The Rapid-fire Lorgnon Is Spiked
He found Uncle Peter in the cross-cut, studying a bit of ore through a
glass, and they went back to ascend.
"Them folks," said the old man, "must be the kind that newspaper meant,
that had done something in practical achievement. I bet that girl's
mother will achieve something practical with you fur cuttin' the girl
out of the bunch; she was awful tormented; talked two or three times
about the people in the humbler walks of life bein' strangely something
or other. You ain't such a humble walker now, are you, son? But say,
that yellow-haired woman, she ain't a bit diffident, is she? She's a
very hearty lady, I _must_ say!"
"But did you see Miss Milbrey?"
"Oh, that's her name is it, the one that her mother was so worried
about and you? Yes, I saw her. Peart and cunnin', but a heap too wise
fur you, son; take my steer on that. Say, she'd have your pelt nailed
to the barn while you was wonderin' which way you'd jump."
"Oh, I know I'm only a tender, teething infant," the young man
answered, with masterly satire. "Well, now, as long's you got that bank
roll you jest look out fur cupboard love--the kind the old cat has when
she comes rubbin' up against your leg and purrin' like you was the
whole thing."
The young man smiled, as they went up, with youth's godlike faith in
its own sufficiency, albeit he smarted from the slights put upon him.
At the surface a pleasant shock was in store for him. There stood the
formidable Mrs. Milbrey beaming upon him. Behind her was Mr. Milbrey,
the pleasing model of all a city's refinements, awaiting the boon of a
hand-clasp. Behind these were the uncomfortable little man, the chatty
blonde, and the two solemn young men who had lately exhibited more
manner than manners. Percival felt they were all regarding him now with
affectionate concern. They pressed forward effusively.
"So good of you, Mr. Bines, to take an interest in us--my daughter has
been so anxious to see one of these fascinating mines." "Awfully
obliged, Mr. Bines." "Charmed, old man; deuced pally of you to stay by
us down in that hole, you know." "So clever of you to know where to
find the gold--"
He lost track of the speakers. Their speeches became one concerted
effusion of affability that was music to his ears.
Miss Milbrey was apart from the group. Having doffed the waterproofs,
she was now pluming herself with those fussy-looking but mysteriously
potent little pats which restore the attire and mind of women to their
normal perfection and serenity. Upon her face was still the amused look
Percival had noted below.
"And, Mr. Bines, do come in with that quaint old grandfather of yours
and lunch with us," urged Mrs. Milbrey, who had, as it were, spiked her
lorgnon. "Here's Mr. Shepler to second the invitation--and then we
shall chat about this very interesting West."
Miss Milbrey nodded encouragement, seeming to chuckle inwardly.
In the spacious dining compartment of the Shepler car the party was
presently at lunch.
"You seem so little like a Western man," Mrs. Milbrey confided
graciously to Percival on her right.
"We cal'late he'll fetch out all straight, though, in a year or so,"
put in Uncle Peter, from over his chop, with guileless intent to defend
his grandson from what he believed to be an attack. "Of course a young
man's bound to get some foolishness into him in an Eastern college like
this boy went to."
Percival had flushed at the compliment to himself; also at the old
man's failure to identify it as such.
Mr. Milbrey caressed his glass of claret with ardent eyes and took the
situation in hand with the easy confidence of a master.
"The West," said he, affably, "has sent us some magnificent men. In
truth, it's amazing to take count of the Western men among us in all
the professions. They are notable, perhaps I should say, less for
deliberate niceties of style than for a certain rough directness, but
so adaptable is the American character that one frequently does not
suspect their--er--humble origin."
"Meaning their Western origin?" inquired Shepler, blandly, with secret
intent to brew strife.
"Well--er--to be sure, my dear fellow, not necessarily humble,--of
course--perhaps I should have said--"
"Of course, not necessarily disgraceful, as you say, Milbrey,"
interrupted Shepler, "and they often do conceal it. Why, I know a chap
in New York who was positively never east of Kansas City until he was
twenty-five or so, and yet that fellow to-day"--he lowered his voice to
the pitch of impressiveness--"has over eighty pairs of trousers and
complains of the hardship every time he has to go to Boston."
"Fancy, now!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer, the blonde. Mr. Milbrey looked
slightly puzzled and Uncle Peter chuckled, affirming mentally that
Rulon Shepler must be like one of those tug-boats, with most of his
lines under the surface.
"But, I say, you know, Shepler," protested one of the solemn young men,
"he must still talk like a banjo."
"And gargle all his 'r's,'" added the other, very earnestly. "They
never get over that, you know."
"Instead of losin' 'em entirely," put in Uncle Peter, who found himself
feeling what his grandson called "Westy." "Of course, he calls it 'Ne'
Yawk,' and prob'ly he don't like it in Boston because they always call
'em 'rawroystahs.'"
"Good for the old boy!" thought Percival, and then, aloud: "It _is_
hard for the West and the East to forgive each other's dialects. The
inflated 'r' and the smothered 'r' never quite harmonise."
"Western money talks good straight New York talk," ventured Miss
Milbrey, with the air of one who had observed in her time.
Shepler grinned, and the parents of the young woman resisted with
indifferent success their twin impulses to frown.
"But the service is so wretched in the West," suggested Oldaker, the
carefully dressed little man with the tired, troubled eyes, whom the
world had been deprived of. "I fancy, now, there's not a good waiter
this side of New York."
"An American," said Percival, "never _can_ make a good waiter or a good
valet. It takes a Latin, or, still better, a Briton, to feel the
servility required for good service of that sort. An American, now,
always fails at it because he knows he is as good as you are, and he
knows that you know it, and you know that he knows you know it, and
there you are, two mirrors of American equality face to face and
reflecting each other endlessly, and neither is comfortable. The
American is as uncomfortable at having certain services performed for
him by another American as the other is in performing them. Give him a
Frenchman or an Italian or a fellow born within the sound of Bow Bells
to clean his boots and lay out his things and serve his dinner and he's
all right enough."
"Hear, hear!" cried Uncle Peter.
"Fancy, now," said Mrs. Drelmer, "a creature in a waiter's jacket
having emotions of that sort!"
"Our excellent country," said Mr. Milbrey, "is perhaps not yet what it
will be; there is undeniably a most distressing rawness where we might
expect finish. Now in Chicago," he continued in a tone suitably hushed
for the relation of occult phenomena, "we dined with a person who
served champagne with the oysters, soup, fish, and _entree_, and for
the remainder of the dinner--you may credit me or not--he proffered a
claret of 1875--. I need hardly remind you, the most delicate vintage
of the latter half of the century--and it was served _frappe_." There
was genuine emotion in the speaker's voice.
"And papa nearly swooned when our host put cracked ice and two lumps of
sugar into his own glass--"
"_Avice, dear!_" remonstrated the father in a tone implying that some
things positively must not be mentioned at table.
"Well, you shouldn't expect too much of those self-made men in
Chicago," said Shepler.
"If they'd only make themselves as well as they make their sausages and
things," sighed Mr. Milbrey.
"And the self-made man _will_ talk shop," suggested Oldaker. "He thinks
you're dying to hear how he made the first thousand of himself."
"Still, those Chicago chaps learn quickly enough when they settle in
New York," ventured one of the young men.
"I knew a Chicago chap who lived East two years and went back not a
half bad sort," said the other. "God help him now, though; his father
made him go back to work in a butcher shop or something of the sort."
"Best thing I ever heard about Chicago," said Uncle Peter, "a man from
your town told me once he had to stay in Chicago a year, and, says he,
'I went out there a New Yorker, and I went home an American,' he says."
The old man completed this anecdote in tones that were slightly
inflamed.
"How extremely typical!" said Mrs. Milbrey. "Truly the West is the
place of unspoiled Americanism and the great unspent forces; you are
quite right, Mr. Bines."
"Think of all the unspent forces back in that silver mine," remarked
Miss Milbrey, with a patent effort to be significant.
"My perverse child delights to pose as a sordid young woman," the fond
mother explained to Percival, "yet no one can be less so, and you, Mr.
Bines, I am sure, would be the last to suspect her of it. I saw in you
at once those sterling qualities--"
"Isn't it dreadfully dark down in that sterling silver mine?" observed
Miss Milbrey, apropos of nothing, apparently, while her mother attacked
a second chop that she had meant not to touch.
"Here's hoping we'll soon be back in God's own country," said Oldaker,
raising his glass.
"Hear, hear!" cried Uncle Peter, and drained his glass eagerly as they
drank the toast. Whereat they all laughed and Mrs. Drelmer said, "What
a dear, lively wit, for an old gentleman."
"Oldaker," said Shepler, "has really been the worst sufferer. This is
his first trip West."
"Beg pardon, Shepler! I was West as far as Buffalo--let me see--in 1878
or '79."
"Dear me! is that so?" queried Uncle Peter. "I got East as fur as
Cheyenne that same year. We nearly run into each other, didn't we?"
Shepler grinned again.
"Oldaker found a man from New York on the train the other day, up in
one of the emigrant cars. He was a truck driver, and he looked it and
talked it, but Oldaker stuck by him all the afternoon."
"Well, he'd left the old town three weeks after I had, and he'd been
born there the same year I was--in the Ninth ward--and he remembered as
well as I did the day Barnum's museum burned at Broadway and Ann. I
liked to hear him talk. Why, it was a treat just to hear him say
Broadway and Twenty-third Street, or Madison Square or City Hall Park.
The poor devil had consumption, too, and probably he'll never see them
again. I don't know if I shall ever have it, but I'd never leave the
old town as he was doing."
"That's like Billy Brue," said Uncle Peter. "Billy loves faro bank jest
as this gentleman loves New York. When he gets a roll he _has_ to play.
One time he landed in Pocatello when there wa'n't but one game in town.
Billy found it and started in. A friend saw him there and called him
out. 'Billy,' says he, 'cash in and come out; that's a brace game.'
'Sure?' says Billy. 'Sure,' says the feller. 'All right,' says Billy,
'much obliged fur puttin' me on.' And he started out lookin' fur
another game. About two hours later the feller saw Billy comin' out of
the same place and Billy owned up he'd gone back there and blowed in
every cent. 'Why, you geezer,' says his friend, 'didn't I put you on
that they was dealin' brace there?' 'Sure,' says Billy, 'sure you did.
But what could I do? It was the only game in town!'"
"That New York mania is the same sort," said Shepler, laughing, while
Mrs. Drelmer requested everybody to fancy immediately.
"Your grandfather is so dear and quaint," said Mrs. Milbrey; "you must
certainly bring him to New York with you, for of course a young man of
your capacity and graces will never be satisfied out of New York."
"Young men like yourself are assuredly needed there," remarked Mr.
Milbrey, warmly.
"Surely they are," agreed Miss Milbrey, and yet with a manner that
seemed almost to annoy both parents. They were sparing no opportunity
to make the young man conscious of his real oneness with those about
him, and yet subtly to intimate that people of just the Milbreys'
perception were required to divine it at present. "These Westerners
fancy you one of themselves, I dare say," Mrs. Milbrey had said, and
the young man purred under the strokings. His fever for the East was
back upon him. His weeks with Uncle Peter going over the fields where
his father had prevailed had made him convalescent, but these New
Yorkers--the very manner and atmosphere of them--undid the work. He
envied them their easier speech, their matter-of-fact air of
omniscience, the elaborate and cultivated simplicity of their dress,
their sureness and sufficiency in all that they thought and said and
did. He was homesick again for the life he had glimpsed. The West was
rude, desolate, and depressing. Even Uncle Peter, whom he had come
warmly to admire, jarred upon him with his crudity and his Western
assertiveness.
And there was the woman of the East, whose presence had made the day to
seem dream-like; and she was kind, which was more than he would have
dared to hope, and her people, after their first curious chill of
indifference, seemed actually to be courting him. She, the fleeting and
impalpable dream-love, whom the thought of seeing ever again had been
wildly absurd, was now a human creature with a local habitation, the
most beautiful name in the world, and two parents whose complaisance
was obvious even through the lover's timidity.