of joyful welcome. She also desired to shake hands with him, and
her keeper had to sit on her head and hold her trunk to repress the
familiarity. In two weeks she was cured, except for extensive and
permanent scars, and she waited only for a favorable opportunity to
rejoin the circus.
The Doctor had got his fee in advance.
* * * * *
Upon a sunny afternoon in the last of August, Dr. Tibbitt jogged slowly
toward Sagawaug in his neat little gig. He had been to Pelion, the next
town, to call upon Miss Minetta Bunker, the young lady whom he desired
to install in the house with the garden running down to the river.
He had found her starting out for a drive in Tom Matson’s dog–cart.
Now, the Doctor feared no foe, in medicine or in love; but when a
young woman is inscrutable as to the state of her affections, when the
richest young man in the county is devoting himself to her, and when
the young lady’s mother is backing the rich man, a young country doctor
may well feel perplexed and anxious over his chance of the prize.
The Doctor was so troubled, indeed, that he paid no heed to a heavy,
repeated thud behind him, on the macadamized road. His gentle little
mare heard it, though, and began to curvet and prance. The Doctor was
pulling her in, and calming her with a “Soo—Soo—down, girl, down!” when
he interrupted himself to shout:
“Great Cæsar! get off me!”
Something like a yard of rubber hose had come in through the side of
the buggy, and was rubbing itself against his face. He looked around,
and the cold sweat stood out on him as he saw Zenobia, her chain
dragging from her hind–foot, her red cap a–cock on her head, trotting
along by the side of his vehicle, snorting with joy, and evidently bent
on lavishing her pliant, serpentine, but leathery caresses upon his
person.
[Illustration]
His fear vanished in a moment. The animal’s intentions were certainly
pacific, to put it mildly. He reflected that if he could keep his horse
ahead of her, he could toll her around the block and back toward her
tent. He had hardly guessed, as yet, the depth of the impression which
he had made upon Zenobia’s heart, which must have been a large organ,
if the size of her ears was any indication—according to the popular
theory.
He was on the very edge of the town, and his road took him by a house
where he had a new and highly valued patient, the young wife of old
Deacon Burgee. Her malady being of a nature that permitted it, Mrs.
Burgee was in the habit of sitting at her window when the Doctor made
his rounds, and indicating the satisfactory state of her health by
a bow and a smile. On this occasion she fled from the window with a
shriek. Her mother, a formidable old lady under a red false–front, came
to the window, shrieked likewise, and slammed down the sash.
[Illustration]
The Doctor tolled his elephant around the block without further
misadventure, and they started up the road toward Zenobia’s tent,
Zenobia caressing her benefactor while shudders of antipathy ran over
his frame. In a few minutes the keeper hove in sight. Zenobia saw
him first, blew a shrill blast on her trumpet, close to the Doctor’s
ear, bolted through a snake fence, lumbered across a turnip–field,
and disappeared in a patch of woods, leaving the Doctor to quiet his
excited horse and to face the keeper, who advanced with rage in his eye.
“What do you mean, you cuss,” he began, “weaning a man’s elephant’s
affections away from him? You ain’t got no more morals than a Turk, you
ain’t. That elephant an’ me has been side–partners for fourteen years,
an’ here you come between us.”
“I don’t want your confounded elephant,” roared the Doctor; “why don’t
you keep it chained up?”
“She busted her chain to git after you,” replied the keeper. “Oh, I
seen you two lally–gaggin’ all along the road. I knowed you wa’n’t no
good the first time I set eyes on yer, a–sayin’ hoodoo words over the
poor dumb beast.”
The Doctor resolved to banish “analogy” from his vocabulary.
* * * * *
The next morning, about four o’clock, Dr. Tibbitt awoke with a
troubled mind. He had driven home after midnight from a late call,
and he had had an uneasy fancy that he saw a great shadowy bulk
ambling along in the mist–hid fields by the roadside. He jumped out
of bed and went to the window. Below him, completely covering Mrs.
Pennypepper’s nasturtium bed, her prehensile trunk ravaging the early
chrysanthemums, stood Zenobia, swaying to and fro, the dew glistening
on her seamed sides beneath the early morning sunlight. The Doctor
hastily dressed himself and slipped downstairs and out, to meet this
Frankenstein’s–monster of affection.
There was but one thing to do. Zenobia would follow him wherever he
went—she rushed madly through Mrs. Pennypepper’s roses to greet him—and
his only course was to lead her out of the town before people began
to get up, and to detain her in some remote meadow until he could get
her keeper to come for her and secure her by force or stratagem. He
set off by the least frequented streets, and he experienced a pang of
horror as he remembered that his way led him past the house of his one
professional rival in Sagawaug. Suppose Dr. Pettengill should be coming
home or going out as he passed!
[Illustration]
He did not meet Dr. Pettengill. He did meet Deacon Burgee, who stared
at him with more of rage than of amazement in his wrinkled countenance.
The Deacon was carrying a large bundle of embroidered linen and
flannel, that must have been tied up in a hurry.
“Good morning, Deacon,” the Doctor hailed him, with as much ease of
manner as he could assume. “How’s Mrs. Burgee?”
“She’s doin’ fust rate, no thanks to no circus doctors!” snorted the
Deacon. “An’ if you want to know any thing further concernin’ her
health, you ask Dr. Pettengill. _He_’s got more sense than to go
trailin’ around the streets with a parboiled elephant behind him,
a–frightening women–folks a hull month afore the’r time.”
“Why, Deacon!” cried the Doctor, “what—what is it?”
“It’s a boy,” responded the Deacon, sternly; “and it’s God’s own mercy
that ’twa’n’t born with a trunk and a tail.”
* * * * *
The Doctor found a secluded pasture, near the woods that encircled the
town, and there he sat him down, in the corner of a snake–fence, to
wait until some farmer or market–gardener should pass by, to carry his
message to the keeper. He had another message to send, too. He had
several cases that must be attended to at once. Unless he could get
away from his pachydermatous familiar, Pettengill must care for his
cases that morning. It was hard—but what was he to do?
Zenobia stood by his side, dividing her attention between the caresses
she bestowed on him and the care she was obliged to take of her
red cap, which was not tightly strapped on, and slipped in various
directions at every movement of her gigantic head. She was unmistakably
happy. From time to time she trumpeted cheerily. She plucked up tufts
of grass, and offered them to the Doctor. He refused them, and she
ate them herself. Once he took a daisy from her, absent–mindedly, and
she was so greatly pleased that she smashed his hat in her endeavors
to pet him. The Doctor was a kind–hearted man. He had to admit that
Zenobia meant well. He patted her trunk, and made matters worse. Her
elephantine ecstasy came near being the death of him.
Still the farmer came not, nor the market–gardener. Dr. Tibbitt began
to believe that he had chosen a meadow that was _too_ secluded. At
last two boys appeared. After they had stared at him and at Zenobia
for half–an–hour, one of them agreed to produce Dr. Pettengill and
Zenobia’s keeper for fifty cents. Dr. Pettengill was the first to
arrive. He refused to come nearer than the furthest limit of the
pasture.
“Hello, Doctor,” he called out, “hear you’ve been seeing elephants.
Want me to take your cases? Guess I can. Got a half–hour free. Brought
some bromide down for you, if you’d like to try it.”
To judge from his face, Zenobia was invisible. But his presence
alarmed that sensitive animal. She crowded up close to the fence, and
every time she flicked her skin to shake off the flies she endangered
the equilibrium of the Doctor, who was sitting on the top rail, for
dignity’s sake. He shouted his directions to his colleague, who shouted
back professional criticisms.
[Illustration]
“Salicylate of soda for that old woman? What’s the matter with
salicylate of cinchonidia? Don’t want to kill her before you get out of
this swamp, do you?”
Dr. Tibbitt was not a profane man; but at this moment he could not
restrain himself.
“_Damn you!_” he said, with such vigor that the elephant gave a
convulsive start. The Doctor felt his seat depart from under him—he was
going—going into space for a brief moment, and then he scrambled up out
of the soft mud of the cow–wallow back of the fence on which he had
been sitting. Zenobia had backed against the fence.
The keeper arrived soon after. He had only reached the meadow when
Zenobia lifted her trunk in the air, emitted a mirthful toot, and
struck out for the woods with the picturesque and cumbersome gallop of
a mastodon pup.
“Dern _you_,” said the keeper to Dr. Tibbitt, who was trying to fasten
his collar, which had broken loose in his fall; “if the boys was here,
and I hollered ‘Hey Rube!’—there wouldn’t be enough left of yer to
spread a plaster fer a baby’s bile!”
The Doctor made himself look as decent as the situation allowed, and
then he marched toward the town with the light of a firm resolve
illuminating his face. The literature of his childhood had come to his
aid. He remembered the unkind tailor who pricked the elephant’s trunk.
It seemed to him that the tailor was a rather good fellow.
“If that elephant’s disease is gratitude,” thought the Doctor, “I’ll
give her an antidote.”
He went to the drug–store, and, as he went, he pulled out a blank pad
and wrote down a prescription, from mere force of habit. It read thus:
[Illustration: PESSELS & MORTON,
DRUGGISTS,
_Commercial Block, Main Street, Sagawaug._
[Index]PRESCRIPTIONS CAREFULLY COMPOUNDED.[Index]
[Rx symbol] Calcium sul 3g ij
Calcium chl 3g xrj
Capsicum pulv 3g zi
sig. Take at once.
Tibbitt]
When the druggist looked at it, he was taken short of breath.
“What’s this?” he asked—“a bombshell?”
“Put it up,” said the Doctor, “and don’t talk so much.” He lingered
nervously on the druggist’s steps, looking up and down the street. He
had sent a boy to order the stable–man to harness his gig. By–and–by,
the druggist put his head out of the door.
“I’ve got some asafœtida pills,” he said, “that are kind o’ tired, and
half a pound of whale–oil soap that’s higher’n Haman—“
“Put ’em in!” said the Doctor, grimly, as he saw Zenobia coming in
sight far down the street.
She came up while the Doctor was waiting for the bolus. Twenty–three
boys were watching them, although it was only seven o’clock in the
morning.
[Illustration]
“Down, Zenobia!” said the Doctor, thoughtlessly, as he might have
addressed a dog. He was talking with the druggist, and Zenobia was
patting his ear with her trunk. Zenobia sank to her knees. The Doctor
did not notice her. She folded her trunk about him, lifted him to her
back, rose, with a heave and a sway, to her feet, and started up the
road. The boys cheered. The Doctor got off on the end of an elm–branch.
His descent was watched from nineteen second–story windows.
His gig came to meet him at last, and he entered it and drove rapidly
out of town, with Zenobia trotting contentedly behind him. As soon
as he had passed Deacon Burgee’s house, he drew rein, and Zenobia
approached, while his perspiring mare stood on her hind–legs.
“Zenobia—pill!” said the Doctor.
As she had often done in her late illness, Zenobia opened her mouth
at the word of command, and swallowed the infernal bolus. Then they
started up again, and the Doctor headed for Zenobia’s tent.
But Zenobia’s pace was sluggish. She had been dodging about the woods
for two nights, and she was tired. When the Doctor whipped up, she
seized the buggy by any convenient projection, and held it back.
This damaged the buggy and frightened the horse; but it accomplished
Zenobia’s end. It was eleven o’clock before Jake Bumgardner’s
“Half–Way–House” loomed up white, afar down the dusty road, and the
Doctor knew that his round–about way had at length brought him near to
the field where the circus–tent had been pitched.
He drove on with a lighter heart in his bosom. He had not heard Zenobia
behind him, for some time. He did not know what had become of her, or
what she was doing, but he learned later.
The Doctor had compounded a pill well calculated to upset Zenobia’s
stomach. That it would likewise give her a consuming thirst he had not
considered. But chemistry was doing its duty without regard to him.
A thirst like a furnace burned within Zenobia. Capsicum and chloride
of lime were doing their work. She gasped and groaned. She searched
for water. She filled her trunk at a wayside trough and poured the
contents into her mouth. Then she sucked up a puddle or two. Then she
came to Bumgardner’s, where a dozen kegs of lager–beer and a keg of
what passed at Bumgardner’s for gin stood on the sidewalk. Zenobia’s
circus experience had taught her what a water–barrel meant. She applied
her knowledge. With her forefoot she deftly staved in the head of one
keg after another, and with her trunk she drew up the beer and the gin,
and delivered them to her stomach. If you think her taste at fault,
remember the bolus.
[Illustration]
Bumgardner rushed out and assailed her with a bung–starter. She turned
upon him and squirted lager–beer over him until he was covered with an
iridescent lather of foam from head to foot. Then she finished the kegs
and went on her way, to overtake the Doctor.
* * * * *
The Doctor was speeding his mare merrily along, grateful for even a
momentary relief from Zenobia’s attentions, when, at one and the same
time, he heard a heavy, uncertain thumping on the road behind him,
and the quick patter of a trotter’s hoofs on the road ahead of him.
He glanced behind him first, and saw Zenobia. She swayed from side to
side, more than was her wont. Her red cap was far down over her left
eye. Her aspect was rakish, and her gait was unsteady. The Doctor did
not know it, but Zenobia was drunk.
Zenobia was sick, but intoxication dominated her sickness. Even
sulphide of calcium withdrew courteously before the might of beer and
gin. Rocking from side to side, reeling across the road and back,
trumpeting in imbecile inexpressive tones, Zenobia advanced.
[Illustration]
The Doctor looked forward. Tom Matson sat in his dog–cart, with Miss
Bunker by his side. His horse had caught sight of Zenobia, and he was
rearing high in air, and whinnying in terror. Before Tom could pull
him down, he made a sudden break, overturned the dog–cart, and flung
Tom and Miss Minetta Bunker on a bank by the side of the road. It was
a soft bank, well–grown with mint and stinging–nettles, just above a
creek. Tom had scarce landed before he was up and off, running hard
across the fields.
Miss Minetta rose and looked at him with fire in her eyes.
“Well!” she said aloud; “I’d like Mother to see you _now_!”
The Doctor had jumped out of his gig and let his little mare go
galloping up the road. He had his arm about Miss Minetta’s waist when
he turned to face his familiar demon—which may have accounted for the
pluck in his face.
But Zenobia was a hundred yards down the road, and she was utterly
incapable of getting any further. She trumpeted once or twice, then she
wavered like a reed in the wind; her legs weakened under her, and she
sank on her side. Her red cap had slipped down, and she picked it up
with her trunk, broke its band in a reckless swing that resembled the
wave of jovial farewell, gave one titanic hiccup, and fell asleep by
the roadside.
* * * * *
An hour later, Dr. Tibbitt was driving toward Pelion, with Miss Bunker
by his side. His horse had been stopped at the toll–gate. He was
driving with one hand. Perhaps he needed the other to show how they
could have a summer–house in the garden that ran down to the river.
* * * * *
But it was evening when Zenobia awoke to find her keeper sitting on her
head. He jabbed a cotton–hook firmly and decisively into her ear, and
led her homeward down the road lit by the golden sunset. That was the
end of Zenobia’s infidelity.
[Illustration]
THE NINE CENT–GIRLS. [Illustration: “_He had an uneasy feeling that
they were noticed._”]
THE NINE CENT–GIRLS.
[Illustration]
Miss Bessie Vaux, of Baltimore, paid a visit to her aunt, the wife of
the Commandant at old Fort Starbuck, Montana. She had at her small feet
all the garrison and some two dozen young ranch–owners, the flower
of the younger sons of the best society of New York, Boston, and
Philadelphia. Thirty–seven notches in the long handle of her parasol
told the story of her three months’ stay. The thirty–seventh was final.
She accepted a measly Second–Lieutenant, and left all the bachelors
for thirty miles around the Fort to mourn her and to curse the United
States Army. This is the proem.
* * * * *
Mr. John Winfield, proprietor of the Winfield Ranch, sat a–straddle a
chair in front of the fire in his big living room, and tugged at his
handsome black beard as he discussed the situation with his foreman,
who was also his confidant, his best friend and his old college mate.
Mr. Richard Cutter stood with his back to the fire, twirled a very
blonde moustache and smoked cigarettes continually while he ministered
to his suffering friend, who was sore wounded in his vanity, having
been notch No. 36 on Miss Vaux’s parasol. Dick had been notch No. 1;
but Dick was used to that sort of thing.
“By thunder,” said Mr. Winfield, “I’m going to get married this year,
if I have to marry a widow with six children. And I guess I’ll have to.
I’ve been ten years in this girlless wilderness, and I never did know
any girls to speak of, at home. Now _you_, you always everlastingly
knew girls. What’s that place you lived at in New York State—where
there were so many girls?”
“Tusculum,” replied Mr. Cutter, in a tone of complacent reminiscence.
“Nice old town, plastered so thick with mortgages that you can’t grow
flowers in the front yard. All the fellows strike for New York as soon
as they begin to shave. The crop of girls remains, and they wither on
the stem. Why, one Winter they had a hump–backed man for their sole
society star in the male line. Nice girls, too. Old families. Pretty,
lots of them. Good form, too, for provincials.”
“Gad!” said Jack Winfield, “I’d like to live in Tusculum for a year or
so.”
“No, you wouldn’t. It’s powerful dull. But the girls were nice. Now,
there were the Nine Cent–Girls.”
“The Nine–cent Girls?”
“No, the Nine Cent–Girls. Catch the difference? They were the daughters
of old Bailey, the civil engineer. Nine of ’em, ranging from
twenty–two, when I was there—that’s ten years ago—down to—oh, I don’t
know—a kid in a pinafore. All looked just alike, barring age, and every
one had the face of the Indian lady on the little red cent. Do you
remember the Indian lady on the little red cent?”
“Hold on,” suggested Jack, rising; “I’ve got one. I’ve had it ever
since I came.” He unlocked his desk, rummaged about in its depths, and
produced a specimen of the neatest and most artistic coin that the
United States government has ever struck.
“That’s it,” said Dick, holding the coppery disk in his palm. “It would
do for a picture of any one of ’em—only the Bailey girls didn’t wear
feathers in their hair. But there they were, nine of ’em, nice girls,
every way, and the whole lot named out of the classics. Old Bailey
was strong on the classics. His great–grandfather named Tusculum, and
Bailey’s own name was M. Cicero Bailey. So he called all his girls
by heathen names, and had a row with the parson every christening.
Let me see—there was Euphrosyne, and Clelia, and Lydia, and Flora
and Aurora—those were the twins—I was sweet on one of the twins—and
Una—and, oh, I can’t remember them all. But they were mighty nice
girls.”
“Probably all married by this time,” Jack groaned. “Let me look at that
cent.” He held it in the light of the fire, and gazed thoughtfully upon
it.
“Not a one,” Dick assured him. “I met a chap from Tusculum last time
I was in Butte City, and I asked him. He said there’d been only one
wedding in Tusculum in three years, and then the local paper had a wire
into the church and got out extras.”
“What sort of girls were they?” Winfield asked, still regarding the
coin.
“Just about like that, for looks. Let me see it again.” Dick
examined the cent critically, and slipped it into his pocket, in an
absent–minded way. “Just about like that. First rate girls. Old man
was as poor as a church mouse; but you would never have known it, the
way that house was run. Bright girls, too—at least, my twin was. I’ve
forgotten which twin it was; but she was too bright for me.”
“And how old did you say they were? How old was the youngest?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Dick, with a bachelor’s vagueness on the
question of a child’s age, “five—six—seven, may be. Ten years ago, you
know.”
“Just coming in to grass,” observed Mr. Winfield, meditatively.
* * * * *
Two months after the evening on which this conversation took place,
Mr. Richard Cutter walked up one of the quietest and most eminently
respectable of the streets of Tusculum.
Mr. Cutter was nervous. He was, for the second time, making up his mind
to attempt a difficult and delicate task. He had made up his mind to
it, or had had it made up for him; but now he felt himself obliged to
go over the whole process in his memory, in order to assure himself
that the mind was really made up.
The suggestion had come from Winfield. He remembered with what a dazed
incomprehension he had heard his chum’s proposition to induce Mr.
Bailey and all his family to migrate to Montana and settle at Starbuck.
“We’ll give the old man all the surveying he wants. And he can have
Ashford’s place on the big dam when Ashford goes East in August. Why,
the finger of Providence is pointing Bailey straight for Starbuck.”
[Illustration]
With a clearer remembrance of Eastern conventionalities than Mr.
Winfield, Dick Cutter had suggested various obstacles in the way
of this apparently simple scheme. But Winfield would hear of no
opposition, and he joined with him eight other young ranchmen, who
entered into the idea with wild Western enthusiasm and an Arcadian
simplicity that could see no chance of failure. These energetic youths
subscribed a generous fund to defray the expenses of Mr. Cutter as a
missionary to Tusculum; and Mr. Cutter had found himself committed to
the venture before he knew it.
Now, what had seemed quite feasible in Starbuck’s wilds wore a
different face in prim and proper Tusculum. It dawned on Mr. Cutter
that he was about to make a most radical and somewhat impudent
proposition to a conservative old gentleman. The atmosphere of
Tusculum weighed heavy on its spirits, which were light and careless
enough in his adopted home in Montana.
Therefore Mr. Cutter found his voice very uncertain as he introduced
himself to the young lady who opened, at his ring, the front door
of one of the most respectable houses in that respectable street of
Tusculum.
“Good morning,” he said, wondering which one of the Nine Cent–Girls he
saw before him; and then, noting a few threads of gray in her hair, he
ventured:
“It’s Miss—Miss Euphrosyne, isn’t it? You don’t remember me—Mr. Cutter,
Dick Cutter? Used to live on Ovid Street. Can I see your father?”
“My father?” repeated Miss Euphrosyne, looking a little frightened.
“Yes—I just want—“
[Illustration]
“Why, Mr. Cutter—I do remember you now—didn’t you know that Papa died
nine years ago—the year after you left Tusculum?”
Dick Cutter leaned against the door–jamb and stared speechlessly at
Euphrosyne. He noted vaguely that she looked much the same as when he
had last seen her, except that she looked tired and just a shade sad.
When he was able to think, he said that he begged her pardon. Then she
smiled, faintly.
“We couldn’t expect you to know,” she said, simply. “Won’t you come in?”
“N–N–No,” stuttered Dick. “I–I–I’ll call later—this evening, if you
don’t mind. Ah—ah—_good_ day.” And he fled to his hotel, to pull
himself together, leaving Miss Euphrosyne smiling.