Farnham walked down the path to the gate, then turned to go to his own
house, with no very definite idea of what direction he was taking. The
interview he had just had was still powerfully affecting his senses, he
was conscious of no depression from the prompt and decided refusal he
had received. He was like a soldier in his first battle who has got a
sharp wound which does not immediately cripple him, the perception of
which is lost in the enjoyment of a new, keen, and enthralling
experience. His thoughts were full of his own avowal, of the beauty of
his young mistress, rather than of her coldness. Seeing his riding-whip
in his hand, he stared at it an instant, and then at his boots, with a
sudden recollection that he had intended to ride. He walked rapidly to
the stable, where his horse was still waiting, and rode at a brisk trot
out of the avenue for a few blocks, and then struck off into a sandy
path that led to the woods by the river-side.
As he rode, his thoughts were at first more of himself than of Alice.
He exulted over the discovery that he was in love as if some great and
unimagined good fortune had happened to him. "I am not past it, then,"
he said to himself, repeating the phrase which had leaped from his
heart when he saw Alice descending the stairs. "I hardly thought that
such a thing could ever happen to me. She is the only one." His
thoughts ran back to a night in Heidelberg, when he sat in the shadow
of the castle wall with a German student of his acquaintance, and
looked far over the valley at the lights of the town and the rippling
waves of the Neckar, silvered by the soft radiance of the summer moon.
"Poor Hammerstein! How he raved that night about little Bertha von
Eichholz. He called her _Die Einzige_ something like a thousand times.
It seemed an absurd thing to say; I knew dozens just like her, with
blue eyes and Gretchen braids. But Hammerstein meant it, for he shot
himself the week after her wedding with the assessor. But mine _is_ the
Only One--though she is not mine. I would rather love her without hope
than be loved by any other woman in the world."
A few days before he had been made happy by perceiving that she was no
longer a child; now he took infinite pleasure in the thought of her
youth; he tilled his mind and his senses with the image of her
freshness, her clear, pure color, the outline of her face and form.
"She is young and fragrant as spring; she has every bloom and charm of
body and soul," he said to himself, as he galloped over the shady
woodland road. In his exalted mood, he had almost forgotten how he had
left her presence. He delighted in his own roused and wakened passion,
as a devotee in his devotions, without considering what was to come of
it all. The blood was surging through his veins. He was too strong, his
love was too new and wonderful to him, to leave any chance for despair.
It was not that he did not consider himself dismissed. He felt that he
had played a great stake foolishly, and lost. But the love was there,
and it warmed and cheered his heart, like a fire in a great hall,
making even the gloom noble.
He was threading a bridle-path which led up a gentle ascent to a hill
overlooking the river, when his horse suddenly started back with a
snort of terror as two men emerged from the thicket and grasped at his
rein. He raised his whip to strike one of them down; the man dodged,
and his companion said, "None o' that, or I'll shoot your horse." The
sun had set, but it was yet light, and he saw that the fellow had a
cocked revolver in his hand.
"Well, what do you want?" he asked.
"I want you to stop where you are and go back," said the man sullenly.
"Why should I go back? My road lies the other way. You step aside and
let me pass."
"You can't pass this way. Go back, or I'll make you," the man growled,
shifting his pistol to his left hand and seizing Farnham's rein with
his right. His intention evidently was to turn the horse around and
start him down the path by which he had come. Farnham saw his
opportunity and struck the hand that held the pistol a smart blow. The
weapon dropped, but went off with a sharp report as it fell. The horse
reared and plunged, but the man held firmly to the rein. His companion,
joined by two or three other rough-looking men who rushed from the
thicket, seized the horse and held him firmly, and pulled Farnham from
the saddle. They attempted no violence and no robbery. The man who had
held the pistol, a black-visaged fellow with a red face and dyed
mustache, after rubbing his knuckles a moment, said: "Let's take it out
o' the ---- whelp!" But another, to whom the rest seemed to look as a
leader, said: "Go slow, Mr. Bowersox; we want no trouble here."
Farnham at this addressed the last speaker and said, "Can you tell me
what all this means? You don't seem to be murderers. Are you
horse-thieves?"
"Nothing of the kind," said the man. "We are Reformers."
Farnham gazed at him with amazement. He was a dirty-looking man, young
and sinewy, with long and oily hair and threadbare clothes, shiny and
unctuous. His eyes were red and furtive, and he had a trick of passing
his hand over his mouth while he spoke. His mates stood around him,
listening rather studiedly to the conversation. They seemed of the lower
class of laboring men. Their appearance was so grotesque, in connection
with the lofty title their chief had given them, that Farnham could not
help smiling, in spite of his anger.
"What is your special line of reform?" he asked,--"spelling, or civil
service?"
"We are Labor Reformers," said the spokesman. "We represent the toiling
millions against the bloated capitalists and grinding monopolies; we
believe that man is better----"
"Yes, no doubt," interrupted Farnham; "but how are you going to help
the toiling millions by stopping my horse on the highway?"
"We was holding a meeting which was kep' secret for reasons
satisfactory to ourselves. These two gentlemen was posted here to keep
out intruders from the lodge. If you had 'a' spoke civil to them, there
would have been no harm done. None will be done now if you want to go."
Farnham at once mounted his horse. "I would take it as a great favor,"
he said, "if you would give me your name and that of the gentleman with
the pistol. Where is he, by the way?" he continued. The man they called
Bowersox had disappeared from the group around the spokesman. Farnham
turned and saw him a little distance away directly behind him. He had
repossessed himself of his pistol and held it cocked in his hand.
"What do you want of our names?" the spokesman asked.
Farnham did not again lose sight of Bowersox. It occurred to him that
the interview might as well be closed. He therefore said, carelessly,
without turning:
"A man has a natural curiosity to know the names of new acquaintances.
But no matter, I suppose the police know you," and rode away.
Bowersox turned to Offitt and said, "Why in ---- did you let him go? I
could have knocked his head off and nobody knowed it."
"Yes," said Offitt, coolly. "And got hung for it."
"It would have been self-defence," said Bowersox. "He hit me first."
"Well, gentlemen," said Offitt, "that closes up Greenwood Lodge. We
can't meet in this grass any more. I don't suppose he knows any of us
by sight, or he'd have us up to-morrow."
"It was a piece of ---- nonsense, comin' out here, anyhow," growled
Bowersox, unwilling to be placated. "You haven't done a ---- thing but
lay around on the grass and eat peanuts and hear Bott chin."
"Brother Bott has delivered a splendid address on 'The Religion of
Nature,' and he couldn't have had a better hall than the Canopy to give
it under," said Offitt. "And now, gentlemen, we'd better get back our
own way."
As Farnham rode home he was not much puzzled by his adventure in the
woods. He remembered having belonged, when he was a child of ten, to a
weird and mysterious confraternity called "Early Druids," which met in
the depths of groves, with ill-defined purposes, and devoted the hours
of meeting principally to the consumption of confectionery. He had
heard for the past few months of the existence of secret organizations
of working-men--wholly outside of the trades-unions and unconnected
with them--and guessed at once that he had disturbed a lodge of one of
these clubs. His resentment did not last very long at the treatment to
which he had been subjected; but still he thought it was not a matter
of jest to have the roads obstructed by ruffians with theories in their
heads and revolvers in their hands, neither of which they knew how to
use. He therefore promised himself to consult with the chief of police
the next morning in regard to the matter.
As he rode along, thinking of the occurrence, he was dimly conscious of
a pleasant suggestion in something he had seen among the hazel brush,
and searching tenaciously in his recollection of the affair, it all at
once occurred to him that, among the faces of the men who came out of
the thicket in the scuffle, was that of the blonde-bearded, blue-eyed
young carpenter who had been at work in his library the day Mrs.
Belding and Alice lunched with him. He was pleased to find that the
pleasant association led him to memories of his love, but for a moment
a cloud passed over him at the thought of so frank and hearty a fellow
and such a good workman being in such company. "I must see if I cannot
get him out of it," he said to himself, and then reverted again to
thoughts of Alice.
Twilight was falling, and its melancholy influence was beginning to
affect him. He thought less and less of the joy of his love and more of
its hopelessness. By the time he reached his house he had begun to
confront the possibility of a life of renunciation, and, after the
manner of Americans of fortune who have no special ties, his mind
turned naturally to Europe. "I cannot stay here to annoy her," he
thought, and so began to plot for the summer and winter, and, in fancy,
was at the second cataract of the Nile before his horse's hoofs,
ringing on the asphalt of the stable-yard, recalled him to himself.
The next day, he was compelled to go to New York to attend to some
matters of business. Before taking the train, he laid his complaint of
being stopped on the road before the chief of police, who promised to
make vigorous inquisition. Farnham remained several days in New York,
and on his return, one warm, bright evening, he found his table
prepared and the grave Budsey waiting behind his chair.
He ate his dinner hastily and in silence, with no great zest. "You have
not forgot, sir," said Budsey, who was his external conscience in
social matters, "that you are going this evening to Mrs. Temple's?"
"I think I shall not go."
"Mr. Temple was here this afternoon, sir, which he said it was most
particular. I asked him would he call again. He said no, he was sure of
seeing you to-night. But it was most particular, he said."
Budsey spoke in the tone of solemn and respectful tyranny which he
always assumed when reminding Farnham of his social duties, and which
conveyed a sort of impression to his master that, if he did not do what
was befitting, his butler was quite capable of picking him up and
deferentially carrying him to the scene of festivity, and depositing
him on the door-step.
"What could Temple want to see me about 'most particular'?" Farnham
asked himself. "After all, I may as well pass the evening there as
anywhere."
Mr. Temple was one of the leading citizens of Buffland. He was the
vice-president of the great rolling-mill company, whose smoke darkened
the air by day and lighted up the skies at night as with the flames of
the nether pit. He was very tall and very slender, with reddish-brown
hair, eyes and mustache. Though a man of middle age, his trim figure,
his fashionable dress, and his clean shaven cheek and chin gave him an
appearance of youth. He was president of the local jockey club, and the
joy of his life was to take his place in the judges' stand, and sway
the destinies of the lean, keen-faced trainers who drove the trotting
horses. He had the eye of a lynx for the detection of any crookedness
in driving, and his voice would ring out over the track like the trump
of doom, conveying fines and penalties to the luckless trickster who
was trying to get some unfair advantage in the start. His voice, a deep
basso, rarely was heard, in fact, anywhere else. Though excessively
social, he was also extremely silent. He gave delightful dinner-parties
and a great many of them, but rarely spoke, except to recommend an
especially desirable wine to a favored guest. When he did speak,
however, his profanity was phenomenal. Every second word was an oath.
To those who were not shocked by it there was nothing more droll and
incongruous than to hear this quiet, reserved, well-dressed,
gentleman-like person pouring out, on the rare occasions when he talked
freely, in a deep, measured, monotonous tone, a flood of imprecations
which would have made a pirate hang his head. He had been, as a boy,
clerk on a Mississippi River steamboat, and a vacancy occurring in the
office of mate, he had been promoted to that place. His youthful face
and quiet speech did not sufficiently impose upon the rough deck-hands
of that early day. They had been accustomed to harsher modes of address,
and he saw his authority defied and in danger. So he set himself
seriously to work to learn to swear; and though at first it made his
heart shiver a little with horror and his cheek burn with shame, he
persevered, as a matter of business, until his execrations amazed the
roustabouts. When he had made a fortune, owned a line of steamboats, and
finally retired from the river, the habit had been fastened upon him,
and oaths became to him the only form of emphatic speech. The hardest
work he ever did in his life was, while courting his wife, a Miss Flora
Ballston, of Cincinnati, to keep from mingling his ordinary forms of
emphasis in his asseverations of affection. But after he was married,
and thrown more and more into the company of women, that additional
sense, so remarkable in men of his mould, came to him, and he never
lapsed, in their presence, into his natural way of speech. Perhaps this
was the easier, as he rarely spoke at all when they were by--not that
he was in the least shy or timid, but because they, as a rule, knew
nothing about stocks, or pig-iron, or wine, or trotting horses,--the
only subjects, in his opinion, which could interest any reasonable
creature.
When Farnham arrived at his house, it was already pretty well filled
with guests. Mr. and Mrs. Temple were at the door, shaking hands with
their friends as they arrived, she with a pleasant smile and word from
her black eyes and laughing mouth, and he in grave and speechless
hospitality.
"Good-evening, Mr. Farnham!" said the good-natured lady. "So glad to
see you. I began to be alarmed. So did the young ladies. They were
afraid you had not returned. Show yourself in the drawing-room and
dispel their fears. Oh, Mr. Harrison, I am so glad you resolved to stay
over."
Farnham gave way to the next comer, and said to Mr. Temple, who had
pressed his hand in silence:
"Did you want to see me for anything special to-day?"
Mrs. Temple looked up at the word, and her husband said:
"No; I merely wanted you to take a drive with me."
Another arrival claimed Mrs. Temple's attention, and as Farnham moved
away, Temple half-whispered in his ear, "Don't go away till I get a
chance to speak to you. There is merry and particular bloom of h---- to
pay."
The phrase, while vivid, was not descriptive, and Farnham could not
guess what it meant. Perhaps something had gone wrong in the jockey
club; perhaps Goldsmith Maid was off her feed; perhaps pig-iron had
gone up or down a dollar a ton. These were all subjects of profound
interest to Temple and much less to Farnham; so he waited patiently the
hour of revelation, and looked about the drawing-room to see who was
there.
It was the usual drawing-room of provincial cities. The sofas and
chairs were mostly occupied by married women, who drew a scanty
entertainment from gossip with each other, from watching the
proceedings of the spinsters, and chiefly, perhaps, from a
consciousness of good clothes. The married men stood grouped in corners
and talked of their every-day affairs. The young people clustered
together in little knots, governed more or less by natural selection--
only the veterans of several seasons pairing off into the discreet
retirement of stairs and hall angles. At the further end of the long
drawing-room, Farnham's eyes at last lighted upon the object of his
quest. Alice sat in the midst of a group of young girls who had
intrenched themselves in a corner of the room, and defied all the
efforts of skirmishing youths, intent upon flirtation, to dislodge
them. They seemed to be amusing themselves very well together, and the
correct young men in white cravats and pointed shoes came, chatted, and
drifted away. They were the brightest and gayest young girls of the
place; and it would have been hard to detect any local color in them.
Young as they were, they had all had seasons in Paris and in
Washington; some of them knew the life of that most foreign of all
capitals, New York. They nearly all spoke French and German better than
they did English, for their accent in those languages was very sweet
and winning in its incorrectness, while their English was high-pitched
and nasal, and a little too loud in company. They were as pretty as
girls are anywhere, and they wore dresses designed by Mr. Worth, or his
New York rivals, Loque and Chiffon; but they occasionally looked across
the room with candid and intelligent envy at maidens of less
pretensions, who were better dressed by the local artists.
Farnham was stopped at some distance from the pretty group by a buxom
woman standing near the open window, cooling the vast spread of her
bare shoulders in a current of air, which she assisted in its office
with a red-and-gold Japanese fan.
"Captain Farnham," she said, "when are you going to give that
lawn-tennis party you promised so long ago? My character for veracity
depends on it. I have told everybody it would be soon, and I shall be
disgraced if it is delayed much longer."
"That is the common lot of prophets, Mrs. Adipson," replied Farnham.
"You know they say in Wall Street that early and exclusive information
will ruin any man. But tell me, how is your club getting on?" he
continued disingenuously, for he had not the slightest interest in the
club; but he knew that once fairly started on the subject, Mrs. Adipson
would talk indefinitely, and he might stand there and torture his heart
and delight his eyes with the beauty of Alice Belding.
He carried his abstraction a little too far, however, for the good lady
soon perceived, from his wandering looks and vague replies, that she
was not holding his attention. So she pettishly released him after
following the direction of his eyes, and said, "There, I see you are
crazy to go and talk to Miss Dallas. I won't detain you. She _is_
awfully clever, I suppose, though she never took the trouble to be
brilliant in my presence; and she is pretty when she wears her hair
that way--I never liked those frizzes."
Farnham accepted his release with perhaps a little more gratitude than
courtesy, and moved away to take a seat which had just been vacated
beside Miss Dallas. He was filled with a boyish delight in Mrs.
Adipson's error. "That she should think I was worshipping Miss Dallas
from afar! Where do women keep their eyes? To think that anybody should
look at Miss Dallas when Alice Belding was sitting beside her." It was
pleasant to think, however, that the secret of his unhappy love was
safe. Nobody was gossiping about it, and using the name of his beloved
in idle conjectures. That was as it should be. His love was sacred from
rude comment. He could go and sit by Miss Dallas, so near his beloved
that he could see every breath move the lace on her bosom. He could
watch the color come and go on her young cheek. He could hear every
word her sweet voice uttered, and nobody would know he was conscious of
her existence.
Full of this thought, he sat down by Miss Dallas, who greeted him
warmly and turned her back upon her friends. By looking over her
shining white shoulder, he could see the clear, pure profile of Alice
just beyond, so near that he could have laid his hand on the crinkled
gold of her hair. He then gave himself up to that duplex act to which
all unavowed lovers are prone--the simultaneous secret worship of one
woman and open devotion to another. It never occurred to him that there
was anything unfair in this, or that it would be as reprehensible to
throw the name of Miss Dallas into the arena of gossip as that of Miss
Belding. That was not his affair; there was only one person in the
universe to be considered by him. And for Miss Dallas's part, she was
the last person in the world to suspect any one of being capable of the
treason and bad taste of looking over her shoulder at another woman.
She was, by common consent, the belle of Buffland. Her father was a
widowed clergyman, of good estate, of literary tendencies, of enormous
personal vanity, who had abandoned the pulpit in a quarrel with his
session several years before, and now occupied himself in writing poems
and sketches of an amorous and pietistic nature, which in his opinion
embodied the best qualities of Swinburne and Chalmers combined, but
which the magazines had thus far steadily refused to print.
He felt himself infinitely superior to the society of Buffland,--with
one exception,--and only remained there because his property was not
easily negotiable and required his personal care. The one exception was
his daughter Euphrasia. He had educated her after his own image. In
fact, there was a remarkable physical likeness between them, and he had
impressed upon her every trick of speech and manner and thought which
characterized himself. This is the young lady who turns her bright,
keen, beautiful face upon Farnham, with eyes eager to criticise, a
tongue quick to flatter and to condemn, a head stuffed full of poetry
and artificial passion, and a heart saved from all danger by its
idolatry of her father and herself.
"So glad to see you--one sees so little of you--I can hardly believe my
good fortune--how have I this honor?" All this in hard, rapid
sentences, with a brilliant smile.
Farnham thought of the last words of Mrs. Adipson, and said,
intrepidly, "Well, you know the poets better than I do, Miss Euphrasia,
and there is somebody who says, 'Beauty draws us by the simple way she
does her hair'--or something like it. That classic fillet was the first
thing I saw as I entered the room, and _me voici!_"
We have already said that the fault of Farnham's conversation with
women was the soldier's fault of direct and indiscriminate compliment.
But this was too much in Euphrasia's manner for her to object to it.
She laughed and said, "You deserve a _pensum_ of fifty lines for such a
misquotation. But, _dites-donc, monsieur_"--for French was one of her
favorite affectations, and when she found a man to speak it with, she
rode the occasion to death. There had been a crisis in the French
ministry a few days before, and she now began a voluble conversation on
the subject, ostensibly desiring Farnham's opinion on the crisis, but
really seizing the opportunity of displaying her familiarity with the
names of the new cabinet. She talked with great spirit and animation,
sometimes using her fine eyes point-blank upon Farnham, sometimes
glancing about to observe the effect she was creating; which gave
Farnham his opportunity to sigh his soul away over her shoulder to
where Alice was sweetly and placidly talking with her friends.
She had seen him come in, and her heart had stood still for a moment;
but her feminine instinct sustained her, and she had not once glanced
in his direction. But she was conscious of every look and action of
his; and when he approached the corner where she was sitting, she felt
as if a warm and embarrassing ray of sunshine was coming near her, She
was at once relieved and disappointed when he sat down by Miss Dallas.
She thought to herself: "Perhaps he will never speak to me again. It is
all my fault. I threw him away. But it was not my fault. It was his--it
was hers. I do not know what to think. He might have let me alone. I
liked him so much. I have only been a month out of school. What shall I
do if he never speaks to me again?" Yet such is the power which, for
self-defence, is given to young maidens that, while these tumultuous
thoughts were passing through her mind, she talked and laughed with the
girls beside her, and exchanged an occasional word with the young men
in pointed shoes, as if she had never known a grief or a care.
Mr. Furrey came up to say good-evening, with his most careful bow.
Lowering his voice, he said:
"There's Miss Dallas and Captain Farnham flirting in Italian."
"Are you sure they are flirting?"
"Of course they are. Just look at them!"
"If you are sure they are flirting, I don't think it is right to look
at them. Still, if you disapprove of it very much, you might speak to
them about it," she suggested, in her sweet, low, serious voice.
"Oh, that would never do for a man of my age," replied Furrey, in good
faith. He was very vain of his youth.
"What I wanted to speak to you about was this," he continued. "There is
going to be a Ree-gatta on the river the day after to-morrow, and I
hope you will grant me the favor of your company. The Wissagewissametts
are to row with the Chippagowaxems, and it will be the finest race this
year. Billy Raum, you know, is stroke of the------"
Her face was still turned to him, but she had ceased to listen. She was
lost in contemplation of what seemed to her a strange and tragic
situation. Farnham was so near that she could touch him, and yet so far
away that he was lost to her forever. No human being knew, or ever
would know, that a few days ago he had offered her his life, and she
had refused the gift. Nobody in this room was surprised that he did not
speak to her, or that she did not look at him. Nobody dreamed that he
loved her, and she would die, she resolved deliberately, before she
would let anybody know that she loved him. "For I do love him with my
whole heart," she said to herself, with speechless energy, which sent
the blood up to her temples, and left her, in another instant, as pale
as a lily.
Furrey at that moment had concluded his enticing account of the
regatta, and she had quietly declined to accompany him. He moved away,
indignant at her refusal, and puzzled by the blush which accompanied
it.
"What did that mean?" he mused. "I guess it was because I said the
crews rowed in short sleeves."
Farnham also saw the blush, in the midst of a disquisition which Miss
Dallas was delivering upon a new poem of Francois Coppee. He saw the
clear, warm color rise and subside like the throbbing of an auroral
light in a starry night. He thought he had never seen anything so
lovely, but he wondered "what that oaf could have said to make her
blush like that. Can it be possible that he----" His brow knitted with
anger and contempt.
"_Mais, qu'est-ce que vous avez donc?_" asked Euphrasia.
Farnham was saved from the necessity of an explanation by Mr. Temple,
who came up at that moment, and, laying a hand on Arthur's shoulder,
said:
"Now we will go into my den and have a glass of that sherry. I know no
less temptation than Tio Pepe could take you away from Miss Dallas."
"Thank you awfully," said the young lady. "Why should you not give Miss
Dallas herself an opportunity to decline the Tio Pepe?"
"Miss Dallas shall have some champagne in a few minutes, which she will
like very much better. Age and wickedness are required to appreciate
sherry."
"Ah! I congratulate your sherry; it is about to be appreciated," said
the deserted beauty, tartly, as the men moved away.
They entered the little room which Temple called his den, which was a
litter of letter-books, stock-lists, and the advertising pamphlets of
wine-merchants. The walls were covered with the portraits of trotting
horses; a smell of perpetual tobacco was in the air. Temple unlocked a
cupboard, and took out a decanter and some glasses. He filled two, and
gave one to Arthur, and held the other under his nose.
"Farnham," he said, with profound solemnity, "if you don't call that
the"--(I decline to follow him in the pyrotechnical combination of
oaths with which he introduced the next words)--"best sherry you ever
saw, then I'm a converted pacer with the ringbone."
Arthur drank his wine, and did not hesitate to admit all that its owner
had claimed for it. He had often wondered how such a man as Temple had
acquired such an unerring taste.
"Temple," he said, "how did you ever pick up this wine; and, if you
will excuse the question, how did you know it when you got it?"
Temple smiled, evidently pleased with the question. "You've been in
Spain, haven't you?"
"Yes," said Farnham.
"You know this is the genuine stuff, then?"
"No doubt of it."
"_How_ do you know?"
"The usual way--by seeing and drinking it at the tables of men who know
what they are about."
"Well, I have never been out of the United States, and yet I have
learned about wine in just the same way. I commenced in New Orleans
among the old Spanish and French Creoles, and have kept it up since,
here and there. I can see in five minutes whether a man knows anything
about his wine. If he does, I remember every word he says--that is my
strong point--head and tongue. I can't remember sermons and speeches,
but I can remember every syllable that Sam Ward said one night at your
grandfather's ten years ago; and if I have once tasted a good wine, I
never forget its fashion of taking hold."
This is an expurgated edition of what he said; his profanity kept up a
running accompaniment, like soft and distant rolling thunder.
"I got this wine at the sale of the Marquis of Santa Rita. I heard you
speak of him, I don't know how long ago, and the minute I read in the
paper that he had turned up his toes, I cabled the consul at Cadiz--you
know him, a wild Irishman named Calpin--to go to the sale of his
effects and get this wine. He cabled back, 'What shall I pay?' I
answered, 'Head your dispatch again: Get means get!' Some men have got
no sense. I did not mind the price of the wine, but it riled me to have
to pay for the two cables."
He poured out another glass and drank it drop by drop, getting, as he
said, "the worth of his money every time."
"Have some more?" he said to Farnham.
"No, thank you."
"Then I'll put it away. No use of giving it to men who would prefer
sixty-cent whiskey."
Having done this, he turned again to Farnham, and said, "I told you the
Old Boy was to pay. This is how. The labor unions have ordered a
general strike; day not fixed; they are holding meetings all over town
to-night. I'll know more about it after midnight."
"What will it amount to?" asked Farnham.
"Keen savey?" replied Temple, in his Mississippi River Spanish. "The
first thing will be the closing of the mills, and putting anywhere from
three thousand to ten thousand men on the streets. Then, if the strike
gains the railroad men, we shall be embargoed, ---- boiling, and
safety-valve riveted down."
Farnham had no thought of his imperilled interests. He began instantly
to conjecture what possibility of danger there might be of a
disturbance of public tranquillity, and to wish that the Beldings were
out of town.
"How long have you known this?" he asked.
"Only certainly for a few hours. The thing has been talked about more
or less for a month, but we have had our own men in the unions and did
not believe it would come to an extremity. To-day, however, they
brought ugly reports; and I ought to tell you that some of them concern
you."
Farnham lifted his eyebrows inquiringly.
"We keep men to loaf with the tramps and sleep in the boozing kens. One
of them told me to-day that at the first serious disturbance a lot of
bad eggs among the strikers--not the unionists proper, but a lot of
loose fish--intend to go through some of the principal houses on
Algonquin Avenue, and they mentioned yours as one of them."
"Thank you. I will try to be ready for them," said Farnham. But, cool
and tried as was his courage, he could not help remembering, with
something like dread, that Mrs. Belding's house was next to his own,
and that in case of riot the two might suffer together.
"There is one thing more I wanted to say," Mr. Temple continued, with a
slight embarrassment. "If I can be of any service to you, in case of a
row, I want to be allowed to help."
"As to that," Farnham said with a laugh, "you have your own house and
stables to look after, which will probably be as much as you can
manage."
"No," said Temple, earnestly, "that ain't the case. I will have to
explain to you"--and a positive blush came to his ruddy face. "They
won't touch me or my property. They say a man who uses such good horses
and such bad language as I do--that's just what they say--is one of
them, and sha'n't be racketed. I ain't very proud of my popularity, but
I am willing to profit by it and I'll come around and see you if
anything more turns up. Now, we'll go and give Phrasy Dallas that glass
of champagne."