The Argonauts Return to the Rising Sun
It was mid-October. The two saddle-horses and a team for carriage use
had been shipped ahead. In the private car the little party was
beginning its own journey Eastward. From the rear platform they had
watched the tall figure of Uncle Peter Bines standing in the bright
autumn sun, aloof from the band of kerchief-waving friends, the droop
of his head and shoulders showing the dejection he felt at seeing them
go. He had resisted all entreaties to accompany them.
His last injunction to Percival had been to marry early.
"I know your stock and I know _you_" he said; "and you got no call to
be rangin' them pastures without a brand. You never was meant fur a
maverick. Only don't let the first woman that comes ridin' herd get her
iron on you. No man knows much about the critters, of course, but I've
noticed a few things in my time. You pick one that's full-chested,
that's got a fairish-sized nose, and that likes cats. The full chest
means she's healthy, the nose means she ain't finicky, and likin' cats
means she's kind and honest and unselfish. Ever notice some women when
a cat's around? They pretend to like 'em and say 'Nice kitty!' but you
can see they're viewin' 'em with bitter hate and suspicion. If they
have to stroke 'em they do it plenty gingerly and you can see 'em
shudderin' inside like. It means they're catty themselves. But when one
grabs a cat up as if she was goin' to eat it and cuddles it in her neck
and talks baby-talk to it, you play her fur bein' sound and true. Pass
up the others, son.
"And speakin' of the fair sex," he added, as he and Percival were alone
for a moment, "that enterprisin' lady we settled with is goin' to do
one thing you'll approve of.
"She's goin'," he continued, in answer to Percival's look of inquiry,
"to take her bank-roll to New York. She says it's the only place fur
folks with money, jest like you say. She tells Coplen that there wa'n't
any fit society out here at all,--no advantages fur a lady of capacity
and ambitions. I reckon she's goin' to be 403 all right."
"Seems to me she did pretty well here; I don't see any kicks due her."
"Yes, but she's like all the rest. The West was good enough to make her
money in, but the East gets her when spendin' time comes."
As the train started he swung himself off with a sad little "Be good to
yourself!"
"Thank the Lord we're under way at last!" cried Percival, fervently,
when the group at the station had been shut from view. "Isn't it just
heavenly!" exclaimed his sister.
"Think of having all of New York you want--being at home there--and not
having to look forward to this desolation of a place."
Mrs. Bines was neither depressed nor elated. She was maintaining that
calm level of submission to fate which had been her lifelong habit. The
journey and the new life were to be undertaken because they formed for
her the line of least resistance along which all energy must flow. Had
her children elected to camp for the remainder of their days in the
centre of the desert of Gobi, she would have faced that life with as
little sense of personal concern and with no more misgivings.
Down out of the maze of hills the train wound; and then by easy grades
after two days of travel down off the great plateau to where the plains
of Nebraska lay away to a far horizon in brown billows of withered
grass.
Then came the crossing of the sullen, sluggish Missouri, that highway
of an earlier day to the great Northwest; and after that the better
wooded and better settled lands of Iowa and Illinois.
"Now we're getting where Christians live," said Percival, with warm
appreciation.
"Why, Percival," exclaimed his mother, reprovingly, "do you mean to say
there aren't any Christians in Montana City? How you talk! There are
lots of good Christian people there, though I must say I have my doubts
about that new Christian Science church they started last spring." "The
term, Mrs. Thorndike, was used in its social rather than its
theological significance," replied her son, urbanely. "Far be it from
me to impugn the religion of that community of which we are ceasing to
be integers at the pleasing rate of sixty miles an hour. God knows they
need their faith in a different kind of land hereafter!"
And even Mrs. Bines was not without a sense of quiet and rest induced
by the gentler contours of the landscape through which they now sped.
"The country here does seem a lot cosier," she admitted.
The hills rolled away amiably and reassuringly; the wooded slopes in
their gay colouring of autumn invited confidence. Here were no
forbidding stretches of the grey alkali desert, no grim bare mountains,
no solitude of desolation. It was a kind land, fat with riches. The
shorn yellow fields, the capacious red barns, the well-conditioned
homes, all told eloquently of peace and plenty. So, too, did the
villages--those lively little clearing-houses for immense farming
districts. To the adventurer from New York they seem always new and
crude. To our travellers from a newer, cruder region they were actually
aesthetic in their suggestions of an old and well-established
civilisation.
In due time they were rattling over a tangled maze of switches, dodging
interminable processions of freight-cars, barely missing crowded
passenger trains whose bells struck clear and then flatted as the
trains flew by; defiling by narrow water-ways, crowded with small
shipping; winding through streets lined with high, gloomy warehouses,
amid the clang and clatter, the strangely-sounding bells and whistles
of a thousand industries, each sending up its just contribution of
black smoke to the pall that lay always spread above; and steaming at
last into a great roomy shed where all was system, and where the big
engine trembled and panted as if in relief at having run in safety a
gantlet so hazardous.
"Anyway, I'd rather live in Montana City than Chicago," ventured Mrs.
Bines.
"Whatever pride you may feel in your discernment, Mrs. Cadwallader, is
amply justified," replied her son, performing before the amazed lady a
bow that indicated the lowest depths of slavish deference.
"I am now," he continued, "going out to pace the floor of this
locomotive-boudoir for a few exhilarating breaths of smoke, and pretend
to myself that I've got to live in Chicago for ever. A little
discipline like that is salutary to keep one from forgetting the great
blessing which a merciful Providence has conferred upon one."
"I'll walk a bit with you," said his sister, donning her jacket and a
cap.
"Lest my remarks have seemed indeterminate, madam," sternly continued
Percival at the door of the car, "permit me to add that if Chicago were
heaven I should at once enter upon a life of crime. Do not affect to
misunderstand me, I beg of you. I should leave no avenue of salvation
open to my precious soul. I should incur no risk of being numbered
among the saved. I should be _b-a-d_, and I should sit up nights to
invent new ways of evil. If I had any leisure left from being as wicked
as I could be, I should devote it to teaching those I loved how to
become abandoned. I should doubtless issue a pamphlet, 'How to Merit
Perdition Without a Master. Learn to be Wicked in your Own Home in Ten
Lessons. Instructions Sent Securely Sealed from Observation. Thousands
of Testimonials from the Most Accomplished Reprobates of the Day.' I
trust Mrs. Llewellen Leffingwell-Thompson, that you will never again so
far forget yourself as to utter that word 'Chicago' in my presence. If
you feel that you must give way to the evil impulse, go off by yourself
and utter the name behind the protection of closed doors--where this
innocent girl cannot hear you. Come, sister. Otherwise I may behave in
a manner to be regretted in my calmer moments. Let us leave the woman
alone, now. Besides, I've got to go out and help the hands make up that
New York train. You never can tell. Some horrible accident might happen
to delay us here thirty minutes. Cheer up, ma; it's always darkest just
before leaving Chicago, you know."
Thus flippantly do some of the younger sons of men blaspheme this
metropolis of the mid-West--a city the creation of which is, by many
persons of discrimination, held to be the chief romance and abiding
miracle of the nineteenth century. Let us rejoice that one such
partisan was now at hand to stem the torrent of abuse. As Percival held
back the door for his sister to pass out, a stout little ruddy-faced
man with trim grey sidewhiskers came quickly up the steps and barred
their way with cheery aggressiveness.
"Ah! Mr. Higbee--well, well!" exclaimed Percival, cordially.
"Thought it might be some of you folks when I saw the car," said
Higbee, shaking hands all around.
"And Mrs. Bines, too! and the girl, looking like a Delaware peach when
the crop's 'failed.' How's everybody, and how long you going to be in
the good old town?"
"Ah! we were just speaking of Chicago as you came in," said Percival,
blandly. "_Isn't_ she a great old town, though--a wonder!"
"My boy," said Higbee, in low, solemn tones that came straight from his
heart, "she gets greater every day you live. You can see her at it,
fairly. How long since you been here?"
"I came through last June, you know, after I left your yacht at
Newport."
"Yes, yes; to be sure; so you did--poor Daniel J.--but say, you
wouldn't know the town now if you haven't seen it since then. Why, I
run over from New York every thirty days or so and she grows out of my
ken every time, like a five-year-old boy. Say, I've got Mrs. Higbee up
in the New York sleeper, but if you're going to be here a spell we'll
stop a few days longer and I'll drive you around--what say?--packing
houses--Lake Shore Drive--Lincoln Park--"
He waited, glowing confidently, as one submitting irresistible
temptations.
Percival beamed upon him with moist eyes.
"By Jove, Mr. Higbee! that's clever of you--it's royal! Sis and I would
like nothing better--but you see my poor mother here is almost down
with nervous prostration and we've got to hurry her to New York without
an hour's delay to consult a specialist. We're afraid"--he glanced
anxiously at the astounded Mrs. Bines, and lowered his voice--"we're
afraid she may not be with us long."
"Why, Percival," began Mrs. Bines, dazedly, "you was just saying--"
"Now don't fly all to pieces, ma!--take it easy--you're with friends,
be sure of that. You needn't beg us to go on. You know we wouldn't
think of stopping when it may mean life or death to you. You see just
the way she is," he continued to the sympathetic Higbee--"we're afraid
she may collapse any moment. So we must wait for another time; but I'll
tell you what you do; go get Mrs. Higbee and your traps and come let us
put you up to New York. We've got lots of room--run along now--and
we'll have some of that ham, 'the kind you have always bought,' for
lunch. A.L. Jackson is a miserable cook, too, if I don't know the
truth." Gently urging Higbee through the door, he stifled a systematic
inquiry into the details of Mrs. Bines's affliction.
"Come along quick! I'll go help you and we'll have Mrs. Higbee back
before the train starts."
"Do you know," Mrs. Bines thoughtfully observed to her daughter, "I
sometimes mistrust Percival ain't just right in his head; you remember
he did have a bad fall on it when he was two years and five months
old--two years, five months, and eighteen days. The way he carries on
right before folks' faces! That time I went through the asylum at Butte
there was a young man kept going on with the same outlandish rigmarole
just like Percival. The idea of Percival telling me to eat a lemon-ice
with an ice-pick, and 'Oh, why don't the flesh-brushes wear nice,
proper clothes-brushes!' and be sure and hammer my nails good and hard
after I get them manicured. And back home he was always wanting to know
where the meat-augers were, saying he'd just bought nine hundred new
ones and he'd have to order a ton more if they were all lost. I don't
believe there is such a thing as a meat-auger. I don't know what on
earth a body could do with one. And that other young man," she
concluded, significantly, "they had him in a little bit of a room with
an iron-barred door to it like a prison-cell."