
+“My fee,” said Lawyer Gooch, “would be one thousand five hundred
+dollars. Five hundred dollars down, and the remainder upon issuance of
+the divorce.”
+
+A loud whistle came from client number one. His feet descended to the
+floor.
+
+“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.”
+
+“Could you stand one thousand two hundred dollars?” asked the lawyer,
+insinuatingly.
+
+“Five hundred is my limit, I tell you. Guess I’ll have to hunt up a
+cheaper lawyer.” The client put on his hat.
+
+“Out this way, please,” said Lawyer Gooch, opening the door that led
+into the hallway.
+
+As the gentleman flowed out of the compartment and down the stairs,
+Lawyer Gooch smiled to himself. “Exit Mr. 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.
+
+“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 Mrs. 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?”
+
+“Entirely”, said the other, eagerly. “And I can produce the cash any
+time at two hours’ notice.”
+
+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.
+
+“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. Mrs. 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—”
+
+Lawyer Gooch paused, for client number three had leaped from his chair
+as if propelled by steel springs, and clutched his satchel.
+
+“What the devil,” he exclaimed, harshly, “do you mean? That woman in
+there! I thought I shook her off forty miles back.”
+
+He ran to the open window, looked out below, and threw one leg over the
+sill.
+
+“Stop!” cried Lawyer Gooch, in amazement. “What would you do? Come, Mr.
+Billings, and face your erring but innocent wife. Our combined
+entreaties cannot fail to—”
+
+“Billings!” shouted the now thoroughly moved client. “I’ll Billings
+you, you old idiot!”
+
+Turning, he hurled his satchel with fury at the lawyer’s head. It
+struck that astounded peacemaker between the eyes, causing him to
+stagger backward a pace or two. When Lawyer Gooch recovered his wits he
+saw that his client had disappeared. Rushing to the window, he leaned
+out, and saw the recreant gathering himself up from the top of a shed
+upon which he had dropped from the second-story window. Without
+stopping to collect his hat he then plunged downward the remaining ten
+feet to the alley, up which he flew with prodigious celerity until the
+surrounding building swallowed him up from view.
+
+Lawyer Gooch passed his hand tremblingly across his brow. It was a
+habitual act with him, serving to clear his thoughts. Perhaps also it
+now seemed to soothe the spot where a very hard alligator-hide satchel
+had struck.
+
+The satchel lay upon the floor, wide open, with its contents spilled
+about. Mechanically, Lawyer Gooch stooped to gather up the articles.
+The first was a collar; and the omniscient eye of the man of law
+perceived, wonderingly, the initials H. K. J. marked upon it. Then came
+a comb, a brush, a folded map, and a piece of soap. Lastly, a handful
+of old business letters, addressed—every one of them—to “Henry K.
+Jessup, Esq.”
+
+Lawyer Gooch closed the satchel, and set it upon the table. He
+hesitated for a moment, and then put on his hat and walked into the
+office boy’s anteroom.
+
+“Archibald,” he said mildly, as he opened the hall door, “I am going
+around to the Supreme Court rooms. In five minutes you may step into
+the inner office, and inform the lady who is waiting there that”—here
+Lawyer Gooch made use of the vernacular—“that there’s nothing doing.”
+
+
+
+
+IV
+CALLOWAY’S CODE
+
+
+The New York _Enterprise_ sent H. B. Calloway as special correspondent
+to the Russo-Japanese-Portsmouth war.
+
+For two months Calloway hung about Yokohama and Tokio, shaking dice
+with the other correspondents for drinks of ‘rickshaws—oh, no, that’s
+something to ride in; anyhow, he wasn’t earning the salary that his
+paper was paying him. But that was not Calloway’s fault. The little
+brown men who held the strings of Fate between their fingers were not
+ready for the readers of the _Enterprise_ to season their breakfast
+bacon and eggs with the battles of the descendants of the gods.
+
+But soon the column of correspondents that were to go out with the
+First Army tightened their field-glass belts and went down to the Yalu
+with Kuroki. Calloway was one of these.
+
+Now, this is no history of the battle of the Yalu River. That has been
+told in detail by the correspondents who gazed at the shrapnel smoke
+rings from a distance of three miles. But, for justice’s sake, let it
+be understood that the Japanese commander prohibited a nearer view.
+
+Calloway’s feat was accomplished before the battle. What he did was to
+furnish the _Enterprise_ with the biggest beat of the war. That paper
+published exclusively and in detail the news of the attack on the lines
+of the Russian General on the same day that it was made. No other paper
+printed a word about it for two days afterward, except a London paper,
+whose account was absolutely incorrect and untrue.
+
+Calloway did this in face of the fact that General Kuroki was making
+his moves and laying his plans with the profoundest secrecy as far as
+the world outside his camps was concerned. The correspondents were
+forbidden to send out any news whatever of his plans; and every message
+that was allowed on the wires was censored with rigid severity.
+
+The correspondent for the London paper handed in a cablegram describing
+Kuroki’s plans; but as it was wrong from beginning to end the censor
+grinned and let it go through.
+
+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 _Enterprise_ 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!
+
+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 _Enterprise_.
+
+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.
+
+“It’s from Calloway,” he said. “See what you make of it.”
+
+The message was dated at Wi-ju, and these were the words of it:
+
+Foregone preconcerted rash witching goes muffled rumour mine dark
+silent unfortunate richmond existing great hotly brute select mooted
+parlous beggars ye angel incontrovertible.
+
+
+Boyd read it twice.
+
+“It’s either a cipher or a sunstroke,” said he.
+
+“Ever hear of anything like a code in the office—a secret code?” asked
+the m. e., who had held his desk for only two years. Managing editors
+come and go.
+
+“None except the vernacular that the lady specials write in,” said
+Boyd. “Couldn’t be an acrostic, could it?”
+
+“I thought of that,” said the m. e., “but the beginning letters contain
+only four vowels. It must be a code of some sort.”
+
+“Try em in groups,” suggested Boyd. “Let’s see—‘Rash witching goes’—not
+with me it doesn’t. ‘Muffled rumour mine’—must have an underground
+wire. ‘Dark silent unfortunate richmond’—no reason why he should knock
+that town so hard. ‘Existing great hotly’—no it doesn’t pan out. I’ll
+call Scott.”
+
+The city editor came in a hurry, and tried his luck. A city editor must
+know something about everything; so Scott knew a little about
+cipher-writing.
+
+“It may be what is called an inverted alphabet cipher,” said he. “I’ll
+try that. ‘R’ seems to be the oftenest used initial letter, with the
+exception of ‘m.’ Assuming ‘r’ to mean ‘e’, the most frequently used
+vowel, we transpose the letters—so.”
+
+Scott worked rapidly with his pencil for two minutes; and then showed
+the first word according to his reading—the word “Scejtzez.”
+
+“Great!” cried Boyd. “It’s a charade. My first is a Russian general. Go
+on, Scott.”
+
+“No, that won’t work,” said the city editor. “It’s undoubtedly a code.
+It’s impossible to read it without the key. Has the office ever used a
+cipher code?”
+
+“Just what I was asking,” said the m.e. “Hustle everybody up that ought
+to know. We must get at it some way. Calloway has evidently got hold of
+something big, and the censor has put the screws on, or he wouldn’t
+have cabled in a lot of chop suey like this.”
+
+Throughout the office of the _Enterprise_ 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—
+
+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 _Enterprise_
+envelope for longer than six years. Calloway had been on the paper
+twelve years.
+
+“Try old Heffelbauer,” said the m. e. “He was here when Park Row was a
+potato patch.”
+
+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.
+
+“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?”
+
+“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.”
+
+“Ah!” said the m. e. “We’re getting on the trail now. Where was it
+kept, Heffelbauer? What do you know about it?”
+
+“Somedimes,” said the retainer, “dey keep it in der little room behind
+der library room.”
+
+“Can you find it?” asked the m. e. eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”
+
+“Mein Gott!” said Heffelbauer. “How long you dink a code live? Der
+reborters call him a maskeet. But von day he butt mit his head der
+editor, und—”
+
+“Oh, he’s talking about a goat,” said Boyd. “Get out, Heffelbauer.”
+
+Again discomfited, the concerted wit and resource of the _Enterprise_
+huddled around Calloway’s puzzle, considering its mysterious words in
+vain.
+
+Then Vesey came in.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“It’s a code,” said Vesey. “Anybody got the key?”
+
+“The office has no code,” said Boyd, reaching for the message. Vesey
+held to it.
+
+“Then old Calloway expects us to read it, anyhow,” said he. “He’s up a
+tree, or something, and he’s made this up so as to get it by the
+censor. It’s up to us. Gee! I wish they had sent me, too. Say—we can’t
+afford to fall down on our end of it. ‘Foregone, preconcerted rash,
+witching’—h’m.”
+
+Vesey sat down on a table corner and began to whistle softly, frowning
+at the cablegram.
+
+“Let’s have it, please,” said the m. e. “We’ve got to get to work on
+it.”
+
+“I believe I’ve got a line on it,” said Vesey. “Give me ten minutes.”
+
+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 _Enterprise_ 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.
+
+It took Vesey exactly fifteen minutes. He brought to the m. e. a pad
+with the code-key written on it.
+
+“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.”
+
+Thus had Vesey set forth the reading of the code:
+
+Foregone—conclusion
+Preconcerted—arrangement
+Rash—act
+Witching—hour of midnight
+Goes—without saying
+Muffled—report
+Rumour—hath it
+Mine—host
+Dark—horse
+Silent—majority
+Unfortunate—pedestrians*
+Richmond—in the field
+Existing—conditions
+Great—White Way
+Hotly—contested
+Brute—force
+Select—few
+Mooted—question
+Parlous—times
+Beggars—description
+Ye—correspondent
+Angel—unawares
+Incontrovertible—fact
+
+
+* Mr. Vesey afterward explained that the logical journalistic
+complement of the word “unfortunate” was once the word “victim.” But,
+since the automobile became so popular, the correct following word is
+now “pedestrians”. Of course, in Calloway’s code it meant infantry.
+
+
+“It’s simply newspaper English,” explained Vesey. “I’ve been reporting
+on the _Enterprise_ long enough to know it by heart. Old Calloway gives
+us the cue word, and we use the word that naturally follows it just as
+we use ’em in the paper. Read it over, and you’ll see how pat they drop
+into their places. Now, here’s the message he intended us to get.”
+
+Vesey handed out another sheet of paper.
+
+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 _Times_ description. Its
+correspondent is unaware of the facts.
+
+
+“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!”
+
+“Mr. 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.”
+
+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.
+
+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 _the same date_.
+
+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 _Enterprise_, anyway.
+
+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.
+
+On the second day following, the city editor halted at Vesey’s desk
+where the reporter was writing the story of a man who had broken his
+leg by falling into a coal-hole—Ames having failed to find a murder
+motive in it.
+
+“The old man says your salary is to be raised to twenty a week,” said
+Scott.
+
+“All right,” said Vesey. “Every little helps. Say—Mr. Scott, which
+would you say—‘We can state without fear of successful contradiction,’
+or, ‘On the whole it can be safely asserted’?”
+
+
+
+
+V
+A MATTER OF MEAN ELEVATION
+
+
+One winter the Alcazar Opera Company of New Orleans made a speculative
+trip along the Mexican, Central American and South American coasts. The
+venture proved a most successful one. The music-loving, impressionable
+Spanish-Americans deluged the company with dollars and “vivas.” The
+manager waxed plump and amiable. But for the prohibitive climate he
+would have put forth the distinctive flower of his prosperity—the
+overcoat of fur, braided, frogged and opulent. Almost was he persuaded
+to raise the salaries of his company. But with a mighty effort he
+conquered the impulse toward such an unprofitable effervescence of joy.
+
+At Macuto, on the coast of Venezuela, the company scored its greatest
+success. Imagine Coney Island translated into Spanish and you will
+comprehend Macuto. The fashionable season is from November to March.
+Down from La Guayra and Caracas and Valencia and other interior towns
+flock the people for their holiday season. There are bathing and
+fiestas and bull fights and scandal. And then the people have a passion
+for music that the bands in the plaza and on the sea beach stir but do
+not satisfy. The coming of the Alcazar Opera Company aroused the utmost
+ardour and zeal among the pleasure seekers.
+
+The illustrious Guzman Blanco, President and Dictator of Venezuela,
+sojourned in Macuto with his court for the season. That potent
+ruler—who himself paid a subsidy of 40,000 pesos each year to grand
+opera in Caracas—ordered one of the Government warehouses to be cleared
+for a temporary theatre. A stage was quickly constructed and rough
+wooden benches made for the audience. Private boxes were added for the
+use of the President and the notables of the army and Government.
+
+The company remained in Macuto for two weeks. Each performance filled
+the house as closely as it could be packed. Then the music-mad people
+fought for room in the open doors and windows, and crowded about,
+hundreds deep, on the outside. Those audiences formed a brilliantly
+diversified patch of colour. The hue of their faces ranged from the
+clear olive of the pure-blood Spaniards down through the yellow and
+brown shades of the Mestizos to the coal-black Carib and the Jamaica
+Negro. Scattered among them were little groups of Indians with faces
+like stone idols, wrapped in gaudy fibre-woven blankets—Indians down
+from the mountain states of Zamora and Los Andes and Miranda to trade
+their gold dust in the coast towns.
+
+The spell cast upon these denizens of the interior fastnesses was
+remarkable. They sat in petrified ecstasy, conspicuous among the
+excitable Macutians, who wildly strove with tongue and hand to give
+evidence of their delight. Only once did the sombre rapture of these
+aboriginals find expression. During the rendition of “Faust,” Guzman
+Blanco, extravagantly pleased by the “Jewel Song,” cast upon the stage
+a purse of gold pieces. Other distinguished citizens followed his lead
+to the extent of whatever loose coin they had convenient, while some of
+the fair and fashionable señoras were moved, in imitation, to fling a
+jewel or a ring or two at the feet of the Marguerite—who was, according
+to the bills, Mlle. Nina Giraud. Then, from different parts of the
+house rose sundry of the stolid hillmen and cast upon the stage little
+brown and dun bags that fell with soft “thumps” and did not rebound. It
+was, no doubt, pleasure at the tribute to her art that caused Mlle.
+Giraud’s eyes to shine so brightly when she opened these little
+deerskin bags in her dressing room and found them to contain pure gold
+dust. If so, the pleasure was rightly hers, for her voice in song,
+pure, strong and thrilling with the feeling of the emotional artist,
+deserved the tribute that it earned.
+
+But the triumph of the Alcazar Opera Company is not the theme—it but
+leans upon and colours it. There happened in Macuto a tragic thing, an
+unsolvable mystery, that sobered for a time the gaiety of the happy
+season.
+
+One evening between the short twilight and the time when she should
+have whirled upon the stage in the red and black of the ardent Carmen,
+Mlle. Nina Giraud disappeared from the sight and ken of 6,000 pairs of
+eyes and as many minds in Macuto. There was the usual turmoil and
+hurrying to seek her. Messengers flew to the little French-kept hotel
+where she stayed; others of the company hastened here or there where
+she might be lingering in some tienda or unduly prolonging her bath
+upon the beach. All search was fruitless. Mademoiselle had vanished.
+
+Half an hour passed and she did not appear. The dictator, unused to the
+caprices of prime donne, became impatient. He sent an aide from his box
+to say to the manager that if the curtain did not at once rise he would
+immediately hale the entire company to the calabosa, though it would
+desolate his heart, indeed, to be compelled to such an act. Birds in
+Macuto could be made to sing.
+
+The manager abandoned hope for the time of Mlle. Giraud. A member of
+the chorus, who had dreamed hopelessly for years of the blessed
+opportunity, quickly Carmenized herself and the opera went on.
+
+Afterward, when the lost cantatrice appeared not, the aid of the
+authorities was invoked. The President at once set the army, the police
+and all citizens to the search. Not one clue to Mlle. Giraud’s
+disappearance was found. The Alcazar left to fill engagements farther
+down the coast.
+
+On the way back the steamer stopped at Macuto and the manager made
+anxious inquiry. Not a trace of the lady had been discovered. The
+Alcazar could do no more. The personal belongings of the missing lady
+were stored in the hotel against her possible later reappearance and
+the opera company continued upon its homeward voyage to New Orleans.
+
+
+On the _camino real_ along the beach the two saddle mules and the four
+pack mules of Don Señor Johnny Armstrong stood, patiently awaiting the
+crack of the whip of the _arriero_, Luis. That would be the signal for
+the start on another long journey into the mountains. The pack mules
+were loaded with a varied assortment of hardware and cutlery. These
+articles Don Johnny traded to the interior Indians for the gold dust
+that they washed from the Andean streams and stored in quills and bags
+against his coming. It was a profitable business, and Señor Armstrong
+expected soon to be able to purchase the coffee plantation that he
+coveted.
+
+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.
+
+“Take with you, señor,” said Peralto, “the blessings of the saints upon
+your journey.”
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+He slipped from his mule and stole to a narrow window in one end of the
+house. Peering cautiously inside, he saw, within three feet of him, a
+woman of marvellous, imposing beauty, clothed in a splendid loose robe
+of leopard skins. The hut was packed close to the small space in which
+she stood with the squatting figures of Indians.
+
+The woman finished her song and seated herself close to the little
+window, as if grateful for the unpolluted air that entered it. When she
+had ceased several of the audience rose and cast little softly-falling
+bags at her feet. A harsh murmur—no doubt a barbarous kind of applause
+and comment—went through the grim assembly.
+
+Armstrong, was used to seizing opportunities promptly. Taking advantage
+of the noise he called to the woman in a low but distinct voice: “Do
+not turn your head this way, but listen. I am an American. If you need
+assistance tell me how I can render it. Answer as briefly as you can.”
+
+The woman was worthy of his boldness. Only by a sudden flush of her
+pale cheek did she acknowledge understanding of his words. Then she
+spoke, scarcely moving her lips.
+
+“I am held a prisoner by these Indians. God knows I need help. In two
+hours come to the little hut twenty yards toward the Mountainside.
+There will be a light and a red curtain in the window. There is always
+a guard at the door, whom you will have to overcome. For the love of
+heaven, do not fail to come.”
+
+The story seems to shrink from adventure and rescue and mystery. The
+theme is one too gentle for those brave and quickening tones. And yet
+it reaches as far back as time itself. It has been named “environment,”
+which is as weak a word as any to express the unnameable kinship of man
+to nature, that queer fraternity that causes stones and trees and salt
+water and clouds to play upon our emotions. Why are we made serious and
+solemn and sublime by mountain heights, grave and contemplative by an
+abundance of overhanging trees, reduced to inconstancy and monkey
+capers by the ripples on a sandy beach? Did the protoplasm—but enough.
+The chemists are looking into the matter, and before long they will
+have all life in the table of the symbols.
+
+Briefly, then, in order to confine the story within scientific bounds,
+John Armstrong, went to the hut, choked the Indian guard and carried
+away Mlle. Giraud. With her was also conveyed a number of pounds of
+gold dust she had collected during her six months’ forced engagement in
+Tacuzama. The Carabobo Indians are easily the most enthusiastic lovers
+of music between the equator and the French Opera House in New Orleans.
+They are also strong believers that the advice of Emerson was good when
+he said: “The thing thou wantest, O discontented man —take it, and pay
+the price.” A number of them had attended the performance of the
+Alcazar Opera Company in Macuto, and found Mlle. Giraud’s style and
+technique satisfactory. They wanted her, so they took her one evening
+suddenly and without any fuss. They treated her with much
+consideration, exacting only one song recital each day. She was quite
+pleased at being rescued by Mr. Armstrong. So much for mystery and
+adventure. Now to resume the theory of the protoplasm.
+
+John Armstrong and Mlle. Giraud rode among the Andean peaks, enveloped
+in their greatness and sublimity. The mightiest cousins, furthest
+removed, in nature’s great family become conscious of the tie. Among
+those huge piles of primordial upheaval, amid those gigantic silences
+and elongated fields of distance the littlenesses of men are
+precipitated as one chemical throws down a sediment from another. They
+moved reverently, as in a temple. Their souls were uplifted in unison
+with the stately heights. They travelled in a zone of majesty and
+peace.
+
+To Armstrong the woman seemed almost a holy thing. Yet bathed in the
+white, still dignity of her martyrdom that purified her earthly beauty
+and gave out, it seemed, an aura of transcendent loveliness, in those
+first hours of companionship she drew from him an adoration that was
+half human love, half the worship of a descended goddess.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Mlle. 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.
+
+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, Mlle. 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?
+
+Now from a little plateau they saw the sea flash at the edge of the
+green lowlands. Mlle. Giraud gave a little, catching sigh.
+
+“Oh! look, Mr. 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, Mr. Armstrong—honestly, now —do I
+look such an awful, awful fright? I haven’t looked into a mirror, you
+know, for months.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Mlle. 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.
+
+“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?”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Perched upon a table in the centre of the room in an attitude of easy
+preëminence was Mlle. 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:
+
+“When you see de big round moon
+Comin’ up like a balloon,
+Dis nigger skips fur to kiss de lips
+Ob his stylish, black-faced coon.”
+
+
+The singer caught sight of Armstrong.
+
+“Hi! there, Johnny,” she called; “I’ve been expecting you for an hour.
+What kept you? Gee! but these smoked guys are the slowest you ever saw.
+They ain’t on, at all. Come along in, and I’ll make this
+coffee-coloured old sport with the gold epaulettes open one for you
+right off the ice.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Armstrong; “not just now, I believe. I’ve several
+things to attend to.”
+
+He walked out and down the street, and met Rucker coming up from the
+Consulate.
+
+“Play you a game of billiards,” said Armstrong. “I want something to
+take the taste of the sea level out of my mouth.”
+
+
+
+
+VI
+“GIRL”
+
+
+In gilt letters on the ground glass of the door of room No. 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.
+
+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.
+
+“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.”
+
+Hartley, twenty-nine, serious, thin, good-looking, nervous, sighed and
+frowned a little.
+
+“Yes,” said he, “we always have cool nights in Floralhurst, especially
+in the winter.”
+
+A man with an air of mystery came in the door and went up to Hartley.
+
+“I’ve found where she lives,” he announced in the portentous
+half-whisper that makes the detective at work a marked being to his
+fellow men.
+
+Hartley scowled him into a state of dramatic silence and quietude. But
+by that time Robbins had got his cane and set his tie pin to his
+liking, and with a debonair nod went out to his metropolitan
+amusements.
+
+“Here is the address,” said the detective in a natural tone, being
+deprived of an audience to foil.
+
+Hartley took the leaf torn out of the sleuth’s dingy memorandum book.
+On it were pencilled the words “Vivienne Arlington, No. 341 East ––––th
+Street, care of Mrs. McComus.”
+
+“Moved there a week ago,” said the detective. “Now, if you want any
+shadowing done, Mr. Hartley, I can do you as fine a job in that line as
+anybody in the city. It will be only $7 a day and expenses. Can send in
+a daily typewritten report, covering—”
+
+“You needn’t go on,” interrupted the broker. “It isn’t a case of that
+kind. I merely wanted the address. How much shall I pay you?”
+
+“One day’s work,” said the sleuth. “A tenner will cover it.”
+
+Hartley paid the man and dismissed him. Then he left the office and
+boarded a Broadway car. At the first large crosstown artery of travel
+he took an eastbound car that deposited him in a decaying avenue, whose
+ancient structures once sheltered the pride and glory of the town.
+
+Walking a few squares, he came to the building that he sought. It was a
+new flathouse, bearing carved upon its cheap stone portal its sonorous
+name, “The Vallambrosa.” Fire-escapes zigzagged down its front—these
+laden with household goods, drying clothes, and squalling children
+evicted by the midsummer heat. Here and there a pale rubber plant
+peeped from the miscellaneous mass, as if wondering to what kingdom it
+belonged—vegetable, animal or artificial.
+
+Hartley pressed the “McComus” button. The door latch clicked
+spasmodically—now hospitably, now doubtfully, as though in anxiety
+whether it might be admitting friends or duns. Hartley entered and
+began to climb the stairs after the manner of those who seek their
+friends in city flat-houses—which is the manner of a boy who climbs an
+apple-tree, stopping when he comes upon what he wants.
+
+On the fourth floor he saw Vivienne standing in an open door. She
+invited him inside, with a nod and a bright, genuine smile. She placed
+a chair for him near a window, and poised herself gracefully upon the
+edge of one of those Jekyll-and-Hyde pieces of furniture that are
+masked and mysteriously hooded, unguessable bulks by day and
+inquisitorial racks of torture by night.
+
+Hartley cast a quick, critical, appreciative glance at her before
+speaking, and told himself that his taste in choosing had been
+flawless.
+
+Vivienne was about twenty-one. She was of the purest Saxon type. Her
+hair was a ruddy golden, each filament of the neatly gathered mass
+shining with its own lustre and delicate graduation of colour. In
+perfect harmony were her ivory-clear complexion and deep sea-blue eyes
+that looked upon the world with the ingenuous calmness of a mermaid or
+the pixie of an undiscovered mountain stream. Her frame was strong and
+yet possessed the grace of absolute naturalness. And yet with all her
+Northern clearness and frankness of line and colouring, there seemed to
+be something of the tropics in her—something of languor in the droop of
+her pose, of love of ease in her ingenious complacency of satisfaction
+and comfort in the mere act of breathing—something that seemed to claim
+for her a right as a perfect work of nature to exist and be admired
+equally with a rare flower or some beautiful, milk-white dove among its
+sober-hued companions.
+
+She was dressed in a white waist and dark skirt—that discreet
+masquerade of goose-girl and duchess.
+
+“Vivienne,” said Hartley, looking at her pleadingly, “you did not
+answer my last letter. It was only by nearly a week’s search that I
+found where you had moved to. Why have you kept me in suspense when you
+knew how anxiously I was waiting to see you and hear from you?”
+
+The girl looked out the window dreamily.
+
+“Mr. Hartley,” she said hesitatingly, “I hardly know what to say to
+you. I realize all the advantages of your offer, and sometimes I feel
+sure that I could be contented with you. But, again, I am doubtful. I
+was born a city girl, and I am afraid to bind myself to a quiet
+suburban life.”
+
+“My dear girl,” said Hartley, ardently, “have I not told you that you
+shall have everything that your heart can desire that is in my power to
+give you? You shall come to the city for the theatres, for shopping and
+to visit your friends as often as you care to. You can trust me, can
+you not?”
+
+“To the fullest,” she said, turning her frank eyes upon him with a
+smile. “I know you are the kindest of men, and that the girl you get
+will be a lucky one. I learned all about you when I was at the
+Montgomerys’.”
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed Hartley, with a tender, reminiscent light in his eye;
+“I remember well the evening I first saw you at the Montgomerys’. Mrs.
+Montgomery was sounding your praises to me all the evening. And she
+hardly did you justice. I shall never forget that supper. Come,
+Vivienne, promise me. I want you. You’ll never regret coming with me.
+No one else will ever give you as pleasant a home.”
+
+The girl sighed and looked down at her folded hands.
+
+A sudden jealous suspicion seized Hartley.
+
+“Tell me, Vivienne,” he asked, regarding her keenly, “is there
+another—is there some one else?”
+
+A rosy flush crept slowly over her fair cheeks and neck.
+
+“You shouldn’t ask that, Mr. Hartley,” she said, in some confusion.
+“But I will tell you. There is one other—but he has no right—I have
+promised him nothing.”
+
+“His name?” demanded Hartley, sternly.
+
+“Townsend.”
+
+“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—”
+
+“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!”
+
+The bell in the flat kitchen whirred. Vivienne hurried to press the
+latch button.
+
+“Stay here,” said Hartley. “I will meet him in the hall.”
+
+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.
+
+“Go back,” said Hartley, firmly, pointing downstairs with his
+forefinger.
+
+“Hullo!” said Townsend, feigning surprise. “What’s up? What are you
+doing here, old man?”
+
+“Go back,” repeated Hartley, inflexibly. “The Law of the Jungle. Do you
+want the Pack to tear you in pieces? The kill is mine.”
+
+“I came here to see a plumber about the bathroom connections,” said
+Townsend, bravely.
+
+“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.
+
+“Vivienne,” said he, masterfully. “I have got to have you. I will take
+no more refusals or dilly-dallying.”
+
+“When do you want me?” she asked.
+
+“Now. As soon as you can get ready.”
+
+She stood calmly before him and looked him in the eye.
+
+“Do you think for one moment,” she said, “that I would enter your home
+while Héloise is there?”
+
+Hartley cringed as if from an unexpected blow. He folded his arms and
+paced the carpet once or twice.
+
+“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.”
+
+“When will you do this?” asked the girl.
+
+Hartley clinched his teeth and bent his brows together.
+
+“To-night,” he said, resolutely. “I will send her away to-night.”
+
+“Then,” said Vivienne, “my answer is ‘yes.’ Come for me when you will.”
+
+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.
+
+“Promise me,” he said feelingly, “on your word and honour.”
+
+“On my word and honour,” repeated Vivienne, softly.
+
+At the door he turned and gazed at her happily, but yet as one who
+scarcely trusts the foundations of his joy.
+
+“To-morrow,” he said, with a forefinger of reminder uplifted.
+
+“To-morrow,” she repeated with a smile of truth and candour.
+
+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.
+
+When they stepped into the hall she said:
+
+“Mamma’s here. The auto is coming for her in half an hour. She came to
+dinner, but there’s no dinner.”
+
+“I’ve something to tell you,” said Hartley. “I thought to break it to
+you gently, but since your mother is here we may as well out with it.”
+
+He stooped and whispered something at her ear.
+
+His wife screamed. Her mother came running into the hall. The
+dark-haired woman screamed again—the joyful scream of a well-beloved
+and petted woman.
+
+“Oh, mamma!” she cried ecstatically, “what do you think? Vivienne is
+coming to cook for us! She is the one that stayed with the Montgomerys
+a whole year. And now, Billy, dear,” she concluded, “you must go right
+down into the kitchen and discharge Héloise. She has been drunk again
+the whole day long.”
+
+
+
+
+VII
+SOCIOLOGY IN SERGE AND STRAW
+
+
+The season of irresponsibility is at hand. Come, let us twine round our
+brows wreaths of poison ivy (that is for idiocy), and wander hand in
+hand with sociology in the summer fields.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The Van Plushvelts have a hundred million dollars, and their name is a
+household word with tradesmen and photographers.
+
+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 _Toadies’ Magazine_, 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 _Toadies’ Magazine_ 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“Going to play ball?” he asked.
+
+“Smoky’s” eyes and countenance confronted him with a frank
+blue-and-freckled scrutiny.
+
+“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.
+
+“Excuse me,” said Haywood, with the insulting politeness of his caste,
+“for mistaking you for a gentleman. I might have known better.”
+
+“How might you have known better if you thought I was one?” said
+“Smoky,” unconsciously a logician.
+
+“By your appearance,” said Haywood. “No gentleman is dirty, ragged and
+a liar.”
+
+“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.
+
+“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!”
+
+“Ragamuffin!” said Haywood.
+
+“Smoky” picked up a fence-rail splinter and laid it on his shoulder.
+
+“Dare you to knock it off,” he challenged.
+
+“I wouldn’t soil my hands with you,” said the aristocrat.
+
+“’Fraid,” said “Smoky” concisely. “Youse city-ducks ain’t got the sand.
+I kin lick you with one-hand.”
+
+“I don’t wish to have any trouble with you,” said Haywood. “I asked you
+a civil question; and you replied, like a—like a—a cad.”
+
+“Wot’s a cad?” asked “Smoky.”
+
+“A cad is a disagreeable person,” answered Haywood, “who lacks manners
+and doesn’t know his place. They sometimes play baseball.”
+
+“I can tell you what a mollycoddle is,” said “Smoky.” “It’s a monkey
+dressed up by its mother and sent out to pick daisies on the lawn.”
+
+“When you have the honour to refer to the members of my family,” said
+Haywood, with some dim ideas of a code in his mind, “you’d better leave
+the ladies out of your remarks.”
+
+“Ho! ladies!” mocked the rude one. “I say ladies! I know what them rich
+women in the city does. They drink cocktails and swear and give parties
+to gorillas. The papers say so.”
+
+Then Haywood knew that it must be. He took off his coat, folded it
+neatly and laid it on the roadside grass, placed his hat upon it and
+began to unknot his blue silk tie.
+
+“Hadn’t yer better ring fer yer maid, Arabella?” taunted “Smoky.” “Wot
+yer going to do—go to bed?”
+
+“I’m going to give you a good trouncing,” said the hero. He did not
+hesitate, although the enemy was far beneath him socially. He
+remembered that his father once thrashed a cabman, and the papers gave
+it two columns, first page. And the _Toadies’ Magazine_ had a special
+article on Upper Cuts by the Upper Classes, and ran new pictures of the
+Van Plushvelt country seat, at Fishampton.
+
+“Wot’s trouncing?” asked “Smoky,” suspiciously. “I don’t want your old
+clothes. I’m no—oh, you mean to scrap! My, my! I won’t do a thing to
+mamma’s pet. Criminy! I’d hate to be a hand-laundered thing like you.
+
+“Smoky” waited with some awkwardness for his adversary to prepare for
+battle. His own decks were always clear for action. When he should spit
+upon the palm of his terrible right it was equivalent to “You may fire
+now, Gridley.”
+
+The hated patrician advanced, with his shirt sleeves neatly rolled up.
+“Smoky” waited, in an attitude of ease, expecting the affair to be
+conducted according to Fishampton’s rules of war. These allowed combat
+to be prefaced by stigma, recrimination, epithet, abuse and insult
+gradually increasing in emphasis and degree. After a round of these
+“you’re anothers” would come the chip knocked from the shoulder, or the
+advance across the “dare” line drawn with a toe on the ground. Next
+light taps given and taken, these also increasing in force until
+finally the blood was up and fists going at their best.
+
+But Haywood did not know Fishampton’s rules. Noblesse oblige kept a
+faint smile on his face as he walked slowly up to “Smoky” and said:
+
+“Going to play ball?”
+
+“Smoky” quickly understood this to be a putting of the previous
+question, giving him the chance to make practical apology by answering
+it with civility and relevance.
+
+“Listen this time,” said he. “I’m goin’ skatin’ on the river. Don’t you
+see me automobile with Chinese lanterns on it standin’ and waitin’ for
+me?”
+
+Haywood knocked him down.
+
+“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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+“Going to play ball?”
+
+“Smoky” looked pensively at the sky, at his bat lying on the ground,
+and at the “leaguer” rounding his pocket.
+
+“Sure,” he said, offhandedly. “The ‘Yellowjackets’ plays the ‘Long
+Islands.’ I’m cap’n of the ‘Long Islands.’”
+
+“I guess I didn’t mean to say you were ragged,” said Haywood. “But you
+are dirty, you know.”
+
+“Sure,” said “Smoky.” “Yer get that way knockin’ around. Say, I don’t
+believe them New York papers about ladies drinkin’ and havin’ monkeys
+dinin’ at the table with ’em. I guess they’re lies, like they print
+about people eatin’ out of silver plates, and ownin’ dogs that cost
+$100.”
+
+“Certainly,” said Haywood. “What do you play on your team?”
+
+“Ketcher. Ever play any?”
+
+“Never in my life,” said Haywood. “I’ve never known any fellows except
+one or two of my cousins.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“I’d like it bully,” said Haywood. “I’ve always wanted to play
+baseball.”
+
+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 _Toadies’ Magazine_ 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Immediately before us were the village baseball grounds. And now came
+the sportive youth of Fishampton and distributed themselves, shouting,
+about the diamond.
+
+“There,” said the sociologist, pointing, “there is young Van
+Plushvelt.”
+
+I raised myself (so far a cosycophant with Mary Ann) and gazed.
+
+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.
+
+“That is he,” repeated the sociologist. If he had said “him” I could
+have been less vindictive.
+
+On a bench, with an air, sat the young millionaire’s chum.
+
+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.
+
+I laughed loudly and vulgarly.
+
+“What you want to do,” said I to the sociologist, “is to establish a
+reformatory for the Logical Vicious Circle. Or else I’ve got wheels. It
+looks to me as if things are running round and round in circles instead
+of getting anywhere.”
+
+“What do you mean?” asked the man of progress.
+
+“Why, look what he has done to ‘Smoky’,” I replied.
+
+“You will always be a fool,” said my friend, the sociologist, getting
+up and walking away.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 _Weekly Farmers’ Budget_. So, it looked good.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“Hey, little boy!” says Bill, “would you like to have a bag of candy
+and a nice ride?”
+
+The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.
+
+“That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars,” says Bill,
+climbing over the wheel.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+“Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the
+terror of the plains?
+
+“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.”
+
+Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun of
+camping out in a cave had made him forget that he was a captive
+himself. He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced
+that, when his braves returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at
+the stake at the rising of the sun.
+
+Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and
+gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech something like
+this:
+
+“I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet ’possum
+once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school. Rats ate up
+sixteen of Jimmy Talbot’s aunt’s speckled hen’s eggs. Are there any
+real Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees
+moving make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes your nose so
+red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed
+Walker twice, Saturday. I don’t like girls. You dassent catch toads
+unless with a string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round?
+Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six
+toes. A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can’t. How many does it
+take to make twelve?”
+
+Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and
+pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber
+for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a
+war-whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper shiver. That boy had Bill
+terrorized from the start.
+
+“Red Chief,” says I to the kid, “would you like to go home?”
+
+“Aw, what for?” says he. “I don’t have any fun at home. I hate to go to
+school. I like to camp out. You won’t take me back home again,
+Snake-eye, will you?”
+
+“Not right away,” says I. “We’ll stay here in the cave a while.”
+
+“All right!” says he. “That’ll be fine. I never had such fun in all my
+life.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“What you getting up so soon for, Sam?” asked Bill.
+
+“Me?” says I. “Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I thought
+sitting up would rest it.”
+
+“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?”
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“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?”
+
+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!”
+
+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.
+
+“What’s he up to now?” says Bill, anxiously. “You don’t think he’ll run
+away, do you, Sam?”
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: “Sam, do you
+know who my favourite Biblical character is?”
+
+“Take it easy,” says I. “You’ll come to your senses presently.”
+
+“King Herod,” says he. “You won’t go away and leave me here alone, will
+you, Sam?”
+
+I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles
+rattled.
+
+“If you don’t behave,” says I, “I’ll take you straight home. Now, are
+you going to be good, or not?”
+
+“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.”
+
+“I don’t know the game,” says I. “That’s for you and Mr. 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.”
+
+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.
+
+“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?”
+
+“I’ll be back some time this afternoon,” says I. “You must keep the boy
+amused and quiet till I return. And now we’ll write the letter to old
+Dorset.”
+
+Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red
+Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down,
+guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the
+ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. “I ain’t
+attempting,” says he, “to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental
+affection, but we’re dealing with humans, and it ain’t human for
+anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of
+freckled wildcat. I’m willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred
+dollars. You can charge the difference up to me.”
+
+So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran
+this way:
+
+_Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.:_
+
+    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.
+    The messenger will place the answer in this box and return
+    immediately to Summit.
+    If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as
+    stated, you will never see your boy again.
+    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.
+
+
+TWO DESPERATE MEN.
+
+
+I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I was
+about to start, the kid comes up to me and says:
+
+“Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you was
+gone.”
+
+“Play it, of course,” says I. “Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind
+of a game is it?”
+
+“I’m the Black Scout,” says Red Chief, “and I have to ride to the
+stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I’m tired of
+playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout.”
+
+“All right,” says I. “It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will
+help you foil the pesky savages.”
+
+“What am I to do?” asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously.
+
+“You are the hoss,” says Black Scout. “Get down on your hands and
+knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?”
+
+“You’d better keep him interested,” said I, “till we get the scheme
+going. Loosen up.”
+
+Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like a
+rabbit’s when you catch it in a trap.
+
+“How far is it to the stockade, kid?” he asks, in a husky manner of
+voice.
+
+“Ninety miles,” says the Black Scout. “And you have to hump yourself to
+get there on time. Whoa, now!”
+
+The Black Scout jumps on Bill’s back and digs his heels in his side.
+
+“For Heaven’s sake,” says Bill, “hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can. I
+wish we hadn’t made the ransom more than a thousand. Say, you quit
+kicking me or I’ll get up and warm you good.”
+
+I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the postoffice and store,
+talking with the chawbacons that came in to trade. One whiskerando says
+that he hears Summit is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Dorset’s
+boy having been lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I bought
+some smoking tobacco, referred casually to the price of black-eyed
+peas, posted my letter surreptitiously and came away. The postmaster
+said the mail-carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to
+Summit.
+
+When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be found. I
+explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked a yodel or two, but there
+was no response.
+
+So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await
+developments.
+
+In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wabbled out
+into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind him was the kid,
+stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill
+stopped, took off his hat and wiped his face with a red handkerchief.
+The kid stopped about eight feet behind him.
+
+“Sam,” says Bill, “I suppose you’ll think I’m a renegade, but I
+couldn’t help it. I’m a grown person with masculine proclivities and
+habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism
+and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is
+off. There was martyrs in old times,” goes on Bill, “that suffered
+death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of
+’em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I
+tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there came a
+limit.”
+
+“What’s the trouble, Bill?” I asks him.
+
+“I was rode,” says Bill, “the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring
+an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand
+ain’t a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to
+explain to him why there was nothin’ in holes, how a road can run both
+ways and what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only
+stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his clothes and drags him
+down the mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black-and-blue from the
+knees down; and I’ve got to have two or three bites on my thumb and
+hand cauterized.
+
+“But he’s gone”—continues Bill—“gone home. I showed him the road to
+Summit and kicked him about eight feet nearer there at one kick. I’m
+sorry we lose the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to
+the madhouse.”
+
+Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and
+growing content on his rose-pink features.
+
+“Bill,” says I, “there isn’t any heart disease in your family, is
+there?
+
+“No,” says Bill, “nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?”
+
+“Then you might turn around,” says I, “and have a took behind you.”
+
+Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down
+plump on the round and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little
+sticks. For an hour I was afraid for his mind. And then I told him that
+my scheme was to put the whole job through immediately and that we
+would get the ransom and be off with it by midnight if old Dorset fell
+in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the kid a
+weak sort of a smile and a promise to play the Russian in a Japanese
+war with him is soon as he felt a little better.
+
+I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being
+caught by counterplots that ought to commend itself to professional
+kidnappers. The tree under which the answer was to be left—and the
+money later on—was close to the road fence with big, bare fields on all
+sides. If a gang of constables should be watching for any one to come
+for the note they could see him a long way off crossing the fields or
+in the road. But no, sirree! At half-past eight I was up in that tree
+as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the messenger to arrive.
+
+Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle,
+locates the pasteboard box at the foot of the fence-post, slips a
+folded piece of paper into it and pedals away again back toward Summit.
+
+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:
+
+_Two Desperate Men.
+
+    Gentlemen:_ 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.
+
+
+Very respectfully,
+EBENEZER DORSET.
+
+
+“Great pirates of Penzance!” says I; “of all the impudent—”
+
+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.
+
+“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 Mr. Dorset is a
+spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain’t going to let
+the chance go, are you?”
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“How long can you hold him?” asks Bill.
+
+“I’m not as strong as I used to be,” says old Dorset, “but I think I
+can promise you ten minutes.”
+
+“Enough,” says Bill. “In ten minutes I shall cross the Central,
+Southern and Middle Western States, and be legging it trippingly for
+the Canadian border.”
+
+And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as
+I am, he was a good mile and a half out of Summit before I could catch
+up with him.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+THE MARRY MONTH OF MAY
+
+
+Prithee, smite the poet in the eye when he would sing to you praises of
+the month of May. It is a month presided over by the spirits of
+mischief and madness. Pixies and flibbertigibbets haunt the budding
+woods: Puck and his train of midgets are busy in town and country.
+
+In May nature holds up at us a chiding finger, bidding us remember that
+we are not gods, but overconceited members of her own great family. She
+reminds us that we are brothers to the chowder-doomed clam and the
+donkey; lineal scions of the pansy and the chimpanzee, and but
+cousins-german to the cooing doves, the quacking ducks and the
+housemaids and policemen in the parks.
+
+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:”
+
+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.
+
+Old Mr. 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, Mrs. Widdup. The fact and the name deserve a sentence
+each. They have it.
+
+When May poked Mr. 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
+Mr. Coulson’s nose. The deadly work of the implacable, false
+enchantress May was done.
+
+Across the park to the olfactories of Mr. 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.
+
+Mr. Coulson twisted the ends of his white mustache, cursed his foot,
+and pounded a bell on the table by his side.
+
+In came Mrs. Widdup. She was comely to the eye, fair, flustered, forty
+and foxy.
+
+“Higgins is out, sir,” she said, with a smile suggestive of vibratory
+massage. “He went to post a letter. Can I do anything for you, sir?”
+
+“It’s time for my aconite,” said old Mr. Coulson. “Drop it for me. The
+bottle’s there. Three drops. In water. D–––– that is, confound Higgins!
+There’s nobody in this house cares if I die here in this chair for want
+of attention.”
+
+Mrs. Widdup sighed deeply.
+
+“Don’t be saying that, sir,” she said. “There’s them that would care
+more than any one knows. Thirteen drops, you said, sir?”
+
+“Three,” said old man Coulson.
+
+He took his dose and then Mrs. Widdup’s hand. She blushed. Oh, yes, it
+can be done. Just hold your breath and compress the diaphragm.
+
+“Mrs. Widdup,” said Mr. Coulson, “the springtime’s full upon us.”
+
+“Ain’t that right?” said Mrs. Widdup. “The air’s real warm. And there’s
+bock-beer signs on every corner. And the park’s all yaller and pink and
+blue with flowers; and I have such shooting pains up my legs and body.”
+
+“‘In the spring,’” quoted Mr. Coulson, curling his mustache, “‘a y––––
+that is, a man’s—fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.’”
+
+“Lawsy, now!” exclaimed Mrs. Widdup; “ain’t that right? Seems like it’s
+in the air.”
+
+“‘In the spring,’” continued old Mr. Coulson, “‘a livelier iris shines
+upon the burnished dove.’”
+
+“They do be lively, the Irish,” sighed Mrs. Widdup pensively.
+
+“Mrs. Widdup,” said Mr. Coulson, making a face at a twinge of his gouty
+foot, “this would be a lonesome house without you. I’m an—that is, I’m
+an elderly man—but I’m worth a comfortable lot of money. If half a
+million dollars’ worth of Government bonds and the true affection of a
+heart that, though no longer beating with the first ardour of youth,
+can still throb with genuine—”
+
+The loud noise of an overturned chair near the portières of the
+adjoining room interrupted the venerable and scarcely suspecting victim
+of May.
+
+In stalked Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, bony, durable, tall,
+high-nosed, frigid, well-bred, thirty-five,
+in-the-neighbourhood-of-Gramercy-Parkish. She put up a lorgnette. Mrs.
+Widdup hastily stooped and arranged the bandages on Mr. Coulson’s gouty
+foot.
+
+“I thought Higgins was with you,” said Miss Van Meeker Constantia.
+
+“Higgins went out,” explained her father, “and Mrs. Widdup answered the
+bell. That is better now, Mrs. Widdup, thank you. No; there is nothing
+else I require.”
+
+The housekeeper retired, pink under the cool, inquiring stare of Miss
+Coulson.
+
+“This spring weather is lovely, isn’t it, daughter?” said the old man,
+consciously conscious.
+
+“That’s just it,” replied Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, somewhat
+obscurely. “When does Mrs. Widdup start on her vacation, papa?”
+
+“I believe she said a week from to-day,” said Mr. Coulson.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+“Well, ain’t I the Olcott and Depew; not mentioning the first name at
+all?” said the iceman, admiringly, of himself.
+
+As a concession he rolled his sleeves down, dropped his icehooks on a
+syringa and went back. When Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson
+addressed him he took off his hat.
+
+“There is a rear entrance to this basement,” said Miss Coulson, “which
+can be reached by driving into the vacant lot next door, where they are
+excavating for a building. I want you to bring in that way within two
+hours 1,000 pounds of ice. You may have to bring another man or two to
+help you. I will show you where I want it placed. I also want 1,000
+pounds a day delivered the same way for the next four days. Your
+company may charge the ice on our regular bill. This is for your extra
+trouble.”
+
+Miss Coulson tendered a ten-dollar bill. The iceman bowed, and held his
+hat in his two hands behind him.
+
+“Not if you’ll excuse me, lady. It’ll be a pleasure to fix things up
+for you any way you please.”
+
+Alas for May!
+
+About noon Mr. Coulson knocked two glasses off his table, broke the
+spring of his bell and yelled for Higgins at the same time.
+
+“Bring an axe,” commanded Mr. Coulson, sardonically, “or send out for a
+quart of prussic acid, or have a policeman come in and shoot me. I’d
+rather that than be frozen to death.”
+
+“It does seem to be getting cool, Sir,” said Higgins. “I hadn’t noticed
+it before. I’ll close the window, Sir.”
+
+“Do,” said Mr. Coulson. “They call this spring, do they? If it keeps up
+long I’ll go back to Palm Beach. House feels like a morgue.”
+
+Later Miss Coulson dutifully came in to inquire how the gout was
+progressing.
+
+“’Stantia,” said the old man, “how is the weather outdoors?”
+
+“Bright,” answered Miss Coulson, “but chilly.”
+
+“Feels like the dead of winter to me,” said Mr. Coulson.
+
+“An instance,” said Constantia, gazing abstractedly out the window, “of
+‘winter lingering in the lap of spring,’ though the metaphor is not in
+the most refined taste.”
+
+A little later she walked down by the side of the little park and on
+westward to Broadway to accomplish a little shopping.
+
+A little later than that Mrs. Widdup entered the invalid’s room.
+
+“Did you ring, Sir?” she asked, dimpling in many places. “I asked
+Higgins to go to the drug store, and I thought I heard your bell.”
+
+“I did not,” said Mr. Coulson.
+
+“I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Widdup, “I interrupted you sir, yesterday when
+you were about to say something.”
+
+“How comes it, Mrs. Widdup,” said old man Coulson sternly, “that I find
+it so cold in this house?”
+
+“Cold, Sir?” said the housekeeper, “why, now, since you speak of it it
+do seem cold in this room. But, outdoors it’s as warm and fine as June,
+sir. And how this weather do seem to make one’s heart jump out of one’s
+shirt waist, sir. And the ivy all leaved out on the side of the house,
+and the hand-organs playing, and the children dancing on the
+sidewalk—’tis a great time for speaking out what’s in the heart. You
+were saying yesterday, sir—”
+
+“Woman!” roared Mr. Coulson; “you are a fool. I pay you to take care of
+this house. I am freezing to death in my own room, and you come in and
+drivel to me about ivy and hand-organs. Get me an overcoat at once. See
+that all doors and windows are closed below. An old, fat,
+irresponsible, one-sided object like you prating about springtime and
+flowers in the middle of winter! When Higgins comes back, tell him to
+bring me a hot rum punch. And now get out!”
+
+But who shall shame the bright face of May? Rogue though she be and
+disturber of sane men’s peace, no wise virgins cunning nor cold storage
+shall make her bow her head in the bright galaxy of months.
+
+Oh, yes, the story was not quite finished.
+
+A night passed, and Higgins helped old man Coulson in the morning to
+his chair by the window. The cold of the room was gone. Heavenly odours
+and fragrant mildness entered.
+
+In hurried Mrs. Widdup, and stood by his chair. Mr. Coulson reached his
+bony hand and grasped her plump one.
+
+“Mrs. Widdup,” he said, “this house would be no home without you. I
+have half a million dollars. If that and the true affection of a heart
+no longer in its youthful prime, but still not cold, could—”
+
+“I found out what made it cold,” said Mrs. Widdup, leaning against his
+chair. “’Twas ice—tons of it—in the basement and in the furnace room,
+everywhere. I shut off the registers that it was coming through into
+your room, Mr. Coulson, poor soul! And now it’s Maytime again.”
+
+“A true heart,” went on old man Coulson, a little wanderingly, “that
+the springtime has brought to life again, and—but what will my daughter
+say, Mrs. Widdup?”
+
+“Never fear, sir,” said Mrs. Widdup, cheerfully. “Miss Coulson, she ran
+away with the iceman last night, sir!”
+
+
+
+
+X
+A TECHNICAL ERROR
+
+
+I never cared especially for feuds, believing them to be even more
+overrated products of our country than grapefruit, scrapple, or
+honeymoons. Nevertheless, if I may be allowed, I will tell you of an
+Indian Territory feud of which I was press-agent, camp-follower, and
+inaccessory during the fact.
+
+I was on a visit to Sam Durkee’s ranch, where I had a great time
+falling off unmanicured ponies and waving my bare hand at the lower
+jaws of wolves about two miles away. Sam was a hardened person of about
+twenty-five, with a reputation for going home in the dark with perfect
+equanimity, though often with reluctance.
+
+Over in the Creek Nation was a family bearing the name of Tatum. I was
+told that the Durkees and Tatums had been feuding for years. Several of
+each family had bitten the grass, and it was expected that more
+Nebuchadnezzars would follow. A younger generation of each family was
+growing up, and the grass was keeping pace with them. But I gathered
+that they had fought fairly; that they had not lain in cornfields and
+aimed at the division of their enemies’ suspenders in the back—partly,
+perhaps, because there were no cornfields, and nobody wore more than
+one suspender. Nor had any woman or child of either house ever been
+harmed. In those days—and you will find it so yet—their women were
+safe.
+
+Sam Durkee had a girl. (If it were an all-fiction magazine that I
+expect to sell this story to, I should say, “Mr. Durkee rejoiced in a
+fiancée.”) Her name was Ella Baynes. They appeared to be devoted to
+each other, and to have perfect confidence in each other, as all
+couples do who are and have or aren’t and haven’t. She was tolerably
+pretty, with a heavy mass of brown hair that helped her along. He
+introduced me to her, which seemed not to lessen her preference for
+him; so I reasoned that they were surely soul-mates.
+
+Miss Baynes lived in Kingfisher, twenty miles from the ranch. Sam lived
+on a gallop between the two places.
+
+One day there came to Kingfisher a courageous young man, rather small,
+with smooth face and regular features. He made many inquiries about the
+business of the town, and especially of the inhabitants cognominally.
+He said he was from Muscogee, and he looked it, with his yellow shoes
+and crocheted four-in-hand. I met him once when I rode in for the mail.
+He said his name was Beverly Travers, which seemed rather improbable.
+
+There were active times on the ranch, just then, and Sam was too busy
+to go to town often. As an incompetent and generally worthless guest,
+it devolved upon me to ride in for little things such as post cards,
+barrels of flour, baking-powder, smoking-tobacco, and—letters from
+Ella.
+
+One day, when I was messenger for half a gross of cigarette papers and
+a couple of wagon tires, I saw the alleged Beverly Travers in a
+yellow-wheeled buggy with Ella Baynes, driving about town as
+ostentatiously as the black, waxy mud would permit. I knew that this
+information would bring no balm of Gilead to Sam’s soul, so I refrained
+from including it in the news of the city that I retailed on my return.
+But on the next afternoon an elongated ex-cowboy of the name of
+Simmons, an old-time pal of Sam’s, who kept a feed store in Kingfisher,
+rode out to the ranch and rolled and burned many cigarettes before he
+would talk. When he did make oration, his words were these:
+
+“Say, Sam, there’s been a description of a galoot miscallin’ himself
+Bevel-edged Travels impairing the atmospheric air of Kingfisher for the
+past two weeks. You know who he was? He was not otherwise than Ben
+Tatum, from the Creek Nation, son of old Gopher Tatum that your Uncle
+Newt shot last February. You know what he done this morning? He killed
+your brother Lester—shot him in the co’t-house yard.”
+
+I wondered if Sam had heard. He pulled a twig from a mesquite bush,
+chewed it gravely, and said:
+
+“He did, did he? He killed Lester?”
+
+“The same,” said Simmons. “And he did more. He run away with your girl,
+the same as to say Miss Ella Baynes. I thought you might like to know,
+so I rode out to impart the information.”
+
+“I am much obliged, Jim,” said Sam, taking the chewed twig from his
+mouth. “Yes, I’m glad you rode Out. Yes, I’m right glad.”
+
+“Well, I’ll be ridin’ back, I reckon. That boy I left in the feed store
+don’t know hay from oats. He shot Lester in the back.”
+
+“Shot him in the back?”
+
+“Yes, while he was hitchin’ his hoss.”
+
+“I’m much obliged, Jim.”
+
+“I kind of thought you’d like to know as soon as you could.”
+
+“Come in and have some coffee before you ride back, Jim?”
+
+“Why, no, I reckon not; I must get back to the store.”
+
+“And you say—”
+
+“Yes, Sam. Everybody seen ’em drive away together in a buckboard, with
+a big bundle, like clothes, tied up in the back of it. He was drivin’
+the team he brought over with him from Muscogee. They’ll be hard to
+overtake right away.”
+
+“And which—”
+
+“I was goin’ on to tell you. They left on the Guthrie road; but there’s
+no tellin’ which forks they’ll take—you know that.”
+
+“All right, Jim; much obliged.”
+
+“You’re welcome, Sam.”
+
+Simmons rolled a cigarette and stabbed his pony with both heels. Twenty
+yards away he reined up and called back:
+
+“You don’t want no—assistance, as you might say?”
+
+“Not any, thanks.”
+
+“I didn’t think you would. Well, so long!”
+
+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.
+
+“I wonder,” said Sam, with a profoundly thoughtful expression, “if the
+cook has any cold beans left over!”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“Nothing like a good meal before a long ride,” said Sam. “Eat hearty.”
+
+I had a sudden suspicion.
+
+“Why did you have two horses saddled?” I asked.
+
+“One, two—one, two,” said Sam. “You can count, can’t you?”
+
+His mathematics carried with it a momentary qualm and a lesson. The
+thought had not occurred to him that the thought could possibly occur
+to me not to ride at his side on that red road to revenge and justice.
+It was the higher calculus. I was booked for the trail. I began to eat
+more beans.
+
+In an hour we set forth at a steady gallop eastward. Our horses were
+Kentucky-bred, strengthened by the mesquite grass of the west. Ben
+Tatum’s steeds may have been swifter, and he had a good lead; but if he
+had heard the punctual thuds of the hoofs of those trailers of ours,
+born in the heart of feudland, he might have felt that retribution was
+creeping up on the hoof-prints of his dapper nags.
+
+I knew that Ben Tatum’s card to play was flight—flight until he came
+within the safer territory of his own henchmen and supporters. He knew
+that the man pursuing him would follow the trail to any end where it
+might lead.
+
+During the ride Sam talked of the prospect for rain, of the price of
+beef, and of the musical glasses. You would have thought he had never
+had a brother or a sweetheart or an enemy on earth. There are some
+subjects too big even for the words in the “Unabridged.” Knowing this
+phase of the feud code, but not having practised it sufficiently, I
+overdid the thing by telling some slightly funny anecdotes. Sam laughed
+at exactly the right place—laughed with his mouth. When I caught sight
+of his mouth, I wished I had been blessed with enough sense of humour
+to have suppressed those anecdotes.
+
+Our first sight of them we had in Guthrie. Tired and hungry, we
+stumbled, unwashed, into a little yellow-pine hotel and sat at a table.
+In the opposite corner we saw the fugitives. They were bent upon their
+meal, but looked around at times uneasily.
+
+The girl was dressed in brown—one of these smooth, half-shiny,
+silky-looking affairs with lace collar and cuffs, and what I believe
+they call an accordion-plaited skirt. She wore a thick brown veil down
+to her nose, and a broad-brimmed straw hat with some kind of feathers
+adorning it. The man wore plain, dark clothes, and his hair was trimmed
+very short. He was such a man as you might see anywhere.
+
+There they were—the murderer and the woman he had stolen. There we
+were—the rightful avenger, according to the code, and the supernumerary
+who writes these words.
+
+For one time, at least, in the heart of the supernumerary there rose
+the killing instinct. For one moment he joined the force of
+combatants—orally.
+
+“What are you waiting for, Sam?” I said in a whisper. “Let him have it
+now!”
+
+Sam gave a melancholy sigh.
+
+“You don’t understand; but _he_ does,” he said. “_He_ knows. Mr.
+Tenderfoot, there’s a rule out here among white men in the Nation that
+you can’t shoot a man when he’s with a woman. I never knew it to be
+broke yet. You _can’t_ do it. You’ve got to get him in a gang of men or
+by himself. That’s why. He knows it, too. We all know. So, that’s Mr.
+Ben Tatum! One of the ‘pretty men’! I’ll cut him out of the herd before
+they leave the hotel, and regulate his account!”
+
+After supper the flying pair disappeared quickly. Although Sam haunted
+lobby and stairway and halls half the night, in some mysterious way the
+fugitives eluded him; and in the morning the veiled lady in the brown
+dress with the accordion-plaited skirt and the dapper young man with
+the close-clipped hair, and the buckboard with the prancing nags, were
+gone.
+
+It is a monotonous story, that of the ride; so it shall be curtailed.
+Once again we overtook them on a road. We were about fifty yards
+behind. They turned in the buckboard and looked at us; then drove on
+without whipping up their horses. Their safety no longer lay in speed.
+Ben Tatum knew. He knew that the only rock of safety left to him was
+the code. There is no doubt that, had he been alone, the matter would
+have been settled quickly with Sam Durkee in the usual way; but he had
+something at his side that kept still the trigger-finger of both. It
+seemed likely that he was no coward.
+
+So, you may perceive that woman, on occasions, may postpone instead of
+precipitating conflict between man and man. But not willingly or
+consciously. She is oblivious of codes.
+
+Five miles farther, we came upon the future great Western city of
+Chandler. The horses of pursuers and pursued were starved and weary.
+There was one hotel that offered danger to man and entertainment to
+beast; so the four of us met again in the dining room at the ringing of
+a bell so resonant and large that it had cracked the welkin long ago.
+The dining room was not as large as the one at Guthrie.
+
+Just as we were eating apple pie—how Ben Davises and tragedy impinge
+upon each other!—I noticed Sam looking with keen intentness at our
+quarry where they were seated at a table across the room. The girl
+still wore the brown dress with lace collar and cuffs, and the veil
+drawn down to her nose. The man bent over his plate, with his close
+cropped head held low.
+
+“There’s a code,” I heard Sam say, either to me or to himself, “that
+won’t let you shoot a man in the company of a woman; but, by thunder,
+there ain’t one to keep you from killing a woman in the company of a
+man!”
+
+And, quicker than my mind could follow his argument, he whipped a
+Colt’s automatic from under his left arm and pumped six bullets into
+the body that the brown dress covered—the brown dress with the lace
+collar and cuffs and the accordion-plaited skirt.
+
+The young person in the dark sack suit, from whose head and from whose
+life a woman’s glory had been clipped, laid her head on her arms
+stretched upon the table; while people came running to raise Ben Tatum
+from the floor in his feminine masquerade that had given Sam the
+opportunity to set aside, technically, the obligations of the code.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+SUITE HOMES AND THEIR ROMANCE
+
+
+Few young couples in the Big-City-of-Bluff began their married
+existence with greater promise of happiness than did Mr. and Mrs.
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.”
+
+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.”
+
+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 Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed and humour, put on a kimono,
+airs, and the water to boil for coffee.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“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?”
+
+There was a moment’s silence. No sounds could be heard except the
+breathing of the fox terrier, and the subdued, monotonous sizzling of
+Vivien’s fulvous locks against the insensate curling irons. Claude
+Turpin, sitting upon a pillow that he had thoughtfully placed upon the
+convolutions of the apartment sofa, narrowly watched the riante, lovely
+face of his wife.
+
+“Claudie, dear,” said she, touching her finger to her ruby tongue and
+testing the unresponsive curling irons, “you do me an injustice. Mme.
+Toinette has not seen a cent of mine since the day you paid your tailor
+ten dollars on account.”
+
+Turpin’s suspicions were allayed for the time. But one day soon there
+came an anonymous letter to him that read:
+
+Watch your wife. She is blowing in your money secretly. I was a
+sufferer just as you are. The place is No. 345 Blank Street. A word to
+the wise, etc.
+
+
+A MAN WHO KNOWS.
+
+
+Turpin took this letter to the captain of police of the precinct that
+he lived in.
+
+“My precinct is as clean as a hound’s tooth,” said the captain. “The
+lid’s shut down as close there as it is over the eye of a Williamsburg
+girl when she’s kissed at a party. But if you think there’s anything
+queer at the address, I’ll go there with ye.”
+
+On the next afternoon at 3, Turpin and the captain crept softly up the
+stairs of No. 345 Blank Street. A dozen plain-clothes men, dressed in
+full police uniforms, so as to allay suspicion, waited in the hall
+below.
+
+At the top of the stairs was a door, which was found to be locked. The
+captain took a key from his pocket and unlocked it. The two men
+entered.
+
+They found themselves in a large room, occupied by twenty or
+twenty-five elegantly clothed ladies. Racing charts hung against the
+walls, a ticker clicked in one corner; with a telephone receiver to his
+ear a man was calling out the various positions of the horses in a very
+exciting race. The occupants of the room looked up at the intruders;
+but, as if reassured by the sight of the captain’s uniform, they
+reverted their attention to the man at the telephone.
+
+“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, Mr. Turpin?”
+
+“She is not,” said Turpin.
+
+“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, Mr.
+Turpin.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“Nothing but Browning,” said the captain. “Hear that?”
+
+“Thanatopsis by a nose,” drawled the man at the telephone.
+
+“That’s not Browning; that’s Longfellow,” said Turpin, who sometimes
+read books.
+
+“Back to the pasture!” exclaimed the captain. “Longfellow made the
+pacing-to-wagon record of 7.53 ’way back in 1868.”
+
+“I believe there’s something queer about this joint,” repeated Turpin.
+
+“I don’t see it,” said the captain.
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+“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.”
+
+“Say no more,” said Claude, gently as he fondly caressed her waving
+curls.
+
+“And you are sure that you fully forgive me?” asked Vivien, gazing at
+him entreatingly with dewy eyes of heavenly blue.
+
+“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?”
+
+
+
+
+XII
+THE WHIRLIGIG OF LIFE
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The Justice of the Peace slipped his feet into his shoes, for the sake
+of dignity, and moved to let them enter.
+
+“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.
+
+“A divo’ce,” repeated Ransie, with a solemn nod. “We-all can’t git
+along together nohow. It’s lonesome enough fur to live in the mount’ins
+when a man and a woman keers fur one another. But when she’s a-spittin’
+like a wildcat or a-sullenin’ like a hoot-owl in the cabin, a man ain’t
+got no call to live with her.”
+
+“When he’s a no-’count varmint,” said the woman, “without any especial
+warmth, a-traipsin’ along of scalawags and moonshiners and a-layin’ on
+his back pizen ’ith co’n whiskey, and a-pesterin’ folks with a pack o’
+hungry, triflin’ houn’s to feed!”
+
+“When she keeps a-throwin’ skillet lids,” came Ransie’s antiphony, “and
+slings b’ilin’ water on the best coon-dog in the Cumberlands, and sets
+herself agin’ cookin’ a man’s victuals, and keeps him awake o’ nights
+accusin’ him of a sight of doin’s!”
+
+“When he’s al’ays a-fightin’ the revenues, and gits a hard name in the
+mount’ins fur a mean man, who’s gwine to be able fur to sleep o’
+nights?”
+
+The Justice of the Peace stirred deliberately to his duties. He placed
+his one chair and a wooden stool for his petitioners. He opened his
+book of statutes on the table and scanned the index. Presently he wiped
+his spectacles and shifted his inkstand.
+
+“The law and the statutes,” said he, “air silent on the subjeck of
+divo’ce as fur as the jurisdiction of this co’t air concerned. But,
+accordin’ to equity and the Constitution and the golden rule, it’s a
+bad barg’in that can’t run both ways. If a justice of the peace can
+marry a couple, it’s plain that he is bound to be able to divo’ce ’em.
+This here office will issue a decree of divo’ce and abide by the
+decision of the Supreme Co’t to hold it good.”
+
+Ransie Bilbro drew a small tobacco-bag from his trousers pocket. Out of
+this he shook upon the table a five-dollar note. “Sold a b’arskin and
+two foxes fur that,” he remarked. “It’s all the money we got.”
+
+“The regular price of a divo’ce in this co’t,” said the Justice, “air
+five dollars.” He stuffed the bill into the pocket of his homespun vest
+with a deceptive air of indifference. With much bodily toil and mental
+travail he wrote the decree upon half a sheet of foolscap, and then
+copied it upon the other. Ransie Bilbro and his wife listened to his
+reading of the document that was to give them freedom:
+
+“Know all men by these presents that Ransie Bilbro and his wife, Ariela
+Bilbro, this day personally appeared before me and promises that
+hereinafter they will neither love, honour, nor obey each other,
+neither for better nor worse, being of sound mind and body, and accept
+summons for divorce according to the peace and dignity of the State.
+Herein fail not, so help you God. Benaja Widdup, justice of the peace
+in and for the county of Piedmont, State of Tennessee.”
+
+The Justice was about to hand one of the documents to Ransie. The voice
+of Ariela delayed the transfer. Both men looked at her. Their dull
+masculinity was confronted by something sudden and unexpected in the
+woman.
+
+“Judge, don’t you give him that air paper yit. ’Tain’t all settled,
+nohow. I got to have my rights first. I got to have my ali-money.
+’Tain’t no kind of a way to do fur a man to divo’ce his wife ’thout her
+havin’ a cent fur to do with. I’m a-layin’ off to be a-goin’ up to
+brother Ed’s up on Hogback Mount’in. I’m bound fur to hev a pa’r of
+shoes and some snuff and things besides. Ef Rance kin affo’d a divo’ce,
+let him pay me ali-money.”
+
+Ransie Bilbro was stricken to dumb perplexity. There had been no
+previous hint of alimony. Women were always bringing up startling and
+unlooked-for issues.
+
+Justice Benaja Widdup felt that the point demanded judicial decision.
+The authorities were also silent on the subject of alimony. But the
+woman’s feet were bare. The trail to Hogback Mountain was steep and
+flinty.
+
+“Ariela Bilbro,” he asked, in official tones, “how much did you ’low
+would be good and sufficient ali-money in the case befo’ the co’t.”
+
+“I ’lowed,” she answered, “fur the shoes and all, to say five dollars.
+That ain’t much fur ali-money, but I reckon that’ll git me to up
+brother Ed’s.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“I hain’t no mo’ money,” breathed Ransie, heavily. “I done paid you all
+I had.”
+
+“Otherwise,” said the Justice, looking severely over his spectacles,
+“you air in contempt of co’t.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“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.
+
+“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.
+
+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.
+
+“I want yo’ money,” said the figure, “’thout any talk. I’m gettin’
+nervous, and my finger’s a-wabblin’ on this here trigger.”
+
+“I’ve only got f-f-five dollars,” said the Justice, producing it from
+his vest pocket.
+
+“Roll it up,” came the order, “and stick it in the end of this here
+gun-bar’l.”
+
+The bill was crisp and new. Even fingers that were clumsy and trembling
+found little difficulty in making a spill of it and inserting it (this
+with less ease) into the muzzle of the rifle.
+
+“Now I reckon you kin be goin’ along,” said the robber.
+
+The Justice lingered not on his way.
+
+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.
+
+“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.”
+
+“You air a-goin’ to your brother Ed’s?” asked Ransie, with fine
+unconcern.
+
+“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.”
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“Be kind o’ lonesome in the old cabin to-night, Ranse,” he said.
+
+Ransie Bilbro stared out at the Cumberlands, clear blue now in the
+sunlight. He did not look at Ariela.
+
+“I ’low it might be lonesome,” he said; “but when folks gits mad and
+wants a divo’ce, you can’t make folks stay.”
+
+“There’s others wanted a divo’ce,” said Ariela, speaking to the wooden
+stool. “Besides, nobody don’t want nobody to stay.”
+
+“Nobody never said they didn’t.”
+
+“Nobody never said they did. I reckon I better start on now to brother
+Ed’s.”
+
+“Nobody can’t wind that old clock.”
+
+“Want me to go back along ’ith you in the cart and wind it fur you,
+Ranse?”
+
+The mountaineer’s countenance was proof against emotion. But he reached
+out a big hand and enclosed Ariela’s thin brown one. Her soul peeped
+out once through her impassive face, hallowing it.
+
+“Them hounds shan’t pester you no more,” said Ransie. “I reckon I been
+mean and low down. You wind that clock, Ariela.”
+
+“My heart hit’s in that cabin, Ranse,” she whispered, “along ’ith you.
+I ai’nt a-goin’ to git mad no more. Le’s be startin’, Ranse, so’s we
+kin git home by sundown.”
+
+Justice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup interposed as they started for the
+door, forgetting his presence.
+
+“In the name of the State of Tennessee,” he said, “I forbid you-all to
+be a-defyin’ of its laws and statutes. This co’t is mo’ than willin’
+and full of joy to see the clouds of discord and misunderstandin’
+rollin’ away from two lovin’ hearts, but it air the duty of the co’t to
+p’eserve the morals and integrity of the State. The co’t reminds you
+that you air no longer man and wife, but air divo’ced by regular
+decree, and as such air not entitled to the benefits and ’purtenances
+of the mattermonal estate.”
+
+Ariela caught Ransie’s arm. Did those words mean that she must lose him
+now when they had just learned the lesson of life?
+
+“But the co’t air prepared,” went on the Justice, “fur to remove the
+disabilities set up by the decree of divo’ce. The co’t air on hand to
+perform the solemn ceremony of marri’ge, thus fixin’ things up and
+enablin’ the parties in the case to resume the honour’ble and elevatin’
+state of mattermony which they desires. The fee fur performin’ said
+ceremony will be, in this case, to wit, five dollars.”
+
+Ariela caught the gleam of promise in his words. Swiftly her hand went
+to her bosom. Freely as an alighting dove the bill fluttered to the
+Justice’s table. Her sallow cheek coloured as she stood hand in hand
+with Ransie and listened to the reuniting words.
+
+Ransie helped her into the cart, and climbed in beside her. The little
+red bull turned once more, and they set out, hand-clasped, for the
+mountains.
+
+Justice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup sat in his door and took off his
+shoes. Once again he fingered the bill tucked down in his vest pocket.
+Once again he smoked his elder-stem pipe. Once again the speckled hen
+swaggered down the main street of the “settlement,” cackling foolishly.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+A SACRIFICE HIT
+
+
+The editor of the _Hearthstone Magazine_ 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.
+
+“The _Hearthstone_,” 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.”
+
+That is the editor’s theory; and this is the way he carries it out:
+
+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
+_Hearthstone Magazine_. 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.
+
+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.
+
+The _Hearthstone_ Company also publishes books, and its imprint is to
+be found on several successful works—all recommended, says the editor,
+by the _Hearthstone’s_ army of volunteer readers. Now and then
+(according to talkative members of the editorial staff) the
+_Hearthstone_ 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.
+
+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.”
+
+But nevertheless the _Hearthstone_ 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 _Hearthstone_ Company the manuscript of “The Under World”), has
+expectations of becoming editor of the magazine some day.
+
+This method of the _Hearthstone_ 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.
+
+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.
+
+Slayton made “Love Is All” the effort of his life. He gave it six
+months of the best work of his heart and brain. It was a pure
+love-story, fine, elevated, romantic, passionate—a prose poem that set
+the divine blessing of love (I am transposing from the manuscript) high
+above all earthly gifts and honours, and listed it in the catalogue of
+heaven’s choicest rewards. Slayton’s literary ambition was intense. He
+would have sacrificed all other worldly possessions to have gained fame
+in his chosen art. He would almost have cut off his right hand, or have
+offered himself to the knife of the appendicitis fancier to have
+realized his dream of seeing one of his efforts published in the
+_Hearthstone_.
+
+Slayton finished “Love Is All,” and took it to the _Hearthstone_ in
+person. The office of the magazine was in a large, conglomerate
+building, presided under by a janitor.
+
+As the writer stepped inside the door on his way to the elevator a
+potato masher flew through the hall, wrecking Slayton’s hat, and
+smashing the glass of the door. Closely following in the wake of the
+utensil flew the janitor, a bulky, unwholesome man, suspenderless and
+sordid, panic-stricken and breathless. A frowsy, fat woman with flying
+hair followed the missile. The janitor’s foot slipped on the tiled
+floor, he fell in a heap with an exclamation of despair. The woman
+pounced upon him and seized his hair. The man bellowed lustily.
+
+Her vengeance wreaked, the virago rose and stalked triumphant as
+Minerva, back to some cryptic domestic retreat at the rear. The janitor
+got to his feet, blown and humiliated.
+
+“This is married life,” he said to Slayton, with a certain bruised
+humour. “That’s the girl I used to lay awake of nights thinking about.
+Sorry about your hat, mister. Say, don’t snitch to the tenants about
+this, will yer? I don’t want to lose me job.”
+
+Slayton took the elevator at the end of the hall and went up to the
+offices of the _Hearthstone_. He left the MS. of “Love Is All” with the
+editor, who agreed to give him an answer as to its availability at the
+end of a week.
+
+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.
+
+Miss Puffkin, the _Hearthstone_ 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.
+
+The writer’s daring and self-sacrificing project was this: He knew that
+the editor of the _Hearthstone_ 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, 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 _Hearthstone_ the novelette “Love Is All”?
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+On Friday morning Mrs. Slayton said she would go over to the
+_Hearthstone_ office, hand in one or two manuscripts that the editor
+had given to her to read, and resign her position as stenographer.
+
+“Was there anything—er—that—er—you particularly fancied in the stories
+you are going to turn in?” asked Slayton with a thumping heart.
+
+“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.”
+
+That afternoon Slayton hurried down to the _Hearthstone_ office. He
+felt that his reward was close at hand. With a novelette in the
+_Hearthstone_, literary reputation would soon be his.
+
+The office boy met him at the railing in the outer office. It was not
+for unsuccessful authors to hold personal colloquy with the editor
+except at rare intervals.
+
+Slayton, hugging himself internally, was nursing in his heart the
+exquisite hope of being able to crush the office boy with his
+forthcoming success.
+
+He inquired concerning his novelette. The office boy went into the
+sacred precincts and brought forth a large envelope, thick with more
+than the bulk of a thousand checks.
+
+“The boss told me to tell you he’s sorry,” said the boy, “but your
+manuscript ain’t available for the magazine.”
+
+Slayton stood, dazed. “Can you tell me,” he stammered, “whether or no
+Miss Puff—that is my—I mean Miss Puffkin—handed in a novelette this
+morning that she had been asked to read?”
+
+“Sure she did,” answered the office boy wisely. “I heard the old man
+say that Miss Puffkin said it was a daisy. The name of it was, ‘Married
+for the Mazuma, or a Working Girl’s Triumph.’”
+
+“Say, you!” said the office boy confidentially, “your name’s Slayton,
+ain’t it? I guess I mixed cases on you without meanin’ to do it. The
+boss give me some manuscript to hand around the other day and I got the
+ones for Miss Puffkin and the janitor mixed. I guess it’s all right,
+though.”
+
+And then Slayton looked closer and saw on the cover of his manuscript,
+under the title “Love Is All,” the janitor’s comment scribbled with a
+piece of charcoal:
+
+“The –––– you say!”
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+THE ROADS WE TAKE
+
+
+Twenty miles west of Tucson, the “Sunset Express” stopped at a tank to
+take on water. Besides the aqueous addition the engine of that famous
+flyer acquired some other things that were not good for it.
+
+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!”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. Mr. 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.
+
+Two miles from the tank the engineer was ordered to stop.
+
+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.
+
+“Say, you old double-decked pirate,” he called joyfully to Dodson, “you
+said we could do it—you got a head for financing that knocks the horns
+off of anything in Arizona.”
+
+“What are we going to do about a hoss for you, Bob? We ain’t got long
+to wait here. They’ll be on our trail before daylight in the mornin’.”
+
+“Oh, I guess that cayuse of yourn’ll carry double for a while,”
+answered the sanguine Bob. “We’ll annex the first animal we come
+across. By jingoes, we made a haul, didn’t we? Accordin’ to the marks
+on this money there’s $30,000—$15,000 apiece!”
+
+“It’s short of what I expected,” said Shark Dodson, kicking softly at
+the packages with the toe of his boot. And then he looked pensively at
+the wet sides of his tired horse.
+
+“Old Bolivar’s mighty nigh played out,” he said, slowly. “I wish that
+sorrel of yours hadn’t got hurt.”
+
+“So do I,” said Bob, heartily, “but it can’t be helped. Bolivar’s got
+plenty of bottom—he’ll get us both far enough to get fresh mounts. Dang
+it, Shark, I can’t help thinkin’ how funny it is that an Easterner like
+you can come out here and give us Western fellows cards and spades in
+the desperado business. What part of the East was you from, anyway?”
+
+“New York State,” said Shark Dodson, sitting down on a boulder and
+chewing a twig. “I was born on a farm in Ulster County. I ran away from
+home when I was seventeen. It was an accident my coming West. I was
+walkin’ along the road with my clothes in a bundle, makin’ for New York
+City. I had an idea of goin’ there and makin’ lots of money. I always
+felt like I could do it. I came to a place one evenin’ where the road
+forked and I didn’t know which fork to take. I studied about it for
+half an hour, and then I took the left-hand. That night I run into the
+camp of a Wild West show that was travellin’ among the little towns,
+and I went West with it. I’ve often wondered if I wouldn’t have turned
+out different if I’d took the other road.”
+
+“Oh, I reckon you’d have ended up about the same,” said Bob Tidball,
+cheerfully philosophical. “It ain’t the roads we take; it’s what’s
+inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.”
+
+Shark Dodson got up and leaned against a tree.
+
+“I’d a good deal rather that sorrel of yourn hadn’t hurt himself, Bob,”
+he said again, almost pathetically.
+
+“Same here,” agreed Bob; “he was sure a first-rate kind of a crowbait.
+But Bolivar, he’ll pull us through all right. Reckon we’d better be
+movin’ on, hadn’t we, Shark? I’ll bag this boodle ag’in and we’ll hit
+the trail for higher timber.”
+
+Bob Tidball replaced the spoil in the bag and tied the mouth of it
+tightly with a cord. When he looked up the most prominent object that
+he saw was the muzzle of Shark Dodson’s .45 held upon him without a
+waver.
+
+“Stop your funnin’,” said Bob, with a grin. “We got to be hittin’ the
+breeze.”
+
+“Set still,” said Shark. “You ain’t goin’ to hit no breeze, Bob. I hate
+to tell you, but there ain’t any chance for but one of us. Bolivar,
+he’s plenty tired, and he can’t carry double.”
+
+“We been pards, me and you, Shark Dodson, for three year,” Bob said
+quietly. “We’ve risked our lives together time and again. I’ve always
+give you a square deal, and I thought you was a man. I’ve heard some
+queer stories about you shootin’ one or two men in a peculiar way, but
+I never believed ’em. Now if you’re just havin’ a little fun with me,
+Shark, put your gun up, and we’ll get on Bolivar and vamose. If you
+mean to shoot—shoot, you blackhearted son of a tarantula!”
+
+Shark Dodson’s face bore a deeply sorrowful look. “You don’t know how
+bad I feel,” he sighed, “about that sorrel of yourn breakin’ his leg,
+Bob.”
+
+The expression on Dodson’s face changed in an instant to one of cold
+ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity. The soul of the man showed
+itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a reputable
+house.
+
+Truly Bob Tidball was never to “hit the breeze” again. The deadly .45
+of the false friend cracked and filled the gorge with a roar that the
+walls hurled back with indignant echoes. And Bolivar, unconscious
+accomplice, swiftly bore away the last of the holders-up of the “Sunset
+Express,” not put to the stress of “carrying double.”
+
+But as “Shark” Dodson galloped away the woods seemed to fade from his
+view; the revolver in his right hand turned to the curved arm of a
+mahogany chair; his saddle was strangely upholstered, and he opened his
+eyes and saw his feet, not in stirrups, but resting quietly on the edge
+of a quartered-oak desk.
+
+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.
+
+“Ahem! Peabody,” said Dodson, blinking. “I must have fallen asleep. I
+had a most remarkable dream. What is it, Peabody?”
+
+“Mr. Williams, sir, of Tracy & Williams, is outside. He has come to
+settle his deal in X. Y. Z. The market caught him short, sir, if you
+remember.”
+
+“Yes, I remember. What is X. Y. Z. quoted at to-day, Peabody?”
+
+“One eighty-five, sir.”
+
+“Then that’s his price.”
+
+“Excuse me,” said Peabody, rather nervously “for speaking of it, but
+I’ve been talking to Williams. He’s an old friend of yours, Mr. Dodson,
+and you practically have a corner in X. 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.”
+
+The expression on Dodson’s face changed in an instant to one of cold
+ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity. The soul of the man showed
+itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a reputable
+house.
+
+“He will settle at one eighty-five,” said Dodson. “Bolivar cannot carry
+double.”
+
+
+
+
+ XV
+A BLACKJACK BARGAINER
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Fortune, passing over many anxious wooers, made a freakish flight into
+Blackjack’s bosky pockets to smile upon Pike and his faithful partner.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 Mrs.
+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.
+
+And thus, at length, it was decided, and the thing done. The village of
+Laurel was their compromise between Mrs. 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“Everything all right at Laurel, Mr. Garvey?” he inquired.
+
+“Everything all right, sir, and mighty pleased is Missis Garvey and me
+with the property. Missis Garvey likes yo’ old place, and she likes the
+neighbourhood. Society is what she ’lows she wants, and she is gettin’
+of it. The Rogerses, the Hapgoods, the Pratts and the Troys hev been to
+see Missis Garvey, and she hev et meals to most of thar houses. The
+best folks hev axed her to differ’nt kinds of doin’s. I cyan’t say, Mr.
+Goree, that sech things suits me—fur me, give me them thar.” Garvey’s
+huge, yellow-gloved hand flourished in the direction of the mountains.
+“That’s whar I b’long, ’mongst the wild honey bees and the b’ars. But
+that ain’t what I come fur to say, Mr. Goree. Thar’s somethin’ you got
+what me and Missis Garvey wants to buy.”
+
+“Buy!” echoed Goree. “From me?” Then he laughed harshly. “I reckon you
+are mistaken about that. I reckon you are mistaken about that. I sold
+out to you, as you yourself expressed it, ‘lock, stock and barrel.’
+There isn’t even a ramrod left to sell.”
+
+“You’ve got it; and we ’uns want it. ‘Take the money,’ says Missis
+Garvey, ‘and buy it fa’r and squar’.’”
+
+Goree shook his head. “The cupboard’s bare,” he said.
+
+“We’ve riz,” pursued the mountaineer, undeflected from his object, “a
+heap. We was pore as possums, and now we could hev folks to dinner
+every day. We been recognized, Missis Garvey says, by the best society.
+But there’s somethin’ we need we ain’t got. She says it ought to been
+put in the ’ventory ov the sale, but it tain’t thar. ‘Take the money,
+then,’ says she, ‘and buy it fa’r and squar’.’”
+
+“Out with it,” said Goree, his racked nerves growing impatient.
+
+Garvey threw his slouch hat upon the table, and leaned forward, fixing
+his unblinking eyes upon Goree’s.
+
+“There’s a old feud,” he said distinctly and slowly, “’tween you ’uns
+and the Coltranes.”
+
+Goree frowned ominously. To speak of his feud to a feudist is a serious
+breach of the mountain etiquette. The man from “back yan’” knew it as
+well as the lawyer did.
+
+“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 Mr. Goree’s feud, fa’r and
+squar’.’”
+
+The squirrel hunter straightened a leg half across the room, drew a
+roll of bills from his pocket, and threw them on the table.
+
+“Thar’s two hundred dollars, Mr. 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.”
+
+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.
+
+“A little corn liquor, Mr. 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, Mr. Garvey?”
+
+Goree laughed self-consciously.
+
+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.
+
+“Two hundred,” repeated Garvey. “Thar’s the money.”
+
+A sudden passion flared up in Goree’s brain. He struck the table with
+his fist. One of the bills flipped over and touched his hand. He
+flinched as if something had stung him.
+
+“Do you come to me,” he shouted, “seriously with such a ridiculous,
+insulting, darned-fool proposition?”
+
+“It’s fa’r and squar’,” said the squirrel hunter, but he reached out
+his hand as if to take back the money; and then Goree knew that his own
+flurry of rage had not been from pride or resentment, but from anger at
+himself, knowing that he would set foot in the deeper depths that were
+being opened to him. He turned in an instant from an outraged gentleman
+to an anxious chafferer recommending his goods.
+
+“Don’t be in a hurry, Garvey,” he said, his face crimson and his speech
+thick. “I accept your p-p-proposition, though it’s dirt cheap at two
+hundred. A t-trade’s all right when both p-purchaser and b-buyer are
+s-satisfied. Shall I w-wrap it up for you, Mr. Garvey?”
+
+Garvey rose, and shook out his broadcloth. “Missis Garvey will be
+pleased. You air out of it, and it stands Coltrane and Garvey. Just a
+scrap ov writin’, Mr. Goree, you bein’ a lawyer, to show we traded.”
+
+Goree seized a sheet of paper and a pen. The money was clutched in his
+moist hand. Everything else suddenly seemed to grow trivial and light.
+
+“Bill of sale, by all means. ‘Right, title, and interest in and to’ . .
+. ‘forever warrant and—’ No, Garvey, we’ll have to leave out that
+‘defend,’” said Goree with a loud laugh. “You’ll have to defend this
+title yourself.”
+
+The mountaineer received the amazing screed that the lawyer handed him,
+folded it with immense labour, and laced it carefully in his pocket.
+
+Goree was standing near the window. “Step here,” he said, raising his
+finger, “and I’ll show you your recently purchased enemy. There he
+goes, down the other side of the street.”
+
+The mountaineer crooked his long frame to look through the window in
+the direction indicated by the other. Colonel Abner Coltrane, an erect,
+portly gentleman of about fifty, wearing the inevitable long,
+double-breasted frock coat of the Southern lawmaker, and an old high
+silk hat, was passing on the opposite sidewalk. As Garvey looked, Goree
+glanced at his face. If there be such a thing as a yellow wolf, here
+was its counterpart. Garvey snarled as his unhuman eyes followed the
+moving figure, disclosing long, amber-coloured fangs.
+
+“Is that him? Why, that’s the man who sent me to the pen’tentiary
+once!”
+
+“He used to be district attorney,” said Goree carelessly. “And, by the
+way, he’s a first-class shot.”
+
+“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, Mr. Goree, better’n you ever did!”
+
+He moved toward the door, but lingered there, betraying a slight
+perplexity.
+
+“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.”
+
+“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, Mr. 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—”
+
+“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!”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“On the table,” said one of them, and they deposited him there among
+the litter of his unprofitable books and papers.
+
+“Yance thinks a lot of a pair of deuces when he’s liquored up,” sighed
+the sheriff reflectively.
+
+“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.”
+
+“Close to two hundred. What I wonder is whar he got it. Yance ain’t had
+a cent fur over a month, I know.”
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+A little uncertain of the outcome, the colonel waited for the other to
+make some sign of recognition. Not in twenty years had male members of
+these two families faced each other in peace. Goree’s eyelids puckered
+as he strained his blurred sight toward this visitor, and then he
+smiled serenely.
+
+“Have you brought Stella and Lucy over to play?” he said calmly.
+
+“Do you know me, Yancey?” asked Coltrane.
+
+“Of course I do. You brought me a whip with a whistle in the end.”
+
+So he had—twenty-four years ago; when Yancey’s father was his best
+friend.
+
+Goree’s eyes wandered about the room. The colonel understood. “Lie
+still, and I’ll bring you some,” said he. There was a pump in the yard
+at the rear, and Goree closed his eyes, listening with rapture to the
+click of its handle, and the bubbling of the falling stream. Coltrane
+brought a pitcher of the cool water, and held it for him to drink.
+Presently Goree sat up—a most forlorn object, his summer suit of flax
+soiled and crumpled, his discreditable head tousled and unsteady. He
+tried to wave one of his hands toward the colonel.
+
+“Ex-excuse—everything, will you?” he said. “I must have drunk too much
+whiskey last night, and gone to bed on the table.” His brows knitted
+into a puzzled frown.
+
+“Out with the boys awhile?” asked Coltrane kindly.
+
+“No, I went nowhere. I haven’t had a dollar to spend in the last two
+months. Struck the demijohn too often, I reckon, as usual.”
+
+Colonel Coltrane touched him on the shoulder.
+
+“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?”
+
+“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—”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+“I lost two hundred dollars last night, playing poker. Now, where did I
+get that money?”
+
+“Take it easy, Yancey. The mountain air will soon clear it up. We’ll go
+fishing, first thing, at the Pinnacle Falls. The trout are jumping
+there like bullfrogs. We’ll take Stella and Lucy along, and have a
+picnic on Eagle Rock. Have you forgotten how a hickory-cured-ham
+sandwich tastes, Yancey, to a hungry fisherman?”
+
+Evidently the colonel did not believe the story of his lost wealth; so
+Goree retired again into brooding silence.
+
+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.
+
+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.”
+
+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.
+
+“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?”
+
+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.”
+
+“Don’t think of it,” said Coltrane cheerfully. “Later on we’ll figure
+it all out together.”
+
+They rode out of the branch, and when they reached the foot of the hill
+Goree stopped again.
+
+“Did you ever suspect I was a very vain kind of fellow, Colonel?” he
+asked. “Sort of foolish proud about appearances?”
+
+The colonel’s eyes refused to wander to the soiled, sagging suit of
+flax and the faded slouch hat.
+
+“It seems to me,” he replied, mystified, but humouring him, “I remember
+a young buck about twenty, with the tightest coat, the sleekest hair,
+and the prancingest saddle horse in the Blue Ridge.”
+
+“Right you are,” said Goree eagerly. “And it’s in me yet, though it
+don’t show. Oh, I’m as vain as a turkey gobbler, and as proud as
+Lucifer. I’m going to ask you to indulge this weakness of mine in a
+little matter.”
+
+“Speak out, Yancey. We’ll create you Duke of Laurel and Baron of Blue
+Ridge, if you choose; and you shall have a feather out of Stella’s
+peacock’s tail to wear in your hat.”
+
+“I’m in earnest. In a few minutes we’ll pass the house up there on the
+hill where I was born, and where my people have lived for nearly a
+century. Strangers live there now—and look at me! I am about to show
+myself to them ragged and poverty-stricken, a wastrel and a beggar.
+Colonel Coltrane, I’m ashamed to do it. I want you to let me wear your
+coat and hat until we are out of sight beyond. I know you think it a
+foolish pride, but I want to make as good a showing as I can when I
+pass the old place.”
+
+“Now, what does this mean?” said Coltrane to himself, as he compared
+his companion’s sane looks and quiet demeanour with his strange
+request. But he was already unbuttoning the coat, assenting readily, as
+if the fancy were in no wise to be considered strange.
+
+The coat and hat fitted Goree well. He buttoned the former about him
+with a look of satisfaction and dignity. He and Coltrane were nearly
+the same size—rather tall, portly, and erect. Twenty-five years were
+between them, but in appearance they might have been brothers. Goree
+looked older than his age; his face was puffy and lined; the colonel
+had the smooth, fresh complexion of a temperate liver. He put on
+Goree’s disreputable old flax coat and faded slouch hat.
+
+“Now,” said Goree, taking up the reins, “I’m all right. I want you to
+ride about ten feet in the rear as we go by, Colonel, so that they can
+get a good look at me. They’ll see I’m no back number yet, by any
+means. I guess I’ll show up pretty well to them once more, anyhow.
+Let’s ride on.”
+
+He set out up the hill at a smart trot, the colonel following, as he
+had been requested.
+
+Goree sat straight in the saddle, with head erect, but his eyes were
+turned to the right, sharply scanning every shrub and fence and
+hiding-place in the old homestead yard. Once he muttered to himself,
+“Will the crazy fool try it, or did I dream half of it?”
+
+It was when he came opposite the little family burying ground that he
+saw what he had been looking for—a puff of white smoke, coming from the
+thick cedars in one corner. He toppled so slowly to the left that
+Coltrane had time to urge his horse to that side, and catch him with
+one arm.
+
+The squirrel hunter had not overpraised his aim. He had sent the bullet
+where he intended, and where Goree had expected that it would
+pass—through the breast of Colonel Abner Coltrane’s black frock coat.
+
+Goree leaned heavily against Coltrane, but he did not fall. The horses
+kept pace, side by side, and the Colonel’s arm kept him steady. The
+little white houses of Laurel shone through the trees, half a mile
+away. Goree reached out one hand and groped until it rested upon
+Coltrane’s fingers, which held his bridle.
+
+“Good friend,” he said, and that was all.
+
+Thus did Yancey Goree, as he rode past his old home, make, considering
+all things, the best showing that was in his power.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+THE SONG AND THE SERGEANT
+
+
+Half a dozen people supping at a table in one of the upper-Broadway
+all-night restaurants were making too much noise. Three times the
+manager walked past them with a politely warning glance; but their
+argument had waxed too warm to be quelled by a manager’s gaze. It was
+midnight, and the restaurant was filled with patrons from the theatres
+of that district. Some among the dispersed audiences must have
+recognized among the quarrelsome sextet the faces of the players
+belonging to the Carroll Comedy Company.
+
+Four of the six made up the company. Another was the author of the
+comedietta, “A Gay Coquette,” which the quartette of players had been
+presenting with fair success at several vaudeville houses in the city.
+The sixth at the table was a person inconsequent in the realm of art,
+but one at whose bidding many lobsters had perished.
+
+Loudly the six maintained their clamorous debate. No one of the Party
+was silent except when answers were stormed from him by the excited
+ones. That was the comedian of “A Gay Coquette.” He was a young man
+with a face even too melancholy for his profession.
+
+The oral warfare of four immoderate tongues was directed at Miss
+Clarice Carroll, the twinkling star of the small aggregation. Excepting
+the downcast comedian, all members of the party united in casting upon
+her with vehemence the blame of some momentous misfortune. Fifty times
+they told her: “It is your fault, Clarice—it is you alone who spoilt
+the scene. It is only of late that you have acted this way. At this
+rate the sketch will have to be taken off.”
+
+Miss Carroll was a match for any four. Gallic ancestry gave her a
+vivacity that could easily mount to fury. Her large eyes flashed a
+scorching denial at her accusers. Her slender, eloquent arms constantly
+menaced the tableware. Her high, clear soprano voice rose to what would
+have been a scream had it not possessed so pure a musical quality. She
+hurled back at the attacking four their denunciations in tones sweet,
+but of too great carrying power for a Broadway restaurant.
+
+Finally they exhausted her patience both as a woman and an artist. She
+sprang up like a panther, managed to smash half a dozen plates and
+glasses with one royal sweep of her arm, and defied her critics. They
+rose and wrangled more loudly. The comedian sighed and looked a trifle
+sadder and disinterested. The manager came tripping and suggested
+peace. He was told to go to the popular synonym for war so promptly
+that the affair might have happened at The Hague.
+
+Thus was the manager angered. He made a sign with his hand and a waiter
+slipped out of the door. In twenty minutes the party of six was in a
+police station facing a grizzled and philosophical desk sergeant.
+
+“Disorderly conduct in a restaurant,” said the policeman who had
+brought the party in.
+
+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.
+
+“Mr. 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.”
+
+“Who makes the charge?” asked the sergeant.
+
+“Me,” said a white-aproned voice in the rear. “De restaurant sent me
+to. De gang was raisin’ a rough-house and breakin’ dishes.”
+
+“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—”
+
+“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.
+
+“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.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“It is not my fault,” reiterated the actress.
+
+“There are only two of you on in the scene,” argued the playwright
+hotly, “you and Delmars, here—”
+
+“Then it’s his fault,” declared Miss Carroll, with a lightning glance
+of scorn from her dark eyes. The comedian caught it, and gazed with
+increased melancholy at the panels of the sergeant’s desk.
+
+The night was a dull one in that particular police station.
+
+The sergeant’s long-blunted curiosity awoke a little.
+
+“I’ve heard you,” he said to the author. And then he addressed the
+thin-faced and ascetic-looking lady of the company who played “Aunt
+Turnip-top” in the little comedy.
+
+“Who do you think spoils the scene you are fussing about?” he asked.
+
+“I’m no knocker,” said that lady, “and everybody knows it. So, when I
+say that Clarice falls down every time in that scene I’m judging her
+art and not herself. She was great in it once. She does it something
+fierce now. It’ll dope the show if she keeps it up.”
+
+The sergeant looked at the comedian.
+
+“You and the lady have this scene together, I understand. I suppose
+there’s no use asking you which one of you queers it?”
+
+The comedian avoided the direct rays from the two fixed stars of Miss
+Carroll’s eyes.
+
+“I don’t know,” he said, looking down at his patent-leather toes.
+
+“Are you one of the actors?” asked the sergeant of a dwarfish youth
+with a middle-aged face.
+
+“Why, say!” replied the last Thespian witness, “you don’t notice any
+tin spear in my hands, do you? You haven’t heard me shout: ‘See, the
+Emperor comes!’ since I’ve been in here, have you? I guess I’m on the
+stage long enough for ’em not to start a panic by mistaking me for a
+thin curl of smoke rising above the footlights.”
+
+“In your opinion, if you’ve got one,” said the sergeant, “is the frost
+that gathers on the scene in question the work of the lady or the
+gentleman who takes part in it?”
+
+The middle-aged youth looked pained.
+
+“I regret to say,” he answered, “that Miss Carroll seems to have lost
+her grip on that scene. She’s all right in the rest of the play,
+but—but I tell you, sergeant, she can do it—she has done it equal to
+any of ’em—and she can do it again.”
+
+Miss Carroll ran forward, glowing and palpitating.
+
+“Thank you, Jimmy, for the first good word I’ve had in many a day,” she
+cried. And then she turned her eager face toward the desk.
+
+“I’ll show you, sergeant, whether I am to blame. I’ll show them whether
+I can do that scene. Come, Mr. Delmars; let us begin. You will let us,
+won’t you, sergeant?”
+
+“How long will it take?” asked the sergeant, dubiously.
+
+“Eight minutes,” said the playwright. “The entire play consumes but
+thirty.”
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+“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.
+
+“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 Mr.
+Delmars, the comedian. A tropical-forest stage is set.
+
+“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.”
+
+“What’s the trouble with the scene now?” asked the sergeant.
+
+“Miss Carroll spoils it right in the middle of it,” said the playwright
+wrathfully.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+When Delmars ceased Miss Carroll started, and covered a sudden flow of
+tears with both hands.
+
+“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!”
+
+Out of her bewitchment, whatever it was, the wood nymph flared
+suddenly, and pointed a desperate finger at Delmars.
+
+“It is you—you who have done this,” she cried wildly. “You never sang
+that song that way until lately. It is your doing.”
+
+“I give it up,” said the sergeant.
+
+And then the gray-haired matron of the police station came forward from
+behind the sergeant’s chair.
+
+“Must an old woman teach you all?” she said. She went up to Miss
+Carroll and took her hand.
+
+“The man’s wearing his heart out for you, my dear. Couldn’t you tell it
+the first note you heard him sing? All of his monkey flip-flops
+wouldn’t have kept it from me. Must you be deaf as well as blind?
+That’s why you couldn’t act your part, child. Do you love him or must
+he be a gorilla for the rest of his days?”
+
+Miss Carroll whirled around and caught Delmars with a lightning glance
+of her eye. He came toward her, melancholy.
+
+“Did you hear, Mr. Delmars?” she asked, with a catching breath.
+
+“I did,” said the comedian. “It is true. I didn’t think there was any
+use. I tried to let you know with the song.”
+
+“Silly!” said the matron; “why didn’t you speak?”
+
+“No, no,” cried the wood nymph, “his way was the best. I didn’t know,
+but—it was just what I wanted, Bobby.”
+
+She sprang like a green grasshopper; and the comedian opened his arms,
+and—smiled.
+
+“Get out of this,” roared the desk sergeant to the waiting waiter from
+the restaurant. “There’s nothing doing here for you.”
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+ONE DOLLAR’S WORTH
+
+
+The judge of the United States court of the district lying along the
+Rio Grande border found the following letter one morning in his mail:
+
+JUDGE:
+
+When you sent me up for four years you made a talk. Among other hard
+things, you called me a rattlesnake. Maybe I am one—anyhow, you hear me
+rattling now. One year after I got to the pen, my daughter died
+of—well, they said it was poverty and the disgrace together. You’ve got
+a daughter, Judge, and I’m going to make you know how it feels to lose
+one. And I’m going to bite that district attorney that spoke against
+me. I’m free now, and I guess I’ve turned to rattlesnake all right. I
+feel like one. I don’t say much, but this is my rattle. Look out when I
+strike.
+
+
+Yours respectfully,
+RATTLESNAKE.
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“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.
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+“Oh, Bob, didn’t court adjourn at twelve to-day until to-morrow?” she
+asked of Littlefield.
+
+“It did,” said the district attorney, “and I’m very glad of it. I’ve
+got a lot of rulings to look up, and—”
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+There was a knock at the door. Kilpatrick answered it. A beautiful,
+dark-eyed girl with a skin tinged with the faintest lemon colour walked
+into the room. A black shawl was thrown over her head and wound once
+around her neck.
+
+She began to talk in Spanish, a voluble, mournful stream of melancholy
+music. Littlefield did not understand Spanish. The deputy did, and he
+translated her talk by portions, at intervals holding up his hand to
+check the flow of her words.
+
+“She came to see you, Mr. Littlefield. Her name’s Joya Treviñas. She
+wants to see you about—well, she’s mixed up with that Rafael Ortiz.
+She’s his—she’s his girl. She says he’s innocent. She says she made the
+money and got him to pass it. Don’t you believe her, Mr. Littlefield.
+That’s the way with these Mexican girls; they’ll lie, steal, or kill
+for a fellow when they get stuck on him. Never trust a woman that’s in
+love!”
+
+“Mr. Kilpatrick!”
+
+Nancy Derwent’s indignant exclamation caused the deputy to flounder for
+a moment in attempting to explain that he had misquoted his own
+sentiments, and then he went on with the translation:
+
+“She says she’s willing to take his place in the jail if you’ll let him
+out. She says she was down sick with the fever, and the doctor said
+she’d die if she didn’t have medicine. That’s why he passed the lead
+dollar on the drug store. She says it saved her life. This Rafael seems
+to be her honey, all right; there’s a lot of stuff in her talk about
+love and such things that you don’t want to hear.”
+
+It was an old story to the district attorney.
+
+“Tell her,” said he, “that I can do nothing. The case comes up in the
+morning, and he will have to make his fight before the court.”
+
+Nancy Derwent was not so hardened. She was looking with sympathetic
+interest at Joya Treviñas and at Littlefield alternately. The deputy
+repeated the district attorney’s words to the girl. She spoke a
+sentence or two in a low voice, pulled her shawl closely about her
+face, and left the room.
+
+“What did she say then?” asked the district attorney.
+
+“Nothing special,” said the deputy. “She said: ‘If the life of the
+one’—let’s see how it went—‘_Si la vida de ella á quien tu amas_—if the
+life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael Ortiz.’”
+
+Kilpatrick strolled out through the corridor in the direction of the
+marshal’s office.
+
+“Can’t you do anything for them, Bob?” asked Nancy. “It’s such a little
+thing—just one counterfeit dollar—to ruin the happiness of two lives!
+She was in danger of death, and he did it to save her. Doesn’t the law
+know the feeling of pity?”
+
+“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 Mr. Greaser guilty
+without leaving the box.”
+
+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.
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“It looks like the man we saw coming over,” remarked Miss Derwent.
+
+As the distance between them lessened, the district attorney suddenly
+pulled up his team sharply, with his eyes fixed upon the advancing
+horseman. That individual had drawn a Winchester from its scabbard on
+his saddle and thrown it over his arm.
+
+“Now I know you, Mexico Sam!” muttered Littlefield to himself. “It was
+you who shook your rattles in that gentle epistle.”
+
+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 No. 8 shot, he threw up his Winchester and
+opened fire upon the occupants of the buckboard.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“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.”
+
+“All right, Bob,” said Nancy steadily. “I’m not afraid. But you come
+close, too. Whoa, Bess; stand still, now!”
+
+She stroked Bess’s mane. Littlefield stood with his gun ready, praying
+that the desperado would come within range.
+
+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 he 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.
+
+The desperado fired again. A little cry came from Nancy Derwent.
+Littlefield whirled, with blazing eyes, and saw the blood trickling
+down her cheek.
+
+“I’m not hurt, Bob—only a splinter struck me. I think he hit one of the
+wheel-spokes.”
+
+“Lord!” groaned Littlefield. “If I only had a charge of buckshot!”
+
+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.
+
+“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:
+
+“If the life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael
+Ortiz.”
+
+Littlefield uttered an exclamation.
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The shotgun blazed with a heavy report. Mexico Sam sighed, turned limp
+all over, and slowly fell from his horse—a dead rattlesnake.
+
+At ten o’clock the next morning court opened, and the case of the
+United States versus Rafael Ortiz was called. The district attorney,
+with his arm in a sling, rose and addressed the court.
+
+“May it please your honour,” he said, “I desire to enter a _nolle
+pros._ in this case. Even though the defendant should be guilty, there
+is not sufficient evidence in the hands of the government to secure a
+conviction. The piece of counterfeit coin upon the identity of which
+the case was built is not now available as evidence. I ask, therefore,
+that the case be stricken off.”
+
+At the noon recess Kilpatrick strolled into the district attorney’s
+office.
+
+“I’ve just been down to take a squint at old Mexico Sam,” said the
+deputy. “They’ve got him laid out. Old Mexico was a tough outfit, I
+reckon. The boys was wonderin’ down there what you shot him with. Some
+said it must have been nails. I never see a gun carry anything to make
+holes like he had.”
+
+“I shot him,” said the district attorney, “with Exhibit A of your
+counterfeiting case. Lucky thing for me—and somebody else—that it was
+as bad money as it was! It sliced up into slugs very nicely. Say, Kil,
+can’t you go down to the jacals and find where that Mexican girl lives?
+Miss Derwent wants to know.”
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+A NEWSPAPER STORY
+
+
+At 8 A. M. 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.
+
+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_.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The third was an eloquent demand that the police force be sustained and
+aided in everything that tended to increase its efficiency as public
+guardians and servants.
+
+Besides these more important chidings and requisitions upon the store
+of good citizenship was a wise prescription or form of procedure laid
+out by the editor of the heart-to-heart column in the specific case of
+a young man who had complained of the obduracy of his lady love,
+teaching him how he might win her.
+
+Again, there was, on the beauty page, a complete answer to a young lady
+inquirer who desired admonition toward the securing of bright eyes,
+rosy cheeks and a beautiful countenance.
+
+One other item requiring special cognizance was a brief “personal,”
+running thus:
+
+DEAR JACK:—Forgive me. You were right. Meet me corner Madison and —th
+at 8.30 this morning. We leave at noon.
+
+
+PENITENT.
+
+
+At 8 o’clock a young man with a haggard look and the feverish gleam of
+unrest in his eye dropped a penny and picked up the top paper as he
+passed Giuseppi’s stand. A sleepless night had left him a late riser.
+There was an office to be reached by nine, and a shave and a hasty cup
+of coffee to be crowded into the interval.
+
+He visited his barber shop and then hurried on his way. He pocketed his
+paper, meditating a belated perusal of it at the luncheon hour. At the
+next corner it fell from his pocket, carrying with it his pair of new
+gloves. Three blocks he walked, missed the gloves and turned back
+fuming.
+
+Just on the half-hour he reached the corner where lay the gloves and
+the paper. But he strangely ignored that which he had come to seek. He
+was holding two little hands as tightly as ever he could and looking
+into two penitent brown eyes, while joy rioted in his heart.
+
+“Dear Jack,” she said, “I knew you would be here on time.”
+
+“I wonder what she means by that,” he was saying to himself; “but it’s
+all right, it’s all right.”
+
+A big wind puffed out of the west, picked up the paper from the
+sidewalk, opened it out and sent it flying and whirling down a side
+street. Up that street was driving a skittish bay to a spider-wheel
+buggy, the young man who had written to the heart-to-heart editor for a
+recipe that he might win her for whom he sighed.
+
+The wind, with a prankish flurry, flapped the flying newspaper against
+the face of the skittish bay. There was a lengthened streak of bay
+mingled with the red of running gear that stretched itself out for four
+blocks. Then a water-hydrant played its part in the cosmogony, the
+buggy became matchwood as foreordained, and the driver rested very
+quietly where he had been flung on the asphalt in front of a certain
+brownstone mansion.
+
+They came out and had him inside very promptly. And there was one who
+made herself a pillow for his head, and cared for no curious eyes,
+bending over and saying, “Oh, it was you; it was you all the time,
+Bobby! Couldn’t you see it? And if you die, why, so must I, and—”
+
+But in all this wind we must hurry to keep in touch with our paper.
+
+Policeman O’Brine arrested it as a character dangerous to traffic.
+Straightening its dishevelled leaves with his big, slow fingers, he
+stood a few feet from the family entrance of the Shandon Bells Café.
+One headline he spelled out ponderously: “The Papers to the Front in a
+Move to Help the Police.”
+
+But, whisht! The voice of Danny, the head bartender, through the crack
+of the door: “Here’s a nip for ye, Mike, ould man.”
+
+Behind the widespread, amicable columns of the press Policeman O’Brine
+receives swiftly his nip of the real stuff. He moves away, stalwart,
+refreshed, fortified, to his duties. Might not the editor man view with
+pride the early, the spiritual, the literal fruit that had blessed his
+labours.
+
+Policeman O’Brine folded the paper and poked it playfully under the arm
+of a small boy that was passing. That boy was named Johnny, and he took
+the paper home with him. His sister was named Gladys, and she had
+written to the beauty editor of the paper asking for the practicable
+touchstone of beauty. That was weeks ago, and she had ceased to look
+for an answer. Gladys was a pale girl, with dull eyes and a
+discontented expression. She was dressing to go up to the avenue to get
+some braid. Beneath her skirt she pinned two leaves of the paper Johnny
+had brought. When she walked the rustling sound was an exact imitation
+of the real thing.
+
+On the street she met the Brown girl from the flat below and stopped to
+talk. The Brown girl turned green. Only silk at $5 a yard could make
+the sound that she heard when Gladys moved. The Brown girl, consumed by
+jealousy, said something spiteful and went her way, with pinched lips.
+
+Gladys proceeded toward the avenue. Her eyes now sparkled like
+jagerfonteins. A rosy bloom visited her cheeks; a triumphant, subtle,
+vivifying, smile transfigured her face. She was beautiful. Could the
+beauty editor have seen her then! There was something in her answer in
+the paper, I believe, about cultivating kind feelings toward others in
+order to make plain features attractive.
+
+The labour leader against whom the paper’s solemn and weighty editorial
+injunction was laid was the father of Gladys and Johnny. He picked up
+the remains of the journal from which Gladys had ravished a cosmetic of
+silken sounds. The editorial did not come under his eye, but instead it
+was greeted by one of those ingenious and specious puzzle problems that
+enthrall alike the simpleton and the sage.
+
+The labour leader tore off half of the page, provided himself with
+table, pencil and paper and glued himself to his puzzle.
+
+Three hours later, after waiting vainly for him at the appointed place,
+other more conservative leaders declared and ruled in favour of
+arbitration, and the strike with its attendant dangers was averted.
+Subsequent editions of the paper referred, in coloured inks, to the
+clarion tone of its successful denunciation of the labour leader’s
+intended designs.
+
+The remaining leaves of the active journal also went loyally to the
+proving of its potency.
+
+When Johnny returned from school he sought a secluded spot and removed
+the missing columns from the inside of his clothing, where they had
+been artfully distributed so as to successfully defend such areas as
+are generally attacked during scholastic castigations. Johnny attended
+a private school and had had trouble with his teacher. As has been
+said, there was an excellent editorial against corporal punishment in
+that morning’s issue, and no doubt it had its effect.
+
+After this can any one doubt the power of the press?
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+TOMMY’S BURGLAR
+
+
+At ten o’clock P. M. Felicia, the maid, left by the basement door with
+the policeman to get a raspberry phosphate around the corner. She
+detested the policeman and objected earnestly to the arrangement. She
+pointed out, not unreasonably, that she might have been allowed to fall
+asleep over one of St. George Rathbone’s novels on the third floor, but
+she was overruled. Raspberries and cops were not created for nothing.
+
+The burglar got into the house without much difficulty; because we must
+have action and not too much description in a 2,000-word story.
+
+In the dining room he opened the slide of his dark lantern. With a
+brace and centrebit he began to bore into the lock of the
+silver-closet.
+
+Suddenly a click was heard. The room was flooded with electric light.
+The dark velvet portières parted to admit a fair-haired boy of eight in
+pink pajamas, bearing a bottle of olive oil in his hand.
+
+“Are you a burglar?” he asked, in a sweet, childish voice.
+
+“Listen to that,” exclaimed the man, in a hoarse voice. “Am I a
+burglar? Wot do you suppose I have a three-days’ growth of bristly
+beard on my face for, and a cap with flaps? Give me the oil, quick, and
+let me grease the bit, so I won’t wake up your mamma, who is lying down
+with a headache, and left you in charge of Felicia who has been
+faithless to her trust.”
+
+“Oh, dear,” said Tommy, with a sigh. “I thought you would be more
+up-to-date. This oil is for the salad when I bring lunch from the
+pantry for you. And mamma and papa have gone to the Metropolitan to
+hear De Reszke. But that isn’t my fault. It only shows how long the
+story has been knocking around among the editors. If the author had
+been wise he’d have changed it to Caruso in the proofs.”
+
+“Be quiet,” hissed the burglar, under his breath. “If you raise an
+alarm I’ll wring your neck like a rabbit’s.”
+
+“Like a chicken’s,” corrected Tommy. “You had that wrong. You don’t
+wring rabbits’ necks.”
+
+“Aren’t you afraid of me?” asked the burglar.
+
+“You know I’m not,” answered Tommy. “Don’t you suppose I know fact from
+fiction. If this wasn’t a story I’d yell like an Indian when I saw you;
+and you’d probably tumble downstairs and get pinched on the sidewalk.”
+
+“I see,” said the burglar, “that you’re on to your job. Go on with the
+performance.”
+
+Tommy seated himself in an armchair and drew his toes up under him.
+
+“Why do you go around robbing strangers, Mr. Burglar? Have you no
+friends?”
+
+“I see what you’re driving at,” said the burglar, with a dark frown.
+“It’s the same old story. Your innocence and childish insouciance is
+going to lead me back into an honest life. Every time I crack a crib
+where there’s a kid around, it happens.”
+
+“Would you mind gazing with wolfish eyes at the plate of cold beef that
+the butler has left on the dining table?” said Tommy. “I’m afraid it’s
+growing late.”
+
+The burglar accommodated.
+
+“Poor man,” said Tommy. “You must be hungry. If you will please stand
+in a listless attitude I will get you something to eat.”
+
+The boy brought a roast chicken, a jar of marmalade and a bottle of
+wine from the pantry. The burglar seized a knife and fork sullenly.
+
+“It’s only been an hour,” he grumbled, “since I had a lobster and a
+pint of musty ale up on Broadway. I wish these story writers would let
+a fellow have a pepsin tablet, anyhow, between feeds.”
+
+“My papa writes books,” remarked Tommy.
+
+The burglar jumped to his feet quickly.
+
+“You said he had gone to the opera,” he hissed, hoarsely and with
+immediate suspicion.
+
+“I ought to have explained,” said Tommy. “He didn’t buy the tickets.”
+The burglar sat again and toyed with the wishbone.
+
+“Why do you burgle houses?” asked the boy, wonderingly.
+
+“Because,” replied the burglar, with a sudden flow of tears. “God bless
+my little brown-haired boy Bessie at home.”
+
+“Ah,” said Tommy, wrinkling his nose, “you got that answer in the wrong
+place. You want to tell your hard-luck story before you pull out the
+child stop.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said the burglar, “I forgot. Well, once I lived in
+Milwaukee, and—”
+
+“Take the silver,” said Tommy, rising from his chair.
+
+“Hold on,” said the burglar. “But I moved away.” I could find no other
+employment. For a while I managed to support my wife and child by
+passing confederate money; but, alas! I was forced to give that up
+because it did not belong to the union. I became desperate and a
+burglar.”
+
+“Have you ever fallen into the hands of the police?” asked Tommy.
+
+“I said ‘burglar,’ not ‘beggar,’” answered the cracksman.
+
+“After you finish your lunch,” said Tommy, “and experience the usual
+change of heart, how shall we wind up the story?”
+
+“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—”
+
+“Say,” said Tommy, “haven’t you got that wrong?”
+
+“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—”
+
+“Not in surprise?” interrupted Tommy, with wide, open eyes.
+
+“He starts back in the doorway,” continued the burglar. And then he
+rose to his feet and began to shout “Rah, rah, rah! rah, rah, rah! rah,
+rah, rah!”
+
+“Well,” said Tommy, wonderingly, “that’s, the first time I ever knew a
+burglar to give a college yell when he was burglarizing a house, even
+in a story.”
+
+“That’s one on you,” said the burglar, with a laugh. “I was practising
+the dramatization. If this is put on the stage that college touch is
+about the only thing that will make it go.”
+
+Tommy looked his admiration.
+
+“You’re on, all right,” he said.
+
+“And there’s another mistake you’ve made,” said the burglar. “You
+should have gone some time ago and brought me the $9 gold piece your
+mother gave you on your birthday to take to Bessie.”
+
+“But she didn’t give it to me to take to Bessie,” said Tommy, pouting.
+
+“Come, come!” said the burglar, sternly. “It’s not nice of you to take
+advantage because the story contains an ambiguous sentence. You know
+what I mean. It’s mighty little I get out of these fictional jobs,
+anyhow. I lose all the loot, and I have to reform every time; and all
+the swag I’m allowed is the blamed little fol-de-rols and luck-pieces
+that you kids hand over. Why, in one story, all I got was a kiss from a
+little girl who came in on me when I was opening a safe. And it tasted
+of molasses candy, too. I’ve a good notion to tie this table cover over
+your head and keep on into the silver-closet.”
+
+“Oh, no, you haven’t,” said Tommy, wrapping his arms around his knees.
+“Because if you did no editor would buy the story. You know you’ve got
+to preserve the unities.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“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?”
+
+The burglar wiped his hands on the tablecloth and arose with a yawn.
+
+“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.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“Well, I suppose I must be clearing out now,” said the burglar, taking
+up his lantern and bracebit.
+
+“You have to take the rest of this chicken and the bottle of wine with
+you for Bessie and her mother,” said Tommy, calmly.
+
+“But confound it,” exclaimed the burglar, in an annoyed tone, “they
+don’t want it. I’ve got five cases of Château de Beychsvelle at home
+that was bottled in 1853. That claret of yours is corked. And you
+couldn’t get either of them to look at a chicken unless it was stewed
+in champagne. You know, after I get out of the story I don’t have so
+many limitations. I make a turn now and then.”
+
+“Yes, but you must take them,” said Tommy, loading his arms with the
+bundles.
+
+“Bless you, young master!” recited the burglar, obedient. “Second-Story
+Saul will never forget you. And now hurry and let me out, kid. Our
+2,000 words must be nearly up.”
+
+Tommy led the way through the hall toward the front door. Suddenly the
+burglar stopped and called to him softly: “Ain’t there a cop out there
+in front somewhere sparking the girl?”
+
+“Yes,” said Tommy, “but what—”
+
+“I’m afraid he’ll catch me,” said the burglar. “You mustn’t forget that
+this is fiction.”
+
+“Great head!” said Tommy, turning. “Come out by the back door.”
+
+
+
+
+XX
+A CHAPARRAL CHRISTMAS GIFT
+
+
+The original cause of the trouble was about twenty years in growing.
+
+At the end of that time it was worth it.
+
+Had you lived anywhere within fifty miles of Sundown Ranch you would
+have heard of it. It possessed a quantity of jet-black hair, a pair of
+extremely frank, deep-brown eyes and a laugh that rippled across the
+prairie like the sound of a hidden brook. The name of it was Rosita
+McMullen; and she was the daughter of old man McMullen of the Sundown
+Sheep Ranch.
+
+There came riding on red roan steeds—or, to be more explicit, on a
+paint and a flea-bitten sorrel—two wooers. One was Madison Lane, and
+the other was the Frio Kid. But at that time they did not call him the
+Frio Kid, for he had not earned the honours of special nomenclature.
+His name was simply Johnny McRoy.
+
+It must not be supposed that these two were the sum of the agreeable
+Rosita’s admirers. The bronchos of a dozen others champed their bits at
+the long hitching rack of the Sundown Ranch. Many were the sheeps’-eyes
+that were cast in those savannas that did not belong to the flocks of
+Dan McMullen. But of all the cavaliers, Madison Lane and Johnny McRoy
+galloped far ahead, wherefore they are to be chronicled.
+
+Madison Lane, a young cattleman from the Nueces country, won the race.
+He and Rosita were married one Christmas day. Armed, hilarious,
+vociferous, magnanimous, the cowmen and the sheepmen, laying aside
+their hereditary hatred, joined forces to celebrate the occasion.
+
+Sundown Ranch was sonorous with the cracking of jokes and sixshooters,
+the shine of buckles and bright eyes, the outspoken congratulations of
+the herders of kine.
+
+But while the wedding feast was at its liveliest there descended upon
+it Johnny McRoy, bitten by jealousy, like one possessed.
+
+“I’ll give you a Christmas present,” he yelled, shrilly, at the door,
+with his .45 in his hand. Even then he had some reputation as an
+offhand shot.
+
+His first bullet cut a neat underbit in Madison Lane’s right ear. The
+barrel of his gun moved an inch. The next shot would have been the
+bride’s had not Carson, a sheepman, possessed a mind with triggers
+somewhat well oiled and in repair. The guns of the wedding party had
+been hung, in their belts, upon nails in the wall when they sat at
+table, as a concession to good taste. But Carson, with great
+promptness, hurled his plate of roast venison and frijoles at McRoy,
+spoiling his aim. The second bullet, then, only shattered the white
+petals of a Spanish dagger flower suspended two feet above Rosita’s
+head.
+
+The guests spurned their chairs and jumped for their weapons. It was
+considered an improper act to shoot the bride and groom at a wedding.
+In about six seconds there were twenty or so bullets due to be whizzing
+in the direction of Mr. McRoy.
+
+“I’ll shoot better next time,” yelled Johnny; “and there’ll be a next
+time.” He backed rapidly out the door.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“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?”
+
+“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 Mr.
+Kid? You plumb make me tired, Kid, with such remarks.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“There’s other ways of committing suicide,” advised Mexican. “Why don’t
+you go and surrender to the sheriff?”
+
+“I’ll get him,” said the Kid.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+At nightfall Madison Lane called aside Jim Belcher and three other
+cowboys employed on his ranch.
+
+“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.”
+
+The guests had arrived in buckboards and on horseback, and were making
+themselves comfortable inside.
+
+The evening went along pleasantly. The guests enjoyed and praised
+Rosita’s excellent supper, and afterward the men scattered in groups
+about the rooms or on the broad “gallery,” smoking and chatting.
+
+The Christmas tree, of course, delighted the youngsters, and above all
+were they pleased when Santa Claus himself in magnificent white beard
+and furs appeared and began to distribute the toys.
+
+“It’s my papa,” announced Billy Sampson, aged six. “I’ve seen him wear
+’em before.”
+
+Berkly, a sheepman, an old friend of Lane, stopped Rosita as she was
+passing by him on the gallery, where he was sitting smoking.
+
+“Well, Mrs. Lane,” said he, “I suppose by this Christmas you’ve gotten
+over being afraid of that fellow McRoy, haven’t you? Madison and I have
+talked about it, you know.”
+
+“Very nearly,” said Rosita, smiling, “but I am still nervous sometimes.
+I shall never forget that awful time when he came so near to killing
+us.”
+
+“He’s the most cold-hearted villain in the world,” said Berkly. “The
+citizens all along the border ought to turn out and hunt him down like
+a wolf.”
+
+“He has committed awful crimes,” said Rosita, “but—I—don’t—know. I
+think there is a spot of good somewhere in everybody. He was not always
+bad—that I know.”
+
+Rosita turned into the hallway between the rooms. Santa Claus, in
+muffling whiskers and furs, was just coming through.
+
+“I heard what you said through the window, Mrs. Lane,” he said. “I was
+just going down in my pocket for a Christmas present for your husband.
+But I’ve left one for you, instead. It’s in the room to your right.”
+
+“Oh, thank you, kind Santa Claus,” said Rosita, brightly.
+
+Rosita went into the room, while Santa Claus stepped into the cooler
+air of the yard.
+
+She found no one in the room but Madison.
+
+“Where is my present that Santa said he left for me in here?” she
+asked.
+
+“Haven’t seen anything in the way of a present,” said her husband,
+laughing, “unless he could have meant me.”
+
+The next day Gabriel Radd, the foreman of the X O Ranch, dropped into
+the post-office at Loma Alta.
+
+“Well, the Frio Kid’s got his dose of lead at last,” he remarked to the
+postmaster.
+
+“That so? How’d it happen?”
+
+“One of old Sanchez’s Mexican sheep herders did it!—think of it! the
+Frio Kid killed by a sheep herder! The Greaser saw him riding along
+past his camp about twelve o’clock last night, and was so skeered that
+he up with a Winchester and let him have it. Funniest part of it was
+that the Kid was dressed all up with white Angora-skin whiskers and a
+regular Santy Claus rig-out from head to foot. Think of the Frio Kid
+playing Santy!”
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+A LITTLE LOCAL COLOUR
+
+
+I mentioned to Rivington that I was in search of characteristic New
+York scenes and incidents—something typical, I told him, without
+necessarily having to spell the first syllable with an “i.”
+
+“Oh, for your writing business,” said Rivington; “you couldn’t have
+applied to a better shop. What I don’t know about little old New York
+wouldn’t make a sonnet to a sunbonnet. I’ll put you right in the middle
+of so much local colour that you won’t know whether you are a magazine
+cover or in the erysipelas ward. When do you want to begin?”
+
+Rivington is a young-man-about-town and a New Yorker by birth,
+preference and incommutability.
+
+I told him that I would be glad to accept his escort and guardianship
+so that I might take notes of Manhattan’s grand, gloomy and peculiar
+idiosyncrasies, and that the time of so doing would be at his own
+convenience.
+
+“We’ll begin this very evening,” said Rivington, himself interested,
+like a good fellow. “Dine with me at seven, and then I’ll steer you up
+against metropolitan phases so thick you’ll have to have a kinetoscope
+to record ’em.”
+
+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.
+
+As we came out of the club there stood two men on the sidewalk near the
+steps in earnest conversation.
+
+“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?”
+
+“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!”
+
+I stopped a few yards away and took out my little notebook.
+
+“Oh, come ahead,” said Rivington, somewhat nervously; “you don’t want
+to listen to that.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“If I follow you,” said the man who had spoken first, “you do not
+believe it possible to reorganize society on the basis of common
+interest?”
+
+“Shinny on your own side!” said the man with glasses. “You never heard
+any such music from my foghorn. What I said was that I did not believe
+it practicable just now. The guys with wads are not in the frame of
+mind to slack up on the mazuma, and the man with the portable tin
+banqueting canister isn’t exactly ready to join the Bible class. You
+can bet your variegated socks that the situation is all spifflicated up
+from the Battery to breakfast! What the country needs is for some bully
+old bloke like Cobden or some wise guy like old Ben Franklin to sashay
+up to the front and biff the nigger’s head with the baseball. Do you
+catch my smoke? What?”
+
+Rivington pulled me by the arm impatiently.
+
+“Please come on,” he said. “Let’s go see something. This isn’t what you
+want.”
+
+“Indeed, it is,” I said resisting. “This tough talk is the very stuff
+that counts. There is a picturesqueness about the speech of the lower
+order of people that is quite unique. Did you say that this is the
+Bowery variety of slang?”
+
+“Oh, well,” said Rivington, giving it up, “I’ll tell you straight.
+That’s one of our college professors talking. He ran down for a day or
+two at the club. It’s a sort of fad with him lately to use slang in his
+conversation. He thinks it improves language. The man he is talking to
+is one of New York’s famous social economists. Now will you come on.
+You can’t use that, you know.”
+
+“No,” I agreed; “I can’t use that. Would you call that typical of New
+York?”
+
+“Of course not,” said Rivington, with a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you
+see the difference. But if you want to hear the real old tough Bowery
+slang I’ll take you down where you’ll get your fill of it.”
+
+“I would like it,” I said; “that is, if it’s the real thing. I’ve often
+read it in books, but I never heard it. Do you think it will be
+dangerous to go unprotected among those characters?”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Rivington; “not at this time of night. To tell the
+truth, I haven’t been along the Bowery in a long time, but I know it as
+well as I do Broadway. We’ll look up some of the typical Bowery boys
+and get them to talk. It’ll be worth your while. They talk a peculiar
+dialect that you won’t hear anywhere else on earth.”
+
+Rivington and I went east in a Forty-second street car and then south
+on the Third avenue line.
+
+At Houston street we got off and walked.
+
+“We are now on the famous Bowery,” said Rivington; “the Bowery
+celebrated in song and story.”
+
+We passed block after block of “gents’” furnishing stores—the windows
+full of shirts with prices attached and cuffs inside. In other windows
+were neckties and no shirts. People walked up and down the sidewalks.
+
+“In some ways,” said I, “this reminds me of Kokomono, Ind., during the
+peach-crating season.”
+
+Rivington was nettled.
+
+“Step into one of these saloons or vaudeville shows,” said he, “with a
+large roll of money, and see how quickly the Bowery will sustain its
+reputation.”
+
+“You make impossible conditions,” said I, coldly.
+
+By and by Rivington stopped and said we were in the heart of the
+Bowery. There was a policeman on the corner whom Rivington knew.
+
+“Hallo, Donahue!” said my guide. “How goes it? My friend and I are down
+this way looking up a bit of local colour. He’s anxious to meet one of
+the Bowery types. Can’t you put us on to something genuine in that
+line—something that’s got the colour, you know?”
+
+Policeman Donahue turned himself about ponderously, his florid face
+full of good-nature. He pointed with his club down the street.
+
+“Sure!” he said huskily. “Here comes a lad now that was born on the
+Bowery and knows every inch of it. If he’s ever been above Bleecker
+street he’s kept it to himself.”
+
+A man about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, with a smooth face, was
+sauntering toward us with his hands in his coat pockets. Policeman
+Donahue stopped him with a courteous wave of his club.
+
+“Evening, Kerry,” he said. “Here’s a couple of gents, friends of mine,
+that want to hear you spiel something about the Bowery. Can you reel
+’em off a few yards?”
+
+“Certainly, Donahue,” said the young man, pleasantly. “Good evening,
+gentlemen,” he said to us, with a pleasant smile. Donahue walked off on
+his beat.
+
+“This is the goods,” whispered Rivington, nudging me with his elbow.
+“Look at his jaw!”
+
+“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?”
+
+I could not help admiring Rivington’s power of adapting himself to his
+surroundings.
+
+“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.”
+
+Rivington seemed ill at ease.
+
+“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?”
+
+“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.
+
+“But perhaps I am wandering from the question. In what way can I assist
+you, gentlemen? I beg you will believe that the hospitality of the
+street is extended to all. There are, I regret to say, many catchpenny
+places of entertainment, but I cannot conceive that they would entice
+you.”
+
+I felt Rivington lean somewhat heavily against me.
+
+“Say!” he remarked, with uncertain utterance; “come and have a drink
+with us.”
+
+“Thank you, but I never drink. I find that alcohol, even in the
+smallest quantities, alters the perspective. And I must preserve my
+perspective, for I am studying the Bowery. I have lived in it nearly
+thirty years, and I am just beginning to understand its heartbeats. It
+is like a great river fed by a hundred alien streams. Each influx
+brings strange seeds on its flood, strange silt and weeds, and now and
+then a flower of rare promise. To construe this river requires a man
+who can build dykes against the overflow, who is a naturalist, a
+geologist, a humanitarian, a diver and a strong swimmer. I love my
+Bowery. It was my cradle and is my inspiration. I have published one
+book. The critics have been kind. I put my heart in it. I am writing
+another, into which I hope to put both heart and brain. Consider me
+your guide, gentlemen. Is there anything I can take you to see, any
+place to which I can conduct you?”
+
+I was afraid to look at Rivington except with one eye.
+
+“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.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“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!”
+
+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.
+
+“Well, anyhow,” said he, braced and recovered, “it couldn’t have
+happened anywhere but in little old New York.”
+
+Which to say the least, was typical of Rivington.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+GEORGIA’S RULING
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+One day, while she was lying with the fever burning brightly in her
+checks, she said suddenly:
+
+“Papa, I wish I could do something good for a whole lot of children!”
+
+“What would you like to do, dear?” asked the Commissioner. “Give them a
+party?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t mean those kind. I mean poor children who haven’t homes,
+and aren’t loved and cared for as I am. I tell you what, papa!”
+
+“What, my own child?”
+
+“If I shouldn’t get well, I’ll leave them you—not _give_ you, but just
+lend you, for you must come to mamma and me when you die too. If you
+can find time, wouldn’t you do something to help them, if I ask you,
+papa?”
+
+“Hush, hush dear, dear child,” said the Commissioner, holding her hot
+little hand against his cheek; “you’ll get well real soon, and you and
+I will see what we can do for them together.”
+
+But in whatsoever paths of benevolence, thus vaguely premeditated, the
+Commissioner might tread, he was not to have the company of his
+beloved. That night the little frail body grew suddenly too tired to
+struggle further, and Georgia’s exit was made from the great stage when
+she had scarcely begun to speak her little piece before the footlights.
+But there must be a stage manager who understands. She had given the
+cue to the one who was to speak after her.
+
+A week after she was laid away, the Commissioner reappeared at the
+office, a little more courteous, a little paler and sterner, with the
+black frock-coat hanging a little more loosely from his tall figure.
+
+His desk was piled with work that had accumulated during the four
+heartbreaking weeks of his absence. His chief clerk had done what he
+could, but there were questions of law, of fine judicial decisions to
+be made concerning the issue of patents, the marketing and leasing of
+school lands, the classification into grazing, agricultural, watered,
+and timbered, of new tracts to be opened to settlers.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. Mr. 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+It was in consequence of these conditions that Hamlin 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.
+
+One sweltering day in July the Commissioner called for the papers in
+connection with this new location. They were brought, and heaped, a
+foot deep, upon his desk—field notes, statements, sketches, affidavits,
+connecting lines—documents of every description that shrewdness and
+money could call to the aid of Hamlin and Avery.
+
+The firm was pressing the Commissioner to issue a patent upon their
+location. They possesed inside information concerning a new railroad
+that would probably pass somewhere near this land.
+
+The General Land Office was very still while the Commissioner was
+delving into the heart of the mass of evidence. The pigeons could be
+heard on the roof of the old, castle-like building, cooing and
+fretting. The clerks were droning everywhere, scarcely pretending to
+earn their salaries. Each little sound echoed hollow and loud from the
+bare, stone-flagged floors, the plastered walls, and the iron-joisted
+ceiling. The impalpable, perpetual limestone dust that never settled,
+whitened a long streamer of sunlight that pierced the tattered
+window-awning.
+
+It seemed that Hamlin and Avery had builded well. The Denny survey was
+carelessly made, even for a careless period. Its beginning corner was
+identical with that of a well-defined old Spanish grant, but its other
+calls were sinfully vague. The field notes contained no other object
+that survived—no tree, no natural object save Chiquito River, and it
+was a mile wrong there. According to precedent, the Office would be
+justified in giving it its complement by course and distance, and
+considering the remainder vacant instead of a mere excess.
+
+The Actual Settler was besieging the office with wild protests _in re_.
+Having the nose of a pointer and the eye of a hawk for the land-shark,
+he had observed his myrmidons running the lines upon his ground. Making
+inquiries, he learned that the spoiler had attacked his home, and he
+left the plough in the furrow and took his pen in hand.
+
+One of the protests the Commissioner read twice. It was from a woman, a
+widow, the granddaughter of Elias Denny himself. She told how her
+grandfather had sold most of the survey years before at a trivial
+price—land that was now a principality in extent and value. Her mother
+had also sold a part, and she herself had succeeded to this western
+portion, along Chiquito River. Much of it she had been forced to part
+with in order to live, and now she owned only about three hundred
+acres, on which she had her home. Her letter wound up rather
+pathetically:
+
+“I’ve got eight children, the oldest fifteen years. I work all day and
+half the night to till what little land I can and keep us in clothes
+and books. I teach my children too. My neighbours is all poor and has
+big families. The drought kills the crops every two or three years and
+then we has hard times to get enough to eat. There is ten families on
+this land what the land-sharks is trying to rob us of, and all of them
+got titles from me. I sold to them cheap, and they aint paid out yet,
+but part of them is, and if their land should be took from them I would
+die. My grandfather was an honest man, and he helped to build up this
+state, and he taught his children to be honest, and how could I make it
+up to them who bought from me? Mr. Commissioner, if you let them
+land-sharks take the roof from over my children and the little from
+them as they has to live on, whoever again calls this state great or
+its government just will have a lie in their mouths”
+
+The Commissioner laid this letter aside with a sigh. Many, many such
+letters he had received. He had never been hurt by them, nor had he
+ever felt that they appealed to him personally. He was but the state’s
+servant, and must follow its laws. And yet, somehow, this reflection
+did not always eliminate a certain responsible feeling that hung upon
+him. Of all the state’s officers he was supremest in his department,
+not even excepting the Governor. Broad, general land laws he followed,
+it was true, but he had a wide latitude in particular ramifications.
+Rather than law, what he followed was Rulings: Office Rulings and
+precedents. In the complicated and new questions that were being
+engendered by the state’s development the Commissioner’s ruling was
+rarely appealed from. Even the courts sustained it when its equity was
+apparent.
+
+The Commissioner stepped to the door and spoke to a clerk in the other
+room—spoke as he always did, as if he were addressing a prince of the
+blood:
+
+“Mr. Weldon, will you be kind enough to ask Mr. Ashe, the state
+school-land appraiser, to please come to my office as soon as
+convenient?”
+
+Ashe came quickly from the big table where he was arranging his
+reports.
+
+“Mr. Ashe,” said the Commissioner, “you worked along the Chiquito
+River, in Salado County, during your last trip, I believe. Do you
+remember anything of the Elias Denny three-league survey?”
+
+“Yes, sir, I do,” the blunt, breezy, surveyor answered. “I crossed it
+on my way to Block H, on the north side of it. The road runs with the
+Chiquito River, along the valley. The Denny survey fronts three miles
+on the Chiquito.”
+
+“It is claimed,” continued the commissioner, “that it fails to reach
+the river by as much as a mile.”
+
+The appraiser shrugged his shoulder. He was by birth and instinct an
+Actual Settler, and the natural foe of the land-shark.
+
+“It has always been considered to extend to the river,” he said, dryly.
+
+“But that is not the point I desired to discuss,” said the
+Commissioner. “What kind of country is this valley portion of (let us
+say, then) the Denny tract?”
+
+The spirit of the Actual Settler beamed in Ashe’s face.
+
+“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.”
+
+“They raise flocks?” inquired the Commissioner.
+
+“Ho, ho! I mean two-legged kids,” laughed the surveyor; “two-legged,
+and bare-legged, and tow-headed.”
+
+“Children! oh, children!” mused the Commissioner, as though a new view
+had opened to him; “they raise children!
+
+“It’s a lonesome country, Commissioner,” said the surveyor. “Can you
+blame ’em?”
+
+“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, Mr. Ashe, I conjecture, to
+believe that a portion of them have brown, or even black, hair.”
+
+“Brown and black, sure,” said Ashe; “also red.”
+
+“No doubt,” said the Commissioner. “Well, I thank you for your courtesy
+in informing me, Mr. Ashe. I will not detain you any longer from your
+duties.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+But the Commissioner knew why they were there. He had half promised to
+render a decision that day upon their location.
+
+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.
+
+“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.”
+
+“I will see it,” said the Commissioner. A few moments later he went to
+the draughtsmen’s room.
+
+As he entered he saw five or six of the draughtsmen grouped about
+Kampfer’s desk, gargling away at each other in pectoral German, and
+gazing at something thereupon. At the Commissioner’s approach they
+scattered to their several places. Kampfer, a wizened little German,
+with long, frizzled ringlets and a watery eye, began to stammer forth
+some sort of an apology, the Commissioner thought, for the congregation
+of his fellows about his desk.
+
+“Never mind,” said the Commissioner, “I wish to see the map you are
+making”; and, passing around the old German, seated himself upon the
+high draughtsman’s stool. Kampfer continued to break English in trying
+to explain.
+
+“Herr Gommissioner, I assure you blenty sat I haf not it
+bremeditated—sat it wass—sat it itself make. Look you! from se field
+notes wass it blatted—blease to observe se calls: South, 10 degrees
+west 1,050 varas; south, 10 degrees east 300 varas; south, 100; south,
+9 west, 200; south, 40 degrees west 400—and so on. Herr Gommissioner,
+nefer would I have—”
+
+The Commissioner raised one white hand, silently, Kampfer dropped his
+pipe and fled.
+
+With a hand at each side of his face, and his elbows resting upon the
+desk, the Commissioner sat staring at the map which was spread and
+fastened there—staring at the sweet and living profile of little
+Georgia drawn thereupon—at her face, pensive, delicate, and infantile,
+outlined in a perfect likeness.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!”
+
+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.
+
+By and by he spoke suddenly and promptly.
+
+“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.
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+“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.’”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.”
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+BLIND MAN’S HOLIDAY
+
+
+Alas for the man and for the artist with the shifting point of
+perspective! Life shall be a confusion of ways to the one; the
+landscape shall rise up and confound the other. Take the case of
+Lorison. At one time he appeared to himself to be the feeblest of
+fools; at another he conceived that he followed ideals so fine that the
+world was not yet ready to accept them. During one mood he cursed his
+folly; possessed by the other, he bore himself with a serene grandeur
+akin to greatness: in neither did he attain the perspective.
+
+Generations before, the name had been “Larsen.” His race had bequeathed
+him its fine-strung, melancholy temperament, its saving balance of
+thrift and industry.
+
+From his point of perspective he saw himself an outcast from society,
+forever to be a shady skulker along the ragged edge of respectability;
+a denizen _des trois-quarts de monde_, that pathetic spheroid lying
+between the _haut_ and the _demi_, whose inhabitants envy each of their
+neighbours, and are scorned by both. He was self-condemned to this
+opinion, as he was self-exiled, through it, to this quaint Southern
+city a thousand miles from his former home. Here he had dwelt for
+longer than a year, knowing but few, keeping in a subjective world of
+shadows which was invaded at times by the perplexing bulks of jarring
+realities. Then he fell in love with a girl whom he met in a cheap
+restaurant, and his story begins.
+
+The Rue Chartres, in New Orleans, is a street of ghosts. It lies in the
+quarter where the Frenchman, in his prime, set up his translated pride
+and glory; where, also, the arrogant don had swaggered, and dreamed of
+gold and grants and ladies’ gloves. Every flagstone has its grooves
+worn by footsteps going royally to the wooing and the fighting. Every
+house has a princely heartbreak; each doorway its untold tale of
+gallant promise and slow decay.
+
+By night the Rue Chartres is now but a murky fissure, from which the
+groping wayfarer sees, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of
+Moorish iron balconies. The old houses of monsieur stand yet,
+indomitable against the century, but their essence is gone. The street
+is one of ghosts to whosoever can see them.
+
+A faint heartbeat of the street’s ancient glory still survives in a
+corner occupied by the Café Carabine d’Or. Once men gathered there to
+plot against kings, and to warn presidents. They do so yet, but they
+are not the same kind of men. A brass button will scatter these; those
+would have set their faces against an army. Above the door hangs the
+sign board, upon which has been depicted a vast animal of unfamiliar
+species. In the act of firing upon this monster is represented an
+unobtrusive human levelling an obtrusive gun, once the colour of bright
+gold. Now the legend above the picture is faded beyond conjecture; the
+gun’s relation to the title is a matter of faith; the menaced animal,
+wearied of the long aim of the hunter, has resolved itself into a
+shapeless blot.
+
+The place is known as “Antonio’s,” as the name, white upon the red-lit
+transparency, and gilt upon the windows, attests. There is a promise in
+“Antonio”; a justifiable expectancy of savoury things in oil and pepper
+and wine, and perhaps an angel’s whisper of garlic. But the rest of the
+name is “O’Riley.” Antonio O’Riley!
+
+The Carabine d’Or is an ignominious ghost of the Rue Chartres. The café
+where Bienville and Conti dined, where a prince has broken bread, is
+become a “family ristaurant.”
+
+Its customers are working men and women, almost to a unit. Occasionally
+you will see chorus girls from the cheaper theatres, and men who follow
+avocations subject to quick vicissitudes; but at Antonio’s—name rich in
+Bohemian promise, but tame in fulfillment—manners debonair and gay are
+toned down to the “family” standard. Should you light a cigarette, mine
+host will touch you on the “arrum” and remind you that the proprieties
+are menaced. “Antonio” entices and beguiles from fiery legend without,
+but “O’Riley” teaches decorum within.
+
+It was at this restaurant that Lorison first saw the girl. A flashy
+fellow with a predatory eye had followed her in, and had advanced to
+take the other chair at the little table where she stopped, but Lorison
+slipped into the seat before him. Their acquaintance began, and grew,
+and now for two months they had sat at the same table each evening, not
+meeting by appointment, but as if by a series of fortuitous and happy
+accidents. After dining, they would take a walk together in one of the
+little city parks, or among the panoramic markets where exhibits a
+continuous vaudeville of sights and sounds. Always at eight o’clock
+their steps led them to a certain street corner, where she prettily but
+firmly bade him good night and left him. “I do not live far from here,”
+she frequently said, “and you must let me go the rest of the way
+alone.”
+
+But now Lorison had discovered that he wanted to go the rest of the way
+with her, or happiness would depart, leaving, him on a very lonely
+corner of life. And at the same time that he made the discovery, the
+secret of his banishment from the society of the good laid its finger
+in his face and told him it must not be.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 he 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.”
+
+Thence he plunged into the story of his abdication from society. The
+story, pruned of his moral philosophy, deserves no more than the
+slightest touch. It is no new tale, that of the gambler’s declension.
+During one night’s sitting he lost, and then had imperilled a certain
+amount of his employer’s money, which, by accident, he carried with
+him. He continued to lose, to the last wager, and then began to gain,
+leaving the game winner to a somewhat formidable sum. The same night
+his employer’s safe was robbed. A search was had; the winnings of
+Lorison were found in his room, their total forming an accusative
+nearness to the sum purloined. He was taken, tried and, through
+incomplete evidence, released, smutched with the sinister _devoirs_ of
+a disagreeing jury.
+
+“It is not in the unjust accusation,” he said to the girl, “that my
+burden lies, but in the knowledge that from the moment I staked the
+first dollar of the firm’s money I was a criminal—no matter whether I
+lost or won. You see why it is impossible for me to speak of love to
+her.”
+
+“It is a sad thing,” said Norah, after a little pause, “to think what
+very good people there are in the world.”
+
+“Good?” said Lorison.
+
+“I was thinking of this superior person whom you say you love. She must
+be a very poor sort of creature.”
+
+“I do not understand.”
+
+“Nearly,” she continued, “as poor a sort of creature as yourself.”
+
+“You do not understand,” said Lorison, removing his hat and sweeping
+back his fine, light hair. “Suppose she loved me in return, and were
+willing to marry me. Think, if you can, what would follow. Never a day
+would pass but she would be reminded of her sacrifice. I would read a
+condescension in her smile, a pity even in her affection, that would
+madden me. No. The thing would stand between us forever. Only equals
+should mate. I could never ask her to come down upon my lower plane.”
+
+An arc light faintly shone upon Lorison’s face. An illumination from
+within also pervaded it. The girl saw the rapt, ascetic look; it was
+the face either of Sir Galahad or Sir Fool.
+
+“Quite starlike,” she said, “is this unapproachable angel. Really too
+high to be grasped.”
+
+“By me, yes.”
+
+She faced him suddenly. “My dear friend, would you prefer your star
+fallen?” Lorison made a wide gesture.
+
+“You push me to the bald fact,” he declared; “you are not in sympathy
+with my argument. But I will answer you so. If I could reach my
+particular star, to drag it down, I would not do it; but if it were
+fallen, I would pick it up, and thank Heaven for the privilege.”
+
+They were silent for some minutes. Norah shivered, and thrust her hands
+deep into the pockets of her jacket. Lorison uttered a remorseful
+exclamation.
+
+“I’m not cold,” she said. “I was just thinking. I ought to tell you
+something. You have selected a strange confidante. But you cannot
+expect a chance acquaintance, picked up in a doubtful restaurant, to be
+an angel.”
+
+“Norah!” cried Lorison.
+
+“Let me go on. You have told me about yourself. We have been such good
+friends. I must tell you now what I never wanted you to know. I
+am—worse than you are. I was on the stage . . . I sang in the chorus .
+. . I was pretty bad, I guess . . . I stole diamonds from the prima
+donna . . . they arrested me . . . I gave most of them up, and they let
+me go . . . I drank wine every night . . . a great deal . . . I was
+very wicked, but—”
+
+Lorison knelt quickly by her side and took her hands.
+
+“Dear Norah!” he said, exultantly. “It is you, it is you I love! You
+never guessed it, did you? ’Tis you I meant all the time. Now I can
+speak. Let me make you forget the past. We have both suffered; let us
+shut out the world, and live for each other. Norah, do you hear me say
+I love you?”
+
+“In spite of—”
+
+“Rather say because of it. You have come out of your past noble and
+good. Your heart is an angel’s. Give it to me.”
+
+“A little while ago you feared the future too much to even speak.”
+
+“But for you; not for myself. Can you love me?”
+
+She cast herself, wildly sobbing, upon his breast.
+
+“Better than life—than truth itself—than everything.”
+
+“And my own past,” said Lorison, with a note of solicitude—“can you
+forgive and—”
+
+“I answered you that,” she whispered, “when I told you I loved you.”
+She leaned away, and looked thoughtfully at him. “If I had not told you
+about myself, would you have—would you—”
+
+“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?”
+
+She wept again.
+
+“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!”
+
+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?”
+
+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.
+
+“The sooner,” said Lorison, “the happier I shall be.”
+
+“What is there to do?” she asked. “What do you have to get? Come! You
+should know.”
+
+Her energy stirred the dreamer to action.
+
+“A city directory first,” he cried, gayly, “to find where the man lives
+who gives licenses to happiness. We will go together and rout him out.
+Cabs, cars, policemen, telephones and ministers shall aid us.”
+
+“Father Rogan shall marry us,” said the girl, with ardour. “I will take
+you to him.”
+
+An hour later the two stood at the open doorway of an immense, gloomy
+brick building in a narrow and lonely street. The license was tight in
+Norah’s hand.
+
+“Wait here a moment,” she said, “till I find Father Rogan.”
+
+She plunged into the black hallway, and the lover was left standing, as
+it were, on one leg, outside. His impatience was not greatly taxed.
+Gazing curiously into what seemed the hallway to Erebus, he was
+presently reassured by a stream of light that bisected the darkness,
+far down the passage. Then he heard her call, and fluttered lampward,
+like the moth. She beckoned him through a doorway into the room whence
+emanated the light. The room was bare of nearly everything except
+books, which had subjugated all its space. Here and there little spots
+of territory had been reconquered. An elderly, bald man, with a
+superlatively calm, remote eye, stood by a table with a book in his
+hand, his finger still marking a page. His dress was sombre and
+appertained to a religious order. His eye denoted an acquaintance with
+the perspective.
+
+“Father Rogan,” said Norah, “this is _he_.”
+
+“The two of ye,” said Father Rogan, “want to get married?”
+
+They did not deny it. He married them. The ceremony was quickly done.
+One who could have witnessed it, and felt its scope, might have
+trembled at the terrible inadequacy of it to rise to the dignity of its
+endless chain of results.
+
+Afterward the priest spake briefly, as if by rote, of certain other
+civil and legal addenda that either might or should, at a later time,
+cap the ceremony. Lorison tendered a fee, which was declined, and
+before the door closed after the departing couple Father Rogan’s book
+popped open again where his finger marked it.
+
+In the dark hall Norah whirled and clung to her companion, tearful.
+
+“Will you never, never be sorry?”
+
+At last she was reassured.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“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.
+
+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.
+
+As soon as he 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.
+
+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.
+
+Strolling along the pacific avenue, he experienced singular,
+supernatural calm, accompanied by an unusual 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.
+
+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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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.
+
+The young woman fixed her unshrinking gaze upon Lorison, and called to
+him in the voice of the wronged heroine in straits:
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+“It’s all right, Sir,” he said, in a husky, confidential tone; “she’s
+the right party. We took her after the first act at the Green Light
+Theatre, on a wire from the chief of police of Chicago. It’s only a
+square or two to the station. Her rig’s pretty bad, but she refused to
+change clothes—or, rather,” added the officer, with a smile, “to put on
+some. I thought I’d explain matters to you so you wouldn’t think she
+was being imposed upon.”
+
+“What is the charge?” asked Lorison.
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+“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.”
+
+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:
+
+“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.
+
+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.
+
+The initial determining influence had been so small a thing as the fact
+and manner of his having been approached by the officer. That agent
+had, by the style of his accost, restored the loiterer to his former
+place in society. In an instant he had been transformed from a somewhat
+rancid prowler along the fishy side streets of gentility into an honest
+gentleman, with whom even so lordly a guardian of the peace might
+agreeably exchange the compliments.
+
+This, then, first broke the spell, and set thrilling in him a
+resurrected longing for the fellowship of his kind, and the rewards of
+the virtuous. To what end, he vehemently asked himself, was this
+fanciful self-accusation, this empty renunciation, this moral
+squeamishness through which he had been led to abandon what was his
+heritage in life, and not beyond his deserts? Technically, he was
+uncondemned; his sole guilty spot was in thought rather than deed, and
+cognizance of it unshared by others. For what good, moral or
+sentimental, did he slink, retreating like the hedgehog from his own
+shadow, to and fro in this musty Bohemia that lacked even the
+picturesque?
+
+But the thing that struck home and set him raging was the part played
+by the Amazonian prisoner. To the counterpart of that astounding
+belligerent—identical at least, in the way of experience—to one, by her
+own confession, thus far fallen, had he, not three hours since, been
+united in marriage. How desirable and natural it had seemed to him
+then, and how monstrous it seemed now! How the words of diamond thief
+number two yet burned in his ears: “If you ever get a girl, she’ll have
+a picnic.” What did that mean but that women instinctively knew him for
+one they could hoodwink? Still again, there reverberated the
+policeman’s sapient contribution to his agony: “A man these days and
+nights wants to know what his women folks are up to.” Oh, yes, he had
+been a fool; he had looked at things from the wrong standpoint.
+
+But the wildest note in all the clamour was struck by pain’s
+forefinger, jealousy. Now, at least, he felt that keenest sting—a
+mounting love unworthily bestowed. Whatever she might be, he loved her;
+he bore in his own breast his doom. A grating, comic flavour to his
+predicament struck him suddenly, and he laughed creakingly as he swung
+down the echoing pavement. An impetuous desire to act, to battle with
+his fate, seized him. He stopped upon his heel, and smote his palms
+together triumphantly. His wife was—where? But there was a tangible
+link; an outlet more or less navigable, through which his derelict ship
+of matrimony might yet be safely towed—the priest!
+
+Like all imaginative men with pliable natures, Lorison was, when
+thoroughly stirred, apt to become tempestuous. With a high and stubborn
+indignation upon him, be retraced his steps to the intersecting street
+by which he had come. Down this he hurried to the corner where he had
+parted with—an astringent grimace tinctured the thought—his wife.
+Thence still back he harked, following through an unfamiliar district
+his stimulated recollections of the way they had come from that
+preposterous wedding. Many times he went abroad, and nosed his way back
+to the trail, furious.
+
+At last, when he reached the dark, calamitous building in which his
+madness had culminated, and found the black hallway, he dashed down it,
+perceiving no light or sound. But he raised his voice, hailing loudly;
+reckless of everything but that he should find the old mischief-maker
+with the eyes that looked too far away to see the disaster he had
+wrought. The door opened, and in the stream of light Father Rogan
+stood, his book in hand, with his finger marking the place.
+
+“Ah!” cried Lorison. “You are the man I want. I had a wife of you a few
+hours ago. I would not trouble you, but I neglected to note how it was
+done. Will you oblige me with the information whether the business is
+beyond remedy?”
+
+“Come inside,” said the priest; “there are other lodgers in the house,
+who might prefer sleep to even a gratified curiosity.”
+
+Lorison entered the room and took the chair offered him. The priest’s
+eyes looked a courteous interrogation.
+
+“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.”
+
+“I am quite a plain man,” said Father Rogan, pleasantly; “but I do not
+see how I am to ask you questions.”
+
+“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?”
+
+“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.”
+
+Lorison laughed harshly.
+
+“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.”
+
+Father Rogan regarded him calmly.
+
+“My son,” he said, “when a man and woman come to me to be married I
+always marry them. I do this for the sake of other people whom they
+might go away and marry if they did not marry each other. As you see, I
+do not seek your confidence; but your case seems to me to be one not
+altogether devoid of interest. Very few marriages that have come to my
+notice have brought such well-expressed regret within so short a time.
+I will hazard one question: were you not under the impression that you
+loved the lady you married, at the time you did so;”
+
+“Loved her!” cried Lorison, wildly. “Never so well as now, though she
+told me she deceived and sinned and stole. Never more than now, when,
+perhaps, she is laughing at the fool she cajoled and left, with
+scarcely a word, to return to God only knows what particular line of
+her former folly.”
+
+Father Rogan answered nothing. During the silence that succeeded, he
+sat with a quiet expectation beaming in his full, lambent eye.
+
+“If you would listen—” began Lorison. The priest held up his hand.
+
+“As I hoped,” he said. “I thought you would trust me. Wait but a
+moment.” He brought a long clay pipe, filled and lighted it.
+
+“Now, my son,” he said.
+
+Lorison poured a twelve month’s accumulated confidence into Father
+Rogan’s ear. He told all; not sparing himself or omitting the facts of
+his past, the events of the night, or his disturbing conjectures and
+fears.
+
+“The main point,” said the priest, when he had concluded, “seems to me
+to be this—are you reasonably sure that you love this woman whom you
+have married?”
+
+“Why,” exclaimed Lorison, rising impulsively to his feet—“why should I
+deny it? But look at me—am I fish, flesh or fowl? That is the main
+point to me, I assure you.”
+
+“I understand you,” said the priest, also rising, and laying down his
+pipe. “The situation is one that has taxed the endurance of much older
+men than you—in fact, especially much older men than you. I will try to
+relieve you from it, and this night. You shall see for yourself into
+exactly what predicament you have fallen, and how you shall, possibly,
+be extricated. There is no evidence so credible as that of the
+eyesight.”
+
+Father Rogan moved about the room, and donned a soft black hat.
+Buttoning his coat to his throat, he laid his hand on the doorknob.
+“Let us walk,” he said.
+
+The two went out upon the street. The priest turned his face down it,
+and Lorison walked with him through a squalid district, where the
+houses loomed, awry and desolate-looking, high above them. Presently
+they turned into a less dismal side street, where the houses were
+smaller, and, though hinting of the most meagre comfort, lacked the
+concentrated wretchedness of the more populous byways.
+
+At a segregated, two-story house Father Rogan halted, and mounted the
+steps with the confidence of a familiar visitor. He ushered Lorison
+into a narrow hallway, faintly lighted by a cobwebbed hanging lamp.
+Almost immediately a door to the right opened and a dingy Irishwoman
+protruded her head.
+
+“Good evening to ye, Mistress Geehan,” said the priest, unconsciously,
+it seemed, falling into a delicately flavoured brogue. “And is it
+yourself can tell me if Norah has gone out again, the night, maybe?”
+
+“Oh, it’s yer blissid riverence! Sure and I can tell ye the same. The
+purty darlin’ wint out, as usual, but a bit later. And she says:
+‘Mother Geehan,’ says she, ‘it’s me last noight out, praise the saints,
+this noight is!’ And, oh, yer riverence, the swate, beautiful drame of
+a dress she had this toime! White satin and silk and ribbons, and lace
+about the neck and arrums—’twas a sin, yer reverence, the gold was
+spint upon it.”
+
+The priest heard Lorison catch his breath painfully, and a faint smile
+flickered across his own clean-cut mouth.
+
+“Well, then, Mistress Geehan,” said he, “I’ll just step upstairs and
+see the bit boy for a minute, and I’ll take this gentleman up with me.”
+
+“He’s awake, thin,” said the woman. “I’ve just come down from sitting
+wid him the last hour, tilling him fine shtories of ould County Tyrone.
+’Tis a greedy gossoon, it is, yer riverence, for me shtories.”
+
+“Small the doubt,” said Father Rogan. “There’s no rocking would put him
+to slape the quicker, I’m thinking.”
+
+Amid the woman’s shrill protest against the retort, the two men
+ascended the steep stairway. The priest pushed open the door of a room
+near its top.
+
+“Is that you already, sister?” drawled a sweet, childish voice from the
+darkness.
+
+“It’s only ould Father Denny come to see ye, darlin’; and a foine
+gentleman I’ve brought to make ye a gr-r-and call. And ye resaves us
+fast aslape in bed! Shame on yez manners!”
+
+“Oh, Father Denny, is that you? I’m glad. And will you light the lamp,
+please? It’s on the table by the door. And quit talking like Mother
+Geehan, Father Denny.”
+
+The priest lit the lamp, and Lorison saw a tiny, towsled-haired boy,
+with a thin, delicate face, sitting up in a small bed in a corner.
+Quickly, also, his rapid glance considered the room and its contents.
+It was furnished with more than comfort, and its adornments plainly
+indicated a woman’s discerning taste. An open door beyond revealed the
+blackness of an adjoining room’s interior.
+
+The boy clutched both of Father Rogan’s hands. “I’m so glad you came,”
+he said; “but why did you come in the night? Did sister send you?”
+
+“Off wid ye! Am I to be sint about, at me age, as was Terence McShane,
+of Ballymahone? I come on me own r-r-responsibility.”
+
+Lorison had also advanced to the boy’s bedside. He was fond of
+children; and the wee fellow, laying himself down to sleep alone in
+that dark room, stirred-his heart.
+
+“Aren’t you afraid, little man?” he asked, stooping down beside him.
+
+“Sometimes,” answered the boy, with a shy smile, “when the rats make
+too much noise. But nearly every night, when sister goes out, Mother
+Geehan stays a while with me, and tells me funny stories. I’m not often
+afraid, sir.”
+
+“This brave little gentleman,” said Father Rogan, “is a scholar of
+mine. Every day from half-past six to half-past eight—when sister comes
+for him—he stops in my study, and we find out what’s in the inside of
+books. He knows multiplication, division and fractions; and he’s
+troubling me to begin wid the chronicles of Ciaran of Clonmacnoise,
+Corurac McCullenan and Cuan O’Lochain, the gr-r-reat Irish
+histhorians.” The boy was evidently accustomed to the priest’s Celtic
+pleasantries. A little, appreciative grin was all the attention the
+insinuation of pedantry received.
+
+Lorison, to have saved his life, could not have put to the child one of
+those vital questions that were wildly beating about, unanswered, in
+his own brain. The little fellow was very like Norah; he had the same
+shining hair and candid eyes.
+
+“Oh, Father Denny,” cried the boy, suddenly, “I forgot to tell you!
+Sister is not going away at night any more! She told me so when she
+kissed me good night as she was leaving. And she said she was so happy,
+and then she cried. Wasn’t that queer? But I’m glad; aren’t you?”
+
+“Yes, lad. And now, ye omadhaun, go to sleep, and say good night; we
+must be going.”
+
+“Which shall I do first, Father Denny?”
+
+“Faith, he’s caught me again! Wait till I get the sassenach into the
+annals of Tageruach, the hagiographer; I’ll give him enough of the
+Irish idiom to make him more respectful.”
+
+The light was out, and the small, brave voice bidding them good night
+from the dark room. They groped downstairs, and tore away from the
+garrulity of Mother Geehan.
+
+Again the priest steered them through the dim ways, but this time in
+another direction. His conductor was serenely silent, and Lorison
+followed his example to the extent of seldom speaking. Serene he could
+not be. His heart beat suffocatingly in his breast. The following of
+this blind, menacing trail was pregnant with he knew not what
+humiliating revelation to be delivered at its end.
+
+They came into a more pretentious street, where trade, it could be
+surmised, flourished by day. And again the priest paused; this time
+before a lofty building, whose great doors and windows in the lowest
+floor were carefully shuttered and barred. Its higher apertures were
+dark, save in the third story, the windows of which were brilliantly
+lighted. Lorison’s ear caught a distant, regular, pleasing thrumming,
+as of music above. They stood at an angle of the building. Up, along
+the side nearest them, mounted an iron stairway. At its top was an
+upright, illuminated parallelogram. Father Rogan had stopped, and
+stood, musing.
+
+“I will say this much,” he remarked, thoughtfully: “I believe you to be
+a better man than you think yourself to be, and a better man than I
+thought some hours ago. But do not take this,” he added, with a smile,
+“as much praise. I promised you a possible deliverance from an unhappy
+perplexity. I will have to modify that promise. I can only remove the
+mystery that enhanced that perplexity. Your deliverance depends upon
+yourself. Come.”
+
+He led his companion up the stairway. Halfway up, Lorison caught him by
+the sleeve. “Remember,” he gasped, “I love that woman.”
+
+“You desired to know.
+
+“I—Go on.”
+
+The priest reached the landing at the top of the stairway. Lorison,
+behind him, saw that the illuminated space was the glass upper half of
+a door opening into the lighted room. The rhythmic music increased as
+they neared it; the stairs shook with the mellow vibrations.
+
+Lorison stopped breathing when he set foot upon the highest step, for
+the priest stood aside, and motioned him to look through the glass of
+the door.
+
+His eye, accustomed to the darkness, met first a blinding glare, and
+then he made out the faces and forms of many people, amid an
+extravagant display of splendid robings—billowy laces, brilliant-hued
+finery, ribbons, silks and misty drapery. And then he caught the
+meaning of that jarring hum, and he saw the tired, pale, happy face of
+his wife, bending, as were a score of others, over her sewing
+machine—toiling, toiling. Here was the folly she pursued, and the end
+of his quest.
+
+But not his deliverance, though even then remorse struck him. His
+shamed soul fluttered once more before it retired to make room for the
+other and better one. For, to temper his thrill of joy, the shine of
+the satin and the glimmer of ornaments recalled the disturbing figure
+of the bespangled Amazon, and the base duplicate histories lit by the
+glare of footlights and stolen diamonds. It is past the wisdom of him
+who only sets the scenes, either to praise or blame the man. But this
+time his love overcame his scruples. He took a quick step, and reached
+out his hand for the doorknob. Father Rogan was quicker to arrest it
+and draw him back.
+
+“You use my trust in you queerly,” said the priest sternly. “What are
+you about to do?”
+
+“I am going to my wife,” said Lorison. “Let me pass.”
+
+“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?”
+
+“Let me go to her,” cried Lorison, again struggling, “and beg her
+forgiveness!’
+
+“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!”
+
+“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—”
+
+“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.”
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+MADAME BO-PEEP, OF THE RANCHES
+
+
+“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.”
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+“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?”
+
+“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—”
+
+“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.”
+
+“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!”
+
+Octavia rippled out a laugh, and then became properly grave.
+
+“_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—’”
+
+“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—”
+
+Octavia sprang up lithely, and deposited a smart kiss on the delicate
+cheek of the prim little elderly maid.
+
+“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 Mr. 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.”
+
+Octavia found her shopping-bag, and drew from it a long envelope filled
+with typewritten documents.
+
+“A ranch in Texas,” sighed Aunt Ellen. “It sounds to me more like a
+liability than an asset. Those are the places where the centipedes are
+found, and cowboys, and fandangos.”
+
+“‘The Rancho de las Sombras,’” read Octavia from a sheet of violently
+purple typewriting, “‘is situated one hundred and ten miles southeast
+of San Antonio, and thirty-eight miles from its nearest railroad
+station, Nopal, on the I. and G. N. Ranch, consists of 7,680 acres of
+well-watered land, with title conferred by State patents, and
+twenty-two sections, or 14,080 acres, partly under yearly running lease
+and partly bought under State’s twenty-year-purchase act. Eight
+thousand graded merino sheep, with the necessary equipment of horses,
+vehicles and general ranch paraphernalia. Ranch-house built of brick,
+with six rooms comfortably furnished according to the requirements of
+the climate. All within a strong barbed-wire fence.
+
+“‘The present ranch manager seems to be competent and reliable, and is
+rapidly placing upon a paying basis a business that, in other hands,
+had been allowed to suffer from neglect and misconduct.
+
+“‘This property was secured by Colonel Beaupree in a deal with a
+Western irrigation syndicate, and the title to it seems to be perfect.
+With careful management and the natural increase of land values, it
+ought to be made the foundation for a comfortable fortune for its
+owner.’”
+
+When Octavia ceased reading, Aunt Ellen uttered something as near a
+sniff as her breeding permitted.
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+“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.”
+
+“Octavia!” Aunt Ellen condensed into the one word all the protests she
+was unable to utter.
+
+“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!”
+
+Octavia swerved suddenly to her knees, laid her flushed face in her
+aunt’s lap, and shook with turbulent sobs.
+
+Aunt Ellen bent over her, and smoothed the coppery-brown hair.
+
+“I didn’t know,” she said, gently; “I didn’t know—that. Who was it,
+dear?”
+
+When Mrs. 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.
+
+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 Mr. 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!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“Why, ’Tave!” he exclaimed, unable to reduce his perplexity to
+coherence. “How—what—when—where?”
+
+“Train,” said Octavia; “necessity; ten minutes ago; home. Your
+complexion’s gone, Teddy. Now, how—what—when—where?”
+
+“I’m working down here,” said Teddy. He cast side glances about the
+station as one does who tries to combine politeness with duty.
+
+“You didn’t notice on the train,” he asked, “an old lady with gray
+curls and a poodle, who occupied two seats with her bundles and
+quarrelled with the conductor, did you?”
+
+“I think not,” answered Octavia, reflecting. “And you haven’t, by any
+chance, noticed a big, gray-mustached man in a blue shirt and
+six-shooters, with little flakes of merino wool sticking in his hair,
+have you?”
+
+“Lots of ’em,” said Teddy, with symptoms of mental delirium under the
+strain. Do you happen to know any such individual?”
+
+“No; the description is imaginary. Is your interest in the old lady
+whom you describe a personal one?”
+
+“Never saw her in my life. She’s painted entirely from fancy. She owns
+the little piece of property where I earn my bread and butter—the
+Rancho de las Sombras. I drove up to meet her according to arrangement
+with her lawyer.”
+
+Octavia leaned against the wall of the telegraph office. Was this
+possible? And didn’t he know?
+
+“Are you the manager of that ranch?” she asked weakly.
+
+“I am,” said Teddy, with pride.
+
+“I am Mrs. Beaupree,” said Octavia faintly; “but my hair never would
+curl, and I was polite to the conductor.”
+
+For a moment that strange, grown-up look came back, and removed Teddy
+miles away from her.
+
+“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.”
+
+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.
+
+“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.”
+
+“Very well, Mr. Westlake,” said Octavia, primly.
+
+“Oh, now,” said Teddy, in some consternation, “that’s carrying the
+thing too far, isn’t it?”
+
+“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!”
+
+“Jack-rabbit,” said Teddy, without turning his head.
+
+“Could I—might I drive?” suggested Octavia, panting, with rose-tinted
+cheeks and the eye of an eager child.
+
+“On one condition. Could I—might I smoke?”
+
+“Forever!” cried Octavia, taking the lines with solemn joy. “How shall
+I know which way to drive?”
+
+“Keep her sou’ by sou’east, and all sail set. You see that black speck
+on the horizon under that lowermost Gulf cloud? That’s a group of
+live-oaks and a landmark. Steer halfway between that and the little
+hill to the left. I’ll recite you the whole code of driving rules for
+the Texas prairies: keep the reins from under the horses’ feet, and
+swear at ’em frequent.”
+
+“I’m too happy to swear, Ted. Oh, why do people buy yachts or travel in
+palace-cars, when a buckboard and a pair of plugs and a spring morning
+like this can satisfy all desire?”
+
+“Now, I’ll ask you,” protested Teddy, who was futilely striking match
+after match on the dashboard, “not to call those denizens of the air
+plugs. They can kick out a hundred miles between daylight and dark.” At
+last he succeeded in snatching a light for his cigar from the flame
+held in the hollow of his hands.
+
+“Room!” said Octavia, intensely. “That’s what produces the effect. I
+know now what I’ve wanted—scope—range—room!”
+
+“Smoking-room,” said Teddy, unsentimentally. “I love to smoke in a
+buckboard. The wind blows the smoke into you and out again. It saves
+exertion.”
+
+The two fell so naturally into their old-time goodfellowship that it
+was only by degrees that a sense of the strangeness of the new
+relations between them came to be felt.
+
+“Madama,” said Teddy, wonderingly, “however did you get it into your
+head to cut the crowd and come down here? Is it a fad now among the
+upper classes to trot off to sheep ranches instead of to Newport?”
+
+“I was broke, Teddy,” said Octavia, sweetly, with her interest centred
+upon steering safely between a Spanish dagger plant and a clump of
+chaparral; “I haven’t a thing in the world but this ranch—not even any
+other home to go to.”
+
+“Come, now,” said Teddy, anxiously but incredulously, “you don’t mean
+it?”
+
+“When my husband,” said Octavia, with a shy slurring of the word, “died
+three months ago I thought I had a reasonable amount of the world’s
+goods. His lawyer exploded that theory in a sixty-minute fully
+illustrated lecture. I took to the sheep as a last resort. Do you
+happen to know of any fashionable caprice among the gilded youth of
+Manhattan that induces them to abandon polo and club windows to become
+managers of sheep ranches?”
+
+“It’s easily explained in my case,” responded Teddy, promptly. “I had
+to go to work. I couldn’t have earned my board in New York, so I
+chummed a while with old Sandford, one of the syndicate that owned the
+ranch before Colonel Beaupree bought it, and got a place down here. I
+wasn’t manager at first. I jogged around on ponies and studied the
+business in detail, until I got all the points in my head. I saw where
+it was losing and what the remedies were, and then Sandford put me in
+charge. I get a hundred dollars a month, and I earn it.”
+
+“Poor Teddy!” said Octavia, with a smile.
+
+“You needn’t. I like it. I save half my wages, and I’m as hard as a
+water plug. It beats polo.”
+
+“Will it furnish bread and tea and jam for another outcast from
+civilization?”
+
+“The spring shearing,” said the manager, “just cleaned up a deficit in
+last year’s business. Wastefulness and inattention have been the rule
+heretofore. The autumn clip will leave a small profit over all
+expenses. Next year there will be jam.”
+
+When, about four o’clock in the afternoon, the ponies rounded a gentle,
+brush-covered hill, and then swooped, like a double cream-coloured
+cyclone, upon the Rancho de las Sombras, Octavia gave a little cry of
+delight. A lordly grove of magnificent live-oaks cast an area of
+grateful, cool shade, whence the ranch had drawn its name, “de las
+Sombras”—of the shadows. The house, of red brick, one story, ran low
+and long beneath the trees. Through its middle, dividing its six rooms
+in half, extended a broad, arched passageway, picturesque with
+flowering cactus and hanging red earthen jars. A “gallery,” low and
+broad, encircled the building. Vines climbed about it, and the adjacent
+ground was, for a space, covered with transplanted grass and shrubs. A
+little lake, long and narrow, glimmered in the sun at the rear. Further
+away stood the shacks of the Mexican workers, the corrals, wool sheds
+and shearing pens. To the right lay the low hills, splattered with dark
+patches of chaparral; to the left the unbounded green prairie blending
+against the blue heavens.
+
+“It’s a home, Teddy,” said Octavia, breathlessly; that’s what it
+is—it’s a home.”
+
+“Not so bad for a sheep ranch,” admitted Teddy, with excusable pride.
+“I’ve been tinkering on it at odd times.”
+
+A Mexican youth sprang from somewhere in the grass, and took charge of
+the creams. The mistress and the manager entered the house.
+
+“Here’s Mrs. MacIntyre,” said Teddy, as a placid, neat, elderly lady
+came out upon the gallery to meet them. “Mrs. Mac, here’s the boss.
+Very likely she will be wanting a hunk of ham and a dish of beans after
+her drive.”
+
+Mrs. 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.
+
+“Oh, Mrs. 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.”
+
+“No,” said Teddy, “no one minds what he says, just so he doesn’t do it
+again.”
+
+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.
+
+“Mr. Westlake likes his fun,” said Mrs. 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.”
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.”
+
+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 Mrs. 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 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 Mr. Bannister’s description of her property
+came into her mind—“all inclosed within a strong barbed-wire fence.”
+
+“Teddy’s fenced, too,” said Octavia to herself.
+
+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, and 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.
+
+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.”
+
+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 Mrs.
+MacIntyre, whose abundant Scotch shrewdness often more than overmatched
+the lighter humour in which she was lacking.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+“Teddy,” said Octavia, suddenly, and rather sharply, “what are you
+working down here on a ranch for?”
+
+“One hundred per,” said Teddy, glibly, “and found.”
+
+“I’ve a good mind to discharge you.”
+
+“Can’t do it,” said Teddy, with a grin.
+
+“Why not?” demanded Octavia, with argumentative heat.
+
+“Under contract. Terms of sale respect all unexpired contracts. Mine
+runs until 12 P. M., December thirty-first. You might get up at
+midnight on that date and fire me. If you try it sooner I’ll be in a
+position to bring legal proceedings.”
+
+Octavia seemed to be considering the prospects of litigation.
+
+“But,” continued Teddy cheerfully, “I’ve been thinking of resigning
+anyway.”
+
+Octavia’s rocking-chair ceased its motion. There were centipedes in
+this country, she felt sure; and Indians, and vast, lonely, desolate,
+empty wastes; all within strong barbed-wire fence. There was a Van
+Dresser pride, but there was also a Van Dresser heart. She must know
+for certain whether or not he had forgotten.
+
+“Ah, well, Teddy,” she said, with a fine assumption of polite interest,
+“it’s lonely down here; you’re longing to get back to the old life—to
+polo and lobsters and theatres and balls.”
+
+“Never cared much for balls,” said Teddy virtuously.
+
+“You’re getting old, Teddy. Your memory is failing. Nobody ever knew
+you to miss a dance, unless it occurred on the same night with another
+one which you attended. And you showed such shocking bad taste, too, in
+dancing too often with the same partner. Let me see, what was that
+Forbes girl’s name—the one with wall eyes—Mabel, wasn’t it?”
+
+“No; Adèle. Mabel was the one with the bony elbows. That wasn’t wall in
+Adèle’s eyes. It was soul. We used to talk sonnets together, and
+Verlaine. Just then I was trying to run a pipe from the Pierian
+spring.”
+
+“You were on the floor with her,” said Octavia, undeflected, “five
+times at the Hammersmiths’.”
+
+“Hammersmiths’ what?” questioned Teddy, vacuously.
+
+“Ball—ball,” said Octavia, viciously. “What were we talking of?”
+
+“Eyes, I thought,” said Teddy, after some reflection; “and elbows.”
+
+“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.”
+
+“It was,” said Teddy.
+
+“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.
+
+“So did I,” confessed Teddy, in a lower voice.
+
+“A glove,” said Octavia, falling back as the enemy approached her
+ditches.
+
+“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.”
+
+“A pearl-gray glove, nearly new,” sighed Octavia, mournfully.
+
+“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.”
+
+Teddy turned his head lazily. Octavia’s chair was vacant.
+
+A certain centipede, crawling along the lines marked out by fate,
+expounded the situation. It was early one morning while Octavia and
+Mrs. 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.
+
+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
+Mrs. Maclntyre, with much clutching of skirts and skirmishing for the
+position of rear guard in the attacking force, followed.
+
+Once outside, the centipede seemed to have disappeared, and his
+prospective murderers began a thorough but cautious search for their
+victim.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The centipede showed genius in concealing himself in such bare
+quarters. Mrs. 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+After all, what a paradise this prairie country was! How it blossomed
+like the rose when you found things that were thought to be lost! How
+delicious was that morning breeze coming in the windows, fresh and
+sweet with the breath of the yellow ratama blooms! Might one not stand,
+for a minute, with shining, far-gazing eyes, and dream that mistakes
+might be corrected?
+
+Why was Mrs. Maclntyre poking about so absurdly with a broom?
+
+“I’ve found it,” said Mrs. MacIntyre, banging the door. “Here it is.”
+
+“Did you lose something? asked Octavia, with sweetly polite
+non-interest.
+
+“The little devil!” said Mrs. Maclntyre, driven to violence. “Ye’ve no
+forgotten him alretty?”
+
+Between them they slew the centipede. Thus was he rewarded for his
+agency toward the recovery of things lost at the Hammersmiths’ ball.
+
+It seems that Teddy, in due course, remembered the glove, and when he
+returned to the house at sunset made a secret but exhaustive search for
+it. Not until evening, upon the moonlit eastern gallery, did he find
+it. It was upon the hand that he had thought lost to him forever, and
+so he was moved to repeat certain nonsense that he had been commanded
+never, never to utter again. Teddy’s fences were down.
+
+This time there was no ambition to stand in the way, and the wooing was
+as natural and successful as should be between ardent shepherd and
+gentle shepherdess.
+
+The prairies changed to a garden. The Rancho de las Sombras became the
+Ranch of Light.
+
+A few days later Octavia received a letter from Mr. Bannister, in reply
+to one she had written to him asking some questions about her business.
+A portion of the letter ran as follows:
+
+“I am at a loss to account for your references to the sheep ranch. Two
+months after your departure to take up your residence upon it, it was
+discovered that Colonel Beaupree’s title was worthless. A deed came to
+light showing that he disposed of the property before his death. The
+matter was reported to your manager, Mr. Westlake, who at once
+repurchased the property. It is entirely beyond my powers of conjecture
+to imagine how you have remained in ignorance of this fact. I beg that
+you that will at once confer with that gentleman, who will, at least,
+corroborate my statement.”
+
+
+Octavia sought Teddy, with battle in her eye.
+
+“What are you working on this ranch for?” she asked once more.
+
+“One hundred—” he began to repeat, but saw in her face that she knew.
+She held Mr. Bannister’s letter in her hand. He knew that the game was
+up.
+
+“It’s my ranch,” said Teddy, like a schoolboy detected in evil. “It’s a
+mighty poor manager that isn’t able to absorb the boss’s business if
+you give him time.”
+
+“Why were you working down here?” pursued Octavia still struggling
+after the key to the riddle of Teddy.
+
+“To tell the truth, ’Tave,” said Teddy, with quiet candour, “it wasn’t
+for the salary. That about kept me in cigars and sunburn lotions. I was
+sent south by my doctor. ’Twas that right lung that was going to the
+bad on account of over-exercise and strain at polo and gymnastics. I
+needed climate and ozone and rest and things of that sort.”
+
+In an instant Octavia was close against the vicinity of the affected
+organ. Mr. Bannister’s letter fluttered to the floor.
+
+“It’s—it’s well now, isn’t it, Teddy?”
+
+“Sound as a mesquite chunk. I deceived you in one thing. I paid fifty
+thousand for your ranch as soon as I found you had no title. I had just
+about that much income accumulated at my banker’s while I’ve been
+herding sheep down here, so it was almost like picking the thing up on
+a bargain-counter for a penny. There’s another little surplus of
+unearned increment piling up there, ’Tave. I’ve been thinking of a
+wedding trip in a yacht with white ribbons tied to the mast, through
+the Mediterranean, and then up among the Hebrides and down Norway to
+the Zuyder Zee.”
+
+“And I was thinking,” said Octavia, softly, “of a wedding gallop with
+my manager among the flocks of sheep and back to a wedding breakfast
+with Mrs. MacIntyre on the gallery, with, maybe, a sprig of orange
+blossom fastened to the red jar above the table.”
+
+Teddy laughed, and began to chant:
+
+“Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,
+And doesn’t know where to find ’em.
+Let ’em alone, and they’ll come home,
+And—”
+
+
+Octavia drew his head down, and whispered in his ear.
+
+But that is one of the tales they brought behind them.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHIRLIGIGS ***
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
+be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
+United States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
+the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
+of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
+copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
+easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
+of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
+Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
+do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
+by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
+license, especially commercial redistribution.
+
+START: FULL LICENSE
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic works
+
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
+person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
+1.E.8.
+
+1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
+Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country other than the United States.
+
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
+on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
+phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+
+  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+  most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
+  restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+  under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+  eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
+  United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
+  you are located before using this eBook.
+
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
+
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg™ License.
+
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
+other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
+Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
+provided that:
+
+• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+  the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
+  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
+  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+  Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+  Literary Archive Foundation.”
+
+• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
+  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
+  works.
+
+• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+  receipt of the work.
+
+• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+  distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
+
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
+the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
+forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
+of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
+
+Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
+www.gutenberg.org.
+
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
+
+The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
+Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
+to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
+and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact.
+
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
+widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
+state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
+
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic
+works
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+
+Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
+facility: www.gutenberg.org.
+
+This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.