The perennially empty cutlery-works gave the Wide-a-Wakefield Club no
rest. Year after year the anxiously awaited census renewed the old note
of fifteen thousand and denied the eloquent argument of increased
population. The committee in its letters continued to refer to
Wakefield as "thriving" rather than as "growing." Its ingeniously
evasive circulars finally roused a curiosity in Wilmer Barstow, a
manufacturer of refrigerators, dissatisfied with the taxes and freight
rates of the city of Clayton.
Barstow was the more willing to leave Clayton because he had suffered
there from that reward which is more unkind than the winter wind. He
loved a woman and paid court to her, sending her flowers at every
possible excuse and besetting her with gifts.
She was not much of a woman--her very lover could see that; but he loved
her in his own and her despite. She was unworthy of his jewels as of his
infatuation, yet she gave him no courtesy for his gifts. She behaved as
if they bored her; yet he knew no other way to win her. The more
indifference she showed the more he tried to dazzle her.
At last he found that she was paying court herself to a younger man--a
selfish good-for-naught who made fun of her as well as of Barstow, and
who borrowed money from her as well as from Barstow.
When Barstow fully realized that the woman had made him not only her own
booby, but the town joke as well, he could not endure her or the place
longer. He cast about for an escape. But he found his factory no
trifling baggage to move.
It was on such fertile soil that one of the Wide-a-Wakefield circulars
fell.
It chimed so well with Barstow's mood that he decided at least to look
the town over.
He came unannounced to make his own observations, like the spies sent
into Canaan. The trolley-car that met his train was rusty, paintless,
forlorn, untenanted. He took a ramshackle hack to the best hotel. Its
sign-board bore this legend: "The Palace, formerly Shelby
House--entirely new management."
He saw his baggage bestowed and went out to inspect the factory building
described to him. The cutlery-works proved smaller than his needs, and
it had a weary look. Not far away he found a far larger factory, idle,
empty, closed. The sign declared it to be the Wakefield Branch of the
Shelby Paradise Powder Company. He knew the prosperity of that firm and
wondered why this branch had been abandoned.
In the course of time the trolley-car overtook him, and he boarded it as
a sole passenger.
The lonely motorman was loquacious and welcomed Barstow as the Ancient
Mariner welcomed the wedding guest. He explained that he made but few
trips a day and passengers were fewer than trips. The company kept it
going to hold the franchise, for some day Wakefield would reach sixteen
thousand and lift the hoodoo.
The car passed an opera-house, with grass aspiring through the chinks of
the stone steps leading to the boarded-up doors.
The car passed the Shelby Block; the legend, "For Rent, apply to Amasa
Harbury," hid the list of Shelby enterprises.
The car grumbled through shabby streets to the outskirts of the town,
where it sizzled along a singing wire past the drooping fences, the
sagging bleachers, and the weedy riot of what had been a
pleasure-ground. A few dim lines in the grass marked the ghost of a
baseball diamond, a circular track, and foregone tennis-courts.
Barstow could read on what remained of the tottering fence: