Dinner at Detchworth Grange was most amusing that evening. One of the
chief reasons--in fact, it would not be too venturesome to say _the_
chief reason--for Captain Palliser’s frequent presence in very good
country houses was that he had a way of making things amusing. His
relation of anecdotes, of people and things, was distinguished by a
manner which subtly declined to range itself on the side of vulgar
gossip. Quietly and with a fine casualness he conveyed the whole
picture of the new order at Temple Barholm. He did it with wonderfully
light touches, and yet the whole thing was to be seen--the little old
maid in her exquisite clothes, her unmistakable stamp of timid good
breeding, her protecting adoration combined with bewilderment; the
long, lean, not altogether ill-looking New York bounder, with his
slight slouch, his dangerously unsophisticated-looking face, and his
American jocularity of slang phrase.
“He’s of a class I know nothing about. I own he puzzled me a trifle at
first,” Palliser said with his cool smile. “I’m not sure that I’ve ‘got
on to him’ altogether yet. That’s an expressive New York phrase of his
own. But when we were strolling about together, he made revelations
apparently without being in the least aware that they were revelations.
He was unbelievable. My fear was that he would not go on.”
“But he did go on?” asked Amabel. “One must hear something of the
revelations.”
Then was given in the best possible form the little drama of the talk
in the garden. No shade of Mr. Temple Barholm’s characteristics was
lost. Palliser gave occasionally an English attempt at the reproduction
of his nasal twang, but it was only a touch and not sufficiently
persisted in to become undignified.
“I can’t do it,” he said. “None of us can really do it. When English
actors try it on the stage, it is not in the least the real thing. They
only drawl through their noses, and it is more than that.”
The people of Detchworth Grange were not noisy people, but their
laughter was unrestrained before the recital was finished. Nobody had
gone so far as either to fear or to hope for anything as undiluted in
its nature as this was.
“Then he won’t give us a chance, the least chance,” cried Lucy and
Amabel in unison. “We are out of the running.”
“You won’t get even a look in--because you are not ‘ladies,’ said
their brother.
“Poor Jem Temple Barholm! What a different thing it would have been if
we had had him for a neighbor!” Mr. Grantham fretted.
“We should have had Lady Joan Fayre as well,” said his wife.
“At least she’s a gentlewoman as well as a ‘lady,’” Mr. Grantham said.
“She would not have become so bitter if that hideous thing had not
occurred.”
They wondered if the new man knew anything about Jem. Palliser had not
reached that part of his revelation when the laughter had broken into
it. He told it forthwith, and the laughter was overcome by a sort of
dismayed disgust. This did not accord with the rumors of an almost
“nice” good nature.
“There’s a vulgar horridness about it,” said Lucy.
“What price Lady Mallowe!” said the son. “I’ll bet a sovereign she
began it.”
“She did,” remarked Palliser; “but I think one may leave Mr. Temple
Barholm safely to Lady Joan.” Mr. Grantham laughed as one who knew
something of Lady Joan.
“There’s an Americanism which I didn’t learn from him,” Palliser added,
“and I remembered it when he was talking her over. It’s this: when you
dispose of a person finally and forever, you ‘wipe up the earth with
him.’ Lady Joan will ‘wipe up the earth’ with your new neighbor.”
There was a little shout of laughter. “Wipe up the earth” was entirely
new to everybody, though even the country in England was at this time
by no means wholly ignorant of American slang.
This led to so many other things both mirth-provoking and serious, even
sometimes very serious indeed, that the entire evening at Detchworth
was filled with talk of Temple Barholm. Very naturally the talk did
not end by confining itself to one household. In due time Captain
Palliser’s little sketches were known in divers places, and it became
a habit to discuss what had happened, and what might possibly happen
in the future. There were those who went to the length of calling on
the new man because they wanted to see him face to face. People heard
new things every few days, but no one realized that it was vaguely
through Palliser that there developed a general idea that, crude and
self-revealing as he was, there lurked behind the outward candor of the
intruder a hint of over-sharpness of the American kind. There seemed no
necessity for him to lay schemes beyond those he had betrayed in his
inquiries about “ladies,” but somehow it became a fixed idea that he
was capable of doing shady things if at any time the temptation arose.
That was really what his boyish casualness meant. That in truth was
Palliser’s final secret conclusion. And he wanted very much to find out
_why_ exactly little old Miss Temple Barholm had been taken up. If the
man wanted introductions, he could have contrived to pick up a smart
and enterprising unprofessional chaperon in London who would have done
for him what Miss Temple Barholm would never presume to attempt. And
yet he seemed to have chosen her deliberately. He had set her literally
at the head of his house. And Palliser, having heard a vague rumor
that he had actually settled a decent income upon her, had made adroit
inquiries and found it was true.
It was. To arrange the matter had been one of his reasons for going to
see Mr. Palford during their stay in London.
“I wanted to fix you--fix you safe,” he said when he told Miss Alicia
about it. “I guess no one can take it away from you, whatever old thing
happens.”
“What could happen, dear Mr. Temple Barholm?” said Miss Alicia in the
midst of tears of gratitude and tremulous joy. “You are so young and
strong and--everything! Don’t even speak of such a thing in jest. What
_could_ happen?”
“Anything can happen,” he answered, “just anything. Happening’s the
one thing you can’t bet on. If I was betting, I’d put my money on the
thing I was sure _couldn’t_ happen. Look at this Temple Barholm song
and dance! Look at T. T. as he was half strangling in the blizzard up
at Harlem and thanking his stars little Munsberg didn’t kick him out of
his confectionery store less than a year ago! So long as I’m all right,
you’re all right. But I wanted you _fixed_, anyhow.”
He paused and looked at her questioningly for a moment. He wanted to
say something and he was not sure he ought. His reverence for her
little finenesses and reserves increased instead of wearing away. He
was always finding out new things about her.
“Say,” he broke forth almost impetuously after his hesitation, “I wish
you wouldn’t call me Mr. Temple Barholm.”
“D-do you?” she fluttered. “But what could I call you?”
“Well,” he answered, reddening a shade or so, “I’d give a house and lot
if you could just call me Tem.”
“But it would sound so unbecoming, so familiar,” she protested.
“That’s just what I’m asking for,” he said--“some one to be familiar
with. I’m the familiar kind. That’s what’s the matter with me. I’d be
familiar with Pearson, but he wouldn’t let me. I’d frighten him half to
death. He’d think that he wasn’t doing his duty and earning his wages,
and that somehow he’d get fired some day without a character.”
He drew nearer to her and coaxed.
“Couldn’t you do it?” he asked almost as though he were asking a favor
of a girl. “Just Tem? I believe that would come easier to you than
T. T. I get fonder and fonder of you every day, Miss Alicia, honest
Injun. And I’d be so grateful to you if you’d just be that unbecomingly
familiar.”
He looked honestly in earnest; and if he grew fonder and fonder of her,
she without doubt had, in the face of everything, given her whole heart
to him.
“Might I call you Temple--to begin with?” she asked. “It touches me so
to think of your asking me. I will begin at once. Thank you--Temple,”
with a faint gasp. “I might try the other a little later.”
It was only a few evenings later that he told her about the flats in
Harlem. He had sent to New York for a large bundle of newspapers, and
when he opened them he read aloud an advertisement, and showed her a
picture of a large building given up entirely to “flats.”
He had realized from the first that New York life had a singular
attraction for her. The unrelieved dullness of her life--those few
years of youth in which she had stifled vague longings for the joys
experienced by other girls; the years of middle age spent in the
dreary effort to be “submissive to the will of God,” which, honestly
translated, signified submission to the exactions and domestic
tyrannies of “dear papa” and others like him--had left her with her
capacities for pleasure as freshly sensitive as a child’s. The smallest
change in the routine of existence thrilled her with excitement.
Tembarom’s casual references to his strenuous boyhood caused her eyes
to widen with eagerness to hear more. Having seen this, he found keen
delight in telling her stories of New York life--stories of himself or
of other lads who had been his companions. She would drop her work and
gaze at him almost with bated breath. He was an excellent raconteur
when he talked of the things he knew well. He had an unconscious habit
of springing from his seat and acting his scenes as he depicted them,
laughing and using street-boy phrasing:
“It’s just like a tale,” Miss Alicia would breathe, enraptured as he
jumped from one story to another. “It’s exactly like a wonderful tale.”
She learned to know the New York streets when they blazed with heat,
when they were hard with frozen snow, when they were sloppy with
melting slush or bright with springtime sunshine and spring winds
blowing, with pretty women hurrying about in beflowered spring hats
and dresses and the exhilaration of the world-old springtime joy. She
found herself hurrying with them. She sometimes hung with him and his
companions on the railing outside dazzling restaurants where scores of
gay people ate rich food in the sight of their boyish ravenousness. She
darted in and out among horses and vehicles to find carriages after the
theater or opera, where everybody was dressed dazzlingly and diamonds
glittered.
“Oh, how rich everybody must have seemed to you--how cruelly rich, poor
little boy!”
“They looked rich, right enough,” he answered when she said it. “And
there seemed a lot of good things to eat all corralled in a few places.
And you wished you could be let loose inside. But I don’t know as it
seemed cruel. That was the way it _was_, you know, and you couldn’t
help it. And there were places where they’d give away some of what was
left. I tell you, we were in luck then.”
There was some spirit in his telling it all--a spirit which had surely
been with him through his hardest days, a spirit of young mirth in
rags--which made her feel subconsciously that the whole experience had,
after all, been somehow of the nature of life’s high adventure. He had
never been ill or heart-sick, and he laughed when he talked of it, as
though the remembrance was not a recalling of disaster.
“Clemmin’ or no clemmin’, I wish I’d lived the loife tha’s lived,”
Tummas Hibblethwaite had said.
Her amazement would indeed have been great if she had been told that
she secretly shared his feeling.
“It seems as if somehow you had _never_ been dull,” was her method of
expressing it.
“Dull! Holy cats! no,” he grinned. “There wasn’t any time for being
anything. You just had to keep going.”
She became in time familiar with Mrs. Bowse’s boarding-house and
boarders. She knew Mrs. Peck and Mr. Jakes and the young lady from the
notion counter (those wonderful shops!). Julius and Jim and the hall
bedroom and the tilted chairs and cloud of smoke she saw so often that
she felt at home with them.
“Poor Mrs. Bowse,” she said, “must have been a most respectable,
motherly, hard-working creature. Really a _nice_ person of her class.”
She could not quite visualize the “parlor,” but it must have been warm
and comfortable. And the pianola--a piano which you could play without
even knowing your notes--What a _clever_ invention! America seemed full
of the most wonderfully clever things.
Tembarom was actually uplifted in soul when he discovered that she laid
transparent little plans for leading him into talk about New York.
She wanted him to talk about it, and the Lord knows he wanted to
talk about himself. He had been afraid at first. She might have hated
it, as Palford did, and it would have hurt him somehow if she hadn’t
understood. But she did. Without quite realizing the fact, she was
beginning to love it, to wish she had seen it. Her Somerset vicarage
imagination did not allow of such leaps as would be implied by the
daring wish that sometime she _might_ see it.
But Tembarom’s imagination was more athletic.
“Jinks! wouldn’t it be fine to _take_ her there! The lark in London
wouldn’t be ace high to it.”
The Hutchinsons were not New Yorkers, but they had been part of the
atmosphere of Mrs. Bowse’s. Mr. Hutchinson would of course be rather
a forward and pushing man to be obliged to meet, but Little Ann! She
did so like Little Ann! And the dear boy did so want, in his heart of
hearts, to talk about her at times. She did not know whether, in the
circumstances, she ought to encourage him; but he was so dear, and
looked so much dearer when he even _said_ “Little Ann,” that she could
not help occasionally leading him gently toward the subject.
When he opened the newspapers and found the advertisements of the
flats, she saw the engaging, half-awkward humorousness come into his
eyes.
“Here’s one that would do all right,” he said--“four rooms and a bath,
eleventh floor, thirty-five dollars a month.”
He spread the newspaper on the table and rested on his elbow, gazing
at it for a few minutes wholly absorbed. Then he looked up at her and
smiled.
“There’s a plan of the rooms,” he said. “Would you like to look at it?
Shall I bring your chair up to the table while we go over it together?”
He brought the chair, and side by side they went over it thoroughly.
To Miss Alicia it had all the interest of a new kind of puzzle. He
explained it in every detail. One of his secrets had been that on
several days when Galton’s manner had made him hopeful he had visited
certain flat buildings and gone into their intricacies. He could
therefore describe with color their resources--the janitor; the
elevator; the dumb-waiters to carry up domestic supplies and carry
down ashes and refuse; the refrigerator; the unlimited supply of hot
and cold water, the heating plan; the astonishing little kitchen, with
stationary wash-tubs; the telephone, if you could afford it,--all the
conveniences which to Miss Alicia, accustomed to the habits of Rowcroft
Vicarage, where you lugged cans of water up-stairs and down if you took
a bath or even washed your face, seemed luxuries appertaining only to
the rich and great.
“How convenient! How wonderful! Dear me! Dear me!” she said again and
again, quite flushed with excitement. “It is like a fairy-story. And
it’s not big at all, is it?”
“You could get most of it into this,” he answered, exulting. “You could
get all of it into that big white-and-gold parlor.”
“The white saloon?”
He showed his teeth.
“I guess I ought to remember to call it that,” he said, “but it always
makes me think of Kid MacMurphy’s on Fourth Avenue. He kept what was
called a saloon, and he’d had it painted white.”
“Did you _know_ him?” Miss Alicia asked.
“Know him! Gee! no! I didn’t fly as high as that. He’d have thought me
pretty fresh if I’d acted like I knew him. He thought he was one of the
Four Hundred. He’d been a prize-fighter. He was the fellow that knocked
out Kid Wilkens in four rounds.” He broke off and laughed at himself.
“Hear me talk to you about a tough like that!” he ended, and he gave
her hand the little apologetic, protective pat which always made her
heart beat because it was so “nice.”
He drew her back to the advertisements, and drew such interesting
pictures of what the lives of two people--mother and son or father
and daughter or a young married couple who didn’t want to put on
style--might be in the tiny compartments, that their excitement mounted
again.
This could be a bedroom, that could be a bedroom, that could be the
living-room, and if you put a bit of bright carpet on the little
hallway and hung up a picture or so, it would look first-rate. He even
went into the matter of measurements, which made it more like putting a
puzzle together than ever, and their relief when they found they could
fit a piece of furniture he called “a lounge” into a certain corner was
a thing of flushing delight. The “lounge,” she found, was a sort of cot
with springs. You could buy them for three dollars, and when you put on
a mattress and covered it with a “spread,” you could sit on it in the
daytime and sleep on it at night, if you had to.
From measurements he went into calculations about the cost of things.
He had seen unpainted wooden tables you could put mahogany stain
on, and they’d look all you’d want. He’d seen a splendid little
rocking-chair in Second Avenue for five dollars, one of the padded kind
that ladies like. He had seen an arm-chair for a man that was only
seven; but there mightn’t be room for both, and you’d have to have the
rocking-chair. He had once asked the price of a lot of plates and cups
and saucers with roses on them, and you could get them for six; and you
didn’t need a stove as there was the range.
He had once heard Little Ann talking to Mrs. Bowse about the price
of frying-pans and kettles, and they seemed to cost next to nothing.
He’d looked into store windows and noticed the prices of groceries
and vegetables and things like that--sugar, for instance; two people
wouldn’t use much sugar in a week--and they wouldn’t need a ton of tea
or flour or coffee. If a fellow had a mother or sister or wife who had
a head and knew about things, you could “put it over” on mighty little,
and have a splendid time together, too. You’d even be able to work in a
cheap seat in a theater every now and then. He laughed and flushed as
he thought of it.
Miss Alicia had never had a doll’s house. Rowcroft Vicarage did not run
to dolls and their belongings. Her thwarted longing for a doll’s house
had a sort of parallel in her similarly thwarted longing for “a little
boy.”
And here was her doll’s house so long, so long unpossessed! It was like
that, this absorbed contriving and fitting of furniture into corners.
She also flushed and laughed. Her eyes were so brightly eager and her
cheeks so pink that she looked quite girlish under her lace cap.
“How pretty and cozy it might be made, how dear!” she exclaimed. “And
one would be so high up on the eleventh floor, that one would feel
like a bird in a nest.”
His face lighted. He seemed to like the idea tremendously.
“Why, that’s so,” he laughed. “That idea suits me down to the ground. A
bird in a nest. But there’d have to be two. One would be lonely. Say,
Miss Alicia, how would you like to live in a place like that?”
“I am sure any one would like it--if they had some dear relative with
them.” He loved her “dear relative,” loved it. He knew how much it
meant of what had lain hidden unacknowledged, even unknown to her,
through a lifetime in her early-Victorian spinster breast.
“Let’s go to New York and rent one and live in it together. Would you
come?” he said, and though he laughed, he was not jocular in the usual
way. “Would you, if we waked up and found this Temple Barholm thing was
a dream?”
Something in his manner, she did not know what, puzzled her a little.
“But if it were a dream, you would be quite poor again,” she said,
smiling.
“No, I wouldn’t. I’d get Galton to give me back the page. He’d do it
quick--quick,” he said, still with a laugh. “Being poor’s nothing,
anyhow. We’d have the time of our lives. We’d be two birds in a nest.
You can look out those eleventh-story windows ’way over to the Bronx,
and get bits of the river. And perhaps after a while Ann would do--like
she said, and we’d be three birds.”
“Oh!” she sighed ecstatically. “How beautiful it would be! We should be
a little _family_!”
“So we should,” he exulted. “Think of T. T. with a family!” He drew his
paper of calculations toward him again. “Let’s make believe we’re going
to do it, and work out what it would cost--for three. You know about
housekeeping, don’t you? Let’s write down a list.”
If he had warmed to his work before, he warmed still more after this.
Miss Alicia was drawn into it again, and followed his fanciful plans
with a new fervor. They were like two children who had played at
make-believe until they had lost sight of commonplace realities.
Miss Alicia had lived among small economies and could be of great
assistance to him. They made lists and added up lines of figures until
the fine, huge room and its thousands of volumes melted away. In the
great hall, guarded by warriors in armor, the powdered heads of the
waiting footmen drooped and nodded while the prices of pounds of butter
and sugar and the value of potatoes and flour and nutmegs were balanced
with a hectic joy, and the relative significance of dollars and cents
and shillings and half-crowns caused Miss Alicia a mild delirium.
By the time that she had established the facts that a shilling was
something like twenty-five cents, a dollar was four and twopence, and
twenty-five dollars was over five pounds, it was past midnight.
They heard the clock strike the half-hour, and stopped to stare at each
other.
Tembarom got up with yet another laugh.
“Say, I mustn’t keep you up all night,” he said. “But haven’t we had a
fine time? I feel as if I’d _been_ there.”
They had been there so entirely that Miss Alicia brought herself back
with difficulty.
“I can scarcely believe that we have not,” she said. “I feel as if I
didn’t like to leave it. It was so delightful.” She glanced about her.
“The room looks _huge_,” she said--“almost too huge to live in.”
“Doesn’t it?” he answered. “Now you know how I feel.” He gathered his
scraps of paper together with a feeling touch. “I didn’t want to come
back myself. When I get a bit of a grouch I shall jerk these out and go
back there again.”
“Oh, do let me go with you!” she said. “I have so enjoyed it.”
“You shall go whenever you like,” he said. “We’ll keep it up for a sort
of game on rainy days. How much is a dollar, Miss Alicia?”
“Four and twopence. And sugar is six cents a pound.”
“Go to the head,” he answered. “Right again.”
The opened roll of newspapers was lying on the table near her. They
were copies of “The Earth.” The date of one of them by merest chance
caught her eye.
“How odd!” she said. “Those are old papers. Did you notice? Is it a
mistake? This one is dated--” She leaned forward, and her eye caught a
word in a head-line.
“The Klondike,” she read. “There’s something about the Klondike.” He
put his hand out and drew the papers away.
“Don’t you read that,” he said. “I don’t want you to go to bed and
dream about the Klondike. You’ve got to dream about the flat in Harlem.”
“Yes,” she answered. “I mustn’t think about sad things. The flat in
Harlem is quite happy. But it startled me to see that word.”
“I only sent for them--because I happened to want to look something
up,” he explained. “How much is a pound, Miss Alicia?”
“Four dollars and eighty-six cents,” she replied, recovering herself.
“Go up head again. You’re going to stay there.”
When she gave him her hand on their parting for the night, he held
it a moment. A subtle combination of things made him do it. The
calculations, the measurements, the nest from which one could look out
over the Bronx, were prevailing elements in its make-up. Ann had been
in each room of the Harlem flat, and she always vaguely reminded him of
Ann.
“We are relations, ain’t we?” he asked.
“I am sure we often seem quite near relations--Temple.” She added the
name with very pretty kindness.
“We’re not distant ones any more, anyhow,” he said. “Are we near
enough--would you let me kiss you good night, Miss Alicia?”
An emotional flush ran up to her cap ribbons.
“Indeed, my dear boy--indeed, yes.”
Holding her hand with a chivalric, if slightly awkward, courtesy, he
bent, and kissed her cheek. It was a hearty, affectionately grateful
young kiss, which, while it was for herself, remotely included Ann.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever said good night to any one like that,”
he said. “Thank you for letting me.”
He patted her hand again before releasing it. She went up-stairs
blushing and feeling rather as though she had been proposed to, and
yet, spinster though she was, somehow quite understanding about the
nest and Ann.
(To be continued)
MANNERING’S MEN
BY MARJORIE L. C. PICKTHALL
“In that town,” said Blake to himself, peering cautiously through the
scrub, “is Mannering’s grave, and the wreck of a brave man’s life-work.
Oh, Sergeant, if those two beggarly Nyam-Nyams try to run away; deal
with them straightly. At moonset we will go down.”
“O sons of Eblis,” murmured the Haussa sergeant with a grin, “scum of
the market-place, little frogs of the mud-puddles of Wakonda, in that
town is good soured milk, much grain, and chickens and goats as many as
the prayers of the prophet. At moonset we will go down.”
The command gurgled pleasantly to itself and lay closer. Blake crawled
nearer Macartney, who was raking the silver-patched blackness with a
pair of night-glasses wrapped in dark cloth.
“I can make out a tin roof,” whispered Macartney at last; “that will be
the roof of the residency.”
“Where Mannering was speared on his own door-step,” said Jim Blake,
taking the glasses. “Dead, down and dead, wiped out, an absolute
failure, Mannering. I can’t get over that, you know. He was such a keen
old beggar, so wrapped up in his work. He simply spent himself on this
beastly country. And he cleared out Wakonda, as far as mortal eye can
see, on purpose to make room for seven other devils worse than the late
king.”
“Couldn’t be,” put in Macartney.
“It’s not being speared that’s the worst part of it,” persisted Blake;
“we all come to that sooner or later. It’s having absolutely nothing to
show for his life or his death. Nothing even for the next man to build
on. It’s that,” he continued, shivering as the dawn chill blew up the
valley, “which I fancy must worry old Mannering--still.”
“What you need is chlorodyne,” whispered Macartney, indignantly.
They lay silent in the dank, upland grass, and the dew beaded and
dripped on the thorns overhead. The command hunted for prickles in its
feet, tightened belts, and babbled softly of stewed fowl.
From immense spaces, as spun out and thin as a thread, came the
hunting-cry of a lion. The Haussa sergeant crept up and touched Blake’s
foot.
“The moon sets, O Effendi, and it is not yet the dawn.”
Blake rose to his feet and looked at the sky. “We be ready,” he said.
The command moved as one man, eyes glinting whitely under the
tarbooshes. The last few days had been hungry ones. Below in the valley
was good food; it was only to fight a little, and all would be full.
“_Ya Illah_, brethren, let us go down.”
They went down. Blake was no tactician, and his plan in such cases was
simple. You took the main gate, held it, and swept the obstructionists
out of the other gates or over the mud walls, broom fashion. He had
worked with his present command for a year, and they followed him like
a foot-ball team. The sergeant at his elbow presently touched his
sleeve.
“There is made ground here.”
“Made ground?”
“Yes. The road built by Mannering Bimbashi.”
Already the road built by Mannering for the grain dealers and spice
merchants was no more than a track in the undergrowth, and the grass
swept to the thigh. Their way dipped sharply, and a river valley
swirling in mist took them like shadows. Blake felt under his feet the
rotten piles of a bridge, and a rifle clanged against rusted iron.
“I think these cattle of Wakonda have the alarm,” said the sergeant as
they grunted up the opposite slope.
“Why?”
“There was a watchman at the bridge end; we should have crossed by the
ford farther down. But these Wakondai cannot fight, and all is as Allah
wills. O Ibrahim, son of Suleiman, keep thy rifle dry and remember to
get under the walls.”
The town was clattering like a frightened hen-roost when a company
of shadows flitted through the fog, and flung themselves under the
walls and against the main gate. Five minutes of noisy, scrambling,
hit-or-miss fighting followed, and they were inside, with their hardest
work before them. Their fire had driven back the defenders, but they
themselves had for the moment no cover. Presently the slugs began to
flop on the walls behind them, and two men fell. Blake felt a stinging
blow on the knee, and went down on all fours. He rose, laughing rather
shakily into Macartney’s scared face.
“A spent bullet,” he cried in the din; “can’t put my foot to the
ground. Clear those houses, old man; I’ll hold the gate.”
Macartney nodded and was gone, his men after him. Blake and his handful
took cover behind a mud buttress and a dead camel, and prepared to hold
the gate. It was only then that Blake saw the sergeant.
“Why art thou here?”
“I stay with thee, O Effendi. Besides,”--he sniffed wistfully,--“in
that house they have been cooking good mutton. I would not go too far.”
The din and turmoil of the narrow ways rose and fell like the froth of
a sea. The roofs were beginning to burn in a dozen places as Macartney,
in rough-and-ready fashion, cleared out the slug-shooters. The red
light of burning thatch danced in the fog and the thinning dark, and
by this light Blake saw a score of white-wrapped figures leap from the
reek and rush for the gate, shouting as they came.
“Steady, men, steady!”
“By the prophet’s beard!” cried the Haussa sergeant, flinging himself
flat behind the camel, “these be no Wakondai, but ghazis of the far
desert. Shoot well, O my children!”
It was all happening with the jerky rapidity of a cinematograph film,
and the noise passed hearing. The command, inspired with visions of
buttered mutton, loaded and fired as one man. Two, three close-range
volleys swept between the walls, and the alley was blotched with
whitish bundles that were the bodies of the desert men. But the others
came on, and suddenly Blake was on his feet in the shadow of the gate,
fighting hand to hand for his life.
“Stand firm, O my children!”
The sergeant’s voice echoed his. He was the center of an indescribable
confusion. Under the gate the smoke of the volleys hung heavily.
Through this broke first one fierce face, then another, the gleam of
arms, the surge and retreat of the attack, the blows and outcries of
men. Ibrahim, the son of Suleiman, fell across Blake’s feet and coughed
his life out in ten seconds. Another of his best men was down, speared
through the heart. And then, as suddenly as they had come, the desert
men retreated to the shelter of the huts, and Blake, looking up, saw
that it was day.
“They are gone,” said the sergeant, looking at the dead, “but they will
come again. O Effendi, this is no good place.”
“I should have kept more men,” Blake was thinking clearly and rapidly.
“If Mac doesn’t come back inside ten minutes, it will be too late for
us, and he’ll have to cut his way out.”
A moment’s dreamlike quiet had succeeded the dreamlike noise. Over his
head the sky was clear and growing gold, barred with the black flocks
of wild-fowl that flew to their feeding-grounds in the valley. The sun
rose with the hard flash of metal, and the blink of metal answered from
the ruined roof of Mannering’s house. Blake’s breath drew cold. Was
he also to die uselessly, wastefully, his work unfinished, under the
spears of Wakonda? “Steady, men, steady, and fire slowly! It is ours to
hold the gate.”
The Haussa sergeant leaped to his feet.
“They come again! O jackals of the sands, we men are ready--”
“Silence--and lie down!”
Again with that dreaming sense of unreality Blake watched the rush of
fluttering figures up the alley. The men were loading and firing as
fast as they could, but the rush was scarcely checked. Someone behind
him began to croon a wild death-song. A thrown spear flickered before
his eyes and struck his head a glancing blow. He looked at it curiously
as it clattered down on his boots, and wondered why his hands felt
so weak, and why the earth reeled under his feet like an out-rolled
ribbon. Then everything was lost in a warm, red mist through which
savage faces seemed to peer and yell. Blinded and dizzy, he braced
himself for the shock of the charge, the while some voice in his head
was buzzing busily, “You will go down as Mannering did, a failure, a
failure--”
An utter pity for Mannering filled him. He leaned back against the
wall, leveled his revolver as well as he could on his knee, and
waited--as Mannering had waited.
“_Ya Illah!_” shouted the sergeant hoarsely. “Who be these?”
Blake cleared the blood from his eyes and looked. The attack had
wavered and had turned upon itself, for a compact little force of ten
had filed out from behind a house and fallen upon the desert men in
the rear. They were in all degrees of dress and undress. Their leader
was very tall and very thin, with a great bush of hair, upon which he
wore the remains of a tarboosh, and he had an empty bandoleer round
his neck. He and his men were armed variously, ranging from a damaged
Martini to an inlaid jezail from the North. These weapons they were
using variously, but effectively, in disciplined silence. So much Blake
saw in a photographic flash of amazement. Then strength came back to
him, and he and the sergeant flung themselves across the dead camel.
“Come on, you black rascals!” shouted Blake, staggering as he stood.
“Follow me, sons of darkness!” yelled the sergeant.
The men obeyed with howls. Caught between two forces, the enemy,
fighting like wolves, were driven down alleys, cut down in corners,
scattered and broken. In five minutes Blake’s men and their unknown
allies were staring and panting under the gate, their work done.
“Now,” suggested the Haussa, patting Blake all over with his delicate
black hands in a search for fatal injuries--“now I go and picket that
street whence came the good cooking smell.”
“Wait!” commanded Blake. He looked at the gate, at the dead lying in
the light and the black shadow. Even now the gold had scarcely gone
from the faint, hot blue of the sky; scattered bands of birds still
flew across it, and the high air seemed stirred with a multitude of
wings. He looked at the leader of the allies, who was standing on one
leg and grinning anxiously.
“Who art thou?”
The man drew his dusty heels together and carefully saluted.
“We be the men of Mannering Bimbashi.”
“Of Mannering Bimbashi?”
“Yea, master. I was a policeman of the force wherewith he policed
this town. He said to us, ‘Go here,’ or ‘Go there,’ and we went and
punished the evil-doers. Twice and thrice have I fought under Mannering
Bimbashi.” He gazed contemptuously at his command. “These others are
also of his force, or of his house--warriors, as I am, or gardeners and
herders of goats; but all Mannering Bimbashi’s men.”
“Go on,” said Blake, quietly.
“Mannering Bimbashi was slain, and many of his folk; but I was
left. I remembered. I gathered these others together, and bade them
remember also. Mannering Bimbashi was dead, but we were not freed
from our service. We had to live. I was a seller of rock-salt in the
market-place, and these others did work after their kind. Sometimes we
met and spoke together. None knew us for his men, and his name might
not be upon our lips; but we laid our hands upon our mouths--so--and
then we remembered.”
“Go on.”
“There is no more. It is very difficult to remember. But I knew the
English would come in the footsteps of our bimbashi, and I held these
of his together in readiness, as thou hast seen. But our bimbashi--on
whom be peace!--has been dead a long time, and now we would take
service with thee, O master.”
“Thou hast done well.” Blake’s voice shook a little as he thought how
well. “Thou hast done very well. But why?”
The man was very ugly and very black, but all the poetry and sadness of
the Arab were in his face as he answered:
“We were his men. We loved him.”
Blake’s eyes were dim as he looked across at the ruined house. There
Mannering had gone down, and his hope, his work, his deeds--all these
had gone down with him into dust.
“But even here there was love left,” said Blake aloud, with a kind of
wonder; “even here there was love left!”
Then he took his men and Mannering’s and went to join Macartney in the
ordering of Wakonda.
VERITA’S STRATAGEM
BY ANNE WARNER[7]
Author of “Susan Clegg,” “Seeing France with Uncle John,” etc.
There were very many people who gave a good deal of time to wondering
whether Lady Verita Veritas would really ever marry Captain Adair.
Many were the opinions on the subject, and some fair-sized bets, one
man even proposing to take out the risk at Lloyd’s that she would
not. The general view was that marrying Captain Adair was about the
only thing that her very original ladyship had _not_ done so far; but
on the heels of this undeniable proposition followed the query as to
whether her very original ladyship would ever do anything that even the
wildest imagination might have accidentally predicted. It was felt that
the chances were all against this possibility, and good society was
preparing to return to its old favorite topic of how very curiously the
young lady treated the young man if she _did_ mean to marry him, and
how much more curious was her course of action if she _didn’t_, when
suddenly, one fair May morning, on every news-stall in England appeared
a well-known magazine, displaying upon its cover list of contributors
the name of our heroine, and upon its pages a terrible tale, entitled,
“The Dowager Marchioness doesn’t Think,” which clearly owed its
inception and development to the quick wit and ready pen of that same
blue-blooded young woman.
Here was a fresh sensation in good earnest, the more pronounced from
the fact that there was a very thoughtless dowager marchioness in the
Veritas family. It was not many hours before all London was buzzing,
and none of the buzzing was louder than that set up by the wheels of
the irate aunt’s car as they hummed round and round, spinning her
rapidly toward her niece. For the earl’s eldest sister lived near
Windsor and was very, very rich, quite rich enough to have a good and
legal right to a thoughtless disposition, the latter combined, be it
added, with a most uncertain temper.
The marchioness had the magazine with her, but the speed she had
commanded was so great and the purchase of her pince-nez so uncertain
that she could only glance casually from time to time at the iniquities
portrayed therein. It was easy to see, however, that it was a frightful
story and calculated to incite to riot and bloodshed, or, at the very
least, to upset all discipline in the servants’ hall. The plot seemed
to hint at some vague system of retribution (here the marchioness
held the page very close), and in one spot there were certain vicious
passages about downing--or was it drowning?--all aristocrats; but just
at that moment the car struck a stone, and the noble lady lost her
place, in fact, both her places. By the time that she had readjusted
herself, the leaf had turned over, and her eye fell on another and
yet more absorbing horror, for an old villager in the story predicted
death to all who had oppressed him, and following immediately upon this
bloodthirsty prophecy came a style of invective that quite shocked one,
and made Verita’s aunt suspect that her dear niece had been slumming in
Limehouse.
“I wonder what her father will--” reflected the ancient lady of ten
times more ancient lineage, shutting tight her thin-lipped mouth; but
there the car, making ever more and more violent efforts to save time
at the expense of every other consideration, skidded, and again the
dowager marchioness was forced to give up thinking.
She gave it up for so long a time that the next thing of which she
became aware was the pillared entrance to Veritas House and the
green-and-silver footman who was brother to her own maid. He took her
out with a solicitude that showed that he also was fully aware of the
tragic happening which had just shaken the august family.
“The duchess is up-stairs, your Ladyship,” he whispered respectfully,
as she clung to his arm, “and Captain Adair, too.”
The dowager marchioness nodded with jelly-like faintness. Then she
mounted the staircase in real agitation, and was announced by a second
footman, this one being a son of her own cook.
The countess was “laid up with her head,” so Verita was pouring the
tea; no one else was present except the duchess and the captain.
“Not a copy to be had,” the captain was saying excitedly; “I tried
everywhere. I tried at Paddington and at the club, and then I took a
taxi to Gray’s Inn. There’s a news-stall just across the way, don’t you
know; but not a beastly one could I find.”
“Too bad,” said the author, going to kiss the new arrival; “but it
doesn’t matter so much now, because here’s one.” She took the dowager
marchioness’s magazine as she spoke, and gave it to the duchess, who
opened it eagerly.
“O Vera, how _could_ you?” began her aunt at once. “Or if you wanted
to do it, why did you drag us all in this terrible way? _This_ is
something much more dreadful than walking in processions and being
arrested; this is the _most_ dreadful thing that you’ve done yet.”
“The worst of it is,” said the captain, “that it breaks down all the
sense of _noblesse oblige_ and _entre nous_--all that kind of thing,
you know. If it were anybody else, it wouldn’t so much matter, for we
seem to be baited from every side just now; but I don’t think that
_she_ ought to join in, and what worries me especially is that their
being sold out at Paddington shows that the magazine has gone out on
the afternoon trains in every direction.” He drew a hard breath and
glared. Just to look at him, any casual observer would have declared on
the Bible that here was a man with great force of character.
“The Paddington trains go only as far as Oxford,” said Lady Verita in a
soothing tone, but Captain Adair was clearly in no easily soothed mood.
“They go to Reading, too,” he said with an uncommon air of real
opposition, “and to Banbury.”
“And to Stratford--they go to Stratford, too,” interposed the dowager
marchioness. “Oh, I’m sure, if you looked into the matter, you’d find
that quite a number of places are reached from Paddington. Else why
shouldn’t those trains have gone from some other station?” She paused
at this bit of constructive London logic, and reverted to her usual
condition.
“I wish that they did go from some other station,” said Captain Adair,
irately, “it took me so long to get to Paddington. To-day was the first
time in ages that I’d gone there, and I wouldn’t have gone there to-day
only I was right in the neighborhood.”
Lady Verita looked at him in a way that she had, and he ceased
speaking. There was no special quality in her glance, but it was of a
kind that one frequently encounters in the best English circles, and it
always causes some one to cease speaking. Captain Adair would become a
duke some day if one man should die and another should never marry; but
it must be confessed that Lady Verita, whether she did or did not have
his interest at heart, frequently chose that he should cease speaking.
“I wish that you hadn’t put your name to it,” said the dowager
marchioness, suddenly awakened to life and their family grievance by
the duchess’s turning a page with a smart snap; “there’s a place there
where a man shrieks that he will fight until not one drop of blue
blood is left running beside another. That is really very terrible, my
dear, that”--She was stopped abruptly, for the duchess threw the book
violently from her, gathered up her feather boa, and, rising abruptly,
started toward the door.
“What is it?” asked Lady Verita, rising also.
Without a word of explanation or adieu, her grace sailed out of the
room. Captain Adair having jumped to open the door for her.
The dowager marchioness sat open-mouthed.
“She must be mad,” said the man as he returned to his seat; “but you
know that you really shouldn’t have written it, Vera; really you
shouldn’t. People don’t do such things.”
“So revolutionary!” expostulated the dowager marchioness, finding her
tongue. “You ought to consider the times. We might as well have Tolstoy
in the family, or that horrid little man who led the French strike.
Think of your country. Think of her need. Think of our ships.”
“Think of the docks,” the captain added, “or don’t write. That would do
just as well.”
“Or, if you must write,” said the aunt, “why not write about the
cottage industries? We’ve such a nice cottage industry near us.”
“You might as well be a socialist,” continued the captain; “think of
the danger _then_. Think of the taxes.”
“Think of all the men who are continually being killed,” said the
dowager, warming to her argument.
“Think of the condition of your party,” said the captain; and then,
having picked up the magazine and hunted out the offending matter, he
ceased speaking and carefully adjusted his glass.
Lady Verita leaned back in her chair and seemed to resign herself to
the inevitable.
“And if I were not kindness itself,” went on the marchioness, after a
slight somnolent pause, “I should feel outraged over your taking your
title from me. That”--
“Well, by George!” cried the captain.
“_What_ is it?” asked the marchioness.
Lady Verita began to laugh.
“I declare!” The captain began to laugh, too.
“_What_ is it?” cried the marchioness again.
“The whole thing is about the French Revolution!”
“Of course,” said the author, laughing more.
“The French Revolution!” stammered her aunt.
“It doesn’t mean us at all,” said Adair, dropping his glass and staring
at both ladies.
“Naturally not.” Lady Verita began crumbling bread for the poodle. “How
could any of you suppose that I would make a story out of you?”
“The French Revolution!” repeated the dowager.
“I’ll wager that’s why the duchess bolted,” said the captain, suddenly.
“She’d seen through it.”
“_Selbstverständlich_,” said Lady Verita, pouring cold tea over
the crumbs, to the end that the poodle might enjoy some truly kind
attention.
“I’m going straight to her!” announced the marchioness, rising with
dignity. “I wish to let her know that _I_ know, too.”
In less than two minutes the lady and the captain were left alone
together.
“I believe you wrote it for a sell,” the man said then. He did
occasionally beam brightly through his own fog, and he was anxious now
to be on good terms again; “you knew how it would be taken.”
“Perhaps,” said Lady Verita, calmly; “but do ring for them to take away
the tea, and then run along yourself. I’m tired.”
“You treat me like a dog,” grumbled the captain, “and I never rebel. Do
kiss me once before I go, anyhow, and say you love me just once. Do!”
She kissed him, and that so sweetly that she was barely through with
it when the men came in for the tea-things. The men going out with the
tea-things were barely on the other side of the door when she said “I
love you,” and that sweetly, too. The captain went away in raptures. If
only--if only--
It was this sort of happenings that kept so much gossip afloat about
the young couple.
* * * * *
There are only two short months between the first of May and the first
of July; it follows therefore that there were only two short months
between the publication of “The Dowager Marchioness doesn’t Think” and
that of “The Earl’s Own County.” Every one who had been shocked by the
title of “The Dowager Marchioness doesn’t Think” had become quickly
calmed upon discovering that it concerned nothing nearer home than
the French Revolution, and so could not have meant anything invidious
in relation to either our particular dowager marchioness, or yet her
times, or yet her class. But there was quite another tale to tell about
“The Earl’s Own County,” and both the earl and his county were so well
known and so dreadful, the description of them was so vividly accurate,
and the language so painful and so glowing, that those who knew the
whole truth stood open-mouthed and aghast, wondering what the noble
father would do with his noble daughter _now_.
The noble father was off yachting and thus altogether removed from the
field of immediate retribution. But his noble brother, the bishop, came
trundling up from his bishopric as fast as, first, a pair of cobs,
second, a first-class ticket, and third, a taxi, could be induced to
bring him. Arriving at Veritas House, he found his sister-in-law, the
countess, laid up with her head, as usual; but the youthful culprit
received her uncle with an outstretched hand and a beaming smile. It
was hard to believe her so great a sinner as she had proved, but the
bishop was ready to believe anything of a daughter and an aristocrat
who would write “The Earl’s Own County.”
“Verita,” he said at once and gravely, “_this_ is no light matter.
_This_ cannot be overlooked. Your own ancestral acres! It is really
_most_ dreadful. You have absolutely identified the place by your
detailed description of the thatches and the drains. Thatches
and drains are no longer mere impersonal matters of picturesque
possibility, as in the past. The low-lying politics of the present
government have unduly exalted the drain and all but carried off the
thatch. To write lightly of the matter is the reverse of pardonable.
Indeed, I may say without fear of prevarication that it is a _very_
serious offense. Statements such as yours, put in the peculiarly
unfortunate manner which you have somehow hit upon, stir people up
beyond all reason. You remember that American book about the pigs
in the jungle near Chicago? Do you recollect that it nearly wrecked
the whole slaughtering industry? These things are better left alone.
There is no knowing to what end they may lead. You might bring about a
question in the House. Consider _that_ possibility. Such fearful issues
have arisen out of most trivial matters. In the present state of German
tiles, we must put down with a hand of steel all reference to English
thatches. I trust that you are following me?” The bishop paused, quite
out of breath.
“But I have a purpose,” said Lady Verita. “Have you read my story?”
“In part--only in part; vespers intervened to spare me useless pain.
But that little was enough--too much, in fact. It is pulling the very
foundations from under our civilization to write as you have written.
I cannot in justice deny that your description of life among the poor
is a remarkable piece of work, but no good can come of descriptions of
life among the poor. Indeed, in my estimation, it is a thing that never
should be done. We have our master’s own warrant for the continual
existence of the poor, and we may not question his statement. ‘Always
with you,’ he said. What could be clearer? In my estimation, their
elimination would undermine the whole foundation of that crown of
virtue, Christian charity.”
“But I don’t agree with that view,” said Lady Verita; “I disagree with
it completely. I think that the situation of the poor can be vastly
improved; in fact, it _is_ being improved; which absolutely proves that
it can be. That’s logic.”
“Not at all,” protested the bishop; “on the contrary, it’s altogether
the opposite of logical. I have it on the authority of nearly all who
view the matter as I do, that things are getting continually worse.
And with things getting continually worse, the case is proved in
opposition to all law and all your so-called logic. I must decline to
argue the matter, for the simple reason that the only side to take is
mine. Therefore, do not let us go into it. Nothing can be gained by
discussing. No one denies that the country has fallen on evil days,
but that is a mere trifle compared to the horror of what you have
written--and to think that it should have been written by one in the
lofty station of your father’s daughter!” Again the bishop paused for
breath.
“I’m interested in the poor,” said Lady Veritas, meditatively.
“Perhaps we had best leave the poor out of the question,” said the
bishop, who was noted for the firmness with which he adhered to any
ground that he had once taken. “As a churchman of more than ordinary
weight, I may say that I have ever deprecated the wasting of words
as to the economic position of the poor. The poor, in my opinion,
are becoming far too prominent. They occupy at present a position
never intended in that divine order of things to which I have already
referred. It is a position that even the most casual observer must
admit is far beyond their limited capabilities to hold. Much of the
provision which is needed--and I may say even bitterly needed--by the
church is now being diverted to what may well be denominated as the
bottomless pit wherein dwell the poor. The poor are fast becoming
the rich. The rich are rapidly being pauperized for the unreasonable
aggrandizement of the poor. The situation will all too soon become
completely unbearable. Now, I put it to you,”--the bishop warmed
suddenly in his most persuasive pulpit manner,--“why make it worse?
A story like yours is to all intents and purposes a suggestion as
to making everything better, and _what_ could be worse? I may say
without fear of prevarication that this is a serious matter. It is a
very serious matter. Here in your story you have your childhood home
desecrated! Our old ancestral acres stripped for the popular gaze! Why
did you do it? Or, if an unconquerable longing to perpetuate them in
print obsessed you, why did you not perpetuate the beeches or the wild
boar or one of the sweet old stories of dole and dungeon? Why drag
forth into the fierce light of the present unfortunate tendency to look
into matters which, after all”--
“Dear uncle,” said Lady Verita, quite wearied by the length as well as
the breadth of her right reverend relative’s scope, “to say the truth,
the story is about Ireland. Any one who reads it carefully through to
the end sees that. The difficulty is that no one reads anything through
to the end nowadays. They skip all but the love scenes. There isn’t a
word about any of us or our own wretched belongings in the whole thing.
It is all about County Mayo.”
“County Mayo!” cried the bishop.
“Yes,” said his niece, “it is all about County Mayo. Of course it is
written very carefully, just as the other story was, and I had a fancy
that it might lead some readers to think, ‘Whom the cap fits, let him
wear it.’ It has amused me not a little to see how the guilty jump at
conclusions. I drew a picture of the French Revolution, and every one
cried out that I was writing of ourselves. And now I write of a poor
corner in a poor county in Ireland, and your own conscience at once
attaches my silly tale to a poor corner in a poor county in England.
That amuses me.”
A dull red glowed in the bishop’s angry face. He never had liked this
girl, and now he felt that he disliked her intensely. But of course
there was no more to be said. An English bishop must not allow himself
to be interested in Ireland.
“I am afraid that your youthful spirits will cause you to do what you
never can undo,” he said, carefully avoiding her glance of fun as he
rose stiffly.
“They have,” said his niece.
“You admit it. Yes, I should imagine so. I”--
Just here Captain Adair was announced.
“Dear uncle,” said Verita, putting her hand into the captain’s while
she looked toward the bishop, “we are what Fate wills in our weaving,
and I am busy unraveling my skein, that’s all.”
The bishop shook his head in a rather irritated manner and went away.
Left alone together, the captain kissed her ladyship and drew her to a
seat on the divan.
“My uncle has been expostulating about ‘The Earl’s Own County,’” she
said then.
“It’s an awful sell,” said Adair, half angry, half laughing; “down to
the last line, every one thinks it’s your place. Of course _I_ always
read to the last line before I say anything now. I’ve learned your
little way.”
Verita laughed brightly.
“But isn’t it droll that directly I deny it, no one sees the real truth
in the descriptions any more?”
“Y-e-s,” said the captain, looking into her pretty face; “and yet I
wish that you wouldn’t--’pon my soul I do. You might consider _me_ a
little, I think. You know what a hard time I have. I’ve stood such a
lot for you. We have all stood such a lot with you. The trouble is,
you’re so much too clever for a woman. All women are nowadays. They’re
going ahead of all the rules of the game. And you go ahead of all the
rest of them.”
“Somebody must go ahead, or progress would cease,” said Lady Verita.
“We’ve sat around quite a bit waiting for the men to do things lately,
I think.”
“Oh, but we’d be so comfortable if progress ceased, don’t you think?”
protested the captain. “Hang it all! if I don’t think that that
progress cult is at the bottom of every trouble in the world these
days. If everybody’s going to join in for progress, there never will
be any peace any more. And as for women like you, Vera dear, if you
ever do get the vote, you’ll find yourself a thorn in the side of your
party. It’s that way with the clever men always: one has to give the
country over to ’em just to keep ’em quiet.”
“I never shall have any party,” said Lady Verita, thoughtfully. “I
don’t believe in party politics. I’ll believe in any party that will
give even the devil his due. That’s all.”
“That would be the worst party of all,” said the captain; “that would
be the kind that no one ever would know which lobby you’d see ’em in.”
He stopped to shake his head sadly, for there seemed to him so much
of which he should despair, and he, like most well-born Englishmen,
did so long to be hopeful and happy! “I do wish you’d quit all this,”
he continued, “and settle down like other girls. Some day I’ll get on
my feet, and then we’ll tell every one. It really isn’t any of it my
fault, you know.”
Lady Verita looked at him not unkindly,--he was a handsome fellow,--and
was aware of a sincere wish that she were not so very much the cleverer
of the two, or, at least, that he wouldn’t be so ready to admit it.
“I’m aiming to accomplish something,” she said, speaking almost as
sadly as he had spoken. “When I’ve done it, I’ll cease writing; but I
can’t before. You know that I never do anything very long, however, so
I shall soon finish with this.”
But this was cold comfort for the captain.
“You keep me so upset, Vera,” he said after a moment’s painful
reflection. “I never know what you’ll do next.”
She laughed a little.
“But there’s one thing I must say,” he added, “and you must remember
it, too: don’t you ever write anything about me, because that’s
something I won’t stand for. Promise me that.”
Lady Verita did not promise. She kissed him instead, and he did not
notice the alteration in the program.
* * * * *
It was only a moon or two later that my lady’s last tale appeared in
print. It was called “If I were only a Duke.” Captain Adair was the
hero, and society, on noting the latter fact, was shaken to its very
center. The captain was in Malta with a special commission of inquiry
into the chance of a night attack from Germany; but he had a sister in
London, who mailed him a copy the day that it appeared.
The framework of the story was remarkable.
“Of course they’re engaged,” people said everywhere; “they _must_ be.”
“We know that it’s true about his being poor,” said the cabinet
minister’s wife to her cousin; “she didn’t need to tell _that_.”
“And that his uncle’s a beast,” rejoined the cousin.
“He’ll rage when he reads this,” continued the cabinet minister’s wife;
“it _is_ rather a give-away, I do think. He might have made them an
allowance.”
“To think of her writing openly that, after all the labor she had
had to get him to offer himself, it is too bad that she must wait
indefinitely to be married!” The cousin sighed deeply. As she had been
waiting twenty-five years for some allowance to be made for her own
marriage, she felt a secret sympathy with Lady Verita.
“A most shocking confession,” said the cabinet minister’s wife, knowing
just what the sigh meant, and being one of those wives who never regard
an allowance as necessary when the maiden ladies of the family marry.
And then she gathered up her wrap and departed.
The old duke, even if he was a beast, had always been a very dignified
beast; but the commotion about his supposedly published parsimony shook
even his conception of noble rights. He went in his big blue car to
call at the house where the dreadful young woman stayed when she was at
home. The countess, her mother, was laid up with her head, as usual.
Lady Verita received his grace exactly as she received most persons in
these trying times.
“I suppose it is the story,” she said as she greeted him. She wasn’t a
bit afraid of him, having learned to regard him as much the same stuff
as the rest of humanity, only more in her way.
“Yes, it is the story,” he said haughtily. He regarded it as most
unfortunate that she herself differed so widely from the rest of
humanity. “It’s really too bad of you, don’t you know. If Clifford
wishes to marry, I’ll give him a little something regular. He ought to
know that. You ought to know that. What’s the good of rowing?”
Lady Verita lowered her eyes. She thought that there had been a deal of
good in rowing, since it had brought his close-fisted grace to this.
“But it’s very shocking to write it out for the _hoi polloi_, don’t
you know,” the duke continued vigorously; “I must beg, if you marry
Clifford, that we have no more of this kind of thing.”
“But it wasn’t meant for any one we know,” protested Lady Verita.
“Yes, it was,” said the duke, putting up his glass and glaring at
her; “everything you’ve written has been straight from the shoulder.
I read the other two, and it was rubbish to suppose you meant the
French Revolution or Ireland. Ireland, indeed! Any one with half an
eye could see what you meant. And I don’t need even half an eye to see
what you mean now. You mean to marry Clifford, and you wish to do it
at once. Dash it all! if putting it off is going to lead to more of
these stories, and putting it forward will stop ’em, I’ll set you up in
housekeeping to stop ’em. We can’t let this kind of thing continue.”
“Thank you so much,” said Lady Verita, casting down her eyes modestly.
“We _are_ betrothed.”
“Yes, I thought so,” said the duke; “I’ve reason to think so, for every
one’s been telling me so for the last two years. But what beats me is
how, with your daring, you haven’t found a way to marry him before
this.”
Lady Verita hesitated.
“I have,” she said finally.
* * * * *
On receipt of the magazine, Captain Adair flew home as if he had been
a dynamite cartridge. For the first time in his life he was stirred
enough to be really very much worth while.
“What did I tell you?” he cried, rushing in upon the guilty person
without even having stopped to be brushed by his valet. “Now you _have_
done it. We’ll _have_ to tell now.”
Verita wasn’t in the least upset. If he had been plate-glass and she
had been a hammer, she couldn’t have been more aware of where the
advantage lay.
“We’ll have to tell now,” he repeated; “in fact, you have virtually
told already.”
She did not deny it. But she rose and went to him. There was something
about her that always had a calming effect when he was vexed, and
the charm worked this time as always. He took her hands, clasped them
behind his neck, and drew her to him.
“Do let us announce it,” he said in a tone that was muffled by
circumstances.
She returned his kiss, for although she knew all his mental
deficiencies, she loved him dearly.
“I want to tell,” he whispered; “I’ve always wanted to tell, you
know. What if we are poor? We’ll scrape along somehow. We’ll open a
flower-shop or a laundry or something.”
She laid her face against his breast.
“I think we’d better tell, too,” she said. “That was the reason why I
wrote the story. Writing stories is such a simple way of bringing the
truth before the public.”
“But our marriage isn’t on a par with the state of the times nor the
condition of your father’s estate,” he reminded her.
“No, not exactly,” she admitted; “but it was something that I felt
should be known and which required careful leading up to.”
He kissed her again.
“But you’ll let it be known now?” he asked.
She did not say:
“I’ve wanted it known all the time, but you were so beastly afraid of
your uncle.” Instead she murmured, “We’ll send an announcement to the
newspapers to-night.”
Then she looked at him and smiled, and then for an instant her heart
misgave her and she sighed. She knew that she had gained her purpose,
and she knew that she liked him better than any other man; but she was
a _femme d’esprit_, and she knew also that although he would one day
be a duke, he never would be her equal. And, like all clever women who
marry future dukes for love, she could but sigh slightly.
[Illustration]
[7] This story was received by ~The Century~ shortly before the death
of the author, which occurred February 4, 1913.
[Illustration: Owned by Sir William Van Horne
ST. ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY. BY FRANCISCO ZURBARÁN
(TIMOTHY COLE’S WOOD ENGRAVINGS OF MASTERPIECES IN AMERICAN GALLERIES)]
[Illustration:
TIMOTHY COLE’S
WOOD ENGRAVINGS
OF
MASTERPIECES
IN
AMERICAN GALLERIES
ST. ELIZABETH
OF HUNGARY
BY
ZURBARÁN
]
[Illustration: THE CENTURY’S AFTER-THE-WAR SERIES]
THE RETURN TO HARD MONEY
BY CHARLES A. CONANT
Formerly Washington Correspondent of the New York “Journal of Commerce”
WITH PORTRAITS AND CARTOONS
TAXES FOR EVERYBODY
When the wrack and waste of war are done, and ceased are the tumults
and the shouting, the harder task lies before the statesman and the
financier of paying the cost. A great war, at least down to very recent
times, has usually carried with it haphazard and wasteful financing,
an oppressive debt, unequal and burdensome taxation, and a depreciated
currency. The aftermath of the Civil War was no exception. At its close
all these evils lay heavy upon the people of the United States.
The public debt stood at $2,846,000,000, or about $80 per capita;
and of this amount nearly $1,900,000,000 was paying interest at the
rate of six per cent., or higher. The ordinary expenditures of the
Government, including the support of the armies, were running at the
rate of about $3,300,000 a day, while receipts from taxation and other
sources than loans were falling below $1,000,000 a day. The man of
business could not affix his signature to a check, a receipt, or a
bill of exchange, receive a legacy or transfer a piece of real estate,
without paying a tax. Cotton was taxed two cents a pound; salt, six
cents a hundred pounds; sugar, from two to three and a half cents a
pound. Manufacturers were paying licenses for the right to do business,
and also taxes upon the value of their output whether a profit emerged
or not; middlemen were taxed upon the volume of goods dealt in,
irrespective of the fact that such goods had already paid several
times. Among other taxes were those levied on matches, photographs,
lottery tickets, perfumery, theaters, and carriages; and additions
made by repairs to the value of a carriage or a machine paid their
own distinctive tax. Incomes were taxed up to twelve and one half per
cent. There existed, in short, to use the terse language of David A.
Wells, “a system of internal taxation which for its universality and
peculiarities has no parallel in anything which had theretofore been
recorded in civil history.”
A FLOOD OF PAPER MONEY
The currency consisted of irredeemable paper, a part issued by national
banks, a part by State banks, and a part directly from the government
printing-presses. Its value, which had been as low as $35.09 in gold
for $100 in paper, in July, 1864, was still less than $70 in gold after
the stimulus of Lee’s surrender. Prices of commodities, which had
fluctuated even more wildly than the gold premium, showed an average
for leading articles, in the first quarter of 1865, representing 2.62
times the corresponding average just before the war.
Brave and energetic as had been the policy of Salmon P. Chase as
Secretary of the Treasury in grappling with the problems of the war,
he made two economic errors which greatly added to the difficulties
that confronted his successor. He continued too long the policy of
borrowing instead of taxing, thereby impairing the public credit and
adding to the cost of his borrowings; and he opened the Pandora’s box
of legal-tender paper money, which left its mark upon our political
history for nearly half a century.
[Illustration: From a photograph by W. Kurtz
DAVID A. WELLS]
McCULLOCH’S FACULTY FOR ECONOMY
The problems presented to Hugh McCulloch, when he succeeded to the
headship of the Treasury in Lincoln’s second cabinet, were to reduce
expenditures, to reorganize taxation, to systematize and consolidate
the debt, and to restore stability to the currency. The country was
fortunate in having such a man as Mr. McCulloch to perform these
services. Of long experience as a practical banker, he had been made
Comptroller of the Currency upon the reorganization of the national
banking system, and was familiar with all branches of government
finance. Fortunately, also, he was not a politician. He was a
descendant of that small but prolific colony of Scotch and Scotch-Irish
who settled in northern New England, whose sturdy courage enriched the
blood of all other races with which it was mingled. His views of what
was required to restore sanity to the national finances were not warped
by fear of popular clamor; and if they went further than the condition
of the country warranted in the direction of monetary contraction, they
at least set a standard of national honor and obligation which was like
a beacon set on a hill to the supporters of honest money.
Toward reducing expenditures, rapid progress was made as the million
men who had sprung to arms at the call of the country were mustered
out of the Grand Army and returned to their plows and workshops.
Expenditures for the War Department, which were $1,030,000,000 in
1865, were brought down the next year to $283,000,000, and in 1867 to
$95,000,000. On the side of reducing and simplifying taxation much was
accomplished by the clear-headed young man who had been called into
consultation by President Lincoln a few weeks before his death. This
man, David A. Wells, tall, gaunt, and deadly in earnest, had perhaps a
greater capacity for massing facts than any other American economist.
At his suggestion, the war taxes, which had fettered production and
exchange, began to drop from the limbs of industry. By the act of July
13, 1866, taxes on articles of common consumption were abolished,
the income tax was suspended from and after June 30, 1870, and the
foundations were laid of the existing system of internal revenue,
taxing substantially only spirits and tobacco.
Of the elaborate operations of refunding, which converted obligations
paying six and seven per cent. into five, four, and finally even into
three per cent. securities, and raised American credit to the level
of that of other powerful nations, it is not desirable, here, to
set forth the details. It is enough to say that the funded debt was
reduced within ten years after the war by nearly $500,000,000, and
that interest payments upon it, which in 1867 were $143,700,000, had
fallen in 1877 to $97,100,000. Even more remarkable in figures were the
achievements of later years; but if it is by obstacles overcome that
the greatness of a victory is measured, then the palm of achievement
belongs to those earlier years when, in the language of Secretary
McCulloch, “the industry of one third part of the country, by reason
of the war and the unsettled state of its political affairs, has been
exceedingly depressed, and the other two thirds by no means exerted
their full productive power.”
A MEASURE OF THE COUNTRY’S GROWTH
For America was still only on the threshold of that wonderful
development which was to make her in the beginning of the twentieth
century one of the half-dozen great Powers of the world; with a
homogeneous white population second in numbers only to that of Russia;
with accumulated wealth exceeding in per capita average that of any
other country except perhaps England; and with imperial interests in
Cuba, Porto Rico, Central America, Samoa, the Philippine Islands, and
China.
The population of the United States in 1860 was only 31,443,000, or
less than one third what it was in 1912; and the estimated total wealth
was $16,159,616,000, or about one seventh of the great accumulations
of to-day. Of these amounts, moreover, the South had taken out of
the Union a proportion which may be estimated roughly at two fifths.
Railway mileage, which was 30,626 for the whole Union in 1860, had
increased only to 35,085 in 1865, or less than one seventh the mileage
of to-day. Much of the country west of the Mississippi was still an
untracked wilderness. Senator John Sherman, after the adjournment
of Congress in 1866, made a vacation trip with his brother, General
William T. Sherman, in the general’s official inspection of army
posts. The Central Pacific Railroad ended at Fort Kearney, and thence
the party traveled in light army-wagons drawn by mules, camping at
night, sleeping in the wagons, the horses parked near by, guarded by
sentinels, and with the frequent menace of Indian attack.
Skilful as was the financial leadership required to reduce
expenditures, reform taxation, and refund the debt, these were the
least difficult in a sense of the economic problems of the war, because
they were chiefly problems of legislation. Much more serious were
the questions of escape from the hectic influences of war prices and
conditions and of inflated government-paper issues; and these were to
give their color to the industrial and financial history of the country
for a generation. Dreams of untold fortunes derived from speculation
in the securities of new railways were rendered peculiarly vivid by
the disorganized state of the currency and the fluctuations in its
gold value, stimulated by manipulation in the gold-room of the New
York Stock Exchange, but due fundamentally to uncertainty as to the
quantity of currency in circulation and as to when it would be made
redeemable. Thaddeus Stevens went to the extreme of declaring that one
of the measures proposed, with the approval of the Secretary of the
Treasury, would put under the absolute and uncontrolled discretion
of that official more than sixteen hundred million dollars’ worth
of paper money, and would confer upon him more power “than was ever
before conferred upon any one man in a government claiming to have
a constitution.” It is small wonder that amid such possibilities
speculation became a rankly luxuriant growth of the financial markets.
“BLACK FRIDAY”
Typical of these conditions was the famous “Black Friday” of September
24, 1869. It was the result of a daring speculation on the part of
Jay Gould, “Jim” Fisk, and kindred spirits in Wall Street to corner
the gold stock of the country and compel short sellers of the yellow
metal to settle with them at their own price. Plans were carefully
laid early in the summer of 1869 to enlist President Grant’s sympathy
by convincing him that high prices were necessary to the prosperity
of the country, and at the same time to entangle Mrs. Grant, her
brother-in-law, A. R. Corbin (the husband of General Grant’s sister
Virginia), the President’s private secretary, General Horace Porter,
the Collector of the Port of New York, and others close to the
President, in the appearance of a corrupt conspiracy to participate in
the profits of the corner. It was planned to bring to a stop the sales
of gold which were being made from time to time by the Secretary of
the Treasury, and which tended to supply the demand for gold for the
payment of customs and other special purposes, and thereby keep down
its price. The tendency of the yellow metal had been downward during
the spring, and the quotations of early September stood at about 135.
The effort to convince President Grant that he ought not to interfere
by throwing Treasury gold upon the market was begun as early as the
middle of June, when the President was on board one of the Fall River
steamers on his way to Boston. Supper was served at nine o’clock,
and the conversation was deftly turned to the state of the country,
the crops, and the financial outlook. On Gould’s own confession,
President Grant’s favorite rôle of a listener stood him in good
stead. After listening for a long time to the talk, which had been
carefully planned by Gould and in which Corbin and others took part,
the President remarked that he thought there was a certain amount of
fictitiousness about the prosperity of the country, and that the bubble
might as well be tapped in one way as another. This remark, according
to Gould, in his testimony before the Congressional Committee of
investigation, “struck across us like a wet blanket.” They concluded
that the President was a contractionist.
The game was by no means abandoned, however, as a result of this first
rebuff. A prominent English financier who was visiting the country
advocated the theory that business interests required an advance in the
price of gold in order to move the crops and sell them on favorable
terms in foreign markets. Corbin was a willing convert to this theory,
for he was already a party to a pool in which Gould and Fisk were
members. Corbin was put forward to talk to the President whenever he
came in contact with him, and even introduced Gould for the purpose of
presenting his views. The President, according to Corbin, engaged in
these conversations with reluctance, and the moment any allusion was
made to the future policy of the Government he became very reticent.
Fisk also tried his hand on the President, but without much success.
Thus matters dragged along until September, when the President wrote a
letter to the Secretary of the Treasury, George S. Boutwell, suggesting
that it would not be wise to sell gold in large amounts to force down
the price while the crops were moving, as it might embarrass the West.
This was the first ray of light from the Presidential office that had
reached the conspirators. It is not certain that they knew definitely
of this letter; but on the third and fourth of September gold began to
rise rapidly, and on the sixth it touched 137-⅝.
About two weeks later, with President Grant staying at a small country
place in Washington, Pennsylvania (on a visit to William Smith, a
cousin of Mrs. Grant), far from the railway and the telegraph, the
time seemed ripe to push up the price of the yellow metal, drive the
“shorts” to cover, and compel them to settle. The final coup was
played by getting Corbin to write a letter to the President, urging
him not to interfere in the struggle between the two factions in the
gold market by ordering or permitting sales of gold by the Treasury.
A faithful messenger, W. O. Chapin, was selected to take this letter
to Pittsburgh, and from there by carriage to Washington, thirty miles
distant. It was testified by General Horace Porter, secretary to the
President, that they were engaged one morning in playing a game of
croquet when General Porter was told that a gentleman wished to see
him. The messenger was asked to wait until the game was finished, when
he handed Porter a note stating that he had a letter which he desired
to deliver to the President. The letter was shown to the President,
who glanced over it and said to the bearer, “No answer.” General
Porter then called the President’s attention to the peculiarity of the
missive being brought so far by a special messenger, with a letter of
introduction. The President was set to thinking. The letter, which
Corbin and his conspirators were relying upon to prevent interference
by the Secretary of the Treasury, proved their ruin. President Grant
began to see through the plot, and suggested to Mrs. Grant to say in a
letter she was writing to Mrs. Corbin that rumors had reached her that
Mr. Corbin was connected with speculators in New York, and that she
hoped, if this were true, that he would disengage himself from them at
once, adding that the President was very much distressed at such rumors.
Mrs. Grant’s letter caused something approaching a panic in the ranks
of the gold speculators. When Gould called at Corbin’s house on the
evening of Wednesday, September 22, and read the contents of the
letter, it was apparent to him that Corbin had no such influence over
the President as had been expected, and that a blow from the Treasury
might fall at any hour. It was a picturesque spectacle, described by
Gould himself in his testimony, when the two were shut in the library
near midnight, Corbin bending over the table and straining with dim
eyes to decipher the contents of the letter, written in pencil to
his wife, while the gold-room gambler, looking over his shoulder,
caught with his sharper vision every word. Corbin had already prepared
a letter to the President denying that he had any interest in the
movement, direct or indirect, and now told Gould that he must send the
letter by the first mail; but that, if it were sent, its statements
must be true. He proposed, therefore, to Gould that they should settle
his (Corbin’s) account, paying him his accrued profits, which as gold
stood that night would amount to more than $100,000, in addition to
$25,000 which he had already received. Gould put the matter over until
morning and eventually drew a check, which, however, never was paid to
Corbin.
Gould knew better than to divulge the unfortunate news to Fisk. It
appeared to be his plan to let him and their brokers continue to buy
gold and force up its price, while Gould himself was unostentatiously
getting rid of his stock at maximum prices. Fisk entered the gold-room
the next morning and struck terror into the hearts of the “bears”
by offering to bet any part of $50,000 that gold would sell at 200.
Thursday afternoon gold closed at about 144, and the conspirators held
a meeting in the evening to lay plans for the next day’s campaign. They
held calls for more than $100,000,000 in gold, and there were not more
than $15,000,000 of gold and gold certificates in New York, outside of
the Sub-Treasury. They had a full list of those who were short of gold,
including more than two hundred and fifty prominent firms; and it was
proposed to publish this list next morning, and to inform the victims
that if they did not settle at 160 before three o’clock, a higher rate
would be demanded. This detail was abandoned because they were advised
by counsel that under the statutes of New York such a course would
constitute a conspiracy. Fisk was asked the next morning why he feared
any sale the Treasury could make, since the clique held calls for more
gold than both the Treasury and the city could command. His answer was,
“Oh, our phantom gold can’t stand the weight of the real stuff!”
About Friday noon, the blow from the Treasury fell. President Grant had
returned from Pennsylvania to Washington on the previous afternoon,
and in the evening had held a consultation with the Secretary of the
Treasury. Both agreed that if the price of gold should be forced
higher, so as to threaten a general financial panic, it would be their
duty to interfere to protect business interests. Friday morning the
price advanced rapidly, and telegrams poured into Washington from
all parts of the country, urging the Government to interfere and if
possible prevent a financial crash. At a conference, held soon after
eleven o’clock, it was agreed to sell $4,000,000 of Treasury gold. The
message to the assistant treasurer at New York, General Butterfield,
was not sent in cipher, and soon the news was in everybody’s mouth.
In the meantime, James Brown, a Scottish banker of New York, with the
support of leading merchants, offered successively to sell $1,000,000
gold at 162, another $1,000,000 at 161, and $5,000,000 more at 160. The
market began to break; and when ten minutes afterward the news came
that the Treasury would sell, the price fell from 160 to 133.
[Illustration: From a photograph owned by F. H. Meserve
COMMODORE CORNELIUS VANDERBILT]
It was with difficulty that Gould and Fisk escaped from the fury of
the ruined victims who had been following their lead, and succeeded
in finding refuge in their up-town stronghold, the office of the Erie
Railroad Company at Twenty-third Street and Eighth Avenue. During
Thursday and Friday they had sold out at high rates a large part of the
gold they had purchased, and had made many private settlements at rates
ruinous to their victims. They now repudiated all the purchases they
had made through Belden, the principal broker who had acted as their
agent. They called on Corbin and overwhelmed him with denunciations.
As Fisk told the story, Corbin “was on one side of the table weeping
and wailing, and I was gnashing my teeth.” In vain they despatched
Corbin to Washington to plead with Grant to suspend the order to sell.
The President cut him short with the remark that that subject was
closed. Corbin returned to New York and did not even see his fellow
conspirators when he got back. As Fisk characterized the situation,
“Matters took such a turn that it was no use; it was each man drag out
his own corpse.” Afterward it was shown that neither Mrs. Grant nor
General Porter was in any way connected with the conspiracy.
THE ERA OF RAILWAY BUILDING
“Black Friday” was only a symptom of the deeper disorders of the
body politic. The minority of the committee of the House which
investigated the “Black Friday” episode declared that “no one doubts
that if the constitutional currency of coin had remained to us, such
panics would have been, and would now be, impossible.” The stimulus
to over-expansion afforded by an unstable currency operated also
upon mercantile enterprise and railway development. The demand for
the extension of the railway network over new farm land, and across
the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, became the channel through which
speculative influences converged to bring on the panic of 1873.
Already, in 1862, Congress had granted a charter for the construction
of the Union Pacific line, and in 1864 it granted further aid by
making the United States bonds that were to be issued for construction
purposes a subordinate lien to that of the bonds of the company sold
in the market. Thus, as John Sherman put it, “The constructors of
these roads, who were mainly directors and managers of the company,
practically received as profit a large portion of the bonds of the
United States issued in aid of the work, and almost the entire capital
stock of the company.” At the same time was enacted the Northern
Pacific charter, which, according to the same authority, was an act
“with broad and general powers, carelessly defined, and with scarcely
any safeguards to protect the Government and its lavish grants of land.”
Already, shortly before the war, the ground had been cleared for
extensive railway enterprises by the knitting together of small roads
into trunk lines connecting New York with the Mississippi Valley.
Originally, eleven companies owned and operated the lines making up the
route between Albany and Buffalo. After this anomaly disappeared, it
remained for the genius of Commodore Vanderbilt to acquire the Hudson
River road in 1864 and the New York Central lines in 1867, and to bear
his share in the picturesque battles of the Stock Exchange and the
courts, which gave such fascination to this lawless epoch of American
finance.
VANDERBILT AND DREW