"Go seek your fortune farther than at home."
Lawrence Colquhoun returned home to find himself famous. Do you
remember a certain book of travels written four or five years ago by
Lord Milton and Dr. Cheadle, in which frequent mention was made of
_un nomme_ Harris, an inquiring and doubting Christian, who wore
a pair of one-eyed spectacles and carried a volume of Paley? If that
Harris, thus made illustrious, had suddenly presented himself in a
London drawing-room while the book was enjoying his first run, he
would have met with much the same success which awaited Lawrence
Colquhoun. Harris let his opportunity go, and never showed up; perhaps
he is still wandering in the Rocky Mountains and pondering over Paley.
But Colquhoun appeared while the work of the Dragoon and the Younger
Son was still in the mouths of men and women. The liveliest thing in
that book is the account of Empire City and its Solitary. Everybody
whose memory can carry him back to last year's reading will remember
so much. And everybody who knew Colquhoun knew also that he was the
Solitary.
The Hermit; the man with the Golden Butterfly, now a millionaire; the
Golden Butterfly, now in a golden cage--all these actually present, so
to speak, in the flesh, and ready to witness if the authors lied. Why,
each was an advertisement of the book, and if the two Chinamen had
been added, probably people might be reading the work still. But they,
poor fellows, were defunct.
It annoyed Lawrence at first to find himself, like Cambuscan, with his
tale half told; and it was monotonous to be always asked whether it
was really true, and if he was the original Hermit. But everything
wears off; people in a week or two began to talk of something else,
and when Colquhoun met a man for the first time after his return he
would startle and confuse that man by anticipating his question. He
knew the outward signs of its approach. He would watch for the smile,
the look of curiosity, and the parting of the lips before they framed
the usual words:
"By the way, Colquhoun, is it actually true that you are the Hermit in
Jack Dunquerque's book?"
And while the questioner was forming the sentence, thinking it a
perfectly original one, never asked before, Lawrence would answer it
for him.
"It is perfectly true that I was the Hermit. Now talk of something
else."
For the rest he dropped into his old place. Time, matrimony, good and
evil hap, had made havoc among his set; but there was still some left.
Club-men come and club-men go; but the club goes on for ever.
Colquhoun had the character of being at once the laziest and the most
good-natured of men. A dangerous reputation, because gratitude is a
heavy burden to bear. If you do a man a good turn he generally finds
it too irksome to be grateful, and so becomes your enemy. But
Colquhoun cared little about his reputation.
When he disappeared, his friends for a day or two wondered where he
was. Then they ceased to talk of him. Now he was come back they were
glad to have him among them again. He was a pleasant addition. He was
not altered in the least--his eyes as clear from crows-feet, his beard
as silky, and his face as cheerful as ever. Some men's faces have got
no sun in them; they only light up with secret joy at a friend's
misfortunes; but this is an artificial fire, so to speak; it burns
with a baleful and lurid light. There are others whose faces are like
the weather in May, being uncertain and generally disagreeable. But
Lawrence Colquhoun's face always had a cheerful brightness. It came
from an easy temper, a good digestion, a comfortable income, and a
kindly heart.
Of course he made haste to find Gilead P. Beck. Jack Dunquerque, who
forgot at the time to make any mention of Phillis Fleming, informed
him of the Golden Butterfly's wonderful Luck. And they all dined
together--the Hermit, the Miner, the Dragoon, and the Younger Son.
They ran the Bear Hunt over again; they talked of Empire City, and
speculated on the two Chinamen; had they known the fate of the two,
their speculations might have taken a wider range.
"It was rough on me that time," said Gilead. "It had never been so
rough before, since I began bumming around."
They waited for more, and presently he began to tell them more. It was
the way of the man. He never intruded his personal experiences, being
for the most part a humble and even a retiring man; but when he was
among men he knew, he delighted in his recollections.
"Thirty-three years ago since I began. Twelve years old; the youngest
of the lot. And I wonder where the rest are. Hiram, I know, sat down
beside a rattle one morning. He remembered he had an appointment
somewhere else, and got up in a hurry. But too late, and his
constitution broke up suddenly. But for the rest I never did know what
became of them. When I go back with that almighty Pile of mine, they
will find me out, I dare say. Then they will bring along all their
friends and the rest of the poor relations. The poorer the relations
in our country, the more affectionate and self-denying they are."
"What did you do first?" asked Ladds.
"Ran messages; swept out stores; picked up trades; went handy boy to a
railway engineer; read what I could and when I could. When I was
twenty I kept a village school at a dollar a day. That was in Ohio.
I've been many things in my pilgrimage and tried to like them all, but
that was most too much for me. Boys _was_ gells, Captain Ladds. Boys
themselves are bad; but boys and gells mixed, they air--wal, it's a
curious and interestin' thing that, ever since that time, when I see
the gells snoopin' around with their eyes as soft as velvet, and their
sweet cheeks the colour of peach, I say to myself, 'Shoddy. It is
shoddy. I've seen you at school, and I know you better than you
think.' As the poet says, 'Let gells delight to bark and bite, for
'tis their nature to.' You believe, Mr. Dunquerque, because you are
young and inexperienced, that gells air soft. Air they? Soft as the
shell of a clam. And tender? Tender as hickory-nut. Air they gentle,
unselfish, and yieldin'? As rattlesnakes. The child is mother to the
woman, as the poet says; and school-gells grow up mostly into women.
They're sweet to look at; but when you've tended school, you feel to
know them. And then you don't yearn after them so much.
"There was once a boy I liked. He was eighteen, stood six foot high in
his stocking-boots, and his name was Pete Conkling. The lessons that
boy taught me were useful in my after life. We began it every morning
at five minutes past nine. Any little thing set us off. He might heave
a desk, or a row of books, or the slates of the whole class at my
head. I might go for him first. It was uncertain how it began, but the
fight was bound to be fought. The boys expected it, and it pleased the
gells. Sometimes it took me half an hour, and sometimes the whole
morning, to wallop that boy. When it was done, Pete would take his
place among the little gells, for he never could learn anything, and
school would begin. To see him after it was over sitting alongside of
little Hepzibah and Keziah, as meek as if he'd never heard of a black
eye, and never seen the human fist, was one of my few joys. I was fond
of Pete, and he was fond of me. Ways like his, gentlemen, kinder creep
round the heart of the lonely teacher. Very fond of him I grew. But I
got restless and dug out for another place; it was when I went on the
boards and became an actor, I think; and it was close on fifteen years
afterwards that I met him. Then he was lying on the slopes of
Gettysburg--it was after the last battle--and his eyes were turned up
to the sky; one of them, I noticed, was black; so that he had kept up
his fighting to the end. For he was stark dead, with a Confed. bullet
in his heart. Poor Pete!"
"You fought for the North?" asked one of his audience.
"I _was_ a Northerner," he replied simply. How could he help taking
his part in maintaining undivided that fair realm of America, which
every one of his countrymen love as Queen Elizabeth's yeoman loved the
realm of England? We have no yeomen now, which is perhaps one of the
reasons why we could not understand the cause of the North.
"I worried through that war without a scratch. We got wary towards the
end, and let the bullets drop into trunks of trees for choice. And
when it was over, I was five-and-thirty, and had to begin the world
again. But I was used to it."
"And you enjoyed a wandering life?"
"Yes, I believe I did enjoy barking up a new tree. There's a breed of
Americans who can't keep still. I belong to that breed. We do not like
to sit by a river and watch the water flow; we get tired livin' in the
village lookin' in each other's faces while the seasons come round
like the hands of a clock. There's a mixture among us of Dutch and
German and English to sit quiet and till the ground. They get their
heels well grounded in the clay, and there they stick."
"Where do you get it from, the wandering blood?" asked Colquhoun.
Gilead P. Beck became solemn.
"There air folk among us," he whispered, "Who hold that we are
descended from the Ten Tribes. I don't say those folk are right, but I
do say that it sometimes looks powerful like as if they were.
Descended from the Ten Tribes, they say, and miraculously kept
separate from the English among whom they lived. Lost their own
language--which, if it was Hebrew, I take it was rather a good thing
to be quit of--and speakin' English, like the rest. What were the
tribes? Wanderers, mostly. Father Abraham went drivin' his cows and
his camels up and down the country. Isaac went around on the rove, and
Jacob couldn't sit still. Very well, then. Didn't their children walk
about, tryin' one location after another, for forty years, and always
feelin' after a bit as if there must be a softer plank farther on? And
when they'd be settled down for a few hundred years, didn't they get
up and disappear altogether? Mark you, they _didn't want_ to settle.
And where are the Ten Tribes now? For they never went back; you may
look Palesteen through and through, and nary a tribe."
He looked round asking the question generally, but no one ventured to
answer it.
"Our folk, who have mostly gut religion, point to themselves. They
say; 'Look at us; we air the real original Wanderers.' Look at us all
over the world. What are the hotels full of? Full of Americans. We are
everywhere. We eat up the milk and the honey, and we tramp off on
ramble again. But there's more points of gen'ral resemblance. We like
bounce and bunkum; so did those people down in Syria; we like to pile
up the dollars; so did the Jews; they liked to set up their kings and
pull them down again; we pursue the same generous and confiding policy
with our presidents; and if they were stiff-necked and backsliding, we
are as stiff-necked and backsliding as any generation among all the
lot."
"A very good case, indeed," said Colquhoun.
"I did not think so, sir, till lately. But it's been borne in upon me
with the weight and force that can't be resisted, and I believe it
now. The lost Ten Tribes, gentlemen, air now located in the United
States. I am certain of it from my own case. Do any of you think--I
put it to you seriously--that such an inseck as the Golden Butterfly
would have been thrown away upon an outsider? It is likely that such
all-fired Luck as mine would have been wasted on a man who didn't
belong to the Chosen People? No, sir; I am of the children of Israel;
and I freeze to that."