temper, ‘didn’t I have catastrophes enough? I know what you want. You want to tell me that story again about Johnny Ammiger and the widow on the train. You’ve told it nine times already this month.’
“‘It must be the heat,’ says Jones, stopping in at the door, amazed. ‘Poor Billy. He’s got bugs. Sitting on ice, and calling his best friends pseudonyms. Hi!–/muchacho/!’ Jones called my force of employees, who was sitting in the sun, playing with his toes, and told him to put on his trousers and run for the doctor.
“‘Come back,’ says I. ‘Sit down, Maxy, and forget it. ‘Tis not ice you see, nor a lunatic upon it. ‘Tis only an exile full of homesickness sitting on a lump of glass that’s just cost him a thousand dollars. Now, what was it Johnny said to the widow first? I’d like to hear it again, Maxy–honest. Don’t mind what I said.’
“Maximilian Jones and I sat down and talked. He was about as sick of the country as I was, for the grafters were squeezing him for half the profits of his rosewood and rubber. Down in the bottom of a tank of water I had a dozen bottles of sticky Frisco beer; and I fished these up, and we fell to talking about home and the flag and Hail Columbia and home-fried potatoes; and the drivel we contributed would have sickened any man enjoying those blessings. But at that time we were out of ’em. You can’t appreciate home till you’ve left it, money till it’s spent, your wife till she’s joined a woman’s club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.
“And sitting there me and Maximilian Jones, scratching at our prickly heat and kicking at the lizards on the floor, became afflicted with a dose of patriotism and affection for our country. There was me, Billy Casparis, reduced from a capitalist to a pauper by over-addiction to my glass (in the lump), declares my troubles off for the present and myself to be an uncrowned sovereign of the greatest country on earth. And Maximilian Jones pours out whole drug stores of his wrath on oligarchies and potentates in red trousers and calico shoes. And we issues a declaration of interference in which we guarantee that the fourth day of July shall be celebrated in Salvador with all the kinds of salutes, explosions, honours of war, oratory, and liquids known to tradition. Yes, neither me nor Jones breathed with soul so dead. There shall be rucuses in Salvador, we say, and the monkeys had better climb the tallest cocoanut trees and the fire department get out its red sashes and two tin buckets.
“About this time into the factory steps a native man incriminated by the name of General Mary Esperanza Dingo. He was some pumpkin both in politics and colour, and the friend of me and Jones. He was full of politeness and a kind of intelligence, having picked up the latter and managed to preserve the former during a two years’ residence in Philadelphia studying medicine. For a Salvadorian he was not such a calamitous little man, though he always would play jack, queen, king, ace, deuce for a straight.
“General Mary sits with us and has a bottle. While he was in the States he had acquired a synopsis of the English language and the art of admiring our institutions. By and by the General gets up and tiptoes to the doors and windows and other stage entrances, remarking ‘Hist!’ at each one. They all do that in Salvador before they ask for a drink of water or the time of day, being conspirators from the cradle and matinee idols by proclamation.
“‘Hist!’ says General Dingo again, and then he lays his chest on the table quite like Gaspard the Miser. ‘Good friends, senores, to-morrow will be the great day of Liberty and Independence. The hearts of Americans and Salvadorians should beat together. Of your history and your great Washington I know. Is it not so?’
“Now, me and Jones thought that nice of the General to remember when the Fourth came. It made us feel good. He must have heard the news going round in Philadelphia about that disturbance we had with England.
“‘Yes,’ says me and Maxy together, ‘we knew it. We were talking about it when you came in. And you can bet your bottom concession that there’ll be fuss and feathers in the air to-morrow. We are few in numbers, but the welkin may as well reach out to push the button, for it’s got to ring.’
“‘I, too, shall assist,’ says the General, thumping his collar-bone. ‘I, too, am on the side of Liberty. Noble Americans, we will make the day one to be never forgotten.’
“‘For us American whisky,’ says Jones–‘none of your Scotch smoke or anisada or Three Star Hennessey to-morrow. We’ll borrow the consul’s flag; old man Billfinger shall make orations, and we’ll have a barbecue on the plaza.’
“‘Fireworks,’ says I, ‘will be scarce; but we’ll have all the cartridges in the shops for our guns. I’ve got two navy sixes I brought from Denver.’
“‘There is one cannon,’ said the General; ‘one big cannon that will go “BOOM!” And three hundred men with rifles to shoot.’
“‘Oh, say!’ says Jones, ‘Generalissimo, you’re the real silk elastic. We’ll make it a joint international celebration. Please, General, get a white horse and a blue sash and be grand marshal.’
“‘With my sword,’ says the General, rolling his eyes. ‘I shall ride at the head of the brave men who gather in the name of Liberty.’
“‘And you might,’ we suggest ‘see the commandante and advise him that we are going to prize things up a bit. We Americans, you know, are accustomed to using municipal regulations for gun wadding when we line up to help the eagle scream. He might suspend the rules for one day. We don’t want to get in the calaboose for spanking his soldiers if they get in our way, do you see?’
“‘Hist!’ says General Mary. ‘The commandant is with us, heart and soul. He will aid us. He is one of us.’
“We made all the arrangements that afternoon. There was a buck coon from Georgia in Salvador who had drifted down there from a busted-up coloured colony that had been started on some possumless land in Mexico. As soon as he heard us say ‘barbecue’ he wept for joy and groveled on the ground. He dug his trench on the plaza, and got half a beef on the coals for an all-night roast. Me and Maxy went to see the rest of the Americans in the town and they all sizzled like a seidlitz with joy at the idea of solemnizing an old-time Fourth.
“There were six of us all together–Martin Dillard, a coffee planter; Henry Barnes, a railroad man; old man Billfinger, an educated tintype taker; me and Jonesy, and Jerry, the boss of the barbecue. There was also an Englishman in town named Sterrett, who was there to write a book on Domestic Architecture of the Insect World. We felt some bashfulness about inviting a Britisher to help crow over his own country, but we decided to risk it, out of our personal regard for him.
“We found Sterrett in pajamas working at his manuscript with a bottle of brandy for a paper weight.
“‘Englishman,’ says Jones, ‘let us interrupt your disquisition on bug houses for a moment. To-morrow is the Fourth of July. We don’t want to hurt your feelings, but we’re going to commemorate the day when we licked you by a little refined debauchery and nonsense–something that can be heard above five miles off. If you are broad-gauged enough to taste whisky at your own wake, we’d be pleased to have you join us.’
“‘Do you know,’ says Sterrett, setting his glasses on his nose, ‘I like your cheek in asking me if I’ll join you; blast me if I don’t. You might have known I would, without asking. Not as a traitor to my own country, but for the intrinsic joy of a blooming row.’
“On the morning of the Fourth I woke up in that old shanty of an ice factory feeling sore. I looked around at the wreck of all I possessed, and my heart was full of bile. From where I lay on my cot I could look through the window and see the consul’s old ragged Stars and Stripes hanging over his shack. ‘You’re all kinds of a fool, Billy Casparis,’ I said to myself; ‘and of all your crimes against sense it does look like this idea of celebrating the Fourth should receive the award of demerit. Your business is busted up, your thousand dollars is gone into the kitty of this corrupt country on that last bluff you made, you’ve got just fifteen Chili dollars left, worth forty-six cents each at bedtime last night and steadily going down. To-day you’ll blow in your last cent hurrahing for that flag, and to-morrow you’ll be living on bananas from the stalk and screwing your drinks out of your friends. What’s the flag done for you? While you were under it you worked for what you got. You wore your finger nails down skinning suckers, and salting mines, and driving bears and alligators off your town lot additions. How much does patriotism count for on deposit with the little man with the green eye-shade in the savings-bank adds up your book? Suppose you were to get pinched over here in this irreligious country for some little crime or other, and appealed to your country for protection–what would it do for you? Turn your appeal over to a committee of one railroad man, an army officer, a member of each labour union, and a coloured man to investigate whether any of your ancestors were ever related to a cousin of Mark Hanna, and then file the papers in the Smithsonian Institution until after the next election. That’s the kind of a sidetrack the Stars and Stripes would switch you onto.’
“You can see that I was feeling like an indigo plant; but after I washed my face in some cool water, and got out my navys and ammunition, and started up to the Saloon of the Immaculate Saints where we were to meet, I felt better. And when I saw those other American boys come swaggering into the trysting place–cool, easy, conspicuous fellows, ready to risk any kind of a one-card draw, or to fight grizzlies, fire, or extradition, I began to feel glad I was one of ’em. So, I says to myself again: ‘Billy, you’ve got fifteen dollars and a country left this morning–blow in the dollars and blow up the town as an American gentleman should on Independence Day.’
“It is my recollection that we began the day along conventional lines. The six of us–for Sterrett was along–made progress among the cantinas, divesting the bars as we went of all strong drink bearing American labels. We kept informing the atmosphere as to the glory and preeminence of the United States and its ability to subdue, outjump, and eradicate the other nations of the earth. And, as the findings of American labels grew more plentiful, we became more contaminated with patriotism. Maximilian Jones hopes that our late foe, Mr. Sterrett, will not take offense at our enthusiasm. He sets down his bottle and shakes Sterrett’s hand. ‘As white man to white man,’ says he, ‘denude our uproar of the slightest taint of personality. Excuse us for Bunker Hill, Patrick Henry, and Waldorf Astor, and such grievances as might lie between us as nations.’
“‘Fellow hoodlums,’ says Sterrett, ‘on behalf of the Queen I ask you to cheese it. It is an honour to be a guest at disturbing the peace under the American flag. Let us chant the passionate strains of “Yankee Doodle” while the senor behind the bar mitigates the occasion with another round of cochineal and aqua fortis.’
“Old Man Billfinger, being charged with a kind of rhetoric, makes speeches every time we stop. We explained to such citizens as we happened to step on that we were celebrating the dawn of our own private brand of liberty, and to please enter such inhumanities as we might commit on the list of unavoidable casualties.
“About eleven o’clock our bulletins read: ‘A considerable rise in temperature, accompanied by thirst and other alarming symptoms.’ We hooked arms and stretched our line across the narrow streets, all of us armed with Winchesters and navys for purposes of noise and without malice. We stopped on a street corner and fired a dozen or so rounds, and began a serial assortment of United States whoops and yells, probably the first ever heard in that town.
“When we made that noise things began to liven up. We heard a pattering up a side street, and here came General Mary Esperanza Dingo on a white horse with a couple of hundred brown boys following him in red undershirts and bare feet, dragging guns ten feet long. Jones and me had forgot all about General Mary and his promise to help us celebrate. We fired another salute and gave another yell, while the General shook hands with us and waved his sword.
“‘Oh, General,’ shouts Jones, ‘this is great. This will be a real pleasure to the eagle. Get down and have a drink.’
“‘Drink?’ says the general. ‘No. There is no time to drink. /Vive la Libertad/!’
“‘Don’t forget /E Pluribus Unum/!’ says Henry Barnes.
“‘/Viva/ it good and strong,’ says I. ‘Likewise, /viva/ George Washington. God save the Union, and,’ I says, bowing to Sterrett, ‘don’t discard the Queen.’
“‘Thanks,’ says Sterrett. ‘The next round’s mine. All in to the bar. Army, too.’
“But we were deprived of Sterrett’s treat by a lot of gunshots several square sway, which General Dingo seemed to think he ought to look after. He spurred his old white plug up that way, and the soldiers scuttled along after him.
“‘Mary is a real tropical bird,’ says Jones. ‘He’s turned out the infantry to help us to honour to the Fourth. We’ll get that cannon he spoke of after a while and fire some window-breakers with it. But just now I want some of that barbecued beef. Let us on to the plaza.’
“There we found the meat gloriously done, and Jerry waiting, anxious. We sat around on the grass, and got hunks of it on our tin plates. Maximilian Jones, always made tender-hearted by drink, cried some because George Washington couldn’t be there to enjoy the day. ‘There was a man I love, Billy,’ he says, weeping on my shoulder. ‘Poor George! To think he’s gone, and missed the fireworks. A little more salt, please, Jerry.’
“From what we could hear, General Dingo seemed to be kindly contributing some noise while we feasted. There were guns going off around town, and pretty soon we heard that cannon go ‘BOOM!’ just as he said it would. And then men began to skin along the edge of the plaza, dodging in among the orange trees and houses. We certainly had things stirred up in Salvador. We felt proud of the occasion and grateful to General Dingo. Sterrett was about to take a bite off a juicy piece of rib when a bullet took it away from his mouth.
“‘Somebody’s celebrating with ball cartridges,’ says he, reaching for another piece. ‘Little over-zealous for a non-resident patriot, isn’t it?’
“‘Don’t mind it,’ I says to him. ”Twas an accident. They happen, you know, on the Fourth. After one reading of the Declaration of Independence in New York I’ve known the S.R.O. sign to be hung out at all the hospitals and police stations.’
“But then Jerry gives a howl and jumps up with one hand clapped to the back of his leg where another bullet has acted over-zealous. And then comes a quantity of yells, and round a corner and across the plaza gallops General Mary Esperanza Dingo embracing the neck of his horse, with his men running behind him, mostly dropping their guns by way of discharging ballast. And chasing ’em all is a company of feverish little warriors wearing blue trousers and caps.
“‘Assistance, amigos,’ the General shouts, trying to stop his horse. ‘Assistance, in the name of Liberty!’
“‘That’s the Campania Azul, the President’s bodyguard,’ says Jones. ‘What a shame! They’ve jumped on poor old Mary just because he was helping us to celebrate. Come on, boys, it’s our Fourth;–do we let that little squad of A.D.T’s break it up?’
“‘I vote No,’ says Martin Dillard, gathering his Winchester. ‘It’s the privilege of an American citizen to drink, drill, dress up, and be dreadful on the Fourth of July, no matter whose country he’s in.’
“‘Fellow citizens!’ says old man Billfinger, ‘In the darkest hour of Freedom’s birth, when our brave forefathers promulgated the principles of undying liberty, they never expected that a bunch of blue jays like that should be allowed to bust up an anniversary. Let us preserve and protect the Constitution.’
“We made it unanimous, and then we gathered our guns and assaulted the blue troops in force. We fired over their heads, and then charged ’em with a yell, and they broke and ran. We were irritated at having our barbecue disturbed, and we chased ’em a quarter of a mile. Some of ’em we caught and kicked hard. The General rallied his troops and joined in the chase. Finally they scattered in a thick banana grove, and we couldn’t flush a single one. So we sat down and rested.
“If I were to be put, severe, through the third degree, I wouldn’t be able to tell much about the rest of the day. I mind that we pervaded the town considerable, calling upon the people to bring out more armies for us to destroy. I remember seeing a crowd somewhere, and a tall man that wasn’t Billfinger making a Fourth of July speech from a balcony. And that was about all.
“Somebody must have hauled the old ice factory up to where I was, and put it around me, for there’s where I was when I woke up the next morning. As soon as I could recollect by name and address I got up and held an inquest. My last cent was gone. I was all in.
“And then a neat black carriage drives to the door, and out steps General Dingo and a bay man in a silk hat and tan shoes.
“‘Yes,’ says I to myself, ‘I see it now. You’re the Chief de Policeos and High Lord Chamberlain of the Calaboosum; and you want Billy Casparis for excess of patriotism and assault with intent. All right. Might as well be in jail, anyhow.’
“But it seems that General Mary is smiling, and the bay man shakes my hand, and speaks in the American dialect.
“‘General Dingo has informed me, Senor Casparis, of your gallant service in our cause. I desire to thank you with my person. The bravery of you and the other senores Americanos turned the struggle for liberty in our favour. Our party triumphed. The terrible battle will live forever in history.
“‘Battle?’ says I; ‘what battle?’ and I ran my mind back along history, trying to think.
“‘Senor Casparis is modest,’ says General Dingo. ‘He led his brave compadres into the thickest of the fearful conflict. Yes. Without their aid the revolution would have failed.’
“‘Why, now,’ says I, ‘don’t tell me there was a revolution yesterday. That was only a Fourth of–‘
“But right there I abbreviated. It seemed to me it might be best.
“‘After the terrible struggle,’ says the bay man, ‘President Bolano was forced to fly. To-day Caballo is President by proclamation. Ah, yes. Beneath the new administration I am the head of the Department of Mercantile Concessions. On my file I find one report, Senor Casparis, that you have not made ice in accord with your contract.’ And here the bay man smiles at me, ‘cute.
“‘Oh, well,’ says I, ‘I guess the report’s straight. I know they caught me. That’s all there is to it.’
“‘Do not say so,’ says the bay man. He pulls off a glove and goes over and lays his hand on that chunk of glass.
“‘Ice,’ says he, nodding his head, solemn.
“General Dingo also steps over and feels of it.
“‘Ice,’ says the General; ‘I’ll swear to it.’
“‘If Senor Casparis,’ says the bay man, ‘will present himself to the treasury on the sixth day of this month he will receive back the thousand dollars he did deposit as a forfeit. Adios, senor.’
“The General and the bay man bowed themselves out, and I bowed as often as they did.
“And when the carriage rolls away through the sand I bows once more, deeper than ever, till my hat touches the ground. But this time ’twas not intended for them. For, over their heads, I saw the old flag fluttering in the breeze above the consul’s roof; and ’twas to it I made my profoundest salute.”
XIV
THE EMANCIPATION OF BILLY
In the old, old, square-porticoed mansion, with the wry window- shutters and the paint peeling off in discoloured flakes, lived one of the last war governors.
The South has forgotten the enmity of the great conflict, but it refuses to abandon its old traditions and idols. In “Governor” Pemberton, as he was still fondly called, the inhabitants of Elmville saw the relic of their state’s ancient greatness and glory. In his day he had been a man large in the eye of his country. His state had pressed upon him every honour within its gift. And now when he was old, and enjoying a richly merited repose outside the swift current of public affairs, his townsmen loved to do him reverence for the sake of the past.
The Governor’s decaying “mansion” stood upon the main street of Elmville within a few feet of its rickety paling-fence. Every morning the Governor would descend the steps with extreme care and deliberation–on account of his rheumatism–and then the click of his gold-headed cane would be heard as he slowly proceeded up the rugged brick sidewalk. He was now nearly seventy-eight, but he had grown old gracefully and beautifully. His rather long, smooth hair and flowing, parted whiskers were snow-white. His full-skirted frock-croak was always buttoned snugly about his tall, spare figure. He wore a high, well-kept silk hat–known as a “plug” in Elmville–and nearly always gloves. His manners were punctilious, and somewhat overcharged with courtesy.
The Governor’s walks up Lee Avenue, the principal street, developed in their course into a sort of memorial, triumphant procession. Everyone he met saluted him with profound respect. Many would remove their hats. Those who were honoured with his personal friendship would pause to shake hands, and then you would see exemplified the genuine /beau ideal/ Southern courtesy.
Upon reaching the corner of the second square from the mansion, the Governor would pause. Another street crossed the venue there, and traffic, to the extent of several farmers’ wagons and a peddler’s cart or two, would rage about the junction. Then the falcon eye of General Deffenbaugh would perceive the situation, and the General would hasten, with ponderous solicitude, from his office in the First National Bank building to the assistance of his old friend.
When the two exchanged greetings the decay of modern manners would become accusingly apparent. The General’s bulky and commanding figure would bend lissomely at a point where you would have regarded its ability to do so with incredulity. The Governor would take the General’s arm and be piloted safely between the hay-wagons and the sprinkling-cart to the other side of the street. Proceeding to the post-office in the care of his friend, the esteemed statesmen would there hold an informal levee among the citizens who were come for their morning mail. Here, gathering two or three prominent in law, politics, or family, the pageant would make a stately progress along the Avenue, stopping at the Palace Hotel, where, perhaps, would be found upon the register the name of some guest deemed worthy of an introduction to the state’s venerable and illustrious son. If any such were found, an hour or two would be spent in recalling the faded glories of the Governor’s long-vanished administration.
On the return march the General would invariably suggest that, His Excellency being no doubt fatigued, it would be wise to recuperate for a few minutes at the Drug Emporium of Mr. Appleby R. Fentress (an elegant gentleman, sir–one of the Chatham County Fentresses–so many of our best-blooded families have had to go into trade, sir, since the war).
Mr. Appleby R. Fentress was a /connoisseur/ in fatigue. Indeed, if he had not been, his memory alone should have enabled him to prescribe, for the majestic invasion of his pharmacy was a casual happening that had surprised him almost daily for years. Mr. Fentress knew the formula of, and possessed the skill to compound, a certain potion antagonistic to fatigue, the salient ingredient of which he described (no doubt in pharmaceutical terms) as “genuine old hand-made Clover Leaf ’59, Private Stock.”
Nor did the ceremony of administering the potion ever vary. Mr. Fentress would first compound two of the celebrated mixtures–one for the Governor, and the other for the General to “sample.” Then the Governor would make this little speech in his high, piping, quavering voice:
“No, sir–not one drop until you have prepared one for yourself and join us, Mr. Fentress. Your father, sir, was one of my most valued supporters and friends during My Administration, and any mark of esteem I can confer upon his son is not only a pleasure but a duty, sir.”
Blushing with delight at the royal condescension, the druggist would obey, and all would drink to the General’s toast: “The prosperity of our grand old state, gentlemen–the memory of her glorious past–the health of her Favourite Son.”
Some one of the Old Guard was always at hand to escort the Governor home. Sometimes the General’s business duties denied him the privilege, and then Judge Broomfield or Colonel Titus, or one of the Ashford County Slaughters would be on hand to perform the rite.
Such were the observances attendant upon the Governor’s morning stroll to the post-office. How much more magnificent, impressive, and spectacular, then, was the scene at public functions when the General would lead forth the silver-haired relic of former greatness, like some rare and fragile waxwork figure, and trumpet his pristine eminence to his fellow citizens!
General Deffenbaugh was the Voice of Elmville. Some said he was Elmville. At any rate, he had no competitor as the Mouthpiece. He owned enough stock in the /Daily Banner/ to dictate its utterance, enough shares in the First National Bank to be the referee of its loans, and a war record that left him without a rival for first place at barbecues, school commencements, and Decoration Days. Besides these acquirements he was possessed with endowments. His personality was inspiring and triumphant. Undisputed sway had moulded him to the likeness of a fatted Roman emperor. The tones of his voice were not otherwise than clarion. To say that the General was public-spirited would fall short of doing him justice. He had spirit enough for a dozen publics. And as a sure foundation for it all, he had a heart that was big and stanch. Yes; General Deffenbaugh was Elmville.
One little incident that usually occurred during the Governor’s morning walk has had its chronicling delayed by more important matters. The procession was accustomed to halt before a small brick office on the Avenue, fronted by a short flight of steep wooden steps. A modest tin sign over the door bore the words: “Wm. B. Pemberton: Attorney-at-Law.”
Looking inside, the General would roar: “Hello, Billy, my boy.” The less distinguished members of the escort would call: “Morning, Billy.” The Governor would pipe: “Good morning, William.”
Then a patient-looking little man with hair turning gray along the temples would come down the steps and shake hands with each one of the party. All Elmville shook hands when it met.
The formalities concluded, the little man would go back to his table, heaped with law books and papers, while the procession would proceed.
Billy Pemberton was, as his sign declared, a lawyer by profession. By occupation and common consent he was the Son of his Father. This was the shadow in which Billy lived, the pit out of which he had unsuccessfully striven for years to climb and, he had come to believe, the grave in which his ambitions were destined to be buried. Filial respect and duty he paid beyond the habit of most sons, but he aspired to be known and appraised by his own deeds and worth.
After many years of tireless labour he had become known in certain quarters far from Elmville as a master of the principles of the law. Twice he had gone to Washington and argued cases before the highest tribunal with such acute logic and learning that the silken gowns on the bench had rustled from the force of it. His income from his practice had grown until he was able to support his father, in the old family mansion (which neither of them would have thought of abandoning, rickety as it was) in the comfort and almost the luxury of the old extravagant days. Yet, he remained to Elmville as only “Billy” Pemberton, the son of our distinguished and honoured fellow-townsman, “ex-Governor Pemberton.” Thus was he introduced at public gatherings where he sometimes spoke, haltingly and prosily, for his talents were too serious and deep for extempore brilliancy; thus was he presented to strangers and to the lawyers who made the circuit of the courts; and so the /Daily Banner/ referred to him in print. To be “the son of” was his doom. What ever he should accomplish would have to be sacrificed upon the altar of this magnificent but fatal parental precedence.
The peculiarity and the saddest thing about Billy’s ambition was that the only world he thirsted to conquer was Elmville. His nature was diffident and unassuming. National or State honours might have oppressed him. But, above all things, he hungered for the appreciation of the friends among whom he had been born and raised. He would not have plucked one leaf from the garlands that were so lavishly bestowed upon his father, he merely rebelled against having his own wreathes woven from those dried and self-same branches. But Elmville “Billied” and “sonned” him to his concealed but lasting chagrin, until at length he grew more reserved and formal and studious than ever.
There came a morning when Billy found among his mail a letter from a very high source, tendering him the appointment to an important judicial position in the new island possessions of our country. The honour was a distinguished one, for the entire nation had discussed the probable recipients of these positions, and had agreed that the situation demanded only men of the highest character, ripe learning, and evenly balanced mind.
Billy could not subdue a certain exultation at this token of the success of his long and arduous labours, but, at the same time, a whimsical smile lingered around his mouth, for he foresaw in which column Elmville would place the credit. “We congratulate Governor Pemberton upon the mark of appreciation conferred upon his son”– “Elmville rejoices with our honoured citizen, Governor Pemberton, at his son’s success”–“Put her there, Billy!”–“Judge Billy Pemberton, sir; son of our State’s war hero and the people’s pride!”–these were the phrases, printed and oral, conjured up by Billy’s prophetic fancy. Grandson of his State, and stepchild to Elmville–thus had fate fixed his kinship to the body politic.
Billy lived with his father in the old mansion. The two and an elderly lady–a distant relative–comprised the family. Perhaps, though, old Jeff, the Governor’s ancient coloured body-servant, should be included. Without doubt, he could have claimed the honour. There were other servants, but Thomas Jefferson Pemberton, sah, was a member of “de fambly.”
Jeff was the one Elmvillian who gave to Billy the gold of approval unmixed with the alloy of paternalism. To him “Mars William” was the greatest man in Talbot County. Beaten upon though he was by the shining light that emanates from an ex-war governor, and loyal as he remained to the old /regime/, his faith and admiration were Billy’s. As valet to a hero, and a member of the family, he may have had superior opportunities for judging.
Jeff was the first one to whom Bill revealed the news. When he reached home for supper Jeff took his “plug” hat and smoothed it before hanging it upon the hall-rack.
“Dar now!” said the old man: “I knowed it was er comin’. I knowed it was gwine ter happen. Er Judge, you says, Mars William? Dem Yankees done made you er judge? It’s high time, sah, dey was doin’ somep’n to make up for dey rascality endurin’ de war. I boun’ dey holds a confab and says: ‘Le’s make Mars William Pemberton er judge, and dat’ll settle it.’ Does you have to go way down to dem Fillypines, Mars William, or kin you judge ’em from here?”
“I’d have to live there most of the time, of course,” said Billy.
“I wonder what de Gubnor gwine say ’bout dat,” speculated Jeff.
Billy wondered too.
After supper, when the two sat in the library, according to their habit, the Governor smoking his clay pipe and Billy his cigar, the son dutifully confessed to having been tendered the appointment.
For a long time the Governor sat, smoking, without making any comment. Billy reclined in his favourite rocker, waiting, perhaps still flushed with satisfaction over the tender that had come to him, unsolicited, in his dingy little office, above the heads of the intriguing, time- serving, clamorous multitude.
At last the Governor spoke; and, though his words were seemingly irrelevant, they were to the point. His voice had a note of martyrdom running through its senile quaver.
“My rheumatism has been growing steadily worse these past months, William.”
“I am sorry, father,” said Billy, gently.
“And I am nearly seventy-eight. I am getting to be an old man. I can recall the names of but two or three who were in public life during My Administration. What did you say is the nature of this position that is offered you, William?”
“A Federal Judgeship, father. I believe it is considered to be a somewhat flattering tender. It is outside of politics and wire- pulling, you know.”
“No doubt, no doubt. Few of the Pembertons have engaged in professional life for nearly a century. None of them have ever held Federal positions. They have been land-holders, slave-owners, and planters on a large scale. One of two of the Derwents–your mother’s family–were in the law. Have you decided to accept this appointment, William?”
“I am thinking it over,” said Billy, slowly, regarding the ash of his cigar.
“You have been a good son to me,” continued the Governor, stirring his pipe with the handle of a penholder.
“I’ve been your son all my life,” said Billy, darkly.
“I am often gratified,” piped the Governor, betraying a touch of complacency, “by being congratulated upon having a son with such sound and sterling qualities. Especially in this, our native town, is your name linked with mine in the talk of our citizens.”
“I never knew anyone to forget the vindculum,” murmured Billy, unintelligibly.
“Whatever prestige,” pursued the parent, “I may be possessed of, by virtue of my name and services to the state, has been yours to draw upon freely. I have not hesitated to exert it in your behalf whenever opportunity offered. And you have deserved it, William. You’ve been the best of sons. And now this appointment comes to take you away from me. I have but a few years left to live. I am almost dependent upon others now, even in walking and dressing. What would I do without you, my son?”
The Governor’s pipe dropped to the floor. A tear trickled from his eye. His voice had risen, and crumbled to a weakling falsetto, and ceased. He was an old, old man about to be bereft of a son that cherished him.
Billy rose, and laid his hand upon the Governor’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry, father,” he said, cheerfully. “I’m not going to accept. Elmville is good enough for me. I’ll write to-night and decline it.”
At the next interchange of devoirs between the Governor and General Deffenbaugh on Lee Avenue, His Excellency, with a comfortable air of self-satisfaction, spoke of the appointment that had been tendered to Billy.
The General whistled.
“That’s a plum for Billy,” he shouted. “Who’d have thought that Billy –but, confound it, it’s been in him all the time. It’s a boost for Elmville. It’ll send real estate up. It’s an honour to our state. It’s a compliment to the South. We’ve all been blind about Billy. When does he leave? We must have a reception. Great Gatlings! that job’s eight thousand a year! There’s been a car-load of lead-pencils worn to stubs figuring on those appointments. Think of it! Our little, wood-sawing, mealy-mouthed Billy! Angel unawares doesn’t begin to express it. Elmville is disgraced forever until she lines up in a hurry for ratification and apology.”
The venerable Moloch smiled fatuously. He carried the fire with which to consume all these tributes to Billy, the smoke of which would ascend as an incense to himself.
“William,” said the Governor, with modest pride, “has declined the appointment. He refuses to leave me in my old age. He is a good son.”
The General swung round, and laid a large forefinger upon the bosom of his friend. Much of the General’s success had been due to his dexterity in establishing swift lines of communication between cause and effect.
“Governor,” he said, with a keen look in his big, ox-like eyes, “you’ve been complaining to Billy about your rheumatism.”
“My dear General,” replied the Governor, stiffly, “my son is forty- two. He is quite capable of deciding such questions for himself. And I, as his parent, feel it my duty to state that your remark about–er –rheumatism is a mighty poor shot from a very small bore, sir, aimed at a purely personal and private affliction.”
“If you will allow me,” retorted the General, “you’ve afflicted the public with it for some time; and ’twas no small bore, at that.”
This first tiff between the two old comrades might have grown into something more serious, but for the fortunate interruption caused by the ostentatious approach of Colonel Titus and another one of the court retinue from the right county, to whom the General confided the coddled statesman and went his way.
After Billy had so effectually entombed his ambitions, and taken the veil, so to speak, in a sonnery, he was surprised to discover how much lighter of heart and happier he felt. He realized what a long, restless struggle he had maintained, and how much he had lost by failing to cull the simple but wholesome pleasures by the way. His heart warmed now to Elmville and the friends who had refused to set him upon a pedestal. It was better, he began to think, to be “Billy” and his father’s son, and to be hailed familiarly by cheery neighbours and grown-up playmates, than to be “Your Honour,” and sit among strangers, hearing, maybe, through the arguments of learned counsel, that old man’s feeble voice crying: “What would I do without you, my son?”
Billy began to surprise his acquaintances by whistling as he walked up the street; others he astounded by slapping them disrespectfully upon their backs and raking up old anecdotes he had not had the time to recollect for years. Though he hammered away at his law cases as thoroughly as ever, he found more time for relaxation and the company of his friends. Some of the younger set were actually after him to join the golf club. A striking proof of his abandonment to obscurity was his adoption of a most undignified, rakish, little soft hat, reserving the “plug” for Sundays and state occasions. Billy was beginning to enjoy Elmville, though that irreverent burgh had neglected to crown him with bay and myrtle.
All the while uneventful peace pervaded Elmville. The Governor continued to make his triumphal parades to the post-office with the General as chief marshal, for the slight squall that had rippled their friendship had, to all indications, been forgotten by both.
But one day Elmville woke to sudden excitement. The news had come that a touring presidential party would honour Elmville by a twenty-minute stop. The Executive had promised a five-minute address from the balcony of the Palace Hotel.
Elmville rose as one man–that man being, of course, General Deffenbaugh–to receive becomingly the chieftain of all the clans. The train with the tiny Stars and Stripes fluttering from the engine pilot arrived. Elmville had done her best. There were bands, flowers, carriages, uniforms, banners, and committees without end. High-school girls in white frocks impeded the steps of the party with roses strewn nervously in bunches. The chieftain had seen it all before–scores of times. He could have pictured it exactly in advance, from the Blue- and-Gray speech down to the smallest rosebud. Yet his kindly smile of interest greeted Elmville’s display as if it had been the only and original.
In the upper rotunda of the Palace Hotel the town’s most illustrious were assembled for the honour of being presented to the distinguished guests previous to the expected address. Outside, Elmville’s inglorious but patriotic masses filled the streets.
Here, in the hotel General Deffenbaugh was holding in reserve Elmville’s trump card. Elmville knew; for the trump was a fixed one, and its lead consecrated by archaic custom.
At the proper moment Governor Pemberton, beautifully venerable, magnificently antique, tall, paramount, stepped forward upon the arm of the General.
Elmville watched and harked with bated breath. Never until now–when a Northern President of the United States should clasp hands with ex- war-Governor Pemberton would the breach be entirely closed–would the country be made one and indivisible–no North, not much South, very little East, and no West to speak of. So Elmville excitedly scraped kalsomine from the walls of the Palace Hotel with its Sunday best, and waited for the Voice to speak.
And Billy! We had nearly forgotten Billy. He was cast for Son, and he waited patiently for his cue. He carried his “plug” in his hand, and felt serene. He admired his father’s striking air and pose. After all, it was a great deal to be a son of a man who could so gallantly hold the position of a cynosure for three generations.
General Deffenbaugh cleared his throat. Elmville opened its mouth, and squirmed. The chieftain with the kindly, fateful face was holding out his hand, smiling. Ex-war-Governor Pemberton extended his own across the chasm. But what was this the General was saying?
“Mr. President, allow me to present to you one who has the honour to be the father of our foremost, distinguished citizen, learned and honoured jurist, beloved townsman, and model Southern gentleman–the Honourable William B. Pemberton.”
XV
THE ENCHANTED KISS
But a clerk in the Cut-rate Drug Store was Samuel Tansey, yet his slender frame was a pad that enfolded the passion of Romeo, the gloom of Laura, the romance of D’Artagnan, and the desperate inspiration of Melnotte. Pity, then, that he had been denied expression, that he was doomed to the burden of utter timidity and diffidence, that Fate had set him tongue-tied and scarlet before the muslin-clad angels whom he adored and vainly longed to rescue, clasp, comfort, and subdue.
The clock’s hands were pointing close upon the hour of ten while Tansey was playing billiards with a number of his friends. On alternate evenings he was released from duty at the store after seven o’clock. Even among his fellow-men Tansey was timorous and constrained. In his imagination he had done valiant deeds and performed acts of distinguished gallantry; but in fact he was a sallow youth of twenty-three, with an over-modest demeanour and scant vocabulary.
When the clock struck ten, Tansey hastily laid down his cue and struck sharply upon the show-case with a coin for the attendant to come and receive the pay for his score.
“What’s your hurry, Tansey?” called one. “Got another engagement?”
“Tansey got an engagement!” echoed another. “Not on your life. Tansey’s got to get home at Motten by her Peek’s orders.”
“It’s no such thing,” chimed in a pale youth, taking a large cigar from his mouth; “Tansey’s afraid to be late because Miss Katie might come down stairs to unlock the door, and kiss him in the hall.”
This last delicate piece of raillery sent a fiery tingle into Tansey’s blood, for the indictment was true–barring the kiss. That was a thing to dream of; to wildly hope for; but too remote and sacred a thing to think of lightly.
Casting a cold and contemptuous look at the speaker–a punishment commensurate with his own diffident spirit–Tansey left the room, descending the stairs into the street.
For two years he had silently adored Miss Peek, worshipping her from a spiritual distance through which her attractions took on stellar brightness and mystery. Mrs. Peek kept a few choice boarders, among whom was Tansey. The other young men romped with Katie, chased her with crickets in their fingers, and “jollied” her with an irreverent freedom that turned Tansey’s heart into cold lead in his bosom. The signs of his adoration were few–a tremulous “Good morning,” stealthy glances at her during meals, and occasionally (Oh, rapture!) a blushing, delirious game of cribbage with her in the parlour on some rare evening when a miraculous lack of engagement kept her at home. Kiss him in the hall! Aye, he feared it, but it was an ecstatic fear such as Elijah must have felt when the chariot lifted him into the unknown.
But to-night the gibes of his associates had stung him to a feeling of forward, lawless mutiny; a defiant, challenging, atavistic recklessness. Spirit of corsair, adventurer, lover, poet, bohemian, possessed him. The stars he saw above him seemed no more unattainable, no less high, than the favour of Miss Peek or the fearsome sweetness of her delectable lips. His fate seemed to him strangely dramatic and pathetic, and to call for a solace consonant with its extremity. A saloon was near by, and to this he flitted, calling for absinthe– beyond doubt the drink most adequate to his mood–the tipple of the roue, the abandoned, the vainly sighing lover.
Once he drank of it, and again, and then again until he felt a strange, exalted sense of non-participation in worldly affairs pervade him. Tansey was no drinker; his consumption of three absinthe anisettes within almost as few minutes proclaimed his unproficiency in the art; Tansey was merely flooding with unproven liquor his sorrows; which record and tradition alleged to be drownable.
Coming out upon the sidewalk, he snapped his fingers defiantly in the direction of the Peek homestead, turned the other way, and voyaged, Columbus-like into the wilds of an enchanted street. Nor is the figure exorbitant, for, beyond his store the foot of Tansey had scarcely been set for years–store and boarding-house; between these ports he was charted to run, and contrary currents had rarely deflected his prow.
Tansey aimlessly protracted his walk, and, whether it was his unfamiliarity with the district, his recent accession of audacious errantry, or the sophistical whisper of a certain green-eyed fairy, he came at last to tread a shuttered, blank, and echoing thoroughfare, dark and unpeopled. And, suddenly, this way came to an end (as many streets do in the Spanish-built, archaic town of San Antone), butting its head against an imminent, high, brick wall. No–the street still lived! To the right and to the left it breathed through slender tubes of exit–narrow, somnolent ravines, cobble paved and unlighted. Accommodating a rise in the street to the right was reared a phantom flight of five luminous steps of limestone, flanked by a wall of the same height and of the same material.
Upon one of these steps Tansey seated himself and bethought him of his love, and how she might never know she was his love. And of Mother Peek, fat, vigilant and kind; not unpleased, Tansey thought, that he and Katie should play cribbage in the parlour together. For the Cut- rate had not cut his salary, which, sordidly speaking, ranked him star boarder at the Peek’s. And he thought of Captain Peek, Katie’s father, a man he dreaded and abhorred; a genteel loafer and spendthrift, battening upon the labour of his women-folk; a very queer fish, and, according to repute, not of the freshest.
The night had turned chill and foggy. The heart of the town, with its noises, was left behind. Reflected from the high vapours, its distant lights were manifest in quivering, cone-shaped streamers, in questionable blushes of unnamed colours, in unstable, ghostly waves of far, electric flashes. Now that the darkness was become more friendly, the wall against which the street splintered developed a stone coping topped with an armature of spikes. Beyond it loomed what appeared to be the acute angles of mountain peaks, pierced here and there by little lambent parallelograms. Considering this vista, Tansey at length persuaded himself that the seeming mountains were, in fact, the convent of Santa Mercedes, with which ancient and bulky pile he was better familiar from different coigns of view. A pleasant note of singing in his ears reinforced his opinion. High, sweet, holy carolling, far and harmonious and uprising, as of sanctified nuns at their responses. At what hour did the Sisters sing? He tried to think –was it six, eight, twelve? Tansey leaned his back against the limestone wall and wondered. Strange things followed. The air was full of white, fluttering pigeons that circled about, and settled upon the convent wall. The wall blossomed with a quantity of shining green eyes that blinked and peered at him from the solid masonry. A pink, classic nymph came from an excavation in the cavernous road and danced, barefoot and airy, upon the ragged flints. The sky was traversed by a company of beribboned cats, marching in stupendous, aerial procession. The noise of singing grew louder; an illumination of unseasonable fireflies danced past, and strange whispers came out of the dark without meaning or excuse.
Without amazement Tansey took note of these phenomena. He was on some new plane of understanding, though his mind seemed to him clear and, indeed, happily tranquil.
A desire for movement and exploration seized him: he rose and turned into the black gash of street to his right. For a time the high wall formed one of its boundaries; but further on, two rows of black- windowed houses closed it in.
Here was the city’s quarter once given over to the Spaniard. Here were still his forbidding abodes of concrete and adobe, standing cold and indomitable against the century. From the murky fissure, the eye saw, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of his Moorish balconies. Through stone archways breaths of dead, vault-chilled air coughed upon him; his feet struck jingling iron rings in staples stone-buried for half a cycle. Along these paltry avenues had swaggered the arrogant Don, had caracoled and serenaded and blustered while the tomahawk and the pioneer’s rifle were already uplifted to expel him from a continent. And Tansey, stumbling through this old-world dust, looked up, dark as it was, and saw Andalusian beauties glimmering on the balconies. Some of them were laughing and listening to the goblin music that still followed; others harked fearfully through the night, trying to catch the hoof beats of caballeros whose last echoes from those stones had died away a century ago. Those women were silent, but Tansey heard the jangle of horseless bridle-bits, the whirr of riderless rowels, and, now and then, a muttered malediction in a foreign tongue. But he was not frightened. Shadows, nor shadows of sounds could daunt him. Afraid? No. Afraid of Mother Peek? Afraid to face the girl of his heart? Afraid of tipsy Captain Peek? Nay! nor of these apparitions, nor of that spectral singing that always pursued him. Singing! He would show them! He lifted up a strong and untuneful voice:
“When you hear them bells go tingalingling,”
serving notice upon those mysterious agencies that if it should come to a face-to-face encounter
“There’ll be a hot time
In the old town
To-night!”
How long Tansey consumed in treading this haunted byway was not clear to him, but in time he emerged into a more commodious avenue. When within a few yards of the corner he perceived, through a window, that a small confectionary of mean appearance was set in the angle. His same glance that estimated its meagre equipment, its cheap soda-water fountain and stock of tobacco and sweets, took cognizance of Captain Peek within lighting a cigar at a swinging gaslight.
As Tansey rounded the corner Captain Peek came out, and they met /vis- a-vis/. An exultant joy filled Tansey when he found himself sustaining the encounter with implicit courage. Peek, indeed! He raised his hand, and snapped his fingers loudly.
It was Peek himself who quailed guiltily before the valiant mien of the drug clerk. Sharp surprise and a palpable fear bourgeoned upon the Captain’s face. And, verily, that face was one to rather call up such expressions on the faces of others. The face of a libidinous heathen idol, small eyed, with carven folds in the heavy jowls, and a consuming, pagan license in its expression. In the gutter just beyond the store Tansey saw a closed carriage standing with its back toward him and a motionless driver perched in his place.
“Why, it’s Tansey!” exclaimed Captain Peek. “How are you, Tansey? H- have a cigar, Tansey?”
“Why, it’s Peek!” cried Tansey, jubilant at his own temerity. “What deviltry are you up to now, Peek? Back streets and a closed carriage! Fie! Peek!”
“There’s no one in the carriage,” said the Captain, smoothly.
“Everybody out of it is in luck,” continued Tansey, aggressively. “I’d love for you to know, Peek, that I’m not stuck on you. You’re a bottle-nosed scoundrel.”
“Why, the little rat’s drunk!” cried the Captain, joyfully; “only drunk, and I thought he was on! Go home, Tansey, and quit bothering grown persons on the street.”
But just then a white-clad figure sprang out of the carriage, and a shrill voice–Katie’s voice–sliced the air: “Sam! Sam!–help me, Sam!”
Tansey sprung toward her, but Captain Peek interposed his bulky form. Wonder of wonders! the whilom spiritless youth struck out with his right, and the hulking Captain went over in a swearing heap. Tansey flew to Katie, and took her in his arms like a conquering knight. She raised her face, and he kissed her–violets! electricity! caramels! champagne! Here was the attainment of a dream that brought no disenchantment.
“Oh, Sam,” cried Katie, when she could, “I knew you would come to rescue me. What do you suppose the mean things were going to do with me?”
“Have your picture taken,” said Tansey, wondering at the foolishness of his remark.
“No, they were going to eat me. I heard them talking about it.”
“Eat you!” said Tansey, after pondering a moment. “That can’t be; there’s no plates.”
But a sudden noise warned him to turn. Down upon him were bearing the Captain and a monstrous long-bearded dwarf in a spangled cloak and red trunk-hose. The dwarf leaped twenty feet and clutched them. The Captain seized Katie and hurled her, shrieking, back into the carriage, himself followed, and the vehicle dashed away. The dwarf lifted Tansey high above his head and ran with him into the store. Holding him with one hand, he raised the lid of an enormous chest half filled with cakes of ice, flung Tansey inside, and closed down the cover.
The force of the fall must have been great, for Tansey lost consciousness. When his faculties revived his first sensation was one of severe cold along his back and limbs. Opening his eyes, he found himself to be seated upon the limestone steps still facing the wall and convent of Santa Mercedes. His first thought was of the ecstatic kiss from Katie. The outrageous villainy of Captain Peek, the unnatural mystery of the situation, his preposterous conflict with the improbable dwarf–these things roused and angered him, but left no impression of the unreal.
“I’ll go back there to-morrow,” he grumbled aloud, “and knock the head off that comic-opera squab. Running out and picking up perfect strangers, and shoving them into cold storage!”
But the kiss remained uppermost in his mind. “I might have done that long ago,” he mused. “She liked it, too. She called me ‘Sam’ four times. I’ll not go up that street again. Too much scrapping. Guess I’ll move down the other way. Wonder what she meant by saying they were going to eat her!”
Tansey began to feel sleepy, but after a while he decided to move along again. This time he ventured into the street to his left. It ran level for a distance, and then dipped gently downward, opening into a vast, dim, barren space–the old Military Plaza. To his left, some hundred yards distant, he saw a cluster of flickering lights along the Plaza’s border. He knew the locality at once.
Huddled within narrow confines were the remnants of the once-famous purveyors of the celebrated Mexican national cookery. A few years before, their nightly encampments upon the historic Alamo Plaza, in the heart of the city, had been a carnival, a saturnalia that was renowned throughout the land. Then the caterers numbered hundreds; the patrons thousands. Drawn by the coquettish /senoritas/, the music of the weird Spanish minstrels, and the strange piquant Mexican dishes served at a hundred competing tables, crowds thronged the Alamo Plaza all night. Travellers, rancheros, family parties, gay gasconading rounders, sightseers and prowlers of polyglot, owlish San Antone mingled there at the centre of the city’s fun and frolic. The popping of corks, pistols, and questions; the glitter of eyes, jewels and daggers; the ring of laughter and coin–these were the order of the night.
But now no longer. To some half-dozen tents, fires, and tables had dwindled the picturesque festival, and these had been relegated to an ancient disused plaza.
Often had Tansey strolled down to these stands at night to partake of the delectable /chili-con-carne/, a dish evolved by the genius of Mexico, composed of delicate meats minced with aromatic herbs and the poignant /chili colorado/–a compound full of singular flavour and a fiery zest delightful to the Southron’s palate.
The titillating odour of this concoction came now, on the breeze, to the nostrils of Tansey, awakening in him hunger for it. As he turned in that direction he saw a carriage dash up to the Mexicans’ tents out of the gloom of the Plaza. Some figures moved back and forward in the uncertain light of the lanterns, and then the carriage was driven swiftly away.
Tansey approached, and sat at one of the tables covered with gaudy oil-cloth. Traffic was dull at the moment. A few half-grown boys noisily fared at another table; the Mexicans hung listless and phlegmatic about their wares. And it was still. The night hum of the city crowded to the wall of dark buildings surrounding the Plaza, and subsided to an indefinite buzz through which sharply perforated the crackle of the languid fires and the rattle of fork and spoon. A sedative wind blew from the southeast. The starless firmament pressed down upon the earth like a leaden cover.
In all that quiet Tansey turned his head suddenly, and saw, without disquietude, a troop of spectral horsemen deploy into the Plaza and charge a luminous line of infantry that advanced to sustain the shock. He saw the fierce flame of cannon and small arms, but heard no sound. The careless victuallers lounged vacantly, not deigning to view the conflict. Tansey mildly wondered to what nations these mute combatants might belong; turned his back to them and ordered his chili and coffee from the Mexican woman who advanced to serve him. This woman was old and careworn; her face was lined like the rind of a cantaloupe. She fetched the viands from a vessel set by the smouldering fire, and then retired to a tent, dark within, that stood near by.
Presently Tansey heard a turmoil in the tent; a wailing, broken- hearted pleading in the harmonious Spanish tongue, and then two figures tumbled out into the light of the lanterns. One was the old woman; the other was a man clothed with a sumptuous and flashing splendour. The woman seemed to clutch and beseech from him something against his will. The man broke from her and struck her brutally back into the tent, where she lay, whimpering and invisible. Observing Tansey, he walked rapidly to the table where he sat. Tansey recognized him to be Ramon Torres, a Mexican, the proprietor of the stand he was patronizing.
Torres was a handsome, nearly full-blooded descendant of the Spanish, seemingly about thirty years of age, and of a haughty, but extremely courteous demeanour. To-night he was dressed with signal magnificence. His costume was that of a triumphant /matador/, made of purple velvet almost hidden by jeweled embroidery. Diamonds of enormous size flashed upon his garb and his hands. He reached for a chair, and, seating himself at the opposite side of the table, began to roll a finical cigarette.
“Ah, Meester Tanse,” he said, with a sultry fire in his silky, black eyes, “I give myself pleasure to see you this evening. Meester Tansee, you have many times come to eat at my table. I theenk you a safe man– a verree good friend. How much would it please you to leeve forever?”
“Not come back any more?” inquired Tansey.
“No; not leave–/leeve/; the not-to-die.”
“I would call that,” said Tansey, “a snap.”
Torres leaned his elbows upon the table, swallowed a mouthful of smoke, and spake–each word being projected in a little puff of gray.
“How old do you theenk I am, Meester Tansee?”
“Oh, twenty-eight or thirty.”
“Thees day,” said the Mexican, “ees my birthday. I am four hundred and three years of old to-day.”
“Another proof,” said Tansey, airily, “of the healthfulness of our climate.”
“Eet is not the air. I am to relate to you a secret of verree fine value. Listen me, Meester Tansee. At the age of twenty-three I arrive in Mexico from Spain. When? In the year fifteen hundred nineteen, with the /soldados/ of Hernando Cortez. I come to thees country seventeen fifteen. I saw your Alamo reduced. It was like yesterday to me. Three hundred ninety-six year ago I learn the secret always to leeve. Look at these clothes I war–at these /diamantes/. Do you theenk I buy them with the money I make with selling the /chili-con-carne/, Meester Tansee?”
“I should think not,” said Tansey, promptly. Torres laughed loudly.
“/Valgame Dios/! but I do. But it not the kind you eating now. I make a deeferent kind, the eating of which makes men to always leeve. What do you think! One thousand people I supply–/diez pesos/ each one pays me the month. You see! ten thousand /pesos/ everee month! /Que diable/! how not I wear the fine /ropa/! You see that old woman try to hold me back a little while ago? That ees my wife. When I marry her she is young–seventeen year–/bonita/. Like the rest she ees become old and–what you say!–tough? I am the same–young all the time. To-night I resolve to dress myself and find another wife befitting my age. This old woman try to scr-r-ratch my face. Ha! ha! Meester Tansee –same way they do /entre los Americanos/.”
“And this health-food you spoke of?” said Tansey.
“Hear me,” said Torres, leaning over the table until he lay flat upon it; “eet is the /chili-con-carne/ made not from the beef or the chicken, but from the flesh of the /senorita/–young and tender. That ees the secret. Everee month you must eat of it, having care to do so before the moon is full, and you will not die any times. See how I trust you, friend Tansee! To-night I have bought one young ladee– verree pretty–so /fina, gorda, blandita/! To-morrow the /chili/ will be ready. /Ahora si/! One thousand dollars I pay for thees young ladee. From an /Americano/ I have bought–a verree tip-top man–/el Capitan Peek/–/que es, Senor/?”
For Tansey had sprung to his feet, upsetting the chair. The words of Katie reverberated in his ears: “They’re going to eat me, Sam.” This, then, was the monstrous fate to which she had been delivered by her unnatural parent. The carriage he had seen drive up from the Plaza was Captain Peek’s. Where was Katie? Perhaps already–
Before he could decide what to do a loud scream came from the tent. The old Mexican woman ran out, a flashing knife in her hand. “I have released her,” she cried. “You shall kill no more. They will hang you –/ingrato/–/encatador/!”
Torres, with a hissing exclamation, sprang at her.
“Ramoncito!” she shrieked; “once you loved me.”
The Mexican’s arm raised and descended. “You are old,” he cried; and she fell and lay motionless.
Another scream; the flaps of the tent were flung aside, and there stood Katie, white with fear, her wrists still bound with a cruel cord.
“Sam!” she cried, “save me again!”
Tansey rounded the table, and flung himself, with superb nerve, upon the Mexican. Just then a clangour began; the clocks of the city were tolling the midnight hour. Tansey clutched at Torres, and, for a moment, felt in his grasp the crunch of velvet and the cold facets of the glittering gems. The next instant, the bedecked caballero turned in his hands to a shrunken, leather-visaged, white-bearded, old, old, screaming mummy, sandalled, ragged, and four hundred and three. The Mexican woman was crawling to her feet, and laughing. She shook her brown hand in the face of the whining /viejo/.
“Go, now,” she cried, “and seek your senorita. It was I, Ramoncito, who brought you to this. Within each moon you eat of the life-giving /chili/. It was I that kept the wrong time for you. You should have eaten /yesterday/ instead of /to-morrow/. It is too late. Off with you, /hombre/! You are too old for me!”
“This,” decided Tansey, releasing his hold of the gray-beard, “is a private family matter concerning age, and no business of mine.”
With one of the table knives he hastened to saw asunder the fetters of the fair captive; and then, for the second time that night he kissed Katie Peek–tasted again the sweetness, the wonder, the thrill of it, attained once more the maximum of his incessant dreams.
The next instant an icy blade was driven deep between his shoulders; he felt his blood slowly congeal; heard the senile cackle of the perennial Spaniard; saw the Plaza rise and reel till the zenith crashed into the horizon–and knew no more.
When Tansey opened his eyes again he was sitting upon those self-same steps gazing upon the dark bulk of the sleeping convent. In the middle of his back was still the acute, chilling pain. How had he been conveyed back there again? He got stiffly to his feet and stretched his cramped limbs. Supporting himself against the stonework he revolved in his mind the extravagant adventures that had befallen him each time he had strayed from the steps that night. In reviewing them certain features strained his credulity. Had he really met Captain Peek or Katie or the unparalleled Mexican in his wanders–had he really encountered them under commonplace conditions and his over- stimulated brain had supplied the incongruities? However that might be, a sudden, elating thought caused him an intense joy. Nearly all of us have, at some point in our lives–either to excuse our own stupidity or to placate our consciences–promulgated some theory of fatalism. We have set up an intelligent Fate that works by codes and signals. Tansey had done likewise; and now he read, through the night’s incidents, the finger-prints of destiny. Each excursion that he had made had led to the one paramount finale–to Katie and that kiss, which survived and grew strong and intoxicating in his memory. Clearly, Fate was holding up to him the mirror that night, calling him to observe what awaited him at the end of whichever road he might take. He immediately turned, and hurried homeward.
* * * * *
Clothed in an elaborate, pale blue wrapper, cut to fit, Miss Katie Peek reclined in an armchair before a waning fire in her room. Her little, bare feet were thrust into house-shoes rimmed with swan’s down. By the light of a small lamp she was attacking the society news of the latest Sunday paper. Some happy substance, seemingly indestructible, was being rhythmically crushed between her small white teeth. Miss Katie read of functions and furbelows, but she kept a vigilant ear for outside sounds and a frequent eye upon the clock over the mantel. At every footstep upon the asphalt sidewalk her smooth, round chin would cease for a moment its regular rise and fall, and a frown of listening would pucker her pretty brows.
At last she heard the latch of the iron gate click. She sprang up, tripped softly to the mirror, where she made a few of those feminine, flickering passes at her front hair and throat which are warranted to hypnotize the approaching guest.
The door-bell rang. Miss Katie, in her haste, turned the blaze of the lamp lower instead of higher, and hastened noiselessly down stairs into the hall. She turned the key, the door opened, and Mr. Tansey side-stepped in.
“Why, the i-de-a!” exclaimed Miss Katie, “is this you, Mr. Tansey? It’s after midnight. Aren’t you ashamed to wake me up at such an hour to let you in? You’re just /awful/!”
“I was late,” said Tansey, brilliantly.
“I should think you were! Ma was awfully worried about you. When you weren’t in by ten, that hateful Tom McGill said you were out calling on another–said you were out calling on some young lady. I just despise Mr. McGill. Well, I’m not going to scold you any more, Mr. Tansey, if it /is/ a little late–Oh! I turned it the wrong way!”
Miss Katie gave a little scream. Absent-mindedly she had turned the blaze of the lamp entirely out instead of higher. It was very dark.
Tansey heard a musical, soft giggle, and breathed an entrancing odour of heliotrope. A groping light hand touched his arm.”
“How awkward I was! Can you find your way–Sam?”
“I–I think I have a match, Miss K-Katie.”
A scratching sound; a flame; a glow of light held at arm’s length by the recreant follower of Destiny illuminating a tableau which shall end the ignominious chronicle–a maid with unkissed, curling, contemptuous lips slowly lifting the lamp chimney and allowing the wick to ignite; then waving a scornful and abjuring hand toward the staircase–the unhappy Tansey, erstwhile champion in the prophetic lists of fortune, ingloriously ascending to his just and certain doom, while (let us imagine) half within the wings stands the imminent figure of Fate jerking wildly at the wrong strings, and mixing things up in her usual able manner.
XVI
A DEPARTMENTAL CASE
In Texas you may travel a thousand miles in a straight line. If your course is a crooked one, it is likely that both the distance and your rate of speed may be vastly increased. Clouds there sail serenely against the wind. The whip-poor-will delivers its disconsolate cry with the notes exactly reversed from those of his Northern brother. Given a drought and a subsequently lively rain, and lo! from a glazed and stony soil will spring in a single night blossomed lilies, miraculously fair. Tom Green County was once the standard of measurement. I have forgotten how many New Jerseys and Rhode Islands it was that could have been stowed away and lost in its chaparral. But the legislative axe has slashed Tom Green into a handful of counties hardly larger than European kingdoms. The legislature convenes at Austin, near the centre of the state; and, while the representative from the Rio Grande country is gathering his palm-leaf fan and his linen duster to set out for the capital, the Pan-handle solon winds his muffler above his well-buttoned overcoat and kicks the snow from his well-greased boots ready for the same journey. All this merely to hint that the big ex-republic of the Southwest forms a sizable star on the flag, and to prepare for the corollary that things sometimes happen there uncut to pattern and unfettered by metes and bounds.
The Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History of the State of Texas was an official of no very great or very small importance. The past tense is used, for now he is Commissioner of Insurance alone. Statistic and history are no longer proper nouns in the government records.
In the year 188-, the governor appointed Luke Coonrod Standifer to be the head of this department. Standifer was then fifty-five years of age, and a Texan to the core. His father had been one of the state’s earliest settlers and pioneers. Standifer himself had served the commonwealth as Indian fighter, soldier, ranger, and legislator. Much learning he did not claim, but he had drank pretty deep of the spring of experience.
If other grounds were less abundant, Texas should be well up in the lists of glory as the grateful republic. For both as republic and state, it has busily heaped honours and solid rewards upon its sons who rescued it from the wilderness.
Wherefore and therefore, Luke Coonrod Standifer, son of Ezra Standifer, ex-Terry ranger, simon-pure democrat, and lucky dweller in an unrepresented portion of the politico-geographical map, was appointed Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History.
Standifer accepted the honour with some doubt as to the nature of the office he was to fill and his capacity for filling it–but he accepted, and by wire. He immediately set out from the little country town where he maintained (and was scarcely maintained by) a somnolent and unfruitful office of surveying and map-drawing. Before departing, he had looked up under the I’s, S’s and H’s in the “Encyclopaedia Britannica” what information and preparation toward his official duties that those weighty volumes afforded.
A few weeks of incumbency diminished the new commissioner’s awe of the great and important office he had been called upon to conduct. An increasing familiarity with its workings soon restored him to his accustomed placid course of life. In his office was an old, spectacled clerk–a consecrated, informed, able machine, who held his desk regardless of changes of administrative heads. Old Kauffman instructed his new chief gradually in the knowledge of the department without seeming to do so, and kept the wheels revolving without the slip of a cog.
Indeed, the Department of Insurance, Statistics, and History carried no great heft of the burden of state. Its main work was the regulating of the business done in the state by foreign insurance companies, and the letter of the law was its guide. As for statistics–well, you wrote letters to county officers, and scissored other people’s reports, and each year you got out a report of your own about the corn crop and the cotton crop and pecans and pigs and black and white population, and a great many columns of figures headed “bushels” and “acres” and “square miles,” etc.–and there you were. History? The branch was purely a receptive one. Old ladies interested in the science bothered you some with long reports of proceedings of their historical societies. Some twenty or thirty people would write you each year that they had secured Sam Houston’s pocket-knife or Santa Ana’s whisky-flask or Davy Crockett’s rifle–all absolutely authenticated–and demanded legislative appropriation to purchase. Most of the work in the history branch went into pigeon-holes.
One sizzling August afternoon the commissioner reclined in his office- chair, with his feet upon the long, official table covered with green billiard cloth. The commissioner was smoking a cigar, and dreamily regarding the quivering landscape framed by the window that looked upon the treeless capitol grounds. Perhaps he was thinking of the rough and ready life he had led, of the old days of breathless adventure and movement, of the comrades who now trod other paths or had ceased to tread any, of the changes civilization and peace had brought, and, maybe, complacently, of the snug and comfortable camp pitched for him under the dome of the capitol of the state that had not forgotten his services.
The business of the department was lax. Insurance was easy. Statistics were not in demand. History was dead. Old Kauffman, the efficient and perpetual clerk, had requested an infrequent half-holiday, incited to the unusual dissipation by the joy of having successfully twisted the tail of a Connecticut insurance company that was trying to do business contrary to the edicts of the great Lone Star State.
The office was very still. A few subdued noises trickled in through the open door from the other departments–a dull tinkling crash from the treasurer’s office adjoining, as a clerk tossed a bag of silver to the floor of the vault–the vague, intermittent clatter of a dilatory typewriter–a dull tapping from the state geologist’s quarters as if some woodpecker had flown in to bore for his prey in the cool of the massive building–and then a faint rustle and the light shuffling of the well-worn shoes along the hall, the sounds ceasing at the door toward which the commissioner’s lethargic back was presented. Following this, the sound of a gentle voice speaking words unintelligible to the commissioner’s somewhat dormant comprehension, but giving evidence of bewilderment and hesitation.
The voice was feminine; the commissioner was of the race of cavaliers who make salaam before the trail of a skirt without considering the quality of its cloth.
There stood in the door a faded woman, one of the numerous sisterhood of the unhappy. She was dressed all in black–poverty’s perpetual mourning for lost joys. Her face had the contours of twenty and the lines of forty. She may have lived that intervening score of years in a twelve-month. There was about her yet an aurum of indignant, unappeased, protesting youth that shone faintly through the premature veil of unearned decline.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” said the commissioner, gaining his feet to the accompaniment of a great creaking and sliding of his chair.
“Are you the governor, sir?” asked the vision of melancholy.
The commissioner hesitated at the end of his best bow, with his hand in the bosom of his double-breasted “frock.” Truth at last conquered.
“Well, no, ma’am. I am not the governor. I have the honour to be Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History. Is there anything, ma’am, I can do for you? Won’t you have a chair, ma’am?”
The lady subsided into the chair handed her, probably from purely physical reasons. She wielded a cheap fan–last token of gentility to be abandoned. Her clothing seemed to indicate a reduction almost to extreme poverty. She looked at the man who was not the governor, and saw kindliness and simplicity and a rugged, unadorned courtliness emanating from a countenance tanned and toughened by forty years of outdoor life. Also, she saw that his eyes were clear and strong and blue. Just so they had been when he used them to skim the horizon for raiding Kiowas and Sioux. His mouth was as set and firm as it had been on that day when he bearded the old Lion Sam Houston himself, and defied him during that season when secession was the theme. Now, in bearing and dress, Luke Coonrod Sandifer endeavoured to do credit to the important arts and sciences of Insurance, Statistics, and History. He had abandoned the careless dress of his country home. Now, his broad-brimmed black slouch hat, and his long-tailed “frock” made him not the least imposing of the official family, even if his office was reckoned to stand at the tail of the list.
“You wanted to see the governor, ma’am?” asked the commissioner, with a deferential manner he always used toward the fair sex.
“I hardly know,” said the lady, hesitatingly. “I suppose so.” And then, suddenly drawn by the sympathetic look of the other, she poured forth the story of her need.
It was a story so common that the public has come to look at its monotony instead of its pity. The old tale of an unhappy married life –made so by a brutal, conscienceless husband, a robber, a spendthrift, a moral coward and a bully, who failed to provide even the means of the barest existence. Yes, he had come down in the scale so low as to strike her. It happened only the day before–there was the bruise on one temple–she had offended his highness by asking for a little money to live on. And yet she must needs, woman-like, append a plea for her tyrant–he was drinking; he had rarely abused her thus when sober.
“I thought,” mourned this pale sister of sorrow, “that maybe the state might be willing to give me some relief. I’ve heard of such things being done for the families of old settlers. I’ve heard tell that the state used to give land to the men who fought for it against Mexico, and settled up the country, and helped drive out the Indians. My father did all of that, and he never received anything. He never would take it. I thought the governor would be the one to see, and that’s why I came. If father was entitled to anything, they might let it come to me.”
“It’s possible, ma’am,” said Standifer, “that such might be the case. But ‘most all the veterans and settlers got their land certificates issued, and located long ago. Still, we can look that up in the land office, and be sure. Your father’s name, now, was–“
“Amos Colvin, sir.”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Standifer, rising and unbuttoning his tight coat, excitedly. “Are you Amos Colvin’s daughter? Why, ma’am, Amos Colvin and me were thicker than two hoss thieves for more than ten years! We fought Kiowas, drove cattle, and rangered side by side nearly all over Texas. I remember seeing you once before, now. You were a kid, about seven, a-riding a little yellow pony up and down. Amos and me stopped at your home for a little grub when we were trailing that band of Mexican cattle thieves down through Karnes and Bee. Great tarantulas! and you’re Amos Colvin’s little girl! Did you ever hear your father mention Luke Standifer–just kind of casually– as if he’d met me once or twice?”
A little pale smile flitted across the lady’s white face.
“It seems to me,” she said, “that I don’t remember hearing him talk about much else. Every day there was some story he had to tell about what he and you had done. Mighty near the last thing I heard him tell was about the time when the Indians wounded him, and you crawled out to him through the grass, with a canteen of water, while they–“
“Yes, yes–well–oh, that wasn’t anything,” said Standifer, “hemming” loudly and buttoning his coat again, briskly. “And now, ma’am, who was the infernal skunk–I beg your pardon, ma’am–who was the gentleman you married?”
“Benton Sharp.”
The commissioner plumped down again into his chair, with a groan. This gentle, sad little woman, in the rusty black gown, the daughter of his oldest friend, the wife of Benton Sharp! Benton Sharp, one of the most noted “bad” men in that part of the state–a man who had been a cattle thief, an outlaw, a desperado, and was now a gambler, a swaggering bully, who plied his trade in the larger frontier towns, relying upon his record and the quickness of his gun play to maintain his supremacy. Seldom did any one take the risk of going “up against” Benton Sharp. Even the law officers were content to let him make his own terms of peace. Sharp was a ready and an accurate shot, and as lucky as a brand-new penny at coming clear from his scrapes. Standifer wondered how this pillaging eagle ever came to be mated with Amos Colvin’s little dove, and expressed his wonder.
Mrs. Sharp sighed.
“You see, Mr. Standifer, we didn’t know anything about him, and he can be very pleasant and kind when he wants to. We lived down in the little town of Goliad. Benton came riding down that way, and stopped there a while. I reckon I was some better looking then than I am now. He was good to me for a whole year after we were married. He insured his life for me for five thousand dollars. But for the last six months he has done everything but kill me. I often wish he had done that, too. He got out of money for a while, and abused me shamefully for not having anything he could spend. Then father died, and left me the little home in Goliad. My husband made me sell that, and turned me out into the world. I’ve barely been able to live, for I’m not strong enough to work. Lately, I heard he was making money in San Antonio, so I went there, and found him, and asked for a little help. This,” touching the livid bruise on her temple, “is what he gave me. So I came on to Austin to see the governor. I once heard father say that there was some land, or a pension, coming to him from the state that he never would ask for.”
Luke Standifer rose to his feet, and pushed his chair back. He looked rather perplexedly around the big office, with its handsome furniture.
“It’s a long trail to follow,” he said, slowly, “trying to get back dues from the government. There’s red tape and lawyers and rulings and evidence and courts to keep you waiting. I’m not certain,” continued the commissioner, with a profoundly meditative frown, “whether this department that I’m the boss of has any jurisdiction or not. It’s only Insurance, Statistics, and History, ma’am, and it don’t sound as if it would cover the case. But sometimes a saddle blanket can be made to stretch. You keep your seat, just for a few minutes, ma’am, till I step into the next room and see about it.”
The state treasurer was seated within his massive, complicated railings, reading a newspaper. Business for the day was about over. The clerks lolled at their desks, awaiting the closing hour. The Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History entered, and leaned in at the window.
The treasurer, a little, brisk old man, with snow-white moustache and beard, jumped up youthfully and came forward to greet Standifer. They were friends of old.
“Uncle Frank,” said the commissioner, using the familiar name by which the historic treasurer was addressed by every Texan, “how much money have you got on hand?”
The treasurer named the sum of the last balance down to the odd cents –something more than a million dollars.
The commissioner whistled lowly, and his eyes grew hopefully bright.
“You know, or else you’ve heard of, Amos Colvin, Uncle Frank?”
“Knew him well,” said the treasurer, promptly. “A good man. A valuable citizen. One of the first settlers in the Southwest.”
“His daughter,” said Standifer, “is sitting in my office. She’s penniless. She’s married to Benton Sharp, a coyote and a murderer. He’s reduced her to want, and broken her heart. Her father helped build up this state, and it’s the state’s turn to help his child. A couple of thousand dollars will buy back her home and let her live in peace. The State of Texas can’t afford to refuse it. Give me the money, Uncle Frank, and I’ll give it to her right away. We’ll fix up the red-tape business afterward.”
The treasurer looked a little bewildered.
“Why, Standifer,” he said, “you know I can’t pay a cent out of the treasury without a warrant from the comptroller. I can’t disburse a dollar without a voucher to show for it.”
The commissioner betrayed a slight impatience.
“I’ll give you a voucher,” he declared. “What’s this job they’ve given me for? Am I just a knot on a mesquite stump? Can’t my office stand for it? Charge it up to Insurance and the other two sideshows. Don’t Statistics show that Amos Colvin came to this state when it was in the hands of Greasers and rattlesnakes and Comanches, and fought day and night to make a white man’s country of it? Don’t they show that Amos Colvin’s daughter is brought to ruin by a villain who’s trying to pull down what you and I and old Texans shed our blood to build up? Don’t History show that the Lone Star State never yet failed to grant relief to the suffering and oppressed children of the men who made her the grandest commonwealth in the Union? If Statistics and History don’t bear out the claim of Amos Colvin’s child I’ll ask the next legislature to abolish my office. Come, now, Uncle Frank, let her have the money. I’ll sign the papers officially, if you say so; and then if the governor or the comptroller or the janitor or anybody else makes a kick, by the Lord I’ll refer the matter to the people, and see if they won’t endorse the act.”
The treasurer looked sympathetic but shocked. The commissioner’s voice had grown louder as he rounded off the sentences that, however praiseworthy they might be in sentiment, reflected somewhat upon the capacity of the head of a more or less important department of state. The clerks were beginning to listen.
“Now, Standifer,” said the treasurer, soothingly, “you know I’d like to help in this matter, but stop and think a moment, please. Every cent in the treasury is expended only by appropriation made by the legislature, and drawn out by checks issued by the comptroller. I can’t control the use of a cent of it. Neither can you. Your department isn’t disbursive–it isn’t even administrative–it’s purely clerical. The only way for the lady to obtain relief is to petition the legislature, and–“
“To the devil with the legislature,” said Standifer, turning away.
The treasurer called him back.
“I’d be glad, Standifer, to contribute a hundred dollars personally toward the immediate expenses of Colvin’s daughter.” He reached for his pocketbook.
“Never mind, Uncle Frank,” said the commissioner, in a softer tone. “There’s no need of that. She hasn’t asked for anything of that sort yet. Besides, her case is in my hands. I see now what a little, rag- tag, bob-tail, gotch-eared department I’ve been put in charge of. It seems to be about as important as an almanac or a hotel register. But while I’m running it, it won’t turn away any daughters of Amos Colvin without stretching its jurisdiction to cover, if possible. You want to keep your eye on the Department of Insurance, Statistics, and History.”
The commissioner returned to his office, looking thoughtful. He opened and closed an inkstand on his desk many times with extreme and undue attention. “Why don’t you get a divorce?” he asked, suddenly.
“I haven’t the money to pay for it,” answered the lady.
“Just at present,” announced the commissioner, in a formal tone, “the powers of my department appear to be considerably string-halted. Statistics seem to be overdrawn at the bank, and History isn’t good for a square meal. But you’ve come to the right place, ma’am. The department will see you through. Where did you say your husband is, ma’am?”
“He was in San Antonio yesterday. He is living there now.”
Suddenly the commissioner abandoned his official air. He took the faded little woman’s hands in his, and spoke in the old voice he used on the trail and around campfires.
“Your name’s Amanda, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I thought so. I’ve heard your dad say it often enough. Well, Amanda, here’s your father’s best friend, the head of a big office in the state government, that’s going to help you out of your troubles. And here’s the old bushwhacker and cowpuncher that your father has helped out of scrapes time and time again wants to ask you a question. Amanda, have you got money enough to run you for the next two or three days?”
Mrs. Sharp’s white face flushed the least bit.
“Plenty, sir–for a few days.”
“All right, then, ma’am. Now you go back where you are stopping here, and you come to the office again the day after to-morrow at four o’clock in the afternoon. Very likely by that time there will be something definite to report to you.” The commissioner hesitated, and looked a trifle embarrassed. “You said your husband had insured his life for $5,000. Do you know whether the premiums have been kept paid upon it or not?”
“He paid for a whole year in advance about five months ago,” said Mrs. Sharp. “I have the policy and receipts in my trunk.”
“Oh, that’s all right, then,” said Standifer. “It’s best to look after things of that sort. Some day they may come in handy.”
Mrs. Sharp departed, and soon afterward Luke Standifer went down to the little hotel where he boarded and looked up the railroad time- table in the daily paper. Half an hour later he removed his coat and vest, and strapped a peculiarly constructed pistol holster across his shoulders, leaving the receptacle close under his left armpit. Into the holster he shoved a short-barrelled .44 calibre revolver. Putting on his clothes again, he strolled to the station and caught the five- twenty afternoon train for San Antonio.
The San Antonio /Express/ of the following morning contained this sensational piece of news:
BENTON SHARP MEETS HIS MATCH
The Most Noted Desperado in Southwest Texas Shot to Death in the Gold Front Restaurant–Prominent State Official Successfully Defends Himself Against the Noted Bully–Magnificent Exhibition of Quick Gun Play.
Last night about eleven o’clock Benton Sharp, with two other men, entered the Gold Front Restaurant and seated themselves at a table. Sharp had been drinking, and was loud and boisterous, as he always was when under the influence of liquor. Five minutes after the party was seated a tall, well-dressed, elderly gentleman entered the restaurant. Few present recognized the Honourable Luke Standifer, the recently appointed Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History.
Going over to the same side where Sharp was, Mr. Standifer prepared to take a seat at the next table. In hanging his hat upon one of the hooks along the wall he let it fall upon Sharp’s head. Sharp turned, being in an especially ugly humour, and cursed the other roundly. Mr. Standifer apologized calmly for the accident, but Sharp continued his vituperations. Mr. Standifer was observed to draw near and speak a few sentences to the desperado in so low a tone that no one else caught the words. Sharp sprang up, wild with rage. In the meantime Standifer had stepped some yards away, and was standing quietly with his arms folded across the breast of his loosely hanging coat.
With that impetuous and deadly rapidity that made Sharp so dreaded, he reached for the gun he always carried in his hip pocket–a movement that has preceded the death of at least a dozen men at his hands. Quick as the motion was, the bystanders assert that it was met by the most beautiful exhibition of lightning gun- pulling ever witnessed in the Southwest. As Sharp’s pistol was being raised–and the act was really quicker than the eye could follow–a glittering .44 appeared as if by some conjuring trick in the right hand of Mr. Standifer, who, without a perceptible movement of his arm, shot Benton Sharp through the heart. It seems that the new Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History has been an old-time Indian fighter and ranger for many years, which accounts for the happy knack he has of handling a .44.
It is not believed that Mr. Standifer will be put to any inconvenience beyond a necessary formal hearing to-day, as all the witnesses who were present unite in declaring that the deed was done in self-defence.
When Mrs. Sharp appeared at the office of the commissioner, according to appointment, she found that gentleman calmly eating a golden russet apple. He greeted her without embarrassment and without hesitation at approaching the subject that was the topic of the day.
“I had to do it, ma’am,” he said, simply, “or get it myself. Mr. Kauffman,” he added, turning to the old clerk, “please look up the records of the Security Life Insurance Company and see if they are all right.”
“No need to look,” grunted Kauffman, who had everything in his head. “It’s all O.K. They pay all losses within ten days.”
Mrs. Sharp soon rose to depart. She had arranged to remain in town until the policy was paid. The commissioner did not detain her. She was a woman, and he did not know just what to say to her at present. Rest and time would bring her what she needed.
But, as she was leaving, Luke Standifer indulged himself in an official remark:
“The Department of Insurance, Statistics, and History, ma’am, has done the best it could with your case. ‘Twas a case hard to cover according to red tape. Statistics failed, and History missed fire, but, if I may be permitted to say it, we came out particularly strong on Insurance.”
XVII
THE RENAISSANCE AT CHARLEROI
Grandemont Charles was a little Creole gentleman, aged thirty-four, with a bald spot on the top of his head and the manners of a prince. By day he was a clerk in a cotton broker’s office in one of those cold, rancid mountains of oozy brick, down near the levee in New Orleans. By night, in his three-story-high /chambre garnier/ in the old French Quarter he was again the last male descendant of the Charles family, that noble house that had lorded it in France, and had pushed its way smiling, rapiered, and courtly into Louisiana’s early and brilliant days. Of late years the Charleses had subsided into the more republican but scarcely less royally carried magnificence and ease of plantation life along the Mississippi. Perhaps Grandemont was even Marquis de Brasse. There was that title in the family. But a Marquis on seventy-five dollars per month! /Vraiment/! Still, it has been done on less.
Grandemont had saved out of his salary the sum of six hundred dollars. Enough, you would say, for any man to marry on. So, after a silence of two years on that subject, he reopened that most hazardous question to Mlle. Adele Fauquier, riding down to Meade d’Or, her father’s plantation. Her answer was the same that it had been any time during the last ten years: “First find my brother, Monsieur Charles.”
This time he had stood before her, perhaps discouraged by a love so long and hopeless, being dependent upon a contingency so unreasonable, and demanded to be told in simple words whether she loved him or no.
Adele looked at him steadily out of her gray eyes that betrayed no secrets and answered, a little more softly:
“Grandemont, you have no right to ask that question unless you can do what I ask of you. Either bring back brother Victor to us or the proof that he died.”
Somehow, though five times thus rejected, his heart was not so heavy when he left. She had not denied that she loved. Upon what shallow waters can the bark of passion remain afloat! Or, shall we play the doctrinaire, and hint that at thirty-four the tides of life are calmer and cognizant of many sources instead of but one–as at four-and- twenty?
Victor Fauquier would never be found. In those early days of his disappearance there was money to the Charles name, and Grandemont had spent the dollars as if they were picayunes in trying to find the lost youth. Even then he had had small hope of success, for the Mississippi gives up a victim from its oily tangles only at the whim of its malign will.
A thousand times had Grandemont conned in his mind the scene of Victor’s disappearance. And, at each time that Adele had set her stubborn but pitiful alternative against his suit, still clearer it repeated itself in his brain.
The boy had been the family favourite; daring, winning, reckless. His unwise fancy had been captured by a girl on the plantation–the daughter of an overseer. Victor’s family was in ignorance of the intrigue, as far as it had gone. To save them the inevitable pain that his course promised, Grandemont strove to prevent it. Omnipotent money smoothed the way. The overseer and his daughter left, between a sunset and dawn, for an undesignated bourne. Grandemont was confident that this stroke would bring the boy to reason. He rode over to Meade d’Or to talk with him. The two strolled out of the house and grounds, crossed the road, and, mounting the levee, walked its broad path while they conversed. A thunder-cloud was hanging, imminent, above, but, as yet, no rain fell. At Grandemont’s disclosure of his interference in the clandestine romance, Victor attacked him, in a wild and sudden fury. Grandemont, though of slight frame, possessed muscles of iron. He caught the wrists amid a shower of blows descending upon him, bent the lad backward and stretched him upon the levee path. In a little while the gust of passion was spent, and he was allowed to rise. Calm now, but a powder mine where he had been but a whiff of the tantrums, Victor extended his hand toward the dwelling house of Meade d’Or.
“You and they,” he cried, “have conspired to destroy my happiness. None of you shall ever look upon my face again.”
Turning, he ran swiftly down the levee, disappearing in the darkness. Grandemont followed as well as he could, calling to him, but in vain. For longer than an hour he pursued the search. Descending the side of the levee, he penetrated the rank density of weeds and willows that undergrew the trees until the river’s edge, shouting Victor’s name. There was never an answer, though once he thought he heard a bubbling scream from the dun waters sliding past. Then the storm broke, and he returned to the house drenched and dejected.
There he explained the boy’s absence sufficiently, he thought, not speaking of the tangle that had led to it, for he hoped that Victor would return as soon as his anger had cooled. Afterward, when the threat was made good and they saw his face no more, he found it difficult to alter his explanations of that night, and there clung a certain mystery to the boy’s reasons for vanishing as well as to the manner of it.
It was on that night that Grandemont first perceived a new and singular expression in Adele’s eyes whenever she looked at him. And through the years following that expression was always there. He could not read it, for it was born of a thought she would never otherwise reveal.
Perhaps, if he had known that Adele had stood at the gate on that unlucky night, where she had followed, lingering, to await the return of her brother and lover, wondering why they had chosen so tempestuous an hour and so black a spot to hold converse–if he had known that a sudden flash of lightning had revealed to her sight that short, sharp struggle as Victor was sinking under his hands, he might have explained everything, and she–
I know what she would have done. But one thing is clear–there was something besides her brother’s disappearance between Grandemont’s pleadings for her hand and Adele’s “yes.” Ten years had passed, and what she had seen during the space of that lightning flash remained an indelible picture. She had loved her brother, but was she holding out for the solution of that mystery or for the “Truth”? Women have been known to reverence it, even as an abstract principle. It is said there have been a few who, in the matter of their affections, have considered a life to be a small thing as compared with a lie. That I do not know. But, I wonder, had Grandemont cast himself at her feet crying that his hand had sent Victor to the bottom of that inscrutable river, and that he could no longer sully his love with a lie, I wonder if–I wonder what she would have done!
But, Grandemont Charles, Arcadian little gentleman, never guessed the meaning of that look in Adele’s eyes; and from this last bootless payment of his devoirs he rode away as rich as ever in honour and love, but poor in hope.
That was in September. It was during the first winter month that Grandemont conceived his idea of the /renaissance/. Since Adele would never be his, and wealth without her were useless trumpery, why need he add to that hoard of slowly harvested dollars? Why should he even retain that hoard?
Hundreds were the cigarettes he consumed over his claret, sitting at the little polished tables in the Royal street cafes while thinking over his plan. By and by he had it perfect. It would cost, beyond