"Myself when young did eagerly frequentDoctor and Saint and heard great argumentAbout it and about: but evermoreCame out by the same door where in I went.""With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,And with my own hand wrought to make it grow;And this was all the Harvest that I reaped—'I came like Water and like Wind I go.'"
"I shall look forward to seeing you—and your mother and sister?—in New York," she said, when they parted, "and I am sure I shall have more to say when we're better known to each other."
"If you were the one woman before, if the thought of you was more than the substance of any other to me,—you must know how it will be now, when the dream has come true. It's no small thing for your best dream to come true."
"Dear me! haven't we been sentimental and philosophic? I'm never like this at home, I assure you. I've really been thoughtful."
From up the cañon came the sound of a puffing locomotive that presently steamed by them with its three dingy little coaches, and, after a stop for water and the throwing of a switch, pushed back to connect with the Shepler car.
The others of the party crowded out on to the rear platform as Percival helped Miss Milbrey up the steps. Uncle Peter had evidently been chatting with Shepler, for as they came out the old man was saying, "'Get action' is my motto. Do things. Don't fritter. Be something and be it good and hard. Get action early and often."
Shepler nodded. "But men like us are apt to be unreasonable with the young. We expect them to have their own vigour and our wisdom, and the infirmities of neither."
The good-byes were hastily said, and the little train rattled down the cañon. Miss Milbrey stood in the door of the car, and Percival watched her while the glistening rails that seemed to be pushing her away narrowed in perspective. She stood motionless and inscrutable to the last, but still looking steadily toward him—almost wistfully, it seemed to him once.
"Well," he said cheerfully to Uncle Peter.
"You know, son, I don't like to cuss, but except one or two of them folks I'd sooner live in the middle kittle of hell than in the place that turns 'em out. They rile me—that talk about 'people in the humbler walks of life.' Of course Iamhumble, but then, son, if you come right down to it, as the feller said, I ain't sodamnedhumble!"
From Mr. Percival Bines to Miss Psyche Bines, Montana City.
On car at Skiplap, Tuesday Night.
Dear Sis:—When you kept nagging me about "Who is the girl?" and I said you could search me, you wouldn't have it that way. But, honestly, until this morning I didn't know her myself. Now that I can put you next, here goes.
One night last March, after I'd come back from the other side, I happened into a little theatre on Broadway where a burlesque was running. It's a rowdy little place—a music hall—but nice people go there because, though it's stuffy, it's kept decent.
Shewas in a box with two men—one old and one young—and an older woman. As soon as I saw her she had me lashed to the mast in a high sea, with the great salt waves dashing over me. I never took much stock in the tales about its happening at first sight, but they're as matter-of-fact as market reports. Soon as I looked at her it seemed to me I'd known her always. I was sure we knew each other better than any two people between the Battery and Yonkers, and that I wasn't acting sociable to sit down there away from her and pretend we were Strangers Yet. Actually, it rattled me so I had to take the full count. If I hadn't been wedged in between a couple of people that filled all the space, and then some, it isn't any twenty to one that I wouldn't have gone right up to her and asked her what she meant by cutting me. I was udgy enough for it. But I kept looking and after awhile I was able to sit up and ask what hit me.
She was dressed in something black and kind of shiny and wore a big black hat fussed up with little red roses, and her face did more things to me in a minute than all the rest I've ever seen. It wasfullof little kissy places. Her lips were very red and her teeth were very white, and I couldn't tell about her eyes. But she was bred up to the last notch, I could see that.
Well, I watched her through the tobacco smoke until the last curtain fell. They were putting on wraps for a minute or so, and I noticed that the young fellow in the party, who'd been drinking all through the show, wasn't a bit too steady to do an act on the high-wire. They left the box and came down the stairs and I bunched into the crowd and let myself ooze out with them, wondering if I'd ever see her again.
I fetched up at an exit on the side street, and there they were directly in front of me. I just naturally drifted to one side and continued my little private corner in crude rubber. It was drizzling in a beastly way, the street was full of carriages, numbers were being called, cab-drivers were insulting each other hoarsely, people dashing out to see if their carriages weren't coming—everything in a whirl of drizzle and dark and yells, with the horses' hoofs on the pavement sounding like castanets. The two older people got into a carriage and were driven off, while she and the young fellow waited for theirs. I could see then that he was good and soused. He was the same lad they throw on the screen when the "Old Homestead" Quartet sings "Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night?" I could see she was annoyed and a little worried, because he was past taking notice.
The man kept yelling the number of their carriage from time to time, while the others he'd called were driving up—it was 249 if any one ever tries to worm it out of you—and then I saw from her face that 249 had wriggled pretty near to the curb, but was still kept away by another carriage. She said something to the drunken cub and started to reach the carriage by going out into the street behind the one in its way. At the same time their carriage started forward, and the inebriate, instead of going with her, started the other way to meet it, and so, there she was alone on the slippery pavement in this muddle of prancing horses and yelling terriers. If you can get any bets that I was more than two seconds getting out there to her, take them all, and give better than track odds if necessary. Then I guess she got rattled, for when I would have led her back to the curb she made a dash the other way and all but slipped under a team of bays that were just aching to claw the roses off her hat. I saw she was helpless and "turned around," so I just naturally grabbed her and she was so frightened by this time that she grabbed me, and the result was that I carried her to the sidewalk and set her down. Their carriage still stood there with little Georgie Rumlets screaming to the driver to go on. I had her inside in a jiffy, and they were off. Not a word about "My Preserver!" though, of course, with the fright and noise and her mortification, that was natural.
After that, you can believe it or not, she was the girl. And I never dreamed of seeing her any place but New York again.
Well, this morning when I came up from below at the mineshewas standing there as if she had been waiting for me. She is Miss Avice Milbrey, of New York. Her father and mother—fine people, the real thing, I judge—were with her, members of a party Rulon Shepler has with him on his car. They've been here all day; went through the mine; had lunch with them, and later a walk withher, they leaving at 5.30 for the East. We got on fairly well, considering. She is a wonder, if anybody cross-examines you. She is about your height, I should judge, about five feet four, though not so plump as you; still her look of slenderness is deceptive. She's one of the build that aren't so big as they look, nor yet so small as they look. Thoroughbred is the word for her, style and action, as the horse people say, perfect. The poise of her head, her mettlesome manner, her walk, show that she's been bred up like a Derby winner. Her face is the one all the aristocrats are copied from, finely cut nose, chin firm but dainty, lips just delicately full and the reddest ever, and her colour when she has any a rose-pink. I don't know that I can give you her eyes. You only see first that they're deep and clear, but as near as anything they are the warm slatish lavender blue you see in the little fall asters. She has so much hair it makes her head look small, a sort of light chestnut, with warmish streaks in it. Transparent is another word for her. You can look right through her—eyes and skin are so clear. Her nature too is the frank, open kind, "step in and examine our stock; no trouble to show goods" and all that, and she is so beautifully unconscious of her beauty that it goes double. At times she gave me a queer little impression of being older at the game than I am, though she can't be a day over twenty, but I guess that's because she's been around in society so much. Probably she'd be called the typical New York girl, if you wanted to talk talky talk.
Now I've told you everything, except that the people all asked kindly after you, especially her mother and a Mrs. Drelmer, who's a four-horse team all by herself. Oh, yes! No, I can't remember very well; some kind of a brown walking skirt, short, and high boots and one of those blue striped shirt-waists, the squeezy looking kind, and when we went to walk, a red plaid golf cape; and for general all-around dearness—say, the other entries would all turn green and have to be withdrawn. If any one thinks this thing is going to end here you make a book on it right away; take all you can get. Little Willie Lushlets was her brother—a lovely boy if you get to talking reckless. With love to Lady Abercrombie, and trusting, my dear Countess, to have the pleasure of meeting you at Henley a fortnight hence, I remain,
Most cordially yours,
E. MALVERN DEVYR ST. TREVORS,
Bart. & Notary Public.
From Mrs. Joseph Drelmer to the Hon. Cecil G. H. Mauburn, New York.
EN ROUTE, August 28th.
MY DEAR MAUBURN:—Ever hear of the tribe of Bines? If not, you need to. The father, immensely wealthy, died a bit ago, leaving a widow and two children, one of the latter being a marriageable daughter in more than the merely technical sense. There is also a grandfather, now a little descended into the vale of years, who, they tell me, has almost as many dollars as you or I would know what to do with, a queer old chap who lounges about the mountains and looks as if he might have anything but money. We met the son and the old man at one of their mines yesterday. They have a private car as large as Shepler's and even more sybaritic, and they'd been making a tour of inspection over their properties. They lunched with us. Knowing the Milbreys, you will divine the warmth of their behaviour toward the son. It was too funny at first. Avice was the only one to suspect at once that he was the very considerable personage he is, and so she promptly sequestered him, with a skill born of her long practice, in the depths of the earth, somewhere near China, I fancy. Her dear parents were furious. Dressed as one of the miners they took him to be an employee. The whole party, taking the cue from outraged parenthood, treated him icily when he emerged from one of those subterranean galleries with that tender sprig of girlishness. That is, we were icy until, on the way up, he remaining in the depths, Avice's dear mother began to rebuke the thoughtless minx for her indiscretion of strolling through the earth with a working person. Then Avice, sweet chatterbox, with joyful malice revealed that the young man, whose name none of us had caught, was Bines, and that he owned the mine we were in, and she didn't know how many others, nor did she believe he knew himself. You should have felt the temperature rise. It went up faster than we were going.
By the time we reached the surface the two Milbreys wore looks that would have made the angel of peace and good-will look full of hatred and distrust. Nothing would satisfy them but that we wait to thank the young Croesus for his courtesy. I waited because I remembered the daughter, and Oldaker and the Angstead twins waited out of decency. And when the genius of the mine appeared from out his golden catacombs we fell upon him in desperate kindness.
Later in the day I learned from him that he expects to bring his mother and sister to New York this fall, and that they mean to make their home there hereafter. Of course that means that the girl has notions of marriage. What made me think so quickly of her is that in San Francisco, at a theatre last winter, she was pointed out to me, and while I do you not the injustice of supposing it would make the least difference to you, she is rather a beauty, you'll find; figure fullish, yellow hair, and a good-natured, well-featured, pleasing sort of face; a bit rococo in manner, I suspect; a little too San Francisco, as so many of these Western beauties are, but you'd not mind that, and a year in New York will tone her down anyway.
Now if your dear uncle will only confer a lasting benefit upon the world and his title upon you, by paying the only debt he is ever liable to pay, I am persuaded you could be the man here. I know nothing of how the fortune was left, nor of its extent, except that it's said to be stiffish, and out here that means a big, round sum. The reason I write promptly is that you may not go out of the country just now. That sweet little Milbrey chit—really, Avice is far too old now for ingenue parts—has not only grappled the son with hooks of steel, but from remarks the good mother dropped concerning the fine qualities of her son, she means to convert the daughter'sdotinto Milbrey prestige, also. What a glorious double stroke it would be, after all their years of trying. However, with your title, even in prospective, Fred Milbrey is no rival for you to fear, providing you are on the ground as soon as he, which is why I wish you to stay in New York.
I am indeed gratified that you have broken off whatever affair there may have been between you and that music-hall person. Really, you know, though they talk so about us, a young man can't mess about with that sort of thing in New York as he can in London. So I'm glad she's gone back, and as she is in no position to harm you I should pay no attention to her threats. What under heaven did the creature expect? Whyshouldshe have wanted to marry you?
I shall see you probably in another fortnight.
You know that Milbrey girl must get her effrontery direct from where they make it. She pretended that at first she took young Bines for what we all took him, an employee of the mine. You can almost catch them winking at each other, when she tells it, and dear mamma with such beautiful resignation, says, "My Avice issoimpulsively democratic." Dear Avice, you know, is really quite as impulsive as the steel bridge our train has just rattled over. Sincerely,
JOSEPHINE PRESTON DRELMER.
From Miss Avice Milbrey to Mrs. Cornelia Van Geist, New York.
Mütterchen, dearest, I feel like that green hunter you had to sell last spring—the one that would go at a fence with the most perfect display of serious intentions, and then balk and bolt when it came to jumping. Can it be that I, who have been trained from the cradle to the idea of marrying for money, will bolt the gate after all the expense and pains lavished upon my education to this end; after the years spent in learning how to enchant, subdue, and exploit the most useful of all animals, and the most agreeable, barring a few? And yet, right when I'm the fittest—twenty-four years old, knowing all my good points and just how to coerce the most admiration for each, able nicely to calculate the exact disturbing effect of theensembleupon any poor male, and feeling confident of my excessively eligiblepartiwhen I decide for him—in this situation, striven for so earnestly, I feel like bolting the bars. How my trainer and jockey would weep tears of rage and despair if they guessed it!
There, there—I know your shrewd grey eyes are crackling with curiosity and, you want to know what it's all about, whether to scold me or mother me, and will I please omit theentréesand get to the roast mutton. But you dear, dear old aunt, you, there is more vagueness than detail, and I know I'll strain your patience before I've done. But, to relieve your mind, nothing at all has really happened. After all, it's mostly atroublesome state of mind, that I shall doubtless find gone when we reach Jersey City,—and in two ways this Western trip is responsible for it. Do you know the journey itself has been fascinating. Too bad so many of us cross the ocean twenty times before we know anything of this country. We loiter in Paris, do the stupid German watering-places, the Norway fjords, down to Italy for the museums, see thechateauxof the Loire, or do the English race-tracks, thinking we're 'mused; and all the time out here where the sun goes down is an intensely interesting and beautiful country of our own that we overlook. You know I'd never before been even as far as Chicago. Now for the first time I can appreciate lots of those things in Whitman, that—
"I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air, and free poems, also. Now I see the secret of making the best persons: It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."
I mayn't have quoted correctly, but you know the sort of thing I mean, that sounds sobreezyandstimulating. And they've helped me understand the immensity of the landscapes and the ideas out here, the big, throbbing, rough young life, and under it all, as Whitman says, "a meaning—Democracy,AmericanDemocracy." Really it's been interesting,the jolliest time of my life,and it's got me all unsettled. More than once in watching some scene typical of the region, the plain, busy, earnest people, I've actually thrilled to think that this wasmy country—felt that queer little tickling tingle that locates your spine for you. I'm sure there's noennuihere. Some one said the other day, "Ennuiis a disease that comes from living on other people's money." I said no, that I'd often had as fine an attack as if I'd been left a billion, thatennuiis when you don't know what to do next and wouldn't do it if you did. Well, here they alwaysdoknow what to do next, and as one of them told me, "We always get up early the day before to do it."
Auntie, dear, the trip has made memore restless and dissatisfiedthan ever. It makes me want todosomething—torisksomething, to want towantsomething more than I've ever learned to want.
That's one reason I'm acting badly. The other will interest you more.
It's no less a reason thanthe athletic young Bayardwho cheated those cab-horses of their prey that night Fred didn't drink all the Scotch whiskey in New York. Our meeting, and the mater's treatment of him before she discovered who he was, are too delicious to write. I must wait to tell you.
It is enough to say that now I heard his name it recalled nothing to me, and I took him from his dress to be aworkingmanin the mine we visiting, though from his speech and manner of a gentleman, someone in authority. Dear, he wassodear and so Westernly breezy and progressive and enterprising and soappallingly candid. I've been the "one woman", the "unknown but remembered ideal" since that encounter. Of course, that was to be said, but strangely enough he meant it. He was actually and unaffectedly making love to me. He's not so large or tall, but quick and springy, and muscled like a panther. He's not beautiful either but pleasant to look at, one of those broad high-cheeked faces one sees so much in the West, with the funniest quick yellowish grey eyes and the most disreputable moustache I ever saw, yellow and ragged, If he must eat it, I wish he wouldeat it off evenclear across. And he's likely to talk the most execrable slang, or to quote Browning. But he was making real love, and you know I'm not used to that. I'm accustomed to go my pace before sharply calculating eyes, to show if I'm worth theasking price. But here was real love being made off down in the earth (we'd run away from the others because Iliked him at once). I don't mind telling you he moved me, partly because I had wondered about him from that night, and partly because of all I had come to feel about this new place and the new people, and because he seemed such a fine, active specimen of Western manhood. I won't tell you all the wild, lawless thoughts that scurried andsneakedthrough my mind—they don't matter now—for all at once it came out that he was the only son of that wealthy Bines who died awhile ago—you remember the name was mentioned that night at your house when they were discussing the exodus of Western millionaires to New York; some one named the father as one who liked coming to New York to dissipate occasionally, but who was still rooted in the soil where his millions grew.
There was the son before me, justan ordinary man of millions, after all—and my little toy balloon of romance that I'd been floating so gaily on a string of sentiment was pricked to nothing in an instant. I felt my nostrils expand with the excitement of the chase, and thereafter I was mycoldly professional self. If that young man has not now a high estimate of my charms of person and mind, then have my ways forgot their cunning and I be no longer the daughter of Margaret Milbrey,néevan Schoule.
But, Mütterchen, now comes the disgraceful part. I'm afraid of myself, even in spite of our affairs being so bad. Dad has doubtless told you something must be done very soon, and I seem to be the only one to do it. And yet I am shying at the gate. This trip has unsettled me, I tell you, letting me, among other things, see my old self. Before I always rather liked the idea of marriage, that is, after I'd been out a couple of years—not too well, but well enough—and now some way I rebel, not from scruples, but from pure selfishness. I'm beginning to find that I want toenjoy myselfand to find, further, that I'm not indisposed totake chances—as they say out here. Will you understand, I wonder? And do women who sell themselves ever find any real pleasure in the bargain? The most eloquent examples, the ones that sell themselves tomany men,lead wretched lives. But does the woman who sells herself tobut oneenjoy life any more? She's surely as bad, from any standpoint of morals, and I imagine sometimes she is less happy. At any rate, she has lessfreedomand moreobligationsunder her contract. You see I am philosophising pretty coldly. Now behorrifiedif you will.
I am selfish by good right, though. "Haven't we spent all our surplus in keeping you up for a good marriage?" says the mater, meaning by a good marriage that I shall bring enough money into the family to"keep up its traditions."I am, in other words, an investment from which they expect large returns. I told her I hoped she could trace her selfishness to its source as clearly as I could mine, and as for the family traditions, Fred was preserving those in an excellent medium. Which was very ugly in me, and I cried afterwards and told her how sorry I was.
Are you shocked by my cold calculations? Well, I am trying to let you understand me, and I--
"...have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth."
I am cursed not only with consistent feminine longings and desires, but, in spite of my training and the examples around me, with a disinclination to be wholly vicious. Awhile ago marriage meant only more luxury and less worry about money. I never gave any thought to the husband, certainly never concerned myself with any notions of duty or obligation toward him. The girls I know are taught painstakingly how to get a husband, but nothing of how to be a wife. The husband in my case was to be an inconvenience, but doubtless an amusing one. For all his oppression, if there were that, and even forthe mere offence of his existence,I should wreak my spite merrily on his vulgar dollars.
But you are saying that I like the present eligible. That's the trouble. I like him so well I haven't the heart to marry him. When I was twenty I could have loved him devotedly, I believe. Now something seems to be gone, some freshness or fondness. I can still love—I know it only too well night and day—but it must be a different kind of man. He is so very young and reverent and tender, and in a way so unsophisticated. He is so afraid of me, for all his pretence of boldness.
Is it because I must be taken by sheer force? I'll not be surprised if it is. Do we not in our secret soul of souls nourish this beatitude: "Blessed is the man whodestroys all barriers"?Florence Akemit said as much one day, and Florence, poor soul, knows something of the matter. Do we not sit defiantly behind the barriers, insolently challenging—threatening capital punishment for any assault, relaxing not one severity, yet falling meek and submissive and glad, to the man who brutally and honestly beats them down, anddestroys them utterly?So many fail by merely beating them down. Of course if anuntidy litteris left we make a row. We reconstruct the barrier and that particular assailant is thenceforth deprived of a combatant's rights. What a dear you are that I can say these things to you! Were girls so frank in your time?
Well, my knight of the "golden cross" (joke; laughter and loud applause, and cries of "Go on!") has a little, much indeed, of the impetuous in him, but, alas! not enough. He has a pretty talent for it, but no genius. If I were married to him to-morrow, as surely as I am a woman I should be made to inflict pain upon him the next day, with an insane stress to show him, perhaps, I was not the ideal woman he had thought me—perhaps out of a jealousy of that very ideal I had inspired—rational creatures, aren't we?—beg pardon—not we, then, but I. Now he, being a real likable man of a man, can I do that—for money? Do I want the moneybadly enough?Would I not even rather be penniless with the man who coerced every great passion and littlest impulse, body and soul—perhaps with a very hateful insolence of power over me?Do you know, I suspect sometimes that I've been trained down too fine, as to my nerves, I mean. I doubt if it's safe to pamper and trim and stimulate and refine a woman in that hothouse atmosphere—at leastif she's a healthy woman. She's too apt sometime to break her gait, get the bit of tradition between her teeth, and then let her impulses run away with her.
Oh, Mütterchen, I am so sick and sore, and yet filled with a strange new zest for this old puzzle of life. Will I ever be the same again? This man is going to ask me to marry him the moment I am ready for him to. Shall I be kind enough to tell him no, or shall I steel myself to go in and hurt him—make him writhe?
And yet do you know what he gave me while I was with him? I wonder if women feel it commonly? It was a desire formotherhood—a curiously vivid and very definite longing—entirely irrespective of him, you understand, although he inspired it. Without loving him or being at all moved toward him, he made me sheerlywantto be a mother! Or is it only that men we don't love make us feel motherly?
Am I wholly irrational and selfish and bad, or what am I? I know you'll love me, whatever it is, and I wish now I could snuggle on that soft, cushiony shoulder of yours and go to sleep.
Can anything be more pitiful than "a fine old family" afflicted withdry-rotlike ours? I'm always amused when I read about the suffering in the tenements. The real anguish is up in the homes like ours. We haveto do without so very many more things,and mere hunger and cold are easy compared to the suffering we feel.
Perhaps when I'm back to that struggle for appearances, I'll relent and "barter my charms" as the old novels used to say, sanely and decently like a well brought-up New York girl—with certain reservations,to a man who can support the family in the style to which it wants to become accustomed. Yet there may be a way out. There is a Bines daughter, for example, and mamma, who never does one half where she can as well do two, will marry her to Fred if she can. On the other hand, Joe Drelmer was putting in words for young Mauburn, who will be Lord Casselthorpe when his disreputable old uncle dies.
She hasn't yet spent what she got for introducing the Canovass prince to that oldest Elarton girl, so if she secures this prize for Mauburn, she'll be comfortable for a couple of more years. Perhaps I could turn my hand to something like that. I know the ropes as well as she does.
There, itisa punishment of a letter, isn't it, dear? But I've knownevery bad place in it,and I've religiously put in your "Come, come, child!" every time it belonged, so you've not still to scold me, for which be comforted a little; and give me only a few words of cheerful approval if your conscience will let you. I need that, after all, more than advice. Look for us in a week. With a bear-hug for you,
AVICE.
P.S. Is it true that Ned Ristine and his wife have fixed it up and are together again since his return? Not that I'm interested especially, but I chanced to hear it gossiped the other day here on the car. Indeed, I hope you knowhow thoroughly I detest that man!
As the train resumed speed after stopping at a station, Grant, the porter, came back to the observation room of the Bines car with a telegram for Uncle Peter. The old man read it and for a time mused himself into seeming oblivion. Across the car, near by, Percival lounged in a wicker arm-chair and stared cheerfully out into the gathering night. He, too, was musing, his thoughts keeping pleasantly in time with the rhythmic click of the wheels over the rail-joints. After a day in the open air he was growing sleepy.
Uncle Peter aroused him by making his way back to the desk, the roll-top of which he lifted with a sudden rattle. He called to Percival. Sitting down at the desk he read the telegram again and handed it to the young man, who read:
"Party will try to make good; no bluff. Won't compromise inside limit set. Have seen paper and wish another interview before following original instructions. Party will wait forty-eight hours before acting. Where can you be seen? Wire office to-night.
"TAFE & COPLEN."
The young man looked up with mild interest. Uncle Peter was writing on a telegraph blank.
"TAFE & COPLEN, Butte, Montana.
"Due Butte 7.30 A.M. to-morrow. Join me on car nought sixteen, go to Montana City.
"PETER BINES.
"D.H.F. 742."
To the porter who answered his ring he handed the message to be put off at the first stop.
"But what's it all about?" asked Percival, seeing by Uncle Peter's manner that he was expected to show concern.
Uncle Peter closed the desk, lighted one of his best cigars, and dropped into a capacious chair. The young man seated himself opposite.
"Well, son, it's a matter I cal'lated first off to handle myself, but it looks now as if you better be in on it. I don't know just how much you knew about your pa's ways, but, anyhow, you wouldn't play him to grade much higher above standard than the run of 'em out here that has had things comin' too easy for 'em. He was all right, Dan'l J. was. God knows I ain't discountin' the comfort I've always took in him. He'd stand acid all right, at any stage of the game. Don't forget that about your pa."
The young man reflected.
"The worst story I ever heard of pa was about the time he wanted to draw twenty thousand dollars from the bank in Tacoma. They telegraphed the Butte National to wire his description, and the answer was 'tall and drunk.'"
"Well, son, his periodicals wa'n't all. Seems as if this crowd has a way fur women, and they generally get the gaff because they're so blamed easy. You don't hear of them Eastern big men gettin' it so often, but I've seen enough of 'em to know it ain't because they're any straighter. They're jest a little keener on business propositions. They draw a fine sight when it comes to splittin' pennies, while men out here like your pa is lavish and careless. You know about lots of the others.
"There's Sooley Pentz, good-hearted a man as ever sacked ore, and plenty long-headed enough for the place he's bought in the Senate, but Sooley is restless until he's bought up one end of every town he goes into, from Eden plumb over to Washington, D. C.,—and 'tain't ever the Sunday-school end Sooley buys either. If he was makin' two million a month instead of one Sooley'd grieve himself to death because they don't make that five-dollar kind of wine fast enough.
"Then there was Seth Larby. We're jest gettin' to the details of Seth's expense account after he found the Lucky Cuss. I see the courts have decided against the widow and children, and so they'll have to worry off about five or six millions for the poor lady he duped so outrageously—with a checker on the chips.
"As fur old Nate Kranil, a lawyer from Cheyenne was tellin' me his numerous widows by courtesy was goin' to form an association and share his leavin's pro raty. Said they'd all got kind of acquainted and made up their minds they was such a reg'lar band of wolves that none of 'em was able to do any of the others in the long run, so they'd divide even.
"Then there was Dave Kisber, and—"
"Never mind any more—" Percival broke in. "Do you mean that my father was mixed up like those old Indians?"
"Looks now as if he was. That telegram from Coplen is concernin' of a lady—a party that was with him when he died. The press report sent out that the young and beautiful Mrs. Bines was with her husband, and was prostrated with grief. Your ma and Pishy was up to Steamin' Springs at the time, and I kep' it from them all right."
"Buthowwas he entangled?—to what extent?"
"That's what we'll get more light on in the morning. She made a play right after the will was filed fur probate, and I told Coplen to see jest what grounds she had, and I'd settle myself if she really had any and wa'n't unreasonable."
"It's just a question of blackmail, isn't it? What did you offer?"
"Well, she has a slew of letters—gettin' them is a matter of sentiment and keepin' the thing quiet. Then she claims to have a will made last December and duly witnessed, givin' her the One Girl outright, and a million cash. So you can see she ain't anything ordinary. I told Coplen to offer her a million cash for everything rather'n have any fuss. I was goin' to fix it up myself and keep quiet about it."
"And this telegram looks as if she wanted to fight."
"Well, mebbe that and mebbe it means that she knows wedon'twant to fight considerable more than a million dollars' worth."
"How much do you think she'll hold out for?"
"Can't tell; you don't know how big pills she's been smokin'."
"But, damn it all, that's robbery!"
"Yes—but it's her deal. You remember when Billy Brue was playin' seven-up with a stranger in the Two-Hump saloon over to Eden, and Chiddie Fogle the bartender called him up front and whispered that he'd jest seen the feller turn a jack from the bottom. 'Well,' says Billie, looking kind of reprovin' at Chiddie, 'it washis deal,wa'n't it?' Now it's sure this blond party's deal, and we better reckon ahead a mite before we start any roughhouse with her. You're due to find out if you hadn't better let her turn her jack and trust to gettin' even on your deal. You got a claim staked out in New York, and a scandal like this might handicap you in workin' it. And 'tain't as if hushin' her up was something we couldn't well afford. And think of how it would torment your ma to know of them doin's, and how 'twould shame Pish in company. Of course, rob'ry is rob'ry, but mebbe it's our play to be sporty like Billy Brue was."
"Pretty bad, isn't it? I never suspected pa was in anything of this sort."
"Well, I knew Dan'l J. purty well, and I spleened against some of his ways, but that's done fur. Now the folks out in this part of the country have come to expect it from a man like him. They don't mind so much. But them New York folks—well, I thought mebbe you'd like to take a clean bill of health when you settle in that centre of culture and enlightenment,—and remember your ma and Pish."
"Of course the exposure would mean a lot of cheap notoriety—"
"Well, and not so all-fired cheap at that, even if we beat. I've heard that lawyers are threatenin' to stop this thing of workin' entirely fur their health. There's that to weigh up."
"But I hate to be done."
"Well, wouldn't you be worse done if you let a matter of money, when you're reekin' with it, keep you from protectin' your pa's name? Do you want folks to snicker when they read that 'lovin' husband and father' business on his gravestone? My! I guess that young woman and her folks we met the other day'd be tickled to death to think they knew you after they'd read one of them Sunday newspaper stories with pictures of us all, and an extry fine one of the millionaire's dupe, basely enticed from her poor but honest millinery business in Spokane."
Percival shuddered.
"Well, let's see what Coplen has to say in the morning. If it can be settled within reason I suppose we better give up."
"That's my view now, and the estate bein' left as simply as it was, we can make in the payments unbeknownst to the folks."
They said good-night, and Percival went off to dream that a cab-horse of mammoth size was threatening to eat Miss Milbrey unless he drove it to Spokane Falls and bought two million millinery shops.
When he was jolted to consciousness they were in the switching yard at Butte, and the car was being coupled to the rear of the train made up for Montana City. He took advantage of the stop to shave. By the time he was dressed they were under way again, steaming out past the big smelters that palled the sky with heavy black smoke.
At the breakfast-table he found Uncle Peter and Coplen.
"I'm inclined," said the lawyer, as Percival peeled a peach, "to agree with your grandfather. This woman—if I may use the term—is one of the nerviest leg-pullers you're ever likely to strike."
"Lord! I should hope so," said Percival, with hearty emphasis.
"She studied your father and she knew him better than any of us, I judge. She certainly knew he was liable to go at any time, in exactly the way he did go. Why, she even had a doctor down from 'Frisco to Monterey when they were there about a year ago—introduced him as an old friend and had him stay around three days—just to give her a private professional opinion on his chances. As to this will, the signature is undoubtedly genuine, but my judgment is she procured it in some way on a blank sheet of paper and had the will written above on sheets like it. As it conforms to the real will word for word, excepting the bequests to her, she must have had access to that before having this one written. Of course that helps to make it look as if the testator had changed his mind only as to the one legatee—makes it look plausible and genuine. The witnesses were of course parties to the fraud, but I seriously question our ability to prove there was fraud. We think they procured a copy of the will we kept in our safe at Butte through the clerk that Tafe fired awhile back because of his drinking habits and because he was generally suspicious of him. Of course that's only surmise."
"But can't we fight it?" demanded Percival, hungrily attacking the crisp, brown little trout.
"Well, if we allowed it to come to a contest, we might expose the whole thing, and then again we might not. I tell you she's clever. She's shown it at every step. Now then, if you do fight," and the lawyer bristled, as if his fighting spirit were not too far under the control of his experience-born caution, "why, you have litigation that's bound to last for years, and it would be pretty expensive. I admit the case is tempting to a lawyer, but in the end you don't know what you'll get, especially with this woman. Why, do you know she's already, we've found, made up to two different judges that might be interested in any litigation she'd have, and she's cultivating others. The role of Joseph," he continued, "has never, to the best of my belief, been gracefully played in the world's history, and you may have noticed that the members of the Montana judiciary seem to be particularly awkward in their essays at it. In the end, then, you'll be out a lot of money even if you win. On the other hand, you have a chance to settle it for good and all, getting back everything—excepting the will, which, of course, we couldn't touch or even concede the existence of, but which would, if such an instrumentwereextant, be destroyed in the presence of a witness whose integrity I could rely upon—well—as upon my own. The letters which she has, and which I have seen, are also such as would tend to substantiate her claims and make the large bequests to her seem plausible—and they're also such letters as—I should infer—the family would rather wish not to be made public, as they would be if it came to trial."
"Jest what I told him," remarked Uncle Peter.
"What she'll hold out for I don't know, but I'd suggest this, that I meet her attorney and put the case exactly as I've found it out as to the will, letting them suspect, perhaps, that we have admissions of some sort from Hornby, the clerk, that might damage them. Then I can put it that, while we have no doubt of our ability to dispose of the will, we do wish to avoid the scandal that would ensue upon a publication of the letters they hold and the exposure of her relations with the testator, and that upon this purely sentimental ground we are willing to be bled to a reasonable extent. The One Girl is a valuable mine, but my opinion is she'll be glad to get two million if we seem reluctant to pay that much."
With that gusto of breakfast-appetite which arouses the envy of persons whose alimentation is not what it used to be, Percival had devoured ruddy peaches and purple grapes, trout that had breasted their swift native currents that very morning, crisp little curls of bacon, muffins that were mere flecks of golden foam, honey with the sweetness of a thousand fragrant blossoms, and coffee that was oily with richness. For a time he had seemed to make no headway against his hill-born appetite. The lawyer, who had broken his fast with a strip of dry toast and a cup of weak tea, had watched him with unfeigned and reminiscent interest. Grant, who stood watchful to replenish his plate, and whose pleasure it was to see him eat, regarded him with eyes fairly dewy from sympathy. To A. L. Jackson, the cook, on a trip for hot muffins, he observed, "He eats jes' like th' ole man. I suttin'y do love t' see that boy behave when he got his fresh moral appetite on him. He suttin'y do ca'y hisse'f mighty handsome."
With Coplen's final recommendation to settle Percival concluded his meal, and after surveying with fondly pleasant regret the devastation he had wrought, he leaned back in his chair and lighted a cigar. He was no longer in a mood to counsel fight, even though he disliked to submit.
"You know," he reminded Uncle Peter, "what that editorial in the Rock RipChampionsaid about me when we were over there: 'We opine that the Junior Bines will become a warm piece of human force if he isn't ground-sluiced too early in the game.' Well—and here I'm ground-sluiced the first rattle out of the box."
But the lawyer went over the case again point by point, and Percival finally authorised him to make the best settlement possible. He cared as little for the money as Uncle Peter did, large sum though it was. And then his mother and sister would be spared a great humiliation, and his own standing where most he prized it would not be jeopardised.
"Settle the best you can," was his final direction to Coplen. The lawyer left them at the next station to wait for a train back to Butte.