“Hey! what’s the matter down there?” called John from his room above
mine.
“Oh, nothing,” I answered, “except that I accidentally bumped my head
against the ceiling.”
The next morning I went out on the porch and looked at the mountains.
There were forty-seven of them in sight. I shuddered, went into the big
hall sitting room of the house, selected “Pancoast’s Family Practice of
Medicine” from a bookcase, and began to read. John came in, took the
book away from me, and led me outside. He has a farm of three hundred
acres furnished with the usual complement of barns, mules, peasantry,
and harrows with three front teeth broken off. I had seen such things
in my childhood, and my heart began to sink.
Then John spoke of alfalfa, and I brightened at once. “Oh, yes,” said
I, “wasn’t she in the chorus of—let’s see—”
“Green, you know,” said John, “and tender, and you plow it under after
the first season.”
“I know,” said I, “and the grass grows over her.”
“Right,” said John. “You know something about farming, after all.”
“I know something of some farmers,” said I, “and a sure scythe will mow
them down some day.”
On the way back to the house a beautiful and inexplicable creature
walked across our path. I stopped irresistibly fascinated, gazing at
it. John waited patiently, smoking his cigarette. He is a modern
farmer. After ten minutes he said: “Are you going to stand there
looking at that chicken all day? Breakfast is nearly ready.”
“A chicken?” said I.
“A White Orpington hen, if you want to particularize.”
“A White Orpington hen?” I repeated, with intense interest. The fowl
walked slowly away with graceful dignity, and I followed like a child
after the Pied Piper. Five minutes more were allowed me by John, and
then he took me by the sleeve and conducted me to breakfast.
After I had been there a week I began to grow alarmed. I was sleeping
and eating well and actually beginning to enjoy life. For a man in my
desperate condition that would never do. So I sneaked down to the
trolley-car station, took the car for Pineville, and went to see one of
the best physicians in town. By this time I knew exactly what to do
when I needed medical treatment. I hung my hat on the back of a chair,
and said rapidly:
“Doctor, I have cirrhosis of the heart, indurated arteries,
neurasthenia, neuritis, acute indigestion, and convalescence. I am
going to live on a strict diet. I shall also take a tepid bath at night
and a cold one in the morning. I shall endeavour to be cheerful, and
fix my mind on pleasant subjects. In the way of drugs I intend to take
a phosphorous pill three times a day, preferably after meals, and a
tonic composed of the tinctures of gentian, cinchona, calisaya, and
cardamon compound. Into each teaspoonful of this I shall mix tincture
of nux vomica, beginning with one drop and increasing it a drop each
day until the maximum dose is reached. I shall drop this with a
medicine-dropper, which can be procured at a trifling cost at any
pharmacy. Good morning.”
I took my hat and walked out. After I had closed the door I remembered
something that I had forgotten to say. I opened it again. The doctor
had not moved from where he had been sitting, but he gave a slightly
nervous start when he saw me again.
“I forgot to mention,” said I, “that I shall also take absolute rest
and exercise.”
After this consultation I felt much better. The reëstablishing in my
mind of the fact that I was hopelessly ill gave me so much satisfaction
that I almost became gloomy again. There is nothing more alarming to a
neurasthenic than to feel himself growing well and cheerful.
John looked after me carefully. After I had evinced so much interest in
his White Orpington chicken he tried his best to divert my mind, and
was particular to lock his hen house of nights. Gradually the tonic
mountain air, the wholesome food, and the daily walks among the hills
so alleviated my malady that I became utterly wretched and despondent.
I heard of a country doctor who lived in the mountains nearby. I went
to see him and told him the whole story. He was a gray-bearded man with
clear, blue, wrinkled eyes, in a home-made suit of gray jeans.
In order to save time I diagnosed my case, touched my nose with my
right forefinger, struck myself below the knee to make my foot kick,
sounded my chest, stuck out my tongue, and asked him the price of
cemetery lots in Pineville.
He lit his pipe and looked at me for about three minutes. “Brother,” he
said, after a while, “you are in a mighty bad way. There’s a chance for
you to pull through, but it’s a mighty slim one.”
“What can it be?” I asked eagerly. “I have taken arsenic and gold,
phosphorus, exercise, nux vomica, hydrotherapeutic baths, rest,
excitement, codein, and aromatic spirits of ammonia. Is there anything
left in the pharmacopœia?”
“Somewhere in these mountains,” said the doctor, “there’s a plant
growing—a flowering plant that’ll cure you, and it’s about the only
thing that will. It’s of a kind that’s as old as the world; but of late
it’s powerful scarce and hard to find. You and I will have to hunt it
up. I’m not engaged in active practice now: I’m getting along in years;
but I’ll take your case. You’ll have to come every day in the afternoon
and help me hunt for this plant till we find it. The city doctors may
know a lot about new scientific things, but they don’t know much about
the cures that nature carries around in her saddlebags.”
So every day the old doctor and I hunted the cure-all plant among the
mountains and valleys of the Blue Ridge. Together we toiled up steep
heights so slippery with fallen autumn leaves that we had to catch
every sapling and branch within our reach to save us from falling. We
waded through gorges and chasms, breast-deep with laurel and ferns; we
followed the banks of mountain streams for miles; we wound our way like
Indians through brakes of pine—road side, hill side, river side,
mountain side we explored in our search for the miraculous plant.
As the old doctor said, it must have grown scarce and hard to find. But
we followed our quest. Day by day we plumbed the valleys, scaled the
heights, and tramped the plateaus in search of the miraculous plant.
Mountain-bred, he never seemed to tire. I often reached home too
fatigued to do anything except fall into bed and sleep until morning.
This we kept up for a month.
One evening after I had returned from a six-mile tramp with the old
doctor, Amaryllis and I took a little walk under the trees near the
road. We looked at the mountains drawing their royal-purple robes
around them for their night’s repose.
“I’m glad you’re well again,” she said. “When you first came you
frightened me. I thought you were really ill.”
“Well again!” I almost shrieked. “Do you know that I have only one
chance in a thousand to live?”
Amaryllis looked at me in surprise. “Why,” said she, “you are as strong
as one of the plough-mules, you sleep ten or twelve hours every night,
and you are eating us out of house and home. What more do you want?”
“I tell you,” said I, “that unless we find the magic—that is, the plant
we are looking for—in time, nothing can save me. The doctor tells me
so.”
“What doctor?”
“Doctor Tatum—the old doctor who lives halfway up Black Oak Mountain.
Do you know him?”
“I have known him since I was able to talk. And is that where you go
every day—is it he who takes you on these long walks and climbs that
have brought back your health and strength? God bless the old doctor.”
Just then the old doctor himself drove slowly down the road in his
rickety old buggy. I waved my hand at him and shouted that I would be
on hand the next day at the usual time. He stopped his horse and called
to Amaryllis to come out to him. They talked for five minutes while I
waited. Then the old doctor drove on.
When we got to the house Amaryllis lugged out an encyclopædia and
sought a word in it. “The doctor said,” she told me, “that you needn’t
call any more as a patient, but he’d be glad to see you any time as a
friend. And then he told me to look up my name in the encyclopædia and
tell you what it means. It seems to be the name of a genus of flowering
plants, and also the name of a country girl in Theocritus and Virgil.
What do you suppose the doctor meant by that?”
“I know what he meant,” said I. “I know now.”
A word to a brother who may have come under the spell of the unquiet
Lady Neurasthenia.
The formula was true. Even though gropingly at times, the physicians of
the walled cities had put their fingers upon the specific medicament.
And so for the exercise one is referred to good Doctor Tatum on Black
Oak Mountain—take the road to your right at the Methodist meeting house
in the pine-grove.
Absolute rest and exercise!
What rest more remedial than to sit with Amaryllis in the shade, and,
with a sixth sense, read the wordless Theocritan idyl of the
gold-bannered blue mountains marching orderly into the dormitories of
the night?
XV.
OCTOBER AND JUNE
The Captain gazed gloomily at his sword that hung upon the wall. In the
closet near by was stored his faded uniform, stained and worn by
weather and service. What a long, long time it seemed since those old
days of war’s alarms!
And now, veteran that he was of his country’s strenuous times, he had
been reduced to abject surrender by a woman’s soft eyes and smiling
lips. As he sat in his quiet room he held in his hand the letter he had
just received from her—the letter that had caused him to wear that look
of gloom. He re-read the fatal paragraph that had destroyed his hope.
In declining the honour you have done me in asking me to be your wife,
I feel that I ought to speak frankly. The reason I have for so doing is
the great difference between our ages. I like you very, very much, but
I am sure that our marriage would not be a happy one. I am sorry to
have to refer to this, but I believe that you will appreciate my
honesty in giving you the true reason.
The Captain sighed, and leaned his head upon his hand. Yes, there were
many years between their ages. But he was strong and rugged, he had
position and wealth. Would not his love, his tender care, and the
advantages he could bestow upon her make her forget the question of
age? Besides, he was almost sure that she cared for him.
The Captain was a man of prompt action. In the field he had been
distinguished for his decisiveness and energy. He would see her and
plead his cause again in person. Age!—what was it to come between him
and the one he loved?
In two hours he stood ready, in light marching order, for his greatest
battle. He took the train for the old Southern town in Tennessee where
she lived.
Theodora Deming was on the steps of the handsome, porticoed old
mansion, enjoying the summer twilight, when the Captain entered the
gate and came up the gravelled walk. She met him with a smile that was
free from embarrassment. As the Captain stood on the step below her,
the difference in their ages did not appear so great. He was tall and
straight and clear-eyed and browned. She was in the bloom of lovely
womanhood.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” said Theodora; “but now that you’ve come you
may sit on the step. Didn’t you get my letter?”
“I did,” said the Captain; “and that’s why I came. I say, now, Theo,
reconsider your answer, won’t you?”
Theodora smiled softly upon him. He carried his years well. She was
really fond of his strength, his wholesome looks, his
manliness—perhaps, if—
“No, no,” she said, shaking her head, positively; “it’s out of the
question. I like you a whole lot, but marrying won’t do. My age and
yours are—but don’t make me say it again—I told you in my letter.”
The Captain flushed a little through the bronze on his face. He was
silent for a while, gazing sadly into the twilight. Beyond a line of
woods that he could see was a field where the boys in blue had once
bivouacked on their march toward the sea. How long ago it seemed now!
Truly, Fate and Father Time had tricked him sorely. Just a few years
interposed between himself and happiness!
Theodora’s hand crept down and rested in the clasp of his firm, brown
one. She felt, at least, that sentiment that is akin to love.
“Don’t take it so hard, please,” she said, gently. “It’s all for the
best. I’ve reasoned it out very wisely all by myself. Some day you’ll
be glad I didn’t marry you. It would be very nice and lovely for a
while—but, just think! In only a few short years what different tastes
we would have! One of us would want to sit by the fireside and read,
and maybe nurse neuralgia or rheumatism of evenings, while the other
would be crazy for balls and theatres and late suppers. No, my dear
friend. While it isn’t exactly January and May, it’s a clear case of
October and pretty early in June.”
“I’d always do what you wanted me to do, Theo. If you wanted to—”
“No, you wouldn’t. You think now that you would, but you wouldn’t.
Please don’t ask me any more.”
The Captain had lost his battle. But he was a gallant warrior, and when
he rose to make his final adieu his mouth was grimly set and his
shoulders were squared.
He took the train for the North that night. On the next evening he was
back in his room, where his sword was hanging against the wall. He was
dressing for dinner, tying his white tie into a very careful bow. And
at the same time he was indulging in a pensive soliloquy.
“’Pon my honour, I believe Theo was right, after all. Nobody can deny
that she’s a peach, but she must be twenty-eight, at the very kindest
calculation.”
For you see, the Captain was only nineteen, and his sword had never
been drawn except on the parade ground at Chattanooga, which was as
near as he ever got to the Spanish-American War.
XVI.
THE CHURCH WITH AN OVERSHOT-WHEEL
Lakelands is not to be found in the catalogues of fashionable summer
resorts. It lies on a low spur of the Cumberland range of mountains on
a little tributary of the Clinch River. Lakelands proper is a contented
village of two dozen houses situated on a forlorn, narrow-gauge
railroad line. You wonder whether the railroad lost itself in the pine
woods and ran into Lakelands from fright and loneliness, or whether
Lakelands got lost and huddled itself along the railroad to wait for
the cars to carry it home.
You wonder again why it was named Lakelands. There are no lakes, and
the lands about are too poor to be worth mentioning.
Half a mile from the village stands the Eagle House, a big, roomy old
mansion run by Josiah Rankin for the accommodation of visitors who
desire the mountain air at inexpensive rates. The Eagle House is
delightfully mismanaged. It is full of ancient instead of modern
improvements, and it is altogether as comfortably neglected and
pleasingly disarranged as your own home. But you are furnished with
clean rooms and good and abundant fare: yourself and the piny woods
must do the rest. Nature has provided a mineral spring, grape-vine
swings, and croquet—even the wickets are wooden. You have Art to thank
only for the fiddle-and-guitar music twice a week at the hop in the
rustic pavilion.
The patrons of the Eagle House are those who seek recreation as a
necessity, as well as a pleasure. They are busy people, who may be
likened to clocks that need a fortnight’s winding to insure a year’s
running of their wheels. You will find students there from the lower
towns, now and then an artist, or a geologist absorbed in construing
the ancient strata of the hills. A few quiet families spend the summers
there; and often one or two tired members of that patient sisterhood
known to Lakelands as “schoolmarms.”
A quarter of a mile from the Eagle House was what would have been
described to its guests as “an object of interest” in the catalogue,
had the Eagle House issued a catalogue. This was an old, old mill that
was no longer a mill. In the words of Josiah Rankin, it was “the only
church in the United States, sah, with an overshot-wheel; and the only
mill in the world, sah, with pews and a pipe organ.” The guests of the
Eagle House attended the old mill church each Sabbath, and heard the
preacher liken the purified Christian to bolted flour ground to
usefulness between the millstones of experience and suffering.
Every year about the beginning of autumn there came to the Eagle House
one Abram Strong, who remained for a time an honoured and beloved
guest. In Lakelands he was called “Father Abram,” because his hair was
so white, his face so strong and kind and florid, his laugh so merry,
and his black clothes and broad hat so priestly in appearance. Even new
guests after three or four days’ acquaintance gave him this familiar
title.
Father Abram came a long way to Lakelands. He lived in a big, roaring
town in the Northwest where he owned mills, not little mills with pews
and an organ in them, but great, ugly, mountain-like mills that the
freight trains crawled around all day like ants around an ant-heap. And
now you must be told about Father Abram and the mill that was a church,
for their stories run together.
In the days when the church was a mill, Mr. Strong was the miller.
There was no jollier, dustier, busier, happier miller in all the land
than he. He lived in a little cottage across the road from the mill.
His hand was heavy, but his toll was light, and the mountaineers
brought their grain to him across many weary miles of rocky roads.
The delight of the miller’s life was his little daughter, Aglaia. That
was a brave name, truly, for a flaxen-haired toddler; but the
mountaineers love sonorous and stately names. The mother had
encountered it somewhere in a book, and the deed was done. In her
babyhood Aglaia herself repudiated the name, as far as common use went,
and persisted in calling herself “Dums.” The miller and his wife often
tried to coax from Aglaia the source of this mysterious name, but
without results. At last they arrived at a theory. In the little garden
behind the cottage was a bed of rhododendrons in which the child took a
peculiar delight and interest. It may have been that she perceived in
“Dums” a kinship to the formidable name of her favourite flowers.
When Aglaia was four years old she and her father used to go through a
little performance in the mill every afternoon, that never failed to
come off, the weather permitting. When supper was ready her mother
would brush her hair and put on a clean apron and send her across to
the mill to bring her father home. When the miller saw her coming in
the mill door he would come forward, all white with the flour dust, and
wave his hand and sing an old miller’s song that was familiar in those
parts and ran something like this:
“The wheel goes round,
The grist is ground,
The dusty miller’s merry.
He sings all day,
His work is play,
While thinking of his dearie.”
Then Aglaia would run to him laughing, and call:
“Da-da, come take Dums home;” and the miller would swing her to his
shoulder and march over to supper, singing the miller’s song. Every
evening this would take place.
One day, only a week after her fourth birthday, Aglaia disappeared.
When last seen she was plucking wild flowers by the side of the road in
front of the cottage. A little while later her mother went out to see
that she did not stray too far away, and she was already gone.
Of course every effort was made to find her. The neighbours gathered
and searched the woods and the mountains for miles around. They dragged
every foot of the mill race and the creek for a long distance below the
dam. Never a trace of her did they find. A night or two before there
had been a family of wanderers camped in a grove near by. It was
conjectured that they might have stolen the child; but when their wagon
was overtaken and searched she could not be found.
The miller remained at the mill for nearly two years; and then his hope
of finding her died out. He and his wife moved to the Northwest. In a
few years he was the owner of a modern mill in one of the important
milling cities in that region. Mrs. Strong never recovered from the
shock caused by the loss of Aglaia, and two years after they moved away
the miller was left to bear his sorrow alone.
When Abram Strong became prosperous he paid a visit to Lakelands and
the old mill. The scene was a sad one for him, but he was a strong man,
and always appeared cheery and kindly. It was then that he was inspired
to convert the old mill into a church. Lakelands was too poor to build
one; and the still poorer mountaineers could not assist. There was no
place of worship nearer than twenty miles.
The miller altered the appearance of the mill as little as possible.
The big overshot-wheel was left in its place. The young people who came
to the church used to cut their initials in its soft and slowly
decaying wood. The dam was partly destroyed, and the clear mountain
stream rippled unchecked down its rocky bed. Inside the mill the
changes were greater. The shafts and millstones and belts and pulleys
were, of course, all removed. There were two rows of benches with
aisles between, and a little raised platform and pulpit at one end. On
three sides overhead was a gallery containing seats, and reached by a
stairway inside. There was also an organ—a real pipe organ—in the
gallery, that was the pride of the congregation of the Old Mill Church.
Miss Phœbe Summers was the organist. The Lakelands boys proudly took
turns at pumping it for her at each Sunday’s service. The Rev. Mr.
Banbridge was the preacher, and rode down from Squirrel Gap on his old
white horse without ever missing a service. And Abram Strong paid for
everything. He paid the preacher five hundred dollars a year; and Miss
Phœbe two hundred dollars.
Thus, in memory of Aglaia, the old mill was converted into a blessing
for the community in which she had once lived. It seemed that the brief
life of the child had brought about more good than the three score
years and ten of many. But Abram Strong set up yet another monument to
her memory.
Out from his mills in the Northwest came the “Aglaia” flour, made from
the hardest and finest wheat that could be raised. The country soon
found out that the “Aglaia” flour had two prices. One was the highest
market price, and the other was—nothing.
Wherever there happened a calamity that left people destitute—a fire, a
flood, a tornado, a strike, or a famine, there would go hurrying a
generous consignment of the “Aglaia” at its “nothing” price. It was
given away cautiously and judiciously, but it was freely given, and not
a penny could the hungry ones pay for it. There got to be a saying that
whenever there was a disastrous fire in the poor districts of a city
the fire chief’s buggy reached the scene first, next the “Aglaia” flour
wagon, and then the fire engines.
So this was Abram Strong’s other monument to Aglaia. Perhaps to a poet
the theme may seem too utilitarian for beauty; but to some the fancy
will seem sweet and fine that the pure, white, virgin flour, flying on
its mission of love and charity, might be likened to the spirit of the
lost child whose memory it signalized.
There came a year that brought hard times to the Cumberlands. Grain
crops everywhere were light, and there were no local crops at all.
Mountain floods had done much damage to property. Even game in the
woods was so scarce that the hunters brought hardly enough home to keep
their folk alive. Especially about Lakelands was the rigour felt.
As soon as Abram Strong heard of this his messages flew; and the little
narrow-gauge cars began to unload “Aglaia” flour there. The miller’s
orders were to store the flour in the gallery of the Old Mill Church;
and that every one who attended the church was to carry home a sack of
it.
Two weeks after that Abram Strong came for his yearly visit to the
Eagle House, and became “Father Abram” again.
That season the Eagle House had fewer guests than usual. Among them was
Rose Chester. Miss Chester came to Lakelands from Atlanta, where she
worked in a department store. This was the first vacation outing of her
life. The wife of the store manager had once spent a summer at the
Eagle House. She had taken a fancy to Rose, and had persuaded her to go
there for her three weeks’ holiday. The manager’s wife gave her a
letter to Mrs. Rankin, who gladly received her in her own charge and
care.
Miss Chester was not very strong. She was about twenty, and pale and
delicate from an indoor life. But one week of Lakelands gave her a
brightness and spirit that changed her wonderfully. The time was early
September when the Cumberlands are at their greatest beauty. The
mountain foliage was growing brilliant with autumnal colours; one
breathed aerial champagne, the nights were deliciously cool, causing
one to snuggle cosily under the warm blankets of the Eagle House.
Father Abram and Miss Chester became great friends. The old miller
learned her story from Mrs. Rankin, and his interest went out quickly
to the slender lonely girl who was making her own way in the world.
The mountain country was new to Miss Chester. She had lived many years
in the warm, flat town of Atlanta; and the grandeur and variety of the
Cumberlands delighted her. She was determined to enjoy every moment of
her stay. Her little hoard of savings had been estimated so carefully
in connection with her expenses that she knew almost to a penny what
her very small surplus would be when she returned to work.
Miss Chester was fortunate in gaining Father Abram for a friend and
companion. He knew every road and peak and slope of the mountains near
Lakelands. Through him she became acquainted with the solemn delight of
the shadowy, tilted aisles of the pine forests, the dignity of the bare
crags, the crystal, tonic mornings, the dreamy, golden afternoons full
of mysterious sadness. So her health improved, and her spirits grew
light. She had a laugh as genial and hearty in its feminine way as the
famous laugh of Father Abram. Both of them were natural optimists; and
both knew how to present a serene and cheerful face to the world.
One day Miss Chester learned from one of the guests the history of
Father Abram’s lost child. Quickly she hurried away and found the
miller seated on his favourite rustic bench near the chalybeate spring.
He was surprised when his little friend slipped her hand into his, and
looked at him with tears in her eyes.
“Oh, Father Abram,” she said, “I’m so sorry! I didn’t know until to-day
about your little daughter. You will find her yet some day—Oh, I hope
you will.”
The miller looked down at her with his strong, ready smile.
“Thank you, Miss Rose,” he said, in his usual cheery tones. “But I do
not expect to find Aglaia. For a few years I hoped that she had been
stolen by vagrants, and that she still lived; but I have lost that
hope. I believe that she was drowned.”
“I can understand,” said Miss Chester, “how the doubt must have made it
so hard to bear. And yet you are so cheerful and so ready to make other
people’s burdens light. Good Father Abram!”
“Good Miss Rose!” mimicked the miller, smiling. “Who thinks of others
more than you do?”
A whimsical mood seemed to strike Miss Chester.
“Oh, Father Abram,” she cried, “wouldn’t it be grand if I should prove
to be your daughter? Wouldn’t it be romantic? And wouldn’t you like to
have me for a daughter?”
“Indeed, I would,” said the miller, heartily. “If Aglaia had lived I
could wish for nothing better than for her to have grown up to be just
such a little woman as you are. Maybe you are Aglaia,” he continued,
falling in with her playful mood; “can’t you remember when we lived at
the mill?”
Miss Chester fell swiftly into serious meditation. Her large eyes were
fixed vaguely upon something in the distance. Father Abram was amused
at her quick return to seriousness. She sat thus for a long time before
she spoke.
“No,” she said at length, with a long sigh, “I can’t remember anything
at all about a mill. I don’t think that I ever saw a flour mill in my
life until I saw your funny little church. And if I were your little
girl I would remember it, wouldn’t I? I’m so sorry, Father Abram.”
“So am I,” said Father Abram, humouring her. “But if you cannot
remember that you are my little girl, Miss Rose, surely you can
recollect being some one else’s. You remember your own parents, of
course.”
“Oh, yes; I remember them very well—especially my father. He wasn’t a
bit like you, Father Abram. Oh, I was only making believe: Come, now,
you’ve rested long enough. You promised to show me the pool where you
can see the trout playing, this afternoon. I never saw a trout.”
Late one afternoon Father Abram set out for the old mill alone. He
often went to sit and think of the old days when he lived in the
cottage across the road. Time had smoothed away the sharpness of his
grief until he no longer found the memory of those times painful. But
whenever Abram Strong sat in the melancholy September afternoons on the
spot where “Dums” used to run in every day with her yellow curls
flying, the smile that Lakelands always saw upon his face was not
there.
The miller made his way slowly up the winding, steep road. The trees
crowded so close to the edge of it that he walked in their shade, with
his hat in his hand. Squirrels ran playfully upon the old rail fence at
his right. Quails were calling to their young broods in the wheat
stubble. The low sun sent a torrent of pale gold up the ravine that
opened to the west. Early September!—it was within a few days only of
the anniversary of Aglaia’s disappearance.
The old overshot-wheel, half covered with mountain ivy, caught patches
of the warm sunlight filtering through the trees. The cottage across
the road was still standing, but it would doubtless go down before the
next winter’s mountain blasts. It was overrun with morning glory and
wild gourd vines, and the door hung by one hinge.
Father Abram pushed open the mill door, and entered softly. And then he
stood still, wondering. He heard the sound of some one within, weeping
inconsolably. He looked, and saw Miss Chester sitting in a dim pew,
with her head bowed upon an open letter that her hands held.
Father Abram went to her, and laid one of his strong hands firmly upon
hers. She looked up, breathed his name, and tried to speak further.
“Not yet, Miss Rose,” said the miller, kindly. “Don’t try to talk yet.
There’s nothing as good for you as a nice, quiet little cry when you
are feeling blue.”
It seemed that the old miller, who had known so much sorrow himself,
was a magician in driving it away from others. Miss Chester’s sobs grew
easier. Presently she took her little plain-bordered handkerchief and
wiped away a drop or two that had fallen from her eyes upon Father
Abram’s big hand. Then she looked up and smiled through her tears. Miss
Chester could always smile before her tears had dried, just as Father
Abram could smile through his own grief. In that way the two were very
much alike.
The miller asked her no questions; but by and by Miss Chester began to
tell him.
It was the old story that always seems so big and important to the
young, and that brings reminiscent smiles to their elders. Love was the
theme, as may be supposed. There was a young man in Atlanta, full of
all goodness and the graces, who had discovered that Miss Chester also
possessed these qualities above all other people in Atlanta or anywhere
else from Greenland to Patagonia. She showed Father Abram the letter
over which she had been weeping. It was a manly, tender letter, a
little superlative and urgent, after the style of love letters written
by young men full of goodness and the graces. He proposed for Miss
Chester’s hand in marriage at once. Life, he said, since her departure
for a three-weeks’ visit, was not to be endured. He begged for an
immediate answer; and if it were favourable he promised to fly,
ignoring the narrow-gauge railroad, at once to Lakelands.
“And now where does the trouble come in?” asked the miller when he had
read the letter.
“I cannot marry him,” said Miss Chester.
“Do you want to marry him?” asked Father Abram.
“Oh, I love him,” she answered, “but—” Down went her head and she
sobbed again.
“Come, Miss Rose,” said the miller; “you can give me your confidence. I
do not question you, but I think you can trust me.”
“I do trust you,” said the girl. “I will tell you why I must refuse
Ralph. I am nobody; I haven’t even a name; the name I call myself is a
lie. Ralph is a noble man. I love him with all my heart, but I can
never be his.”
“What talk is this?” said Father Abram. “You said that you remember
your parents. Why do you say you have no name? I do not understand.”
“I do remember them,” said Miss Chester. “I remember them too well. My
first recollections are of our life somewhere in the far South. We
moved many times to different towns and states. I have picked cotton,
and worked in factories, and have often gone without enough food and
clothes. My mother was sometimes good to me; my father was always
cruel, and beat me. I think they were both idle and unsettled.
“One night when we were living in a little town on a river near Atlanta
they had a great quarrel. It was while they were abusing and taunting
each other that I learned—oh, Father Abram, I learned that I didn’t
even have the right to be—don’t you understand? I had no right even to
a name; I was nobody.
“I ran away that night. I walked to Atlanta and found work. I gave
myself the name of Rose Chester, and have earned my own living ever
since. Now you know why I cannot marry Ralph—and, oh, I can never tell
him why.”
Better than any sympathy, more helpful than pity, was Father Abram’s
depreciation of her woes.
“Why, dear, dear! is that all?” he said. “Fie, fie! I thought something
was in the way. If this perfect young man is a man at all he will not
care a pinch of bran for your family tree. Dear Miss Rose, take my word
for it, it is yourself he cares for. Tell him frankly, just as you have
told me, and I’ll warrant that he will laugh at your story, and think
all the more of you for it.”
“I shall never tell him,” said Miss Chester, sadly. “And I shall never
marry him nor any one else. I have not the right.”
But they saw a long shadow come bobbing up the sunlit road. And then
came a shorter one bobbing by its side; and presently two strange
figures approached the church. The long shadow was made by Miss Phœbe
Summers, the organist, come to practise. Tommy Teague, aged twelve, was
responsible for the shorter shadow. It was Tommy’s day to pump the
organ for Miss Phœbe, and his bare toes proudly spurned the dust of the
road.
Miss Phœbe, in her lilac-spray chintz dress, with her accurate little
curls hanging over each ear, courtesied low to Father Abram, and shook
her curls ceremoniously at Miss Chester. Then she and her assistant
climbed the steep stairway to the organ loft.
In the gathering shadows below, Father Abram and Miss Chester lingered.
They were silent; and it is likely that they were busy with their
memories. Miss Chester sat, leaning her head on her hand, with her eyes
fixed far away. Father Abram stood in the next pew, looking
thoughtfully out of the door at the road and the ruined cottage.
Suddenly the scene was transformed for him back almost a score of years
into the past. For, as Tommy pumped away, Miss Phœbe struck a low bass
note on the organ and held it to test the volume of air that it
contained. The church ceased to exist, so far as Father Abram was
concerned. The deep, booming vibration that shook the little frame
building was no note from an organ, but the humming of the mill
machinery. He felt sure that the old overshot-wheel was turning; that
he was back again, a dusty, merry miller in the old mountain mill. And
now evening was come, and soon would come Aglaia with flying colours,
toddling across the road to take him home to supper. Father Abram’s
eyes were fixed upon the broken door of the cottage.
And then came another wonder. In the gallery overhead the sacks of
flour were stacked in long rows. Perhaps a mouse had been at one of
them; anyway the jar of the deep organ note shook down between the
cracks of the gallery floor a stream of flour, covering Father Abram
from head to foot with the white dust. And then the old miller stepped
into the aisle, and waved his arms and began to sing the miller’s song:
“The wheel goes round,
The grist is ground,
The dusty miller’s merry.”
—and then the rest of the miracle happened. Miss Chester was leaning
forward from her pew, as pale as the flour itself, her wide-open eyes
staring at Father Abram like one in a waking dream. When he began the
song she stretched out her arms to him; her lips moved; she called to
him in dreamy tones: “Da-da, come take Dums home!”
Miss Phœbe released the low key of the organ. But her work had been
well done. The note that she struck had beaten down the doors of a
closed memory; and Father Abram held his lost Aglaia close in his arms.
When you visit Lakelands they will tell you more of this story. They
will tell you how the lines of it were afterward traced, and the
history of the miller’s daughter revealed after the gipsy wanderers had
stolen her on that September day, attracted by her childish beauty. But
you should wait until you sit comfortably on the shaded porch of the
Eagle House, and then you can have the story at your ease. It seems
best that our part of it should close while Miss Phœbe’s deep bass note
was yet reverberating softly.
And yet, to my mind, the finest thing of it all happened while Father
Abram and his daughter were walking back to the Eagle House in the long
twilight, almost too glad to speak.
“Father,” she said, somewhat timidly and doubtfully, “have you a great
deal of money?”
“A great deal?” said the miller. “Well, that depends. There is plenty
unless you want to buy the moon or something equally expensive.”
“Would it cost very, very much,” asked Aglaia, who had always counted
her dimes so carefully, “to send a telegram to Atlanta?”
“Ah,” said Father Abram, with a little sigh, “I see. You want to ask
Ralph to come.”
Aglaia looked up at him with a tender smile.
“I want to ask him to wait,” she said. “I have just found my father,
and I want it to be just we two for a while. I want to tell him he will
have to wait.”
XVII.
NEW YORK BY CAMP FIRE LIGHT
Away out in the Creek Nation we learned things about New York.
We were on a hunting trip, and were camped one night on the bank of a
little stream. Bud Kingsbury was our skilled hunter and guide, and it
was from his lips that we had explanations of Manhattan and the queer
folks that inhabit it. Bud had once spent a month in the metropolis,
and a week or two at other times, and he was pleased to discourse to us
of what he had seen.
Fifty yards away from our camp was pitched the teepee of a wandering
family of Indians that had come up and settled there for the night. An
old, old Indian woman was trying to build a fire under an iron pot hung
upon three sticks.
Bud went over to her assistance, and soon had her fire going. When he
came back we complimented him playfully upon his gallantry.
“Oh,” said Bud, “don’t mention it. It’s a way I have. Whenever I see a
lady trying to cook things in a pot and having trouble I always go to
the rescue. I done the same thing once in a high-toned house in. New
York City. Heap big society teepee on Fifth Avenue. That Injun lady
kind of recalled it to my mind. Yes, I endeavours to be polite and help
the ladies out.”
The camp demanded the particulars.
“I was manager of the Triangle B Ranch in the Panhandle,” said Bud. “It
was owned at that time by old man Sterling, of New York. He wanted to
sell out, and he wrote for me to come on to New York and explain the
ranch to the syndicate that wanted to buy. So I sends to Fort Worth and
has a forty dollar suit of clothes made, and hits the trail for the big
village.
“Well, when I got there, old man Sterling and his outfit certainly laid
themselves out to be agreeable. We had business and pleasure so mixed
up that you couldn’t tell whether it was a treat or a trade half the
time. We had trolley rides, and cigars, and theatre round-ups, and
rubber parties.”
“Rubber parties?” said a listener, inquiringly.
“Sure,” said Bud. “Didn’t you never attend ’em? You walk around and try
to look at the tops of the skyscrapers. Well, we sold the ranch, and
old man Sterling asks me ’round to his house to take grub on the night
before I started back. It wasn’t any high-collared affair—just me and
the old man and his wife and daughter. But they was a fine-haired
outfit all right, and the lilies of the field wasn’t in it. They made
my Fort Worth clothes carpenter look like a dealer in horse blankets
and gee strings. And then the table was all pompous with flowers, and
there was a whole kit of tools laid out beside everybody’s plate. You’d
have thought you was fixed out to burglarize a restaurant before you
could get your grub. But I’d been in New York over a week then, and I
was getting on to stylish ways. I kind of trailed behind and watched
the others use the hardware supplies, and then I tackled the chuck with
the same weapons. It ain’t much trouble to travel with the high-flyers
after you find out their gait. I got along fine. I was feeling cool and
agreeable, and pretty soon I was talking away fluent as you please, all
about the ranch and the West, and telling ’em how the Indians eat
grasshopper stew and snakes, and you never saw people so interested.
“But the real joy of that feast was that Miss Sterling. Just a little
trick she was, not bigger than two bits’ worth of chewing plug; but she
had a way about her that seemed to say she was the people, and you
believed it. And yet, she never put on any airs, and she smiled at me
the same as if I was a millionaire while I was telling about a Creek
dog feast and listened like it was news from home.
“By and by, after we had eat oysters and some watery soup and truck
that never was in my repertory, a Methodist preacher brings in a kind
of camp stove arrangement, all silver, on long legs, with a lamp under
it.
“Miss Sterling lights up and begins to do some cooking right on the
supper table. I wondered why old man Sterling didn’t hire a cook, with
all the money he had. Pretty soon she dished out some cheesy tasting
truck that she said was rabbit, but I swear there had never been a
Molly cotton tail in a mile of it.
“The last thing on the programme was lemonade. It was brought around in
little flat glass bowls and set by your plate. I was pretty thirsty,
and I picked up mine and took a big swig of it. Right there was where
the little lady had made a mistake. She had put in the lemon all right,
but she’d forgot the sugar. The best housekeepers slip up sometimes. I
thought maybe Miss Sterling was just learning to keep house and
cook—that rabbit would surely make you think so—and I says to myself,
‘Little lady, sugar or no sugar I’ll stand by you,’ and I raises up my
bowl again and drinks the last drop of the lemonade. And then all the
balance of ’em picks up their bowls and does the same. And then I gives
Miss Sterling the laugh proper, just to carry it off like a joke, so
she wouldn’t feel bad about the mistake.
“After we all went into the sitting room she sat down and talked to me
quite awhile.
“‘It was so kind of you, Mr. Kingsbury,’ says she, ‘to bring my blunder
off so nicely. It was so stupid of me to forget the sugar.’
“‘Never you mind,’ says I, ‘some lucky man will throw his rope over a
mighty elegant little housekeeper some day, not far from here.’
“‘If you mean me, Mr. Kingsbury,’ says she, laughing out loud, ‘I hope
he will be as lenient with my poor housekeeping as you have been.’
“‘Don’t mention it,’ says I. ‘Anything to oblige the ladies.’”
Bud ceased his reminiscences. And then some one asked him what he
considered the most striking and prominent trait of New Yorkers.
“The most visible and peculiar trait of New York folks,” answered Bud,
“is New York. Most of ’em has New York on the brain. They have heard of
other places, such as Waco, and Paris, and Hot Springs, and London; but
they don’t believe in ’em. They think that town is all Merino. Now to
show you how much they care for their village I’ll tell you about one
of ’em that strayed out as far as the Triangle B while I was working
there.
“This New Yorker come out there looking for a job on the ranch. He said
he was a good horseback rider, and there was pieces of tanbark hanging
on his clothes yet from his riding school.
“Well, for a while they put him to keeping books in the ranch store,
for he was a devil at figures. But he got tired of that, and asked for
something more in the line of activity. The boys on the ranch liked him
all right, but he made us tired shouting New York all the time. Every
night he’d tell us about East River and J. P. Morgan and the Eden Musee
and Hetty Green and Central Park till we used to throw tin plates and
branding irons at him.
“One day this chap gets on a pitching pony, and the pony kind of sidled
up his back and went to eating grass while the New Yorker was coming
down.
“He come down on his head on a chunk of mesquit wood, and he didn’t
show any designs toward getting up again. We laid him out in a tent,
and he begun to look pretty dead. So Gideon Pease saddles up and burns
the wind for old Doc Sleeper’s residence in Dogtown, thirty miles away.
“The doctor comes over and he investigates the patient.
“‘Boys,’ says he, ‘you might as well go to playing seven-up for his
saddle and clothes, for his head’s fractured and if he lives ten
minutes it will be a remarkable case of longevity.’
“Of course we didn’t gamble for the poor rooster’s saddle—that was one
of Doc’s jokes. But we stood around feeling solemn, and all of us
forgive him for having talked us to death about New York.
“I never saw anybody about to hand in his checks act more peaceful than
this fellow. His eyes were fixed ’way up in the air, and he was using
rambling words to himself all about sweet music and beautiful streets
and white-robed forms, and he was smiling like dying was a pleasure.
“‘He’s about gone now,’ said Doc. ‘Whenever they begin to think they
see heaven it’s all off.’
“Blamed if that New York man didn’t sit right up when he heard the Doc
say that.
“‘Say,’ says he, kind of disappointed, ‘was that heaven? Confound it
all, I thought it was Broadway. Some of you fellows get my clothes. I’m
going to get up.’
“And I’ll be blamed,” concluded Bud, “if he wasn’t on the train with a
ticket for New York in his pocket four days afterward!”
XVIII.
THE ADVENTURES OF SHAMROCK JOLNES
I am so fortunate as to count Shamrock Jolnes, the great New York
detective, among my muster of friends. Jolnes is what is called the
“inside man” of the city detective force. He is an expert in the use of
the typewriter, and it is his duty, whenever there is a “murder
mystery” to be solved, to sit at a desk telephone at headquarters and
take down the messages of “cranks” who ’phone in their confessions to
having committed the crime.
But on certain “off” days when confessions are coming in slowly and
three or four newspapers have run to earth as many different guilty
persons, Jolnes will knock about the town with me, exhibiting, to my
great delight and instruction, his marvellous powers of observation and
deduction.
The other day I dropped in at Headquarters and found the great
detective gazing thoughtfully at a string that was tied tightly around
his little finger.
“Good morning, Whatsup,” he said, without turning his head. “I’m glad
to notice that you’ve had your house fitted up with electric lights at
last.”
“Will you please tell me,” I said, in surprise, “how you knew that? I
am sure that I never mentioned the fact to any one, and the wiring was
a rush order not completed until this morning.”
“Nothing easier,” said Jolnes, genially. “As you came in I caught the
odour of the cigar you are smoking. I know an expensive cigar; and I
know that not more than three men in New York can afford to smoke
cigars and pay gas bills too at the present time. That was an easy one.
But I am working just now on a little problem of my own.”
“Why have you that string on your finger?” I asked.
“That’s the problem,” said Jolnes. “My wife tied that on this morning
to remind me of something I was to send up to the house. Sit down,
Whatsup, and excuse me for a few moments.”
The distinguished detective went to a wall telephone, and stood with
the receiver to his ear for probably ten minutes.
“Were you listening to a confession?” I asked, when he had returned to
his chair.
“Perhaps,” said Jolnes, with a smile, “it might be called something of
the sort. To be frank with you, Whatsup, I’ve cut out the dope. I’ve
been increasing the quantity for so long that morphine doesn’t have
much effect on me any more. I’ve got to have something more powerful.
That telephone I just went to is connected with a room in the Waldorf
where there’s an author’s reading in progress. Now, to get at the
solution of this string.”
After five minutes of silent pondering, Jolnes looked at me, with a
smile, and nodded his head.
“Wonderful man!” I exclaimed; “already?”
“It is quite simple,” he said, holding up his finger. “You see that
knot? That is to prevent my forgetting. It is, therefore, a
forget-me-knot. A forget-me-not is a flower. It was a sack of flour
that I was to send home!”
“Beautiful!” I could not help crying out in admiration.
“Suppose we go out for a ramble,” suggested Jolnes.
“There is only one case of importance on hand just now. Old man
McCarty, one hundred and four years old, died from eating too many
bananas. The evidence points so strongly to the Mafia that the police
have surrounded the Second Avenue Katzenjammer Gambrinus Club No. 2,
and the capture of the assassin is only the matter of a few hours. The
detective force has not yet been called on for assistance.”
Jolnes and I went out and up the street toward the corner, where we
were to catch a surface car.
Half-way up the block we met Rheingelder, an acquaintance of ours, who
held a City Hall position.
“Good morning, Rheingelder,” said Jolnes, halting.
“Nice breakfast that was you had this morning.”
Always on the lookout for the detective’s remarkable feats of
deduction, I saw Jolnes’s eye flash for an instant upon a long yellow
splash on the shirt bosom and a smaller one upon the chin of
Rheingelder—both undoubtedly made by the yolk of an egg.
“Oh, dot is some of your detectiveness,” said Rheingelder, shaking all
over with a smile. “Vell, I pet you trinks und cigars all round dot you
cannot tell vot I haf eaten for breakfast.”
“Done,” said Jolnes. “Sausage, pumpernickel and coffee.”
Rheingelder admitted the correctness of the surmise and paid the bet.
When we had proceeded on our way I said to Jolnes:
“I thought you looked at the egg spilled on his chin and shirt front.”
“I did,” said Jolnes. “That is where I began my deduction. Rheingelder
is a very economical, saving man. Yesterday eggs dropped in the market
to twenty-eight cents per dozen. To-day they are quoted at forty-two.
Rheingelder ate eggs yesterday, and to-day he went back to his usual
fare. A little thing like this isn’t anything, Whatsup; it belongs to
the primary arithmetic class.”
When we boarded the street car we found the seats all
occupied—principally by ladies. Jolnes and I stood on the rear
platform.
About the middle of the car there sat an elderly man with a short, gray
beard, who looked to be the typical, well-dressed New Yorker. At
successive corners other ladies climbed aboard, and soon three or four
of them were standing over the man, clinging to straps and glaring
meaningly at the man who occupied the coveted seat. But he resolutely
retained his place.
“We New Yorkers,” I remarked to Jolnes, “have about lost our manners,
as far as the exercise of them in public goes.”
“Perhaps so,” said Jolnes, lightly; “but the man you evidently refer to
happens to be a very chivalrous and courteous gentleman from Old
Virginia. He is spending a few days in New York with his wife and two
daughters, and he leaves for the South to-night.”
“You know him, then?” I said, in amazement.
“I never saw him before we stepped on the car,” declared the detective,
smilingly.
“By the gold tooth of the Witch of Endor!” I cried, “if you can
construe all that from his appearance you are dealing in nothing else
than black art.”
“The habit of observation—nothing more,” said Jolnes. “If the old
gentleman gets off the car before we do, I think I can demonstrate to
you the accuracy of my deduction.”
Three blocks farther along the gentleman rose to leave the car. Jolnes
addressed him at the door:
“Pardon me, sir, but are you not Colonel Hunter, of Norfolk, Virginia?”
“No, suh,” was the extremely courteous answer. “My name, suh, is
Ellison—Major Winfield R. Ellison, from Fairfax County, in the same
state. I know a good many people, suh, in Norfolk—the Goodriches, the
Tollivers, and the Crabtrees, suh, but I never had the pleasure of
meeting yo’ friend, Colonel Hunter. I am happy to say, suh, that I am
going back to Virginia to-night, after having spent a week in yo’ city
with my wife and three daughters. I shall be in Norfolk in about ten
days, and if you will give me yo’ name, suh, I will take pleasure in
looking up Colonel Hunter and telling him that you inquired after him,
suh.”
“Thank you,” said Jolnes; “tell him that Reynolds sent his regards, if
you will be so kind.”
I glanced at the great New York detective and saw that a look of
intense chagrin had come upon his clear-cut features. Failure in the
slightest point always galled Shamrock Jolnes.
“Did you say your _three_ daughters?” he asked of the Virginia
gentleman.
“Yes, suh, my three daughters, all as fine girls as there are in
Fairfax County,” was the answer.
With that Major Ellison stopped the car and began to descend the step.
Shamrock Jolnes clutched his arm.
“One moment, sir,” he begged, in an urbane voice in which I alone
detected the anxiety—“am I not right in believing that one of the young
ladies is an _adopted_ daughter?”
“You are, suh,” admitted the major, from the ground, “but how the devil
you knew it, suh, is mo’ than I can tell.”
“And mo’ than I can tell, too,” I said, as the car went on.
Jolnes was restored to his calm, observant serenity by having wrested
victory from his apparent failure; so after we got off the car he
invited me into a café, promising to reveal the process of his latest
wonderful feat.
“In the first place,” he began after we were comfortably seated, “I
knew the gentleman was no New Yorker because he was flushed and uneasy
and restless on account of the ladies that were standing, although he
did not rise and give them his seat. I decided from his appearance that
he was a Southerner rather than a Westerner.
“Next I began to figure out his reason for not relinquishing his seat
to a lady when he evidently felt strongly, but not overpoweringly,
impelled to do so. I very quickly decided upon that. I noticed that one
of his eyes had received a severe jab in one corner, which was red and
inflamed, and that all over his face were tiny round marks about the
size of the end of an uncut lead pencil. Also upon both of his patent
leather shoes were a number of deep imprints shaped like ovals cut off
square at one end.
“Now, there is only one district in New York City where a man is bound
to receive scars and wounds and indentations of that sort—and that is
along the sidewalks of Twenty-third Street and a portion of Sixth
Avenue south of there. I knew from the imprints of trampling French
heels on his feet and the marks of countless jabs in the face from
umbrellas and parasols carried by women in the shopping district that
he had been in conflict with the amazonian troops. And as he was a man
of intelligent appearance, I knew he would not have braved such dangers
unless he had been dragged thither by his own women folk. Therefore,
when he got on the car his anger at the treatment he had received was
sufficient to make him keep his seat in spite of his traditions of
Southern chivalry.”
“That is all very well,” I said, “but why did you insist upon
daughters—and especially two daughters? Why couldn’t a wife alone have
taken him shopping?”
“There had to be daughters,” said Jolnes, calmly. “If he had only a
wife, and she near his own age, he could have bluffed her into going
alone. If he had a young wife she would prefer to go alone. So there
you are.”
“I’ll admit that,” I said; “but, now, why two daughters? And how, in
the name of all the prophets, did you guess that one was adopted when
he told you he had three?”
“Don’t say guess,” said Jolnes, with a touch of pride in his air;
“there is no such word in the lexicon of ratiocination. In Major
Ellison’s buttonhole there was a carnation and a rosebud backed by a
geranium leaf. No woman ever combined a carnation and a rosebud into a
boutonniere. Close your eyes, Whatsup, and give the logic of your
imagination a chance. Cannot you see the lovely Adele fastening the
carnation to the lapel so that papa may be gay upon the street? And
then the romping Edith May dancing up with sisterly jealousy to add her
rosebud to the adornment?”
“And then,” I cried, beginning to feel enthusiasm, “when he declared
that he had three daughters—”
“I could see,” said Jolnes, “one in the background who added no flower;
and I knew that she must be—”
“Adopted!” I broke in. “I give you every credit; but how did you know
he was leaving for the South to-night?”
“In his breast pocket,” said the great detective, “something large and
oval made a protuberance. Good liquor is scarce on trains, and it is a
long journey from New York to Fairfax County.”
“Again, I must bow to you,” I said. “And tell me this, so that my last
shred of doubt will be cleared away; why did you decide that he was
from Virginia?”
“It was very faint, I admit,” answered Shamrock Jolnes, “but no trained
observer could have failed to detect the odour of mint in the car.”
XIX.
THE LADY HIGHER UP
New York City, they said, was deserted; and that accounted, doubtless,
for the sounds carrying so far in the tranquil summer air. The breeze
was south-by-southwest; the hour was midnight; the theme was a bit of
feminine gossip by wireless mythology. Three hundred and sixty-five
feet above the heated asphalt the tiptoeing symbolic deity on Manhattan
pointed her vacillating arrow straight, for the time, in the direction
of her exalted sister on Liberty Island. The lights of the great Garden
were out; the benches in the Square were filled with sleepers in
postures so strange that beside them the writhing figures in Dore’s
illustrations of the Inferno would have straightened into tailor’s
dummies. The statue of Diana on the tower of the Garden—its constancy
shown by its weathercock ways, its innocence by the coating of gold
that it has acquired, its devotion to style by its single, graceful
flying scarf, its candour and artlessness by its habit of ever drawing
the long bow, its metropolitanism by its posture of swift flight to
catch a Harlem train—remained poised with its arrow pointed across the
upper bay. Had that arrow sped truly and horizontally it would have
passed fifty feet above the head of the heroic matron whose duty it is
to offer a cast-ironical welcome to the oppressed of other lands.
Seaward this lady gazed, and the furrows between steamship lines began
to cut steerage rates. The translators, too, have put an extra burden
upon her. “Liberty Lighting the World” (as her creator christened her)
would have had a no more responsible duty, except for the size of it,
than that of an electrician or a Standard Oil magnate. But to
“enlighten” the world (as our learned civic guardians “Englished” it)
requires abler qualities. And so poor Liberty, instead of having a
sinecure as a mere illuminator, must be converted into a Chautauqua
schoolma’am, with the oceans for her field instead of the placid,
classic lake. With a fireless torch and an empty head must she dispel
the shadows of the world and teach it its A, B, C’s.
“Ah, there, Mrs. Liberty!” called a clear, rollicking soprano voice
through the still, midnight air.
“Is that you, Miss Diana? Excuse my not turning my head. I’m not as
flighty and whirly-whirly as some. And ’tis so hoarse I am I can hardly
talk on account of the peanut-hulls left on the stairs in me throat by
that last boatload of tourists from Marietta, Ohio. ’Tis after being a
fine evening, miss.”
“If you don’t mind my asking,” came the bell-like tones of the golden
statue, “I’d like to know where you got that City Hall brogue. I didn’t
know that Liberty was necessarily Irish.”
“If ye’d studied the history of art in its foreign complications ye’d
not need to ask,” replied the offshore statue. “If ye wasn’t so
light-headed and giddy ye’d know that I was made by a Dago and
presented to the American people on behalf of the French Government for
the purpose of welcomin’ Irish immigrants into the Dutch city of New
York. ’Tis that I’ve been doing night and day since I was erected. Ye
must know, Miss Diana, that ’tis with statues the same as with
people—’tis not their makers nor the purposes for which they were
created that influence the operations of their tongues at all—it’s the
associations with which they become associated, I’m telling ye.”
“You’re dead right,” agreed Diana. “I notice it on myself. If any of
the old guys from Olympus were to come along and hand me any hot air in
the ancient Greek I couldn’t tell it from a conversation between a
Coney Island car conductor and a five-cent fare.”
“I’m right glad ye’ve made up your mind to be sociable, Miss Diana,”
said Mrs. Liberty. “’Tis a lonesome life I have down here. Is there
anything doin’ up in the city, Miss Diana, dear?”
“Oh, la, la, la!—no,” said Diana. “Notice that ‘la, la, la,’ Aunt
Liberty? Got that from ‘Paris by Night’ on the roof garden under me.
You’ll hear that ‘la, la, la’ at the Café McCann now, along with
‘garsong.’ The bohemian crowd there have become tired of ‘garsong’
since O’Rafferty, the head waiter, punched three of them for calling
him it. Oh, no; the town’s strickly on the bum these nights.
Everybody’s away. Saw a downtown merchant on a roof garden this evening
with his stenographer. Show was so dull he went to sleep. A waiter
biting on a dime tip to see if it was good half woke him up. He looks
around and sees his little pothooks perpetrator. ‘H’m!’ says he, ‘will
you take a letter, Miss De St. Montmorency?’ ‘Sure, in a minute,’ says
she, ‘if you’ll make it an X.’
“That was the best thing happened on the roof. So you see how dull it
is. La, la, la!”
“’Tis fine ye have it up there in society, Miss Diana. Ye have the cat
show and the horse show and the military tournaments where the privates
look grand as generals and the generals try to look grand as
floor-walkers. And ye have the Sportsmen’s Show, where the girl that
measures 36, 19, 45 cooks breakfast food in a birch-bark wigwam on the
banks of the Grand Canal of Venice conducted by one of the Vanderbilts,
Bernard McFadden, and the Reverends Dowie and Duss. And ye have the
French ball, where the original Cohens and the Robert Emmet-Sangerbund
Society dance the Highland fling one with another. And ye have the
grand O’Ryan ball, which is the most beautiful pageant in the world,
where the French students vie with the Tyrolean warblers in doin’ the
cake walk. Ye have the best job for a statue in the whole town, Miss
Diana.
“’Tis weary work,” sighed the island statue, “disseminatin’ the science
of liberty in New York Bay. Sometimes when I take a peep down at Ellis
Island and see the gang of immigrants I’m supposed to light up, ’tis
tempted I am to blow out the gas and let the coroner write out their
naturalization papers.”
“Say, it’s a shame, ain’t it, to give you the worst end of it?” came
the sympathetic antiphony of the steeplechase goddess. “It must be
awfully lonesome down there with so much water around you. I don’t see
how you ever keep your hair in curl. And that Mother Hubbard you are
wearing went out ten years ago. I think those sculptor guys ought to be
held for damages for putting iron or marble clothes on a lady. That’s
where Mr. St. Gaudens was wise. I’m always a little ahead of the
styles; but they’re coming my way pretty fast. Excuse my back a
moment—I caught a puff of wind from the north—shouldn’t wonder if
things had loosened up in Esopus. There, now! it’s in the West—I should
think that gold plank would have calmed the air out in that direction.
What were you saying, Mrs. Liberty?”
“A fine chat I’ve had with ye, Miss Diana, ma’am, but I see one of them
European steamers a-sailin’ up the Narrows, and I must be attendin’ to
me duties. ’Tis me job to extend aloft the torch of Liberty to welcome
all them that survive the kicks that the steerage stewards give ’em
while landin.’ Sure ’tis a great country ye can come to for $8.50, and
the doctor waitin’ to send ye back home free if he sees yer eyes red
from cryin’ for it.”
The golden statue veered in the changing breeze, menacing many points
on the horizon with its aureate arrow.
“So long, Aunt Liberty,” sweetly called Diana of the Tower. “Some
night, when the wind’s right. I’ll call you up again. But—say! you
haven’t got such a fierce kick coming about your job. I’ve kept a
pretty good watch on the island of Manhattan since I’ve been up here.
That’s a pretty sick-looking bunch of liberty chasers they dump down at
your end of it; but they don’t all stay that way. Every little while up
here I see guys signing checks and voting the right ticket, and
encouraging the arts and taking a bath every morning, that was shoved
ashore by a dock labourer born in the United States who never earned
over forty dollars a month. Don’t run down your job, Aunt Liberty;
you’re all right, all right.”
XX.
THE GREATER CONEY
“Next Sunday,” said Dennis Carnahan, “I’ll be after going down to see
the new Coney Island that’s risen like a phoenix bird from the ashes of
the old resort. I’m going with Norah Flynn, and we’ll fall victims to
all the dry goods deceptions, from the red-flannel eruption of Mount
Vesuvius to the pink silk ribbons on the race-suicide problems in the
incubator kiosk.
“Was I there before? I was. I was there last Tuesday. Did I see the
sights? I did not.
“Last Monday I amalgamated myself with the Bricklayers’ Union, and in
accordance with the rules I was ordered to quit work the same day on
account of a sympathy strike with the Lady Salmon Canners’ Lodge No.2,
of Tacoma, Washington.
“’Twas disturbed I was in mind and proclivities by losing me job, bein’
already harassed in me soul on account of havin’ quarrelled with Norah
Flynn a week before by reason of hard words spoken at the Dairymen and
Street-Sprinkler Drivers’ semi-annual ball, caused by jealousy and
prickly heat and that divil, Andy Coghlin.
“So, I says, it will be Coney for Tuesday; and if the chutes and the
short change and the green-corn silk between the teeth don’t create
diversions and get me feeling better, then I don’t know at all.
“Ye will have heard that Coney has received moral reconstruction. The
old Bowery, where they used to take your tintype by force and give ye
knockout drops before having your palm read, is now called the Wall
Street of the island. The wienerwurst stands are required by law to
keep a news ticker in ’em; and the doughnuts are examined every four
years by a retired steamboat inspector. The nigger man’s head that was
used by the old patrons to throw baseballs at is now illegal; and, by
order of the Police Commissioner the image of a man drivin’ an
automobile has been substituted. I hear that the old immoral amusements
have been suppressed. People who used to go down from New York to sit
in the sand and dabble in the surf now give up their quarters to
squeeze through turnstiles and see imitations of city fires and floods
painted on canvas. The reprehensible and degradin’ resorts that
disgraced old Coney are said to be wiped out. The wipin’-out process
consists of raisin’ the price from 10 cents to 25 cents, and hirin’ a
blonde named Maudie to sell tickets instead of Micky, the Bowery Bite.
That’s what they say—I don’t know.
“But to Coney I goes a-Tuesday. I gets off the ‘L’ and starts for the
glitterin’ show. ’Twas a fine sight. The Babylonian towers and the
Hindoo roof gardens was blazin’ with thousands of electric lights, and
the streets was thick with people. ’Tis a true thing they say that
Coney levels all rank. I see millionaires eatin’ popcorn and trampin’
along with the crowd; and I see eight-dollar-a-week clothin’-store
clerks in red automobiles fightin’ one another for who’d squeeze the
horn when they come to a corner.
“‘I made a mistake,’ I says to myself. ’Twas not Coney I needed. When a
man’s sad ’tis not scenes of hilarity he wants. ’Twould be far better
for him to meditate in a graveyard or to attend services at the
Paradise Roof Gardens. ’Tis no consolation when a man’s lost his
sweetheart to order hot corn and have the waiter bring him the powdered
sugar cruet instead of salt and then conceal himself, or to have
Zozookum, the gipsy palmist, tell him that he has three children and to
look out for another serious calamity; price twenty-five cents.
“I walked far away down on the beach, to the ruins of an old pavilion
near one corner of this new private park, Dreamland. A year ago that
old pavilion was standin’ up straight and the old-style waiters was
slammin’ a week’s supply of clam chowder down in front of you for a
nickel and callin’ you ‘cully’ friendly, and vice was rampant, and you
got back to New York with enough change to take a car at the bridge.
Now they tell me that they serve Welsh rabbits on Surf Avenue, and you
get the right change back in the movin’-picture joints.
“I sat down at one side of the old pavilion and looked at the surf
spreadin’ itself on the beach, and thought about the time me and Norah
Flynn sat on that spot last summer. ’Twas before reform struck the
island; and we was happy. We had tintypes and chowder in the ribald
dives, and the Egyptian Sorceress of the Nile told Norah out of her
hand, while I was waitin’ in the door, that ’twould be the luck of her
to marry a red-headed gossoon with two crooked legs, and I was
overrunnin’ with joy on account of the allusion. And ’twas there that
Norah Flynn put her two hands in mine a year before and we talked of
flats and the things she could cook and the love business that goes
with such episodes. And that was Coney as we loved it, and as the hand
of Satan was upon it, friendly and noisy and your money’s worth, with
no fence around the ocean and not too many electric lights to show the
sleeve of a black serge coat against a white shirtwaist.
“I sat with my back to the parks where they had the moon and the dreams
and the steeples corralled, and longed for the old Coney. There wasn’t
many people on the beach. Lots of them was feedin’ pennies into the
slot machines to see the ‘Interrupted Courtship’ in the movin’
pictures; and a good many was takin’ the sea air in the Canals of
Venice and some was breathin’ the smoke of the sea battle by actual
warships in a tank filled with real water. A few was down on the sands
enjoyin’ the moonlight and the water. And the heart of me was heavy for
the new morals of the old island, while the bands behind me played and
the sea pounded on the bass drum in front.
“And directly I got up and walked along the old pavilion, and there on
the other side of, half in the dark, was a slip of a girl sittin’ on
the tumble-down timbers, and unless I’m a liar she was cryin’ by
herself there, all alone.
“‘Is it trouble you are in, now, Miss,’ says I; ‘and what’s to be done
about it?’
“‘’Tis none of your business at all, Denny Carnahan,’ says she, sittin’
up straight. And it was the voice of no other than Norah Flynn.
“‘Then it’s not,’ says I, ‘and we’re after having a pleasant evening,
Miss Flynn. Have ye seen the sights of this new Coney Island, then? I
presume ye have come here for that purpose,’ says I.
“‘I have,’ says she. ‘Me mother and Uncle Tim they are waiting beyond.
’Tis an elegant evening I’ve had. I’ve seen all the attractions that
be.’
“‘Right ye are,’ says I to Norah; and I don’t know when I’ve been that
amused. After disportin’ me-self among the most laughable moral
improvements of the revised shell games I took meself to the shore for
the benefit of the cool air. ‘And did ye observe the Durbar, Miss
Flynn?’
“‘I did,’ says she, reflectin’; ‘but ’tis not safe, I’m thinkin’, to
ride down them slantin’ things into the water.’
“‘How did ye fancy the shoot the chutes?’ I asks.
“‘True, then, I’m afraid of guns,’ says Norah. ‘They make such noise in
my ears. But Uncle Tim, he shot them, he did, and won cigars. ’Tis a
fine time we had this day, Mr. Carnahan.’
“‘I’m glad you’ve enjoyed yerself,’ I says. ‘I suppose you’ve had a
roarin’ fine time seein’ the sights. And how did the incubators and the
helter-skelter and the midgets suit the taste of ye?’
“‘I—I wasn’t hungry,’ says Norah, faint. ‘But mother ate a quantity of
all of ’em. I’m that pleased with the fine things in the new Coney
Island,’ says she, ‘that it’s the happiest day I’ve seen in a long
time, at all.’
“‘Did you see Venice?’ says I.
“‘We did,’ says she. ‘She was a beauty. She was all dressed in red, she
was, with—’
“I listened no more to Norah Flynn. I stepped up and I gathered her in
my arms.
“‘’Tis a story-teller ye are, Norah Flynn’, says I. ‘Ye’ve seen no more
of the greater Coney Island than I have meself. Come, now, tell the
truth—ye came to sit by the old pavilion by the waves where you sat
last summer and made Dennis Carnahan a happy man. Speak up, and tell
the truth.’
“Norah stuck her nose against me vest.
“‘I despise it, Denny,’ she says, half cryin’. ‘Mother and Uncle Tim
went to see the shows, but I came down here to think of you. I couldn’t
bear the lights and the crowd. Are you forgivin’ me, Denny, for the
words we had?’
“‘’Twas me fault,’ says I. ‘I came here for the same reason meself.
Look at the lights, Norah,’ I says, turning my back to the sea—‘ain’t
they pretty?’
“‘They are,’ says Norah, with her eyes shinin’; ‘and do ye hear the
bands playin’? Oh, Denny, I think I’d like to see it all.’
“‘The old Coney is gone, darlin’,’ I says to her. ‘Everything moves.
When a man’s glad it’s not scenes of sadness he wants. ’Tis a greater
Coney we have here, but we couldn’t see it till we got in the humour
for it. Next Sunday, Norah darlin’, we’ll see the new place from end to
end.”
XXI.
LAW AND ORDER
I found myself in Texas recently, revisiting old places and vistas. At
a sheep ranch where I had sojourned many years ago, I stopped for a
week. And, as all visitors do, I heartily plunged into the business at
hand, which happened to be that of dipping the sheep.
Now, this process is so different from ordinary human baptism that it
deserves a word of itself. A vast iron cauldron with half the fires of
Avernus beneath it is partly filled with water that soon boils
furiously. Into that is cast concentrated lye, lime, and sulphur, which
is allowed to stew and fume until the witches’ broth is strong enough
to scorch the third arm of Palladino herself.
Then this concentrated brew is mixed in a long, deep vat with cubic
gallons of hot water, and the sheep are caught by their hind legs and
flung into the compound. After being thoroughly ducked by means of a
forked pole in the hands of a gentleman detailed for that purpose, they
are allowed to clamber up an incline into a corral and dry or die, as
the state of their constitutions may decree. If you ever caught an
able-bodied, two-year-old mutton by the hind legs and felt the 750
volts of kicking that he can send though your arm seventeen times
before you can hurl him into the vat, you will, of course, hope that he
may die instead of dry.
But this is merely to explain why Bud Oakley and I gladly stretched
ourselves on the bank of the nearby _charco_ after the dipping, glad
for the welcome inanition and pure contact with the earth after our
muscle-racking labours. The flock was a small one, and we finished at
three in the afternoon; so Bud brought from the _morral_ on his saddle
horn, coffee and a coffeepot and a big hunk of bread and some side
bacon. Mr. Mills, the ranch owner and my old friend, rode away to the
ranch with his force of Mexican _trabajadores_.
While the bacon was frizzling nicely, there was the sound of horses’
hoofs behind us. Bud’s six-shooter lay in its scabbard ten feet away
from his hand. He paid not the slightest heed to the approaching
horseman. This attitude of a Texas ranchman was so different from the
old-time custom that I marvelled. Instinctively I turned to inspect the
possible foe that menaced us in the rear. I saw a horseman dressed in
black, who might have been a lawyer or a parson or an undertaker,
trotting peaceably along the road by the _arroyo_.
Bud noticed my precautionary movement and smiled sarcastically and
sorrowfully.
“You’ve been away too long,” said he. “You don’t need to look around
any more when anybody gallops up behind you in this state, unless
something hits you in the back; and even then it’s liable to be only a
bunch of tracts or a petition to sign against the trusts. I never
looked at that _hombre_ that rode by; but I’ll bet a quart of sheep dip
that he’s some double-dyed son of a popgun out rounding up prohibition
votes.”
“Times have changed, Bud,” said I, oracularly. “Law and order is the
rule now in the South and the Southwest.”