CHAPTER XI.
How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose
As the train moved on after leaving Coplen, Percival fell to thinking of the type of man his father had been.
"Uncle Peter," he said, suddenly, "they don't all cut loose, do they? Now you never did?"
"Yes, I did, son. I yanked away from all the hitchin' straps of decency when I first struck it, jest like all the rest of 'em. Oh, I was an Indian in my time—a reg'ler measly hop-pickin' Siwash at that.
"You don't know, of course, what livin' out in the open on bacon and beans does fur a healthy man's cravin's. He gets so he has visions day and night of high-livin'—nice broiled steaks with plenty of fat on 'em, and 'specially cake and preserves and pies like mother used to make—fat, juicy mince pies that would assay at least eight hundred dollars a ton in raisins alone, say nothing of the baser metals. He sees the crimp around the edges made with a fork, and the picture of a leaf pricked in the middle to vent the steam, and he gets to smellin' 'em when they're pulled smokin' hot out of the oven. And frosted cake, the layer kind—about five layers, with stratas of jelly and custard and figs and raisins and whatever it might be. I saw 'em fur years, with a big cuttin' out to show the cross-section.
"But a man that has to work by the day fur enough to take him through the prospectin' season can't blow any of his dust on frivolous things like pie. The hard-workin' plain food is the kind he has to tote, and I never heard of pie bein' in anybody's grub-stake either.
"Well, fur two or three years at a time the nearest I'd ever get to them dainties would be a piece of sour-dough bread baked on a stove-lid. But whenever I was in the big camps I'd always go look into the bake-shop windows and just gloat.—'rubber' they call it now'days. My! but they would be beautiful. Son, if I could 'a' been guaranteed that kind of a heaven, some of them times, I'd 'a' become the hottest kind of a Christian zealot, I'll tell you that. That spell of gloatin' was what I always looked forward to when I was lyin' out nights.
"Well, the time before I made the strike I outfitted in Grand Bar. The bake-joint there was jest a mortal aggravation. Sakes! but it did torment a body so! It was kep' by a Chink, and the star play in the window was a kind of two-story cake with frostin' all over the place—on top and down the sides, and on the bottom fur all I knew, it looked that rich. And it had cocoanut mixed in with it. Say, now, that concrete looked fit to pave the streets of the New Jerusalem with—and a hunk was cut out, jest like I'd always dream of so much—showin' a cross-section of rich yellow cake and a fruity-lookin' fillin' that jest made a man want to give up.
"I was there three days, and every day I'd stop in front of that window and jest naturally hone fur a slice of that vision. The Chink was standin' in the door the first day.
"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of enticin' me.
"He might as well 'a' said six thousand. I shook my head.
"Next day I was there again, yearnin'. The Chink see me and come out.
"'One doll' li'l piece", he says.
"I says, 'No, you slant-eyed heathen,' or some such name as that. But when you're looking fur tests of character, son, don't let that one hide away from you. I'd play that fur the heftiest moral courage I've ever showed, anyway.
"The third day it was gone and a lemon pie was there, all with nice kind of brownish snow on top. I was on my way out then, pushin' the mule. I took one lingerin' last look and felt proud of myself when I saw the hump in the pack made by my bag of beans.
"'That-like flummery food's no kind of diet to be trackin' up pay-rock on,' I says to kind of cheer myself.
"Four weeks later I struck it. And six weeks after that I had things in shape so't I was able to leave. I was nearer to other places 'twas bigger, but I made fur Grand Bar, lettin' on't I wanted to see about a claim there. I'd 'a' felt foolish to have anyone know jest why I was makin' the trip.
"On the way I got to havin' night-mares, 'fear that Chink would be gone. I knew if he was I'd go down to my grave with something comin' to me because I'd never found jest that identical cake I'd been famishin' fur.
"When I got up front of the window, you can believe it or not, but that Chink was jest settin' down another like it. Now you know how that Monte Cristo carried on after he'd proved up. Well, I got into his class, all right. I walked in past a counter where the Chink had crullers and gingerbread and a lot of low-grade stuff like that, and I set down to a little table with this here marble oil-cloth on it.
"'Bring her back,' I says, kind of tremblin', and pointin' to the window.
"The Chink pattered up and come back with a little slab of it on a tin plate. I jest let it set there.
"'Bring it all,' I says; 'I want the hull ball of wax.'
"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of cautious.
"I pulled out my buckskin pouch. 'Bring her back and take it out of that,' I says—'when I get through,' I says.
"He grinned and hurried back with it. Well, son, nothing had ever tasted so good to me, and I ain't say'n' that wa'n't the biggest worth of all my money't I ever got. I'd been trainin' fur that cake fur twenty odd year, and proddin' my imagination up fur the last ten weeks.
"I et that all, and I et another one with jelly, and a bunch of little round ones with frostin' and raisins, and a bottle of brandied peaches, and about a dozen cream puffs, and half a lemon pie with frostin' on top, and four or five Charlotte rushes. The Chink had learned to make 'em all in 'Frisco.
"That meal set me back $34.75. When I went out I noticed the plain sponge cakes and fruit cakes and dried-apple pies—things that had been out of my reach fur twenty years, and—My! but they did look common and unappetisin'. I kind of shivered at the sight of 'em.
"I ordered another one of the big cakes and two more lemon pies fur the next day.
"Fur four days I led a life of what they call 'unbridled licentiousness' while that Chink pandered to me. I never was any hand fur drink, but I cut loose in that fancy-food joint, now I tell you.
"The fifth day I begun to taper off. I begun to have a suspicion the stuff was made of sawdust with plasty of Paris fur frostin'. The sixth day I was sure it was sawdust, and my shameful debauch comes to an end right there. I remembered the story about the feller that cal'lated his chickens wouldn't tell any different, so he fed 'em sawdust instead of corn-meal, and by-and-bye a settin' of eggs hatched out—twelve of the chickens had wooden legs and the thirteenth was a woodpecker. Say, I felt so much like two cords of four-foot stove wood that it made me plumb nervous to ketch sight of a saw-buck.
"It took jest three weeks fur me to get right inside again. My, but meat victuals and all like that did taste mighty scrumptious when I could handle 'em again.
"After that when I'd been out in the hills fur a season I'd get that hankerin' back, and when I come in I'd have a little frosted-cake orgy now and then. But I kep' myself purty well in hand. I never overdone it like that again, fur you see I'd learned something. First off, there was the appetite. I soon see the gist of my fun had been the wantin' the stuff, the appetite fur it, and if you nursed an appetite along and deluded it with promises it would stay by you like one of them meachin' yellow dogs. But as soon as you tried to do the good-fairy act by it, and give it all it hankered fur, you killed it off, and then you wouldn't be entertained by it no more, and kep' stirred up and busy.
"And so I layed out to nurse my appetite, and aggravate it by never givin' it quite all it wanted. When I was in the hills after a day's tramp I'd let it have its fling on such delicacies as I could turn out of the fryin'-pan myself, but when I got in again I'd begin to act bossy with it. It's wantin' reasonably that keeps folks alive, I reckon. The mis-a-blest folks I've ever saw was them that had killed all their wants by overfeedin' 'em.
"Then again, son, in this world of human failin's there ain't anything ever can be as pure and blameless and satisfyin' as the stuff in a bake-shop window looks like it is. Don't ever furget that. It's jest too good to be true. And in the next place—pastry's good in its way, but the best you can ever get is what's made fur you at home—I'm talkin' about a lot of things now that you don't probably know any too much about. Sometimes the boys out in the hills spends their time dreamin' fur other things besides pies and cakes, but that system of mine holds good all through the deal—you can play it from soda to hock and not lose out. And that's why I'm outlastin' a lot of the boys and still gettin' my fun out of the game.
"It's a good system fur you, son, while you're learnin' to use your head. Your pa played it at first, then he cut loose. And you need it worse'n ever he did, if I got you sized up right. He touched me on one side, and touched you on the other. But you can last longer if you jest keep the system in mind a little. Remember what I say about the window stuff."
Percival had listened to the old man's story with proper amusement, and to the didactics with that feeling inevitable to youth which says secretly, as it affects to listen to one whom it does not wish to wound, "Yes, yes, I know, but you were living in another day, long ago, and you are not me!"
He went over to the desk and began to scribble a name on the pad of paper.
"If a man really loves one woman he'll behave all right," he observed to Uncle Peter.
"Oh, I ain't preachin' like some do. Havin' a good time is all right; it's the only thing, I reckon, sometimes, that justifies the misery of livin'. But cuttin' loose is bad jedgment. A man wakes up to find that his natural promptin's has cold-decked him. If I smoked the best see-gars now all the time, purty soon I'd get so't I wouldn't appreciate 'em. That's why I always keep some of these out-door free-burners on hand. One of them now and then makes the others taste better."
The young man had become deaf to the musical old voice.
He was writing:
"MY DEAR MISS MILBREY:—I send you the first and only poem I ever wrote. I may of course be a prejudiced critic, but it seems to me to possess in abundance those graces of metre, rhyme, high thought in poetic form, and perfection of finish which the critics unite in demanding. To be honest with you—and why should I conceal that conceit which every artist is said secretly to feel in his own production?—I have encountered no other poem in our noble tongue which has so moved and captivated me.
"It is but fair to warn you that this is only the first of a volume of similar poems which I contemplate writing. And as the theme appears now to be inexhaustible, I am not sure that I can see any limit to the number of volumes I shall be compelled to issue. Pray accept this author's copy with his best and hopefullest wishes. One other copy has been sent to the book reviewer of the Arcady Lyre, in the hope that he, at least, will have the wit to perceive in it that ultimate and ideal perfection for which the humbler bards have hitherto striven in vain.
"Sincerely and seriously yours,
"P. PERCIVAL BINES"
Thus ran the exalted poem on a sheet of note-paper:
"AVICE MILBREY.
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey,
Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey.
And ninety-eight thousand other verses quite like it."