The God in the Machine
Uncle Peter next morning was up to a late breakfast with the stricken
family. Percival found him a trifle less bitter, but not less convinced
in his despair. The young man himself had recovered his spirits
wonderfully. The utter collapse of the old man, always so reliant
before, had served to fire all his latent energy. He was now voluble
with plans for the future; not only determined to reassure Uncle Peter
that the family would be provided for, but not a little anxious to
justify the old man's earlier praise, and refute his calumnies of the
night before.
Mrs. Bines, so complacent overnight, was the most disconsolate one of
the group. With her low tastes she was now regarding the loss of the
fortune as a calamity to the worthy infants of her own chosen field.
"And there, I'd promised to give five thousand dollars to the new home
for crippled children, and five thousand to St. John's Guild for the
floating hospitals this summer--just yesterday--and I do declare, I
just couldn't stay in New York without money, and see those poor babies
suffer."
"You couldn't stay in New York without money. Mrs. Good-thing," said
her son,--"not even if you couldn't see a thing; but don't you welsh
on any of your plays--we'll make that ten thousand good if I have to
get a sand-bag, and lay out a few of these lads around here some dark
night."
"But anyway you can't do much to relieve them. I don't know but what
it's honester to be poor while the authorities allow such goings on."
"You have the makings of a very dangerous anarchist in you, ma. I've
seen that for some time. But we're an honest family all right now, with
the exception of a few properties that I'll have to sit up with
nights--sit right by their sick-beds and wake them up to take their
meddy every half hour--"
"Now, my son, don't you get to going without your sleep," began his
mother.
"And wasn't it lucky about my sending that note to George!" said
Psyche. "Here in this morning's paper we find he isn't going to be Lord
Casselthorpe, after all. What _could_ I have done if we hadn't lost the
money?" From which it might be inferred that certain people who had
declared Miss Bines to be very hard-headed were not so far wrong as
the notorious "casual observer" is very apt to be.
"Never you mind, sis," said her brother, cheerfully, "we'll be all
right yet. You wait a little, and hear Uncle Peter take back what he's
said about me. Uncle Peter, I'll have you taking off that hat of yours
every time you get sight of me, in about a year."
He went again over the plans. The income from the One Girl was to be
used in developing the other properties: the stock ranch up on the
Bitter Root, the other mines that had been worked but little and with
crude appliances; the irrigation and land-improvement enterprises, and
the big timber tracts.
"I got something of an idea of it when Uncle Peter took me around
summer before last, and I learned a lot more getting the stuff together
with Coplen. Now, I'm ready to buckle down to it." He looked at Uncle
Peter, hungry for a word of encouragement to soothe the hurts the old
man had put upon him.
But all Uncle Peter would say was, "That _sounds_ very well,"
compelling the inference that he regarded sound and substance as
phenomena not necessarily related.
"But give me a chance, Uncle Peter. Just don't jump on me too hard for
a year!"
"Well, I know that country. There's big chances for a young man with
brains--understand?--that has got all the high-living nonsense blasted
out of his upper levels--but it takes work. You _may_ do
something--there _are_ white blackbirds--but you're on a nasty piece
of road-bed--curves all down on the outside--wheels flatted under every
truck, and you've had her down in the corner so long I doubt if you can
even slow up, say nothin' of reversin'. And think of me gettin' fooled
that way at _my_ time of life," he continued, as if in confidence to
himself. "But then, I always was a terrible poor judge of human
nature."
"Well, have your own way; but I'll fool you again, while you're
coppering me. You watch, that's all I ask. Just sit around and talk
wise about me all you want to, but watch. Now, I must go down and get
to work with Fouts. Thank the Lord, we didn't have to welsh either, any
more than Mrs. Give-up there did."
"You won't touch any more stock; you won't get that money from
Shepler?"
"I won't; I won't go near Shepler, I promise you. Now you'll believe me
in one thing, I know you will, Uncle Peter." He went over to the old
man.
"I want to thank you for pulling me up on that play as you did last
night. You saved me, and I'm more grateful to you than I can say. But
for you I'd have gone in and dug the hole deeper." He made the old man
shake hands with him--though Uncle Peter's hand remained limp and
cheerless. "You can shake on that, at least. You saved me, and I thank
you for it."
"Well, I'm glad you got _some_ sense," answered the old man,
grudgingly. "It's always the way in that stock game. There's always
goin' to be a big killing made in Wall Street to-morrow, only to-morrow
never comes. Reminds me of Hollings's old turtle out at
Spokane--Hollings that keeps the Little Gem restaurant. He's got an
enormous big turtle in his cellar that he's kept to my knowledge fur
fifteen years. Every time he gets a little turtle from the coast he
takes a can of red paint down cellar, and touches up the sign on old
Ben's back--they call the turtle Ben, after Hollings's father-in-law
that won't do a thing but lay around the house all the time, and kick
about the meals. Well, the sign on Ben's back is, 'Green Turtle Soup
To-morrow,' and Ben is drug up to the sidewalk in front of the Little
Gem. And Hollings does have turtle-soup next day, but it's always the
little turtles that's killed, and old Ben is hiked back to his boudoir
until another killing comes off. It's a good deal like that in Wall
Street; there's killings made, but the big fellers with the signs on
their back don't worry none."
"You're right, Uncle Peter. It certainly wasn't my game. Will you come
down with me?"
"Me? Shucks, no! I'm jest a poor, broken old man, now. I'm goin' down
to the square if I can walk that fur, and set on a bench in the sun."
Uncle Peter did succeed in walking as far as Madison Square. He walked,
indeed, with a step of amazing springiness for a man of his years. But
there, instead of reposing in the sun, he entered a cab and was driven
to the Vandevere Building, where he sent in his name to Rulon Shepler.
He was ushered into Shepler's office after a little delay. The two men
shook hands warmly. Uncle Peter was grinning now with rare
enjoyment--he who had in the presence of the family shown naught but
broken age and utter despondency.
"You rough-housed the boy considerable yesterday."
"I never believed the fellow would hold on," said Shepler. "I'm sure
you're right in a way about the West. There isn't another man in this
section who'd have plunged as he did. Really, Mr. Bines, the Street's
never known anything like it. Here are those matters."
He handed the old man a dozen or so certified checks on as many
different banks. Each check had many figures on it. Uncle Peter placed
them in his old leather wallet.
"I knew he'd plunge," he said, taking the chair proffered him, near
Shepler's desk. "I knew he was a natural born plunger, and I knew that
once he gets an idea in his head you can't blast it out; makes no
difference what he starts on he'll play the string out. His pa was jest
that way. Then of course he wa'n't used to money, and he was ignorant
of this game, and he didn't realise what he was doin'. He sort of
distrusted himself along toward the last--but I kept him swelled up
good and plenty."
"Well, I'm glad it's over, Mr. Bines. Of course I concede the relative
insignificance of money to a young man of his qualities--"
"Not its relative insignificance, Mr. Shepler--it's plain damned
insignificance, if you'll excuse the word. If that boy'd gone on he'd
'a' been one of what Billy Brue calls them high-collared Clarences--no
good fur anything but to spend money, and get apoplexy or worse by
forty. As it is now, he'll be a man. He's got his health turned on like
a steam radiator, he's full of responsibility, and he's really
long-headed."
"How did he take the loss?"
"He acted jest like a healthy baby does when you take one toy away from
him. He cries a minute, then forgets all about it, and grabs up
something else to play with. His other toy was bad. What he's playin'
with now will do him a lot of good."
"He's not discouraged, then--he's really hopeful?"
"That ain't any name fur it. Why, he's actin' this mornin' jest like
the world's his oyster--and every month had an 'r' in it at that."
"I'm delighted to hear it. I've always been taken with the chap; and
I'm very glad you read him correctly. It seemed to me you were taking a
risk. It would have broken the spirit of most men."
"Well, you see I knew the stock. It's pushin', fightin' stock. My
grandfather fought his way west to Pennsylvania when that country was
wilder'n Africa, and my father fought his way to Ohio when that was the
frontier. I seen some hard times myself, and this boy's father was a
fighter, too. So I knew the boy had it in him, all right. He's got his
faults, but they don't hurt him none."
"Will he return West?"
"He will that--and the West is the only place fur him. He was gettin'
bad notions about his own country here from them folks that's always
crackin' up the 'other side' 'sif there wa'n't any 'this side,' worth
speakin' of in company. This was no place fur him. Mr. Shepler, this
whole country is God's country. I don't talk much about them things,
but I believe in God--a man has to if he lives so much alone in them
wild places as I have--and I believe this country is His favourite. I
believe He set it apart fur great works. The history of the United
States bears me out so fur. And I didn't want any of my stock growin'
up without feelin' that he had the best native land on earth, and
without bein' ready to fight fur it at the drop of the hat. And jest
between you and me, I believe we can raise that kind in the West
better'n you can here in New York. You got a fine handsome town here,
it's a corkin' good place to see--and get out of--but it ain't any
breedin' place--there ain't the room to grow. Now we produce everything
in the West, includin' men. Here you don't do anything but
consume--includin' men. If the West stopped producin' men fur you,
you'd be as bad off as if it stopped producin' food. You can't grow a
big man on this island any more than you can grow wheat out there on
Broadway. You're all right. You folks have your uses. I ain't like one
of these crazy Populists that thinks you're rascals and all like that;
but my point is that you don't get the fun out of life. You don't get
the big feelin's. Out in the West they're the flesh and blood and bone;
and you people here, meanin' no disrespect--you're the dimples and
wrinkles and--the warts. You spend and gamble back and forth with that
money we raise and dig out of the ground, and you think you're gettin'
the best end of it, but you ain't. I found that out thirty-two years
ago this spring. I had a crazy fool notion then to go back there even
when I hadn't gone broke--and I done well to go. And that's why I
wanted that boy back there. And that's why I'm mighty proud of him, to
see he's so hot to go and take hold, like I knew he would be."
"That's excellent. Now, Mr. Bines, I like him and I dare say you've
done the best thing for him, unusual as it was. But don't grind him.
Might it not be well to ease up a little after he's out there? You
might let it be understood that I am willing to finance any of those
propositions there liberally--"
"No, no--that ain't the way to handle him. Say, I don't expect to quit
cussin' him fur another thirty days yet. I want him to think he ain't
got a friend on earth but himself. Why, I'd have made this play just as
I have done, Mr. Shepler, if there hadn't been a chance to get back a
cent of it--if we'd had to go plumb broke--back to the West in an
emigrant car, with bologna and crackers to eat, that's what I'd have
done. No, sir, no help fur him!"
"Aren't you a little hard on him?"
"Not a bit; don't I know the stock, and know just what he needs? Most
men you couldn't treat as I'm treatin' him; but with him, the harder
you bear down on him the more you'll get out of him. That was the way
with his pa--he was a different man after things got to comin' too easy
fur him. This fellow, the way I'm treatin' him, will keep his head even
after he gets things comin' easy again, or I miss my guess. He thinks I
despise him now. If you told him I was proud of him, I almost believe
you could get a bet out of him, sick as he is of gamblin'."
"Has he suspected anything?"
"Sure, not! Why, he just thanked me about an hour ago fur savin'
him--made me shake hands with him--and I could see the tears back in
his eyes."
The old man chuckled.
"It was like Len Carey's Nigger Jim. Len had Jim set apart on the
plantation fur his own nigger. They fished and went huntin' and
swimmin' together. One day they'd been swimmin', and was lyin' up on
the bank. Len got thinkin' he'd never seen any one drown. He knew Jim
couldn't swim a lick, so he thought he'd have Jim go drown. He says to
him, 'Jim, go jump off that rock there!' That was where the deep hole
was. Jim was scar't, but he had to go. After he'd gone down once, Len
says to him, 'Drown, now, you damn nigger!' and Jim come up and went
down twice more. Then Len begun to think Jim was worth a good bit of
money, and mebbe he'd be almighty walloped if the truth come out, so he
dives in after Jim and gets him shore, and after while he brought him
to. Anyway, he said, Jim had already sure-enough drowned as fur as
there was any fun in it. Well, Len Carey is an old man now, and Jim is
an old white-headed nigger still hangin' around the old place, and when
Len goes back there to visit his relatives, old Nigger Jim hunts him up
with tears in his eyes, and thanks Mister Leonard fur savin' his life
that time. Say, I felt this mornin' like Len Carey must feel them times
when Jim's thankin' him."
Shepler laughed.
"You're a rare man, Mr. Bines. I'll hope to have your cheerful, easy
views of life if I ever lose my hold here in the Street. I hope I'll
have the old Bines philosophy and the young Bines spirit. That reminds
me," he continued as Uncle Peter rose to go, "we've been pretty
confidential, Mr. Bines, and I don't mind telling you I was a bit
afraid of that young man until yesterday. Oh, not on the stock
proposition. On another matter. You may have noticed that night at the
Oldakers'--well, women, Mr. Bines, are uncertain. I know something
about markets and the ways of a dollar, but all I know about women is
that they're good to have. You can't know any more about them, because
they don't know any more themselves. Just between us, now, I never felt
any too sure of a certain young woman's state of mind until copper
reached 51 and Union Cordage had been blown up from inside."
They parted with warm expressions of good-will, and Uncle Peter, in
high spirits at the success of his machinations, had himself driven
up-town.
The only point where his plans had failed was in Mrs. Wybert's refusal
to consider Mauburn after the birth of the Casselthorpe twins. Yet he
felt that matters, in spite of this happening, must go as he wished
them to. The Englishman-Uncle Peter cherished the strong anti-British
sentiment peculiar to his generation--would surely never marry a girl
who was all but penniless, and the consideration of an alliance with
Mrs. Wybert, when the fortune should be lost, had, after all, been an
incident--a means of showing the girl, if she should prove to be too
deeply infatuated with Mauburn for her own peace of mind--how unworthy
and mercenary he was; for he had meant, in that event, to disillusion
her by disclosing something of Mrs. Wybert's history--the woman Mauburn
should prefer to her. He still counted confidently on the loss of the
fortune sufficing to break the match.
When he reached the Hightower that night for dinner, he found Percival
down-stairs in great glee over what he conceived to be a funny
situation.
"Don't ask me, Uncle Peter. I couldn't get it straight; but as near as
I could make out, Mauburn came up here afraid the blow of losing him
was going to kill sis with a broken heart, and sis was afraid the blow
was going to kill Mauburn, because she wouldn't have married him
anyway, rich or poor, after he'd lost the title. They found each other
out some way, and then Mauburn accused her of being heartless, of
caring only for his title, and she accused him of caring only for her
money, and he insisted she ought to marry him anyway, but she wouldn't
have it because of the twins--"
Uncle Peter rubbed his big brown hands with the first signs of
cheerfulness he had permitted Percival to detect in him.
"Good fur Pish--that's the way to take down them conceited
Britishers--"
"But then they went at matters again from a new standpoint, and the
result is they've made it up."
"What? Has them precious twin Casselthorpes perished?"
"Not at all, both doing finely--haven't even had colic--growing
fast--probably learned to say 'fancy, now,' by this time. But Mauburn's
going West with us if we'll take him."
"Get out!"
"Fact! Say, it must have been an awful blow to him when he found sis
wouldn't think of him at all without his title, even if she was broke.
They had a stormy time of it from all I can hear. He said he was strong
enough to work and all that, and since he'd cared for her, and not for
her money, it was low down of her to throw him over; then she said she
wouldn't leave her mother and us, now that we might need her, not for
him or any other man--and he said that only made him love her all the
more, and then he got chesty, and said he was just as good as any
American, even if he never would have a title; so pretty soon they got
kind of interested in each other again, and by the time I came home it
was all over. They ratified the preliminary agreement for a merger."
"Well, I snum!"
"That's right, go ahead and snum. I'd snum myself if I knew how--it
knocked me. Better come up-stairs and congratulate the happy couple."
"Shoo, now! I certainly am mighty disappointed in that fellow. Still he
_is_ well spotted, and them freckles mean iron in the blood. Maybe we
can develop him along with the other properties."
They found Psyche already radiant, though showing about her eyes traces
of the storm's devastations. Mauburn was looking happy; also defiant
and stubborn.
"Mr. Bines," he said to Uncle Peter, "I hope you'll side with me. I
know something about horses, and I've nearly a thousand pounds that
I'll be glad to put in with you out there if you can make a place for
me."
The old man looked him over quizzically. Psyche put her arm through
Mauburn's.
"I'd _have_ to marry some one, you know, Uncle Peter!"
"Don't apologise, Pish. There's room for men that can work out there,
Mr. Mauburn, but there ain't any vintages or trouserings to speak of,
and the hours is long."
"Try me, Mr. Bines!"
"Well, come on! If you can't skin yourself you can hold a leg while
somebody else skins. But you ain't met my expectations, I'll say that."
And he shook hands cordially with the Englishman.
"I say, you know," said Mauburn later to Psyche, "why _should_ I skin
myself? Why should I be skinned at all, you know?"
"You shouldn't," she reassured him. "That's only Uncle Peter's way of
saying you can help the others, even if you can't do much yourself at
first. And won't Mrs. Drelmer be delighted to know it's all settled?"
"Well," said Uncle Peter to Percival, later in the evening, "Pish has
done better than you have here. It's a pity you didn't pick out some
good sensible girl, and marry her in the midst of your other doings."
"I couldn't find one that liked cats. I saw a lot that suited every
other way but I always said to myself, 'Remember Uncle Peter's
warning!' so I'd go to an animal store and get a basket of kittens and
take them around, and not one of the dozen stood your test. Of course
I'd never disregard your advice."
"Hum," remarked Uncle Peter, in a tone to be noticed for its extreme
dryness. "Too bad, though--you certainly need a wife to take the
conceit out of you."
"I lost that in the Street, along with the rest."
"Well, son, I ain't no ways alarmed but what you'll soon be on your
feet again in that respect--say by next Tuesday or Wednesday. I wish
the money was comin' back as easy."
"Well, there are girls in Montana City."
"You could do worse. That reminds me--I happened to meet Shepler to-day
and he got kind of confidential,--talkin' over matters. He said he'd
never really felt sure about the affections of a certain young woman,
especially after that night at the Oldakers'--he'd never felt dead sure
of her until you went broke. He said you never could know anything
about a woman--not really."
"He knows something about that one, all right, if he knows she wouldn't
have any use for me now. Shepler's coming on with the ladies. I feel
quite hopeful about him."