Japanese maid calls her," he says to me at this time. "She says I could
never guess what that funny little mite calls her. And I says no, I never
could of guessed it if she hadn't already told me; but I says I know it
is Madam Peach Blossom, and that Jap maid sure is one funny little mite,
thinking up a thing like that, the Japanese being a serious race and
not given to saying laughable things."
That's Cousin Egbert all over. He ain't a bit like one of them courters
of the old French courts that you read about in the Famous Crimes of
History.
"Madam Peach Blossom!" he says, snickering bitterly. "Say, ain't them
Japs got a great sense of humour! I bet what she meant was Madam Lemon
Blossom!"
Anyway, Genevieve May trusted her flying man to this here brutal cynic
when she wouldn't of trusted him to any of the younger, dancing set.
And Cousin Egbert pretty near made him late for his great engagement to
auction off the strange preserves. It was on this third day of the fair,
and Genevieve May was highly excited about it.
She had her stock set up in tiers against the wall and looking right
imposing in the polished glass; and she had a box in front where the
Frenchman would stand when he did the auctioning.
That hall was hot, let me tell you, with the high sun beating down on the
thin boards. I looked in a minute before the crowd come, and it looked
like them preserves had sure had a second cooking, standing there day
after day.
And this Cousin Egbert, when he should of been leading the Frenchman back
to Horticultural Hall to the auction block, was dragging him elsewhere to
see a highly exciting sight. So he said. He was innocent enough. He
wanted to give that Frenchman a good time, he told me afterward. So he
tells him something is going to take place over at the race track that
will thrill him to the bone, and come on quick and hurry over!
The Frenchman is still using one crutch and the crowd is already surging
in that direction; but after finding out it ain't any more silos or
windmills, he relies on Cousin Egbert that it really is exciting, and
they manage to get through the crowd, though it was excited even now
and stepped on him and pushed him a lot.
Still he was game, all right. I've always said that. He was about as
excited as the crowd; and Cousin Egbert was, too, I guess, by the time
they had pushed up to the railing. I guess he was wondering what Wild
Western kind of deviltry he was going to see now. Cousin Egbert had told
him it wasn't a horse race; but he wouldn't tell him what it was, wishing
to keep it for a glad surprise when the Frenchman would see it with his
own eyes.
"Just you wait one minute now!" says Cousin Egbert. "You wait one minute
and I bet you'll be glad you got through that rough crowd with me. You'd
go through ten crowds like that, crutch or no crutch, to see what's going
to be here."
The poor man was kind of used up, but he stands there waiting for the
thrill, with Cousin Egbert beaming on him fondly, like a father that's
going in one minute to show the little tots what Santa Claus brought 'em
on the tree.
Then the Frenchman hears a familiar roar and a airplane starts up from
the lower end of the field inside the track.
"There!" says Cousin Egbert. "Now I guess you're glad you pushed in here,
leg or no leg. I knew it would be a dandy surprise for you. Yes, sir; the
committee got a regular airplane to give a thrilling flight right here
in front of us. You look up in the sky there and pretty soon you'll see
it just as plain, sailing round and round like some great bird; and they
say this man flying it is going to loop the loop twice in succession. Now
I bet you're glad you come!"
Cousin Egbert says right at this minute he begun to take a dislike to
the Frenchman. After he'd took all that trouble to get him there to see
something exciting, the Frenchman just looked at him kind of sad for a
long time, and then says he believes he'd rather go back some place where
he can set down and rest his leg.
Cousin Egbert says he turned out to be like the Frenchmen you read about
that is blasé about everything in the world and kind of tired of life,
not having the least bit of interest in whatever happens. But, of course,
he was polite to his guest and helped push a way back through the crowd,
with the crowd more excited than ever by this time, because the flying
machine was right up in the air, hundreds of feet off the ground.
"You'll think I'm a liar," he says to me; "but it's the God's truth this
Frenchman just kept pushing through that crowd and didn't even turn to
look up in the air when this man was actually risking his life by looping
the loop twice in succession. He never turned his head the least bit."
Cousin Egbert says, here he'd been up in one himself and knew what
flying meant, but he probably wouldn't of took the least notice if this
dare-devil had been killed right there before thousands.
"I don't understand it," he says. "It sure wouldn't be the least
use boosting for a brighter and busier Red Gap if everybody was as
cold-blooded as the French." He was right grouchy about the French
after this.
Anyway, he got his suffering man back to Horticultural Hall somewhat the
worse for being stepped on by the crowd; in fact, the Frenchman is kind
of all in when he gets to the auction block. He sets right down on it
looking white, and Genevieve May gets him a glass of water to revive him.
Pretty soon he says he's nearly as well as ever, but that wasn't much.
Now the patriots for the auction begun to throng in and Genevieve May is
once more proud and fluttering. She glances fondly at her noble array of
jars, with these illegitimate preserves shining richly through, and she
gets the Frenchman on his feet and onto the box; and the crowd cheers
like mad and presses close. I was standing close to G.H. Stultz, and he
whispers to me:
"My Lord! If there was only some means of getting that stock into the
German commissary! But I'm told they analyze everything. Anyway, I got my
bidders planted and I'll have to buy up the stock if it breaks me."
Then the Frenchman begun to talk in a very nice way. He said a few words
about his country--how they had been fighting all these years, not
knowing whether they could win or not, but meaning to fight till there
wasn't any fighters left; and how grateful France was for the timely aid
of this great country and for the efforts of beautiful ladies like Madam
Popper, and so on.
You bet no one laughed, even if he didn't talk such very good English.
They didn't even laugh when he said beautiful ladies like Madam Popper,
though Cousin Egbert, somewhere off in the crowd, made an undignified
sound which he pretended was coughing.
The Frenchman then said he would now ask for bids for these beautiful
table delicacies, which were not only of rich food value but were more
priceless than gold and jewels because of having been imprisoned in the
crystal glass by the fair hands of the beautiful Madam Popper; and what
was he offered for six bottles of this unspeakable jelly?
Of course G.H. Stultz would of had 'em in no time if the panic hadn't
saved him. Yes, sir; right then something terrible and unforeseen
happened to cause a frightful panic. About five of them jars of preserves
blew up with loud reports. Of course everyone's first thought was that a
German plot was on to lay Horticultural Hall in ruins with dynamite. It
sounded such. No one thought it was merely these strange preserves that
had been working overtime in that furnace.
Women screamed and strong men made a dash for the door over prostrate
bodies. And then a lot more explosions took place. The firing became
general, as the reports say. Bottle after bottle shot its dread contents
into the fray, and many feeble persons was tromped on by the mob.
It wasn't any joke for a minute. The big jars, mostly loaded with
preserves, went off with heavy reports; then there was these smaller
bottles, filled with artificial ketchup and corked. They went off like
a battery of light field guns, putting down a fierce barrage of ketchup
on one and all. It was a good demonstration of the real thing, all right.
I ain't never needed any one since that to tell me what war is.
The crowd was two thirds out before any one realized just what kind of
frightfulness was going on. Then, amid shot and shell that would still
fly from time to time, the bravest, that hadn't been able to fight their
way out, stood by and picked up the wounded under fire and helped brush
their clothes off. The groans of the sufferers mingled with the hiss of
escaping ketchup.
Genevieve May was in hysterics from the minute the first high-powered
gun was fired. She kept screaming for everyone to keep cool. And at
last, when they got some kind of order, she went into a perfectly new
fit because her Frenchman was missing. She kept it up till they found
the poor man. He was found, without his crutch, at the far end of the
hall, though no one has ever yet figgered how he could get there through
the frenzied mob. He was on a chair, weak and trembling, behind a fancy
quilt made by Grandma Watkins, containing over ten thousand pieces of
silk. He was greenish yellow in colour and his heart had gone wrong.
That'll show you this bombardment wasn't any joke. The poor man had been
exhausted by Cousin Egbert's well-meant efforts to show him something
exciting, and he was now suffering from sure-enough shell shock, which
he'd had before in more official circumstances.
He was a brave man; he'd fought like a tiger in the trenches, and had
later been shot down out of the air four times, and was covered with
wounds and medals and crosses; but this here enfilade at the fair hands
of the beautiful Madam Popper, coming in his weak state, had darn near
devastated what few nerves the war had left him.
It was a sad moment. Genevieve May was again exploding, like her own
handiwork, which wasn't through itself yet by any means, because a
solitary shot would come now and then, like the main enemy had retreated
but was leaving rear guards and snipers. Also, people that had had
exhibits in the art section and the fancy-work section was now setting
up yells of rage over their treasures that had been desecrated by the
far-flung ketchup.
But tender hands was leading the stricken Frenchman back of the lines to
a dressing station, and all was pretty near calm again, except for G.H.
Stultz, who was swearing--or words to that effect.
It really took a good hour to restore perfect calm and figure up the
losses. They was severe. Of course I don't mean to say the whole three
hundred bottles of this ammunition dump had exploded. Some had been
put up only a short while and hadn't had time to go morbid; and even
some of the old stuff had remained staunch.
The mincemeat shrapnel had proved fairly destructive, but the turnip
marmalade didn't seem to of developed much internal energy. All of them
jars of marmalade proved to be what they call "duds." But you bet enough
had gone up to make a good battle sketch. The ketchup, especial, was
venomous.
I met G.H. Stultz as I left the trenches. He'd been caught in a
machine-gun nest of ketchup and had only wiped about half of it off
his face. He looked like a contagious disease.
"Say, look here," he says; "you can't tell me there isn't a Providence
ever watching over this world to give some of us just what's coming to
us!" That was very silly, because I'd never told him anything of the
sort.
Then I go out into No Man's Land and meet Cousin Egbert by a lemonade
stand. He was one radiant being. He asked me to have a glass of the
beverage, and I done so; and while I was sipping it he says brightly:
"Wasn't that some gorgeous display of fireworks? And wasn't it fine to
stand there and watch them bottles laugh their heads off at this food
profiteer?"
I said he ought to be right sorry for her--after all the work she'd done.
"Not me!" he says firmly. "She never done any work in her life except to
boost her own social celebrity."
Then he took another gulp of his lemonade and says, very bitter:
"Madam Peach Blossom! I wonder what that funny little mite of hers will
say when she sees her to-night? Something laughable, I bet--like it would
be 'Madam Onion Blossom!'--or something comical, just to give her a good
laugh after her hard day."
Such is Cousin Egbert, and ever will be. And Genevieve May, having took
up things all round the circle, is now back to the dance.
X
AS TO HERMAN WAGNER
It had been a toilsome day for Ma Pettengill and me. Since sunup we
had ridden more than a score of mountain miles on horses that could
seldom exceed a crawl in pace. At dawn we had left the flatlands along
the little timbered river, climbed to the lava beds of the first mesa,
traversed a sad stretch of these where even the sage grew scant, and
come, by way of a winding defile that was soon a mounting cañon, into
big hills unending.
Here for many hours we had laboured over furtive, tortuous trails,
aimless and lost, it might have seemed, but that ever and again we came
upon small bands of cattle moving one way. These showed that we had a
mission and knew, after all, what we were about. These cattle were
knowingly bent toward the valley and home. They went with much of a
businesslike air, stopping only at intervals to snatch at the sparse
short grass that grows about the roots of the sagebrush. They had come a
long journey from their grazing places, starting when the range went bad
and water holes dried, and now seemed glad indeed to give up the wild
free life of a short summer and become tended creatures again, where
strangely thoughtful humans would lavish cut grass upon them for certain
obscure but doubtless benevolent purposes of their own.
It was our mission this day to have a look-see, mebbe as far as Horsefly
Mountain, and get a general idee of how many head was already coming down
to eat up the so-and-so shortest hay crop that had ever been stacked on
the Arrowhead since the dry winter of '98, when beef fell to two cents a
pound, with darned few takers at that.
It was really a day of scenic delight, if one hadn't to reflect sorely
upon the exigencies of the beef-cattle profession, and at least one of
us was free of this thrall.
What we reached at last were small mountains rather than big hills;
vast exclamatory remnants of shattered granite and limestone, thickly
timbered, reckless of line, sharp of peak. One minute cañon we viewed
from above was quite preposterous in its ambitions, having colour and
depth and riot of line in due proportions and quite worthy of the grand
scale. It wasn't a Grand Cañon, but at least it was a baby grand, and I
loitered on its brink until reminded sharply that I'd better pour leather
into that there skate if I wanted to make home that night.
I devoutly did wish to make home that night, for the spot we were on was
barren of those little conveniences I am accustomed to. Moreover, the air
was keen and a hunger, all day in the building, called for strong meats.
So I not too reluctantly passed on from this scenic miniature of parlour
dimensions--and from the study of a curious boulder thereby which had
intrigued me not a little.
Now we were home and relaxed by the Arrowhead fireside, after a moving
repast of baked young sage hens. The already superior dynamics of the
meal, moreover, had been appreciably heightened by a bottle of Uncle
Henry's homemade grape wine, which he warmly recommends for colds or
parties, or anything like that. It had proved to be a wine of almost
a too-recent _crû_. Ma Pettengill said that if Uncle Henry was aiming
to put it on the market in quantity production he had ought to name
it the Stingaree brand, because it was sure some stuff, making for
malevolence even to the lengths of matricide, if that's what killing
your mother is called. She said, even at a Polish wedding down across
the tracks of a big city, it would have the ambulances and patrol
wagons clanging up a good half hour quicker than usual.
Be that as it may, or is, when I had expected sleep to steal swiftly
to the mending of the day's ravages I merely found myself wakeful and
wondering. This stuff of Uncle Henry's is an able ferment. I wondered
about a lot of things. And at the same time I wondered interminably about
that remarkable boulder at the side of the Tom Thumb Grand Cañon. I was
even wakeful enough and discursive enough--my hostess had taken but one
glass from the bottle--to wonder delightedly about all rocks and stones,
and geology, and that sort of thing. It was almost scientific, the way
I wondered, as I sat there idly toying with my half-filled glass.
Take this particular boulder, for example. It had once been mere star
dust, hadn't it? Some time ago, I mean, or thereabouts. But it had been
star dust; and then, next thing it knew, it got to be a kind of cosmic
stew, such as leisurely foreigners patch out highways with, and looking
no more like a granite boulder than anything.
Then something happened, like someone letting the furnace fire go out the
night of the big freeze; and this stuff I'm talking about grew cold and
discouraged, and quit flat, apparently not caring a hoot what shape it
would be found in years and years later, the result being that it was
found merely in the general shape of rocks or boulders--to use the more
scientific term--which is practically no shape at all, as you might say,
being quite any shape that happens, or the shape of rocks and boulders
as they may be seen on almost every hand by those of us who have learned
to see in the true sense of the word.
I have had to be brief in this shorter science course on the earth's
history before the time of man, because more important matters claim my
attention and other speakers are waiting. The point is that this boulder
up there by the dwarf cañon had survived from unremembered chaos; had
been melted, stewed, baked, and chilled until it had no mind of its own
left; then bumped round by careless glaciers until it didn't care where
it came to rest; and at last, after a few hundred million years of stony
unconcern for its ultimate fate, here it had been drawn by the cunning
hand of man sprang into the complex mechanism of our industrial human
scramble.
That is to say, this boulder I speak of, the size of a city hall, lying
there in noble neglect since long before wise old water animals were
warning their children that this here fool talk about how you could go up
out of the water and walk round on dry land would get folks into trouble,
because how could a body breathe up there when there wasn't any water to
breathe in? And the fools that tried it would soon find out; and serve
'em right! Well, I mean to say, this boulder that had lain inert and
indifferent while the ages wrought man from a thing of one cell--and not
much of a cell at that--bore across that face of it nearest the winding
trail, a lettered appeal, as from one man to another. The letters were
large and neatly done in white paint and the brushwork was recent. And
the letters said, with a good deal of pathos, it seemed to me:
WAGNER'S SYLVAN GLEN, ONLY THIRTY-TWO MILES. HERMAN WAGNER, SOLE PROP.
Let this teach us, one and all, this morning, that everything in Nature
has its use if we but search diligently. I mean, even big rocks like
this, which are too big to build homes or even courthouses of. May we
not, at least, paint things on them in plain letters with periods and
commas, and so on, and so give added impetus to whatever is happening
to us?
But the evening wears on and the whipping mental urge of grape juice
meddled with by Uncle Henry wears off. And so, before it all ends, what
about Herman Wagner, Sole Prop. of Wagner's Sylvan Glen?
I know it has been a hard day, but let us try to get the thing in order.
Why not begin cautiously with a series of whys? Why any particular sylvan
glen in a country where everything is continuously and overwhelmingly
sylvan and you can't heave a rock without hitting a glen? Really, you
can't walk fifty yards out there without stepping on a glen--or in a
glen; it doesn't matter. What I am earnestly trying to get at is, if this
Herman Wagner wanted to be sole prop. of a sylvan glen, why should he
have gone thirty-two miles farther for one? Why didn't he have it right
there? Why insanely push thirty-two miles on in a country where miles
mean something serious? Up-and-down miles, tilted horribly or standing
on edge!
It didn't seem astute. And Herman achieved simply no persuasion whatever
with me by stocking in that "only." He could have put only all over the
rock and it would still have been thirty-two miles, wouldn't it? Only
indeed! You might think the man was saying "Only ten minutes' walk from
the post office"--or something with a real meaning like that. I claimed
then and I claim now that he should have omitted the only and come out
blunt with the truth. There are times in this world when the straight and
bitter truth is better without any word-lace. This Wagner person was a
sophist. So I said to him, now, as a man will at times:
"All right, Herman, old top! But you'll have to think up something better
than only to put before those thirty-two miles. If you had said 'Only two
miles' it might have had its message for me. But thirty more than that!
Be reasonable! Why not pick out a good glen that parties can slip off to
for a quiet evening without breaking up a whole week? Frankly, I don't
understand you and your glen. But you can bet I'll find out about it!"
So, right away, I said to Ma Pettengill, who by this time had a lot of
bills and papers and ledgers and stuff out on her desk, and was talking
hotly to all of them--I said to her that there was nearly half a bottle
of Uncle Henry's wine left, his rare old grape wine laid down well over a
month ago; so she had better toss off a foamy beaker of it--yes, it still
foamed--and answer me a few questions.
It was then she said the things about that there wine being able to
inflate the casualty lists, even of Polish weddings, which are already
the highest known to the society page of our police-court records. She
said, further, that she had took just enough of the stuff at dinner to
make her think she wasn't entirely bankrupt, and she wanted to give
these here accounts a thorough going-over while the sensation lasted.
Not wishing to hurt Uncle Henry's feelings, even if he didn't catch me at
it, I partook again of the fervent stuff, and fell into new wonder at the
seeming imbecility of Herman Wagner. I found myself not a little moved
by the pathos of him. It was little enough I could get from Ma Pettengill
at first. She spoke almost shortly to me when I asked her things she had
to stop adding silly figures to answer.
What I found out was mostly my own work, putting two and two in their
fit relationship. Even the mention of Herman Wagner's full name brought
nothing about himself. I found it most annoying. I would say: "Come on,
now; what about this Herman Wagner that paints wheedling messages across
the face of Nature?" And to this fair, plain query I would merely have
more of the woman's endless help troubles. All that come looking for work
these days was stormy petrels, not caring if they worked or not--just
asking for it out of habit.
Didn't she have a singing teacher, a painless dentist, a crayon-portrait
artist and a condemned murderer on her payroll this very minute, all
because the able-bodied punchers had gone over to see that nasty little
Belgium didn't ever again attack Germany in that ruthless way? She had
read that it cost between thirty and thirty-five thousand dollars to
wound a soldier in battle. Was that so? Well, she'd tell me that she
stood ready to wound any of these that was left behind for between
thirty and thirty-five cents, on easy payments. Wound 'em severely,
too! Not mere scratches.
Presently again I would utter Herman Wagner, only to be told that these
dry cows she was letting go for sixty dollars--you come to cut 'em up for
beef and you'd have to grease the saw first. Or I heard what a scandal
it was that lambs actually brought five-fifty, and the Government at
Washington, D.C., setting back idly under the outrage!
Then I heard, with perfect irrelevance to Herman Wagner, that she
wouldn't have a puncher on the place that owned his own horse. Because
why? Because he'd use him gentle all day and steal grain for him at
night. Also, that she had some kind of rheumatiz in her left shoulder;
but she'd rather be a Christian Scientist and fool herself than pay a
doctor to do the same. It may all have been true, but it was not
important; not germane to the issue, as we so often say in writing
editorials.
It looked so much like a blank for Herman Wagner that I quit asking for
a time and let the woman toil at her foolish ruinous tasks.