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THREE PEOPLE
BY
PANSY
AUTHOR OF "LOST ON THE TRAIL," "TIP LEWIS AND
HIS LAMP," "ESTER RIED," "FOUR GIRLS AT CHAUTAUQUA,"
"CHAUTAUQUA GIRLS AT HOME," ETC.
[Illustration]
BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
[Illustration] PANSY [Illustration]
TRADE-MARK
Registered in U. S. Patent Office.
Entered according to the Act of Congress, by
WESTERN TRACT AND BOOK SOCIETY,
In the Office of the Congressional Librarian, District of
Columbia, 1871.
COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY ISABELLA M. ALDEN.
* * * * *
THREE PEOPLE.
[Illustration: "ARE YOU A TOTAL ABSTAINER?"--_Page 60._]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. SOME BABIES 5
II. JOHN BIRGE'S OPPORTUNITY 15
III. WOLFIE 26
IV. BRAIN WORK 37
V. TODE'S AMBITION 49
VI. NEW IDEAS 57
VII. TWO T'S 67
VIII. WHICH SHALL PROSPER, THIS OR THAT? 77
IX. TAKE IT AWAY 89
X. HABAKKUK 100
XI. BUSINESS AND BOTTLES 113
XII. THE STEPPING STONE 128
XIII. TODE'S REAL ESTATE 145
XIV. SIGNS AND WONDERS 162
XV. EXIT TODE MALL 178
XVI. PLEDGES AND PARTNERSHIPS 195
XVII. TRANSLATIONS 211
XVIII. WINE IS A MOCKER 223
XIX. THE THREE PEOPLE MEET AGAIN 242
XX. MRS. JENKINS' TOMMY 255
XXI. MIDNIGHT WORK 270
XXII. POOR PLINY 289
XXIII. JUDGMENTS 305
XXIV. A DOUBLE CRISIS 322
XXV. STEPS UPWARD 336
XXVI. THEODORE'S INSPIRATION 349
XXVII. DAWN AND DARKNESS 364
XXVIII. DEATH AND LIFE 383
XXIX. SOME MORE BABIES 398
THREE PEOPLE
CHAPTER I.
SOME BABIES.
"Tie the sash a very little looser, nurse, and give the loops a more
graceful fall; there--_so_. Now he's a beauty! every inch of him." And
Mrs. Hastings moved backward a few steps in order to get the full
effect.
A beauty he was, certainly; others beside his mother would have admitted
that. What baby fresh from a bath, and robed in the daintiest and most
perfect of baby toilets, with tightly curling rings of brown hair
covering the handsome head; with great sparkling, dancing blue eyes, and
laughing rosebud mouth; with hands and feet and body strung on invisible
wires, and quivering with life and glee, was ever other than a beauty?
The whole house was in commotion in honor of the fact that Master Pliny
L. Hastings, only son and heir of the great Pliny Hastings, Senior, of
Hastings' Hall, had "laughed and cried, and nodded and winked," through
the entire space of three hundred and sixty-five days and nights, and
actually reached the first anniversary of his birthday.
A remarkable boy was Pliny Hastings. He didn't know yet that his father
was a millionaire, but he must have surmised it, for, as far back as he
could remember, his bits of sleeves had been looped with real pearls;
rosewood and lace and silk and down had united to make his tiny bed; he
had bitten his first tooth through on a sphere of solid gold--and all
the wonderful and improbable contrivances for royal babyhood that could
be bought or imagined, met together in that grand house on the Avenue
for this treasured bit of humanity.
On this particular day baby was out in all his glory; he had made the
circuit of the great parlors, stopping on his way to be tossed toward
the ceiling, in the arms of first one uncle and then another. He had
been kissed and cuddled by all the aunties and cousins, until his cheeks
were rosy with triumph; and, finally, he had been carried, shouting
with glee, high up on his father's shoulder, down to the dining-room,
and occupied the seat of honor at the long table, where he crowed, and
laughed, and clapped his hands over every plum that found its way into
his dainty mouth. This conduct was interspersed, however, by sundry
dives and screams after the coffee urn and the ice pitcher, and various
unattainable things--for there were unattainable things, even for Pliny
Hastings. Oh, the times and times in his young life that he had cried
for the beautiful round moon, and got it not! And even gaslight and
firelight had hitherto eluded his eager grasp; but he had learned no
lessons from his failures, and still pitched and dived after
impossibilities in the most insane fashion. To-day he looked with
indifference on the gold-lined silver cup bearing his name and age, and
wanted the great carving fork instead. He cared not a whit that the
sparkling wine was poured, and glasses were touched, and toasts drank on
his account; but a touch of wisdom must have come over his baby brain,
for he made a sudden dash at his father's glass, sending the red wine
right and left, and shivering the frail glass to fragments; he did more
than that, he promptly seized on one of the sharpest bits, and thereby
cut a long crooked gash in the sweet chubby finger, and was finally
borne, shrieking and struggling, from the room, his little heart filled
with mingled feelings of terror and rage. So much for Baby Hastings and
his birthday.
* * * * *
In a neat white house, no more than a mile away from this great mansion,
there was another baby. It was just when Pliny Hastings was hurried away
to the nursery that this baby's mother folded away papers, and otherwise
tidied up her bit of a nursery, then pushed a little sewing chair in
front of her work table, and paused ere she sat down to give another
careful tuck to the blanketed bundle, which was cuddled in the great
rocking chair, fast asleep. Then she gathered the doubled up fist into
her hand, and caressed it softly, while she murmured: "Bless his
precious little heart! he takes a splendid nap for his birthday, so he
does."
"Ben," this to the gentleman who was lounging in another rocker, reading
the paper, "does it seem possible that Bennie is a year old to-day? I
declare, Ben, we ought to have got him a present for his birthday."
The father looked up from his paper with a good-natured laugh. "Seems to
me he's rather youthful to begin on that tack, isn't he?"
"Oh, Ben, no! I want every one of his birthdays to be so nice and
pleasant. Do, papa, come here and see how nice he looks, with his hair
all in a curl."
Thus appealed to, Mr. Phillips came over to the arm-chair, and together
they stood looking down on the treasured bit of flesh and blood.
"Our eldest born," the mother said, softly.
"And youngest, too, for the matter of that," answered Mr. Phillips,
gaily.
His wife laughed. "Ben, there isn't the least bit of sentiment in you,
is there? Now they are having a wonderful time to-day in the grand
corner house on the Avenue, the Hastings' house, you know, and it's all
because their baby is a year old to-day, and he isn't a bit nicer than
ours."
"Their baby's father is worth a million."
"I don't care if he is worth a billion, that don't make their baby any
sweeter. Say, Ben, I just wish, for the fun of it, we had some little
cunning thing for his birthday present."
Mr. Phillips seemed to be very much amused. "Well," he said, still
laughing, "Which shall it be, a razor or a jack-knife?"
His wife actually shuddered. "Ben!" she said, with a reproachful face,
"how _can_ you say such dreadful things? What if he should grow up and
commit suicide?"
"What if I had a boy, and he should grow to be a man, and another man
should tread on his toes, and he should knock the other man down, and
the other man should die, and they should hang my boy," rattled off Mr.
Phillips in anything but a grave tone.
"Little woman, that's what I should call looking into the future, isn't
it?"
A knock at the door interrupted them, and Roxie, the tidy little maid of
all work, who had been out for an afternoon, appeared to them, talking
rapidly.
"If you please, ma'am, I'm a quarter late, and could you please to
excuse me; the clock around the corner doesn't go, and Kate she didn't
know the time; and Mrs. Meeker said would you please accept her love and
these grapes in a basket. She says they're the finest of the lot, and
you needn't mind sending of it home, 'cause she'll let little Susie step
around after it."
This mixture set Mr. Phillips off into another of his hearty laughs; but
when they were alone again, he seized one of the great purple clusters,
and flinging himself on the floor in front of the baby, exclaimed:
"I'll tell you what we'll do, little wife: we'll present one of these to
the boy, and then you and I will eat it in honor of his birthday,
unless, indeed, there may be some bad omen in this, even. You know the
juice of the grape may, under certain circumstances, become a dangerous
article?"
Mrs. Phillips laughed carelessly as she nestled in the little sewing
chair, and prepared to enjoy the grapes. "No," she said, gaily; "grapes
are very harmless omens to me. I'm not the least afraid that Baby Benny
will ever be a drunkard."
* * * * *
There used to be in Albany, not many years ago, a miniature "Five
Points," and one didn't have to go very far up what is now Rensselaer
Street to find it, either. There were tenement houses, which from attic
to basement swarmed with filthy, ragged, repulsive human life.
In one of the lowest and meanest of these many cellars, on the very day,
and at the identical hour, in which Master Pliny Hastings held high
carnival at his father's table, and Baby Benny Phillips nestled and
dreamed among the soft pillows of his mother's easy chair, a little
brother of theirs, clad in dirt and rags, crawled over the reeking
floor, and occupied himself in devouring eagerly every bit of potato
skin or apple paring that came in his way. Was there ever a more forlorn
looking specimen of a baby! It was its birthday, too--there are more
babies in the world than we think for whose birthdays might be
celebrated on the same day. But this one knew nothing about it--dear me!
neither did his mother. I doubt if it had once occurred to her that this
poor bit of scrawny, dirty, terrible baby had been through one whole
year of life. And yet, perhaps, she loved her boy a little--her face
looked sullen rather than wicked. On the whole, I think she did, for as
she was about to ascend the stairs, with the sullen look deepening or
changing into a sort of gloomy apprehension, she hesitated, glanced
behind her, and finally, with a muttered "Plague take the young one,"
turned back, and, catching him by the arm of his tattered dress, landed
him on the topmost step, in a mud-puddle! but she did it because she
remembered that he would be very likely to climb into the tub of
soapsuds that stood at the foot of the bed, and so get drowned.
Mrs. Ryan came up her cellar stairs at the same time, and looked over at
her neighbor, then from her to her forlorn child, who, however, enjoyed
the mud-puddle, and finally commenced a conversation.
"How old is that young one of yours?"
"Pretty near a year--why, let me see--what day is it?--why, I'll be
bound if he ain't _just_ a year old this very day."
"Birthday, eh? You ought to celebrate."
"Humph," said the mother, with a darkening face, "we shall likely; we do
most generally. His loving father will get drunk, and if he don't pitch
Tode head over heels out here on the stones, in honor of his birthday,
I'll be thankful. Tode Mall, you stop crawling out to that gutter, or
I'll shake you within an inch of your life!"
This last, in a louder and most threatening tone, to the ambitious baby.
But poor Tode didn't understand, or forgot, or something, for while his
mother talked with her companion, out he traveled toward the inviting
gutter again, and tumbled into it, from whence he was carried, dripping
and screaming, by his angry mother, who bestowed the promised shake, and
added a vigorous slapping, whereat Tode kicked and yelled in a manner
that proved him to be without doubt a near relative of Master Pliny
Hastings himself. Three brothers they were, Messrs. Pliny, Bennie and
Tode, opening their wondrous eyes on the world on precisely the same day
of time, though under such different circumstances, and amid such
different surroundings, that I doubt if it looked equally round to them
all. Besides, they hadn't the least idea each of the existence of the
other; but no matter for that, they were brothers, linked together in
many a way.
Perhaps you wouldn't have had an idea that their fathers were each
occupied in the same business; but such was the case. Pliny L. Hastings,
the millionaire, owned and kept in motion two of the hotels in a western
city where the bar-rooms were supplied with marble counters, and the
customers were served from cut-glass goblets, resting on silver salvers.
Besides he was a wholesale liquor dealer, and kept great warehouses
constantly supplied with the precious stuff. Bennie Phillips'
good-natured father was a grocer, on a modest and unpretending scale;
but he had a back room in his store where he kept a few barrels of
liquor for medicinal purposes, and a clerk in attendance. Tode Mall's
father kept an unmitigated grog-shop, or rum hole, or whatever name you
are pleased to call it, without any cut glass or medicinal purposes
about it, and sold vile whisky at so much a drink to whoever had sunk
low enough to buy it. So now you know all about how these three baby
brothers commenced their lives.