Transcriber’s Notes:
Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_
in the original text.
Equal signs “=” before and after a word or phrase indicate =bold=
in the original text.
Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.
Antiquated spellings have been preserved.
Typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Extract from a three-column review in the _San Francisco Examiner_:
“Mr. Hastings has touched the very core of the
matter respecting the proclivities of our doddering
plutocracy. Throughout his book he has revealed
that plutocracy in its true light and shown it to
be something utterly conscienceless and debased.
No more scathing review of the situation, as it is
seen at present, could possibly be given in a work
of fiction.”
[Illustration]
=SHALL WE
HAVE A
KING?=
Will the United States be a monarchy in 1975?
Have you read “THE FIRST AMERICAN KING,” by George
Gordon Hastings? It is a dashing romance in which
a scientist and a detective of today wake up
seventy-five years later to find His Majesty,
Imperial and Royal, William I, Emperor of the
United States and King of the Empire State of New
York, ruling the land, with the real power in the
hands of half a dozen huge trusts. Automobiles
have been replaced by phaërmobiles; air-ships sail
above the surface of the earth; there has been a
successful war against Russia; a social revolution
is brewing. The book is both an enthralling
romance and a serious sociological study, which
scourges unmercifully the society and politics of
the present time, many of whose brightest stars
reappear in the future under thinly disguised
names. There are wit and humor and sarcasm
galore—a stirring tale of adventure and a charming
love-story.
Net $1.00, postpaid. All Booksellers,
or sent postpaid upon receipt of price by
=TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE=
121 West 42d Street, NEW YORK CITY
=TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE=
THE MAGAZINE WITH A PURPOSE BACK OF IT
=March, 1905=
_The Political Situation Thomas E. Watson_ 1
_To W. J. B.—To President Roosevelt—The Ship Subsidy
—Hearst, the Myth—Mr. Bryan’s Race in Nebraska—Let
the Greenbacks Alone!—En Route to Royalty_
_The Palace Edwin Markham_ 12
_The House in the Jungle St. Clair Beall_ 13
_A Belated Reconciliation Will N. Harben_ 32
_Franchise Wealth and Municipal Ownership John H. Girdner, M.D._ 40
_The Storm-Petrel Maxim Gorky_ 44
_What Buzz-Saw Morgan Thinks W. S. Morgan_ 45
_A Family Necessity Alex. Ricketts_ 49
_The Songs We Love Eugene C. Dolson_ 49
_The Alligator of Blique Bayou Frank Savile_ 50
_The Boy; His Hand and Pen Tom P. Morgan_ 60
_The Force of Circumstance Chauncey C. Hotchkiss_ 61
_An Ideal Cruise in an Ideal Craft Wallace Irwin_ 72
_The Heritage of Maxwell Fair Vincent Harper_ 73
_The Butcheries of Peace W. J. Ghent_ 87
_Remembered Ella Wheeler Wilcox_ 90
_Martyrdom Leonard Charles van Noppen_ 90
_The Heroism of Admiral Guldberg Robert Barr_ 91
_A Sociological Fable F. P. Williams_ 95
_The Old 10.30 Train Marion Drace_ 96
_Gallows Gate H. B. Marriott-Watson_ 97
_The Judge and the Jack Tar Henry H. Cornish_ 105
_Object, Matrimony Caroline Lockhart_ 106
_The Rivers of the Nameless Dead Theodore Dreiser_ 112
_Another View of the Simple Life Zenobia Cox_ 114
_The Corner in Change William A. Johnston_ 118
_Car Straps as Disease Spreaders John H. Girdner, M.D._ 124
_The Say of Reform Editors_ 126
Application made for entry as Second-Class Matter at
New York (N. Y.) Post Office, March, 1905
Copyright, 1905, in U. S. and Great Britain.
Published by TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE,
121 West 42d Street, N. Y.
TERMS: $1.00 A YEAR; 10 CENTS A NUMBER
=TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE FOR APRIL=
=EDITORIALS Hon. THOMAS E. WATSON=
In Russia—President Roosevelt and the Railroad
Problem—Bribery in Georgia—Who Pays the Taxes?
—The Free Pass Evil, etc., etc.
=CORRUPT PRACTICES IN POLITICS=
Hon. Lucius F. C. Garvin,
Ex-Governor of Rhode Island
=THE NEW YORK CHILDREN’S COURT=
Hon. Joseph M. Deuel,
Author of the legislation creating the Court
and one of the Judges presiding therein
=CONSERVATIVES AND RADICALS= John H. Girdner, M.D.
=NEW SINS=—Footpace Ethics in a Horse-Power World
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
=THE CONSTITUTION=—A Document that Needs Revision
_=FICTION=_
WILL N. HARBEN OWEN OLIVER
W. MURRAY GRAYDON Capt. W. E. P. FRENCH, U.S.A.
ELEANOR H. PORTER B. M. BOWER
VINCENT HARPER HUGH PENDEXTER
_TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE_
VOL. I. MARCH, 1905 No. 1
_The Political Situation_
BY THOMAS E. WATSON
Carefully studied, the election of Nov. 8, 1904, affords more
encouragement to Reformers than any event which has happened since the
Civil War.
In smashing the fraudulent scheme of Gorman-Hill-McCarren-Belmont, the
people proved that there was still such a thing as public conscience.
The whole Parker campaign was rotten—from inception to final
fiasco—and the manner in which the masses rose and stamped the life
out of it was profoundly refreshing. Roosevelt stood for many things
which the people did not like, but they recognized in him a man instead
of a myth, a reality instead of a sham.
He had fought abuses in civil life; he had fought the enemies of his
country on the battlefield; he had achieved literary success; he had
been a worker and a fighter all his days. He had faced the coal barons
and virtually brought them to terms; he had bearded the railroad kings
and broken up the Northern Securities Combine. Thus, while he “stood
pat” on many things which the people detested, he stood likewise for
many things they admired, and they gave him a vote larger than that of
his party.
* * * * *
Another thing helped Roosevelt. This was the prominence of Grover
Cleveland and his “second administration” gang. Apparently Parker had
no conception of the bitterness with which the masses hate Cleveland.
Because he was cheered by the self-chosen delegates to the St. Louis
convention, because he was given a cut-and-dried ovation by the
business men of New York City, the Democratic bosses seemed to believe
that the more of Cleveland they forced into the campaign the better the
country would like the taste of it.
So they not only kept Cleveland on exhibition in the most conspicuous
manner, but they dug up John G. Carlisle, Arthur Pue Gorman, Olney
of Massachusetts, and other Cleveland fossils, until Parker’s
identification with Cleveland’s second administration was complete.
And when _that_ happened, it was “Good-bye Parker!”
* * * * *
Cleveland had issued the bonds which Harrison had refused to issue; he
had sold $62,000,000 of these bonds at private sale, _at midnight_, to
J. P. Morgan and his associates; _the price was less than that which
the negroes of Jamaica were getting for their bonds!_
August Belmont was Morgan’s partner in that infamous deal. Therefore,
when Cleveland and Belmont got so close to Parker that he couldn’t
breathe without touching them on either side, the suspicion became
violent that the same Wall Street influences which had pledged
Cleveland to a bond issue had pledged Parker to the same thing.
_There is no reasonable doubt whatever that Parker’s managers had
pledged themselves to another issue of bonds._
* * * * *
How could these bonds have been issued? Easy enough. Cleveland had
invented the process by violating the law; and the Cleveland precedent
still stands.
To get more bonds, you only need another President who will take orders
from Belmont and Morgan at secret, midnight conferences.
* * * * *
Then there was John G. Carlisle. Among political shrubs which are
aromatic, none smells sweeter than he. Not by any other name would he
smell half so sweet. Carlisle was the Whisky Trust representative in
Congress, who made so many speeches for Free Silver and Tariff Reform.
Placed in Cleveland’s cabinet he crawled at the feet of the gold-bugs,
and he wrote a new tariff for the Sugar Trust, which enabled those
robbers to take annual millions from the people in repayment for the
thousands which the Trust had put into the Democratic Campaign fund.
This man, Carlisle, was exhumed and brought to New York to make another
speech for “Reform” and for Parker!
* * * * *
Likewise there was Gorman. With a political ignorance which is hard
to understand, Parker seemed to believe that his salvation depended
upon linking himself to Gorman. He appeared to breathe easy only when
sitting in the lap of Gorman. Nothing in the way of campaign plan could
be sent forth into the world with any hope of success until there
had been a laying-on of hands and a blessing by the cloud-compelling
Gorman. Yet it would seem that a well-informed schoolboy should have
been able to tell Parker that Gorman was one of the best hated men
living.
When poor people were freezing in the big cities and the Coal Trust was
pitiless, and the golden-hearted Senator Vest of Missouri proposed to
cut the ground from under the feet of the Trust by putting coal upon
the Free List, who was it that virtually said in the United States
Senate, “Let the people freeze; the Trust shall not be weakened”?
_It was Gorman, of Maryland!_
* * * * *
Who was it that took the Tariff Reform Measure of Wm. L. Wilson and
turned it into an elaborate device for enriching the few at the expense
of the many?
It was Gorman.
Who took Sugar off the Free List and put a tax of $45,000,000 upon it?
Gorman.
Who increased the McKinley duties upon lumber and nails and wire and
trace-chains and horseshoes and iron-ware which the common people must
use?
Gorman.
Who doubled the tax on molasses?
Gorman.
Who stands upon the Democratic side in the Senate of the United States
as the champion of the Sugar Trust and all other Democratic Trusts?
Gorman.
But Parker could never get enough of Gorman. The people could—and did.
Their votes showed that they wanted no more tariff bills fixed by
Gorman.
* * * * *
Why was the election encouraging to reformers?
Because it showed such an increase in the independent vote.
At least a million Independents voted for Roosevelt because they were
hell-bent on beating Parker. In part, they were moved to do this
because of the belief that Roosevelt himself leans to radicalism. His
past record as a reformer gave hope that during the next four years he
would be a powerful factor in bringing about improved conditions.
* * * * *
Reformers not only take encouragement from Parker’s loss of votes, but
in the victories won by Douglas, La Follette and Folk.
Widely separated as were the States of Massachusetts, Wisconsin and
Missouri the fact that the independent voter broke party lines in each
of these States to support a genuine reformer is the most significant
fact among the election results.
No one can misunderstand it. The people want honest leaders. The people
will follow without flinching. Party names count for nothing. Give the
people a MAN: fearless, honest, aggressive, _standing for something_,
and not afraid to fight for it: the people will follow him to the death.
* * * * *
We too often say, “The people are fickle; they won’t stand by their own
leaders!” Ah, friend! Think how often the people have been fooled. See
how many men they have put into office to accomplish reforms. See how
often these leaders have forgotten their pledges as soon as they began
to draw salaries, free passes and perquisites!
The people have been betrayed so often that they are discouraged. But
don’t you doubt this, brother: Another reform wave is coming, and woe
unto those leaders who seek to check it!
* * * * *
Here is the condition of the Democratic Party:
For four years it is bound to the St. Louis platform, plus Parker’s
gold telegram, plus Parker’s message to Roosevelt “heartily”
congratulating him upon his election.
For four years Belmont, McCarren, Meyer, Dave Hill, Gorman & Co. have
absolute control of the party machinery.
For four years the official commander-in-chief, the standard-bearer of
National Democracy is Tom Taggart, the gambling-hell man of French Lick
Springs, Indiana!
* * * * *
Commenting upon the campaign, _The Independent_, of New York, says that
Mr. Bryan gave his support to the Democratic ticket, but took back
nothing which he had said about Parker. _The Independent_ is mistaken.
Bryan changed his position so often and so fast that Dr. Holt evidently
failed to keep up.
In that special-car trip of his through Indiana, Mr. Bryan’s
evolutionary process developed him into a Parker champion, who saw in
the Esopus man “The Moses of Democracy,” one whose “ideals” were the
same as Bryan’s “ideals,” one whose candidacy enlisted Bryan’s support
as cordially as though Bryan “had framed the platform and selected the
nominee.” Oh, yes, that was about what he said, Dr. Holt.
And when he had finished saying it twenty-two times per day, the
Indiana voter girded up his trousers, trekked to the polls, and voted
for Roosevelt.
* * * * *
_To W. J. B._
Would you be so kind as to tell us when and where you will commence to
reorganize the Democratic party? You promised to begin “immediately
after the election.” What is your construction of the word
“immediately”? And what did you really mean by “reorganize”?
Your party is fully organized from top to bottom—from Tom Taggart, the
gambling-hell man, down to Pat McCarren, the Standard Oil lobbyist. How
can you reorganize a party so thoroughly organized? You can’t do it,
you are not trying to do it, and you must have known all along that you
couldn’t do it.
Watch out, William! The people have loved you and believed in you, but
your course in the last campaign has shaken your popularity to its
very foundations. Beware how you trifle with the radicals. If you want
to come with us, come and be done with it. If you want to go to the
Belmonts and Taggarts, go and be done with it.
Be assured of this, William—_you can’t ride both horses_!
* * * * *
_To President Roosevelt_
The people have given you power and opportunity. For four years you will
have a responsibility such as few men have ever had.
_What Will You Do With It?_
* * * * *
The Express Companies are robbing the people of many millions of
dollars every year in excessive charges for carrying small parcels. In
every civilized land, save ours, the Government carries these small
parcels at a nominal cost, as a part of the postal service.
In America, a venal Congress keeps the yoke of the Express Companies
fastened upon the people and will not allow the government to establish
a Parcels Post. Mr. President, will you not fix your attention upon
this monstrous abuse? Will you not come into the arena and help us in
the fight for the Parcels Post?
* * * * *
Mr. President, the railroads are charging the government $65,000,000
per year for carrying our mails! This represents a yearly income of
more than two per cent. upon three billion dollars.
Squeeze out the water, and the railroads of the United States could be
bought for three billion dollars.
_Therefore, on the carriage of mails alone, your administration is
paying the railroads more than two per cent. upon their entire value!_
The Government could float a two per cent. bond at par, and if it
issued enough bonds to pay for all the roads the annual interest charge
would be no greater than we now pay for carrying the mails.
Can you do nothing about this, Mr. President? Is your strong arm
powerless to defend the people against this high-handed robbery?
* * * * *
Mr. President, your administration is now paying the Oceanic Steamship
Company $45,000 per year to carry mails to the semi-savages of Tahiti.
This island is under French control. French steamers offered to carry
these mails for $400 per year. Your administration refused the offer,
and continued to pay an American Corporation $45,000. _Did you know
this, Mr. President? Is there nothing you can do about it? Must the
taxpayers be plundered of $44,600 every year simply because an American
Corporation wants the money?_
* * * * *
Mr. President, is it right that to China and Japan American-made cloth
should be sold cheaper than we Americans can buy it? Is it right that
we should have to pay more for implements to work our fields with than
the South American farmer pays for the same tools? For a hundred years
our manufacturers have been protected from foreign competition in the
home market; they charge us higher prices in this home market than are
paid by any other people on earth; they organize this monopoly into a
Trust, and then they take their surplus goods into foreign markets and
sell them to foreigners at a lower price than they sell to us. Is that
right, Mr. President?
* * * * *
How can this evil be corrected? How can the Trusts be curbed?
By putting on the Free List every article which is sold abroad cheaper
than it is sold here, and every article which enters into the necessary
makeup of the Trust.
* * * * *
Mr. President, under your administration corporate wealth escapes
national taxation, as it has done for the past thirty years.
_Under Abraham Lincoln, the railroads and the manufacturers paid a
federal tax._
They pay none now.
_Under Abraham Lincoln, the vastly overgrown Insurance Companies and
Express Companies paid a federal tax._
They pay none now.
Is that right, Mr. President?
Why should the poorest mechanic, clerk, storekeeper, printer, farmer,
or mine-worker _pay excessive federal taxes upon the necessaries of
life while the billion dollar corporations pay nothing at all_?
* * * * *
_The Ship Subsidy_
In his message to Congress the President says:
“I especially commend to your immediate attention the encouragement of
our merchant marine by appropriate legislation.”
Does Mr. Roosevelt, like the late Senator Hanna, favor the Ship
Subsidy? Is the government going to hire merchants to go to sea? Are we
to have hothouse commerce sustained at the expense of the taxpayers?
* * * * *
What ails our merchant marine? Why cannot American merchants compete
with British and German merchants on the ocean?
Simply because our own laws will not allow it. Our navigation acts have
destroyed the American merchant marine.
How?
By denying registry and the protection of the flag to any ship not
built in one of our own shipyards. We are not allowed to buy vessels
from England, Scotland or Germany without losing the protection of our
government. We must build them at home. Our precious tariff increases
the cost of all shipbuilding material, while in Great Britain vessels
are built under free trade conditions. Hence it costs us more to
build any sort of seagoing vessel than it costs Great Britain. If we
were allowed to buy ships abroad we could get them on equal terms
with British merchants. Consequently we could compete with them for
the carrying trade. We would get our share. The American Merchant
Marine would once more flourish as it did prior to the Civil War. The
Tariff compels the merchant to pay more for an American ship than the
Englishman pays for an English ship, and our Navigation laws compel the
American merchant to use the American ship or none.
Result: The Englishman gets the business.
* * * * *
It was just this kind of legislation which provoked the preliminary
troubles between Great Britain and the American Colonies. Our
forefathers hated the British navigation acts; the sons copied them.
Great Britain grew wise, swung to Free Trade, and took the seas away
from us. Our navigation acts represent the most violent type of the
Protective madness. To deny the merchant the right to buy his vessel
where he can get it cheapest is mere lunacy. The cheapest and best
ships will inevitably get the cargoes; and where the law denies to the
American the chance to get the cheapest and best vessel it simply puts
him out of the combat.
Our Navigation acts have done that identical thing.
* * * * *
What is the remedy? Senator Hanna wanted “ship subsidies.” In other
words, the merchant was to be encouraged to go into the shipping
business by the assurance that the Government would go down into the
pockets of the taxpayers and pull out enough money to make good the
difference between the costly ships of America and the cheaper, better
ships of Great Britain.
To escape the effects of one bad law, Senator Hanna proposed that
Congress should pass another. The Tariff, which plunders the many to
enrich the few (see recent remarks of Parker and Cleveland), has killed
the merchant marine; therefore the merchant marine must be restored to
life, not at the expense of the enriched few, but of the plundered many.
* * * * *
The merchant marine has been destroyed by the system which is “the
mother of the Trusts,” by the system which sells to foreign consumers
at a lower price than to home consumers.
Why not encourage our merchant marine by allowing our merchants
_to buy their vessels in those foreign markets where our Protected
Manufacturers sell their wares so much cheaper than they sell them to
us at home_?
* * * * *
Would it not be the most shameless kind of class legislation to take the
tax money of the unprivileged masses of our people (who pay practically
all the taxes), and build up fortunes for another class of privileged
shipowners.
The beneficiaries of protection are the few: its victims are the many.
Thus the favored few get all the benefits of protection and escape all
its evils; while the unprivileged many bear all of its evils and reap
none of its benefits.
* * * * *
We are told that Great Britain and Germany subsidize their merchant
marine and that therefore our government must do it. The argument
would be contemptible even if the facts supported it, but that is not
the case. Great Britain does not subsidize her merchant marine nor
does Germany do so. Great Britain pays certain lines for specific mail
service and colonial service; nothing more. Germany does likewise.
Neither country _hires_ merchants to go to sea about their own business.
There is no more statesmanship in hiring a mariner to engage in private
business between New York and Liverpool than there would be in hiring
John Wanamaker to establish another branch of his mercantile business
in San Francisco or Terra Del Fuego. Such legislation as that is
_Privilege run mad_.
* * * * *
When Napoleon encouraged the beet sugar industry in France by bounties
he may have done a wise thing. France was under his despotic control;
commerce with the world was cut off; internal development became the
law of self-preservation.
But no imperial sceptre rules the ocean. There can be no monopoly of
the use of her myriad highways. Amid her vast areas, natural law mocks
the puny contrivances of men. Competition is free. The ocean race is to
the swift; the battle is to the strong. Whoever can do the work, do it
quickest, cheapest, surest, best, will do it—American bounties to the
contrary notwithstanding.
Take off the rusty fetters which bind the limbs of the American seaman
and he will need no bounty. Give him a fair start, an open course, and
he will outrun the world. Keep the chains on him—and he will never win!
Suppose you give bounties to the shipper, then what? To the extent of
the bounty he will do business—no further. And you will soon find
that you have attracted mercenary corporations who do business for the
bounty, the whole bounty, and nothing but the bounty.
We tried this ship subsidy business once before—from 1867 to 1877.
What was the result? Scandals and failure. Congress took more than six
and a half million dollars of the people’s money, gave it to greedy
corporations and got nothing in return save a fit of disappointment and
disgust which lasted the country till the advent of Hanna.
We earnestly hope that President Roosevelt will look into the record
of the former subsidy experiment before he ever signs a bill of like
character.
* * * * *
In 1856 a little more than three-fourths of all our exports and imports
were carried in American bottoms. In 1881 seventy-two million bushels
of grain were shipped from New York to Europe, and not one bushel of it
went in American ships.
Less than one-sixth of our marine freight was handled by ourselves in
1881, and the amount has gone on dwindling.
Great Britain improved her methods of building ships; built cheaper and
better vessels than ours. The law did not permit us to buy from her,
but did permit her to bring her ships into our waters and capture our
trade; and so she captured it.
We are the only people in the world who are not allowed to buy ships
wherever we can buy them cheapest. We are the only serfs alive who
are chained hand and foot to obsolete Navigation laws. And to escape
the logical consequences of our folly we do not propose to repeal the
monstrous laws which led us into the difficulty, but we do propose to
compel the taxpayers to make good, by subsidies, the difference between
the costly American ship and the cheaper, better European ship!
When statesmanship gets down to that low ebb its morality is gone.
A venal Congress may pass such a measure, but we do not believe an
honest President will sign it.
_Hearst, the Myth_
Because he is not perpetually making an exhibit of himself, a good many
shallow politicians sneer at W. R. Hearst and call him a myth.
Because he is not everlastingly on his feet reeling off speeches which
come from nowhere and go nowhere, the average regulation “orator” looks
down upon the modest, silent man from New York as a very inferior
mortal, indeed.
Yet W. R. Hearst, with all his shyness and silence, has a way of
hitting out quick, hard and sure that does more good for the people
than all the “orators” have done in the last decade. If there is
anything on this blessed earth that we have got enough of at this
time, it is talk, _talk_, TALK! From Presidents in fact and Presidents
in prospectus, from Senators of all shades and Congressmen of every
variety down to oratorical Federal Judges, College Doctors and
legislative lights we have floods of talk, _talk_, TALK! The misery
of it all is that this oratory doesn’t mean anything. It strikes a
bee-line for the waste basket.
It lives today, echoes tomorrow, and is forgotten the day after. The
orator himself thinks only of the success of the speech. He drinks in
the immediate applause, he gloats over the newspaper puffs, he puts
out his chest, he is happy: and that is all. The speech accomplishes
nothing; was not meant to accomplish anything. Perhaps the orator
himself voted for the thing which he denounced, as happened with the
Panama business when Democratic “orators” spoke on one side and voted
on the other. Now if there is anything which the American people are
sick unto death of, it is this kind of patent-medicine oratory. What
we all want just now is that men shall become _workers_ instead of
automatic spellbinders. We want men who actually do something—men who
have ideas, plans, practical resources; men who will literally take
up their clubs and hammer away at monstrous abuses wherever they show
their heads.
Such a man is W. R. Hearst. By his assault upon the Coal Trust he has
exposed the heartless methods of capitalism and laid the foundations
for much good work in the future. By his swift, successful attack upon
the Gas Trust, which, by the collusion of city officials, was about to
steal seven million dollars from the taxpayers of New York, he has set
an example which should inspire every reformer in the Union.
May his courage become contagious! May his example breed imitations!
May his firmness in standing for the rights of the people raise up
enemies to the Trusts throughout the land!
Mr. Hearst is a Democrat; the corrupt officials who were about to
surrender the treasury of New York to the Gas Trust were Democrats;
that fact did not bother him in the least. Rascality is doubly odious
when it borrows a good name; and the honest Democrat did not hesitate
to bring his injunction down like a flail upon the heads of the
dishonest Democrats who were betraying their trust.
We wish we could swap a couple of hundred “orators” for another myth
like William R. Hearst.
_Mr. Bryan’s Race in Nebraska_
In a recent issue of his paper, Mr. Bryan says, referring to Mr. Watson:
The small vote which he received—a vote much
smaller than Populists, Democrats, and even
Republicans expected him to receive—shows either
that there are few who agree with him as to the
course of action to be pursued or that they did
not have confidence in his leadership. It is not
only more charitable, but more in accordance with
the facts, to assume that the reformers had personal
confidence in Mr. Watson, but did not agree with
him as to the best method of securing remedial
legislation.
This paragraph reminds me that Mr. Bryan was likewise a candidate in
the year 1904.
He ran for the United States Senate in the State of Nebraska, and he
got no votes to speak of. Out of 133 members of the Legislature, he
captured less than a dozen.
The small vote which he received—a vote much smaller than Populists,
Democrats and even Republicans expected him to receive—shows either
that there are few who agree with him as to the course of action to be
pursued, or that they did not have confidence in his leadership. “It is
not only more charitable, but”—and so forth.
Mr. Bryan says that “reforms are not to be secured all at once.” Quite
right; and they will never be secured at all by leaders who change
front as often as Mr. Bryan has done within the last twelve months.
Neither will they be secured by a political party which preaches a
certain creed for eight years and then throws it aside like a worn out
garment. Nor will reforms ever be secured by a party which contains
so many different sorts of Democrats that nobody knows which is the
genuine variety.
_Let the Greenbacks Alone!_
To the right, to the left, in front, in the rear, we are beset by
problems, abuses, critical conditions, wrongs crying for redress,
victims of legislative injustice demanding relief. That a President of
the United States should be blind to so many self-evident conditions,
deaf to so many sounds of suffering, and should go out of his way to
strike at the Greenback currency is a fact to cause astonishment.
What harm is the Greenback doing to anybody? What evil has it ever
wrought?
The approval of Lincoln gave it life; the soldier who fought for the
Union, when Roosevelt was in the cradle, was paid with it; the Union
armies were fed and clothed with it when gold had run off and hid. The
Greenback saved the Government in its hour of need, and it has done
good each day of its life ever since. If we had five times as much of
it as now exists, the country would be twice as well off.
Who is it that hates the Greenback?
The National Banker.
Why?
Because the National Banker would like to have the monopoly of
supplying the paper currency. The Government circulates $346,000,000
Greenbacks; the National Banker circulates $400,000,000 of his own
notes.
The bank-notes earn compound interest for the banker; the Greenbacks
earn no interest at all. Therefore, they compete with the notes of the
banker. They interfere with his business. As long as they exist, he has
no absolute monopoly.
Therefore what?
The National Banker hates the Greenback just as the Standard Oil
detests the independent companies. For the same reason which moves
the Coal Barons, the Beef Trust and the Tobacco Trust to wage
relentless war upon the independent dealer, the money power demands the
suppression of the Greenback. If the National Bankers can destroy the
Greenback, they can fill its place with their own notes. Loaned out at
lawful interest, compounded at the usual periods, they will wring from
the people a yearly tribute of nearly thirty million dollars. In other
words, the country now gets Greenbacks free of charge, whereas the
bank-notes to replace them will cost $30,000,000 per annum. I can see
how this will benefit the bankers; but whom else will it benefit?
One of the strangest hallucinations that ever entered the legislative
mind is that a banker’s note, based on national credit, is good, safe,
sane currency, while the Government’s own note, based on national
credit, is unsafe, unsound and not to be tolerated. The first
legislators who saw the thing that way were probably hired to do it.
The example having been set, ignorance, prejudice and self-interest
helped to swell the numbers of the converts, until now the men who
cling to the belief that a Government note, issued by the Government
itself would be as good as that which it authorizes the banker to
issue, are in a helpless minority.
If the Government buys paper, sets up a press, stamps a note and issues
it as currency, the banker howls “_Rag Money_!” The subsidized editor
takes up the dismal refrain, the limber-kneed politician tunes his
mouth to the echo, the wise men of the academy quit gerund-grinding to
talk finance, and with one accord the orthodox repeat the jeer of “_Rag
Money_,” “_Rag Baby_” and “_Dishonest Dollar_,” until the Government
lets _the banker take the paper, the press, the stamp and issue the
notes as his own_! Then it is all right. The editor’s soul is soothed;
the politician purrs with satisfaction; the savant of the academy
returns to his Greeks and Romans. All is well. The bankers issue their
currency, grow fat on usury, and the principles of high finance are
vindicated. _The paper currency of the Government is a “Rag Baby”; the
paper money of the National Banker is “Sound Money.”_
So, we let the bankers exploit a governmental function to their immense
profit, when the Government could use the function itself, to the
injury of nobody, and to the vast benefit of the people at large. But
if the Government did this thing, the National Banker would lose his
special privilege, his unjust advantage, his huge gains.
Hence, he not only refuses to permit the Government to supply the
country with any more Greenbacks, but he demands the destruction of
those already outstanding. I regret to see President Roosevelt lending
himself to this wicked proposition.
Cleveland, during the whole time he was in office, was hostile to the
Greenbacks and recommended that they be destroyed. Nobody was surprised
at this. In fact, Cleveland had exhausted the capacity of honest men to
be surprised.
But the country hoped for better things from Mr. Roosevelt. He was
thought to be too strong a man to be the blind tool of the National
Bankers.
The Greenback is hurting nobody, is doing great good; its only enemy
is the National Banker, whose motive is sordidly selfish. LET THE
GREENBACK ALONE!
If the President will take the trouble to study for himself the
financial statements issued by his own subordinates, he will discover a
state of things which would otherwise be incredible.
He will find that _the bankers are drawing compound interest on more
money than there is in existence_!
He will find that _they reap usurious revenues from three times as much
money as there is in actual circulation_!
He will find that _they have drawn interest upon seven times as much
money as_ THEY ACTUALLY HAVE!
Under the law of its birth, the Greenback is real money. Like gold
and silver, it comes direct from the Government to the people. If you
burn it, and do not supply its place, _you contract the currency at a
time when such contraction means national disaster_. If you burn the
Greenback, and allow the National Banker to supply its place with his
own notes, then _you rob the people of thirty million dollars annually
and give the spoils to the banker_!
He already earns about $50,000,000 per year on his special privilege of
issuing currency.
_Isn’t that enough?_
He already enjoys the use of one hundred million dollars of the tax
money which _other people pay into the treasury_; and he fattens on the
luxury of getting this money free of interest and of lending it out at
compound interest to the “_other people_.”
_Isn’t that enough?_
And he has filled the channels of trade with his “lines of credit,” his
loans of money which has no existence save in the confidence of his
dupes, _until his yearly income from fictitious money is half as great
as the entire revenues of the Government!_
ISN’T THAT ENOUGH?
The Greenback is the barrier which stands between the National Banker
and absolute financial despotism.
LET IT ALONE!
_En Route to Royalty_
The approaching inauguration of President Roosevelt is to be the most
king-like ceremony ever witnessed on the American Continent.
Three thousand troops of the regular Army, twenty thousand soldiers of
the National Guard, the Cadets from West Point and Annapolis will take
part in the parade, and battleships of the Navy will be ordered to the
Potomac to add to the pompous function.
From the White House to Capitol Hill, Pennsylvania avenue is to be
built up on either side with statuary and decorations and plaster work,
which will at least wear the mask of regal magnificence.
The Government will turn its Pension Bureau out of house and home,
suspending public work, in order that Society’s beaux and belles may
have the most magnificent ball ever known since our Government was
founded.
First and last, directly and indirectly, it is quite within the range
of the probable that the public and private expenditure of money in
connection with Mr. Roosevelt’s inauguration will approach, if not
exceed, a million dollars.
Is it in good taste for the representative of a democratic republic to
give his sanction to such prodigalities as these?
Mr. Roosevelt is bound to know that there are ten millions of his
fellow-citizens, fashioned by the same God out of the same sort of
clay, who are today in want—lacking the necessaries of life.
He is bound to know that in this land, which they tell us is so
prosperous, there are now four million paupers.
He is bound to know that there are at least one million half-starved
children working in our factories, wearing out their little lives at
the wheels of labor, in order that the favorites of class legislation
may pile up the wealth which enables them to dine sumptuously off
vessels of silver and gold.
He is bound to know that in one city of his native State of New York
there are at least half a million of his brother mortals who never have
enough to eat, and that seventy thousand children trudge to the public
schools, hungry as they go.
He is bound to know that all over the Southern States hangs a shadow
and a fear, because an industrious people, whose toil brought forth
a bountiful harvest, are being driven by a remorseless speculative
combine into misery and desperation.
It would have been a proof of excellent judgment if the robust manhood
of Theodore Roosevelt had asserted itself against the snobbery of our
shoddy “Society” in Washington, by reducing the ceremonial of his
inauguration to the modest measure of what was decorous and necessary.
It is no time for ostentatious display of military power or of
ill-gotten wealth. It is no time to be acting the ape of a German
Kaiser or an English King. It is no time to allow free rein to a rotten
Nobility of Money-bags, which seeks to turn the simple swearing-in of
the Chief Servant of a free people—freely chosen by ballot—into a
quasi-royal coronation of an hereditary beneficiary of the monstrous
dogma of Divine Right.
_One_ of Mr. Roosevelt’s predecessors had long been familiar with
courts and princes and kings, and they had filled him with so deep a
contempt for idle, vain and pompous display that when he came to be
inaugurated President of the United States he simply gathered around
him a few of those who were at his hotel, walked with them up Capitol
Hill, took the oath of office before his assembled fellow-citizens and
delivered to them his inaugural address—which still ranks as a classic
in the political literature of the world.
This President was he who broke the power of the Barbary Pirates to
whom Washington had paid tribute. He it was who by the daring seizure
of opportunity gained Louisiana and raised this Republic from its place
as a power of the third class into the dignity of a nation of the first
class, by a sweep of his pen, lifting our Western boundary from the
Mississippi and setting it on the coast line of the Pacific.
His inauguration was simplicity itself, but his administration was full
of the grandeur of great deeds accomplished.
_This was Thomas Jefferson._
_Another_ of Mr. Roosevelt’s predecessors had been _a hero in three
wars_. In the Revolutionary War he had fought bravely, though only a
boy. In the Indian wars he had led armies from the upper Chattahoochee
to the Gulf of Mexico, adding an empire to our domain. In the War of
1812 he had taken the volunteers of the South, and at New Orleans had
whipped the veterans of Wellington as English soldiers had never been
whipped before and have never been whipped since.
Entering civil life, this great soldier dashed himself against the
power of Clay, Webster and Calhoun, triumphing over them all.
Yet when he came to be inaugurated President of the Republic whose
glory and power he had so greatly increased, it contented him to go
quietly from the old Metropolitan Hotel, accompanied by the Marshal of
the District and a volunteer escort, to take the oath of office in the
Senate Chamber, without the slightest attempt at pompous ceremonial.
The great soldier was honored by a salute fired by the local military,
and, with that salute, the function ended.
_This was Andrew Jackson._
I do not say that times have not changed and that customs have not
altered, but I do say that the sober judgment of the judicious,
throughout the country, would have profoundly approved the course of
Mr. Roosevelt had he put the curb upon the snobs and the flunkies and
the imitation courtiers, who are about to distinguish his inauguration
by an excess of military display, ornamental frippery, tommy-rot
formalities and prodigal expenditure of money such as has not been
known since Edward the Seventh was crowned King of England.
_Elucidations_
FADS—Other people’s hobbies.
ALLOWANCE—A sum of money we spend before we get it.
PESSIMIST—A person who is perfectly happy only when
he is perfectly miserable.
HUSH MONEY—The kind that talks most.
A DISTANT RELATIVE—A rich one.
BARGAIN COUNTER—A place where women buy things they don’t
want with money they do want.
WEATHER REPORT—One that is not always verified.
HONEYMOON—The brief period before the novelty wears off.
NOTORIETY—Something that doesn’t last so long as fame,
but brings in more money.
THE SIMPLE LIFE—The existence led by people who invest
in get-rich-quick schemes.
J. J. O’CONNELL.
_The Palace_
BY EDWIN MARKHAM
(Copyright by Edwin Markham in Great Britain)
_Author of “The Man With the Hoe” and other poems_
Once, in a world that has gone down to dust,
I began to build a palace by the sea,
White-pillared, in a garden full of fountains.
The mock-birds in the tall magnolias sang;
And down all ways the Graces and the Joys
Went ever beckoning with wreathing arms.
The chisels and the hammers of the men
Were singing merrily among the stones,
And tower and gable rose against the sky.
A thousand friends,
All hastening to make ready for the feast,
Felt their light bodies whirling in the ball;
Were jesting and roaring at the tables spread
After the masquerade; were sleeping high
In perfumed chambers under the quiet stars;
When, lo! a voice came crying through my heart:
“Leave all thou hast, and come and follow Me!”
Then all at once the hammers and the tongues
Grew still around me, and the multitudes—
The endless multitudes that ache in chains
That we may have our laughter at the wine—
Rose spectral and dark to pass before my face.
I saw the labor-ruined forms of men;
Faces of women worn by many tears;
Faces of little children old in youth.
I left the towers to crumble in the rains,
And waste upon the winds: my old-time friends
Flung out their fleering laughters after me.
I raised a low roof by a traveled road,
And softly turned to give myself to man—
To open wells along a trodden way,
To build a wall against the sliding sand,
To raise a light upon a dangerous coast;
When suddenly I found me in a Palace
With God for Guest!
There in a Palace, fairer than my dream, I dwell:
High company come and go through distant-sounding doors.
_The House in the Jungle_
BY ST. CLAIR BEALL
_Author of “The Winning of Sarenne,” etc._
“We are almost there now, sir; we have passed the last of the
lighthouses.”
The speaker and another man were standing beside the cabin of a
small steamer; they were clad in heavy oilskins, and were sheltering
themselves from the fierce storm that was beating down.
“I don’t see how you can tell,” the other remarked, “or how you can see
anything in this weather!”
“Oh, it’s my business,” was the reply of the first speaker, who was
one of the officers of the ship. “I have been over this same route for
thirty years.”
“What sort of a town is St. Pierre?” inquired the other, a young man,
also heavily wrapped.
“It is not of much consequence,” was the answer. “But—but you don’t
mean to stay there?”
“No,” was the reply. “I am bound for the interior; I shall take a train
tonight, if I can catch it.”
“I should think you would find it rather difficult to get along in
this country,” the other remarked. “You say you don’t speak a word of
French?”
“No,” was the laughing reply. “I chose German when I was at school, and
I don’t know enough of that to hurt me; but where I am going I have a
cousin who is in charge of some of the mines, and I suppose I will get
along if I can find him.”
“You ought not to have any trouble in that,” replied the officer. “The
only railroad depot is very near the wharf.”
The conversation was taking place on board a small coasting steamer,
which was making its way slowly through the darkness and storm into the
port of the little town of St. Pierre, in French Guiana. The solitary
passenger was Henry Roberts, an American, who found himself at last
near the end of a long and tedious journey—half by railroad and half
by steamer—along the South American coast.
“Four days,” he muttered to himself, “and not a soul to speak to but
this one stray fellow-countryman! Between Spanish and French and Dutch
my head is in a whirl. Gee whiz! What a night!”
The exclamation was prompted by an unusually violent gust of wind,
which flung itself around the edge of the cabin and compelled the
passenger to make a precipitate retreat into the hot and ill-lighted
interior. However, it was not very long before his impatience was
relieved. The vessel was slowing up still more, and he hurried up on
deck again, where, from the shouts of the crew, he made out that the
dock was near.
“I wish you luck!” said the officer, as they parted. “I have looked
up a time-table, and there is a train due to leave in about an hour;
it probably won’t start for three or four more, after the fashion of
the country, so you will have plenty of time. You ought to reach your
destination before morning, however.”
And soon afterward Henry Roberts with a satchel in either hand, made
his way across the rickety gangplank and set out as fast as he dared
down the unlighted dock. He was gruffly held up by someone who greeted
him in French, and left him uncertain for a few minutes as to whether
or not he was a highwayman. It proved, however, to be merely a
custom-house officer, and after the usual ceremony of tipping had been
gone through with, the passenger once more set out.
He was half expecting to be greeted by a row of cabmen, but if any such
existed in St. Pierre they had been frightened away by the storm, and
he was compelled to find his way to the station by himself. He found
only a dimly lighted shed, with apparently no person in sight. To his
great relief, however, the train arrived only a short time afterward,
and he made his way into the stuffy car, which was lighted only by an
ill-smelling oil lamp at one end.
There was another long wait before the train finally started, having on
board only one other passenger besides Roberts.
This person was, apparently, either an Englishman or an American—a
tall, slenderly built man with an exceedingly pale face. As he came
into the car very silently and seated himself at the extreme end,
turning away as if to escape observation, Roberts refrained from
attempting to open a conversation with him.
Though he did not understand a word of French, he had the name of his
station firmly settled in his mind and lost no time in impressing it
upon the conductor of the train. When he had made certain that the
latter perfectly understood his meaning he sank back in the seat and
closed his eyes with a peaceful feeling that at last his troubles
were over. The road was, however, a remarkably ill-built one and the
car swayed in such a manner that he found it impossible to secure a
moment’s rest. He fell at last to watching the other passenger.
This person had at first remained with his head sunk forward as if in
thought; but the ride had continued only about half an hour before
Roberts saw that his fellow-traveler was looking up and gazing about
nervously. Several times he leaned forward suddenly, as if to spring to
his feet, but each time he again sank back, and once the American heard
him mutter a subdued exclamation to himself.
He seemed to be growing more and more excited. And then suddenly came
the climax of the whole unusual performance. The man bounded to a
standing position, an expression of the wildest terror on his face. “I
can’t do it!” he gasped, in a choking voice. An instant later he leaped
forward.
There was a window in front of him, and for an instant Roberts thought
that he meant to fling himself from it. But, instead, the man reached
for the bell-rope and gave it a fierce jerk.
The effect was immediate, the train at once beginning to slow up. The
strange man turned and rushed down the car, his eyes gleaming and his
arms waving wildly. “I can’t do it!” he cried again and again. “I can’t
do it!”
In a second or two more he had passed Roberts and bounded out of the
rear door, where he disappeared in the darkness.
At the same time the conductor, who had apparently been on the engine,
came rushing back to ascertain what was the matter. As the two hurried
back to the rear platform Roberts managed to make the man understand
what had occurred.
“The fellow must have been crazy,” Roberts thought to himself, as he
gazed out into the blackness of the night. “At any rate,” he added, “it
is not likely that we will see anything more of him.”
The conductor was evidently of the same opinion, for after several
minutes of waiting and after a consultation with the engineer, the
train was again started and the journey continued.
The conductor signified to Roberts that the next stop was his
destination, and a quarter of an hour later he found himself in the
midst of absolute blackness. The train had started on at once, and the
passenger stood for several minutes uncertain which way to turn, for
there was not a house, nor even so much as a platform beneath his feet.
II
At last, however, as his eyes grew used to the darkness, he managed to
make out what appeared to be some kind of structure nearby, and toward
it he stumbled. It was a small shed, in the shelter of which he stopped.
“Good heavens!” he muttered to himself. “What kind of a town can this
be?”
His cousin had unfortunately not known when he was to arrive, and the
mines, as he knew, were a number of miles away, so he had nothing to
hope for from that quarter.
“Perhaps there is only this shed and the road!” he groaned to himself.
“Not even a hotel!”
There was no sign of one, at any rate, and the storm did not encourage
efforts at exploration. “Perhaps if I give a few yells it will bring
somebody,” thought Roberts.
He reflected that it was as likely to bring a wildcat as anything else,
but he determined to risk the effort. He had scarcely opened his mouth,
however, before his shout was answered; and at the same moment his ear
was caught by the sound of a vehicle behind him.
He waited anxiously. He heard the carriage come to a stop and then a
couple of men walking about. They came toward the shed, and he found
himself confronted by two dark forms, heavily wrapped as a protection
against the storm.
“_Bien venu, monsieur_,” remarked one of the strangers. He extended
his hand, and Roberts, supposing that that might be the custom of the
country, put out his own and exchanged greetings.
“_Monsieur est arrivé?_” continued the other. “_Un très longue voyage!_”
Roberts’s reply to that was only a melancholy shake of his head. “What
in the world did I study German for?” he groaned to himself.
“_Vous ne comprenez pas?_” continued the mysterious Frenchman.
A vigorous shake of the head was the American’s only reply. “Don’t you
speak English?”
The only result was likewise a negative shaking of the head, and the
American gave a groan.
“I want a hotel!” he exclaimed. “Can you tell me where to go? What in
the world am I going to do?”
There was a minute or two more of rather embarrassing silence. Then the
spokesman of the two strangers gave a hearty laugh.
“_Allons!_” he said. “_Cela ne fait rien._”
And, to Roberts’s surprise, he stooped down and picked up one of his
traveling-bags.
“_Allons!_” he cried again. “_Allons!_”
The man took the traveler by the arm and escorted him to the carriage,
which had remained standing in the darkness. In a few seconds more the
American and his baggage were inside and being rapidly driven off down
the muddy road.
“Well, this is an adventure!” thought Roberts to himself. “Either I
have come across some charitable stranger or else the hotel here runs a
stage—I don’t know which to think!”
During the ride the two men made no further attempt to communicate with
him. Roberts heard them speak to each other once or twice in a low
voice, but for the most of the time the drive was made in silence.
“At any rate,” he thought, with a chuckle, “it can’t do me any harm,
and I shall get out of the rain.”
Before the trip was over, however, Roberts found himself beginning
to feel somewhat uncomfortable because of the length of it. “Good
heavens!” he muttered, “it can’t be a hotel this distance away, and for
all I know, I may be going in exactly the opposite direction from the
mines!”
He had already been sitting in the bumping vehicle for an hour when
he made that reflection; however, he was given fully another hour to
ruminate over it before the drive came to an end. Several times he made
an attempt to inquire from the strangers where or how much farther
he was going, but his efforts met with no success, and a “_Soyez
tranquille_,” was all he could get, accompanied by a gentle motion of
pushing him back into the seat.
He had about made up his mind to trouble himself no further when the
carriage suddenly made a sharp turn and came to a stop; one of the men
opened the door and stepped out.
There was a few seconds’ wait, during which several voices were heard
calling outside; and then suddenly Roberts, who was gazing out of the
window with not a little anxiety, caught sight of a light, apparently
in the window of a house. Only a short distance from the carriage a
flood of light suddenly streamed before his eyes, coming from an open
doorway.
He saw several figures moving about, and at the same time the other man
in the carriage sprang quickly out.
“_Nous sommes arrivés!_” he exclaimed. “_Voici!_”
And Roberts lost no time in taking his other satchel and springing out
of the carriage. As he did so he found himself covered by an umbrella
held by a shadowy form near him, and under the protection of this he
hurried up the path and the steps to the house.
By this time more lights had appeared in the windows, and by the single
glance which he had Roberts saw that he was in front of a very large
building, consisting of at least two stories, and with extremely broad
and, at present, brilliantly lighted windows. It was only a few seconds
later before he found himself in the entrance, which he discovered to
be apparently that of an elegant mansion.
“Good gracious!” he thought, “I wasn’t prepared for a house like this!”
But there were still greater surprises in store for him. He found that
on either side of the doorway two domestics were standing, bowing
obsequiously at his entrance. The person who had obligingly covered him
with the umbrella proved to be an attendant, similarly attired, and as
Roberts entered the house one stepped forward for his satchel, and the
other took his rain-soaked hat as he removed it; a second later the
astonished man found himself being graciously relieved of his dripping
overcoat by yet another obliging personage.
In the meantime he was gazing about him; what he saw fairly took his
breath away. He was no more prepared for such things than if he had
been traveling in the wilds of Africa. He found himself in the midst
of a broad, well-lighted hallway, on either side of which opened
splendid parlors containing every conceivable kind of luxurious
appointment—splendid furniture and tapestry, mirrors and pictures.
In the hall he saw a broad, open fireplace, in which a great log was
blazing, casting a glow in every direction.
While Roberts was staring at it, and feeling his heart expand with
satisfaction, one of his traveling companions carrying the other
satchel, had come hurrying into the room. He took off his hat and
flung back his heavy coat, disclosing to the American’s view a rather
stout and short elderly personage, with a gray beard and an extremely
pleasant countenance.
“He looks promising, at any rate,” thought Roberts, “even if I can’t
understand what he says!”
The man, after handing his coat to one of the domestics, bowed
graciously to Roberts with another “_Bien venu, monsieur!_” Then he
signaled the American to make himself comfortable before the fire, and
Roberts lost no time in following his host’s suggestion, as he had been
wet and cold for many hours.
“If this is an inn,” the stranger thought in the meantime—“gee whiz!
but what will the bill be!”
All his belongings had by this time been carried away by the servants
and he was left alone with his obliging host. The latter, after rubbing
his hands a few times before the fire and surveying his guest with
considerable interest, suddenly demanded:
“_Avez-vous faim, monsieur?_”
The American, of course, did not understand that, but he comprehended
the signal a second later, and nodded his head vigorously. The other
called for one of the servants and gave him a command.
The latter signed to Roberts to precede him up the broad staircase
which opened into the hallway, and he soon found himself in front of an
open door which led into a beautifully furnished bedroom. He entered,
and the man followed, closing the door behind him.
Roberts gazed about him with something of a gasp of consternation. Here
also was a grate fire, before which his hat and coat had been hung.
The rest of his baggage had been brought into the room, and lying upon
the bed he found a complete change of clothing, lacking nothing, from
necktie down to evening slippers.
Almost before he had half succeeded in comprehending the state of
affairs the servant, after several profuse bows, had set to work calmly
removing his clothing.
Roberts was not used to a valet, but he concluded to keep the secret as
well as possible and meekly allowed himself to be dressed. Half an hour
later he was completely equipped, and the servant darted briskly to the
door and opened it with an overwhelming bow.
“If this is a hotel, it beats anything New York can show,” was the
traveler’s decision by this time. “And if it is not a hotel, it can
only be a fairy-story!”
However, without troubling his head any further, he followed the
servant down the stairs, at the end of which he found his genial host
awaiting his arrival. The latter immediately took his arm and escorted
him through one of the parlors, at the other end of which a door was
flung open by the servant.
A little dining-room was disclosed to his view—a dining-room so
perfect in all its furnishings that it cost him an effort to restrain
an exclamation. The table was a small one, but was perfectly appointed,
with cut-glass and silver, and there were several small lamps upon it.
There were seats for only two, and after the Frenchman had seated his
guest he himself took the other chair. Then a dinner was served which
was the first respectable meal the American had eaten since he left
home.
He had by this time determined to enjoy himself and let his cousin pay
the bill, if necessary; so he made no attempt to restrain his appetite.
His host evidently expected him to be hungry after his journey, for he
plied him with every conceivable variety of eatables.
“Where in the world can they get them all from?” Roberts thought. “I
have been expecting to live on beans and bacon up at the mines!”
To be sure it was rather an embarrassing meal, from one point of view,
for the utmost in the way of conversation which could be managed was an
occasional exchange of smiles between the two persons. “But if we could
talk there might be an end to this state of affairs!” thought Roberts.
“And I have no mind to be turned out until daylight, anyway.”
By this time his cogitations over the strange condition of things
had resulted in the conclusion that it could not possibly be an inn
to which he had come. “It must be some kind of a private house,” he
thought. “But what in the world is it doing away off up here in this
lonely, God-forsaken country, and what the people want to do with me is
more than I can imagine. I can’t help thinking it is a mistake of some
kind; and I wonder who can live here—surely, not this queer little
fellow, all by himself!”
Roberts had seen no one else except the servants, but this did not seem
strange when he came to think of it, for on the mantelpiece was a clock
which informed him that it was then nearly two in the morning.
“Perhaps I will find out more when day comes,” he thought. “I am safe
for tonight, anyhow, I think.”
And so it proved, for when at last the meal was over, the Frenchman
rose and politely bowed his new acquaintance to the door. There he
summoned one of the servants, again bowed to Roberts with a “_Bonne
nuit, monsieur!_” and, after shaking hands, Roberts turned to follow
the servant up the stairway.
The two made their way into the bedroom which the American had visited
before, and where he found that his baggage had been all unpacked
and neatly stowed away in a bureau in the room. The servant bowed
his departure at the door, which was closed behind him, and then the
astounded stranger sat down on the bed and, as the ludicrousness of the
situation and the whole proceedings flashed over him, he flung himself
back and gave vent to a silent fit of laughter.
“This will certainly be a story to tell if I ever get home again!” he
thought.
But he was too sleepy by this time to trouble himself any further, and
he rose and prepared to make the most of the opportunity afforded him
for slumber. “I guess I will just take off my coat,” he thought, “for I
don’t know when the mistake may be discovered.”
As he performed that operation his hand happened to strike upon his
back-pocket, where he had safely stowed away a small revolver. “If there
_should_ turn out to be anything wrong!” he thought, with a laugh.
All during that evening the man had been racking his brains trying to
think of some possible explanation of his strange reception. During
the drive he had been somewhat alarmed, but his welcome had served to
remove any suspicion of possible danger. But just then, as he gazed
about the room, he suddenly observed something which gave a most
unexpected turn to his thoughts.
The room to which he had been ushered was a large bedroom, perfectly
furnished in every way, and having two broad windows; it was the latter
which suddenly caught Roberts’s eye, and as they did so he experienced a
start of emotion that was very different from his former state.
He had noticed the startling fact that both of the two windows were
protected by heavy iron bars!
For a minute or two Roberts stood gazing at them, scarcely able to
realize the full significance of the discovery. He darted a swift
glance about the room to make sure that he was alone, and then he
sprang quickly forward to test them. He found that they were firmly set
in the heavy masonry of the window-sill, and that they were scarcely
wide enough apart to permit his arms to pass through.
Then the very decidedly sobered American sank back in a chair and again
gazed about him.
“I can scarcely think it means any danger,” he muttered to himself,
“for I am unable to think what kind of danger it could be—but yet, it
is most extraordinary!”
Suddenly another idea came to his mind and brought him to his feet
with a jump. He sprang toward the door, and as he approached it half
instinctively he began stepping more quietly until as he neared it he
was advancing on tiptoe.
“One of those fellows in livery may be outside,” he thought.
Then he took hold of the knob and very softly and silently turned it.
When it was turned all the way he gave a slight push at the door, which
opened outward.
And as he did so he felt the blood rush to his forehead and his breath
almost stopped. He flung his weight against the door violently, but it
did not move. Almost overcome with his discovery, he staggered back
against the wall.
“By Jove!” he panted, “I am locked in!”
III
Roberts began pacing very anxiously up and down the floor of the room.
He did not continue that for very many minutes, however, before he
stopped abruptly and again seated himself in the chair.
“There is something wrong here,” he muttered, “mighty wrong! But I
don’t want them to know I have discovered it.”
He sat for several minutes with his head in his hands, gazing straight
in front of him, his mind in a perfect tumult. He was absolutely
without any possible idea as to what that state of affairs could mean
or what object his mysterious host could possibly have in taking him
prisoner.
“There is one comfort, however,” he muttered. “Heaven is to be thanked
for that!”
He took the revolver from his pocket as he muttered the words; all of
its chambers were loaded, and he put it back into his pocket with a
slight chuckle of satisfaction.
“I guess they didn’t count on that. They have got me in here, but it’ll
be another thing to get me out!”
There was but very little idea of sleep left in his mind. When at last
he had decided that there was no solving the mystery with the few facts
that he knew, he began stealthily moving about the room and examining
everything in it.
Directly at the head of the bed he found a handsome portiere hanging,
and as he reached behind this he discovered that there was another door
to the apartment.
“Perhaps they haven’t locked that,” he thought. “I wonder where it
leads to?”
He slipped in behind the curtain and proceeded to test that door also.
He set about the matter with the utmost caution, for by this time he
was firmly convinced that it was more than likely that someone was
keeping watch outside of his room.
The prisoner had really very little idea of finding the door unlocked;
he did not think it likely that his captors would have neglected that
precaution, and he was thoroughly prepared to spend the rest of the
night in his prison. Such being the case, his surprise and delight may
be imagined when, upon turning the knob and pushing softly, he found
the door giving way before him.
His heart was thumping with excitement as he made this discovery, and
inch by inch he opened the barrier wider. He could see nothing, for
the curtain back of him shut out the light from his own room and the
next apartment appeared absolutely dark. However, when it was opened
wide enough for him to slip in, Roberts stole cautiously forward, and
was soon standing on the floor of the other room. All about him was
absolutely dark and silent, but he groped around him for some distance
before he finally concluded to go back and get a little light.
From a notebook in his pocket he tore several pages, which served him
for a small taper; and by this he made the discovery with consternation
that the apartment into which he had come was a tiny cell, not more
than fifteen feet square. There was a square window, high up from the
ground and heavily barred. By the faint light which he had Roberts saw
that the walls of the place were all stone, and that the door through
which he had come was composed of iron!
“Great heavens!” he gasped. “I am in a fearful trap, as sure as I’m
alive!”
He gripped his revolver in his hand, turned, and once more crept back
into his own room to wait. However, he found that everything there was
as silent as before, and after some little meditation over the problem
he removed several more pages from his notebook and set out for another
exploration.
He had noticed on the other side of that tiny cell another door,
exactly like the first. “I wonder where that leads?” he thought; and
this time he twisted his tiny taper so as to make it last longer, and
then again crept forward.
He darted across the stone floor and paused before the other iron door.
There was a keyhole there through which he could see a light shining,
but he could make out nothing by peering through. After pausing and
listening for several seconds and hearing absolutely no sound of any
kind, he determined upon a bold expedient.
“I am here,” he thought, “probably for good. I am likely to have a
fight whenever I try to get out, so it might as well be now as any
time, for it will be an advantage to take the other people unawares.”
And his mind once made up on that point Roberts softly turned the knob
of the door. As he did so he pushed against it; but it did not yield.
There was another effect, however, one which caused him to give a start
of alarm. The sound he had made had evidently been heard, for on the
other side he heard a soft exclamation and then a footstep in the room.
“That settles it!” Roberts murmured. “They have heard me!”
He pushed at the door still harder and then gave a savage lunge; but
the barrier remained firm, and he knew that it was locked.
At the same instant the sound of moving became much more distinct, and
Roberts, without a second’s hesitation, turned and sprang back toward
his own room. “It is better to be caught there than here,” he thought
in a flash.
But before he had taken half a dozen steps he was stopped by a new and
unexpected development. He heard a voice behind him, coming through the
crack in the door he had been trying.
“Who’s there?” it cried. “Who’s there?”
And the words were in English!
The voice was a low whisper. In an instant it occurred to Roberts that
this might be a friend, a prisoner like himself! He turned and crept
back toward the door.
“Who are you?” he cried.
His heart was beating so wildly with the excitement that he could
scarcely hear the reply of the other person, who still whispered in a
very low tone.
“An American,” was the reply. “Are you?”
“Yes,” said Roberts, “I am.”
“And have they got you, too?” panted the other breathlessly.
“Yes,” answered Roberts, “they have got me. What in the world does it
mean?”
“I don’t know,” said the other, “I haven’t an idea!”
“Do you mean that you are kept prisoner here without knowing why?”
“Yes, without the faintest idea; absolutely!” came the breathless
whisper from the keyhole. “Don’t talk too loud, or they will hear you,
and then heaven knows what fearful things may happen to you! How long
have you been here?”
“I only came tonight,” Roberts whispered. “And you?”
As he heard the reply it was all he could do to keep his balance; he
clutched at the rough stone wall to sustain himself. The man’s voice
was reduced almost to a moan as he answered:
“I have been here twenty years!”
IV
Every drop of blood seemed to leave Roberts’s face, and his head fairly
swam.
“Twenty years!” he gasped to himself. “In heaven’s name, what can it
mean?”
Those words seemed to him to cap the climax of the night’s experiences,
and he stood as he was for fully a minute without speaking or asking
another question of the inmate of the other room. When suddenly the
silence was broken, it was by the other.
“Are you sure no one has heard you?” panted the man.
Roberts sprang to his feet and crept swiftly toward his own room. He
peered out around the front of the bed, but a single glance was enough
to show him that the door was still shut, and that there was no longer
any sign of trouble. Then once more he came back and stooped before the
keyhole.
“Tell me,” he gasped breathlessly, “tell me your story. How did it
happen? Where were you?”
“I lived in Caracas, in Venezuela,” the other responded. “I was in
business there for years. One day I was surprised in my own house by
three men, who overpowered me and drove me away in a carriage. They
drugged me in some way or other, for the next time I knew anything I
was a prisoner in this room.”
“And you have stayed there ever since?” panted Roberts, almost beside
himself with horror.
“For twenty years!” the man responded.
“And you have made no attempt to get out?”
“What good would it do?” cried the other. “They have iron bars for all
the windows and they keep my door locked.”
“How do they pass you food?” inquired Roberts. “They must open the
door.”
“Why, yes,” the man answered, “they open the door, but what good does
that do? There are always a half-dozen men standing in the doorway, and
they would overpower me if I made any resistance.”
As Henry Roberts listened to that narrative he could scarcely believe
the evidences of his own senses. He had long ago given up any attempt
to think what could be the explanation of this extraordinary state of
affairs. He made one more attempt upon the door, but that apparently
caused the utmost terror to the other man.
“You can’t do it,” he said. “It is locked, and that Frenchman has the
key.”
“What Frenchman?” asked Roberts.
“The man who is in charge of this place,” said the other. “The one
whose prisoner I am.”
“Is he a short, stout man, with gray hair?”
“Yes,” was the reply, “that is he.”
Roberts shuddered involuntarily.
“Oh, don’t speak of him!” continued the other breathlessly. “He is a
fiend! A perfect fiend!”
“What did he do?” panted Roberts.
“I cannot tell you all,” was the reply. “It would be too horrible. He
is the master of this place and it is he who keeps me prisoner. On no
account resist him or cry out for help—it is utterly useless.”
Roberts felt a grim smile cross his face as he heard those words; he
clutched his revolver tightly.
“I will risk it,” he thought. “They will have to open that door to give
me some food!”
“They never fail to watch this door,” the voice whispered in response
to an inquiry from Roberts. “They will hear me and come in here, and
then—then——”
There was an instant or two of silence, during which Roberts waited
for the man to continue. But he did not do so. For suddenly the deep
silence which reigned through the place was broken by a different
sound, one that made the American’s hair fairly rise. It was as if the
teeth of the other man were chattering audibly.
“They are coming!” he whispered in a low gasp, as if he were trying
to speak but dared not. And then a second later Roberts’s ears were
smitten by a loud, piercing scream. He heard the man bound to his feet.
“No! no!” he shrieked. “Stop! You shall not! It was not my fault!”
At the same instant came the sound of several muffled footsteps about
the room, and, in another voice, several words which Roberts could not
understand.
The agonized screams of the other person grew louder and louder,
accompanied by sounds which told plainly of a struggle. They lasted for
only a few seconds, however, and then came a crash and all was silent.
During that incident Henry Roberts had remained crouching at the door,
too horrified to move, but, as the sounds died away, for the first time
he thought of his own peril and was on his feet with a single spring.
He turned and dashed across the floor of the cell. But even as he did
so he realized that the few seconds’ hesitation had cost him everything.
The curtain of his bedroom was suddenly pushed aside, and a hand reached
in to grasp the door. Like a flash Roberts swung up his revolver and
leveled it, but before he could pull the trigger the iron barrier shut
to with a clang that seemed to shake every portion of the man’s body.
He was a prisoner in the cell!
The American leaned back against the wall, where he stood panting for
breath and clutching his weapon, staring about him wildly and striving
to pierce the darkness. The effort was vain, however, and the absolute
silence that prevailed afforded him not the slightest clue as to what
was going on.
He realized with a sinking heart what an advantage he had lost by
failing to take possession of the large room where he had a light. But
even as he was, with his revolver in his hand, he concluded, after a
few swift thoughts, that his case was not entirely hopeless.
“They will have to open the door some time,” he gasped, “and they may
not know that I have got a revolver.”
There was, however, the fearful possibility that his mysterious captor
might see fit to starve him out. The American realized that he would be
absolutely helpless before that.
“But there is a window,” he thought; “perhaps I can shout and attract
attention.”
Prompted by that thought, he felt his way along the wall until he
reached the opening in question. He raised himself up and peered
between the bars; but it was only to make one more discovery. The
window was closed by an iron shutter or drop, which resisted all his
efforts to move it.
“And I am in here without a breath of air!” he thought.
The whispered words had scarcely passed his lips before the last
climax of his mysterious experiences arrived. Suddenly a strange smell
attracted his attention, and as he discovered the cause he gave a gasp
of despair.
The room was slowly filling with a gas!
Roberts even then fancied that he could hear the sound of it entering
through some pipe which he could not find. Every second that certainty
was made more and more plain to him, and he darted forward perfectly
beside himself with desperation. He flung himself savagely against
the iron door, but it seemed to laugh at his efforts. He seized the
knob and tugged savagely, but with no effect. He stooped down at the
keyhole, hoping in that way to escape the new and horrible fate, but he
found that it also had been closed, and as he rushed across the room to
the other door exactly the same experience was repeated.
In the meantime he had, of course, been breathing the poisoned air of
the tiny cell. The deadly fumes were becoming stronger and stronger,
causing him to gasp and his head to reel. Twice more he threw all
his weight against the door in vain, and then, clutching the knob to
sustain himself, he stood for a second or two, swaying this way and
that, gasping and striving to hold his breath to keep out the choking
vapor.
Then everything reeled before him, and he found himself clutching
wildly in every direction. The revolver dropped from his helpless
grasp, and a second later he pitched forward upon the floor of his
cell. At the very same instant one of the doors was flung open and
a flood of light poured into the place. It was the last thing he
perceived as consciousness left him.
V
How long a time Roberts remained unconscious after he had been
overpowered in the room of the mysterious house it was impossible for
him to say. When his senses returned to him he was in a sort of stupor.
As one half awake he became conscious of being carried about by someone.
He was too dazed to think about his situation or to realize what had
occurred to him, nor was he even conscious of the lapse of time; but
gradually his senses came back to him more and more, to a recognition
of his terrible plight in the hands of mysterious enemies in the midst
of that wild country.
With what little strength he had he tried to raise himself, and found
that both his hands and feet were tightly bound; also a bandage was
tied tightly about his eyes, so that he could not see anything. He was
too weak to make any outcry, and could only give himself up helplessly
to his captors.
Several times he heard people speaking in his neighborhood, but as the
language was still French he obtained no clue as to what had happened
to him in the meantime.
“At any rate,” he thought, “it is something to be alive—_that_ is more
than I expected.”
It was not long after this he was picked up again by two men, who
apparently carried him down a flight of steps. By this time Roberts had
recovered his wits and was anxiously trying to discover any signs as to
his whereabouts.
He heard the door open, and then a fresh breeze told him that he was
being carried out of the house.
“I wonder what in the world is going to happen to me now,” he thought
to himself.
Again he made an effort to free his hands, but it was of no use with
the little strength he had. His head was aching, and he was completely
exhausted by the ordeal through which he had passed.
From the footsteps of the men who were carrying him he made out that
they were passing next down a gravel walk. At the same time, nearby,
he heard what he took to be the stamping of horses. “Perhaps it is the
same place where they took me in before,” he thought. However, that did
him no good, as he had been brought to the house in the darkness of a
stormy night and had seen nothing of the neighborhood.
His surmise was correct, however, for the men raised him and placed him
in a carriage. Two of them sprang in and the horses started rapidly
down the road.
Then was repeated the same experience as before, the long ride over the
roughest of roads. Roberts was completely helpless, and was flung this
way and that upon the seat. Perhaps the jarring helped to revive his
faculties, however, for when the trip was over he was fully alert.
During the ride the two men who were in the carriage whispered to each
other occasionally; but the conversation was in French, as before, and
the American could understand nothing. It was a weary journey, but it
came to an end at last. The carriage stopped, the two men sprang out,
and then again he felt himself lifted and carried away.
“I will pretty soon know what is going to happen to me,” he muttered to
himself.
He was taken only a short distance before he was set down by the two
men, who stepped aside and held a whispered conversation. Then suddenly
he heard them walking away again, and a minute or two later he heard
the carriage start. It sped rapidly away, and in a half-minute more was
out of hearing, the American being left alone in absolute silence and
without any further clue as to what was taking place or where he was.
He lay there for fully half an hour, waiting impatiently for the next
development. He grew more and more impatient, and finally summoned all
his strength in an effort to free his hands. “Perhaps it will do me no
good,” he thought, “but I would like everlastingly to make a fight for
it.”
His astonishment may be imagined when, at the very first effort, the
rope which bound him parted and left his hands free!
He was scarcely able to realize it for a moment, and lay with his
hands still behind his back, trying to grasp the fact that he was at
liberty, or partially so, at any rate. His heart gave a great bound of
joy. There was no doubt, however, that his enemies were nearby, and the
thought made him cautious.
Slowly and silently he raised his hands to his head and grasped the
handkerchief which still bound his eyes. It was only loosely tied, and
a single pull was sufficient to remove it. The eagerness with which he
glanced about him may be imagined. The first sight that met his eyes
was the stars; then, realizing that in the darkness he was not so
likely to be observed, he bent swiftly forward to the rope that bound
his feet.
This, too, he found but loosely tied, and it took him but a few seconds
to loosen it, after which he turned his head anxiously and glanced
about him. He found himself, apparently, in the midst of an open
country, in the shadow of a tall tree. What surprised him most of all
was the fact that he saw nothing to indicate that anyone was near.
“They do not seem very careful to guard me,” Roberts thought, “after
all the pains they took to capture me.”
However, there was no time to spend in debating that question. His only
thought was to make the most of his opportunity and escape from that
spot as quickly as possible.
He raised himself and began silently to make his way along the ground.
He was still weak, but for all that he managed to make good time. As he
crept along he found that he was on a road, and his first impulse was
to reach the thicket at one side. Once in the shade of this he rose to
his feet, considerably emboldened by his success. He still saw no one
and heard no sounds to indicate that his escape had been discovered, so
he set out somewhat more boldly, creeping through the underbrush.
He was almost beside himself with delight at his sudden and unexpected
good fortune. He knew that every step he took was carrying him more and
more to safety, for the nature of the country told him that it would be
almost impossible for his enemies, whoever they might be, to find him
again. “It was a terrible experience,” he thought to himself. “This end
of it seems almost like an anti-climax.”
When he was far enough away to be sure that there was no danger of his
steps being heard he broke into a run, nor did he stop until he was
completely exhausted.
By that time he knew that he had put fully half a mile of the dense
jungle between himself and any possible pursuers. He sat down on the
ground to recover his breath and think over the strange situation.
“Perhaps I shall never come to an explanation,” he thought, “or find
out what that strange Frenchman wanted with me.”
As he turned the matter over in his mind, however, there was one thing
about which he made up his mind definitely, and that was that if he
ever succeeded in reaching his cousin, he would never cease his efforts
to find out all about that mysterious house, and to inform the proper
authorities about the unfortunate captive who was detained there. “I
guess I will have a hard time finding him, though,” Roberts thought.
“Perhaps I have only exchanged one danger for another, as I have pretty
well lost myself in this thicket.”
It was just then he chanced to notice that a heavy package had been
stuffed into one of the pockets of his coat. He found it was a paper
parcel, which he took out and examined with not a little curiosity. He
found that his enemies, as if anticipating his escape, had provided him
with a supply of food!
Again he put his hand to his pocket, and, discovering something else,
proceeded to examine it. There were two pieces of paper, and he struck
a match to examine them. One, as he found to his utter consternation,
was a French bank-note of the value of five hundred francs!
That discovery almost overwhelmed him. He sat gazing in silent wonder
at the paper until the match went out. Then he struck another and
proceeded to examine the other piece of paper, which he found was a
note addressed to him in English:
SIR—It was all mistake. We thought you
were somebody other. We are sorry. We inclose money
to pay you for your time and loss of——
As Roberts read the last word he gave a gasp. Then he swung his hand up
to his head and found to his horror that the statement of the letter
was only too true. The word was _hair_, and every particle of it had
been shaved from his head!
If anything had been needed to complete Roberts’s amazement at his
strange adventure, this would have done it. He sat where he was for
fully five minutes, alternately feeling for his missing locks and
examining the bank-note and the lunch.
“All a mistake!” he muttered to himself. “Took me for someone else!”
The first thought that came to Roberts after that was a renewal of his
resolution to probe the mystery to the bottom.
“Mistake or no mistake,” he thought, “those villains intended a
horrible fate for someone—and they have got that other wretched
prisoner in there yet. I am going to find out what it means or die in
the attempt!”
And it was with determination in his mind that Henry Roberts at last
raised himself to his feet once more. He tucked the note and bank-bill
away in his pocket and wrapped up the food.
“At first, I thought it might have been poisoned,” he observed, “but I
guess that is not very likely under the circumstances. It may come in
very handy, for all I can tell.”
He had now made up his mind that there was no longer any chance of his
being pursued, and he saw very plainly that his enemies had taken him
to the lonely spot and left him with the intention of allowing him to
free himself, as he had done.
“However, they probably took pains to lose me,” he thought, “so that I
could not come back to revenge myself.”
As this thought entered his mind, Roberts instinctively put his hand to
his back-pocket where his revolver had been. Sure enough, he found that
it had not been returned to him.
“A wise precaution!” he muttered.
His first purpose now was, of course, to get back to the road, so that
he might find some kind of habitation.
“I must get to the mines, and get my cousin to help me,” he thought.
The task seemed likely to be a difficult one, for in the darkness
Roberts had no way of telling which way he had come. It was by no means
a pleasant prospect, that of getting lost in the jungle country.
“If I had only thought to examine my pockets before I did all that
running!” he exclaimed.
He could not help laughing at the thought of his wild dash and the
extreme caution and anxiety with which he had freed himself. However,
his amusement did not last very long; for once more the terrified cries
of the unfortunate prisoner crossed his mind. The last words which he
had heard from the man were still ringing in his ears.
“Twenty years!”
He started to make his way back through the jungle in the direction
where he hoped to find the road he had left. He trudged on for a
considerable time, getting more and more involved in the tangled vines
of that swampy region. Finally he concluded that there was nothing else
for him to do but wait until the dawn. There was no means of telling
what wild animals might be near, and he was haunted with the fear of
disturbing some serpent. At last he determined on climbing one of the
high trees. From this vantage point he found that he had not much
longer to wait. Already the first streaks of dawn were visible in the
east.
His tree was one of the tallest in the dense forest, and as soon as
it was light he caught sight of a slight opening in the trees, where
he discovered the long-sought road, winding up the hillside in front.
Without a minute’s hesitation he climbed to the ground and set out
through the thicket. No shipwrecked mariner was ever more relieved at
the sight of land. “If I get to the road, I am pretty sure to find
someone in the end.”
Twice he took the precaution to climb a tree to make sure that he was
on the right track, and at last he came out upon the thoroughfare. A
single glance was sufficient to tell him that a carriage had passed
over it since the recent heavy rain, and he concluded that this was the
road over which he had been taken.
He sat down for a short while to rest and think over the situation. “I
am going to set out and walk until I come to some place,” he decided
finally. “The only question is in which direction to go.”
He had nothing to guide him, and he finally decided haphazard and set
out tramping. He found out that the fresh air and the excitement of
his escape had served to remove almost all the effects of his recent
unpleasant experience.
“I have lost nothing,” he thought, “except my hair and my baggage!”
The latter had been taken into the mysterious house, and that was the
last Roberts had seen of it; as he thought the matter over, however,
he concluded that in all probability the Frenchmen had left it with
him when they drove away. “And I ran away and left it!” he laughed.
“Anyway, I have got a hundred dollars to pay for it.”
The road was so rough as to be almost as difficult as the thicket.
Winding in and out through the dense jungle, sometimes completely
covered by the interlacing trees and vines, it seemed as if it might
run on forever.
“But there must be some house along it!” the man muttered grimly. “If I
can only find somebody to direct me to the mines!”
The sun rose until at last it was beating down fiercely upon the
traveler. It was long after high noon when at last he made out the
first sign that he had gained anything by his mountain journey. There
came one hill much higher than the rest; as he reached the summit and
glanced around him, he saw a slender column of smoke rising from the
midst of the dark trees.
“A house at last!” he cried, and set swiftly forward.
He kept his wits about him, however, not forgetting that he was in the
midst of a strange country. As he descended the hill the smoke passed
out of sight, and he did not again observe it until he was almost upon
the house from which it proceeded.
He took the precaution to turn from the road and make his way through
the thicket, where the tropical vegetation was so dense about him that
he could see nothing in front of him even, when various sounds led
him to believe that he was almost upon the house. And so it was that
suddenly, without the slightest warning, he came to the end of the
bushes, and the building rose before his very eyes.
From a spot a few yards to one side the road still stretched onward,
but it had broadened out into a smooth avenue, lined on either side
with great forest trees. Beneath them was a well-kept lawn, and
perhaps a hundred yards beyond at the end of the avenue was a building,
a great mansion, three stories high, and built of handsome stone.
A single glance at it, and the American staggered back with a gasp. It
was the house of his recent adventure!
VI
Roberts’s first impulse was to spring back into the bushes and crouch
down to prevent his being observed. There he lay peering out and
watching the scene.
There was no doubt about the house being the same one, for besides the
improbability of there being two such houses in that dense wilderness,
he had seen from the lights the general outline of the house on the
night he had been first taken there. If he had any doubt, a discovery
he made a short time after was sufficient to remove it.
Two sides of the great structure were visible to him from where he was,
and he saw that all the windows were protected with iron bars!
He ran his eye over the whole building with considerable curiosity.
Except for the bars above mentioned, it was a most inviting-looking
structure, having broad piazzas around it covered with vines and
growing plants and a beautiful garden in front. It was situated upon
a high elevation, and, even from where he was, Roberts could see
the broad view stretching beyond on the other side. But the thought
uppermost in his mind while he lay watching the place was less of all
this than of the wretched American whom he had left there.
He had not been there more than five minutes before he saw the door in
front of the broad avenue open and a man step out. A single glance at
the figure was enough to tell him that it was the little Frenchman who
had welcomed him on the night he had been brought there.
“You scoundrel!” Roberts thought, clenching his hands. “I should like
to get hold of you!”
The man had a cigar in his mouth, and began sauntering up and down the
piazza. Roberts had the pleasure of watching him for a considerable
time at this occupation, and then he came out and fell to examining the
flowers in front of the house.
In the meantime the American was thinking over his situation and trying
to make up his mind what to do. He was not willing to risk any further
explorations of the place by himself; and yet, on the other hand, he
dreaded retracing that long walk on the road.
“Perhaps it goes on,” he thought, “and perhaps I can find another house
beyond.”
He stole back into the bushes and made a circuit of the broad grove to
investigate. He found, however, that the road apparently led only to
the mansion and that he was confronted with the necessity of retracing
his steps the entire day’s journey.
“Perhaps they left me near some place,” he thought, “and I would have
been all right if I had only waited for daylight!”
Weakened by his unpleasant experiences, Roberts was not prepared to
undertake that trip immediately. It was then well on toward sunset, but
he resolved to rest several hours, at any rate.
He crept back into the bushes a short distance to make himself safe
from discovery and stretched himself out to rest. Several hours passed
in that way, and then, as darkness once more settled upon the place,
he crept forward for a closer view of the house before leaving it. He
had not taken very many steps, however, before something occurred which
caused him to stop abruptly. He could see, through the bushes, the
lights shining out from one or two of the windows. Suddenly, his ears
were caught by a confused sound of voices. He sprang forward to the
edge of the bushes and gazed out just in time to witness an exciting
scene.
The doorway was open and a flood of light was pouring out. In the
doorway several men were struggling violently.
At that very instant one of the voices cried out in English: “Help!
Help!” And to his consternation Roberts recognized the voice as the
same he had heard through the keyhole of his cell! It was the American
prisoner!
As Roberts realized this, all thought of caution left him. With a yell
he leaped forward and bounded across the lawn at the top of his speed.
The rest happened so quickly that Roberts had no time to think. He saw
the figures silhouetted in the light of the doorway, one man making a
desperate struggle against two or three others. Roberts reached the
foot of the steps leading up to the piazza at the very same instant
that another figure came dashing around the corner of the porch, crying
out excitedly in French. He recognized both the voice and form as those
of the hated master of the house.
It was the opportunity for which he had been wishing. He flung himself
upon the man, and before the latter had time even to throw up his hands
dealt him a blow with all the power of his arm, catching him in the
chest and sending him reeling backward; then, with a shout of
encouragement, he turned and dashed toward the doorway.
He was in the very nick of time, for the other prisoner, who had been
making a gallant fight for his liberty, was now almost overpowered by
the men. Roberts recognized them as the same servants who had welcomed
him upon his entrance. Several others were rushing down the hallway to
join in the struggle, when he flung himself through the doorway. One of
the men had pinned the unfortunate prisoner to the wall, but Roberts
dealt him a blow that sent him flying backward. The others turned with
a cry of alarm, at the same time loosening their hold upon the prisoner.
And the latter whirled like a flash, and before Roberts had time to
shout to him had dashed out of the doorway and down the steps of the
building. His rescuer paused only long enough to repel a furious
onslaught, and then he, too, turned and rushed away into the darkness.
“Run! Run!” he yelled to the man he had helped. “Run for your life!”
There was no need of the exhortation. The man was fairly flying over
the ground, making for the thicket beyond.
Roberts heard footsteps behind him and glanced over his shoulder in
time to see that his danger was by no means over. It seemed as if
his shout must have alarmed the whole house. Half a dozen men had
poured out of the doorway and were in full pursuit of the fugitives.
The nearest of them, who had been rushing up to join in the fight as
Roberts turned, were only a few yards behind.
Roberts knew that all depended upon his being able to get away into
the thicket, for he was by no means strong enough for a long race. The
other man seemed able to run faster, and was leaving his rescuer behind.
“Oh, if I only had my revolver!” he said to himself.
As it was, he expected some of the men to fire upon him. Before there
was time for this, however, the race was over and lost. To the edge
of the bushes was a matter of only a few seconds; the first man
disappeared and Roberts followed, when suddenly a tangled vine in his
path caught his foot and brought him to earth with a blow so violent
that it almost stunned him. Not two seconds later Roberts felt a heavy
body fling itself upon him and heard a voice crying out in the now too
familiar French.
He tried to struggle to his feet once more to grapple with his
assailant, but his efforts were in vain, for the latter’s cries had
brought several more to the spot, and before he was able to realize it
Roberts was again a helpless prisoner.
His cries were stopped by one of the men flinging his coat about his
head; then two others picked him up by the arms and feet and set out to
carry him.
He was so breathless and dazed by what had occurred that he was
scarcely able to realize his plight. Once more a prisoner in the hands
of the mysterious Frenchman!
“Of course, they will take me straight back to the house,” he thought,
and in this he found that he was not mistaken. From the sounds that
reached his ears he knew that a crowd had gathered about those who were
carrying him, and suddenly, above all the excited cries, Roberts heard
a voice that he recognized as that of the master.
“_Vous l’avez?_” he cried excitedly. “_Bien!_”
Roberts did not know the meaning of the words, but the Frenchman’s
delight was sufficiently manifested by the tone of the voice. The
American’s heart sank as he thought of what was before him.
“He won’t let me off so easily this time!” he thought. “I am not sorry
I whacked him, all the same, and at least that other fellow will
escape!”
He was borne swiftly forward by the men; from the sounds of the
footsteps he knew that they were on the gravel walk once more. Then
they mounted the steps of the piazza, and through an opening in the
coat that was still flung over his head he made out the light of the
doorway. At the same time he heard the voice of the Frenchman and was
borne into the hallway again. The door shut behind him. It sounded like
a death-knell in his ears.
“Probably they will take me back to that very same cell,” he thought.
And then suddenly two of the men seized him by his arms, and the rest
released their hold, leaving him standing upon his feet. The coat was
flung from off his face, and he stood before his captors.
Roberts found himself in the very same hallway as on the previous
occasion, surrounded by the very same servants, and in the presence of
the very same master. All this was exactly what he had expected, and
nothing of it surprised him. But there was one new circumstance, one
that left him almost dazed with consternation—the action of the crowd
of men the instant they caught sight of him.
The master himself, having apparently recovered from the blow which
Roberts had dealt him, was standing in front of his prisoner; as he got
a glimpse of his face he staggered back with an exclamation, and burst
into a roar of laughter! He began to shake all over with uncontrollable
merriment, and finally he sank back against the wall, apparently
scarcely able to stand.
Nor were his assistants less strangely affected—they, too, gazed at
the prisoner, and then went likewise into spasms of laughter. Everyone
in the hall was soon joining in the uproar, and two men who were
holding Roberts were so overcome that they let go their hold of him!
The puzzled man found himself alone and free once more, but he was so
amazed that he could only stand and stare about him.
It would not be possible to describe his perplexity. The little
Frenchman, now apparently not in the least alarmed by the fact that
his prisoner was free, lay back in a chair near the fireplace, almost
purple in the face with laughter. And this situation continued for
fully two minutes more before the man, seeing Roberts’s amazement, rose
to his feet and came toward him.
“_Monsieur!_” he began, making a desperate effort to control his
laughter. “_Monsieur! Une très grande bévue!_”
Then seeing from the expression on Roberts’s face that the remark was
not understood, he again went into an explosion of merriment.
“_J’ai oublié!_” he gasped. “_Vous ne comprenez pas_——”
Yet, though Roberts did _not_ understand, there was one thing which
these things did make plain to him, and which brought him a vast
relief. This farce, whatever it was, was at least not going to turn out
a tragedy for him.
He stood as he was in the centre of the hallway watching the crowd.
When the first burst of laughter had passed away they remained eagerly
talking to each other, glancing at him occasionally and gesticulating.
The little Frenchman, who seemed not to have the slightest enmity
toward Roberts for having knocked him down, was still standing in front
of him, laughing excitedly and trying to make himself understood. As
he only continued to shake his head the Frenchman gave a gesture of
despair. Suddenly, however, a thought seemed to strike him, and he
whirled about and called to one of the men.
“_Jacques!_” he exclaimed. “_Appelez Jacques!_”
Immediately one of the men turned and darted out of the door. It was
only a few seconds later before another man entered the room and toward
him the excited little Frenchman rushed. Still shaking with merriment
he began an excited conversation, glancing occasionally at Roberts. In
a few seconds the newcomer was also convulsed with hilarity.
“_Parlez-lui, Jacques!_” cried the master of the house excitedly.
“_Vite!_”
And the man came toward Roberts, his face strained with suppressed
laughter.
“Sir!” he stammered, scarcely able to speak. “Sir, I explain!”
“Go ahead,” said Roberts, who by this time had begun to feel the
laughter contagious. “Hurry up, for heaven’s sake!”
The Frenchman paused for a few seconds, evidently collecting his scanty
knowledge of English; then he turned toward the master of the house.
“Sir,” he said, making a profound bow, “I introduce—I introduce you
the Dr. Anselme.”
The little Frenchman in turn made a profound bow; at the same time a
sudden idea flashed across Roberts.
The two men, who were watching him closely, glanced at each other
and again began laughing uproariously. Then again Jacques began his
laborious explanation, pausing very long between words.
“This house,” he said, “this house—it is—it is _une—une_—what is de
word? _Une hôpital_——”
Again the man stopped and gazed into the air. In the meantime, however,
Roberts’s brain had been working, and a possible explanation of his
extraordinary adventures with Dr. Anselme had flashed over him.
“A hospital!” he cried, “an asylum!”
“_Oui, oui, monsieur!_” cried the man excitedly.
“There was one man coming,” he continued excitedly, “one——”
“Patient?” suggested Roberts.
“_Oui, oui!_” exclaimed the other. “One patient! He was to come——”
But the man did not finish his sentence. At that moment there came
the sound of rolling carriage-wheels, and Dr. Anselme made a sudden
start for the door and flung it open just as the carriage stopped and
a man bounded up the steps of the porch. The little doctor, still
half convulsed with laughter, dragged him into the house and began an
excited conversation with him. In a moment or two the latter turned to
Roberts. He began to speak in fluent English, keeping from giving way
to laughter by a violent effort.
“Sir,” he said, “my brother wishes me to explain—I have arrived just
in time.”
“For heaven’s sake!” cried Roberts in relief. “Talk on, and tell me
what is the matter!”
“It is a most extraordinary blunder,” said the newcomer. “You have
escaped a dangerous surgical operation by the merest chance!”
Roberts placed his hand on his bald head, and everyone in the hallway
gave a roar of laughter.
“Yes,” said the other, “that is it. My brother is a well-known
specialist in mental diseases and has this sanitarium in the mountains.
No doubt you were surprised to find such a large house so far away from
any city. We were expecting a patient, an American, by the same train
on which you arrived. He was suffering from an injury to the skull,
which made him liable to periodic attacks of insanity, and he was
coming up here to be treated.”
“The very man I saw on the train!” cried Roberts. “A tall, dark-haired
person?”
“We do not know in the least what he looks like,” was the reply, “for
had we known we should not have made the horrible blunder we did.”
In a few words Roberts related how the stranger had leaped from the
train during the night.
“Undoubtedly,” said the other, “that was he. He probably lacked courage
to come. I have been out hunting for him, but have not found him.”
“And they were going to operate on me?” Roberts gasped.
“Yes,” said the other; “it was only the fact that my brother was unable
to find any trace of injury to your skull that saved you. Then it
occurred to him to search your clothing, and he found your card, which,
of course, showed him the terrible mistake.”
By this time Roberts himself was able to join in the uproarious
laughter.
“But that other man—that prisoner who has been here for twenty
years—what about him?” he asked.
“He has been here nearly thirty years,” laughed the other, “but he has
no knowledge of the time. He is a raving maniac!”
“And I helped him to escape!” gasped Roberts.
“Yes, you did,” said the other ruefully, “and I am afraid it will take
us many days to catch him!”
“But why in the world did you take me away and leave me there on the
road?” cried Roberts, when he was able to speak. “Why did you not
explain to me?”
“I would have if I had been here,” the man answered, “but my brother
concluded that, as you were not destined for here, you were going to
the mines, which are the only other inhabited spot around here. So they
carried you to the mines.”
“To the mines!” gasped the other. “For heaven’s sake, what do you mean?
You left me out in the middle of the jungle!”
Once more the Frenchman went off into a fit of laughter. “Why, they
left you within fifty yards of the place!” gasped Dr. Anselme’s
brother. “They did not take you in, as they thought there might be some
trouble made about the matter and we were anxious to get out of it
without any.”
Then in a few words Roberts told what had happened to him since that
adventure.
“I thought I was doing something very heroic in rescuing that man,” he
exclaimed. “Please apologize to the doctor for the whack I gave him.”
Dr. Anselme protested that the blow was nothing at all, though Roberts
fancied that he could see him wince at the mere recollection of it.
Nothing more was said about that, however, and, still laughing about
the man’s strange adventures, the doctor turned to the door on one side
and flung it open, disclosing the same familiar dining-room.
“Sir, I pardon you,” he said, and his brother interpreted, “now sit
again with us at our table, I beg of you.”
And they went in to supper.
_The Day_
“Here’s one for you, ’Squire, that I’ll betcha you can’t answer,”
tantalizingly said Hi Spry, as the Old Codger added himself to the
roster of the Linen Pants and Solid Comfort Club. “‘When tomorrow is
yesterday, today will be as far from the end of the week as was today
from the beginning of the week when yesterday was tomorrow. What is
today?’”
“Today, Hiram,” grimly returned the veteran, “is the day that I’m
goin’ to ask you to return to me them three dollars and thirty-five
cents that you borrowed from me over two months ago, with the promise
that you’d pay ’em back the then-comin’ day-after-tomorrow, which
went mizzling down the corridors of time quite a spell ago without
fetchin’ me the money. That’s what day this is, Hiram, although I
prob’ly shouldn’t have mentioned it if you hadn’t tried to humiliate
me in public by springin’ a question on me that you was pretty sure I
couldn’t answer.”
* * * * *
_No Retribution_
CRAWFORD—Why do you object to the methods of our benevolent
millionaires?
CRABSHAW—Because in distributing their surplus wealth they
don’t give it back to the people they got it from.
_A Belated Reconciliation_
BY WILL N. HARBEN
_Author of “Abner Daniel,” “The Substitute,”
“The Georgians,” etc._
Old Jim Ewebanks sat down on the wash-bench in front of the widow
Thompson’s cabin and watched the old woman as she stood in the doorway,
pouring water into her earthen churn to “make the butter come.” He had
walked over from his cabin across the hollow to bring her a piece of
news; but the subject was a delicate one, and he hardly knew how to
broach it.
If he had been a lighter man, he would have led her further in her
cheerful comments on the crops, the price of cotton and the health of
their neighbors; but deception of no sort was in Ewebanks’s line, and
moreover, the sun was going down. He could see the blue smoke curling
from the mud-and-log chimney on the dark, mist-draped mountainside
across the marshes and writing a welcome message on the sky. He had a
mental glimpse of his wife as she bent over a big fireplace and put
steaming food on the supper-table. He was reminded that he had not fed
his cattle; and still he could not bring himself to the task before him.
Mrs. Thompson’s son, Joe, came up the narrow road from the field,
leading his bay mare. The young man turned the animal into a little
stableyard. With the clanking harness massed on his brawny shoulder he
passed by, nodding to the visitor, and hung his burden on a peg in the
lean-to shed at the end of the cabin.
Then he went into the entry between the two rooms of the house, and,
rolling up his shirt sleeves, bathed his face and hands in a tin basin.
Ewebanks determined to come to his point before Joe finished washing.
Indeed, a sudden question from the widow made it somewhat easier for
him.
“What’s fetched you ’long here this time o’ day, Jim?” she asked, as
she tilted her churn toward the light reflected from the sky and raised
the dasher cautiously to inspect the yellow lumps of butter clinging to
its dripping surface.
Ewebanks felt his throat tighten. It was hard for him to bring up a
subject to the mild-faced, reticent woman, which, while it had been
common talk in the neighborhood for the past twenty-five years, had
scarcely been mentioned in her presence. He bent down irresolutely and
began to pick the cockle-burrs from the frayed legs of his trousers.
Joe Thompson saved him from an immediate reply by throwing the contents
of his basin at a lot of chickens in the yard and coming toward him,
drying his face and hands on his red cotton handkerchief.
“You _are_ off’n yore reg’lar stompin’-ground, hain’t you?” he said
cordially.
Jim Ewebanks made a failure of a smile as his eyes fell on Mrs.
Thompson. She had stopped churning, and, leaning on her wooden dasher,
was studying his face.
“What fetched you, shore ’nough?” she asked abruptly.
Ewebanks knew that her suspicions were roused. He sat erect and clasped
his coarse hands between his knees.
“My cousin Sally Wynn’s been over in the valley today,” he gulped.
“It’s reported thar that yore sister, Mrs. Hansard, is purty low.
We-uns talked it over—me’n my wife did—an’ Sally, an’ ’lowed you ort
to know. They axed me to come tell you, but as I told them, I hain’t no
hand to—it looks like they could ’a’ picked somebody——”
He broke off. There was little change in the grim, lined face under the
gray hair, and the red-checked breakfast shawl which the woman wore
like a hood. She turned the churn again to the light and peered down
into the white depths.
Someone had once said in the hearing of Ewebanks that nothing could
induce Martha Thompson to utter a word about her sister, and he
wondered how she would treat the present disclosure. She let the churn
resume its upright position and put the lid back into place; then she
glanced at him.
“She—hain’t _bad_ off, I reckon,” she said tensely.
“Purty low,” he replied, his eyes on the ground. “The fact is, Mrs.
Thompson, ef you want to see ’er alive you’d better go over thar
tomorrow at the furdest.”
Ewebanks knew he had gone a little too far in his last words, when Joe
broke in fiercely:
“She won’t go a step! She sha’n’t set foot inside that cussed house.
They’ve done ’thout us so fur, an’ they kin longer—dead, dyin’ or
buried!”
“Hush, Joe!” Mrs. Thompson had left her churn, and with her hands
wrapped in her apron was leaning against the door-jamb.
Joe didn’t heed her.
“They’ve always helt the’r heads above us becase we’re poor an’ they’re
rich,” he ran on. “You sha’n’t go a step, mother!”
Mrs. Thompson said nothing. She rolled her churn aside and went into
the cabin. Ewebanks saw her bending over the pots and kettles in the
red light from the live coals. He saw her rise to arrange the table,
and knew she was going to ask him to supper. He got up to go, said good
day to Joe, who had lapsed into sullen silence, and descended the rocky
path toward his cabin.
It was growing dusk; a deepening haze, half of smoke, half of mist,
hung over the wooded hill on the right of the road, and on the left a
newly cleared field was dotted with the smoldering fires of brush-heaps.
At the foot of the hill he glanced back and saw Mrs. Thompson in the
path signaling to him. He paused in the corner of a rail fence half
overgrown with briars and waited for her. She was panting with exertion
when she reached him.
“I didn’t care to talk up thar ’fore Joe,” she began. “He’s so bitter
agin Melissa an’ ’er folks; but I want to know more. What seems to be
ailin’ ’er, Jim?”
“A general break-down, I reckon,” was the answer. “She’s been gradually
on the fail fer some time. I reckon yore duty-bound to see ’er, Mrs.
Thompson. I’d not pay any attention to Joe nur nobody else. Maybe
thar’s been some pride on yore side, too.”
“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully, and then she was silent. She broke
a piece of worm-eaten bark from a pine rail on the fence and crumbled
it in her hand.
“I’ve been wantin’ to tell you some’n fer a long time,” Ewebanks put in
cautiously, “but it wasn’t no business o’ mine, an’ I hate meddlin’. I
hain’t no talebearer, but this hain’t that, I reckon.”
“I hauled some wood fer ’er one day last spring when me’n my team was
detained at court over thar. She come out in the yard in front o’ her
fine house whar I was unloadin’. She looked mighty thin an’ peaked an’
lonesome. I had no idea she knowed me from a side o’ sole leather,
grand woman that she is, but she axed me ef I wasn’t from out this
way. I told ’er I was, an’ then she reached over the wagon-wheel an’
shuck hands powerful friendly like, an’ axed particular about you an’
Joe, an’ how you was a-makin’ of it. I told ’er you was up an’ about,
but, like the rest of us, as pore as Job’s turkey. She said she’d been
a-layin’ off to go to see you, but, somehow, hadn’t been able to git
round to it. She said she’d been porely fer over a year.”
“She wasn’t porely two year back when I was on my back with typhoid,”
said Mrs. Thompson bitterly. “The report went out that I’d never git up
agin, but she never come a-nigh me, nur sent no word.”
“Maybe she never heard of it,” said Ewebanks. “They had a lot to do
over thar about that time in one way and another. One o’ the gals
was marryin’ of a banker, an’ t’other the Governor’s son, an’ yore
brother-in-law, up to his death, was in politics, an’ they was constant
a-givin’ parties an’ a-havin’ big company an’ the like. We-uns that
don’t carry on at sech a rate ortn’t to be judges. I’m of the opinion
that you ort to go, Mrs. Thompson. Ef she dies you’ll always wish you’d
laid aside the grudge.”
The old woman glanced up at her cabin and awkwardly wiped her mouth
with her bare hand.
“It seems sech a short time sence me’n her was childern together,”
she mused. “We was on the same level then, an’ I never loved anybody
more’n I did her. She was the purtiest gal in the neighborhood, an’ as
sharp as a briar. Squire Farnhill tuck a likin’ to ’er, an’, as he had
no childern o’ his own, he offered to adopt ’er an’ give ’er a home
an’ education. She was a great stay-at-home an’ we had to actually beg
’er to go. We knowed it was best, fer pa was weighted down with debt
an’ was a big drinker. She was soon weaned from us an’ ’fore she was
seventeen Colonel Frank Hansard married ’er an’ tuck ’er over to his
big plantation in Fannin’. We had our matters to look after, an’ they
had the’rn. It begun that way, an’ it’s kept up.”
“I don’t know how true it is,” ventured Ewebanks, “but I have heard
that her husband was a proud, stuck-up, ambitious man, an’ that he
wished to cut off communication betwixt you two; but he’s dead an’ out
o’ the way now.”
“Yes, but sometimes childern take after the’r fathers,” said the widow,
“an’, right or wrong, it’s natural fer a mother to sympathize with her
offspring. I’m sorter afeard the family wouldn’t want me even at ’er
deathbed. Now, ef they had jest ’a’ sent me word that she was low,
or——”
“I’d be fer doin’ my duty accordin’ to my own lights,” declared
Ewebanks, when he saw she was going no further. “I don’t know as I’d
be bothered about what them gals, or the’r husbands, thought at sech a
serious time.”
She nodded as if she agreed with him, and turned to go. “Joe’s waitin’
fer his supper,” she said. “I’ll study about it, Jim. I couldn’t go
till tomorrow, anyway. But, Jim Ewebanks—” she hesitated for a moment,
and then she looked at him squarely—“Jim, I want to tell you that I
think you are a powerful good man. Yo’re a Christian o’ the right sort,
an’ I’m glad you are my neighbor.”
II
That night Mrs. Thompson had a visit from Mrs. Ewebanks, accompanied
by her daughter Mary Ann, a fair slip of a creature of twelve years.
Mary Ann was always her mother’s companion on her social rounds in
the neighborhood. She was a very timid child and was never known to
open her mouth on any of these visits. They took the chairs offered
them before the fire. It was at once evident from Mrs. Ewebanks’s
manner that she had come to advise her neighbor, and she showed by her
disregard for oral approaches that she was going to reach her point by
a short cut.
“Jim told me he’d been over,” she began, with a sneer, as she seated
herself squarely in her chair and brushed a brindled cat from under
her blue homespun skirt. “Scat! I don’t want yore flees! An’ he told
me, after I’d pumped ’im about dry, what he was fool enough to advise
you. Men hain’t a bit o’ gumption. What’s he want to tell you all that
foolishness fer? I hain’t never had a bit o’ use fer them high-falutin’
Hansards. Why, they hain’t had respect enough fer yore feelin’s to even
let you know yore sister was at death’s door. Sally Wynn jest drapped
onto it by accident.”
Mrs. Thompson was standing in the chimney-corner, her hand on the
little mantelpiece, but she sat down.
“I reckon a body ort not to have ill-will at sech a time,” she
faltered. “Ef Melissa’s a-dyin’ I reckon it ’ud be nothin’ more’n human
fer me to want to be thar. She mought be sorry you see, in ’er last
hour, an’ wish she’d sent fer me. I’d hate to think _that_, after she
was laid away fer good an’ all.”
“Pshaw!” Mrs. Ewebanks drew her damp, steaming shoes back from the
fire. She had something else to say.
“I never told you, Martha Thompson, but I give it to that woman
straight from the shoulder not long back. I was visitin’ my brother
over thar. Mrs. Hansard used to drive out fer fresh air when the
weather was good, an’ she stopped at the spring on brother’s place one
day while I was thar gittin’ me a drink—no, I remember now, I was
pickin’ a place to set a bucket o’ fresh butter to harden it up fer
camp-meetin’. She didn’t take no more notice o’ me’n ef I’d been some
cornfield nigger, but you bet I started the conversation. I up an’ axed
’er ef she wasn’t a Hansard an’ when she ’lowed she was, I told ’er I
thought so from her favor to ’er sister over here. She got as red as a
pickled beet, an’ stammered an’ looked ashamed, then she sot into axin’
how you was a-comin’ on, an’ the like.”
“That was a good deal fer Melissa to do,” observed the widow. “Thar was
a time that she never mentioned my name. She’s awful proud.”
“Oh, I’ll be bound you’ll make excuses fer ’er,” snapped Mrs. Ewebanks.
“When folks liter’ly knock the breath out’n you, you jump up an’ rub
the hurt place an’ ax the’r pardon. As fer me, I give that woman a
setback that I’ll bet she didn’t git over in a long time. I told ’er as
I looked straight in ’er eyes, that ef she wanted to know how ’er own
sister was makin’ of it, she’d better have ’er nigger drive ’er over to
the log shack Martha Thompson lives in, an’ pay a call.”
“Oh, you said that!”
“Yes, an’ she jest set on the carriage-seat an’ squirmed like an eel an’
looked downcast an’ said nothin’.”
“That must ’a’ been at the beginnin’ o’ ’er sickness,” said Mrs.
Thompson thoughtfully. She had missed the point of her visitor’s story
and kept her eyes on her son, who sat in the chimney-corner, his feet
on a pile of logs and kindling pine.
“The Lord wouldn’t give blessed health to a pusson with her mean
sperit,” resumed the visitor warmly. “I jest set thar an’ wondered how
any mortal woman in a Christian land could calmly ax a stranger about
’er own sister livin’ twenty miles off an’ not go to see ’er. She tried
to talk about some’n else but she’d no sooner git started than I’d
deliberately switch ’er back to you an’ yore plight an’ I kept that
a-goin’ till she riz an’ driv off.”
“I have heard,” said the widow, her glance going cautiously back
to her son, who had bent down to add another piece of pine to the
fire, “I have heard that Colonel Hansard was always in debt from his
extravagance, an’ that his family lived past the’r means. Brother
Thomas went to see Melissa once, an’ he said he believed she was a
misjudged woman. He ’lowed she was willin’ enough to do right, but that
her husband always made ’er feel dependent on him becase his money had
lifted ’er up. Brother Thomas said the gals had growed up like the’r
daddy, an’ that between ’em all, Melissa never’d had any will o’ her
own. I reckon I railly ort to go see ’er.”
“Ef you do they’ll slam the door in yore face,” said Mrs. Ewebanks in
the angry determination to stir the widow’s pride.
“I don’t think it’s a matter fer you to decide on, Mrs. Ewebanks.” The
widow leaned back out of the fire-light, and sat coldly erect. “I
believe in doin’ unto others as I’d have them do unto me, an’ ef I was
in Melissa’s fix I’d want to see my only livin’ sister. Facin’ the end
folks sometimes change powerful. Circumstances made ’er what she is; ef
she hadn’t been tuck by a rich man, she’d ’a’ been like common folks.
She used to love me when she was little, an’ I jest don’t want ’em to
lay ’er body away without seein’ ’er once more. I—I used to—I reckon
I still love ’er some.”
Mrs. Thompson’s voice had sunk almost to a whisper. Mrs. Ewebanks moved
uneasily; a sneer had risen on her red face, but it died away. Joe
Thompson had suddenly turned upon her from the semi-darkness of his
corner. There was no mistaking the ferocious glare of his eyes.
“It—it hain’t none o’ my business,” she stammered; “I—I jest——”
Joe leaned forward; his round freckled face under the shock of tawny
hair, through which he had been running his fingers, was in the light.
“Now yo’re a-shoutin’!” he said, with a harsh laugh; “it hain’t none o’
yore business, but you stalked all the way over here tonight to attend
to it.”
“Hush, Joe, be ashamed o’ yorese’f!” said his mother; “you’ve clean
forgot how to behave ’fore company.”
“’Fore company hell!” Joe rose quickly and stumbled over a fire-log
which rolled down under his feet. There was a hint of tears in his eyes
and he shook his head like an angry dog as he went to the door and
stood with his back to the visitors in sullen silence.
For a moment there was silence. Mrs. Ewebanks knew she had blundered
hopelessly. Mary Ann, who never said anything, and who seldom moved
when anyone was looking at her, now turned appealingly to her mother,
and, unfolding her gingham sunbonnet, she bent down and swung it like a
switchman’s flag between her knees. Mrs. Ewebanks paid no heed to it.
She dreaded her husband’s finding out what had passed, especially as he
had intrusted her with a message to Mrs. Thompson quite out of key with
her argument.
“Jim told me to tell you he’d drive you over in his wagon in the
mornin’ ef you are bent on makin’ the trip,” she said almost
apologetically.
Joe Thompson whirled round fiercely. His back was against the door, and
in his checked shirt and rolled-up sleeves he looked like a pugilist
ready for fight.
“We don’t need any help from you-uns,” he snorted. “I’m goin’ to take
mother.”
Mrs. Ewebanks now felt sure that her husband would blame her for the
rejection of his invitation. In her vexation she slapped Mary Ann’s red
hand loose from its urgent clutch on her skirt and turned to Joe.
“I’m afeard I’ve been meddlin’ with what don’t concern me,” she began,
but the young man interrupted her.
“It’s our bed-time,” he said fiercely. “The Lord knows mother’s had
enough o’ yore clatter fur one dose.”
“Joe!” exclaimed Mrs. Thompson sternly, “I ’lowed you had more manners.”
Mary Ann had drawn her mother’s skirt sharply to one side and grasped
her arm tenaciously. Mrs. Ewebanks allowed herself thus to be unseated,
and she rose meekly enough. There was nothing in her manner resembling
a threat that she would never be ordered out of that house again, and
in this Mary Ann witnessed her mother’s first swerving from habit.
There was a look on the widow’s face which showed that she was almost
sorry for her visitor’s chagrin.
“Don’t hurry,” she said in a pained and yet gentle tone.
“Oh, no, don’t hurry!” Joe repeated, with a sneer; “stay to breakfast;
I’ll throw some more wood on the fire an’ let’s set down an’ talk.”
The defeat of Mrs. Ewebanks was more than complete. Between her hostess
and the son she stood wavering. This provoked an actual vocal sound
from Mary Ann. At any other time the Thompsons would have marveled over
it. She grunted in impatience and then said audibly:
“Come on, ma, let’s go home.” And in this it was as if the child had at
once extended a verbal hand of sympathy to the Thompsons and given her
mother a back-handed slap.
There was nothing for Mrs. Ewebanks to do but obey, for Mary Ann
had stalked heavily from the cabin and just outside the door stood
beckoning to her. Joe had gone to the fireplace and was digging a grave
in the hot ashes for the fire-coated back-log.
Mrs. Thompson shambled to the door and looked after her departing
guests. She could see their dresses in the light of the thinly veiled
moon as they slowly descended the narrow path. When the noise Joe was
making with the shovel and tongs had ceased she heard someone speaking
in a raised voice. For several minutes it continued, rising and falling
with the breeze, an uninterrupted monologue, growing fainter and
fainter as the visitors receded.
It was the voice of Mary Ann.
III
The Hansards lived in an old-fashioned, two-storied, white frame
building. It had dormer windows in the gray shingled roof and a long
veranda with massive fluted columns. Back of the house rose a rocky
hill covered with pines, and in front lay a wide, rolling lawn, through
which, for a quarter of a mile, stretched a white-graveled drive,
shaded by fine old water oaks from the house to the main traveled road.
Along this drive the next morning Joe Thompson drove his mother in a
rickety buggy. On the left near the house was a row of cabins where the
negro servants lived, and standing somewhat to itself was the white
cottage of the overseer of the plantation. The doors of all the cabins
were closed, and no one was in sight.
“I’m afeared she’s wuss, an’ they’ve all gone to the big house,” sighed
Mrs. Thompson. “Maybe we won’t git thar in time.”
Joe made no response, but he whipped his mare into a quicker pace.
When they reached the veranda and alighted no one came to meet them. A
negro woman hastened across the hall, but she did not look toward Mrs.
Thompson, who stood on the steps waiting for Joe to hitch his mare to a
post nearby.
“Ain’t you goin’ to come in?” she asked, when he came toward her.
“No, I’ll wait out here,” he answered, and he sat down on the steps.
She hesitated for an instant, then she turned resolutely into the great
carpeted hall, and through a door on the right she entered a large
parlor. No one was there. The carpet was rich in color and texture, the
furniture massive and fine. Over the mantel was a large oil portrait
of Colonel Hansard, and on the opposite wall one of his wife painted
just after her marriage. Set into the wall and hung about with lace
drapery was a mirror that reached from the floor to the ceiling. From
this room, through an open door on her left, Mrs. Thompson went into
another. It was the library. No one was there. On all sides of the room
were glass-doored cases of richly bound books. Here and there on tables
and stands stood time-yellowed marble busts and pots of plants. In a
corner of the room was a revolving bookcase, and in the centre a long
writing-table covered with green cloth.
The old woman looked about her perplexed. Everything was so still that
she could hear the scratching of a honeysuckle vine against the window
under the touch of the breeze. She wondered if her sister had died, and
if everybody had gone to the funeral.
She was on the point of returning to Joe, when she was startled by a
low moan in an adjoining room. The sound came through a door on her
right, which was slightly ajar. She cautiously pushed it open. The room
contained an awed and silent group. The crisis had come. Mrs. Hansard
was dying. She lay on a high-canopied bed in a corner, hidden from Mrs.
Thompson’s view by the family and servants gathered at the bed. Seeing a
vacant chair in a row of women against a wall, the visitor went in and
sat down. Her black cotton sunbonnet hid her face, and, as there were
others present as humbly clad as she, she attracted little notice.
There was a breathless silence for a moment. Those at the bed seemed to
be leaning forward in great agitation. Suddenly one of the daughters of
the dying woman cried out: “Oh, doctor! Come quick!” and a physician
who stood near advanced and bent over his patient.
After a moment he silently withdrew to the fireplace, where he simply
stood looking at the fire in the grate. Edith, the eldest child,
followed and asked him a question. He gravely nodded, and with her
handkerchief to her eyes she burst into tears. Her husband, the
Governor’s son, a handsome, manly fellow, came to her and, putting his
arm around her, drew her back to the bed.
“She’s trying to speak,” he whispered, and for the next moment the
dying woman’s labored breathing was the only sound in the room.
“Father! Mother!” Mrs. Thompson was hearing her sister’s voice for the
first time in twenty-five years. “Brother Thomas! Uncle Frank! Where
are you?”
“She is thinking of her childhood,” said Edith in a whisper. She bent
over her mother and in a calm, steady voice said:
“We are all here, mother dear—Susie and Annie and Jasper and I.”
There was silence for a moment; then the voice of the dying woman rose
in keen appeal.
“Martha! Oh, I want Martha—I want Martha!”
The two sisters exchanged anxious glances.
“She means Aunt Martha Thompson,” whispered Susie; “we have not sent
for her. What shall we do?”
Edith bent over the pillow.
“Mother dear——”
“I want Martha, my sister Martha!” Mrs. Hansard said impatiently, and
she beat the white coverlet with her thin hand. “Martha, sister Martha,
where are you?”
“Here I am, Melissa.” The gaunt figure rose suddenly, to the surprise
of all, and moved toward the bed. They made room for her. There was no
time for formal explanations or greetings. “I’m here, Melissa; I heard
you was sick, an’ ’lowed I’d better drap in.”
“Thank God!” cried Mrs. Hansard, as she took the hardened hand in her
frail fingers and tried to press it. “I’ve been prayin’ God to let me
see you once more. I want you to forgive me, Martha. I’m dying. I’ve
done you a great wrong. Forgive me, forgive me!”
“La, me, Melissa, I hain’t a thing to forgive!” was the calm, insistent
reply; “not a blessed thing! It was all as much my doin’ as yore’n. We
was both jest natural—that’s all—jest natural, like the Lord made
us—me in my way, and you in yore’n.”
Edith kissed her aunt’s wrinkled cheek gratefully, and, with her cheek
on the old woman’s shoulder, she wept silently.
“I thank God; I feel easier now,” said Mrs. Hansard. “You’ve made me
happier, Martha. I can die easier now. God is good.”
Someone gave Mrs. Thompson a chair, and she sat down and held her
sister’s hand till it was all over. Then the Governor’s son took the
old woman’s arm and led her into the sitting-room, and there the three
motherless girls joined her.
“You are much like her,” sobbed Susie, the youngest; “you have her eyes
and mouth.”
“Yes, folks used to say we favored,” said Mrs. Thompson simply.
“You must not leave us, Aunt Martha,” said Edith. “We must keep you
with us. She would like to have it so.”
“Yes, do, do, Aunt Martha,” chimed in Susie and Annie.
The old woman had folded her bonnet in her lap and was holding her
rough hands out to the fire. She smiled as if vaguely pleased, and yet
she shook her head.
“No, don’t ax me _that_, girls,” she said. “I’ve got ways an’ habits
that ain’t one bit like yore’n. I’d feel out o’ place anywhar except
in my cabin. I couldn’t change at my time o’ life. Joe’s workin’ fer
me, an’ he’ll never marry. He hates the sight of a woman. He says they
meddle. He’s waitin’ fer me now outside, an’ I reckon I ort to be
a-goin’.”
“But not till after—after the funeral,” said Susie.
“Yes, honey. I don’t think I ort to wait. I’ve got lots to do at home.
My cows are to feed an’ milk, an’ it’s a long drive. It’ll be in the
night when we git home. Remember, me an’ yore mother hain’t been
intimate sence we was childern. I’m her sister by blood, but not by
raisin’, an’ I hain’t the same sort o’ mourner as you-uns, an’ don’t
think I ort to pass as one in public. I wouldn’t feel exactly natural,
that’s all.”
The Governor’s son nodded his head as if he agreed with her, and the
girls silently gave her her wish.
_A Remorseful Regret_
“If I’d only married her!” muttered Tanquerly, with the bitter regret
of a lost soul bewailing vanished opportunities.
I thought of the sweet little wife he had at home, and was swamped with
surprise.
“Oh, if I’d only married her!” he repeated, still more intensely.
The woman referred to occupied a seat across and further down the car
from us. She had a form that made the ordinary carpenter’s scaffolding
look graceful and huggable, her jaw reminded one of a trip-hammer, her
face was plotted to throw a nervous child into convulsions, and her
voice!—her voice would make a busy boiler-factory seem restful and
serene after a second of it. She had just had a slight controversy with
the conductor, and that official—you know how shy and shrinking the
ordinary street-car conductor is—had been reduced to quivering pulp in
a trifle over a minute. He, one of the most explosive and overbearing
of his kind, had joined issue with her confidently and gleefully,
but when her strident voice once got to working full time, about two
hundred and fifty words to the second, I calculated, analyzing his
character, dissecting his reputation, tearing up his habits, unjointing
his hopes, shredding his ambitions, and ruthlessly forecasting his
future, it was pathetic to watch that strong man striving fruitlessly
to stem the torrent, then yielding little by little, still struggling
strenuously to get in a word, until at last he was swept out on to
the back platform, a mangled and lacerated bundle of raw nerves, too
broken-spirited to so much as curse a little fussy old gentleman who
berated him for not stopping the car at his corner. I never saw the
stiffening so thoroughly, quickly and completely taken out of a man in
my life. Oh, it was pitiable!
“If I’d only married her!” murmured Tanquerly again.
“Are you crazy?” I demanded sharply.
Tanquerly shook his head slowly and painfully. “No,” he said, “not
yet. But I’ll bet if I’d only married her I wouldn’t have been to that
banquet last night and felt like this this morning.”
_Nothing to Gain_
FARMER MOSSBACKER—Are ye goin’ to send your son to college, Ezry?
FARMER BENTOVER—Hod-durn him—no! He’s a reg’lar rowdy now!
_Franchise Wealth and Municipal Ownership_
BY JOHN H. GIRDNER, M.D.
There is much writing and talk about _municipal ownership_ in these
days. When you talk about a municipality or an individual owning
something, it implies that there is _something_ to own. It is about
this “something” that I want to write. I want to make it clear to the
reader what I mean by _franchise wealth_ or _franchise property_, and
exactly how it differs from private wealth or private property.
When you buy a house and lot in a town or city, your property is of two
kinds, private property and franchise property. Your private property
begins at the building line in front and extends backward the full
width of your lot to the fence or line which divides your back yard
from the back yard of your neighbor who fronts on the next street. Your
franchise property extends from the building or stoop line, outward,
the full width of your lot, across the sidewalk and on to the middle of
the street where it meets the franchise property of your neighbor on
the opposite side of your street.
The money to grade, drain and pave the street in front of your lot was
raised by assessments levied on that lot. These assessments were added,
by previous owners, perhaps, to the cost of the lot, and were a part
of the price you paid for the lot. In other words, you bought and paid
for the franchise property in front of your stoop line as directly as
you did for the private property behind the stoop line, and you are
therefore entitled to the usufruct of the one as much as the other.
The aggregate of the franchise wealth of all the individual owners
in any given street is the sum total of the franchise wealth of that
street. And the aggregate of the franchise wealth of all the streets of
a given town or city is the sum total of the franchise wealth of that
city. And it is absolutely owned by all the inhabitants of that city,
for everyone contributes in some manner to the creation and maintenance
of this franchise wealth.
There is another thing about this kind of property which the people
ought to keep in mind. Like their private property, their rights in
this franchise property extend from the surface right down into the
earth, as far as it is practical to dig; and, from the surface, right
up into the sky, as high as it is practical to build. It is well, I
say, to keep these facts in mind; they may come in handy when a corrupt
mayor and board of aldermen, or an eminently respectable board of rapid
transit commissioners, are about to hand over to a private corporation
a city subway or elevated road.
The tremendous importance of the franchise wealth on all social
and economic questions in a city like New York may be more fully
appreciated if we call to mind this fact, viz.:
That the value of any piece of city real estate is determined almost
entirely by the character of the franchise property in front of and
nearby it.
Why does a lot one hundred feet deep, with twenty-five feet front on
Fifth avenue, sell for so much more than a similar lot fronting on
Second avenue? They are the same size. They are composed alike of earth
and rock. You can dig as deep a foundation and build as high in the
air on the one as the other. But why the great difference in price?
You say because Fifth avenue is a better street than Second avenue.
But this answer does not explain much. What you mean to say is, that
there are certain characteristics, which I have not time to discuss
here in detail, connected with the franchise property in front of and
contiguous to the Fifth avenue lot which make it more valuable than
similar characteristics connected with the franchise property in front
of and contiguous to the Second avenue lot. And this is my point, that
it is at last the character of the franchise property of a street or a
city which determines the value of the private property or real estate
of that street or city.
The streets of New York City, which I have called franchise wealth
or franchise property to distinguish this kind of property from the
private property of the individual, were built and are maintained with
money contributed by all the citizens; and all the citizens are as
fully entitled to the usufruct of them, as is any individual to the
usufruct of his private property.
The individual manages his private property or he employs an agent to
manage it for him. And he holds this agent to a strict account. If the
agent appropriates the income from the use of his private property
the law steps in and justly punishes him. Acting collectively, the
individuals elect by ballot a mayor and board of aldermen and members
of the State legislature as agents to manage their franchise property
for them.
“Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered
together.” In every large city there is a fat carcass of franchise
wealth, and there you find the corporation eagles, and the political
eagles gathered together to gorge themselves on it. The corporation
eagles deceive the unsuspecting citizens by a pretended desire to serve
them. They call themselves “public service corporations.” There never
was a worse misnomer than this. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
They fatten on the people’s franchise wealth and serve no one except
themselves and their congeners, the political eagles. So far from being
_servants_ they become the masters of the people whose property they
have obtained by every corrupt device that the vulpine instinct of man
can invent.
The political eagles that feed on the franchise carcass have a
different way of deceiving the people. They organize themselves into
what they call a political party, and, by working three hundred
and sixty-five days in the year, while other men are attending to
their legitimate businesses, they get control of the legal political
machinery of one of the great national parties. The name by which
they call their organization will depend on the particular city they
are operating in. In New York, for instance, they call themselves
Democrats, not because they know or care anything about the principles
of Democracy, but because a majority of the independent voters are
Democrats, and then they secure the votes to elect their candidates
from the very people they intend to despoil once they get in. For
a similar reason the political eagles of Philadelphia call their
organization Republican. If the majority of the voters of any city
favored prohibition, you would have that city’s organized political
eagles calling themselves Prohibitionists. New York, Philadelphia,
Chicago, St. Louis, every city in this country which has a fat
franchise wealth carcass, has its corporation and political eagles
gathered together to devour it.
When a complete history of New York City for the past forty years is
written, not the least interesting chapters will be an account of the
development, growth and present perfection of the system by which the
corporations and politicians enriched themselves at the expense of the
people, and how the people were so hypnotized that they were unable
to rise in their might and drive out these cormorants. This era of
corruption began with William M. Tweed. The enterprise was in its
infancy then and Tweed was a blunderer. He and his associates robbed
the city treasury on false vouchers, fraudulent bills, etc. Then came
Jake Sharp, who bribed the aldermen outright with cash to induce them
to hand over to him some millions worth of the people’s franchise
wealth. Tweed and his people, Jake Sharp and the boodle aldermen got
into trouble, state prison or exile.
Politicians do not like striped clothes when the stripes all run one
way any better than other folks do. So a new and safer system had to
be found for exploiting the people. Money in the form of campaign
contributions from the individual or corporation who wants something
to the head of the organization who could deliver that something after
election, looked good and safe, and this is the plan which has been in
operation in New York for some years.
During the last mayoralty campaign in this city I was told one
evening by a man who is thoroughly reliable, and who is in a position
to know, that the Consolidated Gas Company, of this city, had paid
$300,000 into the campaign fund of Tammany Hall. George B. McClellan,
the Tammany candidate for mayor, was elected. In less than one year
after taking office he signed the so-called Remsen gas bill. Had it
become a law it would have tightened the clutch of the Gas Trust more
firmly on the people of this city and would have turned over to that
corporation some millions more of their franchise wealth. Fortunately a
Republican governor vetoed it and saved, for the time at least, further
encroachments on the people’s rights.
And you have today the spectacle of this so-called Democratic mayor
lined up with the Trust magnates and their money-bags at the big ends
of the gas-tubes and against the people of all parties who suffer
extortion at the little ends of the gas-tubes. He is actually opposing
the efforts of the people of this city to secure the necessary
legislation to permit them to build and operate their own gas-plants
and deliver the gas to themselves through pipes laid in their own
streets. And if you refuse to support such a man you are likely to be
told by an insolent Tammany Hall henchman that you are no Democrat.
Talk about municipal ownership! Why, the municipality, which is another
name for the people, already own everything they need. They own the
streets and the right of way through them, and they own the money to
build lighting plants, railways and telephone lines. The only thing
they do not own is _permission_ to use their own property. And this is
withheld from them by greedy Trust magnates through their bought-up
politicians.
We need MEN in this city who cannot be deceived by the _names_
Democracy and Republicanism. We need men who will stand together
and protect our franchise property against grafting politicians and
grafting political organizations, no matter by what names they call
themselves. New York City may be likened to a big “skyscraper” laid
on its side. The streets correspond to the elevator shafts. Now, what
would be thought of the sanity of a company of men who built a high
office building, hotel or apartment house and allowed their agents to
give away to outsiders the right to run the elevators and the further
right to prey upon the tenants who are obliged to use them? Yet this is
exactly what the politicians have done and are doing with the streets
of this city.
Make an inventory of the Gas Trust’s property, find out how much it
would cost to duplicate its plant, then subtract that sum from the
capitalization of the Trust and the remainder is franchise property,
and that belongs to the people. Go through the list of telephone,
telegraph and railway companies the same way, and you will begin to get
an idea of the value and earning capacity of your franchise property
which has been stolen from you by your agents, the officeholders.
If the agent of an individual deeds away a piece of his private
property and fails to make a just return to the owner, the law
holds the title to be spurious and punishes that agent. But the
officeholders, the agents appointed by all the individuals to care for
their franchise property, deed it away to so-called public service
corporations, pocket the proceeds and go scot-free!
The telephone, telegraph and all the corporations that use wires and
electricity appropriate and use the people’s private property as
well as their franchise property. Go on your roofs, New Yorkers, and
count the electric wires that the thieving electricity corporations
have attached to your houses or have strung across your lots without
your permission. Remember that you own a space equal to the surface
dimensions of your lot down into the bowels of the earth and up into
the sky as far as you like to go. And nobody has the right to string
wires across this space in the air or in the earth without your
permission. The New York Telephone Company attached a wire to the roof
of a house I had leased. I threatened to cut the wire. The company
insolently replied that they needed that wire on my roof to carry on
their business. I insisted on justice and my rights in the matter.
The company then came round with a lease, which I signed, granting
them permission to pass their wire over my roof, and I received a
substantial annual rental for that privilege.
These corporations appropriate your private property as well as your
franchise property for their own enrichment and pay nothing for it.
They would string wires on your teeth if they needed them and you did
not object. And to cap the climax they charge extortionate rates for
service in order to pay dividends on watered stock. I wrote these facts
a few years ago and offered the article to two daily newspapers in
this town, and they did not dare to publish it. But thank God TOM
WATSON’S MAGAZINE exists to tell the truth. New Yorkers, you ought
to examine the fences around your backyards. You surely own them, and
they are valuable property. They produce an enormous income to—the
telephone company. Tens of thousands of yards of telephone wires are
strung on these fences. The company uses them to get wires into your
houses, in order to charge you extortionate prices for ’phone service.
The company will tell you they need these fences to give _you_ ’phone
service. That answer reminds me of the answer given by a negro girl
caught stealing raisins from her mistress’s bureau drawer. “Why did you
steal those raisins?” asked the mistress. Sally replied, “Why, missus,
dey’s good.”
_The Cause of the Congregating_
“MY friends,” began the Great Man, in a voice admirably adapted for
declamatory purposes, as he stepped out upon the platform of the car
and beheld the major portion of the inhabitants of the wayside hamlet
seething and jostling around the station, “I thank you from the bottom
of my heart for this enthusiastic greeting, this spontaneous outpouring
of your best citizens, this wholesale welcome, this——”
“Wholesale gran’mother!” broke in a youthful and pessimistic voice.
“It ain’t you that’s the attraction—a big fat drummer is havin’ the
gol-rammedest fit you ever had the pleasure of witnessin’, right there
in the waitin’-room!”
* * * * *
_That Fateful Day_
FREDDIE—How long does the honeymoon last, dad?
COBWIGGER—Until a fellow’s wife learns not to be afraid of him.
_The Storm-Petrel_
PROSE POEM BY MAXIM GORKY
TRANSLATED BY ABRAHAM CAHAN
[NOTE: The following prose poem by Maxim
Gorky was written a few years ago in prophecy of
the present crisis in Russia and was published
only in _Life_, the leading literary magazine of
St. Petersburg. In consequence the periodical was
immediately suppressed. The editor and his entire
staff voluntarily expatriated themselves and
re-established the magazine in London, whence, during
the few months of its existence in exile, thousands
of copies were smuggled over the frontier for secret
circulation.
Gorky was arrested for complicity in the strikers’
movement that resulted in the St. Petersburg massacre
of January 22 last. The rumor that the Russian
Government purposed to sentence him to death excited
so much feeling, that the foremost literary men of
Germany, England and the United States concerted in
an appeal for clemency, on the ground that the life
and work of a great writer belong not alone to his
country but to the world.
Gorky has risen from the depths of poverty and
ignorance to literary eminence as the interpreter of
life among the masses. His first successful short
stories appeared in the newspapers and attracted
attention for their truth and vigor. Since 1893
he has made his literary position secure by the
production of various novels and plays. He is now
thirty-six years old.
Abraham Cahan, translator of the poem, is a
Russian who has attained distinction among American
writers of fiction through short stories and the
novels, “Yekl” and “The White Terror and the
Red.”—EDITORS.]
Over the gray expanse of sea the wind is gathering the clouds. Circling
between the clouds and the sea, like a black flash of lightning, is the
storm-petrel on high.
Now touching a wave with his wing, now shooting heavenward, dart-like,
he is crying, and the clouds hear glad tidings in his cry.
There is thirst for storm in that cry. The force of rage, the flame of
passion, the confidence of victory do the clouds hear in that cry.
The gulls are groaning before the storm, groaning and tossing over the
sea; ready to hide their terror at the bottom of the sea.
The cargeese, too, are groaning. The joy of the struggle is unknown to
them; the din of strife awes them.
The silly albatross hides his fat body in the cliffs. The proud
storm-petrel alone is soaring boldly, freely over the sea, the waves
singing, dancing on high, coming to meet the thunder.
The thunder roars. Foaming with fury, the waves are raging, battling
with the wind. Now the wind seizes a flock of waves in gigantic
embrace, now hurls them with savage hate to the rocks, shattering them
to dust and masses of emerald spray.
Shouting joyously, the storm-petrel is circling like a black flash of
lightning, piercing the clouds like a spear, brushing foam off the
waves with its wings.
There he is, flying like a demon, a proud, black storm-demon, laughing
and sobbing at once. It is at the clouds he is laughing; it is for joy
he is sobbing.
In the thunder’s rage the sensitive demon perceives a weary note, the
voice of defeat. He knows that the clouds cannot conceal the sun—not
they!
The wind is sighing; the thunder is pealing. Hundreds of clouds gleam
bluish over the precipice of the sea. The sea is catching darts of
lightning and smothering them in its bosom. Like serpents of fire the
reflections of the lightning are writhing, vanishing one after the
other.
The storm is advancing! Another minute and the storm will come with a
crash.
It is the intrepid storm-petrel who is proudly careering among the
flashes of lightning over the roaring, infuriated sea; it is the
prophet of victory who is shouting.
Let the storm blow and roar with all its might!
_What Buzz-Saw Morgan Thinks_
BY W. S. MORGAN
Trusts breed distrust.
Law cannot make wrong right.
Charity is no cure for poverty; it is only a plaster.
A forty-three-cent protective tariff is worse than a fifty-cent dollar.
Fiat dollars are better than the fiat promises of the old party
politicians.
The rich will continue to grow richer and the poor poorer as long as
the present financial system exists.
I want to ask our Democratic friends how often do they need to be
fooled by their leaders before they will get their eyes open?
Liberty is not safe in a country where greed and avarice are the basis
of its prosperity.
The gold power owes allegiance to no party, yet it controls the
machines of both old parties.
If there is anything that is calculated to give the political bosses
the jim-jams it is a show of independence on the part of the masses.
I would rather be a dog and scratch at the root of a stump for a mouse,
than to feel as small as most rich people do when the assessor and
tax-collector come round.
Money paid out for public improvements is a blessing compared with that
paid out for war expenses.
An honest dollar is one that preserves the equity in contracts, and not
the one of increasing or decreasing value, or whose value depends upon
the caprice or self-interest of a few bankers.
The greatest need of this country is for about seven million men who
have the courage to vote for what they want.
“The poverty of the poor is their destruction,” and the wealth of the
rich has the same effect on its possessors. These two extremes are the
cause of the downfall of the nations.
There are some things of which there can be an overproduction, and one
of them is yellow-dog politics.
Is there a farmer or laborer in all the land that ever signed a
petition to Congress for the destruction of the greenbacks?
The question of 16 to 1 is still an issue; that is, there are sixteen
reasons why the Democratic party should permit itself to be buried to
one against it.
The banks are in the field to destroy the greenbacks and secure
complete control of the currency.
It is not despair but hope that incites revolution. Despair is death.
The workingmen divide what they produce with every idler in the land,
rich and poor.
The way to get even with a private trust is for the people to establish
a public trust.
It wasn’t the so-called “sound money” men that saved the flag.
It is the hog nature in man that causes most of the suffering in the
world.
Our commercial system rests upon the basis of skinning the other fellow
before he has an opportunity to skin us.
One of the strongest planks in the devil’s platform is yellow-dog
politics.
The best way to abolish poverty is to establish justice.
You can’t cheat the devil by passing a law that calls stealing business.
The lower classes are those who act low—rich or poor.
The practice of redeeming one kind of a dollar with another kind
constitutes the banker’s cinch.
The harmony that will likely prevail in the next national Democratic
convention might best be illustrated by pouring out a barrel of
Kilkenny cats upon a wet floor.
I don’t think that Mr. Bryan is a thief, but he had the Populist
platform borrowed so long that he has perhaps inadvertently fallen into
the habit of thinking it is his own.
Railroads under private ownership form the strongest prop on which the
trusts lean. Through special and reduced rates in the way of rebates
they are enabled to freeze out all competitors.
It is stated that the rebate given to the Colorado Fuel and Iron
Company by the Santa Fé Railroad while Paul Morton was its traffic
manager amounted to $400,000 a year. Morton was a heavy stockholder
in the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. If this is true, and this is
the kind of man President Roosevelt is depending on to reform railroad
rates and abolish rebates, we may know just what to expect.
The supreme test of any question is, is it right? If it is, then no man
should hesitate to declare himself for the right.
Direct legislation is the very essence of democracy, and that is why
the politicians don’t want it.
* * * * *
If Thomas Lawson is telling the truth it appears that about
three-fourths of the Captains of Industry ought to be wearing striped
clothes behind prison bars.
* * * * *
The President’s recommendation for the control of the railroads, and
the plan he seems to have adopted to go about it, consultation with
the railroad magnates, reminds me of a story I once heard related by a
German speaker at a public meeting. A man who had been considered as
having an unsound mind was found one morning hanging to a beam in the
barn, the rope under his arms. He was promptly cut down, and on being
asked why he hanged himself that way he answered that he was trying to
commit suicide.
“But why didn’t you place the rope around your neck?” he was asked.
“I’ve tried it that way twice,” he replied, “and it always chokes me.”
Is the President afraid of choking the railroad corporations?
* * * * *
The question of how to get something for nothing is pretty well
illustrated in the free government deposits in national banks. The
banks have now over one hundred millions of dollars of government
money for their own use, for which they do not pay a cent. Yet when
the farmer talks about borrowing money from the government on his land
at 2 per cent. interest, the banks raise a howl of paternalism that
can be heard all around the world. If President Roosevelt is sincere
in his fight on the trusts let him yank that money out of the hands of
the biggest trust of all—the money trust. This is something that he
can do and that ought to be done. There is no constitutional question
involved, and if it be urged that it is necessary for the money to be
in circulation let the government loan it direct to the people without
a rake-off for the banks. This thing of prosecuting the little trusts
and aiding the big ones won’t add any laurels to Teddy’s brow. Let no
guilty trust escape, and there ain’t any innocent ones.
* * * * *
Toledo has just brought in a batch of indictments against some of her
public officials. Governor Durbin, of Indiana, declares: “Statistics
of political debauchery in this State for 1904, if it were possible
to present them, would be nothing short of stunning.” Several other
governors in their messages have called attention to the growth of
corruption in their States, and in Colorado the situation is alarming.
Three United States senators have been indicted within the past year,
besides scores of lesser officials, some of whom are now serving terms
in the penitentiary. Four Republican candidates for governor have been
defeated in Republican States on account of their connection or
sympathy with corrupt practices, and yet the work is only begun. Let
the crusade against political corruption continue. If there is not room
enough in the jails, I move that some of the horse thieves be turned
out and the public thieves turned in.
* * * * *
The express companies once had a monopoly of transmitting money and
charged exorbitant rates for the service. Then the government went
into the business and reduced the rates. The express companies were
compelled to come to the government rates or not get any business.
Thus money is saved to the people, and the business is established on
a firm basis. Of course the express companies set up the usual cry of
paternalism, but it did no good, and the people would not think now of
surrendering this prerogative to private companies. Now, why can’t the
government add to its postal system the carrying of parcels, say up to
ten or twelve pounds’ weight, and a telegraph and telephone system?
The latter are just as legitimate and necessary as the former. Is it
because the express companies, that have grown immensely rich, have a
lobby in Congress to prevent the passage of such a bill? In England
they have the parcels post and the government telegraph, and they
save the people millions of dollars. In the past few years nineteen
congressional committees have been appointed to investigate the use of
the telegraph in connection with the postal department and seventeen
of them have reported favorably toward establishing it. A majority of
Postmaster Generals have recommended it, and the people demand it, yet
the telegraph companies, or rather one company which is controlled by
one family, has been successful in thwarting all legislation toward the
establishment of a government telegraph system.
* * * * *
The readiness of the Democrats to vote for any old thing they see coming
down the pike with the Democratic label on—Parker or Bryan, the gold
standard or free silver—reminds me of an incident that happened down
in Texas. A wealthy farmer who employed a great many negroes was going
into town one day, and one of the negroes on the farm asked him to
bring him back a marriage license.
“All right, Pete,” said the farmer, “but what’s the girl’s name?”
“Ann Brown,” replied the darkey.
When the farmer returned that evening he gave the negro his marriage
license.
Pete took it and slowly read it over.
“Look heah, Marse Henry, you’se done gone an’ got dis license fer Mary
Clarke. I’se gwine t’ marry Ann Brown.”
“I’m sorry, Pete,” the farmer replied, “but never mind; when I go into
town again next week I’ll get you another license.”
“What’ll dat cost?” asked Pete.
“One dollar.”
“Lordy, nebber mind, Marse. Dere ain’t a dollar’s wuff ob difference
’tween all de coons on de fa’m.”
* * * * *
Every effort is now being put forth by the banks to have the greenbacks
retired. So long as they continue to be issued by the government the
banks have not complete control of the money of the country. This
movement to retire the greenbacks was begun directly after the Civil
War. At that time the bankers said: “It will not do to allow the
greenback, as it is called, to circulate as money for any length of
time, for we cannot control that.” Hugh McCulloch, then Secretary of
the Treasury, acting on the bankers’ suggestion, said: “The first thing
to be done is to establish the policy of contraction.” It was done,
and we had the panic of 1873, on account of which thousands lost their
homes. The panic aroused the people and caused the bankers to pause
in their conspiracy. The Greenback party came and $346,000,000 in
greenbacks were saved from destruction. But in the meantime the bankers
had silver secretly demonetized. In 1878, however, it was partially
restored by the Bland-Allison law. But the bankers were still at work.
In October, 1877, the famous Buell circular letter was sent to the
bankers throughout the country. “It is advisable,” said this circular,
“to do all in your power to sustain such prominent daily and weekly
newspapers, especially the agricultural and religious press, as will
oppose the issuing of greenback paper money, and that you also withhold
patronage or favors from all applicants who are not willing to oppose
the government issue of money. Let the government issue the coin and
the banks issue the paper money of the country, for then we can better
protect each other.”
* * * * *
In March, 1893, the American Bankers’ Association sent out to all the
national banks what is known as the “panic circular.” In view of the
present efforts on the part of the banks to retire the greenbacks, this
circular furnishes some very good reading matter:
DEAR SIR: The interests of national
bankers require immediate financial legislation by
Congress. Silver, silver certificates and Treasury
notes must be retired and national bank-notes upon a
gold basis made the only money. This will require the
authorization of from $500,000,000 to $1,000,000,000
of new bonds as a basis of circulation. You will at
once retire one-third of your circulation and call in
one-half of your loans. Be careful to make a money
stringency felt among your patrons, especially among
influential business men. Advocate an extra session
of Congress for the repeal of the purchasing clause
of the Sherman law, and act with the other banks of
your city in securing a large petition to Congress
for its unconditional repeal, as per accompanying
form. Use personal influence with congressmen and
particularly let your wishes be known to senators.
The future life of national banks as safe investments
depends upon immediate action, as there is an
increasing sentiment in favor of government legal
tender notes and silver coinage.
Does anyone but the bankers themselves, and their paid agents, believe
for a moment that it would be safe to surrender the control of the
currency of the country into the hands of men who would put out such a
circular as that? May we not conjecture what they would do when once
they had us in their power? If there are those who are in doubt about
this question, or the patriotism and honesty of the national bankers,
let them read the history of the panics of 1873 and 1893, both of which
were precipitated by the bankers. Let the government take the bankers
at their word and compel them to keep in their banks a reserve gold
fund for the redemption of their own notes. Abolish the gold reserve
in the Treasury and make every greenback a perpetual, absolute money,
receivable for all dues to the United States, and a legal tender for
the payment of private debts. In other words, put the banks where the
government is now, if they are to issue any notes at all, and give the
government the prerogatives which the banks now want, and some of which
they already have. Instead of the government loaning money to the banks
at one-fourth of one per cent., let it loan it to the people direct
at two per cent. Instead of the government maintaining a large supply
of gold for the benefit of the banks, let the banks furnish their own
gold for the redemption of their notes, and compel them to maintain
a 100-cent reserve, for a note that has only 50 cents behind it is
worse than any 50-cent dollar that the banker has ever conjured in his
mind. Money issued by the banks and that issued by the government are
entirely different propositions. If the banks have proved anything they
have proved too much. They have proved that the government credit is
the best in the world, that it will even make the note of a dishonest
banker good. They have proved that it would not be safe to place the
control of the currency into their hands, for they might at any time
issue another panic circular asking the banks to call in “one-third of
their circulation and one-half of their loans,” and a lot of other mean
things that an honest man and a patriot would not do. The question is
now up, and it is nearing the climax where the people must decide as to
whether the banks will control the currency of the country, and through
it the business of the country, or whether the power shall remain in
the hands of the people, as Jefferson says, “where it belongs.”
_A Family Necessity_
“James,” said Mrs. Talkyerdeth, as she discontentedly jabbed her
hatpins into the hat she had just taken off, “one of us has got to be
operated on.”
“Wha-at!” ejaculated Mr. Talkyerdeth, sitting up with a jolt.
“And right away, and seriously, too,” continued Mrs. Talkyerdeth,
setting her lips firmly.
“What are you talking about, Maria?” demanded Mr. Talkyerdeth
impatiently.
“Well, it’s so,” asserted Mrs. Talkyerdeth decidedly. “Will you
telephone for a surgeon, or shall I?”
“Why, my dear,” protested Mr. Talkyerdeth anxiously, “I hadn’t the
least suspicion that there was anything the matter with you.”
“There isn’t,” snapped Mrs. Talkyerdeth. “Do you take me for one of
these puling, pasty, putty-like females all the women seem to be
nowadays?”
“Well, there’s nothing the matter with me, either,” asserted Mr.
Talkyerdeth, with intense relief in every glad accent. “I never felt
better in my life than I do this minute.”
“I know it. But what difference does that make?” demanded Mrs.
Talkyerdeth sharply.
“Eh?” cried Mr. Talkyerdeth, his eyelids flying up and his lower jaw
dropping down until there seemed to be some danger of their colliding,
if they kept on, in the middle of the back of his head.
“I never was so mortified in my life as I was at the sewing society
this afternoon, and it’s never going to happen again,” replied Mrs.
Talkyerdeth positively. “So you can just make up your mind that the
doctor is going to chop something, I don’t care what, out of one of us
right straight off. Why, every woman there was telling all about either
her own or her husband’s operation, and I had to sit with my mouth shut
all afternoon, just because we’ve never had one!”
ALEX. RICKETTS.
_The Songs We Love_
BY EUGENE C. DOLSON
The songs we love, the dear heart songs
That light us on our way,
Are records of our smiles and tears—
Our lives from day to day.
For words to simple nature true
Are those that reach the heart,
And that which thrills the common soul
Is still the highest art.
_The Alligator of Blique Bayou_
A CUBAN TALE
BY FRANK SAVILE
The smoking-room steward yawned his despair. The card parties had
broken up half an hour before, nightcap drinks had been ordered,
tumblers had been emptied, and half a dozen men had risen to their feet
with “Good night” upon their lips. It looked as if the long-suffering
attendant were to be allowed a real six hours’ sleep below.
And then a single word—“fishing”—had changed all these bright
prospects in the twinkling of an eye. The globe-trotting Englishman,
Mathers, was vaunting the fifty-six-pound salmon he had caught in the
Sands River, British Columbia. It seemed that not a man in the room
could take to his bed in peace till he had confuted the boaster from
stores of personal experience. Fresh cigars were lit, tumblers were
refilled, and story climbed upon story in unctuous mendacity.
Muller, the German bagman, bumbled tales of Baltic sturgeon that would
make two bites of the British Columbian salmon if they encountered them
after breakfast time; Morehead, fresh from Florida, smiled superiorly
as he told of one-hundred-and-fifty-pound tarpon, caught with a line
and rod, of the weight of a walking-cane; Rivaz, the creole, asked what
was the matter with a two-hundred-weight tuna that it should score
second place to what was nothing more than a glorified herring? Across
the clouds of smoke romance answered to romance; falsehood was fought
with its own weapons.
Finally Morehead, abandoning his earliest illustration, harked back to
the land from which it was drawn. Alligators—had any one of them
enjoyed the sport of hanging a looped line over an alligator run, and
opening a manhole through the earth upon their lairs? That was fishing
if you liked, with the odds upon the fish! Till you had joined in the
tug which yanked a fighting saurian ashore you didn’t know what human
muscles could stand—you might go shark-fishing every day of your life,
and miss learning it.
The suddenness of the topic left him, for the moment, master of the
field. Professional liars, hurriedly reviewing their conversational
equipments, found themselves with no better weapon than an already
over-tempered imagination. None of them had been in Florida—none could
supply the substratum of fact which alone is a true foundation for
convincing fiction.
Then a new voice shattered the periods of Morehead’s triumph. In the
corner, with one foot banked against the table and the other stretched
across the lounge, sat a long and lanky graybeard, his extended limbs
giving him something of the effect of a pair of human compasses. So far
he had added nothing to the conversation.
“Say, now, my dear sir,” he drawled plaintively, “you know you have not
got any _real_ alligators in Florida.”
The young man’s face grew purple.
“Not got any!” he blared. “Not got any!”
“Not to call _alligators_!” persisted the veteran complacently. “What,
now, would be your idea of the length, breadth and jaw-capacity of one
of your little pets?”
The youth drew a calculating breath and eyed his questioner narrowly.
“I assisted, a short time back, to capture one eighteen feet long,”
he lied coldly. The man on the lounge accepted the statement with a
patronizing little nod.
“There now!” he agreed. “It just bears out what I say. Nowadays there
aren’t any of a size to _call_ alligators. When _I_ was in Florida,
it might be forty or it might be fifty years ago, that kind of small
fry were reckoned in among the lizards. When we went hunting what the
New York manufacturers call crocodile leather, anything less than four
fathoms from tail-tip to smile we shouldered out of the way. One of
thirty feet, I allow, we considered a circumstance.”
A murmur rustled up from the assembly. Even the steward’s unconscious
grimace spoke of incredulity.
“Yes,” continued the old man pleasantly. “I see your eyebrows rise,
but that won’t prevent my assuring you that my recollections don’t
stop there. For over a year I had the personal acquaintance of one
that measured from end to end not a single inch less than twelve slimy
yards. But that,” he allowed generously, “was not in Florida.”
“Barnum’s Museum?” suggested Morehead contemptuously, and the listeners
grinned. The veteran was not put out.
“No,” he contradicted, “not even in the United States. Yet, at the same
time, not so far from home. In Cuba—to be explicit.”
There was a shout of derision. Not less than six of those present had
been volunteers in the war.
“Cuba!” they bawled in chorus. “There isn’t a crocodile in the island
that would crowd a bathtub!” added Morehead defiantly.
The graybeard eyed them serenely.
“Of course,” he said, with a humble note of interrogation, “you’re
posted—you know every inch of the country from Baracoa to Corrientes?”
Morehead moved a little restlessly.
“I was three months around Santiago with my regiment,” said he.
“And spent every spare second examining the creeks, I don’t doubt,”
said the other cheerfully. “My boy,” he went on, “I had been five
years in the country before you began to attend kindergarten. In those
days the fame of the Blique Bayou alligator was known to every soul
within a hundred miles of Guantanama. I don’t mind allowing that the
name of Everett P. Banks—which is what I’m called when I’m at home,
gentlemen—was a good deal in men’s mouths about the same time. We were
much mixed up together, one way or another, that astounding beast and
I.”
The steward leaned his head upon his palms, and swore gently beneath
his breath. He told himself that this evil old man was about to knock
another half-hour off the night’s rest. He recognized in the gray eyes
a triumphant light—the gleam that illumines the face of the raconteur
whose audience is assured.
Morehead was still dissatisfied.
“Blique Bayou?” he repeated superciliously. “Blique Bayou?”
Banks nodded with an indulgent air.
“On the map it appears as the San Antonio River,” he explained, “and
it flows into the sea about a mile to the west of the Buena Esperanza
Mining Company’s settlement. As it was notorious that Emil Blique, the
West Indian, owned all the shares, the hill that was topped by the
shafting was called Blique Mountain, and the creek and swamp around it
Blique Bayou. For five years I was manager of the whole outfit. And a
knock-kneed crowd they were,” he added reminiscently.
Mathers interrupted. It looked as if the narrative were going to jump
the tracks to be wrecked on outside issues.
“The alligator,” he insisted. “We want the tale of the alligator!”
The old man stared at him in gentle surprise.
“You wouldn’t keep a man of my age out of his berth to tell you yarns
thirty years old?” he deprecated.
“We would,” said Mathers determinedly. “What’s yours?”
Startled out of his equanimity, the ancient allowed that so far he
had encountered nothing to abash whisky—plain. But as for the story
at that time of night—well, well, they needn’t make all that noise.
If it had to be done he supposed he had better get to it as quickly
as possible. He paused, took a gulp at the tumbler the steward
placed before him, and let a meditative glance dwell upon Morehead,
who had made a motion to rise. Catching his eye, the Floridian
suddenly abandoned his purpose, and sat down in a pose of exasperated
resignation.
“It was somewhere about ’81—or it might be ’82,” began the old man,
anchoring his gaze mildly upon Morehead’s uncompromising features,
“that I landed at Santiago from Savannah, with a letter in my pocket
from my late employer, George S. Gage, to Señor Emil Blique, Buena
Esperanza; the letter and myself being respectively part answers to
a wild telegram that my boss had received ten days before. The West
Indian had cabled that his manager had died of yellow fever, and that
he was alone with nothing but creole help to drive the congregation of
hard-shell niggers and dagos that he paid to grub manganese from the
bowels of the earth.
“He wanted a man, he said, with a knowledge of mining and with two
working fists. He laid particular stress upon the second qualification,
and offered such a one three hundred dollars a month to come at the
earliest opportunity.
“Gage told me that if I’d the spirit of a louse I’d run along and take
it. Otherwise, he said, he’d offer it to Altsheler, the under manager,
who was a wicked man behind a pistol, but with no kind of idea of using
four fingers and a thumb when the gun got lost. That’s a terrible fault
among dagos. They are frightened of a knock-down blow, because they
don’t understand it. But when you start gunning among them—well, they
can gun and knife themselves—some.
“You mightn’t think it, gentlemen, but in those days I’d a fist like
a ham, and I concluded, after consideration, that the job was built
for my particular talents and not for Altsheler’s. Ten days after that
telegram arrived I was bumping along the trail to Blique Mountain,
wondering just how hard those three hundred dollars would be to collect
at the end of every four weeks.
“I needn’t have troubled. For a Jamaican, old Emil was as straight a
man as I have ever known. His cheque was good money every time I cashed
it, and, when I’d got the hang of the business, fairly easy earned.
During the first fortnight I filled an eye for two mine hands _per
diem_, and by the end of that time the crowd began to understand just
where their best interest lay. They reasoned it out that they’d have
to do as they were told, and after that things went like clockwork.
When I’d got them really tame, indeed, I found that I could slack off
in the afternoons when old man Blique was moving about himself, and so
I looked around for relaxation. Like all of you, I was something of a
fisherman.
“Naturally, I turned my steps toward the bayou, and it was there that
I made the acquaintance of Pedro Garsia, Concepcion, his son, and the
other member of the family, as I must call him, for from every point
of view, he was treated like a relation. I allude to my friend Joaquin
el Legardo—Jimmy the Alligator, in the vernacular—and he, I repeat,
was every inch of thirty-six feet long. I dare say he was a hundred and
fifty years old, and he led a more or less blameless existence in the
swamp and stream adjacent to the Garsia bungalow.
“At first, though, it looked as if our relations might be strained. I’d
got down to the bank, fitted up my rod and cast a speculative lump of
frog’s flesh into the water just to see if anything sizeable was on the
move. No sooner had I made the cast than there was a boil and a rush
’way out in midstream, and an ugly dun snout bobbed above the surface
and took down my bait and half my line before I realized what was
happening. It didn’t take me long to understand. I saw the great jaws
open and champ viciously on the good catgut that was tangled in the
yellow teeth, and I said a wicked word. Also I drew my revolver. Before
I’d got it cocked I heard a terrible uproar from behind.
“An old man, with silver-white hair hanging over a chocolate-brown
face, was running toward me, shouting as if he’d break a blood vessel.
“‘No shoot!’ he bawled, ‘no shoot!’ and he waved his arms with some of
the most complete gesticulations I have ever witnessed. I put down my
pistol and waited till he arrived panting.
“He was too much out of breath to say much at first, but what he did
manage to whisper was to the point. ‘_Bueno legardo_—_bueno_,’ he
repeated, pointing to the brute that was playing cat’s-cradle with my
fishing line, and then, tapping the butt of my revolver, ‘no shoot—no!’
“I can tell you I was mystified, for the idea of a _good_ alligator,
as he kept calling it, was outside the pale of my experiences. I told
him so. But he nodded and beckoned and led me down the bank a couple
of hundred yards till we were opposite his house. There I found a rope
stretched between two stumps across the river, with a loop running on
it, and this last was lashed to the bow of a pirogue.
“‘This mine,’ he explained, smiling. ‘This what you call a ferry.’ I
looked at the boat. Then I remembered that coming up from Santiago the
road had circled widely. Blique Mountain had been in sight a good hour
before we reached it and my driver had made me understand that we were
avoiding the river. This was evidently the short cut for foot travelers.
“‘If this is the ferry, why in the name of gracious don’t you let
me fill that old pirate with lead?’ I asked, as the brute floated
comfortably by. ‘Not that he’d mind,’ I added, as I realized the size
of him, ‘but you should get a howitzer and pump a six-pound ball
through him. Some day, when your catboat’s full of people, he’ll upset
it and fill his larder for a fortnight.’
“The old man smiled agreeably and put his head on one side like a
magpie. He cocked me a comical look out of the corner of his eye.
‘This river not deep,’ he explained glibly. ‘This what you call ford
one time,’ and he pointed toward the eddies that swirled between us and
the opposite bank. I could see that they were running over shallows
nowhere more than four feet deep. And at that the old chap toddled into
the house and reappeared with a basket load of decaying lizard flesh.
He came close to me and gave me a little nudge.
“‘Ford one time,’ he repeated, taking a lump of offal and tossing
it into the stream. Then he gave me another nudge, and grinned.
‘Joaquin—’ he drew my attention to the dun snout that came floating
down upon the bait—‘_Joaquin make it ferry!_’
“I gave him one look, and he answered me with a grimace that would have
done credit to an idol. Then I sat down and laughed and laughed till I
was sore. The originality of it! The old scoundrel was positively and
actually maintaining his private alligator to put the fear of death
upon the niggers and mulattos that used the short cut into the town,
and was reaping a harvest of ferry dues over a four-foot deep river!
“He watched me, as I shouted, quite politely, and when I’d had my laugh
out insisted on escorting me into his house and offering me a glass of
aguardiente. While I was sipping it he was rummaging among his litter
and finally produced me a line in the place of the one that Joaquin had
snatched. He insisted on binding it on to my reel, and then, in his
broken English, began to explain just where the best fishing stands
could be found along the banks. And he didn’t stop a-telling. He took
me out when the sun got lower and gave me a few practical hints upon the
spot. He laid himself out to be agreeable, and at the end of a couple
of hours we were as thick as thieves.
“When we got back to the shanty we found a thick, squat, low-browed
young man smoking a cigarette on the veranda. The old man introduced
him as his son, Concepcion. The youth bowed, smirked and expressed his
sense of the honor in perfect English, yet somehow I didn’t take to him
as I had done to his parent. He had the same magpie way of looking at
you as his father had, but with a difference. The old man did it with
a laugh in his eye: the young one furtively, shiftily and without the
ghost of a smile.
“It came about that for the next twelve months I was thrown a good deal
into the company of the Garsias. They lived openly on the earnings
of their ferry, but I suspected that they made a little by selling
aguardiente to my dagos and niggers. But they knew when to stop—they
never sent one of my crowd back so’s he couldn’t take his spell the day
after a carouse, and anything short of that I winked at.
“Old man Blique was not a conversationalist, and the two at the
bungalow were practically my only company for days together. And when
they were out of the way I got into the habit of regarding even Joaquin
as a sort of companion. I got to know his haunts, and where a newcomer
would have seen nothing but an ugly log, half buried in the mud, I
could recognize the upper half of the alligator’s countenance and his
little, straight, slit eyes winking at me most benevolent.
“And yet he was the one that put an end to all this simplicity and
loving kindness. I don’t know if the fish supply in the river grew
short. Perhaps in his old age he developed epicurean tastes. But nasty
stories suddenly began to come in. Fowls went, pigs were missed and
never heard of again, a couple of steers disappeared from an _estancia_
higher up the river, and a mare of Emil’s was robbed of her colt and
pervaded the banks of the bayou for weeks, neighing like a lost soul.
Joaquin grew to be the most unpopular personage in the neighborhood.
“The worst, however, was to come. Red Rambo, the head man of a gang
that worked Number 44 level, and a mulatto went spreeing off to
Santiago one fine evening before a Saint’s Day. The next afternoon,
late, as I was fishing, he appeared on the opposite bank, evidently
full up, calling to Pedro to fetch him and his mates across. The moment
the old man had got the pirogue against the far bank Red Rambo started
to call him every kind of extortioner and money-sucker, and, seeing
that it was from a mulatto to a pure-breed creole, I don’t wonder that
the old man got mad. He refused to take the fellow over—told him to
cool his blood by walking six miles round.
“Unfortunately Rambo had drunk himself up to the pitch of Dutch
obstinacy and Dutch courage. He came splashing into the river, wading
after the pirogue and cursing Pedro by every saint in the nigger
calendar.
“Some of the low-down half-castes, who’d believe anything, used to
declare that Joaquin was the familiar spirit of the Garsia family and
was sworn to protect them in this life in return for a note of hand
for their souls in the life to come. I could see some of the men in
the boat just shivering for Red Rambo as they listened to the insults
he was piling upon the old boy, and their shivers were prophetic. For
there came a sudden swirl upon the surface of the calm in midstream,
and then a little grooving eddy shot toward the mulatto with the rush
of a millrace.
“He yelled, tossed up his arms, and made a half-turn toward the shore.
Through a long instant I could see his finger-tips quiver against the
green of a fern palm opposite. And then he was _gone_—snatched down
from below as suddenly as the pantomime clown drops through the trap
in the boards. A little foaming cone of water burst up from the whirl
where he disappeared, and long, irregular stains floated away from its
crimson centre. But never another sign of Rambo was seen again, either
in the water or out of it. Joaquin was both his murderer and his grave!
“In justice to poor old Pedro I must allow that he was the man who
took the thing most to heart. He screeched, he gesticulated, he called
down curses upon the alligator from all the angels of paradise, and
he made as if he would leap into the river and fall upon Joaquin with
nothing more than a pocket-knife; in fact, it took all the exertions
of the other niggers to keep him from it. They got him ashore at last
pretty well demented and fighting like a maniac. He had to be tied to
his bed before we durst leave him to himself. When the others had gone
jabbering off home I shook my head solemnly at Concepcion.
“‘That means the end of Joaquin,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow I shall get orders
from the boss to fill him up with Winchester bullets, and then where’s
your ferry?’
“The Spaniard was as pale as milk. He looked away from me to his father
foaming upon the bed, and then he gave a queer little high-pitched
laugh.
“‘Señor Banks,’ he answered, ‘there may be two sides to that question.
Señor Blique owns the mines, but not the river or the alligator. That
dirt-begotten negro brought his fate upon himself.’
“I looked at him narrowly, and noticed that he was ostentatiously and
abnormally calm. That’s a bad sign in a creole. They are safer red and
roaring. Cold and white they’re malicious.
“‘My dear friend,’ said I politely, ‘there is no law against alligator
shooting. Whatever orders I get I shall obey—be sure of that and take
a friendly warning. Joaquin can’t stay hereabouts after that bloody
exploit—it’s absurd to expect it.’
“He bowed quite pleasantly.
“‘If warnings are in order, señor,’ he replied, ‘take one from me.
The man that kills Joaquin will not live long to boast of it!’ And at
that he drew back the curtain from before the door and gave me a very
significant view of the street. I took the hint and, without another
word, marched out. And I did it sideways, too. You don’t expose the
broad of your back to a man of Concepcion’s singular talents without
making sure that he’s leaving his knife in his belt.
“Of course, as I predicted, old Emil was not prepared to stand any
nonsense from Pedro Garsia, his son, or Joaquin. Rambo was one of his
best foremen. He gave me the strictest orders to take my gun to the
alligator the first thing in the morning and to revenge the mulatto if
it took all day. I nodded, shrugged my shoulders, and went to bed.
“The first news brought me in the morning was that old Pedro was
dead. The shock had brought on brain fever, and the son’s homeopathic
treatment of forcing aguardiente down his throat had lifted the fever
to the point of delirium. In the night the patient had burst his bonds
and broken straight for the river. His son and their nigger servant had
been aroused by the noise and had followed.
“They were just about ten seconds too late. The old man stumbled upon
the bank and went sprawling half in and half out of the water, his
outstretched hand falling upon what the nigger thought was a floating
log.
“It wasn’t. For the log split into twin jaws, and, as the other two
snatched the poor old fellow up, the open fangs came together just
below the unfortunate wretch’s shoulder. It was only a piece of corpse
that they carried back into the veranda, while Joaquin went smiling off
into midstream to enjoy a most unexpected dessert.
“I considered, of course, that any son with Christian feelings would
spare me any further trouble in the matter of the alligator’s death.
That, for the sake of commercial advantage, Concepcion would allow
his parent to go unrevenged seemed out of the question. I took my
Winchester with me as I strolled down to the river merely because I
thought he might be too much overcome with grief to have completed his
obvious duty, and that I might do him a neighborly turn by forestalling
him.
“You can imagine my surprise, then, when I saw, as I turned the corner
of the Garsia bungalow, Concepcion, standing alone upon the river
bank, the usual basket of offal on the ground beside him, tossing the
contents into the water, lump by lump! The alligator was taking them,
serenely and regularly, waiting for them with half-open jaws as a
lapdog waits for biscuits!
“There are moments when one’s impulses take the reins into their teeth
and bolt. I made no sound—I said nothing. I strode silently up behind
the man, drew a clear bead upon the brute’s eye and sent a bullet plumb
into his wicked brain. And as he ripped out of the water and rolled
over in his agony I fired another cartridge at the junction of his
forearm and body, and that was the end of his floundering. He sank like
a lump of lead.
“The Spaniard gave a yell as I fired the first time. I brought my rifle
down from the second shot to see him springing straight at me. I pulled
him up short. With the butt at my hip and the muzzle pointing straight
at his chest, I made him understand just what to expect if he came a
step nearer. He halted five yards away—panting.
“For ten seconds we two stood there, each glaring into the other’s
face, and if the light of hell ever burns in a man’s eyes, I saw it so
burning in the eyes of Concepcion Garsia. His shirt was open at the
neck—I could watch the drumming of his heart within his ribs!
“And then the tenseness of his limbs gave. He seemed to fall in
upon himself. He just gasped one threatening word—‘_Mañana!_’
(tomorrow!)—turned upon his heel and staggered off toward his house
like a drunken man! I did not see him again for a fortnight.
“Of course, after that, the fact that there was a strain of madness in
the Garsia family didn’t seem to me open to doubt. And, pondering the
question, I determined that I must be very much upon my guard whenever
I visited the ferry. My fishing excursions I gave up entirely and I
wore my six-shooter night and day. No—with Concepcion I was taking no
risks.
“That same evening Joaquin’s carcass floated up upon a sandbank a
hundred yards below the bungalow. The next morning it was gone. The
bush behind the bank was trampled and bloodstained, and the niggers
began to whisper. They told me, in confidence, that the Spaniard had
dug his heart out to make a fetich of and that I was doomed to many
lingering torments. Naturally, I took small notice of that sort of
thing.
“The hands, now that the ferry had become a ford again, went much
more frequently down to Santiago, and it was not long before I heard
that Concepcion had been seen there. But his bungalow was closed, his
nigger had been sent about his business, and the weeds began to fill
his garden, as weeds do in tropical countries alone. At the end of a
couple of weeks I began to believe that we had seen the last of Señor
Concepcion.
“And then a thing happened that appeared to be no less than a miracle.
One evening, less than half an hour after a score of the hands had set
out to spend the next day’s fiesta in the town, nineteen of them were
back in my veranda, yelling, screeching that Joaquin was returned—back
and playing his old tricks again! He had risen in the midst of them as
they forded the stream and had taken down Tome, a quadroon pickman,
exactly as he had taken down Red Rambo less than a month before.
“Of course, I didn’t believe them. I had seen my bullets go home into
Joaquin’s brain and heart and I opined that Tome, for the joke of the
thing, had dived with a bit of a splutter and was probably laughing
himself into convulsions at the success of the trick. I put this view
of the case to the others mildly.
“They didn’t seem to have breath enough to pour all the contempt they
felt upon the idea. ‘Dived! Joking!’ He was pulled down, screaming,
they declared—they saw the jaws close on him—there wasn’t one of them
five yards from him when he was taken!
“I shrugged my shoulders, took my rifle and went back with them to the
river bank. You can just figure my astonishment when a dun snout, as
like the late Joaquin’s as one pea is like another, cut a lazy ripple
across the surface as it went sliding out from the bank into midstream!
And the boil of his tail showed up ten yards behind his head. I hadn’t
believed that there was another such alligator in the wide world!
“These reflections didn’t prevent my rifle-butt coming up to my
shoulder. I aimed for a point three inches behind the snout. We heard
the bullet thud, but the brute didn’t twitch—he didn’t even close his
half-open eye! He just let the water close slowly over his head—so
slowly that I found time to empty my magazine at him as he sank. Every
one of the five bullets hit his wicked head, and the last glanced
off! We knew it by the sound of a second thud among the echoes of the
report, while a splash of splintered wood showed on a branch on the
opposite side of the stream. Positively and actually, this new Joaquin
had a shot-proof skull!
“The niggers were gabbling excitedly about Ju-ju, and such like
idolatries, while the dagos were little better. As for me, I sat down
upon a stump and took my head in my hands. That two brutes of the same
size should appear in the same unimportant little Cuban creek was
almost unbelievable—to the superstitious imaginations of the mine
hands it could be explained in one way alone. It was debbil-debbil, and
they went off home up the hill, starting out of their skins if a bird
rustled in the bushes. I was left sitting and wondering.
“At the sound of an opening door some time later I looked up.
Concepcion Garsia came sauntering out of the bungalow. I reached for my
Winchester.
“He strolled on toward me slowly and complacently, halted a few yards
away and bowed. There was a wicked sneer round his thin lips.
“‘_Buenos dias, señor_,’ (Good day) he said as he raised his hat. ‘As
you remarked, it is permitted to shoot alligators. That, it appears,
does not always include the killing of them,’ and he laughed—his queer
high-pitched laugh.
“For the moment I was tongue-tied. The suggestion that an animal whose
brain had been shattered by my bullet was still alive was ridiculous,
but—well, the ‘but’ was to explain this new brute of the same size in
precisely the same spot. I looked Garsia squarely in the eyes.
“‘Do you mean to imply that Joaquin has come back?’ I asked.
“He shrugged his shoulders.
“‘_Quien sabe_—who knows?’ he answered, with that impudent smile still
twisting his lips. ‘What is your own opinion, señor?’
“I patted the breech of my rifle.
“‘It is here,’ I said quietly. ‘Joaquin—or another, I shall continue
the old treatment, _amigo_ (friend). Half an ounce of lead—at frequent
intervals.’
“He laughed again jeeringly, and turned upon his heel.
“‘Continue it, señor, continue it,’ he cried over his shoulder, ‘but
remember that all things come to an end, even your treatment and
perhaps—yourself!’
“The next minute he had slammed the door of his bungalow, and I, not
forgetting what an excellent mark for a bullet I was against the yellow
of the tinder-dry bush, hastened to put a tree between myself and the
shuttered window.
“There is no need to go into details of the next three months. It is
sufficient to say that the alligator began a reign of terror at the
ford. Horses went—goats, steers, poultry. And the river was almost
deserted, for boats were no longer a protection. The planters, who had
been accustomed to use the water for a highway between their
_estancias_, gave it up after no less than five pirogues had been
charged by the monster, and upset. One of the crew always sank, never
to rise again. Strangers using the foot road, and too impatient to wait
for the chance of being ferried when the boat was the wrong side, were
snatched up. Finally the heavy ferry pirogue itself was capsized, and
Manuel, the creole overseer, was lost. With him went, moreover, two
thousand _pesetas_ in cash, which he was bringing up from the bank at
Santiago for pay day.
“No less than twenty poor wretches went to their account in one way
or another in those twelve weeks, and the countryside grew desperate.
Enough bullets were showered upon the alligator to sink him by pure
weight if they had only stuck in him, but he seemed to mind them no
more than peas! I spent a week’s pay in cartridges myself.
“Of course, it is all very well to sit here in this smoking-room and
laugh out of court ideas about Ju-ju, fetish work, Whydah and all
those sorts of deviltries. They don’t go with ten-thousand-ton boats,
electric light and the last special edition Marconigram. But it gets
on your nerves if you sit day after day beside a jungle-ringed swamp,
listening to all that a couple of hundred niggers have to tell you
about the tropical powers of the Evil One. And that there was something
mysterious in the business I could swear—something, too, that my
instincts told me Concepcion Garsia held the key to. The sight of his
face the few times I passed him witnessed to that. There was a glint
of triumph in his eye that was simply diabolical. And yet he seldom
showed himself. Passers-by used the ferry pirogue as they liked—the
_centimos_ that his father used to collect he seemed to think no more
about.
“Well, as Concepcion himself remarked, there is an end to everything,
even to this story, and it fell to my lot to write finis across it.
But it was Providence alone that kept me from being the page and the
Spaniard the writer. It was just this way.
“I sat, one evening, on the bank not far from the bungalow, reading.
I was keeping an occasional lookout for the alligator, though as the
seasonal floods were just falling he hadn’t been seen for two or three
weeks. I had my revolver in my belt, more by habit than with any hope
of doing him mortal harm with it. Experience had proved that the
heaviest rifle bullets didn’t affect him. Just as I finished a chapter
a voice hailed me from across the stream.
“I looked up, and recognized Señora Barenna, the wife of the planter
at the _estancia_ behind Blique Mountain. She was waving her hand, and
beckoning to me to bring the pirogue across.
“I was surprised to see her there, for neither she nor her husband
used the ferry, as the metaled road to Santiago passed close to their
house. But naturally I didn’t wait for explanations at that distance.
I ran down, got into the boat and began to pull hand over hand on the
guide-rope. The señora welcomed me with a smile.
“‘You may well stare,’ she said, as I gave her my hand to help her down
the bank, ‘to find me in such a situation. I was driving from the town
when our stupid mules took fright at a wild pig that ran between their
feet. They swerved, bolted into the bush, smashed a wheel and there I
found myself, less than three miles from home by the ford, and six by
the road! You may imagine which I chose.’
“‘I’m truly sorry for your misfortune,’ said I, ‘but truly glad of the
opportunity of doing you a service,’ for Spanish ladies expect this
sort of thing and I began to collect my ideas for a further succession
of compliments. I never had a chance to frame them, for the pirogue,
which was in midstream again by now, quivered with a tremendous shock.
It was lifted half out of the water!
“The next instant it began to rock from side to side, broke from the
loop which held it to the guide-rope, and finally upset. The señora
screamed, and both she and I instinctively grasped the strands above
our heads. The boat floated on its side from beneath our feet!
“She was hanging by her hands alone. I swung up my feet, got a good
purchase by crooking my knee, and so, freeing one arm, hauled her up by
the waist beside me.
“Fortunately, she was an active woman, and she kept her presence of
mind. I shouted to her to unfasten the shoulder-shawl she wore, and to
fasten it over the rope and around her waist. She had done it in less
time than it takes to tell of it, but as she did it my heart jumped
into my mouth. Our combined weights amounted to more than the rope had
been stayed up to bear. The poles to which it was lashed at each end
slanted. We dipped till, owing to the height of the flood, we swung a
bare six inches above the surface! And, of course, I had a very good
idea of what had upset the boat!
“I had not to wait long. There was a boil of the eddies not ten yards
away and the familiar dun snout lifted and showed the upper half of
an open jaw. The brute made a bee-line for the bait that hung so
attractively at his mercy.
“Señora Barenna’s shriek was piercing. As for me—well, I spoke before
of the sudden way in which an impulse masters one. I saw in an instant
that it was a case of two or one, and a sort of frenzy of rage seized
upon me. With a curse I flung myself down upon the brute’s head,
feeling with my thumbs for his eyes, while, released from my weight,
the rope jerked the señora up six feet into safety.
“The next few seconds were a sort of disconnected nightmare. The water
closed over my head, the great jaws worked beneath my hands, and then a
blow struck me on the chest, exactly over the book that I had placed in
my breast-pocket a minute or two before.
“At times like those one’s reason is not in the very best working
order, but even then I was quite capable of recognizing that the blow
could not have been dealt by an alligator’s clumsy limbs. And my legs
and feet, too, instead of meeting the resistance of the brute’s back,
were sprawled along nothing more solid than a twenty-foot pole!
“My hand gripped my revolver from my belt, searched with it aimlessly
downward and sideways, and blundered against what I felt to be a living
body. At the same time the blow was repeated, but not quite in the same
place. The point of an edged weapon slipped across the smooth cover of
the book and gashed into my ribs. At that I pulled the trigger!
“And many a time since have I thanked Providence for the man that
invented brass-drawn, water-tight cartridges. For as I fired there was
a great bubbling rush from the explosion that rocked me over, while the
huge head below me heaved violently. Like a leaping salmon it burst
with me above the surface!
“The flood caught us, gripped us, and whirled us away together, to
fling us up upon a shallow bank of mud. And as I struggled to my feet I
looked down upon Concepcion’s dead body, a wound gaping in it from my
bullet, while beside him was stranded a great sheet-iron shell, floated
with leathern bags and surmounted with the stuffed head of old Joaquin!
Behind it stretched a pole ornamented with the tip of the same animal’s
tail!
“Well, gentlemen, I don’t know that there is much more to add. After
I had climbed along the rope and dragged Señora Barenna into safety
I kicked open the door of the bungalow and left her there, while I
hurried up to the works for help. But before I sent old Emil and his
housekeeper down with cordials, and so forth, I got the old man’s
permission to knock the hands off at once. I had my reasons.
“I lined those superstitious fools along the mud-bank before that sham
scaffolding of an alligator, and the sermon I preached them on the
follies of Ju-ju ought to have converted them then and there. But the
results were entirely contrary to my expectations. For when, some years
later, after I had left old Emil, I returned for a short visit to the
Barennas, who were always my grateful friends, I found Joaquin’s head
hung in their veranda.
“A servant who did not know me saw me looking at it.
“‘That American debbil-debbil,’ he explained politely, and pointed
to the little brass plate his master had had stuck upon it with an
inscription setting forth that I had shot the brute on such and such a
date. ‘Him name _Banks_,’ he added, ‘and great big Ju-ju. Nigger boy
say prayers to him ebry night!’”
_The Boy; His Hand and Pen_
BY TOM P. MORGAN
My Aunt Almira, who is an old maid, says that spring is the time when
the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love; but my Uncle
Bill, who has been a bachelor so long that it’s chronic with him,
says that ’most every spring he gets as bilious as a goat. That’s the
way it goes; women are romantic and are everlastingly thinking about
their hearts and souls, while men are generally more concerned about
their stomachs and pocketbooks. You give a man enough to eat and a few
dollars to squander and he’ll manage to scuffle along, but a woman
won’t be happy unless she’s worrying about love, or something.
Uncle Bill once knew an old maid who lived in constant dread of finding
a man under the bed. She kept on hopefully fearing him for thirty-seven
years, and early in the thirty-eighth she was drowned. One time there
was a Brighamyoungamist who married twenty-three different women in
rapid succession, and he looked a good deal like the last end of a
hard winter, too. Well, the judge threw up his hands in astonishment,
and asked him how in all-git-out a man would go to work to marry
twenty-three women. And the Brighamyoungamist grinned and replied:
“Aw—tee! hee!—Judge, I just asked ’em!”
But, on the other hand, spring is the time when your neighbor
borrows your lawn-mower and keeps it till he is ready to borrow your
snow-shovel. In the spring all Nature seems to smile, especially in
the Third Reader, and the little flowers go gaily skipping over hill
and dale. The grass pops up, the boys begin fighting regularly, the
birds warble all the day long in the leafy boughs, and the book-agent
comes hurriedly up the road with a zealous but firm dog appended to his
pants. About this time you feel achy and itchy and stretchy and gappy,
and so forth, all of which is a sign that you’ve got the spring fever.
Some men have the spring fever all the year round. Then they join all
the lodges they can squeeze into, and owe everybody, and talk about the
workingman needing his beer on Sunday.
This is all I know about spring, and most of it is what Uncle Bill told
me.
_Old Saws Filed New_
“Vice is contagious”—and so few of us have been vaccinated!
“A man must keep his mouth open a long time before a roast pigeon flies
into it”—but the chances are worse if he keeps it shut.
“Associate with men of good judgment”—if their good judgment will
permit.
“Duty is a power which rises with us in the morning and goes to rest
with us in the evening”—or even earlier in the day.
_The Force of Circumstance_
BY CHAUNCEY C. HOTCHKISS
They came up to me, he and his daughter, as I was sitting on the
half-deserted piazza of the hotel. His soft felt hat had been replaced
by a tall one, and there was no suggestion of his former outing costume
in the stiff linen and conventionally cut clothing he wore. His
daughter stood by his side, her hand within his arm, a little impatient
pout on her lips and a petulant wrinkle on her fine brows, as fair a
specimen of the typical American girl, in beauty of face and form and
taste in dress, as one could find or wish for.
“Ah, Alan, my boy!” said he heartily. “I’m off—quite suddenly. Some
plaguy business in town, you know. Sorry, but can’t help it! Wish you
were going along! Will be back tomorrow night—I think.” And here he
gave me a decided wink with the eye farthest from his daughter. The
girl twisted him about to see his face, as though suspicious of his
honesty.
“Why must you go, papa? And why won’t you take me? Aunt Margaret and
her rheumatism are poor company!”
“No, no, little woman—not this time! Force of circumstances, you know.
Mustn’t leave your aunt alone—not for the world! Have many things to
see to in town. How’s your arm, Alan? Better? That’s good! There’s the
stage, by Jove! Keep her out of mischief, my boy. Kiss your dad, puss.
Good-bye, Alan!”
As I looked at this fine specimen of metropolitan growth while he
clambered into the ramshackle stage that ran to the station, I felt
pretty sure that his conscience was not quite easy in thus hurrying to
town and leaving his daughter to her own devices. That the easy-going,
retired lawyer, whose hardest work consisted in killing time, had no
such pressing matters on hand as he had intimated, I was certain, and
had small doubt that visions of the stock-ticker, cool cocktails and
club cronies were the “plaguy business” which demanded his attention.
Nor did I blame him, for had it not been for the young girl who was now
looking blankly at the rapidly retreating vehicle my own place at the
table of the hotel would have been vacated days before.
A broken arm just cut of its sling and still almost useless was
my ostensible reason for lingering. It served me as an excuse
for protracting the pleasures of the broad Sound and stunted but
picturesque woods, though it did not blind me to the fact that I was
playing with fire by remaining. I was not born with a great deal
of conceit and am too well acquainted with the times to have faith
in the infallibility of love as a leveling power when applied to
cash considerations. In finances the girl was an aristocrat and I a
plebeian. My meditations were to myself, but the young lady gave vent
to hers.
“Very good, sir! I’ll pay you well for this,” she said, shaking her
finger in the direction of the vanished stage. “You wouldn’t take me
with you! Well, you’ll wish you had!” Then she turned to me. “Why did
he go, Mr. Alan?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. Force of circumstances, he said.”
“Force of fiddlesticks! He _always_ gives that as an excuse when he
does anything I dislike. I don’t believe in the force of circumstances.
Do you?”
“Most assuredly,” I returned.
“Well, I don’t, then. I’m a free agent. You and papa might as well
confess to fatalism. I would like to see circumstances force me!”
“I might weave a story showing the contrary. You have just seen——”
“Oh, that and your story would prove nothing,” she interrupted, with a
charming lack of logic. “A truce to nonsense—it’s too hot. Look at me,
sir!” she commanded, with mock severity. “Papa has practically thrown
me on your hands without regard to my opinion in the matter, as though
I were a small child. Aunt Margaret has a mild spell of rheumatism and
the religious mood that always seems to go with it. I understand that
you are responsible for me; how dare you assume the burden?”
“I accept, however,” I replied, with secret warmth.
“You will probably live to repent it. What shall we do?”
“Anything you elect. I am under your orders.”
“Then see that you obey them. The woods are too wet for a walk since
last night’s storm, and as for staying about here after being cooped up
two whole days by rain, it is intolerable. Let’s try to get Maxwell to
take us out on his fishing-sloop. He will do it for you.”
“No,” I said firmly. “That is the one thing your father prohibits.
It is mere nervousness, of course, but I will not be a party to such
a thing. Think of something else—the force of circumstance is still
against you.”
“Plague take the force of circumstance!” she exclaimed, but did not
urge me further, though my suspicions should have been aroused when she
said:
“We will take lunch and go to the beach anyway. Shall we?”
“Well, you might do that without breaking the fifth commandment,”
I returned, with much less enthusiasm than I felt at the idea of a
tête-à-tête picnic with her.
Her answer was a light laugh. There was a swishing of skirts and a
twinkle of tan-colored shoes as she sped from the piazza to get ready,
leaving me with the certainty that I was a fool, or worse, for allowing
her to go unchaperoned, though I was too selfish to attempt to right
the neglect.
Something over an hour later a scraggy horse hitched to a scraggy wagon
was drawing us to the “Cove,” a mile or so distant from the hotel. A
well-packed hamper had been provided and the pace set for the day was
nothing less innocent than lunch on the beach, which at this quarter
of Long Island is a stretch of snow-white sand and the perfection of
isolation.
It was not with feelings of positive delight that, as we neared the
Sound, I noticed the _Flying Fish_, of which Maxwell was master, moored
at the edge of the expanse of blue water. From an artistic point it
might have satisfied me, as fine material for an _aquarelle_ as, with
its mainsail loosely hoisted for drying, it lay against the strip of
woods on the other side of the little bay, but it did not satisfy me
to have a controversy on the point of taking my companion for a sail,
a thing to which I knew her father to be strongly opposed. However, it
was not a lengthy skirmish.
“Will you ask Maxwell to take us out—for just an hour?” she asked
demurely.
“Not for one instant,” I replied. “Besides, there is no wind.”
“There will be wind enough; you are just determined to be meanly
perverse. _I_ will ask him!” And she sent her clear voice across the
water in a long-drawn call.
I saw the man on board look up from the work he was fussing over;
presently the sail was lowered and, shortly after, the punt drove its
nose into the sand of the beach and Maxwell came toward us.
“Miss Edith,” I said, with dignity and as much severity as I dared show
her, “I am well aware that I have no right to dictate to you, but if
you are determined to go sailing in spite of your father’s wishes you
will go without me.”
“Do you really mean it?” she asked, with a light laugh and a wicked
glint in her eyes. “What a goose you are! Of course I wouldn’t go, but
we can compromise. Let’s go out to her and lunch on board. It will be
ever so much nicer than the sand, and I have never even stepped on
board of a sloop. Can’t we go out to her, Mr. Maxwell?”
“Sartin, miss, but it’s lucky that’s all ye want,” said that worthy.
Then, turning to me, he continued:
“The old tub’s ’most used up, Mr. Alan. She broke up a good deal of
her riggin’ in the storm last night. That ain’t all, neither. I find
the anchor shackle most rusted out and the moorin’ line ’most chafed
through. I was just startin’ for a new shackle. Tell you what ye might
do, sir, an’ ’twould be a big favor. Let me put you two aboard and then
take your hoss to go to the Centre with. That will suit the lady an’ be
a savin’ to my legs. I will be back in a shake.”
“Where’s your deck-hand?” I asked, wavering in my determination.
“Gone home sick, sir. Last night used him up.”
Doubts of propriety and prudence were of little avail against the
coaxing demands of my companion. She was used to having her way in
most things. Nothing but the novelty of taking lunch on board the old
fishing-boat would satisfy her, and, as it would not do for me to carry
the air of protector too far, it was but a short time before we were
on the deck of the vessel, from which we watched Maxwell climb into
the wagon and start for the village. The lady’s expression was one of
subdued triumph.
I confess that as I saw the little boat pulled high on the beach and
realized how completely we were cut off from the land, I was conscious
of a feeling that was not one of unalloyed content. From the physical
conditions there seemed to be nothing to fear. The water of the Cove
was like glass in the hot sunshine, and the vessel as steady as the
Rock of Ages; but the situation would certainly become compromising to
the fair young girl if our isolation should be generally known, and,
though I was willing enough to shoot at folly as it flew, I was in
hopes that the absence of Maxwell would not be prolonged, and so set to
work to entertain and enlighten Miss Edith, who was a very child in her
curiosity and her demands to have it satisfied.
The _Flying Fish_, a fearful misnomer, was an old acquaintance of
mine, and was typical of her class. Clean enough on deck, she was an
abomination of vile smells below, the combination of fish, clams and
bilge-water making a forcible compound. The inevitable scuttle-butt
of fresh water stood before the mast, and forward was a mass of rusty
chain cable, tangled gear, mops, winch-handles, buckets and the anchor,
the latter secured with a piece of rope.
In the stern of the boat the conditions were improved. The long tiller
projected into the roomy cockpit, the seats of which were as clean as
water could make them, while overhead the broken boom with its loose
sail made a wide strip of shade that was very acceptable.
For me there was no novelty in the craft, but it was a monstrous toy
for my companion, who flitted from stem to stern, picking up her dainty
skirts as she explored the bow, or wrinkling her delicate nose as she
met the odor of the cabin she insisted on entering.
“Does Maxwell cook on that thing?” asked the girl, pointing to the
small stove red with old rust, “and sleep in one of those dirty boxes?”
“Undoubtedly. That is a sailor’s lot.”
“Horrors! I wouldn’t be a sailor for the world! Let’s get into the
air—I’m stifled!”
An hour passed quickly enough and without the return of Maxwell. The
lunch was spread and eaten in the strip of shade, which took another
hour. A slight restraint followed the smoking of my cigar, for our
conversation was becoming as circumscribed as our freedom, probably due
to the fact that we both began to realize we were prisoners. At best
there is no exhilaration of spirits to be found on the hot deck of a
dilapidated fishing-sloop at anchor, and I dreaded the dulness which
would ensue if our confinement became protracted beyond a certain point.
But we were not destined to be beset by stupidity through lack
of events. Two hours, three hours passed and yet no Maxwell. The
conversation waned like a slowly dying blaze. I was becoming desperate
and Miss Edith was beginning to question me with her eyes, when I saw
matters were to be made worse by a thunderstorm which showed its black
head over the woods to the southwest. Was Maxwell crazy? What could
he be thinking of to leave us in this predicament? Again and again I
searched the opening into the woods through which the horse and wagon
had disappeared, but the shore remained as wild and deserted as when
Columbus discovered America. The little boat lay temptingly on the sand
five hundred feet away, but it might as well have been as many miles,
for my broken arm made swimming impossible.
From being slightly compromising our situation had become fully so—and
more; it was irksome, awkward and not at all heroic. It was evident
from her manner that the girl was becoming fully alive to her position.
Rapidly the clouds approached the zenith. They were terribly sinister,
and, though there appeared to be no more danger to us than the remote
chance of being struck by lightning, I dreaded for Miss Edith the
closer imprisonment in the unwholesome cabin and a probable drenching
in the end.
Even should Maxwell now arrive it would be impossible to return to the
hotel before the storm broke, and as the sun became suddenly quenched
by the sulphur-colored mass that had risen to it, and a sickly green
shade settled over us, I turned my attention to cheering my companion,
who, awed by the tragic light that overspread us, seemed lost in
fearful contemplation of the approaching tempest, and sat silent in the
cockpit with both hands tightly clutching the tiller. The tide was full
flood and not a wrinkle marred the polished surface of the Sound. In
the distance were some motionless vessels taking in their lighter sails
and over all nature there brooded a portentous quiet.
It was evident that we were about to experience something out of
the common, for though the edge of the squall had no more than the
usual threat of a summer shower, the clouds behind it sent through
me a thrill of awe mingled with fear. As I stood with my hands on
the shrouds watching a space of inky blackness it opened and from it
descended a bulb of vapor shaped like a bowl, its edges hidden in the
clouds above. It was a mass lighter than the rest, and it elongated
until its form changed to a funnel-shaped pipe which gradually neared
the surface of the earth, trailing as it moved along. Its approach was
accompanied with a roar as of a distant cataract, and as I saw the
sinuous tube lose itself in a mist of dust, flying branches and heavier
debris and appear to be coming toward us, a fearful knowledge of what
we were about to encounter burst upon my mind and I turned quickly to
the girl, who in her fright had risen to her feet.
“What is it?” she cried, blanching at the sight of the awful column.
“A tornado! Into the cabin, quick!” I shouted.
She obeyed without a word, and I had barely time to snatch up the
basket containing the remains of our lunch and scramble through the
door after her when, with a howl it is impossible to describe, the
vortex of whirling air was upon us.
The darkness that came down like a curtain was appalling; the din
deafening. The centre of the tornado must have missed us, else I
would not now be telling this tale, but the sight through the open
doors, which I had not had time to close, showed it had missed us but
narrowly. I saw the surface of the Cove turn to milk under the lash
of the wind, but had scant time to see more, for, as we were lying
broadside to the blast, it struck us fairly on the side and careened us
until the deck stood wellnigh up and down.
With a shriek the girl threw herself into my arms, and we both slid
to leeward. There came a jar as though we had been struck, a crash
overhead that sent the skylight shivering in fragments about us, a
quick blast of icy air, and the vessel righted with a jerk.
Placing the fainting girl on a locker I ran up the steps to the deck.
The whirlwind was passing out into the Sound, its shape hidden by the
muck that flew in its wake, though a well-defined path of fallen trees
and boiling water marked its track. A moment’s observation showed its
outskirts had created havoc aboard the sloop.
The mainsail, having been only held in stops, had been blown open by
the fearful power of the wind and, split into ribbons, was whipping in
the gale with quick, pistol-like reports. The boom-jack had been torn
away and the broken spar fallen on the cabin-house, which accounted
for the smashed skylight. The topsail had clean gone, hardly a rag
remaining. The buckets and all loose articles had been blown overboard;
the scuttle-butt had fetched away and lay bung down, its contents
gurgling out through the vent, while the only things outside the hull
that remained intact were the jib-sail and its gearing.
I had hardly made the last observation when I discovered we were
adrift! The first fierce tug of the wind had snapped our moorings,
which Maxwell had spoken of as chafed, and, under the weight of the
gale which was blowing, we were rapidly drawing into open water.
I caught my breath for a moment, but was immediately relieved as I
thought of the anchor. Throwing off my coat I tossed it into the cabin,
and, opening my pocket-knife, ran forward; but before I could reach
the bow I was drenched by a sudden downpour of rain the volume and icy
coldness of which made me gasp. It took but a second to cut the
lashings that held the anchor, but, as the iron plunged to the bottom
followed by only some half-fathom of chain, I nearly fainted. The
shackle lay at my feet with its pin gone. The anchor was lost—the
mooring parted; we were adrift in a storm and on a crippled boat.
For a moment I was completely stunned at the realization and stood
looking over the side like a fool, as though expecting to see the mass
of lost iron float to the surface; but the violent beating of the rain,
now mixed with hail, forced sense into me and compelled a hasty retreat
to the cabin.
So far as danger to life was concerned there was none at present, and
the one menace of the future lay in being blown across the Sound and
going to pieces on the rocky coast of Connecticut. I was something of a
fair-weather yachtsman and knew the danger of a lee shore; but whether
my wit would be sufficient to offset the predicament we were in I was
by no means sure. For a rescue I trusted more to being picked up by
some passing craft than to my own efforts. But what a situation for the
lady!
How to enlighten her as to our double disaster was troubling me not a
little as I entered the cabin, but I had barely cleared the steps when
we were beset by a volley of hail that thundered on the cabin-house and
rivaled the uproar of the tornado itself. Great icy lumps larger than
marbles drove through the broken skylight and bounded through the open
door. The hail was followed by another downpour of rain accompanied by
vivid lightning and bellowing thunder. Between the flashes the darkness
was that of midnight.
Knowing the terror of my companion I attempted to speak to her, but my
voice was lost in the turmoil. Striking a match I lighted the small
lamp hanging against the bulkhead and found the girl had recovered from
her faint and was sitting on the locker with her face buried in her
hands. At that moment the sky lightened a trifle and the thunder rolled
more at a distance. Shaken as I was, I little wondered at the
convulsive shudders that swept over her slight frame; had I been alone
I might have succumbed to panic. Presently she looked up at me; her
face was like chalk, but I was thankful to see that she had not lost
control of herself.
“Oh, wasn’t it awful!” she exclaimed, and was about to rise when she
caught sight of my streaming clothing. “Why did you go out? What have
you been doing? Have you seen Maxwell?”
“Maxwell? No, but I have seen enough else,” I returned, determined to
hide nothing.
“What do you mean? What has happened?”
“I mean that we have met with disaster. We are adrift.”
“Adrift!” Her eyes widened with sudden terror.
“We have been torn from our moorings,” I answered, with an attempt at
ease that I might not increase her panic. “But there is no present
danger.”
“I—I do not understand,” she said weakly.
“I have made a mistake, which makes it worse,” I continued desperately.
“I have cut away the anchor but lost it—the shackle-pin was gone. We
must——”
“But you _knew_ the shackle-pin—or something—was gone! I heard
Maxwell tell you!” she interrupted, with a flash of temper in her eye
that took the place of fear.
“I remembered when too late,” I returned meekly. “In the confusion
it went from my mind. When I found we had broken from the mooring I
naturally turned to the anchor and cut it free. Will you—can you
forgive me? I will make what reparation I may.”
For an answer she dropped limply on the locker, and, again burying her
face in her hands, sobbed violently while I stood silent, not knowing
how to comfort her, though my brain was busy enough. Presently the
paroxysm passed and she looked up with a changed expression; then,
heedless of her dainty costume, she approached me and placed both hands
on my wringing sleeve.
“Oh, it is for you to forgive me!” she said, the tears still in her
eyes. “It is all my fault! If I had only heeded you in the beginning!
And I am such a cowardly girl; but I’ll try to be brave and not make it
worse. What must we do?” And a divine smile brightened her woebegone
face.
“I will tell you all I fear,” I said, mightily relieved at her changed
attitude. “With the wind from its present quarter it is impossible to
return to the Cove, and to continue drifting is dangerous. Stratford
Shoal lies directly in our way, and unless some other direction can be
given the vessel we are certain to be wrecked upon it. Listen quietly,”
I added, as I saw fright come again to her eyes. “I think I can avert
that danger. It may appear strange and hard to you, but it is necessary
that we run _from_ home instead of toward it. Will you trust me
entirely?”
“Oh, yes! I must—I will.”
“Then excuse me for a time; I have work to do.”
“And am I to sit still and do nothing?”
“You may make a fire, if you will; we will need it. This may be an
all-night matter.”
She shrank visibly, but made no reply, and, not daring to lose more
time, I abruptly left her.
All I had told her was true. The afternoon had waned and the storm
would cause the September day to darken early. The gale, yet strong
from the southwest, was carrying us with considerable rapidity toward
the well-known shoal that lies in the centre of the Sound—a line of
black teeth marked by a lighthouse, and a deadly thing to have close
to leeward. There was but one action for me to take, and that to set
the jib and under this single sail run to the eastward until we had the
fortune to be picked up by some passing craft.
By this we had drawn so far into open water that the seas, which were
rapidly rising, had a jump to them, making it a matter of some risk for
me to crawl out on the foot-ropes of the bowsprit and throw off the
ropes that confined the jib; for it must be remembered that my left
arm was almost useless. It was an infinite labor for me to get the wet
canvas aloft, but I finally set the sail after a fashion. Loosening the
sheet until the great spread of cotton blew out like a balloon, I took
the tiller and put the helm hard a-port.
There was life in the old tub at once. She had been wallowing heavily
in the trough of the sea, but now we ran across the waves, and the
change of motion was a relief. The rain had ceased by this time, but
the sky was of an even blackness or the color of the smoke now pouring
from the funnel of the cabin stove. As the gloom of evening fell the
shore lights twinkled coldly across the water. No vessel came near
enough to be hailed, and, as there is nothing distinctively distressing
in the appearance of a fishing-smack running before the wind under her
jib, I saw it would be foolish to expect a rescue before daylight, save
by the merest chance of being passed close at hand.
The gale was decreasing rapidly, but it was getting cold—bitter cold
to me in my wet state. Not daring to leave the helm I called to Miss
Edith to hand up my coat, but she appeared on deck with it. Her face
was hot and flushed, her head bare, and the wind caught her disordered
hair and blew it about her eyes.
“Why, you poor fellow!” she exclaimed as the cold air struck her. “You
must not do this! Let me take your place while you go down and get warm
and dry.”
“You are a ministering angel,” I returned through my chattering teeth,
“but unfortunately you can’t steer. However, if you will watch here
I will go down and wring myself out. I can lash the tiller. Do you
realize our situation?”
“I—I believe so,” she faltered. “I did not even tell Aunt Margaret we
were going anywhere. It is too awful to think of—I dare not think—I
try not to. This is——”
“The force of circumstance,” I interrupted, with an attempt at levity
as I proceeded to fasten the helm. “A force you denied only a few hours
ago.”
“And do now!” she said, with some spirit, catching back her blowing
hair with her hand. “It was the desire to make you do something against
your will. It was pure foolishness. Don’t argue now. Do something for
yourself; you will find that I have been neither idle nor useless.”
I was surprised at the change she had wrought in the cabin. On a
locker was spread the remains of our lunch; the bunks had been put in
some kind of order, the floor wiped up, and the indefinable air of
femininity she had given to the dingy hole was accentuated by the gay
color of her little hat, which hung against the blackened bulkhead.
Rank as it was, the warm atmosphere was a welcome change from that
of the deck, and through it floated the odor of coffee. A pot was
simmering on the stove, the grate of which was all aglow.
While wondering how she had brought herself to forage through the
repulsive mess below and where she had obtained fresh water, I emptied
two cups of the scalding beverage and, after stripping myself of my wet
clothing, was in a mood to have enjoyed the adventure had it not been
for my anxiety for the future. By overhauling a bunk I found an old
pair of trousers and an oil-coat, both smelling villainously of fish,
and putting them on, wrapped a grimy blanket about me and returned to
the deck.
Even during my short absence the wind had fallen decidedly, but the
young lady was shivering in her summer dress as she sat looking
over the blank water at the distant shore, and I could see that the
loneliness filled her with an awe I well understood. She laughed a
little as she noticed the figure I cut, but her chattering teeth belied
her forced spirits.
“You are freezing, Miss Edith. Go down and drink a cup of your own
coffee. Where did you get fresh water? The scuttle-butt was wrecked
with the rest.”
“I melted hail-stones—there were plenty of them. Don’t you see I am
superior to mere circumstance? You must go down, too; you must rest and
keep warm.”
“I must do my resting here,” I replied, cutting the helm lashing.
“What! All night?”
I laughed at her simplicity. “I could not guarantee you a
tomorrow—certainly not a rescue, if I stayed in the cabin.”
“Then I will watch, too.”
“It is far too cold—and—and I am afraid you are forgetting the
proprieties,” I answered lightly. “I have much to think about.”
I believe she suspected what was in my mind, for she asked soberly:
“Were—were you referring to—to me?”
“Could it be otherwise? And I was thinking of poor Maxwell and his
probable loss,” I answered, in an attempt to shift the subject I was
not yet ready to discuss.
She drew herself up with sudden hauteur. “Mr. Maxwell’s loss—probable
or otherwise—shall be made more than good to him. As for me, I am
still above the circumstance that has brought us to this state,” she
answered, and, turning quickly, went below.
It was a rebuke, and I saw that I might better have taken her into my
confidence then and there, for Maxwell’s loss had had little weight
with me. It was her loss and possibly my own. Though her position in
society was too well assured for her to suffer in character through
an adventure of the sort we were experiencing, there would be many
who would talk behind their hands. When the facts were known—as they
were bound to be—advantage would be taken of the opportunity to cast
reflections and give the smile incredulous to any explanation. A young
man and a young woman adrift for an indefinite number of hours in the
night after having deliberately cut off communication with the shore
would be a tempting morsel for scandalmongers. And what then?
It was just that “what,” and another, which were bothering me. My
love for the girl was as pure as man’s love could be, yet after this
what could I be to her? Must I cease to be even a friend? Was I to be
sacrificed on the altar of circumstance, the force of which I asserted
as strongly as she denied? I sat at the helm and turned my thoughts
inward until the stars came out from behind the scattering clouds, and
the wind, grown colder, fell to a force that barely filled the jib. I
looked at my watch—it was past eleven. I was becoming faint for want
of food, and, as the wind was now harmless, I dropped the helm and went
below.
The fire was almost out and the oil in the lamp so low that it added
another smell to the cabin. The girl lay on the hard locker fast
asleep, and I could see that she had been weeping. For a time I gazed
at her eagerly, then taking some food with me, stole back to my dreary
watch. As the hours waned so did my spirits. I may have dozed, but
about two o’clock the girl’s ghostly white dress appeared in the
companionway and she stepped out on deck. She looked around at the
darkness for a moment, then came and seated herself by my side.
“You have had an uncomfortable nap, I fear,” I said as I saw her
dispirited face.
“Yes,” wearily, “but how did you know?”
“I went below and saw you. I am very sorry for you, Miss Edith.”
“You saw I had been crying. I am more than sorry to have exposed my
weakness to you. I was lonely and—and you did not wish me here. Is it
so very wrong?”
“I was only thinking of your comfort.”
“Did you imagine it greater down there? And you said you were thinking
of the proprieties and—and Maxwell.”
“Of Maxwell—incidentally only.”
She made no answer to this. I had hoped she would, for now I was as
ready to talk of our peculiar situation as before I had been unwilling.
But the small hours of the morning are not conducive to discussion.
The girl was fagged out and silent in consequence. Once or twice she
nodded, but refused to go below, though I urged her to get out of the
cold. I finally prevailed on her to put on my coat, and then we sat in
silence. But Nature asserted herself at last, and she unconsciously but
gradually drooped toward me until her head touched my shoulder, and
there it settled. I brought half of the blanket about her and passed my
arm around her waist that she might not pitch forward to the deck.
And in this fashion we remained, I with the tiller in the hollow of
my left arm, and she in a heavy slumber, her face close to mine. I
sat thus, immovable, until I was as sore and uncomfortable as though
in bonds, but I may as well confess that I felt repaid for all I had
undergone and was then undergoing through my self-enforced rigidity.
I lost all sense of drowsiness and was never more wide awake in my
life than when I determined to take advantage of the cursed force of
circumstance and keep her by me as a right. I would use the argument
placed in my power, which argument was the force of circumstance
itself. I had been a coward long enough.
The time went easily. The girl slept as quietly as a child, oblivious
of all the world. My own mind undoubtedly strayed from purely practical
matters, but I was suddenly brought to my senses by the sight of a
red and a green light, topped by a white one, bearing directly down
upon us. The vessel with the night signals was almost into us before I
realized its approach. If the pilot of the oncoming tug—for as such I
recognized her—had been no more attentive than I, we should be a wreck
in less than thirty seconds, and with no blame to him, as we carried no
light. Rudely awakening the girl I put the helm up and shouted with all
my power.
The black mass forged on until within two lengths of us. I heard the
powerful throbbing of her engine, the tearing hiss and splash from her
cut-water, and the churning of the propeller. In an instant more I
would hear the crashing of timbers, but as I strained my eyes on the
oncoming boat and threw my arm around the girl, ready for the worst, I
saw the shadow of a man as he ran from the engine-room to the wheel,
and then the tug suddenly swerved and passed us so close that I could
have touched her rail! In an instant she had slid by and then I leaped
up and shouted like one possessed:
“Come to! Come to, for God’s sake! We are in distress!”
There was a hoarse answer and the vessel sank into the darkness. I
thought we were to be abandoned and for an instant felt all the deep
hopelessness of a shipwrecked mariner in mid-ocean as he marks the loss
of a possible rescue. But presently I saw the green starboard light
reappear and knew, when the red light joined it, they were working to
return to us. There was the clang of a gong, a quick churning of the
reversed wheel, and the tug slowed up close at hand, keeping way gently
until it bumped against the sloop and a man leaped from its deck to
ours.
“What’s the row here?” he asked.
“We are crippled and adrift,” I answered. “I am no sailor, and there is
a lady aboard.”
The girl stood at my side as the man listened to my story, the
lividness of dawn in the east just touching his coarse face. His little
eyes shifted from her to me incessantly, and when I had finished he
gave an irritating laugh, for which I could have knocked him down with
a good grace.
“Blowed away, hey!” he said, expectorating over the rail and wiping
his mouth with the back of his hand. “D’ye mean ye hadn’t sense enough
to know when a cable’s bent an’ when it’s _on_bent? Wall, ’tain’t no
business o’ mine. Want to get aboard o’ us, hey? Yer green, fer a fact,
an’ I’ll be frank with ye. If ye leaves the sloop she’ll be derelict,
an’ I can pull her in an’ claim salvage. That’s the law. Course I’ll
take ye aboard if ye want, but ye had better bide here an’ give me a
hundred dollars fer a tow to New Haven. I got a date there an’ can’t do
better fer ye.”
“Where are we now?” I asked.
“Sum’ers off the Thimbles.”
I well knew that I was being taken advantage of, but a slight pressure
on my arm from the hand of Miss Edith told me it was no time for
bargaining, so, after a deal of backing and going ahead, we found
ourselves under way behind the tug, I still at the helm to prove that
the sloop had not been deserted.
Safe thus far I felt relieved, but, the first difficulty passed, the
remaining and greater phase of the situation reasserted itself. For
a long time neither the girl nor I spoke, and I fancied her face was
more deeply anxious in its expression than I had yet seen it. The light
broadened; the shore showed faintly against a clear sky, and the stars
grew pale and disappeared. Probably two hours more would get us into
harbor, and the subject of our adventure and our probable reception
home, even a plan for future movements, had not been touched upon.
Something must be said, but in my intense interest my brain went all
adrift and my intended delicacy was lost in my first blundering speech.
“You are looking tired, Miss Edith, but your last sleep was more
restful than your first.”
It was man-like stupidity. Her face flushed hotly as she turned it
away, but presently she looked at me and said:
“It has all been like a terrible dream, now that we are out of danger.
It seems days since we left the hotel, and—and—oh! what will papa
say—and Aunt Margaret? What will people think?” And she covered her
face with her hands.
“The last is not a knotty problem,” I replied gently, though I could
not spare her distress. “We will not be overburdened with Christ-like
charity, and the result may be hard for you to bear.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, dropping her hands.
“Do you not see?” said I, as with my heart beating rapidly I went
boldly to meet my fate. “Do you know so little of the world—of the
venom of it? We have done an innocent thing, but, forgive me, will
people believe it? Your father will be fiercely angry, society will be
skeptical, and—and I would protect you from all scandal; I would bear
your father’s anger for you.”
She was rosy now and her lips were half apart, but she did not answer.
“I know I am taking an undue advantage by making such a proposal here,
but it is the old force of circumstances which permits me. There is but
one way, Edith. Give me the right I would have—the right to protect
you! Does not your heart understand my meaning? We could then face the
world together and not care. No, that is not all,” I continued as I saw
she was about to speak. “God knows that affection lacks proper words
to express it! I have been so fearful—that is why I have been dumb so
long! To me the gale has been a godsend, not a misfortune. Edith, must
I be wrecked at last?”
She had turned away her face, but now she looked at me, not in anger
nor amazement. As she fixed her beautiful eyes on mine I saw the tears
come into them and overflow, but she made no answer.
“Have I hurt you?” I cried.
“You are generous,” she said; “but are you honest now? Are you sure
you wish this? Is it me you really want? You are a man and will not be
blamed—and I—well, I can live it down. The fault was mine, not yours.
Perhaps you will regret; perhaps it is because you are sorry for me
that you offer me your—your protection. Oh! be sure—be sure!”
I do not remember what I said or did then, but I know I had a ready
answer for this and urged it so vehemently, becoming oblivious to all
else, that the sloop yawed widely and I was called to earth by a shout
from the tug to the effect that I had better “mind my eye” and see what
in the devil I was about.
It was a strange wooing. Five o’clock in the morning is not a usual
hour for inspiration, yet I was never more eloquent. Nor were the chief
elements of the little drama picturesque—a woebegone and very much
mussed-up young lady with unkempt hair, her figure lost in the folds of
a dirty blanket, and a man with the appearance of having been hurriedly
starched and rough-dried. But there was a new pink in the cheeks of the
one and a new light in the eyes of the other, as Edith, without a word
in answer to my pleading, simply placed her soft hand in mine for a
moment, then brushing away her tears, ran below.
To the casual observer on the streets of New Haven no doubt we looked
somewhat time-worn, but this was partly mended by the milliner and the
tailor. I was still as idiotic as a man is likely to be after a heavy
stroke of good fortune, and it was when sitting in the hotel where I
had just penned the last of a number of telegrams that I turned to the
girl for my final triumph.
“Edith, it was only yesterday morning that you scoffed at the force of
circumstance and I hinted at a tale I could write that would convince
you. But I need not use invention—we have acted a story ourselves. You
have been forced to capitulate. Was I not right?”
“No, dear,” she returned softly. “My answer would have been the same
had you asked me long ago.”
_Before and After_
WANDERING WILLIE—Why wudn’t yer wanter be a millionaire, pard?
WEARY RAGGLES—What’s de diff’rence? Dose fellers git de dyspepsie an’
hev de distressed feelin’ arter eatin’, ’stead of afore, dat’s all.
* * * * *
_Declined_
TED—It was a case of love at first sight with him.
NED—How was it with the girl?
TED—From the answer she gave him she must have had second
sight.
* * * * *
_A Terrible Example_
LATSON—He used to be a newsboy, and now he is in the legislature.
CODWELL—That’s just what you might expect shooting craps
would lead to.
* * * * *
Everybody tells you not to worry. The point is: how not to worry. Worry
is discontent swathed with timidity. Be brave in your worries by making
them protests. At least it helps your circulation.
_An Ideal Cruise in an Ideal Craft_
BY WALLACE IRWIN
It were the good ship _Gentle Jane_
On which we et and slept,
The tightest, safest little craft
As ever sailed, except—
Her cargo it wuz gasolene
And pitch-wood kindling light
And powder fine and turpentine
And tar and dynamite.
Our crew wuz tried and trusty men
As ever sailed the wet,
And so I had full confidence
In their discretion, yet—
The cook _would_ dump hot, glowin’ coals
In that there gasolene,
And them there tars _would_ smoke cigars
In the powder magazine.
“Oh, Cap,” I sez to Capting White
With reverent respect,
“Now couldn’t we in trifles be
A bit more circumspect?”
“Well I’ll be blowed!” the Capting sez
To pass the matter by.
“Unless I’m wrong ere very long
We’ll all be blowed,” sez I.
And as I croke this little joke
The sea got very rough,
The gong went clang! the hull went bang!
Our gallant ship went puff!
A cloud o’ smoke with us on top
A million fathoms lept—
Yet in that muss not one of us
Wuz scratched or hurt, except—
Our gallant Capting lost his head.
Our Mate his limbs and breath,
The soup wuz spilled, our crew wuz killed,
Our cook wuz scared to death.
So often in the stilly night
I long with fond regret
To sail again the _Gentle Jane_
Upon the sea, and yet—
_The Heritage of Maxwell Fair_
BY VINCENT HARPER
CHAPTER I
With the smoking pistol still in his hand he stepped over the prostrate
man and, grasping Mrs. Fair’s bare shoulder, shook her until she looked
up.
“Quick! For God’s sake, Janet, get to your room!” he said, trying to
make her comprehend what he meant, but she only stared at him vacantly,
her white face filled with terror and her eyes fixed on the form on the
floor—that of a man in evening dress, across whose wide shirt front a
streak of blood was widening.
“Why did he come here?” she asked, hiding the sickening sight with her
hands before her eyes. “He swore he would not. This is horrible!”
“Come, Janet, come,” remonstrated Fair, seizing her again. “It’s past
seven, and they will be here presently. My God, can’t you see what this
means? He’s dead!”
“Oh, don’t, don’t,” she cried, shuddering as if the truth burned her
brain. “Ugh! See!” she gasped as she caught sight of a splash of red on
her gown.
“Yes, and you stand here! Are you mad?” muttered Fair, pushing her to
the door. “Go, now, and change—and be careful what you do with that
dress. Hark! There’s the bell now. Remember, until they go, you must
betray no feeling. Are you great enough to do this? You won’t fail me?”
“Anything, Maxwell, for your sake—but you—what will you do
with—_that_?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at the thing as if
it fascinated her.
“Leave everything to me,” he answered, pulling her chin around so that
she could not see. “I assume all. Remember, girl, it was I, do you
understand? Go!”
When he had finally closed the door upon her, he gave way to his
agony—but only for a moment. With a quietness and rapidity that seemed
to astonish even himself he placed the pistol upon the library-table,
locked both of the doors, drew the heavy red velvet curtains across the
window and, bending over the fallen man, critically examined him.
Satisfied that life was extinct, he pulled the body over to the
fireplace, beside which, at right angles to the side of the room, there
stood a large Italian chest with a very high carved back. Into this
chest Fair lifted the limp body of the man and thoughtfully placed a
number of heavy books and magazines upon it. Then carefully glancing
about the room and noticing no evidences of the crime, he sat down,
wiped his brow, and closing his eyes, tried to let the stupendous facts
of the last five minutes become realities to his mind—to formulate
some practical line of action in the future which those five minutes
had so fatally revolutionized.
The way that he started at a respectful tap at the library door showed
him what a terribly changed man he already was, and it was with a
petulant, unnatural voice that he shouted: “Well? That you, Baxter?”
“A man, sir, who insists upon seeing you, sir,” answered Baxter, Fair’s
old butler, whom he had inherited with the estates and furniture, felt
grateful to as a faithful servant, and tolerated as an incompetent old
bore.
“Tell him to go to the devil, with my compliments, and to come to my
office if he really has business with me!” thundered Fair, not at all
like himself.
Baxter shook his head as he said: “Very good, sir,” and toddled
downstairs, putting two and two together as servants will in the best
regulated families.
The furniture seemed to be all out of place, so Fair pulled it this
way and that, but wherever he placed it, it still seemed, to his mind,
to show that a scuffle had taken place. After abandoning the idea of
getting it to look right, he devoted his anxious attention to his own
appearance, which, although his faultless evening attire was immaculate
and his thin, brown hair, with a touch of gray, was smooth and precise,
seemed to him to betray the fact that he had passed through a scene of
some sort. Giving up the effort to discover just what was wrong, he
unlocked the doors, drew his chair to the table and toyed with a pen
and some sheets of paper on which he began several times to write.
“Maxwell Fair, old chap,” he said to himself, looking up at the
ceiling, “this is pretty well near the end—but it’s all in the day’s
work.”
Then he dashed off two telegrams and rang the bell, which Baxter
promptly answered, having been standing at the door. “Did you ring,
sir?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Fair. “Here, see that these two telegrams are sent
immediately—but wait. Baxter, a gentleman called about twenty minutes
ago. Did you let him in?”
He watched the old man’s face closely as he replied: “Yes, sir. A dark,
foreign-looking gentleman, sir.”
“Yes,” went on Fair, picking up the evening paper carelessly and
speaking with great indifference; “he is in my study. Just fetch his
coat and hat here, will you? And, by the way, did any of the other
servants see him?”
“The gentleman said he was an old friend of my lady’s—and none of the
other servants saw him, sir. Aren’t you well, sir? I hope that nothing
has occurred, sir,” answered Baxter, with an old servant’s liberty.
“No,” snapped Fair, with irritation, but going on more in his usual
way. “Now look sharp and fetch the gentleman’s coat. A very old friend
of Mrs. Fair’s. What was the other chap like—the one who wished to see
me?”
“Oh, him, sir,” replied Baxter, with a servant’s contempt for callers
of his own class in society, “he were a quiet-spoken, ordinary sort of
party, sir, as said he come from Scotland Yard.”
Fair was too well in hand by this time to wince as he heard this bit
of disturbing coincidence, but he said to himself: “My word, they are
prompt—but, damn it, they can’t have known!” Then, happening to look
up and seeing the old butler, “What are you waiting for?”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” gently began Baxter, shuffling nearer to
Fair, “but, Mr. Fair, sir—Master Maxwell—you’ll forgive an old
servant that served your father and grandfather before you, sir. There
ain’t no trouble like, or anythink a-hangin’ over us, is there, sir?
One of the parlormaids thought that she heard a shot, sir—and——”
“Oh, yes,” quickly responded Fair, with a laugh, “I was cleaning this
old pistol and it went off. Get on now. Trouble? Why, look at me,
Baxter. I’m the luckiest dog in the world. I have just made another
fortune.”
“Thank God for that, sir,” quietly replied old Baxter, moving toward
the door, at which he turned and said, “The gentleman will be dining,
of course?”
“No, he can’t stop. In fact, he wishes to leave the house unobserved
by our guests when we are at dinner—so fetch his hat and coat,” said
Fair, again settling down to his evening paper.
“I was forgetting, sir,” once more the querulous old voice began, “that
Miss Mettleby said that the children are coming to say good night——”
“The children?” exclaimed Fair, caught off his guard. “No—good God,
no!—that is, I mean I shall be engaged. Tell Miss Mettleby so. Be off.”
With suspicions now thoroughly aroused and full of misgivings Baxter
did as he was bid, and his master jerked the paper open again and
slapped at the crease to make the sheet flat. But his eyes wandered
aimlessly.
“The children—gad! I had forgotten them,” he muttered as he thought
with horror what this all meant to them. Time after time he tried to
read the leading article which was about his own brilliant achievement,
but with a mad spasm he crumpled the newspaper into a ball and flung it
across the great room, exclaiming, “Why didn’t the infernal blackguard
know when he was well off?”
“The gentleman’s coat and hat, sir,” said Baxter, coming in annoyingly.
“Very well—now go,” retorted Fair peevishly. “Ask Mr. Travers to come
up here the moment he arrives. Here, here—you are forgetting the
telegrams. You seem to forget everything lately. You are too careless.”
“So I am, so I am,” quavered the poor old beggar, with tears in his
voice. “I shall soon be of very little service, sir.”
“Nonsense,” answered Fair, touched by the old fellow’s feeling. “You
have twenty years of good work before you. But, I say, Baxter, I forgot
to tell you—we are leaving town tomorrow morning. Discharge all of the
servants tonight. Hear me? All of them—tonight.”
“Tonight, sir?” exclaimed Baxter, dropping his little silver card-tray.
“They will be expecting a month’s notice, sir.”
“That means a month’s pay, I suppose,” answered Fair sharply. “Give
them a year’s pay, if you like—but get them out of the house tomorrow
morning before nine o’clock. You see, I have sold the house, and the
new owner takes possession at ten. You understand me? We shall, of
course, take you and Anita with us—to the continent, you know.”
“I hear, sir,” replied Baxter, adding, after a dazed and groping moment,
“some of them have been in our family’s service for twenty years. That
is a long time, sir, and they will think it hard to be——”
“By Jove, that’s so!” exclaimed Fair, pacing up and down with a growing
sense of disgust and rage at having to cramp his future into the
ignominious bondage of a desperate situation. “No, I can’t turn them
away. Tell them that I shall instruct my solicitor to provide for them
for life—yes, tell them that. Come here, Baxter,” he went on, rapidly
losing control of himself and pathetically stretching his hands out as
if to grasp the love and sympathy of someone; “I haven’t been a hard
master, have I? No. And when the end comes, you won’t turn against me?
I—I—I—oh, damn it, clear out of here, won’t you?”
“Why, my dear young master, whatever ails you, sir?” cried the old
butler, grasping the hand that Fair waved to him. “If you did but know
how we all love you, sir, perhaps you would——”
“Do you? Do you?” broke in Fair feverishly. “That’s right, too. But,
Baxter, things have gone wrong, and in a few hours I may need all the
love that you or anybody else will give me. Get out of here, can’t you?”
Baxter threw his arms about the young man’s neck. “Come what may, sir,
there shall not be found a better friend than your poor old servant.”
And then, holding the lapels of Fair’s coat, he added, with much
embarrassment and tenderness, “And, sir, if I might make so bold—I
have close on a thousand pounds in the funds, and every penny——”
“Every penny is mine, you were going to say?” interrupted Fair,
smiling even in his despair at the old man’s estimate of his needs.
“Thanks, thanks, old comrade; but no amount of money can stave off
the blue devils at times, you know. You knew my fathers, Baxter. They
were a race of damned fools who were ready at a moment’s notice to
lose everything for an idea! I am their son—I am their heir—and the
damnedest fool of the lot.”
As he said this Fair raised his head with a look so defiant, so full
of an almost supernatural exaltation, so nearly that which shines in
the eye of the victim of a fixed idea or of a fatal hallucination that
Baxter, who was not expert at psychological analysis, felt a vague
misgiving that his eccentric young master had suddenly gone off his
head.
And one more penetrating than old Baxter would have been amazed at the
change which had come over the expression of the agitated man. The look
of horror and disgust and consternation was gone, and in its place had
come the fire of enthusiasm, the sublime uplift of the martyr, the
terrifying concentration of some irrational, uncalculating, final _idée
fixe_.
“See who that is,” he said to the butler when a knock was heard.
“It is Miss Mettleby, sir,” replied Baxter from the door.
“Oh, come in, come in,” called out Fair with unaccountable eagerness.