CHAPTER XVI.Some Things which Happened in Our Halcyon Days.
CHAPTER XVI.
Some Things which Happened in Our Halcyon Days.
If there was any tension among us just after the house-warming, it was not noticeable. Mr. Cornish and Mr. Elkins seemed unaware of their rivalry. Had either of the two been successful, it might have made mischief; but as it was, neither felt that his rejection was more than temporary. Neither knew much of the other’s suit, and both seemed full of hope and good spirits.
Altogether, these were our halcyon days. It seemed to crew and captain a time for the putting off of armor, and the donning of the garlands of complacent respite from struggle. The work we had undertaken seemed accomplished—our village was a city. The great wheel we had set whirling went spinning on with power. Long ago we had ceased to treat the matter jocularly; and to regard our operations as applied psychology only, or as a piratical reunion, no longer occurred to us. There is such a thing, I believe, as self-hypnotism; but if we knew it, we made no application of our knowledge to our own condition. This great, scattered, ebullient town, grown from the drowsy Lattimore of afew years ago, must surely be, even now, what we had willed it to be: and therefore, could we not pause and take our ease?
There was the General, of course. He, Jim said, “‘knocked’ so constantly as to be sort of ex-officio President of the Boiler-makers’ Union,” and talked of the inevitable collapse. But who ever heard of a city built by people of his way of thinking? And there was Josie Trescott, with her agreement on broad lines with the General, and her deprecation of the giving of fortunes to people who had not earned them; but Josie was only a woman, who, to be sure, knew more of most matters than the rest of us, but could not have any very valuable knowledge of the prospects for commercial prosperity.
That we were in the midst of an era of the most wonderful commercial prosperity none denied. How could they? The streets, so lately bordered with low stores, hotels, and banks, were now craggy with tall office buildings and great hostelries, through which the darting elevators shot hurrying passengers. Those trees which made early twilight in the streets that night when Alice, Jim, and I first rode out to the Trescott farm were now mostly cut down to make room for “improvements.”
Brushy Creek gorge was no longer dark and cool, with its double sky-line of trees drowsing toward one another, like eyelashes, from the friendly cliffs. The cooing of the pigeons was gone forever. The muddied water from the great flume raced down through the ravine, turning many wheels, but nowhere gathering in any form or place which seemed goodfor trout. On either side stood shanties, and ramshackle buildings where such things as stonecutting and blacksmithing were done. Along the waterside ran the tracks of our Terminal and Belt Line System, on which trains of flat-cars always stood, engaged in the work of carrying away the cliffs, in which they were aided and abetted by giant derricks and the fiends of dynamite and nitro-glycerin. Limekilns burned all the time, turning the companionable gray ledges into something offensive and corrosive. One must now board a street-car, and ride away beyond Lynhurst Park before one could find the good and pure little Brushy Creek of yore.
The dwellers in the houses which stood in their lawns of vivid green had gone away into the new “additions,” to be in the fashion, and to escape from the smoke and clang of engine and factory. Their old houses were torn away, or converted, by new and incongruous extensions, into cheap boarding-houses. Only the Lattimore house kept faith with the past, and stood as of old, in its five acres of trees and grass, untouched of the fever for platting and subdivision, its very skirts drawn up from the asphalt by austere retaining-walls. And here went on the preparation for the time when Laura and Clifford were to stand up and declare their purposes and intentions with reference to each other. The first wedding this was to be, in all our close-knit circle.
“I am glad,” said I, “that they are all so sensible as not to permit rivalries to breed discord among us. It might be disastrous.”
“There is time,” said Alice, “for that to develop yet.”
Not that everything happened as we wished. Indeed, some things gave us much anxiety. Bill Trescott, for instance, began at last to show signs of that going up in the air which Jim had said we must keep him from. Even Captain Tolliver complained that Bill’s habits were getting bad: and he was the last person in the world to censure excess in the vices which he deemed gentlemanly. His own idea of morning, for instance, was that period of the day when the bad taste in the mouth so natural to a gentleman is removed by a stiff toddy, drunk just before prayers. He would, no doubt, have conceded to the inventor of the alphabet a higher place among men than that of the discoverer of the mint julep, had the matter been presented to him in concrete form; but would have qualified the admission by adding, with a seriousness incompatible with the average conception of a joke: “But the question is sutt’nly one not entiahly free from doubt, suh; not entiahly free from doubt!”
However, the Captain had his standards, and prescribed for himself limits of time, place, and degree, to which he faithfully conformed. But he had been for a long time doing business under a sort of partnership arrangement with Bill, and their affairs had become very much interwoven. So he came to us, one day, in something like a panic, on finding that Bill had become a frequenter of one of the local bucket-shops, and had been making maudlin boasts of the profitable deals he had made.
“This means, gentlemen,” said the Captain, “that influences entiahly fo’eign to ouah investments hyah ah likely to bring a crash, which will not only wipe out Mr. Trescott, but, owin’ to ouah association in the additions we have platted, cyah’y me down also! You can see that with sev’al hundred thousand dolla’s of deferred payments on what we have sold, most of which have been rediscounted in the East by the G. B. T., Mr. Trescott’s condition becomes something of serious conce’n fo’ you-all, as well as fo’ me. Nothing else, I assuah you, gentlemen, could fo’ce me to call attention to a mattah so puahly pussonal as a diffe’nce between gentlemen in theiah standahds of inebriety! Nothing else, believe me!”
By the G. B. T. the Captain meant the Grain Belt Trust Company, and anything which affected its solvency or welfare was, as he said, a matter of serious concern for all of us. In fact, at that very moment there were in Lattimore two officers of New England banks with whom we had placed a rather heavy line of G. B. T. securities, and who had made the trip for the purpose of looking us up. Suppose that they found out that the notes and mortgages of William S. Trescott & Co. really had back of them only some very desirable suburban additions, and the personal responsibility of a retired farmer, who was daily handing his money to board-of-trade gamblers, with whom he was getting an education in the great strides we are making in the matter of mixed drinks? This thought occurred to all of us at once.
“Well,” said Cornish, stating the point of agreement after the Captain’s trouble had been fully discussed, “unfortunately ‘the right to be a cussed fool is safe from all devices human,’ and there doesn’t seem to be any remedy.”
It all came, thought I, as Jim and I sat silent after Cornish and the Captain went out, from the fact that Bill’s present condition in life gave those tendencies to which he had always been prone to yield, a chance for unrestricted growth. He ought to have staid with his steers. Cattle and corn were the only things in which he could take an interest sufficiently keen to keep him from drink. These habits of his were enacting the old story of the lop-eared rabbits in Australia—overrunning the country. Bill had been as sober a citizen as one could desire, as long as his house-building occupied his time; and he and Josie had worked together as companionably as they used to do in the hay and wheat. But now he was drifting away from her. Her father should have staid on the farm.
“Do you know,” said I, “that Giddings is making about as great a fool of himself as Bill?”
“Yes,” said Jim, “but that’s because he’s in a terrible state of mind about his marriage. If we can keep him from delirium tremens until after the wedding, he’ll be all right. Some Italian brain-sharp has written up cases like his, and he’ll be all right. But with Bill it’s different.... Do you remember our old Shep?”
“No,” I returned wonderingly, almost impatiently. “What about him?”
“Well,” he mused, “I’ve been picking up knowledge of men for a while along back; and I’ve come to prize more highly the personal history of dogs; and Shep was worth a biography for its own sake, to say nothing of the value of a typical case. He was a woolly collie, who would cheerfully have given up his life for the cows and sheep. Anything in his line, that a dog could grasp, Shep knew, and he was busier than a cranberry-merchant the year around, and the happiest thing on the farm. Then our folks moved to Mayville, and took him along. He wasn’t fitted for town life at all. He’d lie on the front piazza, and search the street for cows and sheep, and when one came along he’d stick his sharp nose through the fence, and whine as if some one was whipping him. In less than six weeks he bit a baby; in two months he was the most depraved dog in Mayville, and in three ... he died.”
I had no answer for the apologue—not even for the self-condemnatory tone in which he told it. Presently he rose to go, and said that he would not be back.
“Don’t forget our date at the club this evening,” said he, as he passed out. “Your style of diplomacy always seems to win with these down-East bankers. Your experience as rob-ee gives you the right handshake and the subscribed-and-sworn-to look that does their business for ’em every time. Good-by until then.”
Our club was the terminal bud of our growth, and was housed in a building of which we were enormously proud. It was managed by a steward importedfrom New York, whose salary was made large to harmonize with his manners—that being the only way in which the majority of our members felt equal to living up to them. So far as money could make a club, ours was of high rank. There were meat-cooks and pastry-cooks in incredible numbers, under the command of a French chef, who ruled the house committee with a rod of iron. We were all members as a matter of public duty. I have often wondered what the servants, brought from Eastern cities, thought of it all. To see Bill Trescott and Aleck Macdonald going in through the great door, noiselessly swung open for them by an attendant in livery, was a sight to be remembered. The chief ornament of the club was Cornish, who lived there.
“I want to see Mr. Cornish,” said I to the servant who took my overcoat, that evening.
“Right this way, sir,” said he. “Mr. Giddings is with him. He gave orders for you to be shown up.”
Cornish sat at a little round table on which there were some bottles and glasses. The tipple was evidently ale, and Mr. Giddings was standing opposite, lifting a glass in one hand and pointing at it with the other, in evident imitation of the attitude in which the late Mr. Gough loved to have himself pictured; but the sentiments of the two speakers were quite different.
“‘Turn out more ale; turn up the light!’”
Giddings glanced at the electric light-fixtures, and then looked about as if for a servant to turn them up.
“‘I will not go to bed to-night!For, of all foes that man should dread,The first and worst one is a bed!Friends I have had, both old and young;Ale have we drunk, and songs we’ve sung.Enough you know when this is said,That, one and all, they died in bed!’”
Here Giddings’s voice broke with grief, and he stopped to drink the rest of the glassful, and went on:
“‘In bed they died, and I’ll not goWhere all my friends have perished so!Go, ye who fain would buried be;But not to-night a bed for me!’”
“Do you often have these Horatian fits?” I inquired.
“Base groveler!” said he, “if you can’t rise to the level of the occasion, don’t butt in.”
“‘For me to-night no bed prepare,But set me out my oaken chair,And bid me other guests besideThe ghosts that shall around me glide!’”
“You will, of course,” said Cornish, “permit us to withdraw for the purpose of having our conference with our Eastern friends? If I take your meaning, you’ll not be alone.”
“Not by a jugful, I’ll not be alone!” said Giddings, tossing off another glass:
“‘In curling smoke-wreaths I shall seeA fair and gentle company.Though silent all, fair revelers they,Who leave you not till break of day!Go, ye who would not daylight see;But not to-night a bed for me!For I’ve been born, and I’ve been wed,And all man’s troubles come of bed!’”
Here Giddings sank down in his chair and began weeping.
“The divinest attribute of poetry,” said he, “is that of bringing tears. Let me weep awhile, fellows, and then I’ll give you the last stanza. Last stanza’s the best—”
And in the midst of his critique he went to sleep, thereby breaking his rule adopted in “Dum Vivemus Vigilemus.”
“Is he this way often?” said I to Cornish, as we went down to meet Jim and the bankers.
“Pretty often,” said Cornish. “I don’t know how I’d amuse my evenings if it weren’t for Giddings. He’s too far gone to-night, though, to be entertaining. Gets worse, I think, as the wedding-day approaches. Trying to drown his apprehensions, I suspect. Funny fellow, Giddings. But he’s all right from noon to nineP.M.”
“I think we’ll have to organize a dipsomaniacs’ hospital for our crowd,” said I, “if things keep going on as they are tending now! I didn’t think Giddings was so many kinds of an ass!”
My complainings were cut short by our entrance into the presence of Mr. Elkins and the New England bankers. I asked to be excused from partaking of the refreshments which were served. I had seen and heard enough to spoil my appetite. I was agreeably surprised to find that their independent investigations of conditions in Lattimore had convinced them of the safety of their investments. Really, they said, were it not for the pleasure of meeting us here at our home, they should feel that the time andexpense of looking us up were wasted. But, handling, as they did, the moneys of estates and numerous savings accounts, their customers were of a class in whom timidity and nervousness reach their maximum, and they were obliged to keep themselves in position to give assurances as to the safety of their investments from their personal investigations.
Mr. Hinckley, who was with us, assured them that his life as a banker enabled him fully to realize the necessity of their carefulness, which we, for our own parts, were pleased to know existed. We were only too glad to exhibit our books to them, make a complete showing as to our condition generally, and even take them to see each individual piece of property covered by our paper. Mr. Hinckley went with them to their hotel, having proposed enough work in the way of investigation to keep them with us for several months. They were to leave on the evening of the next day.
“But,” said Jim, as we put on our overcoats to go home, “it shows our good will, you see.”
At that moment the steward, with an anxious look, asked Mr. Elkins for a word in private.
“Ask Mr. Barslow if he will kindly step over here,” I heard Jim say; and I joined them at once.
“I was just saying, sir, to Mr. Elkins,” said the steward, “that ordinarily I’d not think of mentioning such a thing as a gentleman’s being indisposed but should see that he was cared for here. But Mr. Trescott being in such a state, I felt it was a case for his friends or the hospital. He’s been—a—seeingthings this afternoon; and while he’s better now in that regard, his—”
“Have a closed carriage brought at once,” said Mr. Elkins. “Al, you’d better go up to the house, and let them know we’re coming. I’ll take him home!”
I shrank from the meeting with Mrs. Trescott and Josie, more, I think, than if it had been Bill’s death which I was to announce. As I approached the house, I got from it, somehow, the impression that it was a place of night-long watchfulness; and I was not surprised by the fact that before I had time to ring or knock at the door Mrs. Trescott herself opened it, with an expression on her face which spoke of long vigils, and of fear passing on to certainty. She peered past me for an expected Something on the street. Her leisure and its new habits had assimilated her in dress and make-up to the women of the wealthier sort in the city; but there was an immensity of trouble in the agonized eye and the pitiful droop of her mouth, which I should have rejoiced to see exchanged again for the ill-groomed exterior and the old fret of the farm. Her first question ignored all reference to the things leading to my being there, “in the dead vast and middle of the night,” but went past me to the core of her trouble, as her eye had gone on from me to the street, in the search for the thing she dreaded.
“Where is he, Mr. Barslow?” said she, in a hushing whisper; “where is he?”
“He is a little sick,” said I, “and Mr. Elkins is bringing him home. I came on to tell you.”“Then he is not—” she went on, still in that hushed voice, and searching me with her gaze.
“No, I assure you!” I answered. “He is in no immediate danger, even.”
Josie came quietly forward from the dusk of the room beyond, where I saw she had been listening, reminding me, in spite of the incongruity of the idea, of that time when she emerged from the obscurity of her garden, and stood at the foot of the windmill tower, leaning on her father’s arm, her hands filled with petunias, the night we first visited the Trescott farm. And then my mind ran back to that other night when she had thrown herself into his arms and begged him to take her away; and he had said, “W’y, yes, little gal, of course I’ll take yeh away, if yeh don’t like it here!” I think that I, perhaps, was more nearly able than any one else in the world beside herself to gauge her grief at this long death in which she was losing him, and he himself.
She took my hand, pressed it silently, and began caressing her mother and whispering to her things which I could not hear. Mrs. Trescott sat upon a sort of divan, shaking with terrible, soundless sobs, and clasping and unclasping her hands, but making no other gesture. I stood helpless at the hidden abyss of woe so suddenly uncovered before me and until this very moment screened by the conventions which keep our souls apart like prisoners in the cells in some great prison. These two women had been bearing this for a long time, and we, their nearest friends, had stood aloof from them. As Istood thinking of this, the carriage-wheels ground upon the pavement in theporte cochère; and a moment later Jim came in, his face graver than I had ever seen it. He sat down by Mrs. Trescott, and gently took one of her hands.
“Dr. Aylesbury has given him a morphia injection,” said he, “and he is sound asleep. The doctor thinks it best for us to carry him right to his room. There is a man here from the hospital, who will stay and nurse him; and the doctor came, too.”
Mrs. Trescott started up, saying that she must arrange his room. Soon the four of us had placed him in bed, where he lay, puffy and purple, with a sort of pasty pallor overspreading his face. His limbs occasionally jerked spasmodically; but otherwise he was still under the spell of the opiate. His wife, now that there was something definite to do, was self-possessed and efficient, taking the physician’s instructions with ready apprehension. The fact that Bill had now assumed the character of a patient rather than that of a portent seemed to make the trouble, somehow, more normal and endurable. The wife and daughter insisted upon assuming the care of him, but assented to the nurse’s remaining as a help in emergencies. It was nearing dawn when I took my leave. As I approached the door, I saw Jim and Josie in the hall, and heard him making some last tenders of aid and comfort before his departure. He put out his hand, and she clasped it in both of hers.
“I want to thank you,” said she, “for what you have done.”
“I have done nothing,” he replied. “It is what I wish to do that I want you to think of. I do not know whether I shall ever be able to forgive myself—”
“No, no!” said she. “You must not talk—you must not allow yourself to feel in that way. It is unjust—to yourself and to—me—for you to feel so!”
I advanced to them, but she still stood looking into his face and holding his hand clasped in hers. There was something of appeal, of an effort to express more than the words said, in her look and attitude. He answered her regard by a gaze so pathetically wistful that she averted her face, pressed his hand, and turned to me.
“Good-night to you both, and thank you both, a thousand times!” said she.
“I wonder if old Shep’s relations and friends,” said Jim, as we stood under the arc light in front of my house, “ever came to forgive the people who took him away from his flocks and herds.”
“After what I’ve seen in the last few minutes,” said I, “I haven’t the least doubt of it.”
“Al,” said he, “these be troublous times, but if I believed all that what you say implies, I’d go home happy, if not jolly. And I almost believe you’re right.”
“Well,” said I, assuming for once the rôle of the mentor, “I think that you are foolish to worry about it. We have enough actual, well-defined, surveyed and platted grief on our hands, without any mooning about hunting for the speculativevariety. Go home, sleep, and bring down a clear brain for to-morrow’s business.”
“To-day’s,” said he gaily. “Tear off yesterday’s leaf from the calendar, Al. For, look! the morn, dressed as usual, ‘walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.’”
CHAPTER XVII.Relating to the Disposition of the Captives.
CHAPTER XVII.
Relating to the Disposition of the Captives.
It was not later than the next day but one, that I met Giddings, alert, ingratiating, and natty as ever.
“When am I to have the third stanza?” I inquired, “the one that’s ‘the best of all.’”
This question he seemed to take as a rebuke; for he reddened, while he tried to laugh.
“Barslow,” said he, “there isn’t any use in our discussing this thing. You couldn’t understand it. A man like you, who can calculate to a hair just how far he is going and just where to turn back, and—Oh, damn! There’s no use!”
I sympathize with Giddings, at this present moment, in his despair of making people understand; for I doubt, sometimes, whether it is possible for me to make the reader understand the conditions with us in Lattimore at the time when poor Trescott lay there in his fine house, fighting for life, and for many things more important, and while the wedding preparations were going forward at the General’s house.
To the steady-going, stationary, passionless community these conditions approach the incomprehensible.No one seemed to doubt the city’s future now. Sometimes the abnormal basis upon which our great new industries had been established struck the stranger with distrust, if he happened to have the insight to notice it; but the concernswere theremost undeniably, and had shifted population in their coming, and were turning out products for the markets of the world.
That they had been evolved magically, and set in operation, not by any slow process of meeting a felt want, but for this sole purpose of shifting population, might be, and undoubtedly was, unusual; but given the natural facilities for carrying the business on, and how did this forced genesis adversely affect their prospects?
I, for one, could see no reason for apprehension. Yet when the story of Trescott’s maudlin plunging came to our ears, and the effect of his possible failure received consideration, or I thought of the business explosion which would follow any open breach between Jim and Cornish (though this seemed too remote for serious consideration), I began to ponder on the enormously complex system of credits we had built up.
Besides the regular line of bonds and mortgages growing out of debts due us on our real-estate sales, and against which we had issued the debentures and the guaranteed rediscounts of the Grain Belt Trust Company, the factories, stock yards, terminals, street-car system, and most of our other properties were pretty heavily bonded. Some of them were temporarily unproductive, and funds had from timeto time to be provided, from sources other than their own earnings, for the payment of their interest-charges. On the whole, however, we had been able to carry the entire line forward from position to position with such success that the people were kept in a fever, and accessions to our population kept pouring in which, of their own force, added fuel to the fire of expectancy.
This one thing began to make me uneasy—there was no place to stop. A failure among us would quench this expectancy, and values would no longer increase. And everything was organized on the basis of the continued crescendo. That was the reason why every uplift in prices had been followed by a new and strenuous effort on our part to hoist them still higher. For that reason, we, who had become richer than we had ever hoped to be, kept toiling on to rear to greater and greater heights an edifice which the eternal forces of nature itself clutched, to drag down.
I was the first to suggest this feature in conference. The Trescott scare had made me more thoughtful. True, outwardly things were more than ever booming. The very signs on the streets spoke of the boom. It was “Lumber, Coal, and Real Estate”; “Burbank’s Livery, Feed, and Sale Stable. Office of Burbank Realty Co.”; or “Thronson & Larson, Grocers. Choice Lots in Thronson’s Addition.” Even Giddings had platted the “HeraldAddition,” and was offering a choice quarter-block as a prize to the person who could guess nearest to the average monthly increase in values in the addition, as shownby the record of sales. Real estate appeared as a part of the business of hardware stores and milliners’ shops, so that one was constantly reminded of the heterogeneous announcements on the signboard of Mr. Wegg. But while all this went on, and transactions “in dirt” were larger than ever, one could see indications that there was in them a larger and larger element of credit, and less and less cash. So one day, at a syndicate conference, I sought to ease my mind by asking where this thing was to stop, and when we could hope for a time when the town would not have to be held up by main strength.
“Why, that’s a very remarkable question!” said Mr. Hinckley. “We surely haven’t reached the point where we can think of stopping. Why, with the history before us of the cities of America which, without half our natural advantages, have grown to so many times the size of this, I’m surprised that such a thing should be thought of! Just think of what Chicago was in ’54 when I came through. A village without a harbor, built along the ditches of a frog-pond! And see it now; see it now!”
There was a little quiver in Mr. Hinckley’s voice, a little infirmity of his chin, which told of advancing years. His ideas were becoming more fixed. It was plain that the notion of Lattimore’s continued and uninterrupted progress was one to which he would cling with the mild and unreasoning stubbornness of gentlemanly senility. But Cornish welcomed the discussion with something like eagerness.
“I’m glad the matter has come up,” said he. “We’ve had a few good years here; but, in thenature of things, won’t the time come when things will be—slower? We’ve got our first plans pretty well worked out. The mills, factories, and live-stock industries are supporting population, and making tonnage which the railroad is carrying. But what next? We can’t expect to build any more railroads soon. No line of less than five hundred miles will do any good, strategically speaking, and sending out stubs just to annex territory for our shippers is too slow and expensive business for this crowd. Things are booming along now; but the Eastern banks are getting finicky about paper, and—I think things are going to be—slower—and that we ought to act accordingly.”
There was a long silence, broken only by a dry laugh from Hinckley, and the remark that Barslow and Cornish must be getting dyspeptic from high living.
“Well,” said Elkins at last, ignoring Hinckley and facing Cornish, “get down to brass nails! What policy would you adopt?”
“Oh, our present policy is all right,” answered he of the Van Dyke beard—
“Yes, yes!” interjected Hinckley. “My view exactly. A wonderfully successful policy!”
“—and,” Cornish continued, “I would only suggest that we cease spreading out—not cease talking it, but only just sort of stop doing it—and begin to realize more rapidly on our holdings. Not so as to break the market, you understand; but so as to keep the demand fairly well satisfied.”
Mr. Elkins was slow in replying, and when thereply came it was of the sort which does not answer.
“A most important, not to say momentous question,” said he. “Let’s figure the thing over and take it up again soon. We’ll not begin to disagree at this late day. Mr. Hinckley has warned us that he has an engagement in thirty minutes. It seems to me we ought to dispose of the matter of the appropriation for the interest on those Belt Lines bonds. Wade’s mash on ‘Atkins, Corning & Co.’ won’t last long in the face of a default.”
Mr. Hinckley staid his thirty minutes and withdrew. Mr. Cornish went to the telephone and ordered his dog-cart.
“Immediately,” he instructed, “over here at the Grain Belt Trust Building.”
“Make it in half an hour, can’t you, Cornish?” said Jim. “There are some more things we ought to go over.”
“Say!” shouted Cornish into the transmitter. “Make that in half an hour instead of at once.”
He hung up the telephone, and turned to Elkins inquiringly. Jim was walking up and down on the rug, his hands clasped behind him.
“Since we’ve spread out into that string of banks,” said he, still keeping up his walk, “and made Mr. Hinckley the president of each of ’em, he’s reverting to his old banker’s timidity. Which consists, in all cases, in an aversion to any change in conditions. To suggest any change, even from an old, dangerous policy to a new safe one, startles a ‘conservative’ banker. If we had gone on a little longer with ourtalk about shutting off steam and taking the nigger off the safety-valve, you’d have seen him scared into a numbness. But, now that the question has been brought up, let’s talk it over. What’s your notion about it, anyhow, Al?”
“I’m seeking light,” said I. “The people are rushing in, and the town’s doing splendidly. But prices, there’s no denying it, are beginning to sort of strangle things. They prevent doing, any more, what we did at first. Kreuger Brothers’ failure yesterday was small; but it’s a clear case of a retailer’s being eaten up with fixed charges—or so Macdonald told me this morning; and I know that frontage on Main Street is demanding fully as much as the traffic will bear. And then our fright over Trescott’s gambling gave me some bad dreams over our securities. It has bothered me to see how to adjust our affairs to a stationary condition of things; that’s all.”
“Of course,” said Cornish, “we must keep boosting. Fortunately society here is now thoroughly organized on the principle of whooping it up for Lattimore. I could get up a successful lynching-party any time to attend to the case of any miscreant who should suggest that property is too high, or rents unreasonable, or anything but a steady up-grade before us. But I think we ought to stop buying—except among ourselves, and keep the transfers from falling off—and begin salting down.”
“If you can suggest any way to do that, and still take care of our paper,” said Jim, “I shall be with you.”
“I’ve never anticipated,” said Cornish, “that such a mass of business could be carried through without some losses. Investors can’t expect it.”
“The first loss in the East through our paper,” said Jim, “means a taking up of the Grain Belt securities everywhere, and no market for more. And you know what that spells.”
“It mustn’t be allowed to happen—yet awhile,” answered Cornish. “As I just now said, we must keep on boosting.”
“You know where the Grain Belt debentures and other obligations are mostly held, of course?” asked Mr. Elkins.
“When a bond or mortgage is sold,” was the answer, “my interest in it ceases. I conclusively presume that the purchaser himself personally looked to the security, or accepted the guaranty of the negotiating trust company.Caveat emptoris my rule.”
Mr. Elkins looked out of the window, as if he had forgotten us.
“We should push the sale of the Lattimore & Great Western,” said he, “and the Belt Line System.”
“I concur,” said Cornish. “Our interest in those properties is a two-million-dollar cash item.”
“It wouldn’t be two million cents,” said Jim, “if our friends on Wall Street could hear this talk. They’d wait to buy at receiver’s sale after some Black Friday. Of course, that’s what Pendleton and Wade have been counting on from the first.”
“You ought to see Halliday and Pendleton at once,” said I.
“Yes, I think so, too,” he rejoined. “Pendleton’ll pay us more than our price, rather than see the Halliday system get the properties. They’re deep ones; but we ought to be able to play them off against each other, so long as we can keep strong at home. I’ll begin the flirtation at once.”
Cornish, assuming that Jim had fully concurred in his views, bade us a pleasant good-day, and went out.
“My boy,” said Jim, “cheer up. If gloom takes hold of you like this while we’re still running before a favoring wind, it’ll bother you to keep feeling worse and worse, as you ought, as we approach the real thing. Cheer up!”
“Oh, I’m all right!” said I. “I was just trying to make out Cornish’s position.”
“Let’s make out our own,” he replied, “that’s the first thing. Bear in mind that this is a buccaneering proposition, and you’re first mate: remember? Well, Al, we’ve had the merriest cruise in the books. If any crew ever had doubloons to throw to the birds, we’ve had ’em. But, you know, we always draw the line somewhere, and I’m about to ask you to join me in drawing the line, and see just what moral level piracy has risen or sunk to.”
He still walked back and forth, and, as he spoke of drawing the line, he drew an imaginary one with his fingers on the green baize of the flat-topped desk.
“You remember what those fellows, Dorr and Wickersham, said the other night, about having invested the funds of estates, and savings accountsin our obligations?” he went on. “But I never told you what Wickersham said privately to me. The infernal fool has more of our paper than his bank’s whole capital stock, with the surplus added, amounts to! And he calls himself a ‘conservative New England banker’! It wouldn’t be so bad if the states back East weren’t infested with the same sort of idiots—I’ve had Hinckley make me a report on it since that night. It means that women and children and sweaty breadwinners have furnished the money for all these things we’re so proud of having built, including the Mt. Desert cottages and the Wyoming hunting-lodge. It means that we’ve got to be able to read our book of the Black Art backwards as well as forwards, or the Powers we’ve conjured up will tear piecemeal both them and us. God! it makes me crawl to think of what would happen!”
He sat down on the flat-topped desk, and I saw the beaded pallor of a fixed and digested anxiety on his brow. He went on, in a lighter way:
“These poor people, scattered from the Missouri to the Atlantic, are our prisoners, Al. I think Cornish is ready to make them walk the plank. But, Al, you know, in our bloodiest days, down on the Spanish Main, we used to spare the women and children! What do you say now, Al?”
The way in which he repeated the old nickname had an irresistible appeal in it; but I hope no appeal was needed. I said, and said truly, that I should never consent to any policy which was not mindful of the interests of which he spoke; and that I knewHinckley would be with us. So, if Cornish took any other view, there would be three to one against him.
“I knew you’d be with me,” he continued. “It would have been a sure-enough case ofet tu, Brute, if you hadn’t been. But don’t let yourself think for a minute that we can’t fight this thing to a finish and come off more than conquerors. We’ll look back at this talk some time, and laugh at our fears. The troublous times that come every so often are nearer than they were five years ago, but they’re some ways off yet, and forewarned is insured.”
“But the hard times always catch people unawares,” said I.
“They do,” he admitted, “but they never tried to stalk a covey of boom specialists before.... You remember all that rot I used to talk about the mind-force method, and psychological booms? We’ve been false to that theory, by coming to believe so implicitly in our own preaching. Why, Al, this work we’ve begun here has got to go on! It must go on! There mustn’t be any collapse or failure. When the hard times come, we must be prepared to go right on through, cutting a little narrower swath, but cutting all the same. Stand by the guns with me, and, in spite of all, we’ll win, and save Lattimore—and spare the captives, too!”
There was the fire of unconquerable resolution in his eye, and a resonance in his voice that thrilled me. After all he had done, after the victories we had won under his leadership, the admiration and love I felt for him rose to the idolatry of a soldier forhis general, as I saw him stiffening his limbs, knotting his muscles, and, with teeth set and nostrils dilated, rising to the load which seemed falling on him alone.
“I’ll make the turn with these railroad properties,” he went on. “We must make Pendleton and Halliday bid each other up to our figure. And there’ll be no ‘salting down’ done, either—yet awhile. I hope things won’t shrink too much in the washing; but the real-estate hot air of the past few years must cause some trouble when the payments deferred begin to make the heart sick. The Trust Company will be called on to make good some of its guaranties—and must do it. The banks must be kept strong; and with two millions to sweeten the pot we shall be with ’em to the finish. Why, they can’t beat us! And don’t forget that right now is the most prosperous time Lattimore ever saw; and put on a look that will corroborate the statement when you go out of here!”
“Bravo, bravo!” said a voice from near the door. “I don’t understand any of it, but the speech sounded awfully telling! Where’s papa?”
It was Antonia, who had come in unobserved. She wore a felt hat with one little feather on it, driving-gloves, and a dark cloth dress. She stood, rosy with driving, her blonde curls clustering in airy confusion about her forehead, a tailor-gowned Brunhilde.
“Why, hello, Antonia!” said Jim. “He went away some time ago. Wasn’t that a corking good speech? Ah! You never know the value of an oldfriend until you use him as audience at the dress rehearsal of a speech! Pacers or trotters?”
“Pacers,” said she, “Storm and The Friar.”
“If you’ll let me drive,” he stipulated, “I’d like to go home with you.”
“Nobody but myself,” said she, “ever drives this team. You’d spoil The Friar’s temper with that unyielding wrist of yours; but if you are good, you may hold the ends of the lines, and say ‘Dap!’ occasionally.”
And down to the street we went together, our cares dismissed. Jim handed Antonia into the trap, and they spun away toward Lynhurst, apparently the happiest people in Lattimore.
CHAPTER XVIII.The Going Away of Laura and Clifford, and the Departure of Mr. Trescott.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Going Away of Laura and Clifford, and the Departure of Mr. Trescott.
“Thet little quirly thing there,” said Mr. Trescott, spreading a map out on my library table and pointing with his trembling and knobby forefinger, “is Wolf Nose Crick. It runs into the Cheyenne, down about there, an’ ’s got worlds o’ water fer any sized herds, an’ carries yeh back from the river fer twenty-five miles. There’s a big spring at the head of it, where the ranch buildin’s is; an’ there’s a clump o’ timber there—box elders an’ cottonwoods, y’ know. Now see the advantage I’ll have. Other herds’ll hev to traipse back an’ forth from grass to water an’ from water to grass, a-runnin’ theirselves poor; an’ all the time I’ll hev livin’ water right in the middle o’ my range.”
His wife and daughter had carefully nursed him through the fever, as Dr. Aylesbury called it, and for two weeks Mr. Trescott was seen by no one else. Then from our windows Alice and I could see him about his grounds, at work amongst his shrubbery, or busying himself with his horses and carriages. Josie had transformed herself into a woman of business, and every day she went to her father’soffice, opened his mail, and held business consultations. Whenever it was necessary for papers to be executed, Josie went with the lawyer and notary to the Trescott home for the signing.
The Trescott and Tolliver business brought her into daily contact with the Captain. He used to open the doors between their offices, and have the mail sorted for Josie when she came in. There was something of homage in the manner in which he received her into the office, and laid matters of business before her. It was something larger and more expansive than can be denoted by the word courtesy or politeness.
“Captain,” she would say, with the half-amused smile with which she always rewarded him, “here is this notice from the Grain Belt Trust Company about the interest on twenty-five thousand dollars of bonds which they have advanced to us. Will you please explain it?”
“Sutt’nly, Madam, sutt’nly,” replied he, using a form of address which he adopted the first time she appeared as Bill’s representative in the business, and which he never cheapened by use elsewhere. “Those bonds ah debentures, which—”
“But whataredebentures, Captain?” she inquired.
“Pahdon me, my deah lady,” said he, “fo’ not explaining that at fuhst! Those ah the debentures of the Trescott Development Company, fawmed to build up Trescott’s Addition. We sold those lands on credit, except fo’ a cash payment of one foath the purchase-price. This brought to us, as you can see,Madam, a lahge amount of notes, secured by fuhst mortgages on the Trescott’s Addition properties. These notes and mortgages we deposited with the Grain Belt Trust Company, and issued against them the bonds of the Trescott Development Company—debentures—and the G. B. T. people floated these bonds in the East and elsewhah. This interest mattah was an ovahsight; I should have looked out fo’ it, and not put the G. B. T. to the trouble of advancing it; but as we have this mawnin’ on deposit with them several thousand dollahs from the sale of the Tolliver’s Subdivision papah, the thing becomes a mattah of no impo’tance whatevah!”
“But,” went on Josie, “how shall we be able to pay the next installment of interest, and the principal, when it falls due?”
“Amply provided foh, my deah Madam,” said the Captain, waving his arm; “the defe’ed payments and the interest on them will create an ample sinking fund!”
“But if they don’t?” she inquired.
“That such a contingency can possibly arise, Madam,” said the Captain in his most impressive orotund, and with his hand thrust into the bosom of his Prince Albert coat, “is something which my loyalty to Lattimore, my faith in my fellow citizens, my confidence in Mr. Elkins and Mr. Barslow, and my regahd fo’ my own honah, pledged as it is to those to whom I have sold these properties on the representations I have made as to the prospects of the city, will not puhmit me to admit!”
This seemed to him entirely conclusive, and cutoff the investigation. Conversation like this, in which Josie questioned the Captain and seemed ever convinced by his answers, gave her high rank in the Captain’s estimation.
“Like most ladies,” said he, “Miss Trescott is a little inclined to ovah-conservatism; but unlike most people of both sexes, she is quite able to grasp the lahgest views when explained to huh, and huh mental processes ah unerring. I have nevah failed to make the most complicated situation cleah to huh—nevah!”
And all this time Mr. Trescott was safeguarded at home, looking after his horses, carriages, and grounds, and at last permitted to come over to our house and pass the evening with me occasionally. It was on one of these visits that he spread out the map on the table and explained to me the advantages of his ranch on Wolf Nose Creek. The very thought of the open range and the roaming herds seemed to strengthen him.
“You talk,” said I, “as if it were all settled. Are you really going out there?”
“Wal,” said he, after some hesitation, “it kind o’ makes me feel good to lay plans f’r goin’. I’ve made the deal with Aleck Macdonald f’r the water front—it’s a good spec if I never go near it—an’ I guess I’ll send a bunch o’ steers out to please Josie an’ her ma. They’re purtendin’ to be stuck on goin’, an’ I’ve made the bargain to pacify ’em; but, say, do you know what kind of a place it is out on one o’ them ranches?”
“In a general way, yes,” said I.
“W’l, a general way wun’t do,” said he. “You’ve got to git right down to p’ticklers t’ know about it, so’s to know. It’s seventy-five miles from a post-office an’ twenty-five to the nearest house. How would you like to hev a girl o’ yourn thet you’d sent t’ Chicago an’ New York and the ol’ country, an’ spent all colors o’ money on so’s t’ give her all the chanst in the world, go out to a place like that to spend her life?”
“I don’t know,” said I, for I was in doubt; “it might be all right.”
“You wouldn’t say that if it was up to you to decide the thing,” said he. “W’y it would mean that this girl o’ mine, that’s fit for to be—wal, you know Josie—would hev to leave this home we’ve built—that she’s built—here, an’ go out where there hain’t nobody to be seen from week’s end to week’s end but cowboys, an’ once in a while one o’ the greasy women o’ the dugouts. Do you know what happens to the nicest girls when they don’t see the right sort o’ men—at all, y’ know?”
I nodded. I knew what he meant. Then I shook my head in denial of the danger.
“I don’t b’lieve it nuther,” said he; “but is it any cinch, now? An’ anyhow, she’ll be where she wun’t ever hear a bit o’ music, ’r see a picter, ’r see a friend. She’ll swelter in the burnin’ sun an’ parch in the hot winds in the summer, an’ in the winter she’ll be shet in by blizzards an’ cold weather. She’ll see nothin’ but kioats, prairie-dogs, sage-brush, an’ cactus. An’ what fer! Jest for nothin’ but me! To git me away from things she’s afraid’ve got more of a pullwith me than what she’s got. An’ I say, by the livin’ Lord, I’ll go under before I’ll give up, an’ say I’ve got as fur down as that!”
It is something rending and tearing to a man like Bill, totally unaccustomed to the expression of sentiment, to give utterance to such depths of feeling. Weak and trembling as he was, the sight of his agitation was painful. I hastened to say to him that I hoped there was no necessity for such a step as the one he so strongly deprecated.
“I d’ know,” said he dubiously. “I thought one while that I’d never want to go near town, ’r touch the stuff agin. But I’ll tell yeh something that happened yisterday!”
He drew up his chair and looked behind him like a child preparing to relate some fearsome tale of goblin or fiend, and went on:
“Josie had the team hitched up to go out ridin’, an’ I druv around the block to git to the front step. An’ somethin’ seemed to pull the nigh line when I got to the cawner! It wa’n’t that I wanted to go—and don’t you say anything about this thing, Mr. Barslow; but somethin’ seemed to pull the nigh line an’ turn me toward Main Street; an’ fust thing I knew, I was a-drivin’ hell-bent for O’Brien’s place! Somethin’ was a-whisperin’ to me, ‘Go down an’ see the boys, an’ show ’em that yeh can drink ’r let it alone, jest as yeh see fit!’ And the thought come over me o’ Josie a-standin’ there at the gate waitin’ f’r me, an’ I set my teeth, an’ jerked the hosses’ heads around, an’ like to upset the buggy a-turnin’. ‘You look pale, pa,’ says Josie. ‘Maybe we’d better not go.’‘No,’ says I, ‘I’m all right.’ But what ... gits me ... is thinkin’ that, if I’ll be hauled around like that when I’m two miles away, how long would I last ... if onst I was to git right down in the midst of it!”
I could not endure the subject any longer; it was so unutterably fearful to see him making this despairing struggle against the foe so strongly lodged within his citadel. I talked to him of old times and places known to us both, and incidentally called to his mind instances of the recovery of men afflicted as he was. Soon Josie came after him, and Jim dropped in, as he was quite in the habit of doing, making one of those casual and informal little companies which constituted a most distinctive feature of life in our compact little Belgravia.
Josie insisted that life in the cow country was what she had been longing for. She had never shot any one, and had never painted a cowboy, an Indian, or a coyote—things she had always longed to do.
“You must take me out there, pa,” said she. “It’s the only way to utilize the capital we’ve foolishly tied up in the department of the fine arts!”
“I reckon we’ll hev to do it, then, little gal,” said Bill.
“My mind,” said Jim, “is divided between your place up on the headwaters of Bitter Creek and Paris. Paris seems to promise pretty well, when this fitful fever of business is over and we’ve cleaned up the mill run.”
Art, he went on, seemed to be a career for which he was really fitted. In the foreground, as a cowboy,or in the middle distance, in his proper person as a tenderfoot, it seemed as if there was a vocation for him. Josie made no reply to this, and Jim went away downcast.
The Addison-Giddings wedding drew on out of the future, and seemed to loom portentously like doom for the devoted Clifford. It may have suggested itself to the reader that Mr. Giddings was an abnormally timid lover. The eternal feminine at this time seemed personified in Laura, and worked upon him like an obsession. I have never seen a case quite like his. The manner in which the marriage was regarded, and the extent to which it was discussed, may have had something to do with this.
The boom period anywhere is essentially an era in which public events dominate those of a private character, and publicity and promotion, hand in hand, occupy the center of the stage. Giddings, as editor and proprietor of theHerald, was one of the actors on whom the lime-light was pretty constantly focussed. Miss Addison, belonging to the Lattimore family, and prominent in good works, was more widely known than he among Lattimoreans of the old days, sometimes referred to by Mr. Elkins as the trilobites, who constituted a sort of ancient and exclusive caste among us, priding themselves on having become rich by the only dignified and purely automatic mode, that of sitting heroically still, and allowing their lands to rise in value. These regarded Laura as one of themselves, and her marriage as a sacrament of no ordinary character.
Giddings, on the other hand, as the type of thenew crowd who had done such wonders, and as the embodiment of its spirit, was dimly sensed by all classes as a sort of hero of obscure origin, who by strong blows had hewed his way to the possession of a princess of the blood. So the interest was really absorbing. Even theHerald’srival, theEvening Times, dropped for a time the normal acrimony of its references to theHerald, and sent a reporter to make a laudatory write-up of the wedding.
On the night before the event, deep in the evening, Giddings and a bibulous friend insisted on having refreshments served to them in the parlor of the clubhouse. This was a violation of rules. Moreover, they had involuntarily assumed sitting postures on the carpet, rendering waiting upon them a breach of decorum as well. At least this was the view of Pearson, who was now attached to the club.
“You must excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, “but Ah’m bound to obey rules.”
“Bring us,” said Giddings, “two cocktails.”
“Can’t do it, sah,” said Pearson, “not hyah, sah!”
“Bring us paper to write resignations on!” said Giddings. “We won’t belong to a club where we are bullied by niggers.”
Pearson brought the paper.
“They’s no rule, suh,” said he, “again’ suhvin’ resignation papah anywhah in the house. But let me say, Mistah Giddings, that Ah wouldn’t be hasty: it’s a heap hahder to get inter this club now than what it was when you-all come in!”
This suggestion of Pearson’s was in every one’smouth as the most amusing story of the time. Even Giddings laughed about it. But all his laughter was hollow.
Some bets were offered that one of two things would happen on the wedding-day: either Giddings (who had formerly been of abstemious habits) would overdo the attempt to nerve himself up to the occasion and go into a vinous collapse, or he would stay sober and take to his heels. Thus, in fear and trembling, did the inexplicable disciple of Iago approach his happiness; but, like most soldiers, when the battle was actually on, he went to the fighting-line dazed into bravery.
It was quite a spectacular affair. The church was a floral grotto, and there were, in great abundance, the adjuncts of ribbon barriers, special electric illuminations, special music, full ritual, ushers, bridesmaids, and millinery. Antonia was chief bridesmaid, and Cornish best man. The severe conformity to vogue, and preservation of good form, were generally attributed to his management. It was a great success.
There was an elaborate supper, of which Giddings partook in a manner which tended to prove that his sense of taste was still in his possession, whatever may have been the case with his other senses. Josie was there, and Jim was her shadow. She was a little pale, but not at all sad; her figure, which had within the past year or so acquired something of the wealth commonly conceded to matronliness, had waned to the slenderness of the day I first saw her in the art-gallery, but now, as then, shewas slim, not thin. To two, at least, she was a vision of delight, as one might well see by the look of adoration which Jim poured into her eyes from time to time, and the hungry gaze with which Cornish took in the ruddy halo of her hair, the pale and intellectual face beneath it, and the sensuous curves of the compact little form. For my own part, my vote was for Antonia, for the belle of the gathering; but she sailed through the evening, “like some full-breasted swan,” accepting no homage except the slavish devotion of Cecil, whose constant offering of his neck to her tread gave him recognition as entitled to the reward of those who are permitted only to stand and wait.
Mr. Elkins had furnished a special train over the L. & G. W. to make the run with the bridal party to Elkins Junction, connecting there with the east-bound limited on the Pendleton line, thence direct to Elysium.
Laura, rosy as a bride should be, and actually attractive to me for the first time in her life, sat in her traveling-dress trying to look matter-of-fact, and discussing time-tables with her bridegroom, who seemed to find less and less of dream and more of the actual in the situation,—calm returning with the cutaway. Cecil and the coterie of gilded youth who followed him did their share to bring Giddings back to earth by a series of practical jokes, hackneyed, but ever fresh. The largest trunk, after it reached the platform, blossomed out in a sign reading: “The Property of the Bride and Groom. You can Identify the Owners by thatAbsorbed Expression!” Divers revelatory incidents were arranged to eventuate on the limited train. Precipitation of rice was produced, in modes known to sleight-of-hand only. So much of this occurred that Captain Tolliver showed, by a stately refusal to see the joke, his disapproval of it—a feeling which he expressed in an aside to me.
“Hoss-play of this so’t, suh,” said he, “ought not to be tolerated among civilized people, and I believe is not! In the state of society in which I was reahed such niggah-shines would mean pistols at ten paces, within fo’ty-eight houahs, with the lady’s neahest male relative! And propahly so, too, suh; quite propahly!”
“Shall we go to the train, Albert?” said Alice, as the party made ready to go.
“No,” said I, “unless you particularly wish it; we shall go home.”
“Mr. Barslow,” said one of the maids, “you are wanted at the telephone.”
“Is this you, Al?” said Jim’s voice over the wire. “I’m up here at Josie’s, and I am afraid there’s trouble with her father. When we got here we found him gone. Hadn’t you better go out and look around for him?”
“Have you any idea where I’m likely to find him?” I asked. I saw at once the significance of Bill’s absence. He had taken advantage of the fact of his wife and daughter’s going to the wedding, and had yielded to the thing which drew him away from them.
“Try the Club, and then O’Brien’s,” answeredJim. “If you don’t find him in one place or the other, call me up over the ’phone. Call me up anyhow; I’ll wait here.”
TheTimesman heard my end of the conversation, saw me hastily give Alice word as to the errand which kept me from going home with her, observed my preparations for leaving the company, and, scenting news, fell in with me as I was walking toward the Club.
“Any story in this, Mr. Barslow?” he asked.
“Oh, is that you, Watson?” I answered. “I was going on an errand which concerns myself. I was going alone.”
“If you’re looking for any one,” he said, trotting along beside me, “I can find him a good deal quicker than you can, probably. And if there’s news in it, I’ll get it anyhow; and I’ll naturally know it more from your standpoint, and look at it more as you do, if we go together. Don’t you think so?”
“See here, Watson,” said I, “you may help if you wish. But if you print a word without my consent, I can and will scoop theTimesevery day, from this on, with every item of business news coming through our office. Do you understand, and do you promise?”
“Why, certainly,” said he. “You’ve got the thing in your own hands. What is it, anyhow?”
I told him, and found that Trescott’s dipsomania was as well known to him as myself.
“He’s been throwing money to the fowls for a year or two,” he remarked. “It’s better than twoto one you don’t find him at the Club: the atmosphere won’t be congenial for him there.”
At the Club we found Watson’s forecast verified. At O’Brien’s our knocking on the door aroused a sleepy bartender, who told us that no one was there, but refused to let us in. Watson called him aside, and they talked together for a few minutes.
“All right,” said the reporter, turning away from him, “much obliged, Hank; I believe you’ve struck it.”
Watson was leader now, and I followed him toward Front Street, near the river. He said that Hank, the barkeeper, had told him that Trescott had been in his saloon about nine o’clock, drinking heavily; and from the company he was in, it was to be suspected that he would be steered into a joint down on the river front. We passed through an alley, and down a back basement stairway, came to a door, on which Watson confidently knocked, and which was opened by a negro who let us in as soon as he saw the reporter. The air was sickening with an odor which I then perceived for the first time, and which Watson called the dope smell. There was an indefinable horror about the place, which so repelled me that nothing but my obligation could have held me there. The lights were dim, and at first I could see nothing more than that the sides of the room were divided into compartments by dull-colored draperies, in a manner suggesting the sections of a sleeping-car. There were sounds of dreadful breathings and inarticulate voices, and over all that sickening smell. I saw, flung aimlesslyfrom the crepuscular and curtained recesses, here the hairy brawn of a man’s arm, there a woman’s leg in scarlet silk stocking, the foot half withdrawn from a red slipper with a high French heel. The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows had opened for me, and I stood as if gazing, with eyes freshly unsealed to its horrors, into some dim inferno, sibilant with hisses, and enwrapped in indeterminate dragon-folds—and I in quest of a lost soul.
“He wouldn’t go with his pal, boss,” I heard the negro say. “Ah tried to send him home, but he said he had some medicine to take, an’ he ‘nsisted on stayin’.”
As he ceased to speak, I knew that Watson had been interrogating him, and that he was referring to the man we sought.
“Show me where he is,” I commanded.
“Yes, boss! Right hyah, sah!”
In an inner room, on a bed, not a pallet like those in the first chamber, was Trescott, his head lying peacefully on a pillow, his hands clasped across his chest. Somehow, I was not surprised to see no evidence of life, no rise and fall of the breast, no sound of breathing. But Watson started forward in amazement, laid his hand for a moment on the pallid forehead, lifted for an instant and then dropped the inert hand, turned and looked fixedly in my face, and whispered, “My God! He’s dead!”
As if at some great distance, I heard the negro saying, “He done said he hed ter tek some medicine, boss. Ah hopes you-all won’t make no trouble foh me, boss—!”
“Send for a doctor!” said I. “Telephone Mr. Elkins, at Trescott’s home!”
Watson darted out, and for an eternity, as it seemed to me, I stood there alone. There was a scurrying of the vermin in the place to snatch up a few valuables and flee, as if they had been the crawling things under some soon-to-be-lifted stone, to whom light was a calamity. I was left with the Stillness before me, and the dreadful breathings and inarticulate voices outside. Then came the clang and rattle of ambulance and patrol, and in came a policeman or two, a physician, aHeraldman and Watson, who was bitterly complaining of Bill for having had the bad taste to die on the morning paper’s time.
And soon came Jim, in a carriage, whirled along the street like a racing chariot—with whom I rode home, silent, save for answering his questions. Now the wife, gazing out of her door, saw in the street the Something for which she had peered past me the other night.
The men carried it in at the door, and laid it on the divan. Josie, her arms and shoulders still bare in the dress she had worn to the wedding, broke away from Cornish, who was bending over her and saying things to comfort her, and swept down the hall to the divan where Bill lay, white and still, and clothed with the mystic majesty of death. The shimmering silk and lace of her gown lay all along the rug and over the divan, like drapery thrown there to conceal what lay before us. She threw her arms across the still breast, and her head went down on his.
“Oh, pa! Oh, pa!” she moaned, “you never did any one any harm!... You were always good and kind!... And always loving and forgiving.... And why should they come to you, poor pa ... and take you from the things you loved ... and ... murder you ... like this!”
Jim fell back, as if staggering from a blow. Cornish came forward, and offered to raise up the stricken girl, whose eyes shone in her grief like the eyes of insanity. Alice stepped before Cornish, raised Josie up, and supported her from the room.
Again it was morning, when we—Alice, Jim, and I—sat face to face in our home. An untasted breakfast was spread before us. Jim’s eyes were on the cloth, and nothing served to rouse him. I knew that the blow from which he had staggered still benumbed his faculties.
“Come,” said I, “we shall need your best thought down at the Grain Belt Building in a couple of hours. This brings things to a crisis. We shall have a terrible dilemma to face, it’s likely. Eat and be ready to face it!”
“God!” said he, “it’s the old tale over again, Al: throw the dead and wounded overboard to clear the decks, and on with the fight!”