“Mr. Tolliver!” she almost screamed.
“Ther’ now, be still, er ye’ll let ever’body know all erbout it,” he half whispered. “Hit’d be disgraceful.”
“Mr. Tolliver!”
“Sh-h-h! They’ll hear ye!”
“Get right out of this room, you—”
Just then Dufour, who had been slowly aroused from his nap and who while yet half asleep had overheard much of what had been said, stepped forth from behind the curtains and stood looking from one to the other of the excited actors in the little drama.
“What’s up?” he, demanded bluntly.
“He’s accusing me of stealing beads!” cried Miss Crabb. “He’s insulting me!”
“What!” exclaimed Dufour, glaring at Tolliver.
“I feel mighty onery a doin’ it,” said Tolliver, “but hit air pine blank mighty suspicious, Kyernel, hit air for a fac’.”
Dufour looked as if he hardly knew which he should do, laugh boisterously, or fling Tolliver out of the window, but he quickly pulled himself together and said calmly:
“You are wrong, sir, and you must apologize.”
“Certingly, certingly,” said Tolliver, “thet air jest what I air a doin’. I beg parding er thousan’ times fer sayin’ what I hev, but, Kyernel, hit air a Lor’ a mighty’s truth, all the same, le’ me tell ye. Them beads was ther’ w’en she come, an’ they was gone w’en she was gone, an’—”
“Stop that! Take back those words or I’ll throw you—”
Dufour took a step towards Tolliver, but stopped suddenly when the latter drew a huge revolver with one hand and a long crooked bowie-knife with the other and said:
“No yer don’t, Kyernel, not by er good deal. Jest ye open yer bread-trap ergain an’ I’ll jest clean up this ole shanty in erbout two minutes.”
It may not be inferred how this bit of dramatic experience would have ended had not a lean, wizzen-faced mountain lad rushed in just then with a three-cornered piece of paper in his hand upon which was scrawled the following message:
“I hev fown them beeds. They wus in mi terbacker bag.”
Tolliver read this and wilted.
The boy was panting and almost exhausted. He had run all the way up the mountain from the Tolliver cabin.
“Yer mammy say kum home,” he gasped.
“Hit air jest as I ’spected,” said Tolliver. “Mammy hev made a pine blank eejit of me again.” He handed the message to Dufour ashe spoke. His pistol and knife had disappeared.
A full explanation followed, and at the end of a half-hour Tolliver went away crest-fallen but happy.
As for Miss Crabb she had made a number of valuable dialect notes.
Dufour promised not to let the rest of the guests know what had just happened in the parlor.
“Literature-makinghas not yet taken the rank of a profession, but of late the world has modified its opinion as to the ability of literary people to drive a close bargain, or to manage financial affairs with success. Many women and some men have shown that it is possible for a vivid imagination and a brilliant style in writing to go close along with a practical judgment and a fair share of selfish shrewdness in matters of bargain and sale. Still, after all, it remains true that a strong majority of literary people are of the Micawber genus, with great faith in what is to turn up, always nicely balancing themselves on the extreme verge of expectancy and gazing over into the promise-land of fame and fortune with pathetically hopeful, yet awfully hollow eyes. Indeed there is no species of gambling more uncertain in its results or more irresistibly fascinating to its victims than literary gambling. Day after day, month after month, year after year, thedeluded, enthusiastic, ever defeated but never discouraged writer plies his pen, besieges the publishers and editors, receives their rebuffs, rough or smooth, takes back his declined manuscripts, tries it over and over, sweats, fumes, execrates, coaxes, bullies, raves, re-writes, takes a newnom de plumeand new courage, goes on and on to the end. Here or there rumor goes that some fortunate literator has turned the right card and has drawn a great prize; this rumor, never quite authentic, is enough to re-invigorate all the fainting scribblers and to entice new victims into the gilded casino of the Cadmean vice. The man who manipulates the literary machine is the publisher, that invisible person who usually grows rich upon the profits of unsuccessful books. He it is who inveigles the infatuated young novelist, essayist, or poet, into the beautiful bunco-den of the book business and there fastens him and holds him as long as he will not squeal; but at the first note of remonstrance he kicks him out and fills his place with a fresh victim. The literary Micawber, however, does not despair. He may be a little silly from the effect of the summersault to which the publisher’s boot has treated him, but after a distraught look about him he gets up, brushes the dust off his seedy clothes and goes directly back into the den again with another manuscript under his arm and with a feverish faith burning in his deep-set eyes. What serene and beautiful courage, by the way, have the literary women! Of course the monster who presidesat the publisher’s desk cannot be as brutal to her as he is to men, but he manipulates her copyright statements all the same, so that her book never passes the line of fifteen hundred copies sold. How can we ever account for a woman who has written forty-three novels under such circumstances and has died, finally, a devout Christian and a staunch friend of her publisher? Poor thing! up to the hour of her demise, white-haired, wrinkled, over-worked, nervous and semi-paralytic, she nursed the rosy hope that to-morrow, or at the very latest, the day after to-morrow, the reward of all her self-devotion would come to her in the form of a liberal copyright statement from her long-suffering and charitable publisher.
“Out in the West they have a disease called milk-sickness, an awful malady, of which everybody stands in deadly terror, but which nobody has ever seen. If you set out to find a case of milk-sickness it is like following awill-o’-the-wisp, it is always just a little way farther on, over in the next settlement; you never find it. The really successful author in America is, like the milk-sickness, never visible, except on the remote horizon. You hear much of him, but you never have the pleasure of shaking his cunning right hand. The fact is, he is a myth. On the other hand, however, the American cities are full of successful publishers who have become millionaires upon the profits of books which have starved their authors. Of course this appears to be a paradox, but I suppose thatit can be explained by the rule of profit and loss. The author’s loss is the publisher’s profit.”
The foregoing is, in substance, the opening part of an address delivered by Ferris before the assembled guests of Hotel Helicon.
Mrs. Nancy Jones Black presided at the meeting; indeed she always presided at meetings. On this occasion, which was informal and impromptu, Ferris was in excellent mood for speaking, as he just had been notified by a letter from Dunkirk & Co. that he was expected to pay in advance for the plates of his new romance,A Mysterious Missive, and that a personal check would not be accepted—a draft on New York must be sent forthwith. Although Ferris was a thoroughly good fellow, who cared nothing for money as money, this demand for a sum the half of which he could not command if his life were at stake, hit him like a bullet-stroke. A chance to talk off the soreness of the wound was accepted with avidity. He felt guilty of a meanness, it is true, in thus stirring up old troubles and opening afresh ancient hurts in the breasts of his listening friends; but the relief to him was so great that he could not forego it. “The American publisher,” he went on, “proclaims himself a fraud by demanding of the author a contract which places the author’s business wholly in the control of the publisher. I take it that publishers are just as honest and just as dishonest, as any other class of respectable men. You know and I know, that, as a rule, the man who trusts his business entirely to others will,in the long run, be robbed. Administrators of estates rob the heirs, in two-thirds of the instances, as every probate lawyer well knows. Every merchant has to treat his clerks and salesmen as if they were thieves, or if he do not they will become thieves. The government has to appoint bank examiners to watch the bankers, and yet they steal. The Indian agents steal from the government. Senators steal, aldermen steal, Wall street men steal from one another and from everybody else. Canada is overflowing with men who have betrayed and robbed those who trusted their business with them. Even clergymen (that poorly paid and much abused class) now and again fall before the temptation offered by the demon of manipulated returns of trust funds. The fact is, one may feel perfectly safe in saying that in regard to all the professions, trades, and occupations, there is absolutely no safety in trusting one’s affairs wholly in the hands of another. (Great applause). Even your milkman waters the milk and the dairyman sells you butter that never was in a churn. If you neglect to keep a pass-book your grocer runs up the bill to—(a great rustle, and some excited whispering) up to something enormous. Of course it is not everybody that is dishonest, but experience shows that if a man has the temptation to defraud his customers constantly before him, with absolutely no need to fear detection, he will soon reason himself into believing it hisright to have the lion’s share of all that goes into his hands.
“Now isn’t it strange, in view of the premises, that nobody ever heard of such a thing as a publisher being convicted of making false returns? Is it possible that the business of book-publishing is so pure and good of itself that it attracts to it none but perfect men? (Great applause). Publishers do fail financially once in a while, but their books of accounts invariably show that just eleven hundred and forty copies of each copyrighted book on their lists have been sold to date, no more, no less. (Suppressed applause). Nobody ever saw cleaner or better balanced books of accounts than those kept by the publishers. They foot up correctly to a cent. Indeed it would be a very strange thing if a man couldn’t make books balance under such circumstances! (Prolonged hand-clapping). I am rather poor at double entry, but I fancy I could make a credit of eleven hundred and forty copies sold, so as to have it show up all right. (Cheers). I must not lose my head in speaking on this subject, for I cannot permit you to misunderstand my motive. So long as authors submit to the per centum method of publication, so long they will be the prey of the publishers. The only method by which justice can be assured to both author and publisher is the cash-sale method. If every author in America would refuse to let his manuscript go out of hand before he had received the cash value for it, the trade wouldsoon adjust itself properly. In that case the author’s reputation would be his own property. So soon as he had made an audience his manuscripts would command a certain price. If one publisher would not pay enough for it another would. As the method now is, it makes little difference whether the author have a reputation or not. Indeed most publishers prefer to publish the novels, for example, of clever tyros, because these fledglings are so proud of seeing themselves in print that they never think of questioning copyright statements. Eleven hundred and forty copies usually will delight them almost beyond endurance. (Laughter and applause). Go look at the book lists of the publishers and you will feel the truth of what I have said.
“Now let me ask you if you can give, or if any publisher can give one solitary honest reason why the publishing business should not be put upon a cash basis—a manuscript for so much money? The publisher controls his own business, he knows every nook and corner, every leaf and every line of it, and he should be able to say, just as the corn-merchant does, I will give you so much, to which the author would say: I will take it, or I will not take it. But what is the good of standing here and arguing? You believe every word I speak, but you don’t expect to profit by it. You will go on gambling at the publisher’s faro table just as long as he will smile and deal the cards. Some of thesedays you will win, you think. Poor deluded wretches, go on and die in the faith!”
No sooner had Ferris ended than Lucas the historian arose and expressed grave doubts as to the propriety of the address. He was decidedly of the opinion that authors could not afford to express themselves so freely and, if he must say it, recklessly. How could Mr. Ferris substantiate by proof any of the damaging allegations he had made against publishers of high standing? What Mr. Ferris had said might be strictly true, but the facts were certainly, very hard to come at, he thought. He hoped that Mr. Ferris’s address would not be reported to the press (here he glanced appealingly at Miss Crabb), at least not as the sense of the meeting. Such a thing would, in his opinion, be liable to work a great harm to all present. He felt sure that the publishers would resent the whole thing as malicious and libellous.
Throughout the audience there was a nervous stirring, a looking at one another askance. It was as if a cold wave had flowed over them. Nobody had anything further to say, and it was a great relief when Dufour moved an adjournmentsine die, which was carried by a vote that suggested a reserve of power. Every face in the audience, with the exception of Dufour’s, wore a half-guilty look, and everybody crept silently out of the room.
Itcaused quite a commotion on Mt. Boab when Bartley Hubbard and Miss Henrietta Stackpole, newspaper people from Boston, arrived at Hotel Helicon. Miss Stackpole had just returned from Europe, and Bartley Hubbard had run down from Boston for a week to get some points for his paper. She had met Mr. Henry James on the continent and Hubbard had dined with Mr. Howells just before leaving Boston.
No two persons in all the world would have been less welcome among the guests at the hotel, just then, than were these professional reporters. Of course everybody tried to give them a cordial greeting, but they were classed along with Miss Crabb as dangerous characters whom it would be folly to snub. Miss Moyne was in downright terror of them, associating the thought of them with those ineffable pictures of herself which were still appearing at second and third hand in the “patent insides” of the country journals, but she was very good to them, and Miss Stackpole at once attached herself to her unshakably. Hubbard did likewise with little Mrs. Philpot, who amused him mightily with her strictures upon analytical realism in fiction.
“I do think that Mr. Howells treated you most shamefully,” she said to him. “He had no right to represent you as a disagreeable person who was cruel to his wife and who had no moral stamina.”
Hubbard laughed as one who hears an absurd joke. “Oh, Howells and I have an understanding. We are really great friends,” he said. “I sat to him for my portrait and I really think he flattered me. I managed to keep him from seeing some of my ugliest lines.”
“Now you are not quite sincere,” said Mrs. Philpot, glancing over him from head to foot. “You are not so bad as he made you out to be. It’s one of Mr. Howells’s hobbies to represent men as rather flabby nonentities and women as invalids or dolls.”
“He’s got the men down fine,” replied Hubbard, “but I guess he is rather light on women. You will admit, however, that he dissects feminine meanness and inconsequence with a deft turn.”
“He makes fun of women,” said Mrs. Philpot, a little testily, “he caricatures them, wreaks his humor on them; but you know very well that he misrepresents them even in his most serious andquasitruthful moods.”
Hubbard laughed, and there was something essentially vulgar in the notes of the laugh. Mrs. Philpot admitted this mentally, and she found herself shrinking from his steadfast but almost conscienceless eyes.
“I imagine I shouldn’t be as bad a husband as he did me into, but—”
Mrs. Philpot interrupted him with a start and a little cry.
“Dear me! and aren’t you married?” sheasked in exclamatory deprecation of what his words had implied.
He laughed again very coarsely and looked at her with eyes that almost lured. “Married!” he exclaimed, “do I look like a marrying man? A newspaper man can’t afford to marry.”
“How strange,” reflected Mrs. Philpot, “how funny, and Mr. Howells calls himself a realist!”
“Realist!” laughed Hubbard, “why he does not know enough about the actual world to be competent to purchase a family horse. He’s a capital fellow, good and true and kind-hearted, but what does he know about affairs? He doesn’t even know how to flatter women!”
“How absurd!” exclaimed little Mrs. Philpot, but Hubbard could not be sure for the life of him just what she meant the expression to characterize.
“And you like Mr. Howells?” she inquired.
“Like him! everybody likes him,” he cordially said.
“Well, you are quite different from Miss Crabb.Shehates Maurice Thompson for puttingherinto a story.”
“Oh, well,” said Hubbard, indifferently, “women are not like men. They take life more seriously. If Thompson had had more experience he would not have tampered with a newspaper woman. He’s got the whole crew down on him. Miss Stackpole hates him almost as fiercely as she hates Henry James.”
“I don’t blame her,” exclaimed Mrs. Philpot, “it’s mean and contemptible for men to caricature women.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” yawned Hubbard, “it all goes in a lifetime.”
At this opportune moment Miss Crabb and Miss Stackpole joined them, coming arm in arm. Miss Crabb looking all the more sallow and slender in comparison with the plump, well-fed appearance of her companion.
“May I introduce you to Miss Crabb of the RingvilleStar, Mr. Hubbard,” Miss Stackpole asked, in a high but by no means rich voice, as she fastened her steady, button-like eyes on Mrs. Philpot.
Hubbard arose lazily and went through the process of introduction perfunctorily, giving Miss Crabb a sweeping but indifferent glance.
“There’s an impromptu pedestrian excursion on hand,” said Miss Stackpole, “and I feel bound to go. One of the gentlemen has discovered a hermit’s cabin down a ravine near here, and he offers to personally conduct a party to it. You will go, Mr. Hubbard?”
“Go! I should remark that I will. You don’t get a scoop of that item, I assure you.”
Miss Stackpole was a plump and rather pretty young woman, fairly well dressed in drab drapery. She stood firmly on her feet and had an air of self-reliance and self-control in strong contrast with the fussy, nervous manner of Miss Crabb.
Mrs. Philpot surveyed the two young womenwith that comprehensive, critical glance which takes in everything that is visible, and quickly enough she made up her comparison and estimate of them.
She decided that Miss Crabb had no style, nosavoir faire, no repose; but then Miss Stackpole was forward, almost impudent in appearance, and her greater ease of manner was really the ease that comes of a long training in intrusiveness, and of rubbing against an older civilization. She felt quite distinctly the decided dash of vulgarity in the three newspaper representatives before her, and she could not help suspecting that it would not be safe to judge the press reporters by these examples.
The question arose in her mind whether after all Howells and Henry James and Maurice Thompson had acted fairly in taking these as representative newspaper people.
She had met a great many newspaper people and had learned to like them as a class; she had many good and helpful friends among them.
Unconsciously she was showing to all present that she was dissecting the three reporters. Her unfavorable opinion of them slowly took expression in her tell-tale face. Not that she wholly disliked or distrusted them; she really pitied them. How could they be content to live such a life, dependent upon what they could make by meddling, so to speak?
Then too, she felt a vague shame, a chagrin, a regret that real people must be put into worksof fiction with all the seamy side of their natures turned out to the world’s eye.
“We’re in for it,” exclaimed Hubbard, “Mrs. Philpot is making a study of us as a group. See the dreaming look in her eyes!”
“Oh, no! she never studies anybody or anything,” said Miss Crabb. “Poor little woman, real life is a constant puzzle to her, and she makes not the slightest effort to understand it.”
Hubbard and Miss Stackpole glanced curiously at each other and then at Miss Crabb. Evidently their thought was a common one.
Thepedestrian excursion spoken of by Miss Stackpole promised to be an enjoyable affair to those of the Helicon guests who could venture upon it. A writer of oddly entertaining and preposterously impossible short stories, John B. Cattleton, had been mousing among the ravines of Mt. Boab, and had stumbled upon what he described as a “very obscure little cabin, jammed under a cliff in an angle of the cañon and right over a bright stream of cold, pure spring-water. It’s a miserably picturesque and forlornly prepossessing place,” he went on in his droll way, “where all sorts of engaging ghosts and entertaining ogres might be supposed to congregate at midnight. I didn’t go quite down to it, but I was near enough to it to make out its main features, and I saw the queerest being imaginable poking around the premises. A veritable hermit, I should callhim, as old as the rocks themselves. His dress was absurdly old-fashioned, a caricature of the uniform of our soldier sires of revolutionary renown. A long spike-tailed blue coat with notable brass buttons, a triangular hat somewhat bell-crowned and tow or cotton trousers. Shirt? Vest? Yes, if I remember well they were of copperas homespun. His hair and beard were white, fine and thin, hanging in tags and wisps as fluffy as lint. I sat upon a rock in the shadow of a cedar tree and watched his queer manœuvres for a good while. All his movements were furtive and peculiar, like those of a shy, wild beast.”
“It’s the Prophet of the Smoky Mountain,” said Miss Crabb in an earnest stage whisper. “He’s Craddock’s material, we can’t touch him.”
“Touch him! I’ll interview him on dialect in politics,” said Hubbard, “and get his views on sex in genius.”
“I should like a sketch of his life. There must be a human interest to serve as straw for my brick,” remarked Miss Stackpole. “The motive that induced him to become a hermit, and all that.”
Miss Crabb dared not confess that she desired a sketch of the old man for the newspaper syndicate, so she merely drummed on her front teeth with her pencil.
Dufour joined the pedestrian party with great enthusiasm, having dressed himself for the occasion in a pair of tennis trousers, a blue flannel shirt, a loose jacket and a shooting cap.
His shoes were genuine alpine foot-gear with short spikes in their heels and soles.
“Lead on Cattleton,” he cried jovially, “and let our motto be, ‘On to the hut of Friar Tuck’!”
“Good,” answered Cattleton in like spirit, “and you shall be my lieutenant, come, walk beside me.”
“Thank you, from the bottom of my heart,” replied Dufour, “but I cannot accept. I have contracted to be Miss Moyne’s servant instead.”
That was a gay procession filing away from Hotel Helicon through the thin forest that fringed one shoulder of stately Mt. Boab. Cattleton led the column, flinging back from time to time his odd sayings and preposterous conceits.
The day was delightfully cool with a steady wind running over the mountain and eddying in the sheltered coves where the ferns were thick and tall. In the sky were a few pale clouds slowly vanishing, whilst some broad-pinioned buzzards wheeled round and round above the blue-green abyss of the valley. There were sounds of a vague, dreamy sort abroad in the woods, like the whisperings and laughter of legions of invisible beings. Everybody felt exhilarated and buoyant, tramping gaily away to the hut of the hermit.
At a certain point Cattleton commanded a halt, and pointing out the entrance to the ravine, said:
“Now, good friends, we must have perfectsilence during the descent, or our visit will be all in vain. Furthermore, the attraction of gravitation demands that, in going down, we must preserve our uprightness, else our progress may be facilitated to an alarming degree, and our advent at the hut be far from becomingly dignified.”
Like a snake, flecked with touches of gay color, the procession crawled down the ravine, the way becoming steeper and more tortuous at every step. Thicker and thicker and thicker grew the trees, saving where the rock broke forth from the soil, and closer drew the zig-zags of the barely possible route. Cattleton silenced every voice and rebuked every person who showed signs of weakening.
“It’s just a few steps farther,” he whispered back from his advanced position, “don’t make the least sound.”
But the ravine proved, upon this second descent much more difficult and dangerous than it had appeared to Cattleton at first, and it was with the most heroic exertions that he finally led the party down to the point whence he had viewed the cabin. By this time the column was pressing upon him and he could not stop. Down he went, faster and faster, barely able to keep his feet, now sliding, now clutching a tree or rock, with the breathless and excited line of followers gathering dangerous momentum behind him.
It was too late now to command silence or to control the company in any way. An avalancheof little stones, loosened by scrambling feet, swept past him and went leaping on down below. He heard Miss Moyne utter a little scream of terror that mingled with many exclamations from both men and women, and then he lost his feet and began to slide. Down he sped and down sped the party after him, till in a cataract of mightily frightened, but unharmed men and women, they all went over a little precipice and landed in a scattered heap on a great bed of oak leaves that the winds had drifted against the rock.
A few moments of strange silence followed, then everybody sprang up, disheveled and red-faced, to look around and see what was the matter.
They found themselves close to the long, low cabin, from under which flowed a stream of water. A little column of smoke was wandering out of a curious clay chimney. Beside the low door-way stood a long, deep trough filled with water in which a metal pipe was coiled fantastically. Two earthen jugs with cob stoppers sat hard by. A sourish smell assaulted their sense and a faint spirituous flavor burdened the air.
Cattleton, who was first upon his feet, shook himself together and drolly remarked:
“We have arrived in good order, let’s interview the——”
Just then rushed forth from the door the old man of the place, who halted outside and snatched from its rack on the wall a long tinhorn, which he proceeded to blow vigorously, the echoes prowling through the woods and over the foot-hills and scampering far away up and down the valley.
Not a soul present ever could forget that sketch, the old man with his shrunken legs bent and wide apart, his arms akimbo as he leaned far back and held up that wailing, howling, bellowing horn, and his long coat-tail almost touching the ground, whilst his fantastic hat quivered in unison with the strain he was blowing. How his shriveled cheeks puffed out, and how his eyes appeared to be starting from their bony sockets!
“That is what I call a fitting reception,” said Cattleton, gazing at the trumpeter.
“See here,” exclaimed Crane with evident excitement, “I smell whisky! This——”
“Hyer! what d’ye mean hyer, you all a comin’ down hyer?” broke forth a wrathful voice, and Wesley Tolliver rushed with melodramatic fierceness upon the scene.
“Oh! I—I—wa—want to g—go home!” cried little Mrs. Philpot, clutching Bartley Hubbard’s arm.
“So do I,” said he with phlegmatic cleverness. “I should like to see my mother. I’m feeling a little lonely and——”
“What upon yearth do this yer mean, anyhow?” thundered Tolliver. “Who invited you all down yer, tell me thet, will ye?”
“Oh, Mr. Tolliver, Mr. Tolliver!” exclaimedMiss Crabb, rushing upon him excitedly, “I’msoglad you are here!”
“Well, I’ll ber dorged!” he ejaculated, “you down hyer again! Well, I never seed the like afore in all my born days.”
He gazed at first one and then another of the party, and a sudden light flashed into his face.
“Well I’ll ber dorged ef ther whole kepoodle of ’em hain’t done jest gone and tumbled off’n the mounting an’ jest rolled down hyer!”
“You’re a very accurate reasoner, my friend,” said Cattleton, trying to get his hat into shape. “I think we touched at two or three points as we came down, however.”
About this time four or five more mountaineers appeared bearing guns and looking savage.
“Bandits,” said Miss Stackpole with a shudder.
“Moonshiners,” muttered Crane.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mr. Hubbard, do t—t—take m—me home!” wailed Mrs. Philpot.
“I should be delighted,” said Hubbard, his voice concealing the uneasiness he felt. “Indeed I should.”
More men appeared and at the same time a roll of thunder tumbled across the darkening sky. A sudden mountain storm had arisen.
The pedestrians found themselves surrounded by a line of grim and silent men who appeared to be waiting for orders from Tolliver.
A few large drops of rain come slanting downfrom the advancing fringe of the sable-cloud, and again the thunder bounded across the heavens.
“I guess you’d better invite us in,” suggested Cattleton, turning to the old man, who stood leaning on his tin horn. “The ladies will get wet.”
“I say, Cattleton,” called out Bartley Hubbard, “if a fellow only had a little supply of Stockton’s negative gravity he could ameliorate his condition, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I’d like to fall up hill just now. The excitement would be refreshing.”
There came a spiteful dash of rain and a flurry of wind.
“You’ns had better go inter the still-house,” said Tolliver. “Hit air goin’ ter rain yearlin’ calves. Go right erlong in, ye sha’n’t be hurt.”
Another gush of rain enforced the invitation, and they all scrambled into the cabin pell-mell, glad of the relief from a strain that had become almost unbearable to some of them, but they stared at each other when they found the door closed and securely locked on the outside.
“Prisoners!” cried some one whose voice was drowned by a deafening crash of thunder and a mighty flood of rain that threatened to crush in the rickety roof of the house.
“The treacherous villain!” exclaimed Dufour, speaking of Tolliver and holding Miss Moyne’s hand. The poor girl was so frightened that it was a comfort to her to have her hand held.
“How grand, how noble it is in Mr. Tolliverand his friends,” said Miss Crabb, “to stand out there in the rain and let us have the shelter! I never saw a more virile and thoroughly unselfish man than he is. He is one of Nature’s unshorn heroes, a man of the ancient god-like race.”
Mrs. Nancy Jones Black gave the young woman a look of profound contempt.
Then a crash of thunder, wind, and rain scattered everybody’s thoughts.
Thestorm was wild enough, but of short duration, and it came to its end as suddenly as it had begun. As the black cloud departed from the sky, the darkness, which had been almost a solid inside the still-house, was pierced by certain lines of mild light coming through various chinks in the walls and roof. Our friends examined one another curiously, as if to be sure that it was not all a dream.
Cattleton found himself face to face with a demure-looking young man, whom he at once recognized as Harry Punner, a writer of delicious verses and editor of a rollicking humorous journal at New York.
“Hello, Hal! you here?” he cried. “Well how does it strike your funny bone? It insists upon appearing serious to me.”
“I’m smothering for a whiff of fresh air,” said Punner, in a very matter-of-fact tone. “Can’t we raise a window or something?”
“The only window visible to the naked eye,” said Cattleton, “is already raised higher than Ican reach,” and he pointed to a square hole in the wall about seven and a-half feet above the ground and very near the roof.
Crane went about in the room remarking that the aroma floating in the air was the bouquet of the very purest and richest copper-distilled corn whisky and that if he could find it he was quite sure that a sip of it would prove very refreshing under the peculiar circumstances of the case, an observation which called forth from Mrs. Nancy Jones Black a withering temperance reprimand.
“As the presiding officer of theWoman’s Prohibition Promulgation SocietyI cannot let such a remark pass without condemning it. If this really is a liquor establishment I desire to be let out of it forthwith.”
“So do I!” exclaimed little Mrs. Philpot with great vehemence. “Open the door Mr. Hubbard, please.”
Hubbard went to the door and finding that it was constructed to open outwardly, gave it a shove with all his might. There was a short tussle and he staggered back.
“Why don’t you push it open?” fretfully exclaimed Mrs. Nancy Jones Black.
“The gentlemen outside object, for reasons not stated,” was the rather stolidly spoken answer.
Cattleton had taken off his hat and was going about through the company soliciting handkerchiefs.
“Drop them in, drop them in,” he urged, “I need all of them that I can get.”
He offered his hat as a contribution box as he spoke, and nearly every-one gave a handkerchief, without in the least suspecting his purpose.
When he had collected a round dozen, Cattleton crammed them all down in the crown of his hat which he then put on his head.
“Now Hal,” he said, addressing Punner, “give me a boost and I’ll make an observation through that window.”
The rain was now entirely ended and the wind had fallen still.
With Punner’s help Cattleton got up to the window and poked out his head.
“Git back ther’!” growled a vicious voice, and at the same time the dull sound of a heavy blow was followed by the retreat of Cattleton from the window to the floor in a great hurry.
Upon top of his hat was a deep trench made by a club.
“The handkerchiefs did their duty nobly,” he remarked. “Let everybody come forward and identify his property.”
“What did you see?” asked Punner.
“A giant with an oak tree in his hand and murder in his eye,” said Cattleton, busily selecting and returning the handkerchiefs. “This eleemosynary padding was all that saved me. The blow was aimed at my divine intellect.”
“See here,” cried Peck, in great earnest, “this is no joking matter. We’re in the powerof a set of mountain moonshiners, and may be murdered in cold blood. We’d better do something.”
Crane had prowled around until he had found a small jug of fragrant mountain dew whisky, which he was proceeding to taste in true Kentucky style, when a gaunt form rose in a corner of the room, and tottering forward seized the jug and took it out of his hand.
“No ye don’t, sonny, no ye don’t! This yer mounting jew air not ever’body’s licker ’at wants it. Not by er half er mile at the littlest calc’lation!”
Miss Crabb made a note. Crane gazed pathetically at the fantastic old man before him, and brushed his handkerchief across his lips, as if from habit, as he managed to say:
“I meant no undue liberty, I assure you. That whisky is——”
“Overpowerin’,” interrupted the old man, taking a sip from the vessel. “Yes, I don’t blame ye fur a wantin’ of it, but this yer licker air mine.”
“Up in Kentucky,” said Crane, “we are proud to offer——”
“Kaintucky! did ye say ole Kaintuck? Air ye from ther’, boy?”
The octogenarian leaned forward as he spoke and gazed at Crane with steadfast, rheumy eyes.
Miss Henrietta Stackpole came forward to hear what was to follow, her instinct telling herthat a point of human interest was about to be reached.
“Yes,” said Crane, “I was born and reared on Lulbegrud creek.”
“Lulbegrud!”
“Yes.”
“How fur f’om Wright’s mill?”
“Close by, at Kiddville,” said Crane.
“Ye ’member Easton’s Springs close by an’ Pilot Knob away off in the distance?”
“Very well, indeed, and Guoff’s pond.”
“Boy, what mought yer name be?”
“Crane.”
“Crane!”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ll ber dorg!”
The old man stood gazing and grinning at Crane for some moments, and then added:
“What’s yer pap’s name?”
“Eliphas Crane.”
“’Liphas Crane yore pap!”
“Yes.”
“Child, I air yer pap’s uncle.”
“What!”
“I air Peter Job Crane.”
“You!”
“Sartin es anything.”
“Are you my father’s uncle Peter?”
“I air yer pap’s uncle Pete.”
“How strange!”
Miss Stackpole did not permit a word, a look, or a shade of this interview to escape her. She now turned to Bartley Hubbard and said:
“We Americans are the victims of heterogeneous consanguinity. Such an incident as this could not happen in England. It will be a long time before we can get rid of our ancestors.”
“Yes,” assented Hubbard, nonchalantly, “Yer pap’s uncle certainly is a large factor in American life.”
“How many men did you see when you looked out?” Peck inquired, addressing Cattleton.
“I saw only one, but he was a monster,” was the ready reply. “It’s no use brooding over trying to escape by force. We’re utterly helpless, and that jolt on my head has rendered me unfit for diplomatic efforts.”
“What do you suppose they will do with us?”
“They won’t dare let us go.”
“Why?”
“They’d be afraid that we would report their illicit distillery.”
“Ah, I see.”
The affair began to take on a very serious and gloomy aspect, and the room was growing oppressively hot, owing to the presence of a a small but energetic furnace that glowed under a sighing boiler. Outside, with the clearing sky and refreshed air, there arose a clamor of bird-song in the dripping trees. Under the floor the spring-stream gurgled sweetly.
“Ye ’member Abbott’s still house on ole Lulbegrud?” said the old man, pursuing his reminisences, after he had permitted his grand-nephewto taste the “mounting jew,” “an’ Dan Rankin’s ole bob-tail hoss?”
“Very well, indeed,” responded Crane, “and Billy Pace’s blackberry fields where I picked berries in summer and chased rabbits in winter.”
“Take er nother drop o’ the jyful juice, boy, fur the mem’ry o’ ole Kaintuck!”
“Oh dear! but isn’t it incomparably awful?” exclaimed Mrs. Nancy Jones Black, gazing in horrified fascination upon the two Kentuckians, as they bowed to each other and drank alternately from the little jug.
“Characteristic Southern scene not used by Craddock,” murmured Miss Crabb, making a whole page of a single note.
“Don’t this yere liquor taste o’ one thing an’ smell o’ another an’ jes’ kinder git ter the lowest p’int o’ yer appetite?” continued Crane’s great uncle Peter.
“Delicious beyond compare,” responded the young man, drinking again, “it is nectar of the gods.”
Mrs. Nancy Jones Black groaned, but could not withdraw her eyes from the scene.
“Good deal like ole times down to Abbott’s still-house on Lulbegrud, boy,” the old man suggested, “ye don’t forgit erbout Dan Rankin’s mule a-kickin’ ole man Hornback’s hat off?”
The poet laughed retrospectively and mopped his glowing face with his handkerchief. The heat from the furnace and the stimulus of the excellent beverage were causing him to feel the need of fresh air.
Indeed, everybody was beginning to pant. Miss Moyne was so overcome with excitement and with the heat of the place, that she was ready to faint, when the door was flung open and Tolliver appeared. A rush of sweet cool air, flooding the room, revived her, just as she was sinking into Dufour’s arms.
Authorswho have added the vice of elocution to the weakness of dialect verse-making, are often at a loss for a sympathetic audience. Whilst it is true that literary people are apt to bear with a good deal of patience the mutually offered inflictions incident to meeting one another, they draw the line at dialect recitations; and, as a rule, stubbornly refuse to be bored with a fantastic rendition of “When Johnny got spanked by a mule,” or “Livery-stable Bob,” or “Samantha’s Courtin’,” or “Over the Ridge to the Pest-house,” no matter how dear a friend may offer the scourge. Circumstances alter cases, however, and although neither Carleton, nor Riley, nor yet Burdette, nor Bill Nye (those really irresistible and wholly delightful humorists), had come to Hotel Helicon, there was a certain relief for those of the guests who had not joined the luckless pedestrians, in hearing Miss Amelia Lotus Nebeker recite a long poem written in New Jersey patois.
Miss Nebeker was very hard of hearing, almost stone deaf, indeed, which affliction lenta pathetic effect even to her humor. She was rather stout, decidedly short, and had a way of making wry faces with a view to adding comicality to certain turns of her New Jersey phraseology, and yet she was somewhat of a bore at times. Possibly she wished to read too often and sometimes upon very unsuitable occasions. It was Mrs. Bridges who once said that, if the minister at a funeral should ask some one to say a few appropriate words, Miss Nebeker, if present, would immediately clear her throat and begin reciting “A Jerseyman’s Jewsharp.” “And if she once got started you’d never be able to stop her, for she’s as deaf as an adder.”
It was during the rainstorm, while those of the guests who had not gone to the hermit’s hut with Cattleton, were in the cool and spacious parlor of the hotel, that something was said about Charles Dickens reading from his own works. Strangely enough, although the remark was uttered in a low key and at some distance from Miss Nebeker, she responded at once with an offer to give them a new rendering ofThe Jerseyman’s Jewsharp. Lucas, the historian, objected vigorously, but she insisted upon interpreting his words and gestures as emphatic applause of her proposition. She arose while he was saying:
“Oh now, that’s too much, we’re tired of the jangling of that old harp; give us a rest!”
This unexpected and surprising slang from so grave and dignified a man set everybody to laughing. Miss Nebeker bowed in smilingacknowledgement of what appeared to her to be a flattering anticipation of her humor, and taking her manuscript from some hiding-place in her drapery, made a grimace and began to read. Mrs. Philpot’s cat, in the absence of its mistress, had taken up with the elocutionist and now came to rub and purr around her feet while she recited. This was a small matter, but in school or church or lecture-hall, small matters attract attention. The fact that the cat now and again mewed plaintively set some of the audience to smiling and even to laughing.
Such apparent approval of her new rendition thrilled Miss Nebeker to her heart’s core. Her voice deepened, her intonations caught the spirit of her mood, and she read wildly well.
Every one who has even a smattering of thepatoiscurrent in New Jersey, will understand how effective it might be made in the larynx of a cunning elocutionist; and then whoever has had the delicious experience of hearing a genuine Jerseyman play on the jewsharp will naturally jump to a correct conclusion concerning the pathos of the subject which Miss Nebeker had in hand. She felt its influence and threw all her power into it. Heavy as she was, she arose on her tip-toes at the turning point of the story and gesticulated vehemently.
The cat, taken by surprise, leaped aside a pace or two and glared in a half-frightened way, with each separate hair on its tail set stiffly. Of course there was more laughter which the reader took as applause.
“A brace of cats!” exclaimed the historian. “A brace of cats!”
Nobody knew what he meant, but the laughing increased, simply for the reason that there was nothing to laugh at.
Discovering pretty soon that Miss Nebeker really meant no harm by her manœuvres, the cat went back to rub and purr at her feet. Then Miss Nebeker let down her heel on the cat’s tail, at the same time beginning with the pathetic part ofThe Jerseyman’s Jewsharp.
The unearthly squall that poor puss gave forth was wholly lost on the excited elocutionist, but it quite upset the audience, who, not wishing to appear rude, used their handkerchiefs freely.
Miss Nebeker paused to give full effect to a touching line.
The cat writhed and rolled and clawed the air and wailed like a lost spirit in its vain endeavor to free its tail; but Miss Nebeker, all unconscious of the situation, and seeing her hearers convulsed and wiping tears from their faces, redoubled her elocutionary artifices and poured incomparable feeling into her voice.
Suddenly the tortured and writhing animal uttered a scream of blood-curdling agony and lunged at Miss Nebeker’s ankles with tooth and claw.
She was in the midst of the passage where the dying Jerseyman lifts himself on his elbow and calls for his trusty Jewsharp:
“Gi’ me my juice-harp, Sarah Ann——” she was saying, when of a sudden she screamedlouder than the cat and bounded into the air, sending her manuscript in fluttering leaves all over the room.
The cat, with level tail and fiery eyes, sailed through the door-way into the hall, and went as if possessed of a devil, bounding up the stairway to Mrs. Philpot’s room.
Congratulations were in order, and Lucas insisted upon bellowing in Miss Nebeker’s ear his appreciation of the powerful effect produced by the last scene in the little drama.
“If our friends who are out in this rain are finding anything half as entertaining,” he thundered, “they needn’t mind the drenching.”
“But I’m bitten, I’m scratched, I’m hurt,” she exclaimed.
Lucas suddenly realized the brutality of his attitude, and hastened to rectify it by collecting the leaves of her manuscript and handing them to her.
“I beg pardon,” he said sincerely, “I hope you are not hurt much.”
“Just like a cat,” she cried, “always under somebody’s feet! I do despise them!”
With a burning face and trembling hands she swiftly rearranged the manuscript and assuming the proper attitude asked the audience to be seated again.
“I am bitten and scratched quite severely,” she said, “and am suffering great pain, but if you will resume your places I will begin over again.”
“Call that cat back, then, quick!” exclaimed Lucas, “it’s the star performer in the play.”
She proceeded forthwith, setting out on a new journey through the tortuous ways of the poem, and held up very well to the end. What she called New Jersey patois was a trifle flat when put into verse and she lacked the polished buffoonery of a successful dialect reader, wherefore she failed to get along very successfully with her audience in the absence of the cat; still the reading served to kill a good deal of time, by a mangling process.
The storm was over long ago when she had finished, and the sun was flooding the valley with golden splendor. Along the far away mountain ridges some slanting wisps of whitish mist sailed slowly, like aerial yachts riding dark blue billows. The foliage of the trees, lately dusky and drooping, twinkled vividly with a green that was almost dazzling, and the air was deliciously fresh and fragrant.
Everybody went out on the veranda for a turn and a deep breath.
The mail had arrived and by a mistake a bundle of letters bearing the card of George Dunkirk & Co., and addressed to “George Dunkirk, Esq., Hotel Helicon, room 24,” was handed to Lucas.
The historian gazed at the superscription, adjusted his glasses and gazed again, and slowly the truth crept into his mind. There were ten or fifteen of the letters. Evidently some of them, as Lucas’s experience suggested, had alienletters inclosed within their envelopes, and thus forwarded by the mailing clerk of the firm had at last come to the senior partner at room 24.
“Gaspard Dufour, indeed!” Lucas exclaimed inwardly. “George Dunkirk, rather. This is a pretty kettle of fish!”
He sent the letters up to room 24, to await the return of their proper recipient, and fell to reflecting upon the many, very many and very insulting things that he and nearly all the rest of the hotel guests as well had said in Dufour’s hearing about publishers in general and about George Dunkirk & Co., in particular. His face burned with the heat of the retrospect, as he recalled such phrases as “sleek thief,” “manipulator of copy-right statements,” “Cadmean wolf” “ghoul of literary grave-yards,” and a hundred others, applied with utter unrestraint and bandied around, while George Dunkirk was sitting by listening to it all!
He called Ferris to him and imparted his discovery in a stage whisper.
“The dickens!” was all that gentleman could say, as the full text of his address of the other evening rushed upon him.
“It is awkward, devilish awkward,” remarked Lucas, wiping his glasses and nervously readjusting them.
A few minutes later two men rode up to the hotel. One of them was a very quiet-looking fellow who dryly stated that he was the high sheriff of Mt. Boab county.
Meantimedown the ravine in the obscure little still-house our pedestrians were held in durance vile by Tolliver and his obedient moon-shiners.
It was a puzzling situation to all concerned. Far from wishing or intending to harm his prisoners, Tolliver still could not see his way clear to setting them at liberty. On the other hand he was clever enough to perceive that to hold them very long would be sure to lead to disaster, for their friends would institute a search and at the same time telegraph an account of their disappearance all over the country.
“’Pears ter me like I’ve ketched bigger game ’an my trap’ll hold,” he thought, as he stood in the door-way surveying his victims.
“What ye all a doin’ a monkeyin’ round’ these yer premerses, anyhow?” he demanded. “W’y c’udn’t ye jest wait ’ll I sent for ye ter kem yer?”
“It’s a sort of surprise party, my dear sir,” said Cattleton. “Don’t you see?”
“S’prise set o’ meddlin’ Yankees a foolin’ roun’ wher’ they air not got no business at,” responded Tolliver, “that’s w’at I calls it.”
“Where’s your pantry?” inquired Punner, “I’m as hungry as a wolf.”
“Hongry, air ye? What’d ye ’spect ter git ter eat at er still-house, anyhow? Hain’t yegot no sense er tall? Air ye er plum blasted eejit?”
Tolliver made these inquiries in a voice and manner suggestive of suppressed but utter wrath.
“Oh he’salwayshungry, he would starve in a feed-store,” exclaimed Cattleton. “Don’t pay the least attention to him, Mr. Tolliver. He’s incurably hungry.”
“W’y ef the man’s really hongry——” Tolliver began to say in a sympathetic tone.
“Here,” interrupted Hubbard gruffly, “let us out of this immediately, can’t you? The ladies can’t bear this foul air much longer, it’s beastly.”
“Mebbe hit air you ’at air a running this yer chebang,” said Tolliver with a scowl. “I’ll jes’ let ye out w’en I git ready an’ not a minute sooner, nother. So ye’ve hearn my tin horn.”
Miss Stackpole and Miss Crabb made notes in amazing haste.
Hubbard shrugged his heavy shoulders and bit his lip. He was baffled.
“Do you think they’ll kill us?” murmured Miss Moyne in Dufour’s ear.
Dufour could not answer.
Crane and his “pap’s uncle Pete” were still hobnobbing over the jug.
“Yer’s a lookin’ at ye, boy, an’ a hopin’ agin hope ’at ye may turn out ter be es likely a man es yer pap,” the old man was saying, preliminary to another draught.
Crane was bowing with extreme politeness inacknowledgement of the sentiment, and was saying:
“I am told that I look like my father——”
“Yes, ye do look a leetle like im,” interrupted the old man with a leer over the jug, “but l’me say at it air dern leetle, boy, dern leetle!”
Punner overhearing this reply, laughed uproariously. Crane appeared oblivious to the whole force of the joke, however. He was simply waiting for his turn at the jug.
“As I wer’ a sayin’,” resumed the old man, “yer’s er hopin’ agin’ hope, an’ a lookin’ at ye——”
“How utterly brutal and disgusting!” cried Mrs. Nancy Jones Black. “I must leave here, I cannot bear it longer! This is nothing but a low, vile dram-shop! Let me pass!”
She attempted to go through the doorway, but Tolliver interfered.
“Stay wher’ ye air,” he said, in a respectful but very stern tone. “Ye can’t git out o’ yer jist yit.”
“Dear me! Dear me!” wailed Mrs. Black, “what an outrage, what an insult! Are you men?” she cried, turning upon the gentlemen near her, “and will you brook this?”
“Give me your handkerchiefs again,” said Cattleton, “and I will once more poke out my head; ’tis all that I can do!”
“Shoot the fust head ’at comes out’n thet ther winder, Dave!” ordered Tolliver, speaking to some one outside.
“I don’t care for any handkerchiefs, thank you,” said Cattleton, “I’ve changed my mind.”
Miss Moyne was holding Dufour’s arm with a nervous clutch, her eyes were full of tears, and she was trembling violently. He strove to quiet her by telling her that there was no danger, that he would shield her, die for her and all that; but Tolliver looked so grim and the situation was so strange and threatening that she could not control herself.
“Goodness! but isn’t this rich material,” Miss Crabb soliloquized, writing in her little red book with might and main. “Bret Harte never discovered anything better.”
Miss Henrietta Stackpole was too busy absorbing the human interest of the interview between the two Cranes, to be more than indirectly aware of anything else that was going on around her.
“Ye needn’t be erfeard as ter bein’ hurt, boy,” said the old man, “not es long es yer pap’s uncle Pete air eroun’ yer. Hit ain’t often ’at I meets up wi’ kinfolks downyer, an’ w’en I does meet up wi’ ’em I treats ’em es er Southern gen’l’man orter treat his kinfolks.”
“Precisely so,” said Crane, taking another sip, “hospitality is a crowning Southern virtue. When I go up to Louisville Henry Watterson and I always have a good time.”
“Spect ye do, boy, spect ye do. Louisville use ter be a roarin’ good place ter be at.”
Tolliver, whose wits had been hard at work,now proposed what he called “terms o’ pay-roll, like what they hed in the war.”
“Ef ye’ll all take a oath an’ swa’ at ye’ll never tell nothin’ erbout nothin,” said he, “w’y I’ll jest let ye off this yer time.”
“That is fair enough,” said Dufour, “we are not in the detective service.”
“Then,” observed Tolliver, “ef I ken git the ’tention of this yer meetin’, I move ’at it air yerby considered swore ’at nothin’ air ter be said erbout nothin’ at no time an’ never. Do ye all swa’?”
“Yes!” rang out a chorus of voices.
“Hit air cyarried,” said Tolliver, “an’ the meetin’ air dismissed, sigh er die. Ye kin all go on erbout yer business.”
The pedestrians filed out into the open air feeling greatly relieved. Crane lingered to have a few more passages with his sociable and hospitable grand-uncle. Indeed he remained until the rest of the party had passed out of sight up the ravine and he did not reach the hotel until far in the night, when he sang some songs under Miss Moyne’s window.
Taken altogether, the pedestrians felt that they had been quite successful in their excursion.
Dufour was happiness itself. On the way back he had chosen for himself and Miss Moyne a path which separated them from the others, giving him an opportunity to say a great deal to her.
Now it is a part of our common stock ofunderstanding that when a man has an excellent and uninterrupted opportunity to say a great deal to a beautiful young woman, he usually does not find himself able to say much; still he rarely fails to make himself understood.
They both looked so self-consciously happy (when they arrived a little later than the rest at Hotel Helicon) that suspicion would have been aroused but for two startling and all-absorbing disclosures which drove away every other thought.
One was the disclosure of the fact that Dufour was not Dufour, but George Dunkirk, and the other was the disclosure of the fact that the high sheriff of Mt. Boab County was in Hotel Helicon on important official business.
Little Mrs. Philpot was the first to discover that the great publisher really had not practiced any deception as to his name. Indeed her album showed that the signature therein was, after all, George Dunkirk and not Gaspard Dufour. The autograph was not very plain, it is true, but it was decipherable and the mistake was due to her own bad reading.
If the sheriff had been out of the question the humiliation felt by the authors, for whom Dunkirk was publisher and who had talked so outrageously about him, would have crushed them into the dust; but the sheriff was there in his most terrible form, and he forced himself upon their consideration with his quiet but effective methods of legal procedure.