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diff --git a/old/wstwn10.txt b/old/wstwn10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c45e6ec --- /dev/null +++ b/old/wstwn10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5118 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Stories of a Western Town, by Octave Thanet + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. + +Please do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.07.00*END* + + + + + +This Project Gutenberg Etext prepared by Judy Boss, Omaha, Nebraska + + + + + +STORIES OF +A WESTERN TOWN + + +by OCTAVE THANET + + + + +CONTENTS + + +The Besetment of Kurt Lieders + +The Face of Failure + +Tommy and Thomas + +Mother Emeritus + +An Assisted Providence + +Harry Lossing + + + + +THE BESETMENT OF +KURT LIEDERS + +A SILVER rime glistened all down the street. + +There was a drabble of dead leaves on the sidewalk which was +of wood, and on the roadway which was of macadam and stiff mud. +The wind blew sharply, for it was a December day and only six +in the morning. Nor were the houses high enough to furnish any +independent bulwark; they were low, wooden dwellings, the tallest +a bare two stories in height, the majority only one story. +But they were in good painting and repair, and most of them +had a homely gayety of geraniums or bouvardias in the windows. +The house on the corner was the tall house. It occupied a larger +yard than its neighbors; and there were lace curtains tied +with blue ribbons for the windows in the right hand front room. +The door of this house swung back with a crash, and a woman darted out. +She ran at the top of her speed to the little yellow house +farther down the street. Her blue calico gown clung about +her stout figure and fluttered behind her, revealing her blue +woollen stockings and felt slippers. Her gray head was bare. +As she ran tears rolled down her cheeks and she wrung her hands. + +"Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh, lieber Herr Je!" One near would have heard +her sob, in too distracted agitation to heed the motorneer of +the passing street-car who stared after her at the risk of his car, +or the tousled heads behind a few curtains. She did not stop +until she almost fell against the door of the yellow house. +Her frantic knocking was answered by a young woman in a light +and artless costume of a quilted petticoat and a red flannel sack. + +"Oh, gracious goodness! Mrs. Lieders!" cried she. + +Thekla Lieders rather staggered than walked into the room and fell +back on the black haircloth sofa. + +"There, there, there," said the young woman while she patted the broad +shoulders heaving between sobs and short breath, "what is it? +The house aint afire?" + +"Oh, no, oh, Mrs. Olsen, he has done it again!" She wailed in sobs, +like a child. + +"Done it? Done what?" exclaimed Mrs. Olsen, then her face paled. +"Oh, my gracious, you DON'T mean he's killed himself ------" + +"Yes, he's killed himself, again." + +"And he's dead?" asked the other in an awed tone. + +Mrs. Lieders gulped down her tears. "Oh, not so bad as that, +I cut him down, he was up in the garret and I sus--suspected him +and I run up and--oh, he was there, a choking, and he was so mad! +He swore at me and--he kicked me when I--I says: 'Kurt, what are you +doing of? Hold on till I git a knife,' I says--for his hands was +just dangling at his side; and he says nottings cause he couldn't, +he was most gone, and I knowed I wouldn't have time to git +no knife but I saw it was a rope was pretty bad worn and so-- +so I just run and jumped and ketched it in my hands, and being I'm +so fleshy it couldn't stand no more and it broke! And, oh! he-- +he kicked me when I was try to come near to git the rope off his neck; +and so soon like he could git his breath he swore at me ----" + +"And you a helping of him! Just listen to that!" +cried the hearer indignantly. + +"So I come here for to git you and Mr. Olsen to help me git +him down stairs, 'cause he is too heavy for me to lift, +and he is so mad he won't walk down himself." + +"Yes, yes, of course. I'll call Carl. Carl! dost thou hear? come! +But did you dare to leave him Mrs. Lieders?" Part of the time she +spoke in English, part of the time in her own tongue, gliding from +one to another, and neither party observing the transition. + +Mrs. Lieders wiped her eyes, saying: "Oh, yes, Danke schon, I aint +afraid 'cause I tied him with the rope, righd good, so he don't got +no chance to move. He was make faces at me all the time I tied him." +At the remembrance, the tears welled anew. + +Mrs. Olsen, a little bright tinted woman with a nose too small for her +big blue eyes and chubby cheeks, quivered with indignant sympathy. + +"Well, I did nefer hear of sooch a mean acting man!" seemed to her +the most natural expression; but the wife fired, at once. + +"No, he is not a mean man," she cried, "no, Freda Olsen, he is not +a mean man at all! There aint nowhere a better man than my man; +and Carl Olsen, he knows that. Kurt, he always buys a whole ham and a +whole barrel of flour, and never less than a dollar of sugar at a time! +And he never gits drunk nor he never gives me any bad talk. +It was only he got this wanting to kill himself on him, sometimes." + +"Well, I guess I'll go put on my things," said Mrs. Olsen, +wisely declining to defend her position. "You set right still +and warm yourself, and we'll be back in a minute." + +Indeed, it was hardly more than that time before both Carl Olsen, +who worked in the same furniture factory as Kurt Lieders, +and was a comely and after-witted giant, appeared with Mrs. Olsen +ready for the street. + +He nodded at Mrs. Lieders and made a gurgling noise in his throat, +expected to convey sympathy. Then, he coughed and said that he was ready, +and they started. + +Feeling further expression demanded, Mrs. Olsen asked: +"How many times has he done it, Mrs. Lieders?" + +Mrs. Lieders was trotting along, her anxious eyes on the house +in the distance, especially on the garret windows. "Three times," +she answered, not removing her eyes; "onct he tooked Rough on Rats +and I found it out and I put some apple butter in the place of it, +and he kept wondering and wondering how he didn't feel notings, +and after awhile I got him off the notion, that time. +He wasn't mad at me; he just said: 'Well, I do it some other time. +You see!' but he promised to wait till I got the spring +house cleaning over, so he could shake the carpets for me; +and by and by he got feeling better. He was mad at the boss +and that made him feel bad. The next time it was the same, +that time he jumped into the cistern ----" + +"Yes, I know," said Olsen, with a half grin, "I pulled him out." + +"It was the razor he wanted," the wife continued, "and when +he come home and says he was going to leave the shop and he aint +never going back there, and gets out his razor and sharps it, +I knowed what that meant and I told him I got to have some bluing +and wouldn't he go and get it? and he says, 'You won't git another +husband run so free on your errands, Thekla,' and I says I don't +want none; and when he was gone I hid the razor and he couldn't +find it, but that didn't mad him, he didn't say notings; +and when I went to git the supper he walked out in the yard +and jumped into the cistern, and I heard the splash and looked +in and there he was trying to git his head under, and I called, +'For the Lord's sake, papa! For the Lord's sake!' just like that. +And I fished for him with the pole that stood there and he was +sorry and caught hold of it and give in, and I rested the pole +agin the side cause I wasn't strong enough to h'ist him out; +and he held on whilest I run for help ----" + +"And I got the ladder and he clum out," said the giant with another grin +of recollection, "he was awful wet!" + +"That was a month ago," said the wife, solemnly. + +"He sharped the razor onct," said Mrs. Lieders, "but he said it +was for to shave him, and I got him to promise to let the barber +shave him sometime, instead. Here, Mrs. Olsen, you go righd in, +the door aint locked." + +By this time they were at the house door. They passed in and +ascended the stairs to the second story, then climbed a narrow, +ladder-like flight to the garret. Involuntarily they had paused +to listen at the foot of the stairs, but it was very quiet, +not a sound of movement, not so much as the sigh of a man breathing. +The wife turned pale and put both her shaking hands on her heart. + +"Guess he's trying to scare us by keeping quiet!" said Olsen, cheerfully, +and he stumbled up the stairs, in advance. "Thunder!" he exclaimed, +on the last stair, "well, we aint any too quick." + +In fact Carl had nearly fallen over the master of the house, +that enterprising self-destroyer having contrived, pinioned as +he was, to roll over to the very brink of the stair well, +with the plain intent to break his neck by plunging headlong. + +In the dim light all that they could see was a small, old man whose +white hair was strung in wisps over his purple face, whose deep set +eyes glared like the eyes of a rat in a trap, and whose very elbows +and knees expressed in their cramps the fury of an outraged soul. +When he saw the new-comers he shut his eyes and his jaws. + +"Well, Mr. Lieders," said Olsen, mildly, "I guess you better +git down-stairs. Kin I help you up?" + +"No," said Lieders. + +"Will I give you an arm to lean on?" + +"No." + +"Won't you go at all, Mr. Lieders?" + +"No." + +Olsen shook his head. "I hate to trouble you, Mr. Lieders," +said he in his slow, undecided tones, "please excuse me," +with which he gathered up the little man into his strong arms and slung +him over his shoulders, as easily as he would sling a sack of meal. +It was a vent for Mrs. Olsen's bubbling indignation to make +a dive for Lieders's heels and hold them, while Carl backed +down-stairs. But Lieders did not make the least resistance. +He allowed them to carry him into the room indicated by his wife, +and to lay him bound on the plump feather bed. It was not his bedroom +but the sacred "spare room," and the bed was part of its luxury. +Thekla ran in, first, to remove the embroidered pillow shams and +the dazzling, silken "crazy quilt" that was her choicest possession. + +Safely in the bed, Lieders opened his eyes and looked from one face +to the other, his lip curling. "You can't keep me this way all the time. +I can do it in spite of you," said he. + +"Well, I think you had ought to be ashamed of yourself, +Mr. Lieders!" Mrs. Olsen burst out, in a tremble between wrath +and exertion, shaking her little, plump fist at him. + +But the placid Carl only nodded, as in sympathy, saying, "Well, I am +sorry you feel so bad, Mr. Lieders. I guess we got to go now." + +Mrs. Olsen looked as if she would have liked to exhort Lieders further; +but she shrugged her shoulders and followed her husband in silence. + +"I wished you'd stay to breakfast, now you're here," +Thekla urged out of her imperious hospitality; had Kurt been +lying there dead, the next meal must have been offered, +just the same. "I know, you aint got time to git Mr. Olsen +his breakfast, Freda, before he has got to go to the shops, +and my tea-kettle is boiling now, and the coffee'll be ready-- +I GUESS you had better stay." + +But Mrs. Olsen seconded her husband's denial, and there +was nothing left Thekla but to see them to the door. +No sooner did she return than Lieders spoke. "Aint you going +to take off them ropes?" said he. + +"Not till you promise you won't do it." + +Silence. Thekla, brushing a few tears from her eyes, scrutinized +the ropes again, before she walked heavily out of the room. +She turned the key in the door. + +Directly a savory steam floated through the hall and pierced +the cracks about the door; then Thekla's footsteps returned; +they echoed over the uncarpeted boards. + +She had brought his breakfast, cooked with the best of her homely skill. +The pork chops that he liked had been fried, there was a napkin on +the tray, and the coffee was in the best gilt cup and saucer. + +"Here's your breakfast, papa," said she, trying to smile. + +"I don't want no breakfast," said he. + +She waited, holding the tray, and wistfully eying him. + +"Take it 'way," said he, "I won't touch it if you stand till doomsday, +lessen you untie me!" + +"I'll untie your arm, papa, one arm; you kin eat that way." + +"Not lessen you untie all of me, I won't touch a bite." + +"You know why I won't untie you, papa." + +"Starving will kill as dead as hanging," was Lieders's orphic +response to this. + +Thekla sighed and went away, leaving the tray on the table. +It may be that she hoped the sight of food might stir his stomach +to rebel against his dogged will; if so she was disappointed; +half an hour went by during which the statue under the bedclothes +remained without so much as a quiver, + +Then the old woman returned. "Aint you awful cramped and stiff, papa?" + +"Yes," said the statue. + +"Will you promise not to do yourself a mischief, if I untie you?" + +"No." + +Thekla groaned, while the tears started to her red eyelids. +"But you'll git awful tired and it will hurt you if you don't +get the ropes off, soon, papa!" + +"I know that!" + +He closed his eyes again, to be the less hindered from dropping +back into his distempered musings. Thekla took a seat by his side +and sat silent as he. Slowly the natural pallor returned to the high +forehead and sharp features. They were delicate features and there +was an air of refinement, of thought, about Lieders's whole person, +as different as possible from the robust comeliness of his wife. +With its keen sensitive-ness and its undefined melancholy it was a +dreamer's face. One meets such faces, sometimes, in incongruous places +and wonders what they mean. In fact, Kurt Lieders, head cabinet maker +in the furniture factory of Lossing & Co., was an artist. He was, also, +an incomparable artisan and the most exacting foreman in the shops. +Thirty years ago he had first taken wages from the senior Lossing. +He had watched a modest industry climb up to a great business, nor was +he all at sea in his own estimate of his share in the firm's success. +Lieders's workmanship had an honesty, an infinite patience of detail, +a daring skill of design that came to be sought and commanded its +own price. The Lossing "art furniture" did not slander the name. +No sculptor ever wrought his soul into marble with a more unflinching +conscience or a purer joy in his work than this wood-carver dreaming +over sideboards and bedsteads. Unluckily, Lieders had the wrong side +of the gift as well as the right; was full of whims and crotchets, +and as unpracti-cal as the Christian martyrs. He openly defied expense, +and he would have no trifling with the laws of art. To make after +orders was an insult to Kurt. He made what was best for the customer; +if the latter had not the sense to see it he was a fool and a pig, +and some one else should work for him, not Kurt Lieders, BEGEHR! + +Young Lossing had learned the business practically. +He was taught the details by his father's best workman; +and a mighty hard and strict master the best workman proved! +Lossing did not dream that the crabbed old tyrant who rarely +praised him, who made him go over, for the twentieth time, +any imperfect piece of work, who exacted all the artisan +virtues to the last inch, was secretly proud of him. +Yet, in fact, the thread of romance in Lieders's prosaic +life was his idolatry of the Lossing Manufacturing Co. +It is hard to tell whether it was the Lossings or that +intangible quantity, the firm, the business, that he worshipped. +Worship he did, however, the one or the other, perhaps the both +of them, though in the peevish and erratic manner of the savage +who sometimes grovels to his idols and sometimes kicks them. + +Nobody guessed what a blow it was to Kurt when, a year ago, +the elder Lossing had died. Even his wife did not connect +his sullen melancholy and his gibes at the younger generation, +with the crape on Harry Lossing's hat. He would not go to +the funeral, but worked savagely, all alone by himself, in the shop, +the whole afternoon--breaking down at last at the sight of a carved +panel over which Lossing and he had once disputed. The desolate +loneliness of the old came to him when his old master was gone. +He loved the young man, but the old man was of his own generation; +he had "known how things ought to be and he could understand +without talking." Lieders began to be on the lookout for signs +of waning consideration, to watch his own eyes and hands, +drearily wondering when they would begin to play him false; +at the same time because he was unhappy he was ten times as +exacting and peremptory and critical with the younger workmen, +and ten times as insolently independent with the young master. +Often enough, Lossing was exasperated to the point of taking +the old man at his word and telling him to go if he would, +but every time the chain of long habit, a real respect for such +faithful service, and a keen admiration for Kurt's matchless +skill in his craft, had held him back. He prided himself on +keeping his word; for that reason he was warier of using it. +So he would compromise by giving the domineering old fellow +a "good, stiff rowing." Once, he coupled this with a threat, +if they could not get along decently they would better part! +Lieders had answered not a word; he had given Lossing a queer +glance and turned on his heel. He went home and bought some +poison on the way. "The old man is gone and the young feller +don't want the old crank round, no more," he said to himself. +"Thekla, I guess I make her troubles, too; I'll git out!" + +That was the beginning of his tampering with suicide. +Thekla, who did not have the same opinion of the "trouble," +had interfered. He had married Thekla to have someone to keep +a warm fireside for him, but she was an ignorant creature +who never could be made to understand about carving. He felt +sorry for her when the baby died, the only child they ever had; +he was sorrier than he expected to be on his own account, too, for it +was an ugly little creature, only four days old, and very red +and wrinkled; but he never thought of confiding his own griefs +or trials to her. Now, it made him angry to have that stupid +Thekla keep him in a world where he did not wish to stay. +If the next day Lossing had not remembered how his father +valued Lieders, and made an excuse to half apologize to him, +I fear Thekla's stratagems would have done little good. + +The next experience was cut out of the same piece of cloth. +He had relented, he had allowed his wife to save him; +but he was angry in secret. Then came the day when open +disobedience to Lossing's orders had snapped the last thread +of Harry's patience. To Lieders's aggrieved "If you ain't +satisfied with my work, Mr. Lossing, I kin quit," the answer +had come instantly, "Very well, Lieders, I'm sorry to lose you, +but we can't have two bosses here: you can go to the desk." +And when Lieders in a blind stab of temper had growled a prophecy +that Lossing would regret it, Lossing had stabbed in turn: +"Maybe, but it will be a cold day when I ask you to come back." +And he had gone off without so much as a word of regret. +The old workman had packed up his tools, the pet tools +that no one was ever permitted to touch, and crammed +his arms into his coat and walked out of the place +where he had worked so long, not a man saying a word. +Lieders didn't reflect that they knew nothing of the quarrel. +He glowered at them and went away sore at heart. We make +a great mistake when we suppose that it is only the affectionate +that desire affection; sulky and ill-conditioned souls often +have a passionate longing for the very feelings that they repel. +Lieders was a womanish, sensitive creature under the surly mask, +and he was cut to the quick by his comrades' apathy. +"There ain't no place for old men in this world," he thought, +"there's them boys I done my best to make do a good job, +and some of 'em I've worked overtime to help; and not one of 'em +has got as much as a good-by in him for me!" + +But he did not think of going to poor Thekla for comfort, +he went to his grim dreams. "I git my property all straight +for Thekla, and then I quit," said he. Perhaps he gave himself +a reprieve unconsciously, thinking that something might happen +to save him from himself. Nothing happened. None of the "boys" +came to see him, except Carl Olsen, the very stupidest man +in the shop, who put Lieders beside himself fifty times a day. +The other men were sorry that Lieders had gone, having a genuine +workman's admiration for his skill, and a sort of underground +liking for the unreasonable old man because he was so absolutely +honest and "a fellow could always tell where to find him." +But they were shy, they were afraid he would take their pity +in bad part, they "waited a while." + +Carl, honest soul, stood about in Lieders's workshop, kicking the +shavings with his heels for half an hour, and grinned sheepishly, +and was told what a worthless, scamping, bragging lot the "boys" +at Lossing's were, and said he guessed he had got to go home now; +and so departed, unwitting that his presence had been a consolation. +Mrs. Olsen asked Carl what Lieders said; Carl answered simply, +"Say, Freda, that man feels terrible bad." + +Meanwhile Thekla seemed easily satisfied. She made no outcry +as Lieders had dreaded, over his leaving the shop. + +"Well, then, papa, you don't need git up so early in the morning +no more, if you aint going to the shop," was her only comment; +and Lieders despised the mind of woman more than ever. + +But that evening, while Lieders was down town (occupied, had she +known it, with a codicil to his will), she went over to the Olsens +and found out all Carl could tell her about the trouble in the shop. +And it was she that made the excuse of marketing to go out +the next day, that she might see the rich widow on the hill +who was talking about a china closet, and Judge Trevor, who had +asked the price of a mantel, and Mr. Martin, who had looked +at sideboards (all this information came from honest Carl); +and who proposed to them that they order such furniture of the best +cabinet-maker in the country, now setting up on his own account. +He, simple as a baby for all his doggedness, thought that they +came because of his fame as a workman, and felt a glow of pride, +particularly as (having been prepared by the wife, who said, +"You see it don't make so much difference with my Kurt 'bout +de prize, if so he can get the furniture like he wants it, +and he always know of the best in the old country") they all +were duly humble. He accepted a few orders and went to work +with a will; he would show them what the old man could do. +But it was only a temporary gleam; in a little while he grew +homesick for the shop, for the sawdust floor and the familiar +smell of oil, and the picture of Lossing flitting in and out. +He missed the careless young workmen at whom he had grumbled, +he missed the whir of machinery, and the consciousness +of rush and hurry accented by the cars on the track outside. +In short, he missed the feeling of being part of a great whole. +At home, in his cosey little improvised shop, there was none +to dispute him, but there was none to obey him either. +He grew deathly tired of it all. He got into the habit +of walking around the shops at night, prowling about his +old haunts like a cat. Once the night watchman saw him. +The next day there was a second watchman engaged. +And Olsen told him very kindly, meaning only to warn him, +that he was suspected to be there for no good purpose. +Lieders confirmed a lurking suspicion of the good Carl's own, +by the clouding of his face. Yet he would have chopped his +hand off rather than have lifted it against the shop. + +That was Tuesday night, this was Wednesday morning. + +The memory of it all, the cruel sense of injustice, returned with such +poignant force that Lieders groaned aloud. + +Instantly, Thekla was bending over him. He did not know whether to laugh +at her or to swear, for she began fumbling at the ropes, half sobbing. +"Yes, I knowed they was hurting you, papa; I'm going to loose one arm. +Then I put it back again and loose the other. Please don't be bad!" + +He made no resistance and she was as good as her word. +She unbound and bound him in sections, as it were; he watching +her with a morose smile. + +Then she left the room, but only to return with some hot coffee. +Lieders twisted his head away. "No," said he, "I don't eat none +of that breakfast, not if you make fresh coffee all the morning; +I feel like I don't eat never no more on earth." + +Thekla knew that the obstinate nature that she tempted was proof +against temptation; if Kurt chose to starve, starve he would +with food at his elbow. + +"Oh, papa," she cried, helplessly, "what IS the matter with you?" + +"Just dying is the matter with me, Thekla. If I can't die one way +I kin another. Now Thekla, I want you to quit crying and listen. +After I'm gone you go to the boss, young Mr. Lossing-- +but I always called him Harry because he learned his trade +of me, Thekla, but he don't think of that now--and you tell him old +Lieders that worked for him thirty years is dead, but he didn't +hold no hard feelings, he knowed he done wrong 'bout that mantel. +Mind you tell him." + +"Yes, papa," said Thekla, which was a surprise to Kurt; +he had dreaded a weak flood of tears and protestations. +But there were no tears, no protestations, only a long look at him +and a contraction of the eyebrows as if Thekla were trying to think +of something that eluded her. She placed the coffee on the tray +beside the other breakfast. For a while the room was very still. +Lieders could not see the look of resolve that finally smoothed +the perplexed lines out of his wife's kind, simple old face. +She rose. "Kurt," she said, "I don't guess you remember this is +our wedding-day; it was this day, eighteen year we was married." + +"So!" said Lieders, "well, I was a bad bargain to you, Thekla; +after you nursed your father that was a cripple for twenty years, +I thought it would be easy with me; but I was a bad bargain." + +"The Lord knows best about that," said Thekla, simply, "be it how it be, +you are the only man I ever had or will have, and I don't like you +starve yourself. Papa, say you don't kill yourself, to-day, and dat +you will eat your breakfast!" + +"Yes," Lieders repeated in German, "a bad bargain for thee, that is sure. +But thou hast been a good bargain for me. Here! I promise. +Not this day. Give me the coffee." + +He had seasons, all the morning, of wondering over his meekness, +and his agreement to be tied up again, at night. But still, +what did a day matter? a man humors women's notions; and starving +was so tedious. Between whiles he elaborated a scheme to attain +his end. How easy to outwit the silly Thekla! His eyes shone, +as he hid the little, sharp knife up his cuff. "Let her tie me!" +says Lieders, "I keep my word. To-morrow I be out of this. +He won't git a man like me, pretty soon!" + +Thekla went about her daily tasks, with her every-day air; +but, now and again, that same pucker of thought returned +to her forehead; and, more than once, Lieders saw her stand +over some dish, poising her spoon in air, too abstracted +to notice his cynical observation. + +The dinner was more elaborate than common, and Thekla had broached +a bottle of her currant wine. She gravely drank Lieders's health. +"And many good days, papa," she said. + +Lieders felt a queer movement of pity. After the table +was cleared, he helped his wife to wash and wipe the dishes +as his custom was of a Sunday or holiday. He wiped dishes as +he did everything, neatly, slowly, with a careful deliberation. +Not until the dishes were put away and the couple were seated, +did Thekla speak. + +"Kurt," she said, "I got to talk to you." + +An inarticulate groan and a glance at the door from Lieders. +"I just got to, papa. It aint righd for you to do the way +you been doing for so long time; efery little whiles you try +to kill yourself; no, papa, that aint righd!" + +Kurt, who had gotten out his pencils and compasses and other +drawing tools, grunted: "I got to look at my work, Thekla, now; +I am too busy to talk." + +"No, Kurt, no, papa"--the hands holding the blue apron that she +was embroidering with white linen began to tremble; Lieders had not +the least idea what a strain it was on this reticent, slow of speech +woman who had stood in awe of him for eighteen years, to discuss +the horror of her life; but he could not help marking her agitation. +She went on, desperately: "Yes, papa, I got to talk it oud with you. +You had ought to listen, 'cause I always been a good wife to you +and nefer refused you notings. No." + +"Well, I aint saying I done it 'cause you been bad to me; +everybody knows we aint had no trouble." + +"But everybody what don't know us, when they read how you +tried to kill yourself in the papers, they think it was me. +That always is so. And now I never can any more sleep nights, +for you is always maybe git up and do something to yourself. +So now, I got to talk to you, papa. Papa, how could you done so?" + +Lieders twisted his feet under the rungs of his chair; +he opened his mouth, but only to shut it again with a click +of his teeth. + +"I got my mind made up, papa. I tought and I tought. I know WHY you +done it; you done it 'cause you and the boss was mad at each other. +The boss hadn't no righd to let you go ------" + +"Yes, he had, I madded him first; I was a fool. Of course I knowed +more than him 'bout the work, but I hadn't no right to go against him. +The boss is all right." + +"Yes, papa, I got my mind made up"--like most sluggish +spirits there was an immense momentum about Thekla's mind, +once get it fairly started it was not to be diverted--"you +never killed yourself before you used to git mad at the boss. +You was afraid he would send you away; and now you have +sent yourself away you don't want to live, 'cause you +do not know how you can git along without the shop. +But you want to get back, you want to get back more as you want +to kill yourself. Yes, papa, I know, I know where you did used +to go, nights. Now"--she changed her speech unconsciously +to the tongue of her youth--"it is not fair, it is not fair +to me that thou shouldst treat me like that, thou dost belong +to me, also; so I say, my Kurt, wilt thou make a bargain with me? +If I shall get thee back thy place wilt thou promise me never +to kill thyself any more?" + +Lieders had not once looked up at her during the slow, +difficult sentences with their half choked articulation; +but he was experiencing some strange emotions, and one of +them was a novel respect for his wife. All he said was: +"'Taint no use talking. I won't never ask him to take +me back, once." + +"Well, you aint asking of him. _I_ ask him. I try to git +you back, once!" + +"I tell you, it aint no use; I know the boss, he aint going +to be letting womans talk him over; no, he's a good man, +he knows how to work his business himself!" + +"But would you promise me, Kurt?" + +Lieders's eyes blurred with a mild and dreamy mist; +he sighed softly. "Thekla, you can't see how it is. +It is like you are tied up, if I don't can do that; if I can +then it is always that I am free, free to go, free to stay. +And for you, Thekla, it is the same." + +Thekla's mild eyes flashed. "I don't believe you would like it +so you wake up in the morning and find ME hanging up in the kitchen +by the clothes-line!" + +Lieders had the air of one considering deeply. +Then he gave Thekla one of the surprises of her life; +he rose from his chair, he walked in his shuffling, +unheeled slippers across the room to where the old woman sat; +he put one arm on the back of the chair and stiffly bent +over her and kissed her. + +"Lieber Herr Je!" gasped Thekla. + +"Then I shall go, too, pretty quick, that is all, mamma," said he. + +Thekla wiped her eyes. A little pause fell between them, and in it +they may have both remembered vanished, half-forgotten days when life +had looked differently to them, when they had never thought to sit +by their own fireside and discuss suicide. The husband spoke first; +with a reluctant, half-shamed smile, "Thekla, I tell you what, +I make the bargain with you; you git me back that place, I don't +do it again, 'less you let me; you don't git me back that place, +you don't say notings to me." + +The apron dropped from the withered, brown hands to the floor. +Again there was silence; but not for long; ghastly as was the alternative, +the proposal offered a chance to escape from the terror that was +sapping her heart. + +"How long will you give me, papa?" said she. + +"I give you a week," said he. + +Thekla rose and went to the door; as she opened it a fierce gust +of wind slashed her like a knife, and Lieders exclaimed, fretfully, +"what you opening that door for, Thekla, letting in the wind? +I'm so cold, now, right by the fire, I most can't draw. +We got to keep a fire in the base-burner good, all night, +or the plants will freeze." + +Thekla said confusedly that something sounded like a cat crying. +"And you talking like that it frightened me; maybe I was wrong +to make such bargains ------" + +"Then don't make it," said Lieders, curtly, "I aint asking you." + +But Thekla drew a long breath and straightened herself, +saying, "Yes, I make it, papa, I make it." + +"Well, put another stick of wood in the stove, will you, now you are up?" +said Lieders, shrugging his shoulders, "or I'll freeze in spite of you! +It seems to me it grows colder every minute." + +But all that day he was unusually gentle with Thekla. +He talked of his youth and the struggles of the early days of the firm; +he related a dozen tales of young Lossing, all illustrating some +admirable trait that he certainly had not praised at the time. +Never had he so opened his heart in regard to his own ideals of art, +his own ambitions. And Thekla listened, not always comprehending +but always sympathizing; she was almost like a comrade, +Kurt thought afterward. + +The next morning, he was surprised to have her appear +equipped for the street, although it was bitterly cold. +She wore her garb of ceremony, a black alpaca gown, with a +white crocheted collar neatly turned over the long black, +broadcloth cloak in which she had taken pride for the last five years; +and her quilted black silk bonnet was on her gray head. +When she put up her foot to don her warm overshoes Kurt saw +that the stout ankles were encased in white stockings. +This was the last touch. "Gracious, Thekla," cried Kurt, +"are you going to market this day? It is the coldest +day this winter!" + +"Oh, I don't mind," replied Thekla, nervously. Then she had wrapped +a scarf about her and gone out while he was getting into his own coat, +and conning a proffer to go in her stead. + +"Oh, well, Thekla she aint such a fool like she looks!" +he observed to the cat, "say, pussy, WAS it you out yestiddy?" + +The cat only blinked her yellow eyes and purred. +She knew that she had not been out, last night. +Not any better than her mistress, however, who at this moment +was hailing a street-car. + +The street-car did not land her anywhere near a market; +it whirled her past the lines of low wooden houses into the big +brick shops with their arched windows and terra-cotta ornaments +that showed the ambitious architecture of a growing Western town, +past these into mills and factories and smoke-stained chimneys. +Here, she stopped. An acquaintance would hardly have recognized her, +her ruddy cheeks had grown so pale. But she trotted on to the great +building on the corner from whence came a low, incessant buzz. +She went into the first door and ran against Carl Olsen. +"Carl, I got to see Mr. Lossing," said she breathlessly. + +"There ain't noding ----" + +"No, Gott sei dank', but I got to see him." + +It was not Carl's way to ask questions; he promptly showed +her the office and she entered. She had not seen young +Harry Lossing half a dozen times; and, now, her anxious eyes +wandered from one dapper figure at the high desks, to another, +until Lossing advanced to her. + +He was a handsome young man, she thought, and he had +kind eyes, but they hardened at her first timid sentence: +"I am Mrs. Lieders, I come about my man ----" + +"Will you walk in here, Mrs. Lieders?" said Lossing. +His voice was like the ice on the window-panes. + +She followed him into a little room. He shut the door. + +Declining the chair that he pushed toward her she stood in the centre +of the room, looking at him with the pleading eyes of a child. + +"Mr. Lossing, will you please save my Kurt from killing himself?" + +"What do you mean?" Lossing's voice had not thawed. + +"It is for you that he will kill himself, Mr. Lossing. +This is the dird time he has done it. It is because he is so +lonesome now, your father is died and he thinks that you forget, +and he has worked so hard for you, but he thinks that you forget. +He was never tell me till yesterday; and then--it was-- +it was because I would not let him hang himself ----" + +"Hang himself?" stammered Lossing, "you don't mean ----" + +"Yes, he was hang himself, but I cut him, no I broke him down," +said Thekla, accurate in all the disorder of her spirits; and forthwith, +with many tremors, but clearly, she told the story of Kurt's despair. +She told, as Lieders never would have known how to tell, +even had his pride let him, all the man's devotion for the business, +all his personal attachment to the firm; she told of his gloom +after the elder Lossing died, "for he was think there was no +one in this town such good man and so smart like your fader, +Mr. Lossing, no, and he would set all the evening and try to draw +and make the lines all wrong, and, then, he would drow the papers +in the fire and go and walk outside and he say, 'I can't do nothing +righd no more now the old man's died; they don't have no use for me +at the shop, pretty quick!' and that make him feel awful bad!" +She told of his homesick wanderings about the shops by night; +"but he was better as a watchman, he wouldn't hurt it for the world! +He telled me how you was hide his dinner-pail onct for a joke, +and put in a piece of your pie, and how you climbed on the roof +with the hose when it was afire. And he telled me if he shall die I +shall tell you that he ain't got no hard feelings, but you didn't know +how that mantel had ought to be, so he done it righd the other way, +but he hadn't no righd to talk to you like he done, nohow, and you +was all righd to send him away, but you might a shaked hands, +and none of the boys never said nothing nor none of them never come +to see him, 'cept Carl Olsen, and that make him feel awful bad, too! +And when he feels so bad he don't no more want to live, so I make +him promise if I git him back he never try to kill himself again. +Oh, Mr. Lossing, please don't let my man die!" + +Bewildered and more touched than he cared to feel, himself, Lossing still +made a feeble stand for discipline. "I don't see how Lieders can expect +me to take him back again," he began. + +"He aint expecting you, Mr. Lossing, it's ME!" + +"But didn't Lieders tell you I told him I would never take him back?" + +"No, sir, no, Mr. Lossing, it was not that, it was you +said it would be a cold day that you would take him back; +and it was git so cold yesterday, so I think, 'Now it would +be a cold day to-morrow and Mr. Lossing he can take Kurt back.' +And it IS the most coldest day this year!" + +Lossing burst into a laugh, perhaps he was glad to have the Western +sense of humor come to the rescue of his compassion. "Well, it was +a cold day for you to come all this way for nothing," said he. +"You go home and tell Lieders to report to-morrow." + +Kurt's manner of receiving the news was characteristic. +He snorted in disgust: "Well, I did think he had more sand +than to give in to a woman!" But after he heard the whole +story he chuckled: "Yes, it was that way he said, and he must +do like he said; but that was a funny way you done, Thekla. +Say, mamma, yesterday, was you look out for the cat or to find +how cold it been?" + +"Never you mind, papa," said Thekla, "you remember what you promised +if I git you back?" + +Lieders's eyes grew dull; he flung his arms out, with a long sigh. +"No, I don't forget, I will keep my promise, but--it is +like the handcuffs, Thekla, it is like the handcuffs!" +In a second, however, he added, in a changed tone, +"But thou art a kind jailer, mamma, more like a comrade. +And no, it was not fair to thee--I know that now, Thekla." + + +THE FACE OF FAILURE + +AFTER the week's shower the low Iowa hills looked vividly green. +At the base of the first range of hills the Blackhawk road +winds from the city to the prairie. From its starting-point, +just outside the city limits, the wayfarer may catch bird's-eye +glimpses of the city, the vast river that the Iowans love, +and the three bridges tying three towns to the island arsenal. +But at one's elbow spreads Cavendish's melon farm. Cavendish's melon +farm it still is, in current phrase, although Cavendish, +whose memory is honored by lovers of the cantaloupe melon, +long ago departed to raise melons for larger markets; and still +a weather-beaten sign creaks from a post announcing to the world +that "the celebrated Cavendish Melons are for Sale here!" +To-day the melon-vines were softly shaded by rain-drops. A pleasant +sight they made, spreading for acres in front of the green-houses +where mushrooms and early vegetables strove to outwit the seasons, +and before the brown cottage in which Cavendish had begun +a successful career. The black roof-tree of the cottage sagged +in the middle, and the weather-boarding was dingy with the +streaky dinginess of old paint that has never had enough oil. +The fences, too, were unpainted and rudely patched. +Nevertheless a second glance told one that there were no gaps in them, +that the farm machines kept their bright colors well under cover, +and that the garden rows were beautifully straight and clean. +An old white horse switched its sleek sides with its long +tail and drooped its untrammelled neck in front of the gate. +The wagon to which it was harnessed was new and had just been washed. +Near the gate stood a girl and boy who seemed to be mutually +studying each other's person. Decidedly the girl's slim, +light figure in its dainty frock repaid one's eyes for their trouble; +and her face, with its brilliant violet eyes, its full, +soft chin, its curling auburn hair and delicate tints, +was charming; but her brother's look was anything but approving. +His lip curled and his small gray eyes grew smaller under +his scowling brows. + +"Is THAT your best suit?" said the girl. + +"Yes, it is; and it's GOING to be for one while," said the boy. + +It was a suit of the cotton mixture that looks like wool when it +is new, and cuts a figure on the counters of every dealer +in cheap ready-made clothing. It had been Tim Powell's best +attire for a year; perhaps he had not been careful enough of it, +and that was why it no longer cared even to imitate wool; +it was faded to the hue of a clay bank, it was threadbare, +the trousers bagged at the knees, the jacket bagged at the elbows, +the pockets bulged flabbily from sheer force of habit, +although there was nothing in them. + +"I thought you were to have a new suit," said the girl. +"Uncle told me himself he was going to buy you one yesterday +when you went to town." + +"I wouldn't have asked him to buy me anything yesterday for more'n +a suit of clothes." + +"Why?" The girl opened her eyes. "Didn't he do anything with the lawyer? +Is that why you are both so glum this morning?" + +"No, he didn't. The lawyer says the woman that owns the mortgage +has got to have the money. And it's due next week." + +The girl grew pale all over her pretty rosy cheeks; her eyes +filled with tears as she gasped, "Oh, how hateful of her, +when she promised ----" + +"She never promised nothing, Eve; it ain't been hers for +more than three months. Sloan, that used to have it, died, +and left his property to be divided up between his nieces; +and the mortgage is her share. See?" + +"I don't care, it's just as mean. Mr. Sloan promised." + +"No, he didn't; he jest said if Uncle was behind he wouldn't +press him; and he did let Uncle get behind with the interest +two times and never kicked. But he died; and now the woman, +she wants her money!" + +"I think it is mean and cruel of her to turn us out! +Uncle says mortgages are wicked anyhow, and I believe him!" + +"I guess he couldn't have bought this place if he didn't give a mortgage +on it. And he'd have had enough to pay cash, too, if Richards hadn't +begged him so to lend it to him." + +"When is Richards going to pay him?" + +"It come due three months ago; Richards ain't never paid up +the interest even, and now he says he's got to have the mortgage +extended for three years; anyhow for two." + +"But don't he KNOW we've got to pay our own mortgage? +How can we help HIM? I wish Uncle would sell him out!" + +The boy gave her the superior smile of the masculine creature. +"I suppose," he remarked with elaborate irony, "that he's like Uncle +and you; he thinks mortgages are wicked." + +"And just as like as not Uncle won't want to go to the carnival," +Eve went on, her eyes filling again. + +Tim gazed at her, scowling and sneering; but she was absorbed in dreams +and hopes with which as yet his boyish mind had no point of contact. + +"All the girls in the A class were going to go to see the fireworks +together, and George Dean and some of the boys were going to take us, +and we were going to have tea at May Arlington's house, and I was to stay +all night;"--this came in a half sob. "I think it is just too mean! +I never have any good times!" + +"Oh, yes, you do, sis, lots! Uncle always gits you everything you want. +And he feels terrible bad when I--when he knows he can't afford to git +something you want ----" + +"I know well enough who tells him we can't afford things!" + +"Well, do you want us to git things we can't afford? +I ain't never advised him except the best I knew how. +I told him Richards was a blow-hard, and I told him those Alliance +grocery folks he bought such a lot of truck of would skin him, +and they did; those canned things they sold him was all musty, +and they said there wasn't any freight on 'em, and he had to pay +freight and a fancy price besides; and I don't believe they +had any more to do with the Alliance than our cow!" + +"Uncle always believes everything. He always is so sure things are +going to turn out just splendid; and they don't--only just middling; +and then he loses a lot of money." + +"But he is an awful good man," said the boy, musingly. + +"I don't believe in being so good you can't make money. +I don't want always to be poor and despised, and have the other +girls have prettier clothes than me!" + +"I guess you can be pretty good and yet make money, if you are +sharp enough. Of course you got to be sharper to be good and make +money than you got to be, to be mean and make money." + +"Well, I know one thing, that Uncle ain't EVER going to make money. +He ----" The last word shrivelled on her lips, which puckered +into a confused smile at the warning frown of her brother. The man +that they were discussing had come round to them past the henhouse. +How much had he overheard? + +He didn't seem angry, anyhow. He called: "Well, Evy, ready?" and Eve +was glad to run into the house for her hat without looking at him. +It was a relief that she must sit on the back seat where she need +not face Uncle Nelson. Tim sat in front; but Tim was so stupid +he wouldn't mind. + +Nor did he; it was Nelson Forrest that stole furtive glances +at the lad's profile, the knitted brows, the freckled cheeks, +the undecided nose, and firm mouth. + +The boyish shoulders slouched forward at the same angle +as that of the fifty-year-old shoulders beside him. +Nelson, through long following of the plough, had lost +the erect carriage painfully acquired in the army. +He was a handsome man, whose fresh-colored skin gave him +a perpetual appearance of having just washed his face. +The features were long and delicate. The brown eyes had a liquid +softness like the eyes of a woman. In general the countenance +was alertly intelligent; he looked younger than his years; +but this afternoon the lines about his mouth and in his brows +warranted every gray hair of his pointed short beard. +There was a reason. Nelson was having one of those searing +flashes of insight that do come occasionally to the most +blindly hopeful souls. Nelson had hoped all his life. +He hoped for himself, he hoped for the whole human race. +He served the abstraction that he called "PROgress" with unflinching +and unquestioning loyalty. Every new scheme of increasing +happiness by force found a helper, a fighter, and a giver in him; +by turns he had been an Abolitionist, a Fourierist, a Socialist, +a Greenbacker, a Farmers' Alliance man. Disappointment always +was followed hard on its heels by a brand-new confidence. +Progress ruled his farm as well as his politics; he bought +the newest implements and subscribed trustfully to four +agricultural papers; but being a born lover of the ground, +a vein of saving doubt did assert itself sometimes in +his work; and, on the whole, as a farmer he was successful. +But his success never ventured outside his farm gates. +At buying or selling, at a bargain in any form, the fourteen-year-old +Tim was better than Nelson with his fifty years' experience of +a wicked and bargaining world. + +Was that any part of the reason, he wondered to-day, +why at the end of thirty years of unflinching toil and honesty, +he found himself with a vast budget of experience in the ruinous +loaning of money, with a mortgage on the farm of a friend, +and a mortgage on his own farm likely to be foreclosed? +Perhaps it might have been better to stay in Henry County. +He had paid for his farm at last. He had known a good moment, too, +that day he drove away from the lawyer's with the cancelled mortgage +in his pocket and Tim hopping up and down on the seat for joy. +But the next day Richards--just to give him the chance of a good thing-- +had brought out that Maine man who wanted to buy him out. +He was anxious to put the money down for the new farm, to have no +whip-lash of debt forever whistling about his ears as he ploughed, +ready to sting did he stumble in the furrows; and Tim was more +anxious than he; but--there was Richards! Richards was a neighbor +who thought as he did about Henry George and Spiritualism, +and belonged to the Farmers' Alliance, and had lent Nelson all the works +of Henry George that he (Richards) could borrow. Richards was +in deep trouble. He had lost his wife; he might lose his farm. +He appealed to Nelson, for the sake of old friendship, to save him. +And Nelson could not resist; so, two thousand of the thirty-four +hundred dollars that the Maine man paid went to Richards, +the latter swearing by all that is holy, to pay his friend off +in full at the end of the year. There was money coming to him +from his dead wife's estate, but it was tied up in the courts. +Nelson would not listen to Tim's prophecies of evil. +But he was a little dashed when Richards paid neither interest nor +principal at the year's end, although he gave reasons of weight; +and he experienced veritable consternation when the renewed +mortgage ran its course and still Richards could not pay. +The money from his wife's estate had been used to improve his farm +(Nelson knew how rundown everything was), his new wife was sickly +and "didn't seem to take hold," there had been a disastrous hail-storm-- +but why rehearse the calamities? they focussed on one sentence: +it was impossible to pay. + +Then Nelson, who had been restfully counting on the money from Richards +for his own debt, bestirred himself, only to find his patient creditor +gone and a woman in his stead who must have her money. He wrote again-- +sorely against his will--begging Richards to raise the money somehow. +Richards's answer was in his pocket, for he wore the best black broadcloth +in which he had done honor to the lawyer, yesterday. Richards plainly +was wounded; but he explained in detail to Nelson how he (Nelson) +could borrow money of the banks on his farm and pay Miss Brown. +There was no bank where Richards could borrow money; and he begged Nelson +not to drive his wife and little children from their cherished home. +Nelson choked over the pathos when he read the letter to Tim; but Tim only +grunted a wish that HE had the handling of that feller. And the lawyer +was as little moved as Tim. Miss Brown needed the money, he said. +The banks were not disposed to lend just at present; money, it appeared, +was "tight;" so, in the end, Nelson drove home with the face of Failure +staring at him between his horses' ears. + +There was only one way. Should he make Richards suffer +or suffer himself? Did a man have to grind other people +or be ground himself? Meanwhile they had reached the town. +The stir of a festival was in the air. On every side bunting +streamed in the breeze or was draped across brick or wood. +Arches spanned some of the streets, with inscriptions of welcome +on them, and swarms of colored lanterns glittered against +the sunlight almost as gayly as they would show when they should +be lighted at night. Little children ran about waving flags. +Grocery wagons and butchers' wagons trotted by with a flash +of flags dangling from the horses' harness. The streets were +filled with people in their holiday clothes. Everybody smiled. +The shopkeepers answered questions and went out on the sidewalks +to direct strangers. From one window hung a banner inviting +visitors to enter and get a list of hotels and boarding-houses. The +crowd was entirely good-humored and waited outside restaurants, +bandying jokes with true Western philosophy. At times the wagons +made a temporary blockade in the street, but no one grumbled. +Bands of music paraded past them, the escort for visitors +of especial consideration. In a window belonging, the sign +above declared, to the Business Men's Association, stood a huge +doll clad in blue satin, on which was painted a device of Neptune +sailing down the Mississippi amid a storm of fireworks. +The doll stood in a boat arched about with lantern-decked hoops, +and while Nelson halted, unable to proceed, he could hear the voluble +explanation of the proud citizen who was interpreting to strangers. + +This, Nelson thought, was success. Here were the successful men. +The man who had failed looked at them. Eve roused him by a +shrill cry, "There they are. There's May and the girls. +Let me out quick, Uncle!" + +He stopped the horse and jumped out himself to help her. +It was the first time since she came under his roof that she +had been away from it all night. He cleared his throat for some +advice on behavior. "Mind and be respectful to Mrs. Arlington. +Say yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am ----" He got no further, +for Eve gave him a hasty kiss and the crowd brushed her away. + +"All she thinks of is wearing fine clothes and going with the fellers!" +said her brother, disdainfully. "If I had to be born a girl, +I wouldn't be born at all!" + +"Maybe if you despise girls so, you'll be born a girl the next time," +said Nelson. "Some folks thinks that's how it happens with us." + +"Do YOU, Uncle?" asked Tim, running his mind forebodingly +over the possible business results of such a belief. +"S'posing he shouldn't be willing to sell the pigs to be killed, +'cause they might be some friends of his!" he reflected, +with a rising tide of consternation. Nelson smiled rather sadly. +He said, in another tone: "Tim, I've thought so many things, +that now I've about given up thinking. All I can do is to +live along the best way I know how and help the world move +the best I'm able." + +"You bet _I_ ain't going to help the world move," said the boy; +"I'm going to look out for myself!" + +"Then my training of you has turned out pretty badly, if that's +the way you feel." + +A little shiver passed over the lad's sullen face; he flushed until +he lost his freckles in the red veil and burst out passionately: +"Well, I got eyes, ain't I? I ain't going to be bad, or drink, +or steal, or do things to git put in the penitentiary; but I ain't +going to let folks walk all over me like you do; no, sir!" + +Nelson did not answer; in his heart he thought that he had failed +with the children, too; and he relapsed into that dismal study +of the face of Failure. + +He had come to the city to show Tim the sights, and, therefore, though +like a man in a dream, he drove conscientiously about the gay streets, +pointing out whatever he thought might interest the boy, and generally +discovering that Tim had the new information by heart already. +All the while a question pounded itself, like the beat of the heart +of an engine, through the noise and the talk: "Shall I give up Richards +or be turned out myself?" + +When the afternoon sunlight waned he put up the horse at a modest +little stable where farmers were allowed to bring their own provender. +The charges were of the smallest and the place neat and weather-tight, +but it had been a long time before Nelson could be induced to use it, +because there was a higher-priced stable kept by an ex-farmer and member +of the Farmers' Alliance. Only the fact that the keeper of the low-priced +stable was a poor orphan girl, struggling to earn an honest livelihood, +had moved him. + +They had supper at a restaurant of Tim's discovery, small, +specklessly tidy, and as unexacting of the pocket as the stable. +It was an excellent supper. But Nelson had no appetite; +in spite of an almost childish capacity for being diverted, +he could attend to nothing but the question always in his ears: +"Richards or me--which?" + +Until it should be time for the spectacle they walked down the hill, +and watched the crowds gradually blacken every inch of the river-banks. +Already the swarms of lanterns were beginning to bloom out in the dusk. +Strains of music throbbed through the air, adding a poignant touch +to the excitement vibrating in all the faces and voices about them. +Even the stolid Tim felt the contagion. He walked with a jaunty +step and assaulted a tune himself. "I tell you, Uncle," says Tim, +"it's nice of these folks to be getting up all this show, and giving +it for nothing!" + +"Do you think so?" says Nelson. "You don't love your book as I +wish you did; but I guess you remember about the ancient Romans, +and how the great, rich Romans used to spend enormous sums in games +and shows that they let the people in free to--well, what for? +Was it to learn them anything or to make them happy? +Oh, no, it was to keep down the spirit of liberty, Son, it was +to make them content to be slaves! And so it is here. +These merchants and capitalists are only looking out for themselves, +trying to keep labor down and not let it know how oppressed it is, +trying to get people here from everywhere to show what a fine +city they have and get their money." + +"Well, 'TIS a fine town," Tim burst in, "a boss town! +And they ain't gouging folks a little bit. None of the hotels +or the restaurants have put up their prices one cent. +Look what a dandy supper we got for twenty-five cents! +And ain't the boy at Lumley's grocery given me two tickets to set +on the steamboat? There's nothing mean about this town!" + +Nelson made no remark; but he thought, for the fiftieth time, that his +farm was too near the city. Tim was picking up all the city boys' +false pride as well as their slang. Unconscious Tim resumed his tune. +He knew that it was "Annie Rooney" if no one else did, and he mangled +the notes with appropriate exhilaration. + +Now, the river was as busy as the land, lights swimming hither +and thither; steamboats with ropes of tiny stars bespangling +their dark bulk and a white electric glare in the bow, low boats +with lights that sent wavering spear-heads into the shadow beneath. +The bridge was a blazing barbed fence of fire, and beyond the bridge, +at the point of the island, lay a glittering multitude of lights, +a fairy fleet with miniature sails outlined in flame as if by jewels. + +Nelson followed Tim. The crowds, the ceaseless clatter of +tongues and jar of wheels, depressed the man, who hardly knew +which way to dodge the multitudinous perils of the thoroughfare; +but Tim used his elbows to such good purpose that they were +out of the levee, on the steamboat, and settling themselves +in two comfortable chairs in a coign of vantage on deck, +that commanded the best obtainable view of the pageant, +before Nelson had gathered his wits together enough to plan +a path out of the crush. + +"I sized up this place from the shore," Tim sighed complacently, +drawing a long breath of relief; "only jest two chairs, +so we won't be crowded." + +Obediently, Nelson took his chair. His head sank on his thin chest. +Richards or himself, which should he sacrifice? So the weary old +question droned through his brain. He felt a tap on his shoulder. +The man who roused him was an acquaintance, and he stood smiling +in the attitude of a man about to ask a favor, while the expectant +half-smile of the lady on his arm hinted at the nature of the favor. +Would Mr. Forrest be so kind?--there seemed to be no more seats. +Before Mr. Forrest could be kind Tim had yielded his own chair +and was off, wriggling among the crowd in search of another place. + +"Smart boy, that youngster of yours," said the man; +"he'll make his way in the world, he can push. Well, Miss Alma, +let me make you acquainted with Mr. Forrest. I know you +will be well entertained by him. So, if you'll excuse me, +I'll get back and help my wife wrestle with the kids. +They have been trying to see which will fall overboard first +ever since we came on deck!" + +Under the leeway of this pleasantry he bowed and retired. +Nelson turned with determined politeness to the lady. +He was sorry that she had come, she looking to him a very fine +lady indeed, with her black silk gown, her shining black ornaments, +and her bright black eyes. She was not young, but handsome +in Nelson's judgment, although of a haughty bearing. +"Maybe she is the principal of the High School," thought he. +"Martin has her for a boarder, and he said she was very particular +about her melons being cold!" + +But however formidable a personage, the lady must be entertained. + +"I expect you are a resident of the city, ma'am?" said Nelson. + +"Yes, I was born here." She smiled, a smile that revealed +a little break in the curve of her cheek, not exactly a dimple, +but like one. + +"I don't know when I have seen such a fine appearing lady," +thought Nelson. He responded: "Well, I wasn't born here; +but I come when I was a little shaver of ten and stayed till I +was eighteen, when I went to Kansas to help fight the border ruffians. +I went to school here in the Warren Street school-house." + +"So did I, as long as I went anywhere to school. +I had to go to work when I was twelve." + +Nelson's amazement took shape before his courtesy had a chance +to control it. "I didn't suppose you ever did any work +in your life!" cried he. + +"I guess I haven't done much else. Father died when I was twelve +and the oldest of five, the next only eight--Polly, that came between +Eb and me, died--naturally I had to work. I was a nurse-girl by +the day, first; and I never shall forget how kind the woman was to me. +She gave me so much dinner I never needed to eat any breakfast, +which was a help." + +"You poor little thing! I'm afraid you went hungry sometimes." +Immediately he marvelled at his familiar speech, but she did +not seem to resent it. + +"No, not so often," she said, musingly; "but I used often and often +to wish I could carry some of the nice things home to mother +and the babies. After a while she would give me a cookey or a +piece of bread and butter for lunch; that I could take home. +I don't suppose I'll often have more pleasure than I used to have then, +seeing little Eb waiting for sister; and the baby and mother ----" +She stopped abruptly, to continue, in an instant, with a kind of laugh; +"I am never likely to feel so important again as I did then, either. +It was great to have mother consulting me, as if I had been grown up. +I felt like I had the weight of the nation on my shoulders, +I assure you." + +"And have you always worked since? You are not working out now?" +with a glance at her shining gown. + +"Oh, no, not for a long time. I learned to be a cook. +I was a good cook, too, if I say it myself. I worked +for the Lossings for four years. I am not a bit ashamed +of being a hired girl, for I was as good a one as I knew how. +It was Mrs. Lossing that first lent me books; and Harry Lossing, +who is head of the firm now, got Ebenezer into the works. +Ebenezer is shipping-clerk with a good salary and stock +in the concern; and Ralph is there, learning the trade. +I went to the business-college and learned book-keeping, +and afterward I learned typewriting and shorthand. +I have been working for the firm for fourteen years. +We have educated the girls. Milly is married, and Kitty goes +to the boarding-school, here." + +"Then you haven't been married yourself?" + +"What time did I have to think of being married? +I had the family on my mind, and looking after them." + +"That was more fortunate for your family than it was for my sex," +said Nelson, gallantly. He accompanied the compliment by a glance +of admiration, extinguished in an eye-flash, for the white radiance +that had bathed the deck suddenly vanished. + +"Now you will see a lovely sight," said the woman, deigning no reply +to his tribute; "listen! That is the signal." + +The air was shaken with the boom of cannon. Once, twice, thrice. +Directly the boat-whistles took up the roar, making a hideous din. +The fleet had moved. Spouting rockets and Roman candles, which painted +above it a kaleidoscopic archway of fire, welcomed by answering javelins +of light and red and orange and blue and green flares from the shore; +the fleet bombarded the bridge, escorted Neptune in his car, +manoeuvred and massed and charged on the blazing city with a many-hued +shower of flame. + +After the boats, silently, softly, floated the battalions of lanterns, +so close to the water that they seemed flaming water-lilies, +while the dusky mirror repeated and inverted their splendor. + +"They're shingles, you know," explained Nelson's companion, +"with lanterns on them; but aren't they pretty?" + +"Yes, they are! I wish you had not told me. It is like a fairy story!" + +"Ain't it? But we aren't through; there's more to come. +Beautiful fireworks!" + +The fireworks, however, were slow of coming. They could see +the barge from which they were to be sent; they could watch +the movements of the men in white oil-cloth who moved in a ghostly +fashion about the barge; they could hear the tap of hammers; +but nothing came of it all. + +They sat in the darkness, waiting; and there came to Nelson a strange +sensation of being alone and apart from all the breathing world with +this woman. He did not perceive that Tim had quietly returned with a box +which did very well for a seat, and was sitting with his knees against +the chair-rungs. He seemed to be somehow outside of all the tumult +and the spectacle. It was the vainglorying triumph of this world. +He was the soul outside, the soul that had missed its triumph. +In his perplexity and loneliness he felt an overwhelming longing +for sympathy; neither did it strike Nelson, who believed in all sorts +of occult influences, that his confidence in a stranger was unwarranted. +He would have told you that his "psychic instincts" never played +him false, although really they were traitors from their astral cradles +to their astral graves. + +He said in a hesitating way: "You must excuse me being kinder dull; +I've got some serious business on my mind and I can't help +thinking of it." + +"Is that so? Well, I know how that is; I have often stayed awake +nights worrying about things. Lest I shouldn't suit and all that-- +especially after mother took sick." + +"I s'pose you had to give up and nurse her then?" + +"That was what Ebenezer and Ralph were for having me do; but mother-- +my mother always had so much sense--mother says, 'No, Alma, you've got +a good place and a chance in life, you sha'n't give it up. +We'll hire a girl. I ain't never lonesome except evenings, +and then you will be home. I should jest want to die,' +she says, 'if I thought I kept you in a kind of prison like by +my being sick--now, just when you are getting on so well.' +There never WAS a woman like my mother!" Her voice shook a little, +and Nelson asked gently: + +"Ain't your mother living now?" + +"No, she died last year." She added, after a little silence, +"I somehow can't get used to being lonesome." + +"It IS hard," said Nelson. "I lost my wife three years ago." + +"That's hard, too." + +"My goodness! I guess it is. And it's hardest when trouble +comes on a man and he can't go nowhere for advice." + +"Yes, that's so, too. But--have you any children?" + +"Yes, ma'am; that is, they ain't my own children. Lizzie and I +never had any; but these two we took and they are most like my own. +The girl is eighteen and the boy rising of fourteen." + +"They must be a comfort to you; but they are considerable +of a responsibility, too." + +"Yes, ma'am," he sighed softly to himself. "Sometimes I feel +I haven't done the right way by them, though I've tried. +Not that they ain't good children, for they are--no better anywhere. +Tim, he will work from morning till night, and never need +to urge him; and he never gives me a promise he don't keep it, +no ma'am, never did since he was a little mite of a lad. +And he is a kind boy, too, always good to the beasts; +and while he may speak up a little short to his sister, he saves +her many a step. He doesn't take to his studies quite as I would +like to have him, but he has a wonderful head for business. +There is splendid stuff in Tim if it could only be worked right." + +While Nelson spoke, Tim was hunching his shoulders forward +in the darkness, listening with the whole of two sharp ears. +His face worked in spite of him, and he gave an inarticulate snort. + +"Well," the woman said, "I think that speaks well for Tim. +Why should you be worried about him?" + +"I am afraid he is getting to love money and worldly success too well, +and that is what I fear for the girl, too. You see, she is so pretty, +and the idols of the tribe and the market, as Bacon calls them, +are strong with the young." + +"Yes, that's so," the woman assented vaguely, not at all sure +what either Bacon or his idols might be. "Are the children +relations of yours?" + +"No, ma'am; it was like this: When I was up in Henry County +there came a photographic artist to the village near us, +and pitched his tent and took tintypes in his wagon. +He had his wife and his two children with him. The poor woman fell +ill and died; so we took the two children. My wife was willing; +she was a wonderfully good woman, member of the Methodist church +till she died. I--I am not a church member myself, ma'am; I passed +through that stage of spiritual development a long while ago." +He gave a wistful glance at his companion's dimly outlined profile. +"But I never tried to disturb her faith; it made HER happy." + +"Oh, I don't think it is any good fooling with other people's religions," +said the woman, easily. "It is just like trying to talk folks out +of drinking; nobody knows what is right for anybody else's soul any +more than they do what is good for anybody else's stomach!" + +"Yes, ma'am. You put things very clearly." + +"I guess it is because you understand so quickly. +But you were saying ------" + +"That's all the story. We took the children, and their +father was killed by the cars the next year, poor man; +and so we have done the best we could ever since by them." + +"I should say you had done very well by them." + +"No, ma'am; I haven't done very well somehow by anyone, myself included, +though God knows I've tried hard enough!" + +Then followed the silence natural after such a confession +when the listener does not know the speaker well enough to parry +abasement by denial. + +"I am impressed," said Nelson, simply, "to talk with you frankly. +It isn't polite to bother strangers with your troubles, but I am +impressed that you won't mind." + +"Oh, no, I won't mind." + +It was not extravagant sympathy; but Nelson thought how kind +her voice sounded, and what a musical voice it was. +Most people would have called it rather sharp. + +He told her--with surprisingly little egotism, as the keen +listener noted--the story of his life; the struggle of his boyhood; +his random self-education; his years in the army (he had +criticised his superior officers, thereby losing the promotion +that was coming for bravery in the field); his marriage +(apparently he had married his wife because another man had jilted her); +his wrestle with nature (whose pranks included a cyclone) +on a frontier farm that he eventually lost, having put all his +savings into a "Greenback" newspaper, and being thus swamped +with debt; his final slow success in paying for his Iowa farm; +and his purchase of the new farm, with its resulting disaster. +"I've farmed in Kansas," he said, "in Nebraska, in Dakota, in Iowa. +I was willing to go wherever the land promised. It always +seemed like I was going to succeed, but somehow I never did. +The world ain't fixed right for the workers, I take it. +A man who has spent thirty years in hard, honest toil oughtn't +to be staring ruin in the face like I am to-day. They won't let it +be so when we have the single tax and when we farmers send our own men +instead of city lawyers, to the Legislature and halls of Congress. +Sometimes I think it's the world that's wrong and sometimes I +think it's me!" + +The reply came in crisp and assured accents, which were the strongest +contrast to Nelson's soft, undecided pipe: "Seems to me in this +last case the one most to blame is neither you nor the world at large, +but this man Richards, who is asking YOU to pay for HIS farm. +And I notice you don't seem to consider your creditor in this business. +How do you know she don't need the money? Look at me, for instance; +I'm in some financial difficulty myself. I have a mortgage for two +thousand dollars, and that mortgage--for which good value was given, +mind you--falls due this month. I want the money. I want it bad. +I have a chance to put my money into stock at the factory. +I know all about the investment; I haven't worked there all these years +and not know how the business stands. It is a chance to make a fortune. +I ain't likely to ever have another like it; and it won't wait for me +to make up my mind forever, either. Isn't it hard on me, too?" + +"Lord knows it is, ma'am," said Nelson, despondently; "it is +hard on us all! Sometimes I don't see the end of it all. +A vast social revolution ----" + +"Social fiddlesticks! I beg your pardon, Mr. Forrest, but it puts me +out of patience to have people expecting to be allowed to make every +mortal kind of fools of themselves and then have 'a social revolution' +jump in to slue off the consequences. Let us understand each other. +Who do you suppose I am?" + +"Miss--Miss Almer, ain't it?" + +"It's Alma Brown, Mr. Forrest. I saw you coming on the boat +and I made Mr. Martin fetch me over to you. I told him not +to say my name, because I wanted a good plain talk with you. +Well, I've had it. Things are just about where I thought +they were, and I told Mr. Lossing so. But I couldn't be sure. +You must have thought me a funny kind of woman to be telling +you all those things about myself." + +Nelson, who had changed color half a dozen times in the darkness, +sighed before he said: "No, ma'am; I only thought how good you +were to tell me. I hoped maybe you were impressed to trust me +as I was to trust you." + +Being so dark Nelson could not see the queer expression on +her face as she slowly shook her head. She was thinking: +"If I ever saw a babe in arms trying to do business! +How did HE ever pay for a farm?" She said: "Well, I did it +on purpose; I wanted you to know I wasn't a cruel aristocrat, +but a woman that had worked as hard as yourself. +Now, why shouldn't you help me and yourself instead +of helping Richards? You have confidence in me, you say. +Well, show it. I'll give you your mortgage for your mortgage +on Richards's farm. Come, can't you trust Richards to me? +You think it over." + +The hiss of a rocket hurled her words into space. +The fireworks had begun. Miss Brown looked at them and watched +Nelson at the same time. As a good business woman who was also +a good citizen, having subscribed five dollars to the carnival, +she did not propose to lose the worth of her money; +neither did she intend to lose a chance to do business. +Perhaps there was an obscurer and more complex motive lurking +in some stray corner of that queer garret, a woman's mind. +Such motives--aimless softenings of the heart, unprofitable diversions +of the fancy--will seep unconsciously through the toughest +business principles of woman. + +She was puzzled by the look of exaltation on Nelson's features, +illumined as they were by the uncanny light. If the fool man +had not forgotten all his troubles just to see a few fireworks! +No, he was not that kind of a fool; maybe--and she almost +laughed aloud in her pleasure over her own insight--maybe it +all made him think of the war, where he had been so brave. +"He was a regular hero in the war," Miss Brown concluded, +"and he certainly is a perfect gentleman; what a pity he hasn't +got any sense!" + +She had guessed aright, although she had not guessed deep enough +in regard to Nelson. He watched the great wheels of light, +he watched the river aflame with Greek fire, then, with a shiver, +he watched the bombs bursting into myriads of flowers, +into fizzing snakes, into fields of burning gold, into showers +of jewels that made the night splendid for a second and faded. +They were not fireworks to him; they were a magical phantasmagoria +that renewed the incoherent and violent emotions of his youth; +again he was in the chaos of the battle, or he was dreaming +by his camp-fire, or he was pacing his lonely round on guard. +His heart leaped again with the old glow, the wonderful, +beautiful worship of Liberty that can do no wrong. +He seemed to hear a thousand voices chanting: + +"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, +As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!" + + +His turbid musings cleared--or they seemed to him to clear-- +under the strong reaction of his imagination and his memories. +It was all over, the dream and the glory thereof. +The splendid young soldier was an elderly, ruined man. +But one thing was left: he could be true to his flag. + +"A poor soldier, but enlisted for the war," says Nelson, +squaring his shoulders, with a lump in his throat and his +eyes brimming. "I know by the way it hurts me to think of +refusing her that it's a temptation to wrong-doing. No, I can't +save myself by sacrificing a brother soldier for humanity. +She is just as kind as she can be, but women don't understand business; +she wouldn't make allowance for Richards." + +He felt a hand on his shoulder; it was Martin apologizing for hurrying +Miss Brown; but the baby was fretting and ---- + +"I'm sorry--yes--well, I wish you didn't have to go!" +Nelson began; but a hoarse treble rose from under his elbows: +"Say, Mr. Martin, Uncle and me can take Miss Brown home." + +"If you will allow me the pleasure," said Nelson, with the touch +of courtliness that showed through his homespun ways. + +"Well, I WOULD like to see the hundred bombs bursting at once +and Vulcan at his forge!" said Miss Brown. + +Thus the matter arranged itself. Tim waited with the lady +while Nelson went for the horse, nor was it until afterward that +Miss Brown wondered why the lad did not go instead of the man. +But Tim had his own reasons. No sooner was Nelson out of earshot +than he began: "Say, Miss Brown, I can tell you something." + +"Yes?" + +"That Richards is no good; but you can't get Uncle to see it. At least +it will take time. If you'll help me we can get him round in time. +Won't you please not sell us out for six months and give me a show? +I'll see you get your interest and your money, too." + +"You?" Miss Brown involuntarily took a business attitude, +with her arms akimbo, and eyed the boy. + +"Yes, ma'am, me. I ain't so very old, but I know all about the business. +I got all the figures down--how much we raise and what we got last year. +I can fetch them to you so you can see. He is a good farmer, and he will +catch on to the melons pretty quick. We'll do better next year, +and I'll try to keep him from belonging to things and spending money; +and if he won't lend to anybody or start in raising a new kind +of crop just when we get the melons going, he will make money sure. +He is awful good and honest. All the trouble with him is he needs +somebody to take care of him. If Aunt Lizzie had been alive +he never would have lent that dead-beat Richards that money. +He ought to get married." + +Miss Brown did not feel called on to say anything. +Tim continued in a judicial way: "He is awful good and kind, +always gets up in the morning to make the fire if I have got +something else to do; and he'd think everything his wife did +was the best in the world; and if he had somebody to take care +of him he'd make money. I don't suppose YOU would think of it?" +This last in an insinuating tone, with evident anxiety. + +"Well, I never!" said Miss Brown. + +Whether she was more offended or amused she couldn't tell; +and she stood staring at him by the electric light. +To her amazement the hard little face began to twitch. "I didn't +mean to mad you," Tim grunted, with a quiver in his rough voice. +"I've been listening to every word you said, and I thought you +were so sensible you'd talk over things without nonsense. +Of course I knew he'd have to come and see you Saturday nights, +and take you buggy riding, and take you to the theatre, +and all such things--first. But I thought we could sorter +fix it up between ourselves. I've taken care of him ever +since Aunt Lizzie died, and I did my best he shouldn't lend +that money, but I couldn't help it; and I did keep him from +marrying a widow woman with eight children, who kept telling +him how much her poor fatherless children needed a man; +and I never did see anybody I was willing--before--and it's-- +it's so lonesome without Aunt Lizzie!" He choked and frowned. +Poor Tim, who had sold so many melons to women and seen +so much of back doors and kitchen humors that he held +the sex very cheap, he did not realize how hard he would +find it to talk of the one woman who had been kind to him! +He turned red with shame over his own weakness. + +"You poor little chap!" cried Miss Brown; "you poor +little sharp, innocent chap!" The hand she laid on his +shoulder patted it as she went on: "Never mind, if I +can't marry your uncle, I can help you take care of him. +You're a real nice boy, and I'm not mad; don't you think it. +There's your uncle now." + +Nelson found her so gentle that he began to have qualms lest +his carefully prepared speech should hurt her feelings. +But there was no help for it now. "I have thought over +your kind offer to me, ma'am," said he, humbly, "and I got +a proposition to make to you. It is your honest due to have +your farm, yes, ma'am. Well, I know a man would like to buy it; +I'll sell it to him, and pay you your money." + +"But that wasn't my proposal." + +"I know it, ma'am. I honor you for your kindness; but I can't risk what-- +what might be another person's idea of duty about Richards. +Our consciences ain't all equally enlightened, you know." + +Miss Brown did not answer a word. + +They drove along the streets where the lanterns were fading. +Tim grew uneasy, she was silent so long. On the brow of the hill +she indicated a side street and told them to stop the horse +before a little brown house. One of the windows was a dim +square of red. + +"It isn't quite so lonesome coming home to a light," +said Miss Brown. + +As Nelson cramped the wheel to jump out to help her from the vehicle, +the light from the electric arc fell full on his handsome face and showed +her the look of compassion and admiration, there. + +"Wait one moment," she said, detaining him with one firm hand. +"I've got something to say to you. Let Richards go for the present; +all I ask of you about him is that you will do nothing until +we can find out if he is so bad off. But, Mr. Forrest, I can +do better for you about that mortgage. Mr. Lossing will take +it for three years for a relative of his and pay me the money. +I told him the story." + +"And YOU will get the money all right?" + +"Just the same. I was only trying to help you a little by the other way, +and I failed. Never mind." + +"I can't tell you how you make me feel," said Nelson. + +"Please let him bring you some melons to-morrow and make a stagger +at it, though," said Tim. + +"Can I?" Nelson's eyes shone. + +"If you want to," said Miss Brown. She laughed; but in a +moment she smiled. + +All the way home Nelson saw the same face of Failure between the old +mare's white ears; but its grim lineaments were softened by a smile, +a smile like Miss Brown's. + + +TOMMY AND THOMAS + +IT was while Harry Lossing was at the High School that Mrs. Carriswood +first saw Tommy Fitzmaurice. He was not much to see, a long lad +of sixteen who had outgrown his jackets and was not yet grown +to his ears. + +At this period Mrs. Fitzmaurice was his barber, and she, +having been too rash with the shears in one place, had snipped +off the rest of his curly black locks "to match;" until he showed +a perfect convict's poll, giving his ears all the better chance, +and bringing out the rather square contour of his jaws to advantage. +He had the true Irish-Norman face; a skin of fine texture, +fair and freckled, high cheekbones, straight nose, and wide +blue eyes that looked to be drawn with ink, because of their +sharply pencilled brows and long, thick, black lashes. +But the feature that Mrs. Carriswood noticed was Tommy's mouth, +a flexible and delicately cut mouth, of which the lips moved +lightly in speaking and seldom were quite in repose. + +"The genuine Irish orator's mouth," thought Mrs. Carriswood. + +Tommy, however, was not a finished orator, and Mrs. Carriswood +herself deigned to help him with his graduating oration; +Tommy delivering the aforesaid oration from memory, on the stage +of the Grand Opera House, to a warm-hearted and perspiring +audience of his towns-people, amid tremendous applause and not +the slightest prod-dings of conscience. + +Really the speech deserved the applause; Mrs. Carriswood, who had +heard half the eloquence of the world, spent three evenings on it; +and she has a good memory. + +Her part in the affair always amused her; though, in fact, +it came to pass easily. She had the great fortune of the family. +Being a widow with no children, and the time not being +come when philanthropy beckons on the right hand and on +the left to free-handed women, Mrs. Carriswood travelled. +As she expressed it, she was searching the globe for a +perfect climate. "Not that I in the least expect to find it," +said she, cheerfully, "but I like to vary my disappointments; +when I get worn out being frozen, winters, I go somewhere +to be soaked." She was on her way to California this time, +with her English maid, who gave the Lossing domestics many a +jolly moment by her inextinguishable panic about red Indians. +Mrs. Derry supposed these savages to be lurking on the prairie +outside every Western town; and almost fainted when she did chance +to turn the corner upon three Kickapoo Indians, splendid in paint +and feathers, and peacefully vending the "Famous Kickapoo Sagwa." +She had others of the artless notions of the travelling English, +and I fear that they were encouraged not only by the cook, +the "second girl," and the man-of-all-work, but by Harry +and his chum, Tommy; I know she used to tell how she saw +tame buffalo "roosting" on the streets, "w'ich they do look +that like common cows a body couldn't tell 'em hapart!" + +She had a great opinion of Tommy, a mystery to her mistress +for a long time, until one day it leaked out that Tommy "and +Master Harry, too," had told her that Tommy's great-grandfather +was a lord in the old country. + +"The family seem to have sunk in the world since, Derry," +was Mrs. Carriswood's single remark, as she smiled to herself. +After Derry was dismissed she picked up a letter, written that +day to a friend of hers, and read some passages about Harry +and Tommy, smiling again. + +"Harry"--one may look over her pretty shoulder without impertinence, +in a story--"Harry," she wrote, "is a boy that I long to steal. Just the +kind of boy we have both wanted, Sarah--frank, happy, affectionate. +I must tell you something about him. It came out by accident. +He has the Western business instincts, and what do you suppose he did? +He actually started a wee shop of his own in the corner of the yard +(really it is a surprisingly pretty place, and they are quite civilized +in the house, gas, hot water, steam heat, all most comfortable), and +sold 'pop' and candy and cakes to the boys. He made so much money that +he proposed a partnership to the cook and the setting up a little booth +in the 'county fair,' which is like our rural cattle shows, you know. +The cook (a superior person who borrows books from Mrs. Lossing, +but seems very decent and respectful notwithstanding, and broils game +to perfection. And SUCH game as we have here, Sarah!)--well, the cook +made him cream-cakes, sandwiches, tarts, and candy, and Harry honorably +bought all the provisions with his profits from the first venture. +You will open your eyes at his father permitting such a thing, +but Henry Lossing is a thorough Westerner in some ways, and he looks +on it all as a joke. 'Might show the boy how to do business,' he says. + +"Well, they had a ravishing display, so Alma, the cook, +and William, the man, assured me--per Derry. +All the sadder its fate; for alas! a gang of rowdy boys fell +upon Harry, and while he was busy fighting half of them-- +he is as plucky as his uncle, the general--the other half +looted the beautiful stock in trade! They would have despoiled +our poor little merchant entirely but for the opportune arrival +of a schoolmate who is mightily respected by the rowdies. +He knocked one of them down and shouted after the others +that he would give every one of them a good thrashing if they +did not bring the plunder back; and as he is known to be a lad +of his word for good or evil, actually the scamps did return +most of the booty, which the two boys brushed off and sold, +as far as it went (!) The consequence of the fray has been +that Harry is unboundedly grateful to this Tommy Fitzmaurice, +and is at present coaching him on his graduating oration. +Fitzmaurice has studied hard and won honors, and wants +to make a show with his oration, to please his father. +'You see,' says Harry, 'Tommy's father has saved money +and is spending it all on Tommy, so's he can be educated. +He needs Tommy in the business real bad, but he won't let him come in; +he keeps him at school, and he thinks everything of his getting +the valedictory, and Tommy, he worked nights studying to get it.' +When I asked what was the father's business, Harry grew +a bit confused. 'Well, he kept a saloon; but'--Harry hastened +to explain--'it was a very nice saloon, never any trouble +with the police there; why, Tommy knew every man on the force. +And they keep good liquors, too,' said Harry, earnestly; +'throw away all the beer left in the glasses.' +'What else would they do with it?' asked innocent I. 'Why, +keep it in a bucket,' said Harry, solemnly, 'and then slip +the glass under the counter and half fill out of the bucket, +then hold it under the keg LOW, so's the foam will come; +that's a trick of the trade, you know. Tommy says his father +would SCORN that!' There is a vista opened, isn't there? +I was rather shocked at such associates for Harry, and told +his mother. Did she think it a good idea to have such a boy +coming to the house? a saloon-keeper's son? She did not laugh, +as I half expected, but answered quite seriously that she had +been looking up Tommy, that he was very much attached to Harry, +and that she did not think he would teach him anything bad. +He has, I find myself, notions of honor, though they are rather +the code of the street. And he picks up things quickly. +Once he came to tea. It was amusing to see how he glued his +eyes on Harry and kept time with his motions. He used his fork +quite properly, only as Harry is a left-handed little fellow, +the right-handed Thomas had the more difficulty. + +"He is taking such vast pains with his 'oration' that I felt +moved to help him. The subject is 'The Triumph of Democracy,' +and Tommy civilly explained that 'democracy' did not mean +the Democratic party, but 'just only a government where all +the poor folks can get their rights and can vote.' + +"The oration was the kind of spread-eagle thing you might expect; +I can see that Tommy has formed himself on the orators of his +father's respectable saloon. What he said in comment interested +me more. 'Sure, I guess it is the best government, ma'am, though, +of course, I got to make it out that way, anyhow. But we come +from Ireland, and there they got the other kind, and me granny, +she starved in the famine time, she did that--with the fever. +Me father walked twenty mile to the Sackville's place, where they +gave him some meal, though he wasn't one of their tenants; +yes, and the lady told him how he would be cooking it. +I never will forget that lady!' + +"I saw a dramatic opportunity: would Tommy be willing to tell +that story in his speech? He looked at me with an odd look-- +or so I imagined it! 'Why not?' says he; 'I'd as soon as not tell it +to anyone of them, and why not to them all together?' Well, why not, +when you come to think of it? So we have got it into the speech; +and I, I myself, Sarah, am drilling young Demos-thenes, and he is +so apt a scholar that I find myself rather pleasantly employed." +Having read her letter, Mrs. Carriswood hesitated a second +and then added Derry's information at the bottom of the page. +"I suppose the lordly ancestor was one of King James's creation-- +see Macaulay, somewhere in the second volume. I dare say there +is a drop or two of good blood in the boy. He has the manners +of a gentleman--but I don't know that I ever saw an Irishman, +no matter how low in the social scale, who hadn't." + +Thus it happened that Tommy's valedictory scored a success +that is a tradition of the High School, and came to be printed +in both the city papers; copies of which journals Tommy's +mother has preserved sacredly to this day; and I have no doubt, +could one find them, they would be found wrapped around a yellow +photograph of the "A Class" of 1870: eight pretty girls in white, +smiling among five solemn boys in black, and Tommy himself, +as the valedictorian, occupying the centre of the picture +in his new suit of broadcloth, with a rose in his buttonhole +and his hair cut by a professional barber for the occasion. + +It was the story of the famine that really captured the audience; +and Tommy told it well, with the true Irish fire, in a beautiful voice. + +In the front seat of the parquette a little old man in a wrinkled +black broadcloth, with a bald head and a fringe of whisker under +his long chin, and a meek little woman, in a red Paisley shawl, +wept and laughed by turns. They had taken the deepest interest +in every essay and every speech. The old man clapped his large hands +(which were encased in loose, black kid gloves) with unflagging vigor. +He wore a pair of heavy boots, the soles of which made a noble thud +on the floor. + +"Ain't it wonderful the like of them young craters can talk like that!" +he cried; "shure, Molly, that young lady who'd the essay-- +where is it?"--a huge black forefinger travelled down the page-- +"'_Music, The Turkish Patrol_,' No--though that's grand, +that piece; I'll be spakin' wid Professor Von Keinmitz to bring +it when we've the opening. Here 'tis, Molly: '_Tin, Essay. +The Darkest Night Brings Out the Stars, Miss Mamie Odenheimer_.' +Thrue for you, mavourneen! And the sintiments, wasn't they illigant? +and the lan-gwidge was as foine as Pat Ronan's speeches or Father-- +whist! will ye look at the flowers that shlip of a gyirl's gitting! +Count 'em, will ye?" + +"Fourteen bouquets and wan basket," says the little woman, +"and Mamie Odenheimer, she got seventeen bouquets and two +baskets and a sign. Well," she looked anxious, but smiled, +"I know of siven bouquets Tommy will git for sure. +And that's not countin' what Harry Lossing will do for him. +Hiven bless the good heart of him!" + +"Well, I kin count four for him on wan seat," says the man, with a nod +of his head toward the gay heap in the woman's lap, "barrin' I ain't +on-vaygled into flinging some of thim to the young ladies!" + +Harry Lossing, in the seat behind with his mother and Mrs. Carriswood, +giggled at this and whispered in the latter lady's ear, "That's Tommy's +father and mother. My, aren't they excited, though! And Tommy's +white's a sheet--for fear he'll disappoint them, you know. He has said +his piece over twice to me, to-day, he's so scared lest he'll forget. +I've got it in my pocket, and I'm going behind when it's his turn, +to prompt him. Did you see me winking at him? it sort of cheers him up." + +He was almost as keen over the floral procession as the +Fitzmaurices themselves. The Lossing garden had been stripped to +the last bud, and levies made on the asparagus-bed, into the bargain, +and Mrs. Lossing and Alma and Mrs. Carriswood and Derry and +Susy Lossing had made bouquets and baskets and wreaths, and Harry +had distributed them among friends in different parts of the house. +I say Harry, but, complimented by Mrs. Carriswood, he admitted +ingenuously that it was Tommy's idea. + +"Tommy thought they would make more show that way," says Harry, "and they +are all on the middle aisle, so his father and mother can see them; +Tim O'Halloran has got one for him, too, and Mrs. Macillarney, +and she's got some splendid pinies. Picked every last one. +They'll make a show!" + +But Harry knew nothing of the most magnificent of his friend's trophies +until it undulated gloriously down the aisle, above the heads of two men, +white satin ribbons flying, tinfoil shining--an enormous horseshoe +of roses and mignonette! + +The parents were both on their feet to crane their necks after it, +as it passed them amid the plaudits. + +"Oh, it was YOU, Cousin Margaret; I know it was you," cried Harry. + +He took the ladies over to the Fitzmaurices the minute that +the diplomas were given; and, directly, Tommy joined them, +attended by two admiring followers laden with the trophies. +Mrs. O'Halloran and Mrs. Macillarney and divers of the friends, both male +and female, joined the circle. Tommy held quite a little court. +He shook hands with all the ladies, beginning with Mrs. Carriswood +(who certainly never had found herself before in such a company, +jammed between Alderman McGinnis's resplendent new tweeds and +Mrs. Macillarney's calico); he affectionately embraced his mother, +and he allowed himself to be embraced by Mrs. Macillarney +and Mrs. O'Halloran, while Patrick Fitzmaurice shook hands +with the alderman. + +"Here's the lady that helped me on me piece, father; +she's the lady that sent me the horseshoe, mother. +Like to make you acquainted with me father and me mother. +Mr. and Mrs. Fitzmaurice, Mrs. Carriswood." + +In these words, Tommy, blushing and happy, presented his happy parents. + +"Sure, I'm proud to meet you, ma'am," said Fitzmaurice, bowing, while his +wife courtesied and wiped her eyes. + +They were very grateful, but they were more grateful for +the flowers than for the oratorical drilling. No doubt they +thought that their Tommy could have done as well in any case; +but the splendid horseshoe was another matter! + +Ten years passed before Mrs. Carriswood saw her pupil again. +During those years the town had increased and prospered; +so had the Lossing Art Furniture Works. It was after Harry Lossing +had disappointed his father. This is not saying that he had +done anything out of the way; he had simply declined to be +the fourth Harry Lossing on the rolls of Harvard College. +Instead, he proposed to enter the business and to begin +by learning his own trade. He was so industrious, he kept +at it with such energy that his first convert was his father-- +no, I am wrong, Mrs. Carriswood was the first; Mrs. Lossing was +not a convert, SHE had believed in Harry from the beginning. +But all this was years before Mrs. Carriswood's visit. + +Another of Master Harry's notions was his belief in the necessity +of his "meddling"--so his father put it--in the affairs of the town, +the state, and the nation, as well as those of the Lossing +furniture company. But, though he was pleased to make rather cynical +fun of his son's political enthusiasm, esteeming it in a sense +a diverting and therefore reprehensible pursuit for a business man, +the elder Lossing had a sneaking pride in it, all the same. +He liked to bring out Harry's political shrewdness. + +"Fancy, Margaret," says he, "whom do you think Harry has brought +over to our side now? The shrewdest ward politician in the town-- +why, you saw him when he was a boy--Tommy Fitzmaurice." + +Then Mrs. Carriswood remembered; she asked, amused, how was Tommy +and where was he? + +"Tommy? Oh, he went to the State university; the old man was +bound to send him, and he was more dutiful than some sons. +He was graduated with honors, and came back to a large, +ready-made justice court's practice. Of course he drifted into +criminal practice; but he has made a fine income out of that, +and is the shrewdest, some folks say the least scrupulous, +political manager in the county. And so, Harry, you have +persuaded him to cast in his lot with the party of principle, +have you? and he is packing the primaries?" + +"I see nothing dishonest in our trying to get our friends out to vote +at the primaries, sir." + +"Of course not, but he may not stop there. However, I want +Bailey elected, and I am glad he will work for us; +what's his price?" + +Harry blushed a little. "I believe he would like to be +city attorney, sir," said he; and Mr. Lossing laughed. + +"Would he make a bad one?" asked Mrs. Carriswood. + +"He would make the best kind of a one," replied Harry, +with youthful fervor; "he's a ward politician and all that, +I know; but he has it in him to be an uncommon deal more! +And I say, sir, do you know that he and the old man will take +twenty-five thousand of the stock at par if we turn ourselves +into a corporation?" + +"How about this new license measure? won't that bear a little +bit hard on the old man?" This from Mr. Lossing, who was biting +his cigar in deep thought. + +"That will not prevent his doing his duty; why, the old man +for very pride will be the first to obey the law. You'll SEE!" + +Six months later they did see, since it was mostly due to Fitzmaurice's +efforts that the reform candidate was elected; as a consequence, +Tommy became prosecuting attorney; and, to the amazement of the critics, +made the best prosecuting attorney that the city had ever known. + +It was during the campaign that Mrs. Carriswood met him. +Her goddaughter, daughter of the friend to whom years ago she +described Tommy, was with her. This time Mrs. Carriswood +had recently added Florida to her disappointments in climates, +and was back, as she told Mrs. Lossing, "with a real sense +of relief in a climate that was too bad to make any pretensions." + +She had brought Miss Van Harlem to see the shops. +It may be that she would not have been averse to Harry Lossing's +growing interested in young Margaret. She had seen a great +deal of Harry while he was East at school, and he remained her +first favorite, while Margaret was as good as she was pretty, +and had half a million of dollars in her own right. +They had seen Harry, and he was showing them through the +different buildings or "shops," when a man entered who greeted +him cordially, and whom he presented to Mrs. Carriswood. +It was Tommy Fitzmaurice, grown into a handsome young man. +He brought his heels together and made the ladies a solemn bow. +"Pleased to meet you, ladies; how do you like the West?" said Tommy. + +His black locks curled about his ears, which seemed rather small now; +he had a good nose and a mobile, clean-shaven face. His hands were +very white and soft, and the rim of linen above them was dazzling. +His black frock-coat was buttoned snugly about his slim waist. +He brushed his face with a fine silk handkerchief, and thereby +diffused the fragrance of the best imported cologne among the odors +of wood and turpentine. A diamond pin sparkled from his neckscarf. +The truth is, he knew that the visitors were coming and had made +a state toilet. "He looks half like an actor and half like a clergyman, +and he IS all a politician," thought Mrs. Carriswood; "I don't think +I shall like him any more." While she thought, she was inclining +her slender neck toward him, and the gentlest interest and pleasure +beamed out of her beautiful, dark eyes. + +"We like the West, but _I_ have liked it for ten years; +this is not my first visit," said Mrs. Carriswood. + +"I have reason to be glad for that, madam. I never made another +speech so good." + +He had remembered her; she laughed. "I had thought that +you would forget." + +"How could I, when you have not changed at all?" + +"But you have," says Mrs. Carriswood, hardly knowing whether +to show the young man his place or not. + +"Yes, ma'am, naturally. But I have not learned how to make +a speech yet." + +"Ah, but you make very good ones, Harry tells me." + +"Much obliged, Harry. No, ma'am, Harry is a nice boy; +but he doesn't know. I know there is a lot to learn, +and I guess a lot to unlearn; and I feel all outside; +I don't even know how to get at it. I have wished a thousand +times that I could talk with the lady who taught me to speak +in the first place." He walked on by her side, talking eagerly. +"You don't know how many times I have felt I would give most +anything for the opportunity of just seeing you and talking +with you; those things you said to me I always remembered." +He had a hundred questions evidently stinging his tongue. +And some of them seemed to Mrs. Carriswood very apposite. + +"I'm on the outside of such a lot of things," says he. +"When I first began to suspect that I was on the outside was when I +went to the High School, and sometimes I was invited to Harry's; +that was my first acquaintance with cultivated society. +You can't learn manners from books, ma'am. I learned them at +Harry's. That is,"--he colored and laughed,--"I learned SOME. +There's plenty left, I know. Then, I went to the University. +Some of the boys came from homes like Harry's, and some of the +professors there used to ask us to their houses; and I saw engravings +and oil paintings, and heard the conversation of persons of culture. +All this only makes me know enough to KNOW I am outside. +I can see the same thing with the lawyers, too. +There is a set of them that are after another kind of things; +that think themselves above me and my sort of fellows. +You know all the talk about this being a free and equal country. +That's the tallest kind of humbug, madam! It is that. +There are sets, one above another, everywhere; big bugs +and little bugs, if you will excuse the expression. +And you can't influence the big ones without knowing how they feel. +A fellow can't be poking in the dark in a speech or anywhere else. +Now, these fellows here, they go into politics, sometimes; and there, +I tell you, we come the nearest to a fair field and no favor! +It is the best fellow gets the prize there--the sharpest-witted, +the nerviest, and stanchest. Oh, talk of machine politics! all +the soft chaps who ain't willing to get up early in the morning, +or to go out in the wet, THEY howl about the primaries and corruption; +let them get up and clean the primaries instead of holding their noses! +Those fellows, I'm not nice enough for them, but I can beat them +every time. They make a monstrous racket in the newspapers, +but when election comes on they can't touch side, edge, or bottom!" + +Discoursing in this fashion, with digressions to Harry +in regard to the machines, the furniture, and the sales, +that showed Mrs. Carriswood that he meant to keep an eye +on his twenty odd thousand dollars, he strolled at her side. +To Miss Van Harlem he scarcely said three words. In fact, +he said exactly three words, uttered as Miss Margaret's +silken skirts swung too near a pot of varnish. +They were "Look out, miss!" and at the same second, Tommy +(who was in advance, with really no call to know of the danger), +turned on his heel and whisked the skirts away, turning back +to pick up the sentence he had dropped. + +Tommy told Harry that Miss Van Harlem was a very handsome lady, +but haughty-looking. Then he talked for half an hour about +the cleverness of Mrs. Carriswood. + +"I am inclined to think Tommy will rise." (Mrs. Carriswood +was describing the interview to her cousin, the next day.) +"What do you think he said to me last of all? 'How,' said he, +'does a man, a gentleman'--it had a touch of the pathetic, +don't you know, the little hesitation he made on the word--'how does +he show his gratitude to a lady who has done him a great service?' +'Young or old?' I said. 'Oh, a married lady,' he said, +'very much admired, who has been everywhere.' Wasn't that clever +of him? I told him that a man usually sent a few flowers. +You saw the basket to-day--evidently regardless of expense. +And fancy, there was a card, a card with a gilt edge and his name +written on it." + +"The card was his mother's. She has visiting cards, now, and pays +visits once a year in a livery carriage. Poor Mrs. Fitzmaurice, +she is always so scared; and she is such a good soul! +Tommy is very good to her." + +"How about the father? Does he still keep that 'nice' saloon?" + +"Yes; but he talks of retiring. They are not poor at all, +and Tommy is their only child; the others died. It is hard +on the old man to retire, for he isn't so very old in fact, +but if he once is convinced that his calling stands in the way +of Tommy's career, he won't hesitate a second." + +"Poor people," said Mrs. Carriswood; "do you know, Grace, I can +see Tommy's future; he will grow to be a boss, a political boss. +He will become rich by keeping your streets always being cleaned-- +which means never clean--and giving you the worst fire department +and police to be obtained for money; and, by and by, a grateful machine +will make him mayor, or send him to the Legislature, very likely +to Congress, where he will misrepresent the honest State of Iowa. +Then he will bloom out in a social way, and marry a gentlewoman, +and they will snub the old people who are so proud of him." + +"Well, we shall see," said Mrs. Lossing; "I think better things of Tommy. +So does Harry." + +Part of the prophecy was to be speedily fulfilled. +Two years later, the Honorable Thomas Fitzmaurice was +elected mayor of his city, elected by the reform party, +on account of his eminent services--and because he was the only +man in sight who had the ghost of a chance of winning. +Harry's version was: "Tommy jests at his new principles, +but that is simply because he doesn't comprehend what they are. +He laughs at reform in the abstract; but every concrete, +practical reform he is as anxious as I or anybody to bring about. +And he will get them here, too." + +He was as good as his word; he gave the city an admirable +administration, with neither fear nor favor. Some of the "boys" +still clung to him; these, according to Harry, were the better "boys," +who had the seeds of good in them and only needed opportunity +and a leader. Tommy did not flag in zeal; rather, as the time +went on and he soared out of the criminal courts into big +civil cases involving property, he grew up to the level +of his admirers' praises. "Tommy," wrote Mr. Lossing, +presently, "is beginning to take himself seriously. +He has been told so often that he is a young lion of reform, +that he begins to study the role in dead earnest. +I don't talk this way to Harry, who believes in him and is +training him for the representative for our district. +What harm? Verily, his is the faith that will move mountains. +Besides, Tommy is now rich; he must be worth a hundred +thousand dollars, which makes a man of wealth in these parts. +It is time for him to be respectable." + +Notwithstanding this preparation, Mrs. Carriswood (then giving +Washington the benefit of her doubts of climate) was surprised one day +to receive a perfectly correct visiting card whereon was engraved, +"Mr. Thomas Sackville Fitzmaurice, M.C." + +The young lady who was with her lifted her brilliant hazel +eyes and half smiled. "Is it the droll young man we met +once at Mrs. Lossing's? Pray see him, Aunt Margaret," +said Miss Van Harlem. + +Mrs. Carriswood shrugged her shoulders and ordered the man +to show him up. + +There entered, in the wake of the butler, a distinguished-looking +personage who held out his hand with a perfect copy of the bow +that she saw forty times a day. "He is taking himself +very seriously," she sighed; "he is precisely like anybody else!" +And she felt her interest snuffed out by Tommy's correctness. +But, directly, she changed her mind; the unfailing charm of his race +asserted itself in Tommy; she decided that he was a delightful, +original young man, and in ten minutes they were talking in the same +odd confidence that had always marked their relation. + +"How perfectly you are gotten up! Are you INSIDE, now?" + +"Ah, do you remember that?" said he; "that's awfully good of you. +Which is so fortunate as to please you, my clothes or my deportment?" + +"Both. They are very good. Where did you get them, Tommy? I shall +take the privilege of my age and call you Tommy." + +"Thank you. The clothes? Oh, I asked Harry for the proper thing, +and he recommended a tailor. I think Harry gave me the manners, too." + +"And your new principles?" She could not resist this little fling. + +"I owe a great deal in that way to Harry, also," answered he, +with gravity. + +Gone were the days of sarcastic ridicule, of visionary politics. +Tommy talked of the civil service in the tone of Harry himself. +He was actually eloquent. + +"Why, Aunt Margaret, he is a remarkable young man," +exclaimed Miss Van Harlem; "his honesty and enthusiasm are +refreshing in this pessimist place. I hope he will come again. +Did you notice what lovely eyes he has?" + +Before long it was not pure good-nature that caused Mrs. Carriswood +to ask Fitzmaurice to her house. He was known as a rising young man, +One met him at the best houses; yet he was a prodigious worker, and had +made his mark in committees, before the celebrated speech that sent +him into all the newspaper columns, or that stubborn and infinitely +versatile fight against odds which inspired the artist of PUCK. + +Tommy bore the cartoon to Mrs. Carriswood, beaming. +She had not seen that light in his face since the memorable June +afternoon in the Opera-house. He sent the paper to his mother, +who vowed the picture "did not favor Tommy at all, at all. +Sure Tommy never had such a red nose!" The old man, however, +went to his ex-saloon, and sat in state all the morning, +showing Tommy's funny picture. + +It was about this time that Mrs. Carriswood observed something +that took her breath away: Tommy Fitzmaurice had the presumption +to be attentive to my lady's goddaughter, Miss Van Harlem. +Nor was this the worst; there were indications that Miss Van Harlem, +who had refused the noble names and titles of two or three continental +nobles, and the noble name unaccompanied by a title of the younger +son of an English earl, without mentioning the half-dozen "nice" +American claimants--Miss Van Harlem was not angry. + +The day this staggering blow fell on her, Mrs. Carriswood was +in her dressing-room, peacefully watching Derry unpack a box +from Paris, in anticipation of a state dinner. And Miss Van Harlem, +in a bewitching wrapper, sat on the lounge and admired. +Upon this scene of feminine peace and happiness enter the Destroyer, +in the shape of a note from Tommy Fitzmaurice! Were they going on +Beatoun's little excursion to Alexandria? If they were, he would move +heaven and earth to put off a committee meeting, in order to join them. +By the way, he was to get the floor for his speech that afternoon. +Wouldn't Mrs. Carriswood come to inspire him? Perhaps Miss Van Harlem +would not be bored by a little of it. + +It was a well-worded note; as Mrs. Carriswood read it she realized +for the first time how completely Tommy was acclimated in society. +She remembered his plaint years ago, and his awe of "oil paintings" +and "people of culture;" and she laughed half-sadly as she passed +the note over to Miss Van Harlem. + +"I presume it is the Alexandria excursion that the Beatouns +were talking about yesterday," she said, languidly. +"He wants to show that young Irishman that we have a mild flavor +of antiquity, ourselves. We are to see Alexandria and have a real +old Virginian dinner, including one of the famous Beatoun hams +and some of the '69 Cha-teau Yquem and the sacred '47 port. +I suppose he will have the four-in-hand buckboard. 'A small party '-- +that will mean the Honorable Basil Sackville, Mrs. Beatoun, Lilly Denning, +probably one of the Cabinet girls, Colonel Turner, and that young +Russian Beatoun is so fond of, Tommy Fitzmaurice ------" + +"Why do you always call Mr. Fitzmaurice Tommy?"--this interruption +comes with a slight rise of color from young Margaret. + +"Everybody calls him Tommy in his own town; a politician as popular +as he with the boys is naturally Tommy or Jerry or Billy. +They slap him on the back or sit with an arm around his neck +and concoct the ways to rule us." + +"I don't think anyone slaps Mr. Fitzmaurice on the back and calls +him Tommy, NOW," says Margaret, with a little access of dignity. + +"I dare say his poor old father and mother don't venture on that liberty; +I wish you had seen them ----" + +"He has told me about them," says Margaret. + +And Mrs. Carriswood's dismay was such that for a second she +simply gasped. Were things so far along that such confessions were made? +Tommy must be very confident to venture; it was shrewd, very shrewd, +to forestall Mrs. Carriswood's sure revelations--oh, Tommy was not +a politician for nothing! + +"Besides," Margaret went on, with the same note of repressed +feeling in her voice, "his is a good family, if they have decayed; +his ancestor was Lord Fitzmaurice in King James's time." + +"She takes HIM seriously too!" thought Mrs. Carriswood, +with inexpressible consternation; "what SHALL I say to her mother?" + +Strange to say, perhaps, considering that she was so frankly +a woman of the world, her stub-bornest objection to Tommy was not +an objection of expediency. She had insensibly grown to take +his success for granted, like the rest of the Washington world; +he would be a governor, a senator, he might be--anything! +And he was perfectly presentable, now; no, it would be on +the whole an investment in the future that would pay well enough; +his parents would be awkward, but they were old people, +not likely to be too much _en evidence_. + +Mrs. Carriswood, while not overjoyed, would not feel crushed +by such a match, but she did view what she regarded as Tommy's +moral instability, with a dubious and fearful eye. He was earnest +enough for his new principles now; but what warrant was there +of his sincerity? Margaret and her mother were high-minded women. +It was the gallant knight of her party and her political faith +that the girl admired, the valiant fight, not the triumph! +No mere soldier of fortune, no matter how successful or how brilliant, +could win her; if Tommy were the mercenary, not the knight, +no worldly glory could compensate his wife. + +Wherefore, after a bad quarter of an hour reflecting +on these things, Mrs. Carriswood went to the Capitol, +resolved to take her goddaughter away. She would not withdraw +her acceptance of the Beatouns' invitation, no; let the Iowa +congressman have every opportunity to display his social +shortcomings in contrast with the accomplished Russian, +and Jack Turner, the most elegant man in the army; the next day +would be time enough for a telegram and a sudden flitting. +Yet in the midst of her plans for Tommy's discomfiture +she was assailed by a queer regret and reluctance. +Tommy's fascination had affected even a professional critic +of life; he had been so amusing, so willing, so trusting, +so useful, that her chill interest had warmed into liking. +She felt a moving of the heart as the handsome black head arose, +and the first notes of that resonant, thrilling voice swelled +above the din on the floor. + +It was the day of his great speech, the speech that made him, +it was said. + +As Mrs. Carriswood sank back, turning a little in an instinctive +effort to repulse her own sympathy, she was aware of the presence +near her of an elderly man and woman. The old man wore a shining +silk hat and shining new black clothes. His expansive shirt-bosom +was very white, but not glossy, and rumpled in places; and his +collar was of the spiked and antique pattern known as a "dickey." +His wrinkled, red face was edged by a white fringe of whisker. +He wore large gold-bowed spectacles, and his jaws worked incessantly. + +The woman was a little, mild, wrinkled creature, with an anxious blue +eye and snowy hair, smoothed down over her ears, under her fine bonnet. +She was richly dressed, but her silks and velvets ill suited the season. +Had she seen them anywhere else, Mrs. Carriswood might not have +recognized them; but there, with Tommy before them, both of them +feverishly absorbed in Tommy, she recognized them at a glance. +She had a twinge of pity, watching the old faces pale and kindle. +With the first rustle of applause, she saw the old father slip +his hand into the old mother's. They sat well behind a pillar; +and however excited they became, they never so lost themselves +as to lean in front of their shield. This, also, she noticed. +The speech over, the woman wiped her eyes. The old man joined +in the tumult of applause that swept over the galleries, but the old +woman pulled his arm, evidently feeling that it was not decent for them +to applaud. She sat rigid, with red cheeks and her eyes brimming; +he was swaying and clapping and laughing in a roar of delight. +But it was he that drew her away, finally, while she fain would +have lingered to look at Tommy receiving congratulations below. + +"Poor things," said Mrs. Carriswood, "I do believe they haven't +let him know that they are here." And she remembered how she had +pitied them for this very possibility of humiliation years before. +But she did not pursue the adventure, and some obscure motive +prevented her speaking of it to Miss Van Harlem. + +Did Tommy's parents tell Tommy? If they did, Tommy made no sign. +The morning found him with the others, in a beautiful white flannel suit, +with a silk shirt and a red silk sash, looking handsomer than any man +of the party. He took the congratulations of the company modestly. +Either he was not much puffed up, or he had the art of concealment. + +They saw Alexandria in a conscientious fashion, for the benefit +of the guest of the day. He was a modest young fellow with a nose +rather too large for his face, a long upper lip, and frank blue eyes. +He made himself agreeable to one of the Cabinet girls, on the front seat, +while Tommy, just behind him, had Miss Van Harlem and bliss +for his portion. + +The old streets, the toppling roofs, the musty warehouses, +the uneven pavement, all pleased the young creatures out in the sunshine. +They made merry over the ancient ball-room, where Washington had asked +a far-away ancestress of Beatoun to dance; and they decorously walked +through the old church. + +IT happened in the church. Mrs. Carriswood was behind the others; +so she saw them come in, the same little old couple of the Capitol. + +In the chancel, Beatoun was explaining; beside Beatoun shone +a curly black head that they knew. + +Mrs. Carriswood sat in one of the high old pews. Through a +crack she could look into the next pew; and there they stood. +She heard the old man: "Whist, Molly, let's be getting +out of this! HE is here with all his grand friends. +Don't let us be interrupting him." + +The old woman's voice was so like Tommy's that it +made Mrs. Carriswood start. Very softly she spoke: +"I only want to look at him a minute, Pat, jest a minute. +I ain't seen him for so long." + +"And is it any longer for you than for me?" retorted the husband. +"Ye know what ye promised if I'd be taking you here, unbeknownst. +Don't look his way! Look like ye was a stranger to him. +Don't let us be mortifying him wid our country ways. Like as not 'tis +the prisidint, himself, he is colloguein' wid, this blessed minute. +Shtep back and be a stranger to him, woman!" + +A stranger to him, his own mother! But she stepped back; +she turned her patient face. Then--Tommy saw her. + +A wave of red flushed all over his face. He took two steps +down the aisle, and caught the little figure in his arms. + +"Why, mother?" he cried, "why, mother, where did you drop from?" + +And before Mrs. Carriswood could speak she saw him step back +and push young Sackville forward, crying, "This is my father, +this is the boy that knew your grandmother." + +He did it so easily; he was so entirely unaffected, so perfectly +unconscious, that there was nothing at all embarrassing for anyone. +Even the Cabinet girl, with a grandmother in very humble life, +who must be kept in the background, could not feel disconcerted. + +For this happy result Mrs. Carriswood owns a share of the credit. +She advanced on the first pause, and claimed acquaintanceship with +the Fitzmaurices. The story of their last meeting and Tommy's first +triumph in oratory came, of course; the famous horseshoe received +due mention; and Tommy described with much humor his terror of the stage. +From the speech to its most effective passage was a natural transition; +equally natural the transition to Tommy's grandmother, the Irish famine, +and the benevolence of Lady Sackville. + +Everybody was interested, and it was Sackville himself, who brought +the Fitzmaurices' noble ancestors, the apocryphal Viscounts Fitzmaurice +of King James's creation, on to the carpet. + +He was entirely serious. "My grandmother told me of your +great-grandfather, Lord Fitzmaurice; she saw him ride to hounds once, +when she was a little girl. They say he was the boldest rider +in Ireland, and a renowned duellist too. King James gave the title +to his grandfather, didn't he? and the countryside kept it, +if it was given rather too late in the day to be useful. +I am glad you have restored the family fortunes, Mr. Fitzmaurice." + +The Cabinet girl looked on Tommy with respect, and Miss Van Harlem +blushed like an angel. + +"All is lost," said Mrs. Carriswood to herself; yet she smiled. +Going home, she found a word for Tommy's ear. The old +Virginian dinner had been most successful. The Fitzmaurices +(who had been almost forced into the banquet by Beatoun's +imperious hospitality) were not a wet blanket in the least. +Patrick Fitzmaurice, brogue and all, was an Irish gentleman +without a flaw. He blossomed out into a modest wag; and told +two or three comic stories as acceptably as he was used to tell +them to a very different circle--only, carrying a fresher +flavor of wit to this circle, perhaps, it enjoyed them more. +Mrs. Fitzmaurice looked scared and ate almost nothing, +with the greatest propriety, and her fork in her left hand. +Yet even she thawed under Miss Van Harlem's attentions and gentle +Mrs. Beatoun's tact, and the winning ways of the last Beatoun baby. +She took this absent cherub to her heart with such undissembled +warmth that its mother ever since has called her "a sweet, +funny little old lady." + +They were both (Patrick and his wife) quite unassuming and retiring, +and no urging could dissuade them from parting with the company +at the tavern door. + +"My word, Tommy, your mother and I can git home by ourselves," +whispered honest Patrick; "we've not exceeded--if the wines WERE good. +I never exceeded in my life, God take the glory!" + +But he embraced Tommy so affectionately in parting that I confess +Mrs. Carriswood had suspicions. Yet, surely, it is more likely +that his brain was--let us not say TURNED, but just a wee bit TILTED, +by the joy and triumph of the occasion rather than by Beatoun's +port or champagne. + +But Mrs. Carriswood's word had nothing to do with Tommy's parents, +ostensibly, though, in truth, it had everything to do. She said: +"Will you dine with us to-morrow, quite _en famille_, Thomas?" + +"I ought to tell you, I suppose, that I find your house a pretty +dangerous paradise, Mrs. Carriswood," says Tommy. + +"And I find you a most dangerous angel, Thomas; but--you see +I ask you!" + +"Thank you," answers Tommy, in a different tone; "you've always been +an angel to me. What I owe to you and Harry Lossing--well, I can't talk +about it. But see here, Mrs. Carriswood, you always have called me Tommy; +now you say Thomas; why this state?" + +"I think you have won your brevet, Thomas." + +He looked puzzled, and she liked him the better that he should not make +enough of his conduct to understand her; but, though she has called +him Tommy often since, he keeps the brevet in her thoughts. In fact, +Mrs. Carriswood is beginning to take the Honorable Thomas Fitzmaurice +and his place in the world seriously, herself. + + +MOTHER EMERITUS + +THE Louders lived on the second floor, at the head of the stairs, +in the Lossing Building. There is a restaurant to the right; +and a new doctor, every six months, who is every kind of a healer +except "regular," keeps the permanent boarders in gossip, to the left; +two or three dressmakers, a dentist, and a diamond merchant up-stairs, +one flight; and half a dozen families and a dozen single +tenants higher--so you see the Louders had plenty of neighbors. +In fact, the multitude of the neighbors is one cause of my story. + +Tilly Louder came home from the Lossing factory (where she is +a typewriter) one February afternoon. As she turned the corner, +she was face to the river, which is not so full of shipping +in winter that one cannot see the steel-blue glint of the water. +Back of her the brick paved street climbed the hill, under a +shapeless arch of trees. The remorseless pencil of a railway +has drawn black lines at the foot of the hill; and, all day and +all night, slender red bars rise and sink in their black sockets, +to the accompaniment of the outcry of tortured steam. +All day, if not all night, the crooked pole slips up and down +the trolley wire, as the yellow cars rattle, and flash, +and clang a spiteful little bell, that sounds like a soprano bark, +over the crossings. + +It is customary in the Lossing Building to say, "We are +so handy to the cars." The street is a handsome street, +not free from dingy old brick boxes of stores below +the railway, but fast replacing them with fairer structures. +The Lossing Building has the wide arches, the recessed doors, +the balconies and the colonnades of modern business architecture. +The occupants are very proud of the balconies, in particular; +and, summer days, these will be a mass of greenery and bright tints. +To-day, it was so warm, February day though it was, that some +of the potted plants were sunning themselves outside the windows. + +Tilly could see them if she craned her neck. There were some bouvardias +and fuchsias of her mother's among them. + +"It IS a pretty building," said Tilly; and, for some reason, she frowned. + +She was a young woman, but not a very young woman. +Her figure was slim, and she looked better in loose waists +than in tightly fitted gowns. She wore a dark green gown +with a black jacket, and a scarlet shirt-waist underneath. +Her face was long, with square chin and high cheek-bones, +and thin, firm lips; yet she was comely, because of her lustrous +black hair, her clear, gray eyes, and her charming, fair skin. +She had another gift: everything about her was daintily neat; +at first glance one said, "Here is a person who has spent pains, +if not money, on her toilet." + +By this time Tilly was entering the Lossing Building. +Half-way up the stairway a hand plucked her skirts. +The hand belonged to a tired-faced woman in black, on whose +breast glittered a little crowd of pins and threaded needles, +like the insignia of an Order of Toil. + +"Please excuse me, Miss Tilly," said the woman, at the same time +presenting a flat package in brown paper, "but WILL you give +this pattern back to your mother. I am so very much obliged. +I don't know how I WOULD git along without your mother, Tilly." + +"I'll give the pattern to her," said Tilly, and she pursued her way. + +Not very far. A stout woman and a thin young man, +with long, wavy, red hair, awaited her on the landing. +The woman held a plate of cake which she thrust at Tilly +the instant they were on the same level, saying: "The cake +was just splendid, tell your mother; it's a lovely recipe, +and will you tell her to take this, and see how well I succeeded?" + +"And--ah--Miss Louder," said the man, as the stout woman rustled away, +"here are some _Banner of Lights;_ I think she'd be interested +in some of the articles on the true principles of the inspirational +faith ----" Tilly placed the bundle of newspapers at the base +of her load--"and--and, I wish you'd tell your dear mother that, +under the angels, her mustard plaster really saved my life." + +"I'll tell her," said Tilly. + +She had advanced a little space before a young girl in a bright +blue silk gown flung a radiant presence between her and the door. +"Oh, Miss Tilly," she murmured, blushing, "will you just +give your mother this?--it's--it's Jim's photograph. +You tell her it's ALL right; and SHE was exactly right, +and _I_ was wrong. She'll understand." + +Tilly, with a look of resignation, accepted a stiff package done +up in white tissue paper. She had now only three steps to take: +she took two, only two, for--"Miss Tilly, PLEASE!" a voice pealed +around the corner, while a flushed and breathless young woman, +with a large baby toppling over her lean shoulder, staggered +into view. "My!" she panted, "ain't it tiresome lugging a child! +I missed the car, of course, coming home from ma's. Oh, say, Tilly, +your mother was so good, she said she'd tend Blossom next time I +went to the doctor's, and ----" + +"I'll take the baby," said Tilly. She hoisted the infant +on to her own shoulder with her right arm. "Perhaps you'll +be so kind's to turn the handle of the door," said she in a +slightly caustic tone, "as I haven't got any hands left. +Please shut it, too." + +As the young mother opened the door, Tilly entered the parlor. +For a second she stood and stared grimly about her. The furniture +of the room was old-fashioned but in the best repair. There was +a cabinet organ in one corner. A crayon portrait of Tilly's father +(killed in the civil war) glared out of a florid gilt frame. +Perhaps it was the fault of the portrait, but he had a peevish frown. +There were two other portraits of him, large ghastly gray tintypes +in oval frames of rosewood, obscurely suggesting coffins. +In these he looked distinctly sullen. He was represented in uniform +(being a lieutenant of volunteers), and the artist had conscientiously +gilded his buttons until, as Mrs. Louder was wont to observe, +"It most made you want to cut them off with the scissors." +There were other tintypes and a flock of photographs in the room. +What Mrs. Louder named "a throw" decorated each framed picture and +each chair. The largest arm-chair was drawn up to a table covered +with books and magazines: in the chair sat Mrs. Louder, reading. + +At Tilly's entrance she started and turned her head, and then +one could see that the tears were streaming down her cheeks. + +"Now, MOTHER!" exploded Tilly. Kicking the door open, +she marched into the bed-chamber. An indignant sweep of one +arm sent the miscellany of gifts into a rocking-chair; +an indignant curve of the other landed the baby on the bed. +Tilly turned on her mother. "Now, mother, what did you promise-- +HUSH! will you?" (The latter part of the sentence a fierce "ASIDE" +to the infant on the bed.) In a second Mrs. Louder's arms were +encircling him, and she was soothing him on her broad shoulder, +where I know not how many babies have found comfort. + +Jane Louder was a tall woman--tall and portly. +She had a massive repose about her, a kind of soft dignity; +and a stranger would not guess how tender was her heart. +Deprecatingly she looked up at her only child, standing in judgment +over her. Her eyes were fine still, though they had sparkled +and wept for more than half a century. They were not gray, +like Tilly's, but a deep violet, with black eyelashes and eyebrows. +Black, once, had been the hair under the widow's cap, +now streaked with silver; but Jane Louder's skin was fresh and +daintily tinted like her daughter's, for all its fine wrinkles. +Her voice when she spoke was mellow and slow, with a nervous +vibration of apology. "Never mind, dear," she said, "I was +just reading 'bout the Russians." + +"I KNEW it! You promised me you wouldn't cry about the +Russians any more." + +"I know, Tilly, but Alma Brown lent this to me, herself. +There's a beautiful article in it about 'The Horrors of Hunger.' +It would make your heart ache! I wish you would read it, Tilly." + +"No, thank you. I don't care to have my heart ache. +I'm not going to read any more horrors about the Russians, +or hear them either, if I can help it. I have to write +Mr. Lossing's letters about them, and that's enough. +I've given all I can afford, and you've given more than you +can afford; and I helped get up the subscription at the shops. +I've done all I could; and now I ain't going to have my feelings +harrowed up any more, when it won't do me nor the Russians +a mite of good." + +"But I cayn't HELP it, Tilly. I cayn't take any comfort in my meals, +thinking of that awful black bread the poor children starve rather +than eat; and, Tilly, they ain't so dirty as some folks think! +I read in a magazine how they have GOT to bathe twice a week +by their religion; and there's a bath-house in every village. +Tilly, do you know how much money they've raised here?" + +"Over three thousand. This town is the greatest town for giving-- +give to the cholera down South, give to Johnstown, +give to Grinnell, give to cyclones, give to fires. +_The Freeman_ always starts up a subscription, and Mr. Bayard runs +the thing, and Mr. Lossing always gives. Mother, I tell you HE +makes them hustle when he takes hold. He's the chairman here, +and he has township chairmen appointed for every township. +He's so popular they start in to oblige him, and then, someway, +he makes them all interested. I must tell you of a funny +letter he had to-day from a Captain Ferguson, out at Baxter. +He's a rich farmer with lots of influence and a great worker, +Mr. Lossing says. But this is 'most word for word what he wrote: +'Dear Sir: I am sorry for the Russians, but my wife +is down with the la grippe, and I can't get a hired girl; +so I have to stay with her. If you'll get me a hired girl, +I'll get you a lot of money for the Russians.'" + +"Did he git a girl? I mean Mr. Lossing." + +"No, ma'am. He said he'd try if it was the city, but it was easier +finding gold-mines than girls that would go into the country. +See here, I'm forgetting your presents. Mother, you look real +dragged and--queer!" + +"It's nothing; jist a thought kinder struck me 'bout--'bout that girl." + +Tilly was sorting out the parcels and explaining them; +at the end of her task her mind harked back to an old grievance. +"Mother," said she, "I've been thinking for a long time, +and I've made up my mind." + +"Yes, dearie." Mrs. Louder's eyes grew troubled. +She knew something of the quality of Tilly's mind, +which resembled her father's in a peculiar immobility. +Once let her decision run into any mould (be it whatsoever +it might), and let it stiffen, there was no chance, any more +than with other iron things, of its bending. + +"Positively I could hardly get up the stairs today," said Tilly-- +she was putting her jacket and hat away in her orderly fashion; +of necessity her back was to Mrs. Louder--"there was such +a raft of people wanting to send stuff and messages to you. +You are just working yourself to death; and, mother, I am +convinced we have _got to move!_" + +Mrs. Louder dropped into a chair and gasped. The baby, who had +fallen asleep, stirred uneasily. It was not a pretty child; +its face was heavy, its little cheeks were roughened by the wind, +its lower lip sagged, its chin creased into the semblance of a fat old +man's. But Jane Louder gazed down on it with infinite compassion. +She stroked its head as she spoke. + +"Tilly," said she, "I've been in this block, Mrs. Carleton and me, +ever since it was built; and, some way, between us we've managed +to keep the run of all the folks in it; at least when they +were in any trouble. We've worked together like sisters. +She's 'Piscopal, and I guess I'm Unitarian; but never a word between us. +We tended the Willardses through diphtheria and the Hopkinses +through small-pox, and we steamed and fumigated the rooms together. +It was her first found out the Dillses were letting that twelve-year-old +child run the gasoline stove, and she threatened to tell Mr. Lossing, +and they begged off; and when it exploded we put it out together, +with flour out of her flour-barrel, for the poor, shiftless things +hadn't half a sack full of their own; and her and me, we took +half the care of that little neglected Ellis baby that was always +sitting down in the sticky fly-paper, poor innocent child. +He's took the valedictory at the High School, Tilly, now. +No, Tilly, I couldn't bring myself to leave this building, where I've +married them, and buried them, and born them, you may say, being with +so many of their mothers; I feel like they was all my children. +Don't ASK me." + +Tilly's head went upward and backward with a little +dilatation of the nostrils. "Now, mother," said she +in a voice of determined gentleness, "just listen to me. +Would I ask you to do anything that wouldn't be for your happiness? +I have found a real pretty house up on Fifteenth Street; +and we'll keep house together, just as cosey; and have a woman +come to wash and iron and scrub, so it won't be a bit hard; +and be right on the street-cars; and you won't have to drudge +helping Mrs. Carleton extra times with her restaurant." + +"But, Tilly," eagerly interrupted Mrs. Louder, "you know I dearly +love to cook, and she PAYS me. I couldn't feel right to take +any of the pension money, or the little property your father +left me, away from the house expenses; but what I earn myself, +it is SUCH a comfort to give away out of THAT." + +Tilly ran over and kissed the agitated face. "You dear, generous mother!" +cried she, "I'LL give you all the money you want to spend or give. +I got another rise in my salary of five a month. Don't you worry." + +"You ain't thinking of doing anything right away, Tilly?" + +"Don't you think it's best done and over with, after we've +decided, mother? You have worked so hard all your life I want +to give you some ease and peace now." + +"But, Tilly, I love to work; I wouldn't be happy to do nothing, +and I'd get so fleshy!" + +Tilly only laughed. She did not crave the show of authority. +Let her but have her own way, she would never flaunt her victories. +She was imperious, but she was not arrogant. For months she +had been pondering how to give her mother an easier life; +and she set the table for supper, in a filial glow of satisfaction, +never dreaming that her mother, in the kitchen, was keeping her +head turned from the stove lest she should cry into the fried +ham and stewed potatoes. But, at a sudden thought, Jane Louder +laid her big spoon down to wipe her eyes. + +"Here you are, Jane Louder"--thus she addressed herself--"mourning and +grieving to leave your friends and be laid aside for a useless old woman, +and jist be taken care of, and you clean forgetting the chance the Lord +gives you to help more'n you ever helped in your life! For shame!" + +A smile of exaltation, of lofty resolution, erased the worry lines +on her face. "Why, it might be to save twenty lives," said she; +but in the very speaking of the words a sharp pain wrenched +her heart again, and she caught up the baby from the floor, +where he sat in a wall of chairs, and sobbed over him: +"Oh, how can I go away when I got to go for good so soon? +I want every minnit!" + +She never thought of disputing Tilly's wishes. "It's only fair," +said Jane. "She's lived here all these years to please me, +and now I ought to be willing to go to please her." + +Neither did she for a moment hope to change Tilly's determination. +"She was the settest baby ever was," thought poor Jane, +tossing on her pillow, in the night watches, "and it's grown +with every inch of her!" + +But in the morning she surprised her daughter. "Tilly," said she +at the breakfast-table, "Tilly, I got something I must do, +and I don't want you to oppose me." + +"Good gracious, ma!" said Tilly; "as if I ever opposed you!" + +"You know how bad I have been feeling about the poor Russians ------" + +"Well?" + +"And how I've wished and wished I could do something-- +something to COUNT? I never could, Tilly, because I ain't got +the money or the intellect; but s'posing I could do it for +somebody else, like this Captain Ferguson who could do so much +if he just could get a hired girl to take care of his wife. +Well, I do know how to cook and to keep a house neat and to do +for the sick ----" + +Tilly could restrain herself no longer; her voice rose to a shout +of dismay--"Mother Louder, you AIN'T thinking of going to be +the Ferguson's _hired girl!_" + +"Not their hired girl, Tilly; just their help, so as he can +work for those poor starving creatures." Jane strangled a sob +in her throat. Tilly, in a kind of stupor of bewilderment, +frowned at her plate. Then her clouded face cleared. +If Mrs. Louder had surprised her daughter, her daughter repaid +the surprise. "Well, if you feel that way, mother," said she, +"I won't say a word; and I'll ask Mr. Lossing to explain +to the Fergusons and fix everything. He will." + +"You're real good, Tilly." + +"And while you're gone I guess it will be a good plan to move +and git settled ----" + +For some reason Tilly's throat felt dry, she lifted her cup. +She did not intend to look across the table, but her eyes escaped her. +She set the coffee down untasted. The clock was slow, she muttered; +and she left the room. + +Jane Louder remained in her place, with the same pale face, +staring at the table-cloth. + +"It don't seem like I COULD go, now," she thought dully to herself; +"the time's so awful short, I don't s'pose Maria Carleton can +git up to see me more'n once or twice a month, busy as she is! +I got so to depend on seeing her every day. A sister +couldn't be kinder! I don't see how I am going to bear it. +And to go away, beforehand ----" + +For a long while she sat, her face hardly changing. At last, +when she did push her chair away, her lips were tightly closed. +She spoke to the little pile of books lying on the table in +the corner. "I cayn't--these are my own and you are strangers!" +She walked across the room to take up the same magazine which +Tilly had found her reading the day before. When she began +reading she looked stern--poor Jane, she was steeling her heart-- +but in a little while she was sniffing and blowing her nose. +With a groan she flung the book aside. "It's no use, I would +feel like a murderer if I don't go!" said she. + +She did go. Harry Lossing made all the arrangements. +Tilly was satisfied. But, then, Tilly had not heard +Harry's remark to his mother: "Alma says Miss Louder +is trying to make the old lady move against her will. +I dare say it would be better to give the young woman a chance +to miss her mother and take a little quiet think." + +Tilly saw her mother off on the train to Baxter, the Fergusons' station. +Being a provident, far-sighted, and also inexperienced traveller, +she had allowed a full half-hour for preliminary passages at arms with +the railway officials; and, as the train happened to be an hour late, +she found herself with time to spare, even after she had exhausted +the catalogue of possible deceptions and catastrophes by rail. +During the silence that followed her last warning, she sat +mentally keeping tally on her fingers. "Confidence men"-- +Tilly began with the thumb--"Never give anybody her check. +Never lend anybody money. Never write her name to anything. +Don't get out till conductor tells her. In case of accident, +telegraph me, and keep in the middle of the car, off the trucks. +Not take care of anybody's baby while she goes off for a minute. +Not take care of babies at all. Or children. Not talk +to strangers--good gracious!" + +Tilly felt a movement of impatience; there, after all her cautions, +there was her mother helping an old woman, an utterly strange +old woman, to pile a bird-cage on a bandbox surmounting a bag. +The old woman was clad in a black alpaca frock, +made with the voluminous draperies of years ago, but with +the uncreased folds and the brilliant gloss of a new gown. +She wore a bonnet of a singular shape, unknown to fashion, +but made out of good velvet. Beneath the bonnet (which was large) +appeared a little, round, agitated old face, with bobbing +white curls and white teeth set a little apart in the mouth, +a defect that brought a kind of palpitating frankness +into the expression. + +"Now, who HAS mother picked up now?" thought Tilly. "Well, praise be, +she hasn't a baby, anyhow!" + +She could hear the talk between the two; for the old woman being deaf, +Mrs. Louder elevated her voice, and the old woman, herself, spoke in +a high, thin pipe that somehow reminded Tilly of a lost lamb. + +"That's just so," said Mrs. Louder, "a body cayn't help worrying +over a sick child, especially if they're away from you." + +"Solon and Minnie wouldn't tell me," bleated the other woman, +"they knew I'd worry. Kinder hurt me they should keep things from me; +but they hate to have me upset. They are awful good children. +But I suspicioned something when Alonzo kept writing. +Minnie, she wouldn't tell me, but I pinned her down and it +come out, Eliza had the grip bad. And, then, nothing would +do but I must go to her--why, Mrs. Louder, she's my child! +But they wouldn't hark to it. 'Fraid to have me travel alone ----" + +"I guess they take awful good care of you," said Mrs. Louder; +and she sighed. + +"Yes, ma'am, awful." She, too, sighed. + +As she talked her eyes were darting about the room, eagerly fixed +on every new arrival. + +"Are you expecting anyone, Mrs. Higbee?" said Jane. +They seemed, at least, to know each other by name, thought Tilly; +it was amazing the number of people mother did know! + +"No," said Mrs. Higbee, "I--I --fact is, I'm kinder frightened. +I--fact is, Mrs. Louder, I guess I'll tell you, though I +don't know you very well; but I've known about you so long-- +I run away and didn't tell 'em. I just couldn't stay way from Liza. +And I took the bird--for the children; and it's my bird, and I was +'fraid Minnie would forget to feed it and it would be lonesome. +My children are awful kind good children, but they don't understand. +And if Solon sees me he will want me to go back. I know I'm +dretful foolish; and Solon and Minnie will make me see I am. +There won't be no good reason for me to go, and I'll have to stay; +and I feel as if I should FLY--Oh, massy sakes! there's Solon +coming down the street ----" + +She ran a few steps in half a dozen ways, then fluttered back +to her bag and her cage. + +"Well," said Mrs. Louder, drawing herself up to her full height, +"you SHALL go if you want to." + +"Solon will find me, he'll know the bird-cage! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" + +Then a most unexpected helper stepped upon the stage. +What is the mysterious instinct of rebellion to authority that, +nine cases out of ten, sends us to the aid of a fugitive? +Tilly, the unconscious despot of her own mother, promptly aided +and abetted Solon's rebel mother in her flight. + +"Not if _I_ carry it," said she, snatching up the bird-cage; +"run inside that den where they sell refreshments; he'll see +ME and go somewhere else." + +It fell out precisely as she planned. They heard Solon demanding +a lady with a bird-cage of the agent; they heard the agent's reply, +given with official indifference, "There she is, inside." +Directly, Solon, a small man with an anxious mien, ran into +the waiting-room, flung a glance of disappointment at Tilly, +and ran out again. + +Tilly went to her client. "Did he look like he was anxious?" +was the mother's greeting. "Oh, I just know he and Minnie +will be hunting me everywhere. Maybe I had better go home, +'stead of to Baxter." + +"No, you hadn't," said Tilly, with decision. "Mother's going +to Baxter, too, and if you like, minnit you're safely off, +I'll go tell your folks." + +"You're real kind, I'd be ever so much obliged. And you don't +mind your ma travelling alone? ain't that nice for her!" +She seemed much cheered by the prospect of company and +warmed into confidences. + +"I am kinder lonesome, sometimes, that's a fact," said she, +"and I kinder wish I lived in a block or a flat like your ma. +You see, Minnie teaches in the public school and she's away all day, +and she don't like to have me make company of the hired girl, +though she's a real nice girl. And there ain't nothing for me +to do, and I feel like I wasn't no use any more in the world. +I remember that's what our old minister in Ohio said once. +He was a real nice old man; and they HAD thought everything +of him in the parish; but he got old and his sermons were long; +and so they got a young man for assistant; and they made HIM +a _pastor americus_, they called it--some sort of Latin. +Folks did say the young feller was stuck up and snubbed +the old man; anyhow, he never preached after young Lisbon come; +and only made the first prayers. But when the old folks would +ask him to preach some of the old sermons they had liked, he only +would say, 'No, friends, I know more about my sermons, now.' +He didn't live very long, and I always kinder fancied being +a AMERICUS killed him. And some days I git to feeling like I +was a kinder AMERICUS myself." + +"That ain't fair to your children," said Tilly; "you ought to let +them know how you feel. Then they'd act different." + +"Oh, I don't know, I don't know. You see, miss, they're so sure +they know better'n me. Say, Mrs. Louder, be you going to visit +relatives in Baxter?" + +"No, ma'am, I'm going to take care of a sick lady," said Jane, +"it's kinder queer. Her name's Ferguson, her ----" + +"For the land's sake!" screamed Mrs. Higbee, "why, that's +my 'Liza!" She was in a flutter of surprise and delight, +and so absorbed was Tilly in getting her and her unwieldy +luggage into the car, that Jane's daughter forgot to kiss +her mother good-by. + +"Put your arm in QUICK," she yelled, as Jane essayed to kiss +her hand through the window; "don't EVER put your arm or your +head out of a train!"--the train moved away--"I do hope +she'll remember what I told her, and not lend anybody money, +or come home lugging somebody else's baby!" + +With such reflections, and an ugly sensation of loneliness +creeping over her, Tilly went to assure Miss Minnie Higbee of her +mother's safety. She described her reception to Harry Lossing +and Alma, later. "She really seemed kinder mad at me," +says Tilly, "seemed to think I was interfering somehow. +And she hadn't any business to feel that way, for SHE +didn't know how I'd fooled her brother with that bird-cage. +I guess the poor old lady daren't call her soul her own. +I'd hate to have my mother that way--so 'fraid of me. +MY mother shall go where she pleases, and stay where she pleases, +and DO as she pleases." + +"That makes me think," says Alma, "I heard you were going to move." + +"Yes, we are. Mother is working too hard. She knows +everybody in the building, and they call on her all the time; +and I think the easiest way out is just to move." + +Alma and Mr. Lossing exchanged glances. There is an Arabian legend +of an angel whose trade it is to decipher the language of faces. +This angel must have perceived that Alma's eyes said, +with the courage of a second in a duel, "Go on, now is the time!" +and that Harry's answered, with masculine pusillanimity, +"I don't like to!" + +But he spoke. "Very likely your mother does sometimes work too hard," +said he. "But don't you think it would be harder for her not to work? +Why, she must have been in the building ever since my father bought it; +and she's been a janitor and a fire inspector and a doctor and a +ministering angel combined! That is why we never raised the rent +to you when we improved the building, and raised it on the others. +My father told me your mother was the best paying tenant he ever had. +And don't you remember how, when I used to come with him, when I +was a little boy, she used to take me in her room while he went +the rounds? She was always doing good to everybody, the same way. +She has a heart as big as the Mississippi, and I assure you, +Miss Louder, you won't make her happy, but miserable, if you try +to dam up its channel. She has often told me that she loved +the building and all the people in it. They all love her. +I HOPE, Miss Louder, you'll think of those things before you decide. +She is so unselfish that she would go in a minute if she thought it +would make you happier." The angel aforesaid, during this speech +(which Harry delivered with great energy and feeling), must have had +all his wits busy on Tilly's impassive features; but he could read +ardent approval, succeeded by indignation, on Alma's countenance, +at his first glance. The indignation came when Tilly spoke. +She said: "Thank you, Mr. Lossing, you're very kind, I'm sure"-- +Harry softly kicked the wastebasket under the desk--"but I guess +it's best for us to go. I've been thinking about it for six months, +and I know it will be a hard struggle for mother to go; but in a little +while she will be glad she went. It's only for her sake I am doing it; +it ain't an easy or a pleasant thing for me to do, either ----" +As Tilly stopped her voice was unsteady, and the rare tears shone +in her eyes. + +"What's best for her is the only question, of course," said Alma, +helping Harry off the field. + +In a few days Tilly received a long letter from her mother. +Mr. Ferguson was doing wonders for the Russians; the family +were all very kind to her and "nice folks" and easily pleased. +("Of COURSE they're pleased with mother's cooking; +what would they be made of if they weren't!" cried Tilly.) +It was wonderful how much help Mrs. Higbee was about the house, +and how happy it made her. Mrs. Ferguson had seemed real +glad to see her, and that made her happy. And then, maybe it +helped a little, her (Jane Louder's) telling Mrs. Ferguson +("accidental like") how Tilly treated her, never trying to boss her, +and letting her travel alone. Perhaps, if Mrs. Ferguson +kept on improving, they might let her come home next week. +And the letter ended: + + +"I will be so glad if they do, for I want to see you so bad, +dear daughter, and I want to see the old home once more before we leave. +I guess the house you tell me about will be very nice and convenient. +I do thank you, dear daughter, for being so nice and considerate +about the Russians. Give my love to Mrs. Carleton and all of them; +and if little Bobby Green hasn't missed school since I left, +give him a nickel, please; and please give that medical student +on the fifth floor--I forget his name--the stockings I mended. +They are in the first drawer of the walnut bureau. +Good-by, my dear, good daughter. + +"MOTHER, JANE M. LOUDER." + + +When Tilly read the letter she was surrounded by wall-paper +and carpet samples. Her eyes grew moist before she laid it down; +but she set her mouth more firmly. + +"It is an awful short time, but I've just got to hurry and have it +over before she comes," said she. + +Next week Jane returned. She was on the train, waiting in her seat +in the car, when Captain Ferguson handed her Tilly's last letter, +which had lain in the post-office for three days. + +It was very short: + + +"DEAR MOTHER: I shall be very glad indeed to see you. +I have a surprise which I hope will be pleasant for you; +anyhow, I truly have meant it for your happiness. + Your affectionate daughter, + M. E. LOUDER." + + +There must have been, despite her shrewd sense, an obtuse streak +in Tilly, else she would never have written that letter. +Jane read it twice. The paper rattled in her hands. +"Tilly has moved while I was gone," she said; "I never shall +live in the block again." She dropped her veil over her face. +She sat very quietly in her seat; but the conductor who came +for her ticket watched her sharply, she seemed so dazed by his +demand and was so long in finding the ticket. + +The train rumbled and hissed through darkening cornfields, +into scattered yellow lights of low houses, into angles of white +light of street-arcs and shop-windows, into the red and blue +lights dancing before the engines in the station. + +"Mother!" cried Tilly's voice. + +Jane let her and Harry Lossing take all her bundles and lift her +out of the car. Whether she spoke a word she could not tell. +She did rouse a little at the vision of the Lossing carriage glittering +at the street corner; but she had not the sense to thank Harry Lossing, +who placed her in the carriage and lifted his hat in farewell. + +"What's he doing all that for, Tilly?" cried she; "there ain't-- +there ain't nobody dead--Maria Carleton ------" She stared +at Tilly wildly. + +Tilly was oddly moved, though she tried to speak lightly. +"No, no, there ain't nothing wrong, at all. +It's because you've done so much for the Russians-- +and other folks! Now, ma, I'm going to be mysterious. +You must shut your eyes and shut your mouth until I tell you. +That's a dear ma." + +It was vaguely comforting to have Tilly so affectionate. +"I'm a wicked, ungrateful woman to be so wretched," +thought Jane; "I'll never let Tilly know how I felt." + +In a surprisingly short time the carriage stopped. +"Now, ma," said Tilly. + +A great blaze of light seemed all about Jane Louder. +There were the dear familiar windows of the Lossing block. + +"Come up-stairs, ma," said Tilly. + +She followed like one in a dream; and like one in a dream +she was pushed into her own old parlor. The old parlor, +but not quite the old parlor; hung with new wall-paper, +shining with new paint, soft under her feet with a new carpet, +it looked to Jane Louder like fairyland. + +"Oh, Tilly," she gasped; "oh, Tilly, ain't you moved?" + +"No, nor we ain't going to move, ma--that's the surprise! +I took the money I'd saved for moving, for the new carpet +and new dishes; and the Lossings they papered and painted. +I was SO 'fraid we couldn't get done in time. Alma and all +the boarders are coming in pretty soon to welcome you, +and they've all chipped in for a little banquet at Mrs. Carleton's-- +why, mother, you're crying! Mother, you didn't really think I'd +move when it made you feel so bad? I know I'm set and stubborn, +and I didn't take it well when Mr. Lossing talked to me; +but the more I thought it over, the more I seemed to myself +like that hateful Minnie. Oh, mother, I ain't, am I? You shall +do just exactly as you like all the days of your life!" + + +AN ASSISTED PROVIDENCE + +IT was the Christmas turkeys that should be held responsible. +Every year the Lossings give each head of a family in their employ, +and each lad helping to support his mother, a turkey at Christmastide. +As the business has grown, so has the number of turkeys, until it +is now well up in the hundreds, and requires a special contract. +Harry, one Christmas, some two years ago, bought the turkeys +at so good a bargain that he felt the natural reaction +in an impulse to extravagance. In the very flood-tide of the +money-spending yearnings, he chanced to pass Deacon Hurst's stables +and to see two Saint Bernard puppies, of elephantine size but of +the tenderest age, gambolling on the sidewalk before the office. +Deacon Hurst, I should explain, is no more a deacon than I am; +he is a livery-stable keeper, very honest, a keen and solemn sportsman, +and withal of a staid demeanor and a habitual garb of black. +Now you know as well as I any reason for his nickname. + +Deacon Hurst is fond of the dog as well as of that noble animal +the horse (he has three copies of "Black Beauty" in his stable, +which would do an incalculable amount of good if they were ever read!); +and he usually has half a dozen dogs of his own, with pedigrees +long enough for a poor gentlewoman in a New England village. +He told Harry that the Saint Bernards were grandsons of Sir Bevidere, +the "finest dog of his time in the world, sir;" that they +were perfectly marked and very large for their age (which Harry +found it easy to believe of the young giants), and that they +were "ridiculous, sir, at the figger of two hundred and fifty!" +(which Harry did not believe so readily); and, after Harry had admired +and studied the dogs for the space of half an hour, he dropped +the price, in a kind of spasm of generosity, to two hundred dollars. +Harry was tempted to close the bargain on the spot, hot-headed, +but he decided to wait and prepare his mother for such a large +addition to the stable. + +The more he dwelt on the subject the more he longed to buy the dogs. + +In fact, a time comes to every healthy man when he wants a dog, +just as a time comes when he wants a wife; and Harry's dog was dead. +By consequence, Harry was in the state of sensitive affection and +desolation to which a promising new object makes the most moving appeal. +The departed dog (Bruce by name) had been a Saint Bernard; +and Deacon Hurst found one of the puppies to have so much +the expression of countenance of the late Bruce that he named +him Bruce on the spot--a little before Harry joined the group. +Harry did not at first recognize this resemblance, but he grew +to see it; and, combined with the dog's affectionate disposition, +it softened his heart. By the time he told his mother he was come +to quoting Hurst's adjectives as his own. + +"Beauties, mother," says Harry, with sparkling eyes; "the markings +are perfect--couldn't be better; and their heads are shaped just right! +You can't get such watch-dogs in the world! And, for all their +enormous strength, gentle as a lamb to women and children! +And, mother, one of them looks like Bruce!" + +"I suppose they would want to be housedogs," says Mrs. Lossing, +a little dubiously, but looking fondly at Harry's handsome face; +"you know, somehow, all our dogs, no matter how properly +they start in a kennel, end by being so hurt if we keep them +there that they come into the house. And they are so large, +it is like having a pet lion about." + +"These dogs, mother, shall never put a paw in the house." + +"Well, I hope just as I get fond of them they will not have +the distemper and die!" said Mrs. Lossing; which speech Harry +rightly took for the white flag of surrender. + +That evening he went to find Hurst and clinch the bargain. +As it happened, Hurst was away, driving an especially important +political personage to an especially important political council. +The day following was a Sunday; but, by this time, +Harry was so bent upon obtaining the dogs that he had it +in mind to go to Hurst's house for them in the afternoon. +When Harry wants anything, from Saint Bernards to purity +in politics, he wants it with an irresistible impetus! +If he did wrong, his error was linked to its own punishment. +But this is anticipating, if not presuming; I prefer to leave +Harry Lossing's experience to paint its own moral without pushing. +The event that happened next was Harry's pulling out his check-book +and beginning to write a check, remarking, with a slight drooping +of his eyelids, "Best catch the deacon's generosity on the fly, +or it may make a home run!" + +Then he let the pen fall on the blotter, for he had remembered the day. +After an instant's hesitation he took a couple of hundred-dollar +bank-notes out of a drawer (I think they were gifts for his two sisters +on Christmas day, for he is a generous brother; and most likely there +would be some small domestic joke about engravings to go with them); +these he placed in the right-hand pocket of his waistcoat. +In his left-hand waistcoat pocket were two five-dollar notes. + +Harry was now arrayed for church. He was a figure to please any +woman's eye, thought his mother, as she walked beside him, and gloried +silently in his six feet of health and muscle and dainty cleanliness. +He was in a most amiable mood, what with the Saint Bernards and +the season. As they approached the cathedral close, Harry, not for +the first time, admired the pure Gothic lines of the cathedral, +and the soft blending of grays in the stone with the warmer hues +of the brown network of Virginia creeper that still fluttered, +a remnant of the crimson adornings of autumn. Beyond were the bare, +square outlines of the old college, with a wooden cupola perched +on the roof, like a little hat on a fat man, the dull-red tints +of the professors' houses, and the withered lawns and bare trees. +The turrets and balconies and arched windows of the boys' +school displayed a red background for a troop of gray uniforms +and blazing buttons; the boys were forming to march to church. +Opposite the boys' school stood the modest square brick house that +had served the first bishop of the diocese during laborious years. +Now it was the dean's residence. Facing it, just as you +approached the cathedral, the street curved into a half-circle +on either side, and in the centre the granite soldier on his shaft +looked over the city that would honor him. Harry saw the tall +figure of the dean come out of his gate, the long black skirts +of his cassock fluttering under the wind of his big steps. +Beside him skipped and ran, to keep step with him, a little man +in ill-fitting black, of whose appearance, thus viewed from the rear, +one could only observe stooping shoulders and iron-gray hair +that curled at the ends. + +"He must be the poor missionary who built his church himself," +Mrs. Lossing observed; "he is not much of a preacher, the dean said, +but he is a great worker and a good pastor." + +"So much the better for his people, and the worse for us!" +says Harry, cheerfully. + +"Why?" + +"Naturally. We shall get the poor sermon and they will get +the good pastoring!" + +Then Harry caught sight of a woman's frock and a profile that he knew, +and thought no more of the preacher, whoever he might be. + +But he was in the chancel in plain view, after the procession +of choir-boys had taken their seats. He was an elderly man +with thin cheeks and a large nose. He had one of those great, +orotund voices that occasionally roll out of little men, and he read +the service with a misjudged effort to fill the building. +The building happened to have peculiarly fine acoustic properties; +but the unfortunate man roared like him of Bashan. +There was nothing of the customary ecclesiastical dignity +and monotony about his articulation; indeed, it grew +plain and plainer to Harry that he must have "come over" +from some franker and more emotional denomination. +It seemed quite out of keeping with his homely manner and +crumpled surplice that this particular reader should intone. +Intone, nevertheless, he did; and as badly as mortal man well could! +It was not so much that his voice or his ear went wrong; +he would have had a musical voice of the heavy sort, +had he not bellowed; neither did his ear betray him; +the trouble seemed to be that he could not decide when to begin; +now he began too early, and again, with a startled air, +he began too late, as if he had forgotten. + +"I hope he will not preach," thought Harry, who was absorbed +in a rapt contemplation of his sweetheart's back hair. +He came back from a tender revery (by way of a little detour into +the furniture business and the establishment that a man of his income +could afford) to the church and the preacher and his own sins, +to find the strange clergyman in the pulpit, plainly frightened, +and bawling more loudly than ever under the influence of fear. +He preached a sermon of wearisome platitudes; making up for lack +of thought by repetition, and shouting himself red in the face +to express earnestness. "Fourth-class Methodist effort," +thought the listener in the Lossing pew, stroking his fair mustache, +"with Episcopal decorations! That man used to be a Methodist minister, +and he was brought into the fold by a high-churchman. Poor fellow, +the Methodist church polity has a place for such fellows as he; +but he is a stray sheep with us. He doesn't half catch on +to the motions; yet I'll warrant he is proud of that sermon, +and his wife thinks it one of the great efforts of the century." +Here Harry took a short rest from the sermon, to contemplate +the amazing moral phenomenon: how robust can be a wife's faith +in a commonplace husband! + +"Now, this man," reflected Harry, growing interested in his own fancies, +"this man never can have LIVED! He doesn't know what it is +to suffer, he has only vegetated! Doubtless, in a prosaic way, +he loves his wife and children; but can a fellow who talks +like him have any delicate sympathies or any romance about him? +He looks honest; I think he is a right good fellow and works +like a soldier; but to be so stupid as he is, ought to HURT!" + +Harry felt a whimsical moving of sympathy towards the preacher. +He wondered why he continually made gestures with the left arm, +never with his right. + +"It gives a one-sided effect to his eloquence," said he. +But he thought that he understood when an unguarded movement +revealed a rent which had been a mended place in the surplice. + +"Poor fellow," said Harry. He recalled how, as a boy, he had +gone to a fancy-dress ball in Continental smallclothes, so small +that he had been strictly cautioned by his mother and sisters not +to bow except with the greatest care, lest he rend his magnificence +and reveal that it was too tight to allow an inch of underclothing. +The stockings, in particular, had been short, and his sister +had providently sewed them on to the knee-breeches, and to guard +against accidents still further, had pinned as well as sewed, +the pins causing Harry much anguish. + +"Poor fellow!" said Harry again, "I wonder is HE pinned somewhere? +I feel like giving him a lift; he is so prosy it isn't likely anyone +else will feel moved to help." + +Thus it came about that when the dean announced that the alms this day +would be given to the parish of our friend who had just addressed us; +and the plate paused before the Lossing pew, Harry slipped his hand +into his waistcoat pocket after those two five-dollar notes. + +I should explain that Harry being a naturally left-handed boy, +who has laboriously taught himself the use of his right hand, +it is a family joke that he is like the inhabitants of Nineveh, +who could not tell their right hand from their left. +But Harry himself has always maintained that he can tell +as well as the next man. + +Out drifted the flock of choir-boys singing, "For thee, oh dear, +dear country," and presently, following them, out drifted +the congregation; among the crowd the girl that Harry loved, +not so quickly that he had not time for a look and a smile +(just tinged with rose); and because she was so sweet, so good, +so altogether adorable, and because she had not only smiled +but blushed, and, unobserved, he had touched the fur of her jacket, +the young man walked on air. + +He did not remember the Saint Bernards until after the early +Sunday dinner, and during the after-dinner cigar. +He was sitting in the library, before some blazing logs, +at peace with all the world. To him, thus, came his mother and +announced that the dean and "that man who preached this morning, +you know," were waiting in the other room. + +"They seem excited," said she, "and talk about your munificence. +What HAVE you been doing?" + +"Appear to make a great deal of fuss over ten dollars," +said Harry, lightly, as he sauntered out of the door. + +The dean greeted him with something almost like confusion in +his cordiality; he introduced his companion as the Rev. Mr. Gilling. + +"Mr. Gilling could not feel easy until he had ----" + +"Made sure about there being no mistake," interrupted Mr. Gilling; "I-- +the sum was so great ------" + +A ghastly suspicion shot like a fever-flush over Harry's mind. +Could it be possible? There were the two other bills; could he have +given one of them? Given that howling dervish a hundred dollars? +The thought was too awful! + +"It was really not enough for you to trouble yourself," +he said; "I dare say you are thanking the wrong man." +He felt he must say something. + +To his surprise the dean colored, while the other clergyman answered, +in all simplicity: + +"No, sir, no, sir. I know very well. The only other bill, +except dollars, on the plate, the dean here gave, +and the warden remembers that you put in two notes--I"--he grew +quite pale--"I can't help thinking you maybe intended to put +in only ONE! "His voice broke, he tried to control it. +"The sum is so VERY large!" quavered he. + +"I have given him BOTH bills, two hundred dollars!" thought Harry. +He sat down. He was accustomed to read men's faces, and plainly +as ever he had read, he could read the signs of distress and conflict +on the prosaic, dull features before him. + +"I INTENDED to put in two bills," said he. Gilling gave +a little gasp--so little, only a quick ear could have caught it; +but Harry's ear is quick. He twisted one leg around the other, +a further sign of deliverance of mind. + +"Well, sir, well, Mr. Lossing," he remarked, +clearing his throat, "I cannot express to you properly the-- +the appreciation I have of your--your PRINCELY gift!" +(Harry changed a groan into a cough and tried to smile.) +"I would like to ask you, however, HOW you would like it to +be divided. There are a number of worthy causes: the furnishing +of the church, which is in charge of the Ladies' Aid Society; +they are very hard workers, the ladies of our church. +And there is the Altar Guild, which has the keeping +of the altar in order. They are mostly young girls, +and they used to wash my things--I mean the vestments" +(blushing)--"but they--they were so young they were not careful, +and my wife thought she had best wash the--vestments herself, +but she allowed them to laundry the other--ah, things." +There was the same discursiveness in his talk as in his sermon, +Harry thought; and the same uneasy restlessness of manner. +"Then, we give to--various causes, and--and there is, also, +my own salary ----" + +"That is what it was intended for," said Harry. +"I hope the two hundred dollars will be of some use to you, +and then, indirectly, it will help your church." + +Harry surprised a queer glance from the dean's brown eyes; +there was both humor and a something else that was solemn enough in it. +The dean had believed that there was a mistake. + +"All of it! To ME!" cried Gilling. + +"All of it. To YOU," Harry replied, dryly. He was conscious +of the dean's gaze upon him. "I had a sudden impulse," +said he, "and I gave it; that is all." + +The tears rose to the clergyman's eyes; he tried to wink them away, +then he tried to brush them away with a quick rub of his fingers, +then he sprang up and walked to the window, his back to Harry. +Directly he was facing the young man again, and speaking. + +"You must excuse me, Mr. Lossing; since my sickness a little +thing upsets me." + +"Mr. Gilling had diphtheria last spring," the dean struck in, +"there was an epidemic of diphtheria, in Matin's Junction; Mr. Gilling +really saved the place; but his wife and he both contracted the disease, +and his wife nearly died." + +Harry remembered some story that he had heard at the time-- +his eyes began to light up as they do when he is moved. + +"Why, YOU are the man that made them disinfect their houses," +cried he, "and invented a little oven or something to steam mattresses +and things. You are the man that nursed them and buried them +when the undertaker died. You digged graves with your own hands-- +I say, I should like to shake hands with you!" + +Gilling shook hands, submissively, but looking bewildered. + +He cleared his throat. "Would you mind, Mr. Lossing, if I took +up your time so far as to tell you what so overcame me?" + +"I should be glad ----" + +"You see, sir, my wife was the daughter of the Episcopal minister-- +I mean the rector, at the town--well, it wasn't a town, it was +two or three towns off in Shelby County where I had my circuit. +You may be surprised, sir, to know that I was once a Methodist minister." + +"Is it possible?" said Harry. + +"Yes, sir. Her father--my wife's, I mean--was about as high +a churchman as he could be, and be married. He induced me +to join our communion; and very soon after I was married. +I hope, Mr. Lossing, you'll come and see us some time, +and see my wife. She--are you married?" + +"I am not so fortunate." + +"A good wife cometh from the Lord, sir, SURE! I thought I +appreciated mine, but I guess I didn't. She had two things she wanted, +and one I did want myself; but the other--I couldn't seem to bring +my mind to it, no--anyhow! We hadn't any children but one that died +four years ago, a little baby. Ever since she died my wife has had +a longing to have a stained-glass window, with the picture, you know, +of Christ blessing little children, put into our little church. +In Memoriam, you know. Seems as if, now we've lost the baby, +we think all the more of the church. Maybe she was a sort of idol +to us. Yes, sir, that's one thing my wife fairly longed for. +We've saved our money, what we COULD save; there are so many calls; +during the sickness, last winter, the sick needed so many things, +and it didn't seem right for us to neglect them just for our +baby's window; and--the money went. The other thing was different. +My wife has got it into her head I have a fine voice. And she's +higher church than I am; so she has always wanted me to INTONE. +I told her I'd look like a fool intoning, and there's no +mistake about it, I DO! But she couldn't see it that way. +It was 'most the only point wherein we differed; and last spring, +when she was so sick, and I didn't know but I'd lose her, it was +dreadful to me to think how I'd crossed her. So, Mr. Lossing, +when she got well I promised her, for a thank-offering, I'd intone. +And I have ever since. My people know me so well, and we've +been through so much together, that they didn't make any fuss-- +though they are not high--fact is, I'm not high myself. +But they were kind and considerate, and I got on pretty well +at home; but when I came to rise up in that great edifice, +before that cultured and intellectual audience, so finely dressed, +it did seem to me I could NOT do it! I was sorely tempted to +break my promise. I was, for a fact." He drew a long breath. +"I just had to pray for grace, or I never would have pulled through. +I had the sermon my wife likes best with me; but I know it lacks-- +it lacks--it isn't what you need! I was dreadfully scared and I +felt miserable when I got up to preach it--and then to think that +you were--but it is the Lord's doing and marvellous in our eyes! +I don't know what Maggie will say when I tell her we can get the window. +The best she hoped was I'd bring back enough so the church +could pay me eighteen dollars they owe on my salary. And now-- +it's wonderful! Why, Mr. Lossing, I've been thinking so much and +wanting so to get that window for her, that, hearing the dean wanted +some car-pentering done, I thought maybe, as I'm a fair carpenter-- +that was my trade once, sir--I'd ask him to let ME do the job. +I was aware there is nothing in our rules--I mean our canons-- +to prevent me, and nobody need know I was the rector of Matin's Junction, +because I would come just in my overalls. There is a cheap place +where I could lodge, and I could feed myself for almost nothing, +living is so cheap. I was praying about that, too. Now, your noble +generosity will enable me to donate what they owe on my salary, +and get the window too!" + +"Take my advice," said Harry, "donate nothing. +Say nothing about this gift; I will take care of the warden, +and I can answer for the dean." + +"Yes," said the dean, "on the whole, Gilling, you would better +say nothing, I think; Mr. Lossing is more afraid of a reputation +for generosity than of the small-pox." + +The older man looked at Harry with glistening eyes of admiration; +with what Christian virtues of humility he was endowing that embarrassed +young man, it is painful to imagine. + +The dean's eyes twinkled above his handkerchief, which hid his mouth, +as he rose to make his farewells. He shook hands, warmly. +"God bless you, Harry," said he. Gilling, too, wrung Harry's hands; +he was seeking some parting word of gratitude, but he could only +choke out, "I hope you will get MARRIED some time, Mr. Lossing, +then you'll understand." + +"Well," said Harry, as the door closed, and he flung out his +arms and his chest in a huge sigh, "I do believe it was better +than the puppies!" + + +HARRY LOSSING + +THE note-book of Mr. Horatio Armorer, president of our street railways, +contained a page of interest to some people in our town, on the occasion +of his last visit. + +He wrote it while the train creaked over the river, and the porter +of his Pullman car was brushing all the dust that had been distributed +on the passengers' clothing, into the main aisle. + +If you had seen him writing it (with a stubby little pencil that he +occasionally brightened with the tip of his tongue), you would not have +dreamed him to be more profoundly disturbed than he had been in years. +Nor would the page itself have much enlightened you. + + "_See abt road M-- D-- + See L + See E & M tea-set + See abt L_." + + +Translated into long-hand, this reads: "See about the street-car +road, Marston (the superintendent) and Dane (the lawyer). +See Lossing, see Esther and Maggie, and remember about tea-set. +See about Lossing." + +His memoranda written, he slipped the book in his pocket, +reflecting cynically, "There's habit! I've no need of writing that. +It's not pleasant enough to forget!" + +Thirty odd years ago, Horatio Armorer--they called him 'Raish, then-- +had left the town to seek his fortune in Chicago. It was his +daydream to wrestle a hundred thousand dollars out of the world's +tight fists, and return to live in pomp on Brady Street hill! +He should drive a buggy with two horses, and his wife should keep +two girls. Long ago, the hundred thousand limit had been reached +and passed, next the million; and still he did not return. +His father, the Presbyterian minister, left his parish, or, to be exact, +was gently propelled out of his parish by the disaffected; +the family had a new home; and the son, struggling to help them out +of his scanty resources, went to the new parish and not to the old. +He grew rich, he established his brothers and sisters in prosperity, +he erected costly monuments and a memorial church to his parents +(they were beyond any other gifts from him); he married, and lavished +his money on three daughters; but the home of his youth neither saw +him nor his money until Margaret Ellis bought a house on Brady Street, +far up town, where she could have all the grass that she wanted. +Mrs. Ellis was a widow and rich. Not a millionaire like her brother, +but the possessor of a handsome property. + +She was the best-natured woman in the world, and never guessed +how hard her neighbors found it to forgive her for always +calling their town of thirty thousand souls, "the country." +She said that she had pined for years to live in the country, +and have horses, and a Jersey cow and chickens, and "a neat pig." +All of which modest cravings she gratified on her little estate; +and the gardener was often seen with a scowl and the garden hose, +keeping the pig neat. + +It was later that Mr. Armorer had bought the street railways, +they having had a troublous history and being for sale cheap. +Nobody that knows Armorer as a business man would back his +sentiment by so much as an old shoe; yet it was sentiment, +and not a good bargain, that had enticed the financier. +Once engaged, the instincts of a shrewd trader prompted him +to turn it into a good bargain, anyhow. His fancy was pleased +by a vision of a return to the home of his childhood and his +struggling youth, as a greater personage than his hopes had +ever dared promise. + +But, in the event, there was little enough gratification for his vanity. +Not since his wife's death had he been so harassed and anxious; +for he came not in order to view his new property, but because his +sister had written him her suspicions that Harry Lossing wanted +to marry his youngest daughter. + +Armorer arrived in the early dawn. Early as it was, +a handsome victoria, with horses sleeker of skin and harness heavier +and brighter than one is used to meet outside the great cities, +had been in waiting for twenty minutes; while for that space +of time a pretty girl had paced up and down the platform. +The keenest observer among the crowd, airing its meek impatience +on the platform, did not detect any sign of anxiety in her behavior. +She walked erect, with a step that left a clean-cut footprint +in the dust, as girls are trained to walk nowadays. +Her tailor-made gown of fine blue serge had not a wrinkle. +It was so simple that only a fashionable woman could guess anywhere +near the awful sum total which that plain skirt, that short jacket, +and that severe waistcoat had once made on a ruled sheet of paper. +When she turned her face toward the low, red station-house and +the people, it looked gentle, and the least in the world sad. +She had one of those clear olive skins that easily grow pale; +it was pale to-day. Her black hair was fine as spun silk; +the coil under her hat-brim shone as she moved. The fine hair, +the soft, transparent skin, and the beautiful marking of her brows +were responsible for an air of fragile daintiness in her person, +just as her almond-shaped, liquid dark eyes and unsmiling mouth made +her look sad. It was a most attractive face, in all its moods; +sometimes it was a beautiful face; yet it did not have a single +perfect feature except the mouth, which--at least so Harry Lossing +told his mother--might have been stolen from the Venus of Milo. +Even the mouth, some critics called too small for her nose; +but it is as easy to call her nose too large for her mouth. + +The instant she turned her back on the bustle of the station, +all the lines in her face seemed to waver and the eyes to brighten. +Finally, when the train rolled up to the platform and a +young-looking elderly man swung himself nimbly off the steps, +the color flared up in her cheeks, only to sink as suddenly; +like a candle flame in a gust of wind. + +Mr. Armorer put his two arms and his umbrella and travelling-bag +about the charming shape in blue, at the same time exclaiming, +"You're a good girl to come out so early, Essie! How's Aunt Meg?" + +"Oh, very well. She would have come too, but she hasn't come +back from training." + +"Training?" + +"Yes, dear, she has a regular trainer, like John L. Sullivan, you know. +She drives out to the park with Eliza and me, and walks and runs races, +and does gymnastics. She has lost ten pounds." + +Armorer wagged his head with a grin: "I dare say. I thought so when +you began. Meg is always moaning and groaning because she isn't a sylph! +She will make her cook's life a burden for about two months and lose +ten pounds, and then she will revel in ice-cream! Last time, +she was raving about Dr. Salisbury and living on beefsteak sausages, +spending a fortune starving herself." + +"She had Dr. Salisbury's pamphlet; but Cardigan told her it was +a long way out; so she said she hated to have it do no one any good, +and she gave it to Maria, one of the maids, who is always fretting +because she is so thin." + +"But the thing was to cure fat people!" + +"Precisely." Esther laughed a little low laugh, at which her +father's eyes shone; "but you see she told Maria to exactly reverse +the advice and eat everything that was injurious to stout people, +and it would be just right for her." + +"I perceive," said Armorer, dryly; "very ingenious and feminine scheme. +But who is Cardigan?" + +"Shuey Cardigan? He is the trainer. He is a fireman in a +furniture shop, now; but he used to be the boxing teacher for +some Harvard men; and he was a distinguished pugilist, once. +He said to me, modestly, 'I don't suppose you will have seen my name +in the _Police Gazette_, miss?' But he really is a very sober, +decent man, notwithstanding." + +"Your Aunt Meg always was picking up queer birds! Pray, who introduced +this decent pugilist?" + +Esther was getting into the carriage; her face was turned from him, +but he could see the pink deepen in her ear and the oval of her cheek. +She answered that it was a friend of theirs, Mr. Lossing. As if +the name had struck them both dumb, neither spoke for a few moments. +Armorer bit a sigh in two. "Essie," said he, "I guess it is no use +to side-track the subject. You know why I came here, don't you?" + +"Aunt Meg told me what she wrote to you." + +"I knew she would. She had compunctions of conscience letting +him hang round you, until she told me; and then she had awful +gripes because she had told, and had to confess to YOU!" + +He continued in a different tone: "Essie, I have missed your mother +a long while, and nobody knows how that kind of missing hurts; +but it seems to me I never missed her as I do to-day. I need her +to advise me about you, Essie. It is like this: I don't want to be +a stern parent any more than you want to elope on a rope ladder. +We have got to look at this thing together, my dear little girl, +and try to--to trust each other." + +"Don't you think, papa," said Esther, smiling rather tremulously, +"that we would better wait, before we have all these solemn preparations, +until we know surely whether Mr. Lossing wants me?" + +"Don't you know surely?" + +"He has never said anything of--of that--kind." + +"Oh, he is in love with you fast enough," growled Armorer; but a smile +of intense relief brightened his face. "Now, you see, my dear, +all I know about this young man, except that he wants my daughter-- +which you will admit is not likely to prejudice me in his favor-- +is that he is mayor of this town and has a furniture store ----" + +"A manufactory; it is a very large business!" + +"All right, manufactory, then; all the same he is not a brilliant +match for my daughter, not such a husband as your sisters have." +Esther's lip quivered and her color rose again; but she did not speak. +"Still I will say that I think a fellow who can make his own +fortune is better than a man with twice that fortune made for him. +My dear, if Lossing has the right stuff in him and he is a real +good fellow, I shan't make you go into a decline by objecting; +but you see it is a big shock to me, and you must let me get +used to it, and let me size the young man up in my own way. +There is another thing, Esther; I am going to Europe Thursday, +that will give me just a day in Chicago if I go to-morrow, +and I wish you would come with me. Will you mind?" + +Either she changed her seat or she started at the proposal. +But how could she say that she wanted to stay in America +with a man who had not said a formal word of love to her? +"I can get ready, I think, papa," said Esther. + +They drove on. He felt a crawling pain in his heart, for he loved his +daughter Esther as he had loved no other child of his; and he knew that +he had hurt her. Naturally, he grew the more angry at the impertinent +young man who was the cause of the flitting; for the whole European +plan had been cooked up since the receipt of Mrs. Ellis's letter. +They were on the very street down which he used to walk (for it +takes the line of the hills) when he was a poor boy, a struggling, +ferociously ambitious young man. He looked at the changed rows +of buildings, and other thoughts came uppermost for a moment. +"It was here father's church used to stand; it's gone, now," he said. +"It was a wood church, painted a kind of gray; mother had a bonnet +the same color, and she used to say she matched the church. +I bought it with the very first money I earned. Part of it came +from weeding, and the weather was warm, and I can feel the way my +back would sting and creak, now! I would want to stop, often, but I +thought of mother in church with that bonnet, and I kept on! +There's the place where Seeds, the grocer that used to trust us, +had his store; it was his children had the scarlet fever, +and mother went to nurse them. My! but how dismal it was at home! +We always got more whippings when mother was away. Your grandfather +was a good man, too honest for this world, and he loved every one +of his seven children; but he brought us up to fear him and the Lord. +We feared him the most, because the Lord couldn't whip us! +He never whipped us when we did anything, but waited until next day, +that he might not punish in anger; so we had all the night to +anticipate it. Did I ever tell you of the time he caught me in a lie? +I was lame for a week after it. He never caught me in another lie." + +"I think he was cruel; I can't help it, papa," cried Esther, +with whom this was an old argument, "still it did good, that time!" + +"Oh, no, he wasn't cruel, my dear," said Armorer, with a queer +smile that seemed to take only one-half of his face, not answering +the last words; "he was too sure of his interpretation of the Scripture, +that was all. Why, that man just slaved to educate us children; +he'd have gone to the stake rejoicing to have made sure that we +should be saved. And of the whole seven only one is a church member. +Is that the road?" + +They could see a car swinging past, on a parallel street, +its bent pole hitching along the trolley-wire. + + +"Pretty scrubby-looking cars," commented Armorer; "but get +our new ordinance through the council, we can save enough +to afford some fine new cars. Has Lossing said anything to you +about the ordinance and our petition to be allowed to leave +off the conductors?" + +"He hasn't said anything, but I read about it in the papers. +Is it so very important that it should be passed?" + +"Saving money is always important, my dear," said Armorer, seriously. + +The horses turned again. They were now opposite a fair lawn +and a house of wood and stone built after the old colonial pattern, +as modern architects see it. Esther pointed, saying: + +"Aunt Meg's, papa; isn't it pretty?" + +"Very handsome, very fine," said the financier, who knew nothing +about architecture, except its exceeding expense. "Esther, I've a notion; +if that young man of yours has brains and is fond of you he ought to be +able to get my ordinance through his little eight by ten city council. +There is our chance to see what stuff he is made of!" + +"Oh, he has a great deal of influence," said Esther; +"he can do it, unless--unless he thinks the ordinance would +be bad for the city, you know." + +"Confound the modern way of educating girls!" thought Armorer. +"Now, it would have been enough for Esther's mother to know +that anything was for my interests; it wouldn't have to help +all out-doors, too!" + +But instead of enlarging on this point, he went into a sketch of the +improvements the road could make with the money saved by the change, +and was waxing eloquent when a lady of a pleasant and comely face, +and a trig though not slender figure, advanced to greet them. + + +It was after breakfast (and the scene was the neat pig's pen, +where Armorer was displaying his ignorance of swine) +that he found his first chance to talk with his sister alone. +"Oh, first, Sis," said he, "about your birthday, to-day; +I telegraphed to Tiffany's for that silver service, you know, +that you liked, so you needn't think there's a mistake +when it comes." + +"Oh, 'Raish, that gorgeous thing! I must kiss you, if Daniel +does see me!" + +"Oh, that's all right," said Armorer, hastily, and began +to talk of the pig. Suddenly, without looking up, he dropped +into the pig-pen the remark: "I'm very much obliged to you +for writing me, Meg." + +"I don't know whether to feel more like a virtuous sister or a +villanous aunt," sighed Mrs. Ellis; "things seemed to be getting +on so rapidly that it didn't seem right, Esther visiting me and all, +not to give you a hint; still, I am sure that nothing has been said, +and it is horrid for Esther, perfectly HORRID, discussing her proposals +that haven't been proposed!" + +"I don't want them ever to be proposed," said Armorer, gloomily. + +"I know you always said you didn't want Esther to marry; but I +thought if she fell in love with the right man--we know that marriage +is a very happy estate, sometimes, Horatio!" She sighed again. +In her case it was only the memory of happiness, for Colonel Ellis +had been dead these twelve years; but his widow mourned him still. + +"If you marry the right one, maybe," answered Armorer, grudgingly; +"but see here, Meg, Esther is different from the other girls; +they got married when Jenny was alive to look after them, +and I knew the men, and they were both big matches, you know. +Then, too, I was so busy making money while the other girls grew +up that I hadn't time to get real well acquainted with them. +I don't think they ever kissed me, except when I gave them a check. +But Esther and I ----" he drummed with his fingers on the boards, +his thin, keen face wearing a look that would have amazed his business +acquaintances--"you remember when her mother died, Meg? Only fifteen, +and how she took hold of things! And we have been together ever since, +and she makes me think of her grandmother and her mother both. +She's never had a wish I knew that I haven't granted--why, d---- it! +I've bought my clothes to please her ----" + +"That's why you are become so well-dressed, Horatio; I wondered +how you came to spruce up so!" interrupted Mrs. Ellis. + +"It has been so blamed lonesome whenever she went to visit you, +but yet I wouldn't say a word because I knew what a good time she had; +but if I had known that there was a confounded, long-legged, sniffy young +idiot all that while trying to steal my daughter away from me!" +In an access of wrath at the idea Armorer wrenched off the picket that +he clutched, at which he laughed and stuck his hands in his pockets. + +"Why, Meg, the papers and magazines are always howling +that women won't marry," cried he, with a fresh sense +of grievance; "now, two of my girls have married, that's enough; +there was no reason for me to expect any more of them would! +There isn't one d---- bit of need for Esther to marry!" + +"But if she loves the young fellow and he loves her, won't you +let them be happy?" + +"He won't make her happy." + +"He is a very good fellow, truly and really, 'Raish. And he comes +of a good family ----" + +"I don't care for his family; and as to his being moral +and all that, I know several young fellows that could skin him +alive in a bargain that are moral as you please. I have been +a moral man, myself. But the trouble with this Lossing (I told +Esther I didn't know anything about him, but I do), the trouble +with him is that he is chock full of all kinds of principles! +Just as father was. Don't you remember how he lost parish after +parish because he couldn't smooth over the big men in them? +Lossing is every bit as pig-headed. I am not going +to have my daughter lead the kind of life my mother did. +I want a son-in-law who ain't going to think himself so much +better than I am, and be rowing me for my way of doing business. +If Esther MUST marry I'd like her to marry a man with a head +on him that I can take into business, and who will be willing +to live with the old man. This Lossing has got his notions +of making a sort of Highland chief affair of the labor question, +and we should get along about as well as the Kilkenny cats!" + +Mrs. Ellis knew more than Esther about Armorer's business methods, +having the advantage of her husband's point of view; and Colonel Ellis +had kept the army standard of honor as well as the army ignorance +of business. To counterbalance, she knew more than anyone +alive what a good son and brother Horatio had always been. +But she could not restrain a smile at the picture of the partnership. + +"Precisely, you see yourself," said Armorer. "Meg"--hesitating-- +"you don't suppose it would be any use to offer Esther a cool +hundred thousand to promise to bounce this young fellow?" + +"Horatio, NO!" cried Mrs. Ellis, tossing her pretty gray head indignantly; +"you'd insult her!" + +"Take it the same way, eh? Well, perhaps; Essie has high-toned notions. +That's all right, it is the thing for women. Mother had them too. +Look here, Meg, I'll tell you, I want to see if this young fellow +has ANY sense! We have an ordinance that we want passed. +If he will get his council to pass it, that will show he can put +his grand theories into his pockets sometimes; and I will give +him a show with Esther. If he doesn't care enough for my girl +to oblige her father, even if he doesn't please a lot of carping +roosters that want the earth for their town and would like a +street railway to be run to accommodate them and lose money +for the stockholders, well, then, you can't blame me if I don't +want him! Now, will you do one thing for me, Meg, to help me out? +I don't want Lossing to persuade Esther to commit herself; +you know how, when she was a little mite, if Esther gave her word +she kept it. I want you to promise me you won't let Esther +be alone one second with young Lossing. She is going to-morrow, +but there's your whist-party to-night; I suppose he's coming? +And I want you to promise you won't let him have our address. +If he treats me square, he won't need to ask you for it. Well?" + +He buttoned up his coat and folded his arms, waiting. + +Mrs. Ellis's sympathy had gone out to the young people +as naturally as water runs down hill; for she is of a +romantic temperament, though she doesn't dare to be weighed. +But she remembered the silver service, the coffee-pot, the tea-pot, +the tray for spoons, the creamer, the hot-water kettle, +the sugar-bowl, all on a rich salver, splendid, dazzling; +what rank ingratitude it would be to oppose her generous brother! +Rather sadly she answered, but she did answer: "I'll do that much +for you, 'Raish, but I feel we're risking Esther's happiness, +and I can only keep the letter of my promise." + +"That's all I ask, my dear," said Armorer, taking out a little +shabby note-book from his breast-pocket, and scratching out a line. +The line effaced read: + +"_See E & M tea-set_." + + +"The silver service was a good muzzle," he thought. +He went away for an interview with the corporation lawyer +and the superintendent of the road, leaving Mrs. Ellis +in a distraction of conscience that made her the wonder +of her servants that morning, during all the preparations +for the whist-party. She might have felt more remorseful had she +guessed her brother's real plan. He knew enough of Lossing +to be assured that he would not yield about the ordinance, +which he firmly believed to be a dangerous one for the city. +He expected, he counted on the mayor's refusing his proffers. +He hoped that Esther would feel the sympathy which women give, +without question generally, to the business plans of those near +and dear to them, taking it for granted that the plans are +right because they will advantage those so near and dear. +That was the beautiful and proper way that Jenny had +always reasoned; why should Jenny's daughter do otherwise? +When Harry Lossing should oppose her father and refuse to please +him and to win her, mustn't any high-spirited woman feel hurt? +Certainly she must; and he would take care to whisk her off +to Europe before the young man had a chance to make his peace! +"Yes, sir," says Armorer, to his only confidant, "you never were a +domestic conspirator before, Horatio, but you have got it down fine! +You would do for Gaboriau"--Gaboriau's novels being the only +fiction that ever Armorer read. Nevertheless, his conscience +pricked him almost as sharply as his sister's pricked her. +Consciences are queer things; like certain crustaceans, +they grow shells in spots; and, proof against moral artillery +in one part, they may be soft as a baby's cheek in another. +Armorer's conscience had two sides, business and domestic; +people abused him for a business buccaneer, at the same time +his private life was pure, and he was a most tender husband +and father. He had never deceived Esther before in her life. +Once he had ridden all night in a freight-car to keep a promise +that he had made the child. It hurt him to be hoodwinking her now. +But he was too angry and too frightened to cry back. + +The interview with the lawyer did not take any long time, +but he spent two hours with the superintendent of the road, +who pronounced him "a little nice fellow with no airs about him. +Asked a power of questions about Harry Lossing; guess there is +something in that story about Lossing going to marry his daughter!" + +Marston drove him to Lossing's office and left him there. + +He was on the ground, and Marston lifting the whip to touch the horse, +when he asked: "Say, before you go--is there any danger in leaving +off the conductors?" + +Marston was raised on mules, and he could not overcome a vehement distrust +of electricity. "Well," said he, "I guess you want the cold facts. +The children are almighty thick down on Third Street, and children +are always trying to see how near they can come to being killed, +you know, sir; and then, the old women like to come and stand on +the track and ask questions of the motorneer on the other track, +so that the car coming down has a chance to catch 'em. The two together +keep the conductors on the jump!" + +"Is that so?" said Armorer, musingly; "well, I guess you'd better +close with that insurance man and get the papers made out before we +run the new way." + +"If we ever do run!" muttered the superintendent to himself +as he drove away. + +Armorer ran his sharp eye over the buildings of the +Lossing Art Furniture Manufacturing Company, from the ugly +square brick box that was the nucleus--the egg, so to speak-- +from which the great concern had been hatched, to the handsome +new structures with their great arched windows and red mortar. +"Pretty property, very pretty property," thought Armorer; +"wonder if that story Marston tells is true!" The story +was to the effect that a few weeks before his last sickness +the older Lossing had taken his son to look at the buildings, +and said, "Harry, this will all be yours before long. +It is a comfort to me to think that every workman I have is +the better, not the worse, off for my owning it; there's no +blood or dirt on my money; and I leave it to you to keep it +clean and to take care of the men as well as the business." + +"Now, wasn't he a d---- fool!" said Armorer, cheerfully, taking out +his note-book to mark, + +"_See abt road M--D-- _" + + +And he went in. Harry greeted him with exceeding cordiality +and a fine blush. Armorer explained that he had come +to speak to him about the proposed street-car ordinances; +he (Armorer) always liked to deal with principals and +without formality; now, couldn't they come, representing the +city and the company, to some satisfactory compromise? +Thereupon he plunged into the statistics of the earnings +and expenses of the road (with the aid of his note-book), +and made the absolute necessity of retrenchment plain. +Meanwhile, as he talked he studied the attentive listener before him; +and Harry, on his part, made quite as good use of his eyes. +Armorer saw a tall, athletic, fair young man, very carefully, +almost foppishly dressed, with bright, steady blue eyes and +a firm chin, but a smile under his mustache like a child's; +it was so sunny and so quick. Harry saw a neat little figure +in a perfectly fitting gray check travelling suit, with a rose +in the buttonhole of the coat lapel. Armorer wore no jewellery +except a gold ring on the little finger of his right hand, +from which he had taken the glove the better to write. +Harry knew that it was his dead wife's wedding-ring; +and noticed it with a little moving of the heart. +The face that he saw was pale but not sickly, delicate and keen. +A silky brown mustache shot with gray and a Van-dyke beard +hid either the strength or the weakness of mouth and chin. +He looked at Harry with almond-shaped, pensive dark eyes, +so like the eyes that had shone on Harry's waking and sleeping +dreams for months that the young fellow felt his heart rise again. +Armorer ended by asking Harry (in his most winning manner) +to help him pull the ordinance out of the fire. "It would be," +he said, impressively, "a favor he should not forget!" + +"And you must know, Mr. Armorer," said Harry, in a dismal tone +at which the president chuckled within, "that there is no man +whose favor I would do so much to win!" + +"Well, here's your chance!" said Armorer. + +Harry swung round in his chair, his clinched fists on his knee. +He was frowning with eagerness, and his eyes were like blue steel. + +"See here, Mr. Armorer," said he, "I am frank with you. +I want to please you, because I want to ask you to let me marry +your daughter. But I CAN'T please you, because I am mayor of +this town, and I don't dare to let you dismiss the conductors. +I don't DARE, that's the point. We have had four children +killed on this road since electricity was put in." + +"We have had forty killed on one street railway I know; what of it? +Do you want to give up electricity because it kills children?" + +"No, but look here! the conductors lessen the risk. A lady I know, +only yesterday, had a little boy going from the kindergarten home, +nice little fellow only five years old ----" + +"She ought to have sent a nurse with a child five years old, a baby!" +cried Armorer, warmly. + +"That lady," answered Harry, quietly, "goes without any servant +at all in order to keep her two children at the kindergarten; +and the boy's elder sister was ill at home. The boy got on +the car, and when he got off at the crossing above his house, +he started to run across; the other train-car was coming, +the little fellow didn't notice, and ran to cross; he stumbled +and fell right in the path of the coming car!" + +"Where was the conductor? He didn't seem much good!" + +"They had left off the conductor on that line." + +"Well, did they run over the boy? Why haven't I been informed +of the accident?" + +"There was no accident. A man on the front platform saw the boy fall, +made a flying leap off the moving car, fell, but scrambled up and pulled +the boy off the track. It was sickening; I thought we were both gone!" + +"Oh, you were the man?" + +"I was the man; and don't you see, Mr. Armorer, why I feel +strongly on the subject? If the conductor had been on, +there wouldn't have been any occasion for any accident." + +"Well, sir, you may be assured that we will take precautions +against any such accidents. It is more for our interest than +anyone's to guard against them. And I have explained to you +the necessity of cutting down our expense list." + +"That is just it, you think you have to risk our lives to cut +down expenses; but we get all the risk and none of the benefits. +I can't see my way clear to helping you, sir; I wish I could." + +"Then there is nothing more to say, Mr. Lossing," said Armorer, coldly. +"I'm sorry a mere sentiment that has no real foundation should stand +in the way of our arranging a deal that would be for the advantage +of both the city and our road." He rose. + +Harry rose also, but lifted his hand to arrest the financier. +"Pardon me, there is something else; I wouldn't mention it, but I hear +you are going to leave to-morrow and go abroad with--Miss Armorer. +I am conscious I haven't introduced myself very favorably, +by refusing you a favor when I want to ask the greatest one possible; +but I hope, sir, you will not think the less of a man because he is +not willing to sacrifice the interests of the people who trust him, +to please ANYONE. I--I hope you will not object to my asking +Miss Armorer to marry me," concluded Harry, very hot and shaky, +and forgetting the beginning of his sentences before he came +to the end. + +"Does my daughter love you, do I understand, Mr. Lossing?" + +"I don't know, sir. I wish I did." + +"Well, Mr. Lossing," said Armorer, wishing that something in the young +man's confusion would not remind him of the awful moment when he asked +old Forrester for his Jenny, "I am afraid I can do nothing for you. +If you have too nice a conscience to oblige me, I am afraid it will be +too nice to let you get on in the world. Good-morning." + +"Stop a minute," said Harry; "if it is only my ability to get +on in the world that is the trouble, I think ------" + +"It is your love for my daughter," said Armorer; "if you don't love +her enough to give up a sentimental notion for her, to win her, +I don't see but you must lose her, I bid you good-morning, sir." + +"Not quite yet, sir"--Harry jumped before the door; +"you give me the alternative of being what I call dishonorable +or losing the woman I love!" He pronounced the last word +with a little effort and his lips closed sharply as his +teeth shut under them. "Well, I decline the alternative. +I shall try to do my duty and get the wife I want, BOTH." + +"Well, you give me fair warning, don't you?" said Armorer. + +Harry held out his hand, saying, "I am sorry that I detained you. +I didn't mean to be rude." There was something boyish and +simple about the action and the tone, and Armorer laughed. +As Harry attended him through the outer office to the door, +he complimented the shops. + +"Miss Armorer and Mrs. Ellis have promised to give me the +pleasure of showing them to them this afternoon," said Harry; +"can't I show them and part of our city to you, also? +It has changed a good deal since you left it." + +The remark threw Armorer off his balance; for a rejected suitor this +young man certainly kept an even mind. But he had all the helplessness +of the average American with regard to his daughter's amusements. +The humor in the situation took him; and it cannot be denied that +he began to have a vivid curiosity about Harry. In less time than it +takes to read it, his mind had swung round the circle of these various +points of view, and he had blandly accepted Harry's invitation. +But he mopped a warm and furrowed brow, outside, and drew a prodigious +sigh as he opened the note-book in his hand and crossed out, "_See L._" +"That young fellow ain't all conscience," said he, "not by a long shot." + +He found Mrs. Ellis very apologetic about the Lossing engagement. +It was made through the telephone; Esther had been anxious +to have her father meet Lossing; Lossing was to drive them there, +and later show Mr. Armorer the town. + +"Mr. Lossing is a very clever young man, very," said Armorer, +gravely, as he went out to smoke his cigar after luncheon. +He wished he had stayed, however, when he returned to find +that a visitor had called, and that this visitor was the mother +of the little boy that Harry Lossing had saved from the car. +The two women gave him the accident in full, and were lavish +of harrowing detail, including the mother's feelings. +"So you see, 'Raish," urged Mrs. Ellis, timidly, "there is +some reason for opposition to the ordinance." + +Esther's cheeks were red and her eyes shone, but she had not spoken. +Her father put his arm around her waist and kissed her hair. +"And what did you say, Essie," he asked, gently, "to all the criticisms?" + +"I told her I thought you would find some way to protect the children +even if the conductors were taken off; you didn't enjoy the slaughter +of children any more than anyone else." + +"I guess we can fix it. Here is your young man." + +Harry drove a pair of spirited horses. He drove well, +and looked both handsome and happy. + +"Did you know that lady--the mother of the boy that wasn't run over-- +was coming to see my sister?" said Armorer, on the way. + +"I did," said Harry, "I sent her; I thought she could explain +the reason why I shall have to oppose the bill, better than I." + +Armorer made no reply. + +At the shops he kept his eye on the young man. Harry seemed to know +most of his workmen, and had a nod or a word for all the older men. +He stopped several moments to talk with one old German who complained +of everything, but looked after Harry with a smile, nodding his head. +"That man, Lieders, is our best workman; you can't get any better work in +the country," said he. "I want you to see an armoire that he has carved, +it is up in our exhibition room." + +Armorer said, "You seem to get on very well with your +working people, Mr. Lossing." + +"I think we generally get on well with them, and they do +well themselves, in these Western towns. For one thing, +we haven't much organization to fight, and for another thing, +the individual workman has a better chance to rise. +That man Lieders, whom you saw, is worth a good many thousand dollars; +my father invested his savings for him." + +"You are one of the philanthropists, aren't you, Mr. Lossing, +who are trying to elevate the laboring classes?" + +"Not a bit of it, sir. I shall never try to elevate the laboring classes; +it is too big a contract. But I try as hard as I know how to have +every man who has worked for Harry Lossing the better for it. +I don't concern myself with any other laboring men." + +Just then a murmur of exclamations came from Mrs. Ellis +and Esther, whom the superintendent was piloting through +the shops. "Oh, no, it is too heavy; oh, don't do it, +Mr. Cardigan!" "Oh, we can see it perfectly well from here! +PLEASE don't, you will break yourself somewhere!" +Mrs. Ellis shrieked this; but the shrieks turned to a murmur +of admiration as a huge carved sideboard came bobbing and wobbling, +like an intoxicated piece of furniture in a haunted house, +toward the two gentlewomen. Immediately, a short but powerfully +built man, whose red face beamed above his dusty shoulders +like a full moon with a mustache, emerged, and waved his hand +at the sideboard. + +"I could tackle the two of them, begging your pardon, ladies." + +"That's Cardigan," explained Harry, "Miss Armorer may have told +you about him. Oh, SHUEY!" + +Cardigan approached and was presented. He brought both his heels +together and bowed solemnly, bending his head at the same time. + +"Pleased to meet you, sir," said Shuey. Then he assumed an attitude +of military attention. + +"Take us up in the elevator, will you, Shuey?" said Harry. +"Step in, Mr. Armorer, please, we will go and see the reproductions +of the antique; we have a room upstairs." + +Mr. Armorer stepped in, Shuey following; and then, before Harry +could enter it, the elevator shot upward and--stuck! + +"What's the matter?" cried Armorer. + +Shuey was tugging at the wire rope. He called, in tones that seemed +to come from a panting chest: "Take a pull at it yourself, sir! +Can you move it?" + +Armorer grasped the rope viciously; Shuey was on the seat pulling +from above. "We're stuck, sir, fast!" + +"Can't you get down either?" + +"Divil a bit, saving your presence, sir. Do ye think like the water-works +could be busted?" + +"Can't you make somebody hear?" panted Armorer. + +"Well, you see there's a deal of noise of the machinery," +said Shuey, scratching his chin with a thoughtful air, +"and they expect we've gone up!" + +"Best try, anyhow. This infernal machine may take a notion +to drop!" said Armorer. + +"And that's true, too," acquiesced Shuey. Forthwith he did lift up +his voice in a loud wailing: "OH--H, Jimmy! OH--H, Jimmy Ryan!" + +Jimmy might have been in Chicago for any response he made; +though Armorer shouted with Shuey; and at every pause the whir +of the machinery mocked the shouters. Indescribable moans +and gurgles, with a continuous malignant hiss, floated up to them +from the rebel steam below, as from a volcano considering eruption. +"They'll be bound to need the elevator some time, if they don't +need US, and that's one comfort!" said Shuey, philosophically. + +"Don't you think if we pulled on her we could get her up +to the next floor, by degrees? Now then!" + +Armorer gave a dash and Shuey let out his muscles in a giant tug. +The elevator responded by an astonishing leap that carried them past +three or four floors! + +"Stop her! stop her!" bawled Shuey; but in spite of Armorer's +pulling himself purple in the face, the elevator did not stop +until it bumped with a crash against the joists of the roof. + +"Well, do you suppose we're stuck HERE?" growled Armorer. + +"Well, sir, I'll try. Say, don't be exerting yourself violent. +It strikes me she's for all the world like the wimmen,-- +in exthremes, sir, in exthremes! And it wouldn't be noways +so pleasant to go riproaring that gait down cellar! +Slow and easy, sir, let me manage her. Hi! she's working." + +In fact, by slow degrees and much puffing, Shuey got +the erratic box to the next floor, where, disregarding +Shuey's protestations that he could "make her mind," +Mr. Armorer got out, and they left the elevator to its fate. +It was a long way, through many rooms, downstairs. Shuey would +have beguiled the way by describing the rooms, but Armorer +was in a raging hurry and urged his guide over the ground. +Once they were delayed by a bundle of stuff in front of a door; +and after Shuey had laboriously rolled the great roll away, +he made a misstep and tumbled over, rolling it back, +to a tittering accompaniment from the sewing-girls in the room. +But he picked himself up in perfect good temper and kicked the roll +ten yards. "Girls is silly things," said the philosopher Shuey, +"but being born that way it ain't to be expected otherwise!" + +He had the friendly freedom of his class in the West. +He praised Mrs. Ellis's gymnastics, and urged Armorer to stay +over a morning train and see a "real pretty boxing match" +between Mr. Lossing and himself. + +"Oh, he boxes too, does he?" said Armorer. + +"And why on earth would he groan-like?" wondered Shuey to himself. +"He does that, sir," he continued aloud; "didn't Mrs. Ellis ever +tell you about the time at the circus? She was there herself, +with three children she borrowed and an unreasonable gyurl, +with a terrible big screech in her and no sense. +Yes, sir, Mr. Lossing he is mighty cliver with his hands! +There come a yell of 'Lion loose! lion loose!' at that circus, +just as the folks was all crowding out at the end of it, and them +that had gone into the menagerie tent came a-tumbling and howling back, +and them that was in the circus tent waiting for the concert +(which never ain't worth waiting for, between you and me!) +was a-scrambling off them seats, making a noise like thunder; +and all fighting and pushing and bellowing to get out! +I was there with my wife and making for the seats that the fools quit, +so's to get under and crawl out under the canvas, when I see +Mrs. Ellis holding two of the children, and that fool girl let +the other go and I grabbed it. 'Oh, save the baby! save one, +anyhow,' cries my wife--the woman is a tinder-hearted crechure! +And just then I seen an old lady tumble over on the benches, +with her gray hair stringing out of her black bonnet. +The crowd was WILD, hitting and screaming and not caring +for anything, and I see a big jack of a man come plunging +down right spang on that old lady! His foot was right in +the air over her face! Lord, it turned me sick. I yelled. +But that minnit I seen an arm shoot out and that fellow shot +off as slick! it was Mr. Lossing. He parted that crowd, +hitting right and left, and he got up to us and hauled a child +from Mrs. Ellis and put it on the seats, all the while shouting: +'Keep your seats! it's all right! it's all over! stand back!' +I turned and floored a feller that was too pressing, and hollered +it was all right too. And some more people hollered too. +You see, there is just a minnit at such times when it is +a toss up whether folks will quiet down and begin to laugh, +or get scared into wild beasts and crush and kill each other. +And Mr. Lossing he caught the minnit! The circus folks came up +and the police, and it was all over. WELL, just look here, sir; +there's our folks coming out of the elevator!" + +They were just landing; and Mrs. Ellis wanted to know where he had gone. + +"We run away from ye, shure," said Shuey, grinning; and he +related the adventure. Armorer fell back with Mrs. Ellis. +"Did you stay with Esther every minute?" said he. +Mrs. Ellis nodded. She opened her lips to speak, then closed +them and walked ahead to Harry Lossing. Armorer looked-- +suspicion of a dozen kinds gnawing him and insinuating that the three +all seemed agitated--from Harry to Esther, and then to Shuey. +But he kept his thoughts to himself and was very agreeable +the remainder of the afternoon. + +He heard Harry tell Mrs. Ellis that the city council would meet +that evening; before, however, Armorer could feel exultant he added, +"but may I come late?" + +"He is certainly the coolest beggar," Armorer snarled, +"but he is sharp as a nigger's razor, confound him!" + +Naturally this remark was a confidential one to himself. + +He thought it more times than one during the evening, +and by consequence played trumps with equal disregard of the laws +of the noble game of whist and his partner's feelings. +He found a few, a very few, elderly people who remembered his parent, +and they will never believe ill of Horatio Armorer, who talked +so simply and with so much feeling of old times, and who is going +to give a memorial window in the new Presbyterian church. +He was beginning to think with some interest of supper, +the usual dinner of the family having been sacrificed to +the demands of state; then he saw Harry Lossing. The young +mayor's blond head was bowing before his sister's black velvet. +He caught Armorer's eye and followed him out to the lawn +and the shadows and the gay lanterns. He looked animated. +Evening dress was becoming to him. "One of my daughters married +a prince, but I am hanged if he looked it like this fellow," +thought Armorer; "but then he was only an Italian. +I suppose the council did not pass the ordinance? your committee +reported against it?" he said quite amicably to Harry. + +"I wish you could understand how much pain it has given me to oppose you, +Mr. Armorer," said Harry, blushing. + +"I don't doubt it, under the circumstances, Mr. Lossing." +Armorer spoke with suave politeness, but there was a cynical +gleam in his eye. + +"But Esther understands," says Harry. + +"Esther!" repeats Armorer, with an indescribable intonation. +"You spoke to her this afternoon? For a man with such high-toned +ideas as you carry, I think you took a pretty mean advantage +of your guests!" + +"You will remember I gave you fair warning, Mr. Armorer." + +"It was while I was in the elevator, of course. +I guessed it was a put-up job; how did you manage it?" + +Harry smiled outright; he is one who cannot keep either his dog +or his joke tied up. "It was Shuey did it," said he; "he pulled +the opposite way from you, and he has tremendous strength; +but he says you were a handful for him." + +"You seem to have taken the town into your confidence," +said Armorer, bitterly, though he had a sneaking inclination +to laugh himself; "do you need all your workmen to help you +court your girl?" + +"I'd take the whole United States into my confidence rather +than lose her, sir," answered Harry, steadily. + +Armorer turned on his heel abruptly; it was to conceal a smile. +"How about my sister? did you propose before her? +But I don't suppose a little thing like that would stop you." + +"I had to speak; Miss Armorer goes away tomorrow. +Mrs. Ellis was kind enough to put her fingers in her ears +and turn her back." + +"And what did my daughter say?" + +"I asked her only to give me the chance to show her how I loved her, +and she has. God bless her! I don't pretend I'm worthy of her, +Mr. Armorer, but I have lived a decent life, and I'll try hard +to live a better one for her trust in me." + +"I'm glad there is one thing on which we are agreed," +jeered Armorer, "but you are more modest than you were this noon. +I think it was considerably like bragging, sending that woman +to tell of your heroic feats!" + +"Oh, I can brag when it is necessary," said Harry, serenely; "what would +the West be but for bragging?" + +"And what do you intend to do if I take your girl to Europe?" + +"Europe is not very far," said Harry. + +Armorer was a quick thinker, but he had never thought more +quickly in his life. This young fellow had beaten him. +There was no doubt of it. He might have principles, +but he declined to let his principles hamper him. +There was something about Harry's waving aside defeat so lightly, +and so swiftly snatching at every chance to forward his will, +that accorded with Armorer's own temperament. + +"Tell me, Mr. Armorer," said Harry, suddenly; "in my place wouldn't +you have done the same thing?" + +Armorer no longer checked his sense of humor. "No, Mr. Lossing," +he answered, sedately, "I should have respected the old gentleman's +wishes and voted any way he pleased." He held out his hand. +"I guess Esther thinks you are the coming young man of the century; +and to be honest, I like you a great deal better than I +expected to this morning. I'm not cut out for a cruel father, +Mr. Lossing; for one thing, I haven't the time for it; +for another thing, I can't bear to have my little girl cry. +I guess I shall have to go to Europe without Esther. +Shall we go in to the ladies now?" + +Harry wrung the president's hand, crying that he should never +regret his kindness. + +"See that Esther never regrets it, that will be better," +said Armorer, with a touch of real and deep feeling. Then, as Harry +sprang up the steps like a boy, he took out the note-book, +and smiling a smile in which many emotions were blended, +he ran a black line through + +"_See abt L._" + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Stories of a Western Town, by Octave Thanet + diff --git a/old/wstwn10.zip b/old/wstwn10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..34f727a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/wstwn10.zip |