The scraping of saw, the clang of hammer and the smell of fresh paint
classed Bloomtown as "Boomtown." The railroad had already peered into
the northern environs of the town, cutting diagonally across Main
street, some half-dozen blocks from the plot of ground that had been
rechristened Court House Square. A substantial municipal building took
the place of the dingy old Town Hall, and the barns of the now almost
defunct Bloomtown, Barton and Faber hack line had been cleared away to
make room for a decent hotel. In the angle between the railroad tracks
and Main street a small temporary station sheltered travelers. The
half-moribund village had burst its swaddling bands and begun to
expand. Everybody was wearing grins as a radiant garment.
As the summer traveled toward July, the headaches that had been so
frequent the past winter merged into a feeling of utter exhaustion, and
Ellis came down to the office but few days of each week. Flossy
stopped Jap at the gate one noon hour.
"Ellis has something to tell you, Jappie, and I want you to be very
composed. Don't let yourself go." Her voice was full of pleading.
She turned quickly as Ellis appeared in the doorway. He walked out to
meet them.
"Let us sit out under the trellis while Flossy finishes fixing dinner,"
he said, leading the way. "Jap, your birthday comes to-morrow, and I
am going to ask you to accept a sacred trust that is a burden. You are
twenty-one and, as they say, 'your own man.' I want to ask you to be
_my man_. Jap, I am going away, how far God only knows. The doctor
says that my lungs are all wrong, and life in the mountains may save
me. My boy--for you have been my boy since you walked through my door,
nine years ago--I want you to take charge of the office, and shoulder
the support of Flossy and the little one if--if----" He caught the
horror-stricken boy's hand. "Jap, I will never come back. I know it.
I have talked with my soul and it is well. Will you do it, Jap?"
Jap pressed Ellis's feverish hand between his strong young palms. He
could not speak. His eyes were dry and his lips twitched.
"There," cautioned Ellis, "no heavy face before Flossy. God bless her!
she thinks that I will be well before the new office is done, and is
making more splendid plans for the big opening! She is---- Jap, you
dunce, grin about something!"
Flossy and the boy came dancing down the sun-flecked path and Jap swung
the slender little fellow to his shoulder and began a mock race from
Ellis.
As soon as dinner was over, a dinner that stuck in his throat for
hours, he told Flossy that two men were rushing Bill to desperation for
their handbills. He hurried out by way of the alley. Flossy ran after
him. "You forgot your hat, Jap," she cried breathlessly. He took the
hat and started off silently.
"Wait a minute, Jap." Her voice was insistent. "You didn't put on a
grave face with Ellis, did you? Oh, Jap"--the cry was from her
heart--"he will never live to see the new office! He will never know
of the realization of his dreams, the big town, the trains whirling
through, and he looking down from his lofty window with a smile of
superior joy. Oh, Jap, how often have we heard him tell about it! He
doesn't know. He is full of hope. Only just before you came he was
joking about the Star Spangled Banner he was going to wind around his
brow when he dedicated the _Herald_ office. Jap, be true to his faith,
for he will never open the door of that office. He will never help to
get out the first paper."
She strangled and turned away. Then in brisk tones she added:
"Now, Jap, hurry along. Here comes Ellis to scold." And in the
marvelous manner that is God-given to loving women, she forced a smile
to her lips as she gave the youth a playful shove and ran to meet her
husband.
A few days later they left. The town took a holiday, and with laughter
and merrymaking it celebrated Ellis Hinton's first vacation. A water
tank was in process of construction, at the upper end of a half-mile
stretch of double track, and at the lower end of the siding, close to
Main street, the imposing brick railroad station stood in potential
grandeur, its bricks still separated by straw and its ample foundation
giving promise of stability as it reposed in sacks of cement and piles
of crushed stone. Something of this was incorporated in Ellis's
farewell speech as he addressed his townspeople. When the train began
to move his black head was still visible, as he returned quip for joke.
And Flossy was flitting from her lifelong friends as if no trouble
clouded her brow.
Little J. W. was the feature of the going, and under the pretense of
caring for his wants, their sleeper compartment had been piled with
fruit and flowers by loving friends who had gone on to the nearest town
to meet the train, so that the surprise should be the more complete.
Then, to the sound of the village band, Ellis left what he had always
called "my town." Jap did not go to the station, and when Bill found
the door of their improvised office locked, he turned silently away.
His heart was full, too.
The Widow Raymond had offered them a room for a printing office. The
press occupied the room. Jap and Bill set the type in the woodshed and
carried the galleys in. During the nine years of their association
Bill had been the unsteady member of the team, consuming more effort in
devising ways and means of escaping work than the work would have cost,
and toiling with feverish penitence when he realized that he had
wrought a hardship to Jap or Ellis. But now, inspired by the dimpled
face of Rosy Raymond, he worked as he had never worked in his life.
Odd things began to happen. Bill insisted on doing all the
proof-reading, a task he had hitherto detested. A bit of verse
occasionally crept into the columns of the _Herald_. Jap did not
detect this verse for several weeks. When he did, he descended upon
Bill.
"Where in Heck did you filch that doggerel?"
"Who said it was doggerel?" demanded Bill.
"Lord love you," cried Jap, "what could any sane being call it? What
did you get for publishing it--advertising rates?"
"You're a fool!" snapped Bill. "You think that you're a criterion. I
will have you know that lots of folks have complimented it."
Jap took up the offending sheet.
"'Thine eyes are blue, thine lips are red, thine locks are gold,'" he
groaned. He looked at Bill. Just then the door opened and Rosy
stepped into the room. A great light shone on Jap's understanding.
Her eyes were blue, her lips certainly red, and a fervid imagination
could call her hair gold. He sighed pathetically.
"Bill, don't you think you could write it out and relieve the pressure
on your heart, without endangering our prestige?"
Bill kicked at the mongrel dog that had its habitat under the press,
and marched out indignantly.
"I'll be glad if I get him out of here single," mused Jap. "He has
these spells as regular as the seasons change. Heretofore his
prospects have never entitled him to consideration. This time it may
be different."
Bill had been systematically chased from every front gate in town,
behind which rosy-cheeked girls abode; but the disquieting conviction
swooped down upon Jap that Barkis, in the shape of the Widow Raymond,
might be more than "willin'" to hitch Bill to her sixteen-year-old
daughter. And if Bill had not contracted a new variety of measles at
the most opportune time, Jap's forebodings might have been realized.
Bill had the "catching" habit. No contagion in town ever escaped him,
and this time he was so ill that he had to go to the country to
recuperate.
The new stores opened, one by one, with much celebration. Owing to
several unaccountable financial complications, the last of all the
important buildings on Main street to be finished was the _Herald_
office. A cylinder press, second-handed, to be sure, but none the less
an object of admiration, was installed, and fonts of clean, new type
stood ready for work. There was a great, sunny front office on the
main floor, and the ample space behind it had been divided into
composing room, press room and private office. On the second floor was
a small job press, and here, at Jap's suggestion, the old Washington
press was stored. The rooms were decorated with flags, and bunting was
strung across the front of the office. Judge Bowers had personally
attended to this.
"You're going to have a dandy paper," Tom Granger beamed, as he
accompanied Jap on the final tour of inspection. "We'll all have to
stop business to watch this cylinder press spill out the news."
Wat Harlow had run down from the Capital to congratulate the staff. At
his suggestion the merchants had ordered flowers from the city, and
great vases of roses and carnations, and decorative pieces in symbolic
design, stood around in fragrant profusion. Every room of the office
was filled with them.
The forms were ready for the printing of that first paper, and only
awaited the conclusion of Wat's speech, to be placed upon the press, so
that Bloomtown should receive the salutatory _Herald_. Jap turned to
the assemblage, waiting in eager curiosity to see the cylinder revolve.
"The paper will be printed on Ellis's press," he said briefly. "I
don't want to be ungrateful for your kindness, but will you leave Bill
and me alone to get out our first edition?"
They filed out slowly, awed by the grief in the voice of Ellis's boy.
With the old types, on the old Washington hand press, they printed the
first _Herald_ of the new regime. With the exception of the greeting
on the front page, every word was reprinted from the predictions
written by Ellis in the years agone, and the greeting, in long pica on
the first page, was his telegram to them and his townsmen received that
morning.
When the last paper was printed by the two sad-faced boys on their day
of jubilee, and the pile had been folded and carried downstairs, Jap
closed the press upon the inky type, and gathered the great bunches of
fragrant blossoms and heaped them upon the press, to be forever silent.
With a groan of anguish, he threw himself against them. Bill slipped
his arm through Jap's, and together they celebrated the day that was
Ellis's. And in the night the telegram came:
"At rest. FLOSSY."