CHAPTER VII
Rumley had not stood still during the decade. It was the proud boast of its most enterprising citizen, Silas Link, that it had done a great deal better than Chicago: it had tripled its population. And, he proclaimed, all “she” had to do was to keep on tripling her population every ten years and “she” would be a city of nearly half a million souls in 1950. It was all very simple, he explained. All you had to do was to multiply fifteen hundred (the approximate population in 1900), by three and you would have forty-five hundred in 1910.
“Work it out yourself,” he was wont to say, “if you don’t believe me. If we keep on multiplying we’ll have 364,500 population fifty years from now.”
The prize pupil in the South Rumley school, Freddy Chuck, aged thirteen, went even further than Mr. Link in his calculations. He carried the matter up to the year 2000 and proved conclusively that if the ratio could be maintained for a hundred years, Rumley would have something like 88,303,500 inhabitants at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Freddy was looked upon as a mathematical “shark.” The North Rumley school, presided over by Mr. Elwell, contained no such prodigy, but it did have an exceedingly promising half-back in the person of Oliver October Baxter.
But this is beside the point. Rumley’s phenomenal growth over a period of ten years was due to several causes. In the first place, it had become a divisional railroad point, with shops, a roundhouse and superintendent’s headquarters. It was now a “junction” as well, a new branch line connecting there with the main line for points east and south. This had brought nearly three hundred new citizens to the town. Then had come the “strawboard works,” employing about thirty men, and after that the “cellulose factory,” with some fifteen or eighteen people on the pay-roll. Later on, in 1896, a “cannery” was added to the list of industries. These extraordinary symptoms of prosperity drew capital of another character to the town. Two saloons, with pool and billiard rooms attached, were opened on Clay Street and did a thriving business from the start, notwithstanding the opposition of the Presbyterian and Methodist churches. New grocery stores, butcher shops, drygoods stores and so forth were established by outside interests, each of them bringing fresh enterprise and competition to the once drowsy hamlet. The older stores were forced to expand in order to keep up with the times and conditions. House building in all parts of town had boomed. Three substantial new brick business “blocks” were erected—all three-story affairs—and an addition of twelve rooms and a bath had been tacked onto the old Bon Ton Restaurant, transforming it, quite properly, into the Hubbard House, the leading hostelry of the town.
Oliver Baxter owned one of the new business “blocks” on Clay Street. It was known as the Baxter Block, erected in 1896. His own enlarged place of business occupied one half of the ground floor, the other half being leased to Silas Link, who conducted a furniture, cabinetmaking and undertaking establishment there, with palms in the front windows.
Link’s Livery Stable and the feed yard of Joseph Sikes had been consolidated, the sign over the sidewalk on Webster Street reading “Link & Sikes, Livery & Feed.” The second floor of the Baxter Block was occupied by Dr. Slade, the dentist, and Simons & Sons, Tailors. The third floor was known as Knights of Pythias Hall, and it was here that all the “swellest” dances and receptions were held. Collapsible chairs from Link’s Undertaking Parlors were rentable for all such festive occasions, a very satisfactory arrangement in that cartage was never an item of expense. Link’s three or four piece orchestra could also be engaged by calling at or telephoning to the aforesaid parlors, where Charlie Link, the embalmer, would be pleased to guarantee satisfaction. Charlie was Silas’s nephew, and a trap-drummer of great dexterity. Catering by Mrs. Hubbard, of the Hubbard House, terms on application. Flowers for all occasions supplied from Link’s new greenhouse and garden, Cemetery Lane.
It is worthy of mention that there was no Main Street in Rumley. In rechristening the principal thoroughfare, the board of trustees deliberately violated all traditions by giving it the name of Clay Street, not in honor of the celebrated Henry Clay but because for at least two generations it had been known as the clay road on account of the natural color and character of its soil. This reduced confusion among the older and more settled inhabitants to a minimum; they very cheerfully consented to spell clay with a capital C and declared it wasn’t half as much trouble as they thought it would be to remember to say Street instead of Road. But even so, it was still a clay road—and in rainy weather a verybadclay road.
Mary Baxter died of typhoid fever when young Oliver was nearing seven. Her untimely demise revived the half-forgotten prophecy of the gypsy fortune-teller. People looked severely at each other and, in hushed tones, discussed the inexorable ways of fate. Those acquainted with the story of that October night told it to newcomers in Rumley; even the doubters and scoffers were impressed. It was the first “sign” that young Oliver’s fortune was coming true. Somehow people were kinder and gentler to him after his mother died.
As for Oliver the elder, there was a strange—one might almost believe, triumphant—expression in his stricken, anxious eyes, as if back of them in his mind he was crying: “Now will you laugh at me for believing what that woman said?”
Of an entirely different nature was the agitation created by the unrighteous behavior of the preacher’s wife. It all came like a bolt out of the blue. No one ever suspected that she had gone away to stay. Why, half the women in town, on learning that she was going to Chicago for a brief visit with her folks, went around to the parsonage to kiss her good-by and to wish her a very pleasant time. Some of them accompanied her to the railway depot and kissed her again, while two or three young men almost came to blows over who should carry her suitcase into the day coach and see that she was comfortably seated. They were all members of Mr. Sage’s church.
Josephine had a remarkable faculty for drawing young men into the fold. Several who had been more or less criticized for their loose ways suddenly got religion and went to church twice every Sabbath and to prayer meeting on Wednesday nights with unbelievable perseverance until they found out that it wasn’t doing them the least bit of good.
Excoriation and a stream of “I told you so’s” were bestowed upon the pretty young wife and mother when it became known that she was not coming back.
The Presbyterians made a great show of pitying their pastor, and the Methodists made an even greater show of pitying the Presbyterians—which, when all is said and done, was the thing that made Josephine’s act an absolutely unpardonable one.
She did not belong in Rumley. That was the long and the short of it. The greatest compliment ever paid to the holy state of matrimony was her ability to stick it out for six long years. In her own peculiar way she loved and respected her husband. But the bonds of love were not strong enough to hold her. She was gay and blithe and impious; she loved life even more than she loved love. The shackles hurt. So she slipped out of them one day and left their symbols lying by the wayside in the shape of a broken, bewildered man and a child of her own flesh, while she went back to the world that was calling her to its arms.
Herbert Sage was stunned, bewildered.... She wrote him from Chicago at the end of the first week of what was to have been a fortnight’s visit to her mother. It was a long, fond letter in which she said she was not coming back—at least, not for the present. She was leaving at once for New York, where she had been promised a trial by one of the greatest of American producers. A month later came a telegram from her saying she was rehearsing a part in a new piece that was sure to be the “hit of the season”—everybody said so, even the stage director who had the name of being the biggest “gloom” in New York. It was a musical comedy, with a popular comedian as the star, and she had a small part that was going to be a big one before she got through with it—or so she said in her joyous conceit.
“With my good looks, my voice, my figure and my ambition, Herby, I cannot fail to get over. Everybody says I’ve got talent, and that dance I used to do for you on week days when it wasn’t necessary to be sanctimonious—well, they are all crazy about it. Before you know it, my dear, you’ll be the husband of one of the most celebrated young women in the United States and I’ll be cashing checks every week that will make your whole year’s salary in that burg look like the change out of a silver half dollar after you’ve bought two ten cent sodas at Fry’s drug store. You will be proud of me, Herby, because I will take mighty good care that you never have any reason to be ashamed of me or for me to be ashamed of myself. You know what I mean. I don’t suppose I will say my prayers as often as I did when you were around to remind me of them but I will be a good girl just the same. Also a wise one.”
That was four years ago. Her confidence in herself had been justified, and, for all we know, the same may be said of Herbert Sage’s confidence in her. She had the talent, the voice, the beauty, and above all, the magnetism, and so there was no holding her back. She was being “featured” now, and there was talk of making a star of her. Her letters to Herbert were not very frequent but they invariably were tender. Every once in a while the press agent sent him a large batch of “notices,” chiefly eulogistic; and regularly on little Jane’s birthday a good sized check arrived for the youngster’s “nest egg.”
At first she had undertaken to share her salary with Sage. He kindly but firmly refused to accept the money. After three checks had been returned to her she accepted the situation, although she wrote to him that he was a “silly old thing” and “hoped to goodness he would see the error of his ways before long.”
For two successive seasons she appeared in a Chicago theater, following long New York runs of the pieces in which she was playing, but not once did Herbert Sage go up to see her. Some of the best people in Rumley saw her, however—one of them, in fact, went three nights in succession to the theater in which she was playing and tried to catch her eye from the balcony—so it was pretty generally known throughout the town that she really had the making of a pretty fair actress in her!
Finally, in one of her letters announcing a prospective engagement in London, she put the question to him: “Do you want to get a divorce from me, Herby?” His reply was terse and brought from her the following undignified but manifestly sincere telegram: “Neither do I, so we’ll stick till the cows come home. I feel like a girl who has just been kissed. Sailing Friday. Will cable. Much love.”
She made a “hit” in London in the big musical success of that season. They liked her so well over there that they wouldn’t let her go back to the States.
At the time of which I write she was playing her first engagement in London, and half the town was in love with her. She wrote to Herbert:
“My dear, you wouldn’t believe the number of matrimonial offers I’ve had, and your hair would turn white in a single night if I was to tell you how many homes I could wreck if I hadn’t brought my conscience along with me. I am the toast of the town, as they say over here. Better than a roast, isn’t it?”
While Herbert Sage forbore speaking of the vagrant Josephine to his friends in Rumley, nevertheless he preserved and re-read from time to time the mass of press cuttings that he kept safely locked away in a drawer of the bureau that once had held her cheap and meager belongings. He looked long and hungrily at the countless photographs with which she never failed to beleaguer him in his loneliness; and then there were the magazines, the pictorial sections of the newspapers and the reproductions of as many as a score of original drawings done by celebrated artists and illustrators on both sides of the Atlantic. Some of these caused him to frown and bite his lip—one in particular: the rather startling picture of a very shapely young gentleman in a mild but attractive state of inebriation caroling (by mistake, no doubt), to an irate old man in a casement window above.
Morning and night she was in his prayers; and little Jane, as soon as she was able to prattle, was taught to say “and God bless and keep my mamma forever and ever, Amen!”
She was greatly missed by little Oliver October. For some reason—perhaps she did not explain it herself—at any rate, she did not go to the trouble of speculating—she had taken a tremendous fancy to the child. He was a lively, amusing little chap who laughed gleefully at her antics and was ever ready for more—a complimentary spirit that constantly supplied kindling for her own unquenchable fires. She romped with him, told marvelous stories to him, sang for him and danced for him—and just about the time she was making ready to leave Rumley guiltily showed him how to turn a “cartwheel”! He was very much impressed by this astonishing bit of acrobatics, and as she faced him, her face crimson and her eyes sparkling, he paid her a doubtful but fulsome compliment by saying he’d bet his mother couldn’t do it, nor any other lady in town, either. She made him promise not to tell anybody—and he was never,neverto ask her to do it again, because she was getting very old and the next time she might fall and break her neck, and he wouldn’t like that, would he?
This small boy of five or six was the only being in town with whom she could play to her heart’s content, and she made the most of him. Her own tiny baby interested but did not amuse her. In the first place, she had not wanted a baby at all, and in the second place since shehadto have one she could not understand why she had not had a boy. It wasn’t quite fair. She liked boy babies. It was something to be the mother of a man-child—something to be proud of. She even went so far as to say to herself that she never could have run way and left her baby if it had been a boy. She would have been ashamed to have a son of hers know that his mother had not quite played the game. She was fond of Jane but it was not as hard to leave her as it would have been had she been a boy. Of that she was absolutely certain.
Oliver October could not understand why he was not allowed to mention “Aunt” Josephine’s name in the presence of “Uncle” Herbert. His mother and Mrs. Serepta Grimes—who, by the way, was still an ever-present help in time of trouble—gave him very strict orders and repeated them so often that he never had a chance to forget them. But when he found out in a roundabout way that Mrs. Sage had gone off to join a show, he at once assumed—and quite naturally, too—that she was with Barnum’s Biggest Show on Earth, and lived in joyous anticipation of seeing her when the great three-ring circus came to the nearby county seat for its biennial visit. Moreover, he was very firm in his determination to run away from home and join the show, a secret decision that called for unusual industry on his part in the matter of mastering the “cartwheel” and other startling feats of skill, such as standing on his head, walking on his hands, turning somersaults off of a sill in the haymow, and standing upright on the capacious hindquarters of patient old Rosy down at Uncle Silas Link’s livery stable.
He also undertook to increase his suppleness by anointing himself with fish worm oil, an absolutely infallible lubricant recommended by Bud Lane, who solemnly averred that he had worked one whole season with the Forepaugh circus as fish worm catcher for the Human Eel, the limberest man alive. Oliver October’s mother gave him a sound spanking within fifteen minutes after the initial application of this diligently acquired lubricant, while Mrs. Grimes made a point of hurrying down to the livery stable to tell the sheepish Bud Lane what she thought of him.
Youth is ever fickle. Oliver October’s heart was soon mended. He was always to have a warm corner in it for the gay Aunt Josephine but such diverting games as “one old cat,” “blackman,” “I spy,” and “duck on the rock” rather too promptly reduced his passionate longing for her to a mild but pleasant memory. They also interfered with his acrobatic aspirations, and it was not until little Jane Sage arrived at an age when she was intelligent enough to be impressed and thrilled by manly achievements that he again took up the “cartwheel,” the “hand spring,” and other sensational feats of endurance—endurance being a better word than agility in view of the fact that he practised them by the hour for her especial benefit.
For, be it here recorded, Janie Sage, at the age of six, was by far the prettiest and the most sought after young lady in Rumley, and only the most surpassing skill with the hands and feet was supposed to have any effect upon her susceptibilities.
What with having had past instructions in the art of cartwheel flipping from a minister’s wife and the present promise of lessons in boxing from the minister himself, Oliver October was indeed a favored lad! He was very glad that he had gone to Sunday-school regularly, for therein lay the secret of his good fortune. If he had not been a very good little boy, Mr. and Mrs. Sage would not have been so kind to him. There wasn’t the slightest doubt in his mind about that. And more than all this, Mr. Sage acted like he was awfully pleased every time he walked home from school with Jane, carrying her books and everything. He showed this by invariably giving him a piece of bread and butter and sugar. No wonder, then, that Oliver fought like a tiger for his lady love. Many a bigger and stronger man than he has fought the whole wide world for his bread and butter alone.
Three or four days after the warning administered to Oliver by his self-appointed guardians, one of the latter, Mr. Sikes, found himself in an extremely awkward position. He was a man of dark and lasting hatreds. His particular aversion was brothers-in-law. He had two of his own and he hated both of them as men are seldom hated by their fellow man. His opinion of them somewhat unjustly extended itself to the brothers-in-law of practically every friend he possessed. It had got to be an obsession with him. The husbands of his two sisters, it appears, had instituted some sort of proceedings against him in court back in the dark and stormy age that he called his youth, and while history does not reveal the nature of the suit, it goes without saying that they won their case, thereby providing him with an everlasting grudge against all brothers-in-law.
Horace Gooch had come over from Hopkinsville to see his wife’s brother on a matter of business. Ten years had not improved Mr. Gooch. If you had asked Mr. Sikes, however, whether they had improved him he would have blasphemously answered in the affirmative. He would have stated—if he had thought of it—that anything that shortened the life of Mr. Gooch could not be otherwise than a most gratifying improvement.
Now this is what happened—and any fair-minded person will sympathize with Mr. Sikes in his dilemma. As Gooch was leaving the Baxter Hardware Store, after a furious wrangle with his brother-in-law—Mr. Sikes had heard most of it through an open window—he had the option of either stepping over or around a half-grown puppy lying immediately in front of the door. He did neither. Notwithstanding the friendly thumping of the puppy’s tail on the board sidewalk and the hospitable smile in his big brown eyes, Mr. Gooch proceeded to remove the obstruction with the toe of his boot. He did not do it gently. A sharp yelp of pain was succeeded by a series of ear-splitting howls as the gangling pup went tearing down the street on three legs.
Mr. Sikes turned the corner of the building just in time to witness this incident. He was also a witness to what followed almost immediately. Oliver October and Sammy Parr were playing “keeps” against the brick wall a dozen paces or so away. Now, it so happened that the former, and not Mr. Baxter, senior, was the sole owner of that sacred pup. Before you could say Jack Robinson, Oliver October was blazing away at the retreating figure of his uncle with marbles he had just won from Sammy. He did not take the time to look for stones in the gutter. His face was white with fury. Mr. Gooch uttered a sharp ejaculation and suddenly clutched his left elbow with his right hand. An instant later the most universally coveted “agate” in Rumley grazed his ear and went hurtling down Clay Street. Mr. Sikes, forgetting himself for the moment, cried out:
“Good shot! Give it to him!”
Another hastily fired “plaster” got Mr. Gooch on the leg, and then young Oliver took to his heels—not because he was afraid of his uncle but because he had caught sight of the far more terrifying figure of Mr. Sikes.
“Whose boy is that?” demanded the outraged Mr. Gooch, addressing Mr. Sikes.
“None of your damned business,” snarled Mr. Sikes, lowering his chin in a menacing way.
“I will make it my business,” roared the other. “I’ll have the little scoundrel locked up for—”
“You just go ahead and try it,” broke in Mr. Sikes, advancing slowly. “Just you go ahead and try it. That’s all I got to say. Go ahead and try it.”
By this time Mr. Gooch had recognized the angry citizen.
“Oho! Mr. Sikes, eh? Well, what cause have you got for losing your temper like this, Mr. Sikes? What right have you to get mad because I ask you the name of a dodgasted little—”
“Mad? I’m not mad,” interrupted Mr. Sikes violently. “And I’ll tell you who that boy is if you really want to know.”
“I do,” said Mr. Gooch, feeling of his elbow.
“Well, he is the owner of that pup you just kicked in the ribs. Good day!”
With that, Mr. Sikes stalked around the corner, a prey to conflicting emotions. He stole down the alley, with many a furtive glance over his shoulder. He felt very guilty. He had openly, vociferously encouraged Oliver October in the commission of a deed of violence. Suppose, for instance, one of those rocks—(he did not know they were marbles)—had struck Horace Gooch at the base of the brain! He wiped his moist forehead. Just suppose! And how was he to take Oliver to task for flying into a rage and throwing stones, with murderous intent, when he himself had been so overjoyed that he yelled to him to keep it up? Yes, he was in a very awkward position. So he decided that unless somebody took him to task fornottaking Oliver October to task, he would consider the incident closed. But every time he thought of the way Horace Gooch grabbed his elbow and subsequently clapped his hand to his “off” leg, he gave way to inordinate mirth.
At supper that evening Mr. Baxter asked his son if he knew who it was that hit his Uncle Horace with a rock. Oliver had spent most of the afternoon in hiding. Hunger and the approach of night were responsible for his decision to give himself up, so to speak. Just before the supper hour he ventured out of his place of hiding—a cornfield down the road—prepared to face the town marshal and arrest. His dog had basely deserted him an hour or so earlier. His spirits rose a little as he took his seat at the table, for old Oliver appeared to be in an unusually cheerful frame of mind. Just as he began to feel that, after all, there was nothing to face, his father frowned severely and asked:
“Oliver, do you know who hit your Uncle Horace with a stone this afternoon?”
There was a loophole. “I didn’t know anybody hit him with a stone, Pa.”
Mr. Baxter reflected. “Well, whatwashe hit with if it wasn’t a stone?”
“A marble.”
“Do you know who threw it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who?”
“Me,” replied Oliver October, and was suddenly thrilled by the thought of George Washington and the cherry tree.
“Well, you must never do it again,” said his father mildly. Then, in his most jovial manner: “Pass up your plate, sonny, and let me give you some more of this steak. It will make you strong.”
CHAPTER VIII
It is not the purpose of the narrator of this story to deal at length with the deeds, exploits, mishaps and sensations of Oliver October as a child. Pages, even reams, could be written—and certainly not wasted—in recording the innumerable adventures that befell him between his tenth and seventeenth years.
If time and space permitted, it would be a pleasure to tell how he learned to swim and dance, to drive an automobile, and to play the mandolin and the allied instruments of torture comprising a trap drummer’s outfit; how he felt when he put on his first pair of long pants; how he earned his first dollar; how he headed an expedition to dig for gold in the ravine reaching out from the upper end of Death Swamp; how he organized the far-famed band of robbers that twice came to grief before reforming—once in Mr. Higgins’s watermelon patch and later on in the vicinity of Mr. Whistler’s bee hives; how he fell in love with pretty Miss Somers, the high-school teacher, and couldn’t keep his mind on his studies; how he performed the common miracle of changing himself from an untidy, dirty-faced boy into a painfully immaculate personage with plastered hair, well-brushed garments, soap-scoured hands, and an astonishing tendency to turn scarlet when he most desired to be complacently pallid; how he screwed up the courage to ask his best girl—at that time a very tall and angular maiden named Jennie Torbeck—to go with him to the theater up at the county seat, and how he lost all affection for her and was miserably disillusioned when she coughed all through the performance and caused people to crane their necks and scowl at them.
In short, how he grew up to be five feet eleven inches tall and stripped at one hundred and seventy pounds of absolutely healthy bone and tissue.
And then it would be an even greater satisfaction to tell of the time he sucked the blood and poison out of the foot of a small boy who had been bitten by a rattlesnake; of the memorable day when he grabbed and hung on to the bit of a horse that was running away with Jane Sage, then twelve years old, alone in the careening phaëton; of the midsummer afternoon when he came near to losing his own life in saving that of a drowning companion. These and many other things could be told of him, but it would only be a case of history repeating itself inasmuch as the untold stories of countless red-blooded American boys would contain, in one form or another, all that befell Oliver October Baxter.
On the other hand, it would be the disagreeable duty of the chronicler to set down in black and white all the unpleasant and trying experiences resulting from the ceaseless espionage that clouded his daily life and doings. All that need be said about this unhappy phase of his development may be confined to a single sentence: he was never free from the advice, direction and criticism of four devoted old men. He had advice from Mr. Sage, direction from the Messrs. Sikes and Link, and a plaintive sort of criticism from his father. Serepta Grimes, who loved him as she would have loved a son of her own, gave him the right kind of advice, good soul that she was. She advised him to be patient; he would be twenty-one before he knew it, and then he could tell ’em to mind their own business. It would be necessary, she ruefully acknowledged, to tell practically the entire population of Rumley to mind its own business, but the ones that really mattered were Silas Link and Joe Sikes.
“But they are such corking old boys, Aunt Serepta,” he was wont to lament; “and they are trying to be good to me. I wouldn’t hurt their feelings for the world.”
“They’re a couple of buzzards, Oliver.”
“I get pretty sore at them sometimes,” he would confess, crinkling his brows. “But I guess I’d better wait till I’m past thirty before I jump on ’em, hadn’t I?”
“I guess maybe you had,” Serepta would agree, for down in her heart she too was afraid.
He was seventeen when he left the Rumley high-school and became a freshman at the State University. There had been some talk of sending him to one of the big Eastern colleges, but when Mr. Sikes pointed out to Mr. Link that he didn’t see how either one of them could give up his business and go East to spend the winters, the latter flopped over and took sides with him against Oliver senior, who was for sending him to Princeton because Mary had taken a strong fancy to that distant seat of learning after hearing Mr. Sage dilate upon its standards.
He made the football and baseball teams in his sophomore year, and was “spiked” by the most impenetrable Greek fraternity before he had been on the campus twenty-four hours. His fame had preceded him. He also was able to show his newly-made freshman friends so many of the fine points about boxing that they proclaimed him a marvel and wanted to know where he had picked it all up. He refused to divulge the long-kept secret. Moreover, he astonished them with his unparalleled skill at turning cartwheels. And besides all this, he astonished the faculty by being up in his studies from the week he entered college to the day he left it with a diploma in his hand. He took the full course in engineering, and not without reason was the prediction of the Dean of the School that one day Oliver Baxter would make his mark in the world.
The last of the three decades allotted to him by the gypsy was shorn of its first twelve months when he received his degree. As Mr. Sikes announced to the Reverend Sage at the conclusion of the commencement exercises, he had less than nine more years to live at the very outside—a gloomy statement that drew from the proud and happy minister ah unusually harsh rejoinder.
“You ought to be kicked all the way home for saying such a thing as that, Joe Sikes. To-day of all days! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Why can’t you be happy like all the rest of us?”
“Happy?” exploded Mr. Sikes. “Why, I’m the happiest man alive. This is the greatest day of my life.”
“Well, then, for goodness’ sake, don’t spoil it for me,” complained the tall, gray pastor. Turning to the slim, pretty girl who walked beside him across the June-warmed campus, he spoke these words of comfort: “Don’t mind this old croaker, Jane dear. He is still living back in the dark ages, when they believed in witchcraft, ghosts and hobgoblins.”
Mr. Sikes was not offended. His broad, seamed face, leathery with the curing of many suns, was alight with his rare but whole-hearted grin.
“You left out fairies, parson,” he said, and winked at Jane over his shoulder. “The older she gets, the more I believe in ’em.”
“Sometimes you can be silly enough to satisfy anybody, Uncle Joe,” said she, gayly.
“Second childhood,” declared Serepta Grimes, trudging several feet behind Old Joe, who had a habit of keeping at least two paces ahead of any one with whom he walked.
Mr. Sikes accepted this with serenity. “Well,” he said, “if it’s second childhood, Serepty, I hope I never get over it. But I’m all-fired glad of one thing. He’s through playing football and I won’t have to act like an idiot any more. I’m too blamed old to jump up and down and yell like an Indian every time he makes a long run. People thought I was a lunatic at that game last fall. The idea of a man sixty-nine years old—Hello, here comes his pa. Say, what’s the matter, Ollie? What are you cryin’ about?”
“I’ve just been talking to the president of the University,” said Mr. Baxter, the tears streaming down his wrinkled cheeks.
“Well, what of it?”
“He said Oliver was about the finest boy they ever had in the college.”
“Is that anything to blubber about?”
“You bet it is,” gulped old Oliver, smiling through his tears. “You just bet your sweet life it is.”
A word in passing about Jane Sage. She was a slender, graceful girl slightly above medium height, just turning into young womanhood—that alluring, mysterious stage that baffles the imagination and confounds the emotions. Her gray eyes, set widely apart under a broad brow, were clear and soft and wistful, and yet in their untrammeled depths stirred the glow of an intelligence far beyond her slender years. She was an extremely pretty girl. Her mouth was rather large and, like her mother’s, humorous. Her hair, brown, wavy and abundant, grew low upon her forehead. Her teeth were small, even and as white as snow; she showed them when she smiled. There were faint dimples in her cheeks.
She kept house for her father, and, at seventeen, made no secret of her determination never to get married! That was settled. Never! She was going to take care of her daddy as long as he lived, and, as she was serenely confident that he would live to be a very old man—indeed, she could not conjure up the thought of him dying at all as other mortals are bound to do sooner or later—there wasn’t any way in the world for her to avoid being an old maid.
If she possessed any of her mother’s powers of mimicry, they were never revealed by word or deed. She was singularly lacking in histrionic ability and for that her father was thankful though secretly surprised. Friends of the family, remembering Josephine’s propensities watched closely for signs of an undesirable heritage, and were somewhat disappointed when they failed to develop. If she had not borne such a striking resemblance to her mother, everybody in town would have said that she “took after her father”—and that would have explained everything. That far-distant, almost mythical mother, was no more than a dream to Jane. It was hard for her to believe that the famous actress, Josephine Judge, was her mother; she was secretly proud of the distinguished isolation in which it placed her among her less favored companions.
She adored Oliver October. There had been a time when she was his sweetheart, but that was ages ago—when both of them were young! Now he was supposed to be engaged to a girl in the graduating class—and Jane was going to be an old maid—so the childish romance was over. She wished she knew the girl, however, so that she could be sure that Oliver was getting some one who was good enough for him.
Late in the fall of 1911, young Oliver, having passed the age of twenty-one and being a free and independent agent, packed his bag and trunk and shook the dust of Rumley from his feet. Through the influence of an older member of his “frat,” supported by the customary recommendation from the college authorities, he was offered and accepted a position in the construction department of a Chicago engineering and investment concern interested in the financing and developing of water power plants in the northwest. His work took him, in the course of time, to the Rocky Mountain region, where concessions had been obtained and plants were either being installed or projected.
There was grave uneasiness in Rumley when he fared forth in quest of fame and fortune. Many were the predictions that Chicago would be the ruination of him; he was bound to fall in with evil companions in that wicked city, and into evil ways. College had been bad enough—but Chicago!
Yes, he was working inevitably toward the end prophesied by the gypsy. Next thing they would hear of his drinking and carousing and leading the gay, riotous life of the ungodly, and then, sure as anything, he would get mixed up in some disgraceful brawl—well, he might be innocent of the actual murder but that wouldn’t save him if the circumstantial evidence was strong enough—as it would be.
And then, when old Oliver resignedly announced that his son was going up into the wild and lawless northwest, where everybody carried guns and lynchings were common, there was real consternation among the older families in Rumley. One very ancient lady went so far in her senile sympathy as to put into words the question that had been in her thoughts for days. Chancing to meet old Oliver on the way home from church one Sunday, she sadly inquired whether he would bring Oliver October’s body all the way back to Rumley for burial or leave it out there in the wilderness.
Early in 1913 he was sent to China by his company on a mission that kept him in the Orient for nearly a year and a half. A week before Christmas, 1914, the RumleyDespatchcame out with the announcement—under a double head—that Oliver October Baxter was returning from the Far East, where he had been engaged in the most stupendous enterprise ever undertaken by American capital, and would arrive on the 22nd to spend the Christmas holidays with his father and to renew acquaintances with old friends—who were legion.
“Samuel Parr, the well-known insurance agent,” said theDespatch, “who is to be married on the 29th to Miss Laura Nickels, received a telegram this morning from Mr. Baxter in which he states that he will be happy to officiate as best man at the ceremony which, instead of being solemnized at the home of the bride’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Nickels, on Grant Street, as originally planned, will take place in the Presbyterian Church at eight o’clock in the evening. Miss Jane Sage will be the maid-of-honor. Mr. Baxter’s many friends will be glad to welcome him to the hustling city of his nativity. He has succeeded well in his profession and has gone forward with remarkable rapidity for one of his years. Few young men have achieved, etc., etc.”
The word that he was back in the United States and on his way to Rumley created quite a little excitement in town. It was the opinion of a good many people that he now stood a pretty fair chance of escaping the fate prescribed for him by the gypsy fortune-teller—provided, of course, he could be persuaded to remain in Rumley for the next five years, ten months, one week and five days.
He arrived on the eleven-twenty from Chicago and was met at the depot by a delegation. Samuel Parr was master of ceremonies.
“Stand back just a minute, will you?” Sammy commanded, addressing those in the front rank of the crowd. “Give his poor old father a chance to shake hands with him, can’t you? Just a minute, Mr. Sikes. That means you, too. Slow, now—slow, Mr. Link. This isn’t a funeral. Hello, Oliver! How’s the boy? Here’s your father—over this way. Never mind your suitcases. I’ll tend to ’em.”
Young Oliver rushed up to his father, both hands extended.
“Hello, dad! My old dad!”
“I can’t believe my eyes—no, sir, I can’t,” cried the old man, quaveringly. He was wringing his son’s hand. “You’re back again, alive and sound. For nearly three years I’ve been sitting around waiting for a telegram or something telling me—”
“You bet I’m alive,” broke in Oliver October, laying his arm over the old man’s shoulder and patting his back. “And you don’t look a day older than when I left, ’pon my soul, you don’t. It’s mighty good to see you, and it’s wonderful to be back in the old town again. Hello, Uncle Joe! Well, you see they haven’t hung me yet.”
“And they ain’t going to if I can help it,” roared Mr. Sikes, pumping Oliver’s arm vigorously. “Not on your life! We got a few more years to go, and, by glory, we’re going to keep you right here in this town from now on. It’s all fixed, Oliver. We’ve got you the appointment of city civil engineer for Rumley, population five thousand and over, salary eighteen hundred a year. How’s that? The Common Council took action on it last Monday night, unanimous vote, politics be damned. All of the democrats voted for you. No opposition to—”
“Give somebody else a chance, will you?” interrupted Sammy Parr, and coolly shouldered the older man aside. “Come over here, Oliver, I want to introduce you to the bride-elect. She came here to live after you went away, and she’s crazy to meet you. Just a minute, Mr. Link. Plenty of time—plenty of time. Don’t crowd! Ladies first—ladies first.”
“Where is Jane, Mr. Sage?” inquired Oliver October, when he had a breathing spell. He was searching the outer edge of the throng with eager, happy eyes.
“She is up at your father’s house, Oliver, helping Mrs. Grimes and Annie with your home-coming dinner,” replied the minister, still gripping the young man’s hand. “It is good to see you, my boy—God bless you.”
“I’ve never forgotten the things you said to me the day I went away, Uncle Herbert. I’ve led a pretty clean life, sir, and I’ve never done anything I’m ashamed of. I’ve done a lot of things I’ve been sorry for—but nothing to be ashamed of.” He leaned close to the other’s ear and said in a low, whimsical tone: “Don’t let it get to the ears of my other uncles, but I’d hate to tell you how many times I’ve thanked the Lord and you for those sparring lessons you gave me.”
“ ‘The Lord loveth a cheerful giver,’ ” quoth the Reverend Mr. Sage dryly.
On the way up to the old home, Oliver’s father, waiting until he saw a clear stretch of road ahead, turned from the steering wheel of his brand new Ford, and, eyeing his son narrowly, said:
“Yes, sir, you’ve surely got my nose, and you’ve almost got my hair. If you was to let your mustache grow I guess it would be a good deal like mine used to be. You’ve made a success of everything so far, from all reports, and now, darn it all, they’ve got you started in politics with this appointment. I fought it tooth and nail, but they argued me down, claiming it can’t be a political job so long as both parties want you to take—”
“You needn’t worry about that, father. I’ll not accept the position.”
Mr. Baxter brightened. “You won’t? Good for you! That’ll show Joe Sikes and Silas Link they can’t run everything.”
“I have other plans. I will tell you about them later on, father.”
“Of course, you’re a good deal taller and heavier than I am,” went on Mr. Baxter, staring ahead. “You don’t take after me when it comes to size and build. Been out in the open a good bit, I see. It’s done you a lot of good.” He shot a glance at his son’s rugged, tanned face. “Yes, and your eyes are clear and bright. I guess you haven’t done much drinking or staying up late o’ nights.”
“I don’t drink very much—very little, in fact. Never have. In my business a fellow has to have his wits about him. As for being up late nights, I have seen many a night when I didn’t go to bed at all.”
“That sounds bad,” said Mr. Baxter sourly. “I don’t see how it could help interfering with your work.”
“It didn’t interfere with it. You see, I was working all night.”
“Extra pay?”
“No, sir. Just extra work.”
Mr. Baxter cackled, cutting it short to toot his horn viciously for the benefit of a dog crossing the street two or three hundred feet away.
“I’m just learning,” he explained.
“So I see,” said his son, crimping his toes suddenly and then relaxing them as his father swung safely around a corner.
“Only had her about six weeks.”
“What can you get out of her?”
“She’s a racer.”
“She is?”
“You bet she is. Seventy-five miles an hour.”
“Gee, it’s good to hear you lie so cheerfully, dad.”
“If I’d had any idea you were going to believe me, I’d have claimed a hundred,” said old Oliver, grinning. “See many changes in the town, sonny?”
“I thought Mr. Sage was looking a little older.”
“Well, he is a little older. We all are, for that matter. I guess you’ll find Jane has changed somewhat too. She’s twenty-one. They say she’s an uncommonly pretty girl.”
“They say? Don’t you see anything of her yourself?”
“See her nearly every day. I don’t take much notice of girls these days, blast the luck. She comes in every once in a while to read the letters she gets from you. Seems as though I get a good deal more news out of the letters you write to her than the ones I get from you. You never wrote anything to me about the girl you was thinking of marrying out there in Montana, or the one in China either.”
“I was always careful not to write anything unpleasant to you,” said Oliver October glibly.
“Umph! Well, here we are. Don’t be uneasy now. I know how to stop her.”
And stop “her” he did, a dozen feet or so beyond the front porch steps.
“Set still. I’ll back her up. Sort of slipped on the ice, I guess. We’ve had some mighty cold weather the last week or so.”
The “uncommonly pretty girl” opened the front door.
“Hello, Oliver!” she cried.
“Hello, Jane!” he shouted back, as he ran up the steps. “Gee! it’s great to see you. And, my goodness, what a big girl you are. You were just an overgrown kid when I went away. Funny how a fellow never thinks of a girl growing up just the same as he does.”
He was holding her warm, strong hands in his own; they were looking straight into each other’s eyes. In his there was wonder and incredulity; in hers the expression of one startled by a sudden indefinable sensation, something that came like a flash and left her strangely puzzled.
“You haven’t grown much,” she said slowly. “Except that you are a man and not a boy.”
“That’s it,” he cried. “The difference in you is that you’re a woman and not a girl. And I was counting on seeing you just as you were four years ago.”
“Come in,” she said, with a queer dignity that she herself did not understand. “Get out of that fur coat and—and give Aunt Serepta a big hug and a dozen kisses. She’s waiting for you in the sitting-room.”
He still held her hands. “Oh, I say, Jane, I—I used to kiss you when we were little kids. I—”
“But we are not little kids any longer, Oliver,” she cried, drawing back.
He stared hard at her. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone and got engaged to somebody, old girl.”
“I am not engaged to any one. I am not even in love with any one.”
“Well, all I’ve got to say is that this burg must have more than its share of blind men,” said he with conviction.
“Hey!” shouted his father. “Do you expect me to carry in these valises for you, you big lummix?”
“Put ’em down, dad. I’ll be out for them in a minute.”
“Well, see that you do.”
“He is getting to be terribly cranky, Oliver,” said Jane, lowering her voice.
“Do you mean—he’s actually sore?”
“Well, he’s—he’s very impatient sometimes,” she explained. “You’d better hurry.”
“Poor dad, he’s aged terribly in the last few years, hasn’t he? I was quite shocked.”
The welcome he received from Serepta Grimes was all that could be desired. After she had hugged and kissed—and wept over him a little—she ordered him to take his bags up stairs to his old room and not to be all day about it, because dinner would soon be ready and they were having company in his honor.
“See here, Aunt Serepta,” he began gayly, “I’m getting too old to be ordered around—and, what’s more, what right have you to come into a house of gladness and cast a spell of gloom over it? You sha’n’t boss the heir-apparent around as if he were a—”
“You do as I tell you, or I’ll speak to Santa Claus about you,” she broke in, with mock severity. “Don’t forget Christmas is coming.”
When he came down stairs, after having unpacked his bags and scattered the contents all over the room, he found the “company” already assembled. As might have been expected, the guests included the Reverend Mr. Sage, Mr. Sikes, and Mr. Link, and one outsider: the Mayor of Rumley, Mr. Samuel Belding.
“What’s this I hear?” demanded the latter sternly, as he shook hands with the young man. “Your father’s just been telling us you won’t accept the distinguished honor the city of Rumley has conferred upon you through the unanimous vote of the Common Council. What’s the matter with it? Ain’t the pay big enough for you? It’s the chance of a life time, my boy. Rumley is going ahead like a house afire. We’re going to open up and pave two or three new streets, put in a new sewerage system and a crematory, build a bridge over the railroad tracks at Clay Street crossing, and—”
“I don’t believe a darned word of it,” broke in Mr. Sikes, almost plaintively.
“What’s that?” demanded the Mayor, going purple in the face. “You don’t believe what I’m—”
“I wasn’t thinking about you,” said Mr. Sikes. “I don’t believe Oliver means what he says.”
“Like as not he never said it,” put in Mr. Link, eyeing old Oliver darkly.
“Oh, yes, he did,” said the latter cheerfully, and not in the least offended by the implication. “Didn’t you, Oliver?”
Oliver’s and Jane’s eyes met. She was standing beside her father a little apart from the garrulous group. He saw something in her dark, unsmiling eyes that puzzled him—something he was a long, long time in fathoming.
“The truth of the matter is,” he said seriously, “I have other plans. I appreciate the honor. The pay has nothing to do with my decision. I love the old burg and I am proud to have been born here. I have just given up a job that has been paying me nearly four times as much as what I would be getting here, Mr. Belding. And it will be open to me whenever I choose to go back with the company. That is understood. I—”
“You say you’ve quit your job?” broke in his father, aghast.
“Yes, sir,” quietly. “I gave it up last week.”
“A job paying more than seven thousand a year?”
“Just seven thousand, to be exact.”
“Well, of all the idiotic—”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Mr. Link. “The thing is, he may be resigning on account of ill health. Now that I’ve had a good look at you, Oliver, I must say your eyes seem a little liverish. Not exactly liverish, either, but sort of bright and feverish. If you—”
“I am perfectly well, Uncle Silas,” said Oliver, smiling. Again his eyes sought Jane’s. They seemed darker and deeper than before. “No, it isn’t my health that’s caused me to give up my job. Needn’t worry about my health, dad.” While he addressed his father he was subtly conscious of speaking solely for Jane’s benefit. “But, come along; let’s have dinner. I’m as hungry as a bear. We can talk about my affairs afterwards. With the cigars. I brought you a box of the finest cigars I could find in Chicago, father. You’ll hear the flapping of angels’ wings every time you light one of ’em and take a few puffs.”
“You’ve got no business buying expensive cigars when you’re out of a job,” grumbled his father. “Giving up a place with seven—”
“Maybe he’s going to get married,” burst out the Mayor, nudging the young man in the ribs. “That accounts for his eyes being feverish and—and sometimes when a feller is in love he does get to be a little bit liverish.”
“That accounts for it,” said Mr. Sikes, very much relieved. “He’s going to marry a woman with plenty of money. He don’t have to work any more, Ollie. I hope to goodness she ain’t got any brothers to make trouble for him after the nuptials have worn off a little. One brother-in-law can do more to make a feller—”
“I am not going to be married,” said Oliver, blushing for no reason at all, and thereby convincing the attentive Jane that if he wasn’t going to be married it was through no fault of his own. “Nobody will have me,” he added lamely.
“Of course, if you’ve been going around telling everybody what’s ahead of you,” said Mr. Sikes, “I don’t blame ’em for not wanting to risk being tied up to a feller—”
“Shut up!” cried Serepta Grimes, from the dining-room door. “You make me sick, Joe Sikes, the way you go on. Dinner’s ready. You sit over here next to Jane, Oliver. This is your place, Sam.”
“There’s another thing,” said the Mayor, very profoundly. “If you take this job we’re offering you, Oliver, it’s bound to lead to something better. I don’t mind telling you that I’m not going to be a candidate for re-election. I’ve got two years more to serve and then I’m through. This here town needs a young, active, progressive man for mayor. Some of us have been talking things over and we’ve about decided that we know the feller that ought to step into my shoes. He is a young man of vast experience, education, integrity, ability, and he’s a good Republican—at least, his father is. My shoes are pretty good-sized, but that’s a blessing. No matter who steps into ’em, they’re not likely to pinch. What size shoes do you wear, Oliver?”
“Sh!” hissed Mr. Baxter. “The parson’s waiting to bless the food.”
The host did not speak again until near the end of the meal. He was deeply pre-occupied.
“What is this plan of yours?” he suddenly asked, breaking in on Mr. Belding’s windy eulogy of the feast prepared by three of the “best cooks in the universe.”
Young Oliver started. “Hadn’t we better leave that till we’re alone—”
“No; let’s have it now,” said old Oliver testily. “Unless it’s something you’re ashamed of,” he amended, bending his gaze upon his son.
“I certainly am not ashamed of it.” A trace of irony, unintentional to be sure, crept into his voice. “I suppose you know there is a war going on?” His eyes swept the circle of listeners.
“Well, it’s kind of leaked out down our way,” spoke Mr. Link dryly.
“Damn the Kaiser,” said Mr. Belding, with feeling.
“Thank God, they turned him back at the Marne,” said Mr. Sage, speaking for the first time in many minutes.
“I know what you are planning to do, Oliver,” cried Jane, paling.
“Yes,” he said, nodding his head. “You would know. You’re young enough to know, Jane.”
“You are going over there to fight,” she cried, a thrill in her voice.
“Right you are. I’m going over in February with the Canadians. It’s all settled. I’m to have my old job back when the war is over.”
Deep silence followed the announcement. Mr. Baxter sat with his lips working, his Adam’s apple rising and falling in quick spasmodic jerks. Jane put her hand to her throat as if to release something that had got caught there and was stifling her.
“But it’s not our war,” said Mr. Sikes at last.
“It’s everybody’s war,” spoke young Oliver out of the very depths of his soul. “We will be in it some day. We can’t keep out of it. But I can’t wait. I’m going over now. Oh, I’ll come back, never fear. No chance of me being killed by a German bullet.” Here he grinned boyishly. “You see, Uncle Joe, I’ve just got to pull through alive and well, so that I can be hung when my time comes.”