We Reach the Atoll.
So we journeyed on to Duluth, to St. Paul and Minneapolis, and to the
cities on the Missouri. It was at one of those recurrent periods when
the fever of material and industrial change and development breaks out
over the whole continent. The very earth seemed to send out tingling
shocks of some occult stimulus; the air was charged with the ozone of
hope; and subtle suggestions seemed to pass from mind to mind, impelling
men to dare all, to risk all, to achieve all. In every one of these
young cities we were astonished at the changes going on under our very
eyes. Streets were torn up for the building of railways, viaducts, and
tunnels. Buildings were everywhere in course of demolition, to make room
for larger edifices. Excavations yawned like craters at street-corners.
Steel pillars, girders, and trusses towered skyward,--skeletons to be
clothed in flesh of brick and stone.
Suburbs were sprouting, almost daily, from the mould of the
market-gardens in the purlieus. Corporations were contending for the
possession of the natural highway approaches to each growing city.
Street-railway companies pushed their charters to passage at midnight
sessions of boards of aldermen, seized streets in the night-time, and
extended their metallic tentacles out into the fields of dazed farmers.
On the frontiers, counties were organized and populated in a season.
Every one of them had its two or three villages, which aped in puny
fashion the achievements of the cities. New pine houses dotted prairies,
unbroken save for the mile-long score of the delimiting plow. Long
trains of emigrant-cars moved continually westward. The world seemed
drunk with hope and enthusiasm. The fulfillment of Jim's careless
prophecy had burst suddenly upon us.
Such things as these were fresh in our memories when we reached
Lattimore. I had wired Elkins of our coming, and he met us at the
station with a carriage. It was one sunny September afternoon when he
drove us through the streets of our future home to the principal hotel.
"We have supper at six, dinner at twelve-thirty, breakfast from seven to
ten," said Jim, as we alighted at the hotel. "That's the sort of bucolic
municipality you've struck here; we'll shove all these meals several
hours down, when we get to doubling our population. You'll have an hour
to get freshened up for supper. Afterwards, if Mrs. Barslow feels equal
to the exertion, we'll take a drive about the town."
Lattimore was a pretty place then. Low, rounded hills topped with green
surrounded it. The river flowed in a broad, straight reach along its
southern margin. A clear stream, Brushy Creek, ran in a miniature
canyon of limestone, through the eastern edge of the town. On each side
of this brook, in lawns of vivid green, amid natural groves of oak and
elm, interspersed with cultivated greenery, stood the houses of the
well-to-do. Trees made early twilight in most of the streets.
People were out in numbers, driving in the cool autumnal evening. As a
handsome girl, a splendid blonde, drove past us, my wife spoke of the
excellent quality of the horseflesh we saw. Jim answered that Lattimore
was a center of equine culture, and its citizens wise in breeders' lore.
The appearance of things impressed us favorably. There was an air of
quiet prosperity about the place, which is unusual in Western towns,
where quietude and progress are apt to be thought incompatible. Jim
pointed out the town's natural advantages as we drove along.
"What do you think of that, now?" said he, waving his whip toward the
winding gorge of Brushy Creek.
"It's simply lovely!" said Alice, "a little jewel of a place."
"A bit of mountain scenery on the prairie," said Jim. "And more than
that, or less than that, just as you look at it, it's the source from
which inexhaustible supplies of stone will be quarried when we begin to
build things."
"But won't that spoil it?" said Alice.
"Well, yes; and down on that bottom we've found as good clay for
pottery, sewer-pipes, and paving-brick as exists anywhere. Back there
where you saw that bluff along the river--looks as if it's sliding down
into the water--remember it? Well, there's probably the only place in
the world where there's just the juxtaposition of sand and clay and
chalk to make Portland cement. Supply absolutely unlimited! Why, there
ought to be a thousand men employed right now in those cement works. Oh,
I tell you, things'll hum here when we get these schemes working!"
We laughed at him: his visualization of the cement works was so
complete.
"I suppose you know where all the capital is coming from," said I, "to
do all these things? For my part, I see no way of getting it except our
old plan of buccaneering."
"Exactly my idea!" said he. "Didn't I write you that I'd enroll you as a
member of the band? Has Al ever told you, Mrs. Barslow, of our old
times, when we, as individuals, were passing through our
sixteenth-century stage?"
"Often," Alice replied. "He looks back upon his pirate days as a time of
Arcadian simplicity, 'Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin.'"
"I can easily understand," said Jim reflectively, "how piracy might
appear in that roseate light after a few years of practical politics.
Now from the moral heights of a life-insurance man's point of view it's
different."
So we rode on chatting and chaffing, now of the old time, now of the
new; and all the time I felt more and more impressed by the dissolving
views which Jim gave us of different parts of his program for making
Lattimore the metropolis of "the world's granary," as he called the
surrounding country. As we topped a low hill on our way back, he pulled
up, to give us a general view of the town and suburbs, and of the great
expanse of farming country beyond. Between us and Lattimore was a mile
stretch of gently descending road, with grain-fields and farm-houses on
each side.
"By the way," said he, "do you see that white house and red barn in the
maple grove off to the right? Well, you remember Bill Trescott?"
Neither of us could call such a person to mind.
"Well, it's all right, I suppose," he went on in a tone implying injury
forgiven, "but you mustn't let Bill know you've forgotten him. The
Trescotts used to live over by the Whitney schoolhouse in Greenwood
Township,--right on the Pleasant Valley line, you know. He remembers you
folks, Al. I'll drive over that way."
There were beds of petunias and four-o'clocks to be seen dimly
glimmering in the dusk, as we drove through the broad gate. Men and
women were gathered in a group about the base of the windmill, as Jim's
loud "whoa" announced our arrival. The women melted away in the
direction of the house. The men stood at gaze.
"Hello, Bill!" shouted Jim. "Come out here!"
"Oh, it's you, is it, Mr. Elkins," said a deep voice. "I didn't know
yeh."
"Thought it was the sheriff with a summons, eh? Well, I guess hardly!"
said Jim. "Mr. Trescott, I want you to shake hands with our old friend
Mr. Barslow."
A heavy figure detached itself from the group, and, as it approached,
developed indistinctly the features of a brawny farmer, with a short,
heavy, dark beard.
"Wal, I declare, I'm glad to see yeh!" said he, as he grasped my hand.
"I'd a'most forgot yeh, till Mr. Elkins told me you remembered my
whalin' them Dutch boys at a scale onct."
I had had no recollection of him; yet form and voice seemed vaguely
familiar. I assured him that my memory for names and faces was
excellent. After being duly presented to Mrs. Barslow, he urged us to
alight and come in. We offered as an excuse the lateness of the hour.
"Why, you hain't seen my family yet, Mr. Barslow," said he. "They'll be
disappointed if yeh don't come in."
I suggested that we were staying for a few days at the Centropolis; and
Alice added that we should be glad to see himself and Mrs. Trescott
there at any time during our stay. Elkins promised that we should all
drive out again.
"Wal, now, you must," said Mr. Trescott. "We must talk over ol' times
and--"
"Fight over old battles," replied Jim. "All the battles were yours,
though, eh, Bill?"
"Huh, huh!" chuckled Bill; "fightin's no credit to any man; but I 'spose
I fit my sheer when I was a boy--when I was a boy, y' know, Mrs.
Barslow, and had more sand than sense. Here, Josie, here's Mr. Elkins
and some old friends of mine. Mr. and Mrs. Barslow, my daughter."
She was a little slim slip of a thing, in white, and emerged from the
shrubbery at Mr. Trescott's call. She bowed to us, and said she was
sorry that we could not stop. Her voice was sweet, and there was
something unexpectedly cool and self-possessed in her intonation. It was
not in the least the speech of the ordinary neat-handed Phyllis or
Neaera; nor was her attitude at all countrified as she stood with her
hand on her father's arm. The increasing darkness kept us from seeing
her features.
"Josie's my right-hand man," said her father. "Half the business of the
farm stops when Josie goes away."
My wife expressed her admiration for Lattimore and its environs, and
especially for so much of the Trescott farm as could be seen in the
deepening gloaming. The flowers, she said, took her back to her
childhood's home.
"Let me give you these," said the girl, handing Alice a great bunch of
blossoms which she had been cutting when her father called, and had held
in her hands as we talked. My wife thanked her, and buried her face in
them, as we bade the Trescotts good-night and drove home.
"That girl," said Jim, as we spun along the road in the light of the
rising moon, "is a crackerjack. Bill thinks the world of her, and she
certainly gives him a mother's care!"
"She seems nice," said Alice, "and so refined, apparently."
"Been well educated," said Jim, "and got a head, besides. You'll like
her; she knows Europe better than some folks know their own front
yard."
"I was surprised at the vividness of my memory of Bill's youthful
combats," said I.
Jim's laugh rang out heartily through the Brushy Creek gorge.
"Well, I supposed you remembered those things, of course," said he, "and
so I insinuated some impression of the delight with which you dwell upon
the stories of his prowess. It made him feel good.... I'm spoiling Bill,
I guess, with these tales. He'll claim to have a private graveyard next.
As harmless a fellow as you ever saw, and the best cattle-feeder
hereabouts. Got a good farm out there, Bill has; we may need it for
stock yards or something, later on."
"Why not hire a corps of landscape-gardeners, and make a park of it?" I
inquired sarcastically. "We'll certainly need breathing-spaces for the
populace."
"Good idea!" he returned gravely. And as he halted the equipage at the
hotel, he repeated meditatively: "A mighty good idea, Al; we must figure
on that a little."
We were tired to silence when we reached our rooms; so much so that
nothing seemed to make a defined and sharp impression upon my mind. I
kept thinking all the time that I must have been mistaken in my first
thought that I had never known the Trescotts.
"Their voices seem familiar to me," said I, "and yet I can't associate
them with the old home at all. It's very odd!"
As Alice stood before the mirror shaking down and brushing her hair, she
said: "Do you suppose he thought you in earnest about that absurd park?"
"No," I answered, "he understood me well enough; but what puzzles me is
the question, was _he_ in earnest?"
* * * * *
In the middle of the night I woke with a perfectly clear idea as to the
identity of the Trescotts! Prescott, Trescott! Josie, Josephine the
"Empress"! And then the voice and figure!
"Why are you sitting up in bed?" inquired Alice.
"I have made a discovery," said I. "That man at the Stock Yards meant
Trescott, not Prescott."
"I don't understand," said she sleepily.
"In a word," said I, "the girl who gave you the flowers is the Empress!"
"Albert Barslow!" said Alice. "Why--"
My wife was silent for a long time.
"I knew we'd meet her," she said at last. "It is fate."