IRONS IN THE FIRE
_Opes Strepitumque_
The food of the body differs not so greatly for the fool or the sage,
the elephant or the cock-sparrow; and similar chemical elements,
variously disguised, support all mortals. A brief study of Pinkerton in
his new setting convinced me of a kindred truth about that other and
mental digestion by which we extract what is called "fun for our money"
out of life. In the same spirit as a schoolboy deep in Mayne Reid
handles a dummy gun and crawls among imaginary forests, Pinkerton sped
through Kearney Street upon his daily business, representing to himself
a highly coloured part in life's performance, and happy for hours if he
should have chanced to brush against a millionaire. Reality was his
romance; he gloried to be thus engaged: he wallowed in his business.
Suppose a man to dig up a galleon on the Coromandel coast, his rakish
schooner keeping the while an offing under easy sail, and he, by the
blaze of a great fire of wreckwood, to measure ingots by the bucketful
on the uproarious beach; such an one might realise a greater material
spoil; he should have no more profit of romance than Pinkerton when he
cast up his weekly balance-sheet in a bald office. Every dollar gained
was like something brought ashore from a mysterious deep; every venture
made was like a diver's plunge; and as he thrust his bold hand into the
plexus of the money-market he was delightedly aware of how he shook the
pillars of existence, turned out men, as at a battle-cry, to labour in
far countries, and set the gold twitching in the drawers of
millionaires.
I could never fathom the full extent of his speculations; but there were
five separate businesses which he avowed and carried like a banner. The
_Thirteen Star Golden State Brandy, Warranted Entire_ (a very flagrant
distillation) filled a great part of his thoughts, and was kept before
the public in an eloquent but misleading treatise, "Why Drink French
Brandy? A Word to the Wise." He kept an office for advertisers,
counselling, designing, acting as middleman with printers and
bill-stickers, for the inexperienced or the uninspired: the dull
haberdasher came to him for ideas, the smart theatrical agent for his
local knowledge, and one and all departed with a copy of his pamphlet,
"How, When, and Where; or, The Advertiser's Vade-Mecum." He had a tug
chartered every Saturday afternoon and night, carried people outside the
Heads, and provided them with lines and bait for six hours' fishing, at
the rate of five dollars a person. I am told that some of them
(doubtless adroit anglers) made a profit on the transaction.
Occasionally he bought wrecks and condemned vessels; these latter (I
cannot tell you how) found their way to sea again under aliases, and
continued to stem the waves triumphantly enough under the colours of
Bolivia or Nicaragua. Lastly, there was a certain agricultural engine,
glorying in a great deal of vermilion and blue paint, and filling (it
appeared) a "long-felt want," in which his interest was something like a
tenth.
This for the face or front of his concerns. "On the outside," as he
phrased it, he was variously and mysteriously engaged. No dollar slept
in his possession; rather, he kept all simultaneously flying, like a
conjurer with oranges. My own earnings, when I began to have a share, he
would but show me for a moment, and disperse again, like those illusive
money gifts which are flashed in the eyes of childhood, only to be
entombed in the missionary-box. And he would come down radiant from a
weekly balance-sheet, clap me on the shoulder, declare himself a winner
by Gargantuan figures, and prove destitute of a quarter for a drink.
"What on earth have you done with it?" I would ask.
"Into the mill again; all re-invested!" he would cry, with infinite
delight. "Investment" was ever his word. He could not bear what he
called gambling. "Never touch stocks, Loudon," he would say; "nothing
but legitimate business." And yet, Heaven knows, many an indurated
gambler might have drawn back appalled at the first hint of some of
Pinkerton's investments! One which I succeeded in tracking home, an
instance for a specimen, was a seventh share in the charter of a certain
ill-starred schooner bound for Mexico--to smuggle weapons on the one
trip, and cigars upon the other. The latter end of this enterprise,
involving (as it did) shipwreck, confiscation, and a lawsuit with the
underwriters, was too painful to be dwelt upon at length. "It's proved a
disappointment," was as far as my friend would go with me in words; but
I knew, from observation, that the fabric of his fortunes tottered. For
the rest, it was only by accident I got wind of the transaction; for
Pinkerton, after a time, was shy of introducing me to his arcana: the
reason you are to hear presently.
The office which was (or should have been) the point of rest for so many
evolving dollars stood in the heart of the city--a high and spacious
room, with many plate-glass windows. A glazed cabinet of polished
red-wood offered to the eye a regiment of some two hundred bottles
conspicuously labelled. These were all charged with Pinkerton's Thirteen
Star, although from across the room it would have required an expert to
distinguish them from the same number of bottles of Courvoisier. I used
to twit my friend with this resemblance, and propose a new edition of
the pamphlet, with the title thus improved, "Why Drink French Brandy,
When We give You the same Labels?" The doors of the cabinet revolved
all day upon their hinges; and if there entered any one who was a
stranger to the merits of the brand, he departed laden with a bottle.
When I used to protest at this extravagance, "My dear Loudon," Pinkerton
would cry, "you don't seem to catch on to business principles! The prime
cost of the spirit is literally nothing. I couldn't find a cheaper
advertisement if I tried." Against the side-post of the cabinet there
leaned a gaudy umbrella, preserved there as a relic. It appears that
when Pinkerton was about to place Thirteen Star upon the market, the
rainy season was at hand. He lay dark, almost in penury, awaiting the
first shower, at which, as upon a signal, the main thoroughfares became
dotted with his agents, vendors of advertisements; and the whole world
of San Francisco, from the business-man fleeing for the ferry-boat, to
the lady waiting at the corner for her car, sheltered itself under
umbrellas with this strange device: _Are you wet? Try Thirteen Star._
"It was a mammoth boom," said Pinkerton, with a sigh of delighted
recollection. "There wasn't another umbrella to be seen. I stood at this
window, Loudon, feasting my eyes; and I declare, I felt like
Vanderbilt." And it was to this neat application of the local climate
that he owed, not only much of the sale of Thirteen Star, but the whole
business of his advertising agency.
The large desk (to resume our survey of the office) stood about the
middle, knee-deep in stacks of handbills and posters of "Why Drink
French Brandy?" and "The Advertiser's Vade-Mecum." It was flanked upon
the one hand by two female type-writers, who rested not between the
hours of nine and four, and upon the other by a model of the
agricultural machine. The walls, where they were not broken by
telephone-boxes and a couple of photographs--one representing the wreck
of the _James L. Moody_ on a bold and broken coast, the other the
Saturday tug alive with amateur fishers--almost disappeared under
oil-paintings gaudily framed. Many of these were relics of the Latin
Quarter, and I must do Pinkerton the justice to say that none of them
were bad, and some had remarkable merit. They went off slowly, but for
handsome figures; and their places were progressively supplied with the
work of local artists. These last it was one of my first duties to
review and criticise. Some of them were villainous, yet all were
saleable. I said so; and the next moment saw myself, the figure of a
miserable renegade, bearing arms in the wrong camp. I was to look at
pictures thenceforward, not with the eye of the artist, but the dealer;
and I saw the stream widen that divided me from all I loved.
"Now, Loudon," Pinkerton had said, the morning after the lecture,--"now,
Loudon, we can go at it shoulder to shoulder. This is what I have longed
for: I wanted two heads and four arms; and now I have 'em. You'll find
it's just the same as art--all observation and imagination only more
movement. Just wait till you begin to feel the charm!"
I might have waited long. Perhaps I lack a sense; for our whole
existence seemed to me one dreary bustle, and the place we bustled in
fitly to be called the Place of Yawning. I slept in a little den behind
the office; Pinkerton, in the office itself, stretched on a patent sofa
which sometimes collapsed, his slumbers still further menaced by an
imminent clock with an alarm. Roused by this diabolical contrivance, we
rose early, went forth early to breakfast, and returned by nine to what
Pinkerton called work, and I distraction. Masses of letters must be
opened, read, and answered; some by me at a subsidiary desk which had
been introduced on the morning of my arrival; others by my bright-eyed
friend, pacing the room like a caged lion as he dictated to the tinkling
type-writers. Masses of wet proof had to be overhauled and scrawled upon
with a blue pencil--"rustic"; "six-inch caps"; "bold spacing here"; or
sometimes terms more fervid--as, for instance, this (which I remember
Pinkerton to have spirted on the margin of an advertisement of Soothing
Syrup), "Throw this all down. Have you never printed an advertisement?
I'll be round in half-an-hour." The ledger and sale-book, besides, we
had always with us. Such was the backbone of our occupation, and
tolerable enough; but the far greater proportion of our time was
consumed by visitors--whole-souled, grand fellows no doubt, and as sharp
as a needle, but to me unfortunately not diverting. Some were apparently
half-witted, and must be talked over by the hour before they could reach
the humblest decision, which they only left the office to return again
(ten minutes later) and rescind. Others came with a vast show of hurry
and despatch, but I observed it to be principally show. The agricultural
model, for instance, which was practicable, proved a kind of fly-paper
for these busybodies. I have seen them blankly turn the crank of it for
five minutes at a time, simulating (to nobody's deception) business
interest: "Good thing this, Pinkerton? Sell much of it? Ha! Couldn't use
it, I suppose, as a medium of advertisement for my article?"--which was
perhaps toilet soap. Others (a still worse variety) carried us to
neighbouring saloons to dice for cocktails and (after the cocktails were
paid) for dollars on a corner of the counter. The attraction of dice for
all these people was, indeed, extraordinary: at a certain club where I
once dined in the character of "my partner, Mr. Dodd," the dice-box came
on the table with the wine, an artless substitute for after-dinner wit.
Of all our visitors, I believe I preferred Emperor Norton; the very
mention of whose name reminds me I am doing scanty justice to the folks
of San Francisco. In what other city would a harmless madman who
supposed himself emperor of the two Americas have been so fostered and
encouraged? Where else would even the people of the streets have
respected the poor soul's illusion? Where else would bankers and
merchants have received his visits, cashed his cheques, and submitted
to his small assessments? Where else would he have been suffered to
attend and address the exhibition days of schools and colleges? Where
else, in God's green earth, have taken his pick of restaurants,
ransacked the bill of fare, and departed scatheless? They tell me he was
even an exacting patron, threatening to withdraw his custom when
dissatisfied; and I can believe it, for his face wore an expression
distinctly gastronomical. Pinkerton had received from this monarch a
cabinet appointment; I have seen the brevet, wondering mainly at the
good-nature of the printer who had executed the forms, and I think my
friend was at the head either of foreign affairs or education: it
mattered, indeed, nothing, the prestation being in all offices
identical. It was at a comparatively early date that I saw Jim in the
exercise of his public functions. His Majesty entered the office--a
portly, rather flabby man, with the face of a gentleman, rendered
unspeakably pathetic and absurd by the great sabre at his side and the
peacock's feather in his hat.
"I have called to remind you, Mr. Pinkerton, that you are somewhat in
arrear of taxes," he said, with old-fashioned, stately courtesy.
"Well, your Majesty, what is the amount?" asked Jim; and, when the
figure was named (it was generally two or three dollars), paid upon the
nail and offered a bonus in the shape of Thirteen Star.
"I am always delighted to patronise native industries," said Norton the
First. "San Francisco is public-spirited in what concerns its emperor;
and indeed, sir, of all my domains, it is my favourite city."
"Come," said I, when he was gone, "I prefer that customer to the lot."
"It's really rather a distinction," Jim admitted. "I think it must have
been the umbrella racket that attracted him."
We were distinguished under the rose by the notice of other and greater
men. There were days when Jim wore an air of unusual capacity and
resolve, spoke with more brevity, like one pressed for time, and took
often on his tongue such phrases as "Longhurst told me so this morning,"
or, "I had it straight from Longhurst himself." It was no wonder, I used
to think, that Pinkerton was called to council with such Titans; for the
creature's quickness and resource were beyond praise. In the early days
when he consulted me without reserve, pacing the room, projecting,
ciphering, extending hypothetical interests, trebling imaginary capital,
his "engine" (to renew an excellent old word) labouring full steam
ahead, I could never decide whether my sense of respect or entertainment
were the stronger. But these good hours were designed to curtailment.
"Yes, it's smart enough," I once observed. "But, Pinkerton, do you think
it's honest?"
"You don't think it's honest?" he wailed. "O dear me, that ever I should
have heard such an expression on your lips."
At sight of his distress I plagiarised unblushingly from Myner. "You
seem to think honesty as simple as Blind Man's Buff," said I. "It's a
more delicate affair than that: delicate as any art."
"O well, at that rate!" he exclaimed, with complete relief; "that's
casuistry."
"I am perfectly certain of one thing; that what you propose is
dishonest," I returned.
"Well, say no more about it; that's settled," he replied.
Thus, almost at a word, my point was carried. But the trouble was that
such differences continued to recur, until we began to regard each other
with alarm. If there were one thing Pinkerton valued himself upon, it
was his honesty; if there were one thing he clung to, it was my good
opinion; and when both were involved, as was the case in these
commercial cruces, the man was on the rack. My own position, if you
consider how much I owed him, how hateful is the trade of fault-finder,
and that yet I lived and fattened on these questionable operations, was
perhaps equally distressing. If I had been more sterling or more
combative, things might have gone extremely far. But, in truth, I was
just base enough to profit by what was not forced on my attention,
rather than seek scenes; Pinkerton quite cunning enough to avail himself
of my weakness; and it was a relief to both when he began to involve his
proceedings in a decent mystery.
Our last dispute, which had a most unlooked-for consequence, turned on
the refitting of condemned ships. He had bought a miserable hulk, and
came, rubbing his hands, to inform me she was already on the slip, under
a new name, to be repaired. When first I had heard of this industry I
suppose I scarcely comprehended; but much discussion had sharpened my
faculties, and now my brow became heavy.
"I can be no party to that, Pinkerton," said I.
He leaped like a man shot. "What next?" he cried. "What ails you anyway?
You seem to me to dislike everything that's profitable."
"This ship has been condemned by Lloyd's agent," said I.
"But I tell you it's a deal. The ship's in splendid condition; there's
next to nothing wrong with her but the garboard streak and the
sternpost. I tell you, Lloyd's is a ring, like everybody else; only it's
an English ring, and that's what deceives you. If it was American, you
would be crying it down all day. It's Anglomania--common Anglomania," he
cried, with growing irritation.
"I will not make money by risking men's lives," was my ultimatum.
"Great Caesar! isn't all speculation a risk? Isn't the fairest kind of
shipowning to risk men's lives? And mining--how's that for risk? And
look at the elevator business--there's danger if you like! Didn't I take
my risk when I bought her? She might have been too far gone; and where
would I have been? Loudon," he cried, "I tell you the truth: you're too
full of refinement for this world!"
"I condemn you out of your own lips," I replied. "'The fairest kind of
shipowning,' says you. If you please, let us only do the fairest kind of
business."
The shot told; the Irrepressible was silenced; and I profited by the
chance to pour in a broadside of another sort. He was all sunk in
money-getting, I pointed out; he never dreamed of anything but dollars.
Where were all his generous, progressive sentiments? Where was his
culture? I asked. And where was the American Type?
"It's true, Loudon," he cried striding up and down the room, and wildly
scouring at his hair. "You're perfectly right. I'm becoming
materialised. O, what a thing to have to say, what a confession to make!
Materialised! Me! Loudon, this must go on no longer. You've been a loyal
friend to me once more; give me your hand--you've saved me again. I must
do something to rouse the spiritual side; something desperate; study
something, something dry and tough. What shall it be? Theology? Algebra?
What's algebra?"
"It's dry and tough enough," said I; "_a^2 + 2ab + b^2._"
"It's stimulating, though?" he inquired.
I told him I believed so, and that it was considered fortifying to
Types.
"Then that's the thing for me. I'll study algebra," he concluded.
The next day, by application to one of his typewriting women, he got
word of a young lady, one Miss Mamie McBride, who was willing and able
to conduct him in these bloomless meadows; and, her circumstances being
lean, and terms consequently moderate, he and Mamie were soon in
agreement for two lessons in the week. He took fire with unexampled
rapidity; he seemed unable to tear himself away from the symbolic art;
an hour's lesson occupied the whole evening; and the original two was
soon increased to four, and then to five. I bade him beware of female
blandishments. "The first thing you know, you'll be falling in love with
the algebraist," said I.
"Don't say it, even in jest," he cried. "She's a lady I revere. I could
no more lay a hand upon her than I could upon a spirit. Loudon, I don't
believe God ever made a purer-minded woman."
Which appeared to me too fervent to be reassuring.
Meanwhile I had been long expostulating with my friend upon a different
matter. "I'm the fifth wheel," I kept telling him. "For any use I am, I
might as well be in Senegambia. The letters you give me to attend to
might be answered by a sucking child. And I tell you what it is,
Pinkerton; either you've got to find me some employment, or I'll have to
start in and find it for myself."
This I said with a corner of my eye in the usual quarter, towards the
arts, little dreaming what destiny was to provide.
"I've got it, Loudon," Pinkerton at last replied. "Got the idea on the
Potrero cars. Found I hadn't a pencil, borrowed one from the conductor,
and figured on it roughly all the way in town. I saw it was the thing at
last; gives you a real show. All your talents and accomplishments come
in. Here's a sketch advertisement. Just run your eye over it. '_Sun,
Ozone and Music!_ PINKERTON'S HEBDOMADARY PICNICS!' (That's a good,
catching phrase, 'hebdomadary,' though it's hard to say. I made a note
of it when I was looking in the dictionary how to spell _hectagonal_.
'Well, you're a boss word,' I said. 'Before you're very much older, I'll
have you in type as long as yourself.' And here it is, you see.) '_Five
dollars a head, and ladies free_. MONSTER OLIO OF ATTRACTIONS.' (How
does that strike you?) '_Free luncheon under the greenwood tree. Dance
on the elastic sward. Home again in the Bright Evening Hours_. _Manager
and Honorary Steward, H. Loudon Dodd, Esq., the well-known
connoisseur._'"
Singular how a man runs from Scylla to Charybdis! I was so intent on
securing the disappearance of a single epithet that I accepted the rest
of the advertisement and all that it involved without discussion. So it
befell that the words "well-known connoisseur" were deleted; but that H.
Loudon Dodd became manager and honorary steward of Pinkerton's
Hebdomadary Picnics, soon shortened by popular consent, to The
Dromedary.
By eight o'clock, any Sunday morning, I was to be observed by an
admiring public on the wharf. The garb and attributes of sacrifice
consisted of a black frockcoat, rosetted, its pockets bulging with
sweetmeats and inferior cigars, trousers of light blue, a silk hat like
a reflector, and a varnished wand. A goodly steamer guarded my one
flank, panting and throbbing, flags fluttering fore and aft of her,
illustrative of the Dromedary and patriotism. My other flank was covered
by the ticket-office, strongly held by a trusty character of the Scots
persuasion, rosetted like his superior, and smoking a cigar to mark the
occasion festive. At half-past, having assured myself that all was well
with the free luncheons, I lit a cigar myself, and awaited the strains
of the "Pioneer Band." I had never to wait long--they were German and
punctual--and by a few minutes after the half-hour I would hear them
booming down street with a long military roll of drums, some score of
gratuitous asses prancing at the head in bearskin hats and buckskin
aprons, and conspicuous with resplendent axes. The band, of course, we
paid for; but so strong is the San Franciscan passion for public
masquerade, that the asses (as I say) were all gratuitous, pranced for
the love of it, and cost us nothing but their luncheon.
The musicians formed up in the bows of my steamer, and struck into a
skittish polka; the asses mounted guard upon the gangway and the
ticket-office; and presently after, in family parties of father,
mother, and children, in the form of duplicate lovers or in that of
solitary youth, the public began to descend upon us by the carful at a
time: four to six hundred perhaps, with a strong German flavour, and all
merry as children. When these had been shepherded on board, and the
inevitable belated two or three had gained the deck amidst the cheering
of the public, the hawser was cast off, and we plunged into the bay.
And now behold the honorary steward in the hour of duty and glory; see
me circulate amid the crowd, radiating affability and laughter, liberal
with my sweetmeats and cigars. I say unblushing things to hobble-dehoy
girls, tell shy young persons this is the married people's boat,
roguishly ask the abstracted if they are thinking of their sweethearts,
offer paterfamilias a cigar, am struck with the beauty and grow curious
about the age of mamma's youngest, who (I assure her gaily) will be a
man before his mother; or perhaps it may occur to me, from the sensible
expression of her face, that she is a person of good counsel, and I ask
her earnestly if she knows any particularly pleasant place on the
Saucelito or San Rafael coast--for the scene of our picnic is always
supposed to be uncertain. The next moment I am back at my giddy badinage
with the young ladies, wakening laughter as I go, and leaving in my wake
applausive comments of "Isn't Mr. Dodd a funny gentleman?" and "O, I
think he's just too nice!"
An hour having passed in this airy manner, I start upon my rounds
afresh, with a bag full of coloured tickets all with pins attached, and
all with legible inscriptions: "Old Germany," "California," "True Love,"
"Old Fogies," "La Belle France," "Green Erin," "The Land of Cakes,"
"Washington," "Blue Jay," "Robin Red-Breast"--twenty of each
denomination; for when it comes to the luncheon we sit down by twenties.
These are distributed with anxious tact--for, indeed, this is the most
delicate part of my functions--but outwardly with reckless unconcern,
amidst the gayest flutter and confusion; and are immediately after
sported upon hats and bonnets, to the extreme diffusion of cordiality,
total strangers hailing each other by "the number of their mess"--so we
humorously name it--and the deck ringing with cries of, "Here, all Blue
Jays to the rescue!" or, "I say, am I alone in this blame' ship? Ain't
there no more Californians?"
By this time we are drawing near to the appointed spot. I mount upon the
bridge, the observed of all observers.
"Captain," I say, in clear, emphatic tones, heard far and wide, "the
majority of the company appear to be in favour of the little cove beyond
One-Tree Point."
"All right, Mr. Dodd," responds the captain heartily; "all one to me. I
am not exactly sure of the place you mean; but just you stay here and
pilot me."
I do, pointing with my wand. I do pilot him, to the inexpressible
entertainment of the picnic, for I am (why should I deny it?) the
popular man. We slow down off the mouth of a grassy valley, watered by a
brook and set in pines and redwoods. The anchor is let go, the boats are
lowered--two of them already packed with the materials of an impromptu
bar--and the Pioneer Band, accompanied by the resplendent asses, fill
the other, and move shoreward to the inviting strains of "Buffalo Gals,
won't you come out to-night?" It is a part of our programme that one of
the asses shall, from sheer clumsiness, in the course of this
embarkation, drop a dummy axe into the water, whereupon the mirth of the
picnic can hardly be assuaged. Upon one occasion the dummy axe floated,
and the laugh turned rather the wrong way.
In from ten to twenty minutes the boats are alongside again, the messes
are marshalled separately on the deck, and the picnic goes ashore, to
find the band and the impromptu bar awaiting them. Then come the
hampers, which are piled up on the beach, and surrounded by a stern
guard of stalwart asses, axe on shoulder. It is here I take my place,
note-book in hand, under a banner bearing the legend, "Come here for
hampers." Each hamper contains a complete outfit for a separate
twenty--cold provender, plates, glasses, knives, forks, and spoons. An
agonised printed appeal from the fevered pen of Pinkerton, pasted on the
inside of the lid, beseeches that care be taken of the glass and silver.
Beer, wine, and lemonade are flowing already from the bar, and the
various clans of twenty file away into the woods, with bottles under
their arms and the hampers strung upon a stick. Till one they feast
there, in a very moderate seclusion, all being within earshot of the
band. From one till four dancing takes place upon the grass; the bar
does a roaring business; and the honorary steward, who has already
exhausted himself to bring life into the dullest of the messes, must now
indefatigably dance with the plainest of the women. At four a bugle-call
is sounded, and by half-past behold us on board again--Pioneers,
corrugated iron bar, empty bottles, and all; while the honorary steward,
free at last, subsides into the captain's cabin over a brandy and soda
and a book. Free at last, I say; yet there remains before him the
frantic leave-takings at the pier, and a sober journey up to Pinkerton's
office with two policemen and the day's takings in a bag.
What I have here sketched was the routine. But we appealed to the taste
of San Francisco more distinctly in particular fetes. "Ye Olde Time
Pycke-Nycke," largely advertised in hand-bills beginning "Oyez, Oyez!"
and largely frequented by knights, monks, and cavaliers, was drowned out
by unseasonable rain, and returned to the city one of the saddest
spectacles I ever remember to have witnessed. In pleasing contrast, and
certainly our chief success, was "The Gathering of the Clans," or
Scottish picnic. So many milk-white knees were never before
simultaneously exhibited in public, and, to judge by the prevalence of
"Royal Stewart" and the number of eagles' feathers, we were a high-born
company. I threw forward the Scottish flank of my own ancestry, and
passed muster as a clansman with applause. There was, indeed, but one
small cloud on this red-letter day. I had laid in a large supply of the
national beverage in the shape of the "Rob Roy MacGregor O' Blend,
Warranted Old and Vatted"; and this must certainly have been a generous
spirit, for I had some anxious work between four and half-past,
conveying on board the inanimate forms of chieftains.
To one of our ordinary festivities, where he was the life and soul of
his own mess, Pinkerton himself came incognito, bringing the algebraist
on his arm. Miss Mamie proved to be a well-enough-looking mouse, with a
large limpid eye, very good manners, and a flow of the most correct
expressions I have ever heard upon the human lip. As Pinkerton's
incognito was strict, I had little opportunity to cultivate the lady's
acquaintance, but I was informed afterwards that she considered me "the
wittiest gentleman she had ever met." "The Lord mend your taste in wit!"
thought I; but I cannot conceal that such was the general impression.
One of my pleasantries even went the round of San Francisco, and I have
heard it (myself all unknown) bandied in saloons. To be unknown began at
last to be a rare experience; a bustle woke upon my passage, above all,
in humble neighbourhoods. "Who's that?" one would ask, and the other
would cry, "That! why, Dromedary Dodd!" or, with withering scorn, "Not
know Mr. Dodd of the picnics? Well!" and, indeed, I think it marked a
rather barren destiny; for our picnics, if a trifle vulgar, were as gay
and innocent as the age of gold. I am sure no people divert themselves
so easily and so well, and even with the cares of my stewardship I was
often happy to be there.
Indeed, there were but two drawbacks in the least considerable. The
first was my terror of the hobble-dehoy girls, to whom (from the
demands of my situation) I was obliged to lay myself so open. The other,
if less momentous, was more mortifying. In early days--at my mother's
knee, as a man may say--I had acquired the unenviable accomplishment
(which I have never since been able to lose) of singing "Just before the
Battle." I have what the French call a fillet of voice--my best notes
scarce audible about a dinner-table, and the upper register rather to be
regarded as a higher power of silence. Experts tell me, besides, that I
sing flat; nor, if I were the best singer in the world, does "Just
before the Battle" occur to my mature taste as the song that I would
choose to sing. In spite of all which considerations, at one picnic,
memorably dull, and after I had exhausted every other art of pleasing, I
gave, in desperation, my one song. From that hour my doom was gone
forth. Either we had a chronic passenger (though I could never detect
him), or the very wood and iron of the steamer must have retained the
tradition. At every successive picnic word went round that Mr. Dodd was
a singer; that Mr. Dodd sang "Just before the Battle"; and, finally,
that now was the time when Mr. Dodd sang "Just before the Battle." So
that the thing became a fixture, like the dropping of the dummy axe; and
you are to conceive me, Sunday after Sunday, piping up my lamentable
ditty, and covered, when it was done, with gratuitous applause. It is a
beautiful trait in human nature that I was invariably offered an encore.
I was well paid, however, even to sing. Pinkerton and I, after an
average Sunday, had five hundred dollars to divide. Nay, and the picnics
were the means, although indirectly, of bringing me a singular windfall.
This was at the end of the season, after the "Grand Farewell Fancy Dress
Gala." Many of the hampers had suffered severely; and it was judged
wiser to save storage, dispose of them, and lay in a fresh stock when
the campaign reopened. Among my purchasers was a working man of the
name of Speedy, to whose house, after several unavailing letters, I must
proceed in person, wondering to find myself once again on the wrong
side, and playing the creditor to some one else's debtor. Speedy was in
the belligerent stage of fear. He could not pay. It appeared he had
already resold the hampers, and he defied me to do my worst. I did not
like to lose my own money; I hated to lose Pinkerton's; and the bearing
of my creditor incensed me.
"Do you know, Mr. Speedy, that I can send you to the penitentiary?" said
I, willing to read him a lesson.
The dire expression was overheard in the next room. A large, fresh,
motherly Irishwoman ran forth upon the instant, and fell to besiege me
with caresses and appeals. "Sure now, and ye couldn't have the heart to
ut, Mr. Dodd--you, that's so well known to be a pleasant gentleman; and
it's a pleasant face ye have, and the picture of me own brother that's
dead and gone. It's a truth that he's been drinking. Ye can smell it off
of him, more blame to him. But, indade, and there's nothing in the house
beyont the furnicher, and Thim Stock. It's the stock that ye'll be
taking, dear. A sore penny it has cost me, first and last, and, by all
tales, not worth an owld tobacco-pipe." Thus adjured, and somewhat
embarrassed by the stern attitude I had adopted, I suffered myself to be
invested with a considerable quantity of what is called "wild-cat
stock," in which this excellent if illogical female had been squandering
her hard-earned gold. It could scarce be said to better my position, but
the step quieted the woman; and, on the other hand, I could not think I
was taking much risk, for the shares in question (they were those of
what I will call the Catamount Silver Mine) had fallen some time before
to the bed-rock quotation, and now lay perfectly inert, or were only
kicked (like other waste-paper) about the kennel of the exchange by
bankrupt speculators.
A month or two after, I perceived by the stock-list that Catamount had
taken a bound; before afternoon "thim stock" were worth a quite
considerable pot of money; and I learned, upon inquiry, that a bonanza
had been found in a condemned lead, and the mine was now expected to do
wonders. Remarkable to philosophers how bonanzas are found in condemned
leads, and how the stock is always at freezing-point immediately before!
By some stroke of chance the Speedys had held on to the right thing;
they had escaped the syndicate; yet a little more, if I had not come to
dun them, and Mrs. Speedy would have been buying a silk dress. I could
not bear, of course, to profit by the accident, and returned to offer
restitution. The house was in a bustle; the neighbours (all
stock-gamblers themselves) had crowded to condole; and Mrs. Speedy sat
with streaming tears, the centre of a sympathetic group. "For fifteen
year I've been at ut," she was lamenting as I entered, "and grudging the
babes the very milk--more shame to me!--to pay their dhirty assessments.
And now, my dears, I should be a lady, and driving in my coach, if all
had their rights; and a sorrow on that man Dodd! As soon as I set eyes
on him, I seen the divil was in the house."
It was upon these words that I made my entrance, which was therefore
dramatic enough, though nothing to what followed. For when it appeared
that I was come to restore the lost fortune, and when Mrs. Speedy (after
copiously weeping on my bosom) had refused the restitution, and when Mr.
Speedy (summoned to that end from a camp of the Grand Army of the
Republic) had added his refusal, and when I had insisted, and they had
insisted, and the neighbours had applauded and supported each of us in
turn; and when at last it was agreed we were to hold the stock together,
and share the proceeds in three parts--one for me, one for Mr. Speedy,
and one for his spouse--I will leave you to conceive the enthusiasm that
reigned in that small, bare apartment, with the sewing-machine in the
one corner, and the babes asleep in the other, and pictures of Garfield
and the Battle of Gettysburg on the yellow walls. Port-wine was had in
by a sympathiser, and we drank it mingled with tears.
"And I dhrink to your health, my dear," sobbed Mrs. Speedy, especially
affected by my gallantry in the matter of the third share; "and I'm sure
we all dhrink to his health--Mr. Dodd of the picnics, no gentleman
better known than him; and it's my prayer, dear, the good God may be
long spared to see ye in health and happiness!"
In the end I was the chief gainer; for I sold my third while it was
worth five thousand dollars, but the Speedys more adventurously held on
until the syndicate reversed the process, when they were happy to escape
with perhaps a quarter of that sum. It was just as well; for the bulk of
the money was (in Pinkerton's phrase) reinvested; and when next I saw
Mrs. Speedy, she was still gorgeously dressed from the proceeds of the
late success, but was already moist with tears over the new catastrophe.
"We're froze out, me darlin'! All the money we had, dear, and the
sewing-machine, and Jim's uniform, was in the Golden West; and the
vipers has put on a new assessment."
By the end of the year, therefore, this is how I stood. I had made
By Catamount Silver Mine $5,000
By the picnics 3,000
By the lecture 600
By profit and loss on capital in Pinkerton's
business 1,350
------
$9,950
to which must be added
What remained of my grandfather's donation 8,500
------
$18,450
It appears, on the other hand, that
I had spent 4,000
------
Which thus left me to the good $14,450
a result on which I am not ashamed to say I looked with gratitude and
pride. Some eight thousand (being late conquest) was liquid and actually
tractile in the bank; the rest whirled beyond reach and even sight (save
in the mirror of a balance-sheet) under the compelling spell of wizard
Pinkerton. Dollars of mine were tacking off the shores of Mexico, in
peril of the deep and the guardacostas; they rang on saloon counters in
the city of Tombstone, Arizona; they shone in faro-tents among the
mountain diggings: the imagination flagged in following them, so wide
were they diffused, so briskly they span to the turning of the wizard's
crank. But here, there, or everywhere I could still tell myself it was
all mine, and--what was more convincing--draw substantial dividends. My
fortune, I called it; and it represented, when expressed in dollars or
even British pounds, an honest pot of money; when extended into francs,
a veritable fortune. Perhaps I have let the cat out of the bag; perhaps
you see already where my hopes were pointing, and begin to blame my
inconsistency. But I must first tell you my excuse, and the change that
had befallen Pinkerton.
About a week after the picnic to which he escorted Mamie, Pinkerton
avowed the state of his affections. From what I had observed on board
the steamer--where, methought, Mamie waited on him with her limpid
eyes--I encouraged the bashful lover to proceed; and the very next
evening he was carrying me to call on his affianced.
"You must befriend her, Loudon, as you have always befriended me," he
said pathetically.
"By saying disagreeable things? I doubt if that be the way to a young
lady's favour," I replied; "and since this picnicking I begin to be a
man of some experience."
"Yes, you do nobly there; I can't describe how I admire you," he cried.
"Not that she will ever need it; she has had every advantage. God knows
what I have done to deserve her. O man, what a responsibility this is
for a rough fellow and not always truthful!"
"Brace up, old man--brace up!" said I.
But when we reached Mamie's boarding-house, it was almost with tears
that he presented me. "Here is Loudon, Mamie," were his words. "I want
you to love him; he has a grand nature."
"You are certainly no stranger to me, Mr. Dodd," was her gracious
expression. "James is never weary of descanting on your goodness."
"My dear lady," said I, "when you know our friend a little better, you
will make a large allowance for his warm heart. My goodness has
consisted in allowing him to feed and clothe and toil for me when he
could ill afford it. If I am now alive, it is to him I owe it; no man
had a kinder friend. You must take good care of him," I added, laying my
hand on his shoulder, "and keep him in good order, for he needs it."
Pinkerton was much affected by this speech, and so, I fear, was Mamie. I
admit it was a tactless performance. "When you know our friend a little
better," was not happily said; and even "keep him in good order, for he
needs it," might be construed into matter of offence. But I lay it
before you in all confidence of your acquittal: was the general tone of
it "patronising"? Even if such was the verdict of the lady, I cannot but
suppose the blame was neither wholly hers nor wholly mine; I cannot but
suppose that Pinkerton had already sickened the poor woman of my very
name; so that if I had come with the songs of Apollo, she must still
have been disgusted.
Here, however, were two finger-posts to Paris--Jim was going to be
married, and so had the less need of my society; I had not pleased his
bride, and so was, perhaps, better absent. Late one evening I broached
the idea to my friend. It had been a great day for me; I had just banked
my five thousand Catamountain dollars; and as Jim had refused to lay a
finger on the stock, risk and profit were both wholly mine, and I was
celebrating the event with stout and crackers. I began by telling him
that if it caused him any pain or any anxiety about his affairs, he had
but to say the word, and he should hear no more of my proposal. He was
the truest and best friend I ever had, or was ever like to have; and it
would be a strange thing if I refused him any favour he was sure he
wanted. At the same time I wished him to be sure; for my life was
wasting in my hands. I was like one from home: all my true interests
summoned me away. I must remind him, besides, that he was now about to
marry and assume new interests, and that our extreme familiarity might
be even painful to his wife. "O no, Loudon; I feel you are wrong there,"
he interjected warmly; "she _does_ appreciate your nature." "So much the
better, then," I continued; and went on to point out that our separation
need not be for long; that, in the way affairs were going, he might join
me in two years with a fortune--small, indeed, for the States, but in
France almost conspicuous; that we might unite our resources, and have
one house in Paris for the winter and a second near Fontainebleau for
summer, where we could be as happy as the day was long, and bring up
little Pinkertons as practical artistic workmen, far from the
money-hunger of the West. "Let me go, then," I concluded; "not as a
deserter, but as the vanguard, to lead the march of the Pinkerton men."
So I argued and pleaded, not without emotion; my friend sitting
opposite, resting his chin upon his hand and (but for that single
interjection) silent. "I have been looking for this, Loudon," said he,
when I had done. "It does pain me, and that's the fact--I'm so miserably
selfish. And I believe it's a death-blow to the picnics; for it's idle
to deny that you were the heart and soul of them with your wand and your
gallant bearing, and wit and humour and chivalry, and throwing that kind
of society atmosphere about the thing. But, for all that, you're right,
and you ought to go. You may count on forty dollars a week; and if Depew
City--one of nature's centres for this State--pan out the least as I
expect, it may be double. But it's forty dollars anyway; and to think
that two years ago you were almost reduced to beggary!"
"I _was_ reduced to it," said I.
"Well, the brutes gave you nothing, and I'm glad of it now!" cried Jim.
"It's the triumphant return I glory in! Think of the master, and that
cold-blooded Myner too! Yes, just let the Depew City boom get on its
legs, and you shall go; and two years later, day for day, I'll shake
hands with you in Paris, with Mamie on my arm, God bless her!"
We talked in this vein far into the night. I was myself so exultant in
my new found liberty, and Pinkerton so proud of my triumph, so happy in
my happiness, in so warm a glow about the gallant little woman of his
choice, and the very room so filled with castles in the air and cottages
at Fontainebleau, that it was little wonder if sleep fled our eyelids,
and three had followed two upon the office-clock before Pinkerton
unfolded the mechanism of his patent sofa.