CHAPTER XXV
Isabel had a long, lingering illness. It was plainly impossible for Jap and Mabelle to go to New York to see Fanny Maud make her debut. Mabelle had been a ministering angel, so faithful in her care of the invalid that an unreasoning jealousy blotted the grin of contentment from Bill's face as he uncomplainingly took the brunt of work at the office. Jap was too abstracted to notice the Associate Editor's woe. One day, when rosy June was just bursting its buds, he glanced hurriedly through the columns of the Herald, still damp from the press. He started, and looked keenly at Bill. Second column, first page, under a double head that reduced the day's political sensation to minor importance, he read:
"OUR NEIGHBOR REJOICES; TWINS COME TO THE EDITOR OF THE BARTON STANDARD."
"Whew!" he whistled. Bill looked up. The red flew to his cheeks.
"Both boys," he commented, folding papers rapidly. "Be in line for pages, when old Brons lands in the Halls of Justice."
Jap hurried home to tell the news. Isabel, still pale and weak, was lying in the hammock on the screened porch. She laughed, her old merry laugh, when Jap told her of Rosy Raymond's achievement. Mabelle tossed her yellow curls.
"Well, I don't think she was worrying Bill," she snapped.
"There is no heavier blow to romance than twins," Jap said.
"Maybe she will call them Jap and Bill," crisped Mabelle, and stopped short when her brother walked abruptly to the other end of the porch.
"I hope that it won't fluster you to know that Bill and I are going to be married before Fanny Maud leaves for Europe," she flung at him. "I want that haughty sister of mine to know that I am marrying a real man."
Jap came swiftly back.
"Have you taken Bill into your confidence, Sis?" he asked, patting Isabel's shoulder gently, as he smiled his whimsical smile at Mabelle.
"You're naughty to tease her so," his wife chided.
"Bill and I are going to New York on our wedding trip, just as soon as Isabel can spare me. I want Fanny Maud to see——" She stopped, then took the bit in her teeth. "Jappie, you never knew why I ran away from New York last Thanksgiving. Of course I told Bill all about it long ago. Fanny and I certainly don't agree when it comes to men. I can't imagine she will approve of Bill, after the one she picked for me."
Further confidence was cut short by the appearance of Bill, turning the corner. She arose and ran to meet him.
"Poor Bill," Jap laughed, as the two came arm in arm up the shady lawn.
Before her designs upon Bill could be executed, a strange thing happened. Fanny Maud and a company of musicians made a summer concert tour. It was only a little run from the city, and such an aggregation of artists as Bloomtown's wildest dreams had never visioned descended upon the town. The hotel was taxed to its uttermost capacity, with six song birds, an orchestra, three lap dogs, and an Impresario whose manner implied that he had designs other than professional on the leading soprano. Her stay was short, and left an impression of perfume, fluffy ruffles, French and haste. Her manager consented to have her sing for Jap and Isabel.
Bloomtown stood out in the road, listening, agape. Perhaps Kelly Jones had been to Barton that summer night, for he declared that cats were climbing out of Tom Granger's chimneys, screeching for help, and a man kept scaring them worse by howling at them. When Fanny Maud reached the famous high note she was justly proud of, Kelly clapped his hands to his stomach and yelled for mercy.
"That's clawsick music," abjured Bill, who was sitting on the lawn with Mabelle. Kelly looked at them with sorrow.
"I was skeered that she had busted her throat, and all the sound was comin' out to onct," he complained.
The last night of the brief but exciting visit Bill and Mabelle were quietly married. Quietly—yes and no. Mike Hawking rallied the band and all the tinware in town to celebrate. Mabelle was indignant at first, but soon began to enjoy the fun, and created the happiest impression on the older generation of Bloomtown by insisting on marching arm in arm with Kelly Jones at the head of the procession. After Bill had given his solemn oath never to repeat the offense the "chivaree" broke up, with wild yells of congratulation.
They took up residence in Mabelle's cottage. By consensus of opinion it was Mabelle's cottage. The town in fact so thoroughly recognized Mabelle, in the possessive case, that Jap cautioned Bill against the contingency of being referred to as "Mabelle's husband." Bill was proud of his wife, and when fortune brought him lucre, from the long-forgotten bit of Texas land that suddenly showed oil, he began to improve the whole street by putting out trees.
As Jap feelingly declared, Mabelle had even improved the dirt under the doorstep of the cottage, and Bill was fairly pushed out on the street for improving to do. Under her fostering care, Bill had learned to make violent demands on the Town Board. And they, the aldermen of Bloomtown, bent on pursuing the even tenor of their way at any hazard, had to adjust themselves to a new ebullition from Bill every Tuesday night. But Bill and Mabelle were not doomed to see their enthusiasm go up in vapor. It bore, instead, the most substantial fruit. The barren, treeless town was beginning to grow shade for the aldermen to rest under in their old age.
Kelly Jones said that if Jap had brought Mabelle with him, instead of waiting fourteen years to import her, the town would be larger than St. Louis. As it was, Bloomtown might yet run that city a swift race. Mabelle set the fashions; told the School Board how to run the schools; the preachers how to make their churches popular; the mothers how to train their children. And the Town Fathers all carried their hats in their hands when she breezed down the street. Jap and Isabel watched and smiled, serene in the happiness that was theirs.
"How wonderful it is, Jap, dear," said Isabel, standing in the sunset glow, on that Easter Sunday, after the year had flown. The last red gleam touched the tip of the monument to Ellis Hinton, that had been erected by Bloomtown and dedicated that morning. Together they had gone to the cemetery, when the crowd would not be there, Isabel's arms full of garlands for the low green tents of their loved ones.
"It seemed that Flossy must be smiling at you as you stood there, saying the marvelous things that must have come to you direct from the lips of your spirit father. Ellis Hinton spoke through you when you told the story of our town."
Jap drew her tenderly to the fostering shadow of the monument and pressed her to his heart. Her face was glorified as she looked up into his.
"Oh, Jap, what if Ellis had never lived!"
Jap drew her close. Many hours had he wrought with his fear, but now the roses had come again to her cheeks and the light to her eyes. He looked over the City of Peace, and his own eyes were full with joy.
"But, thank God, Ellis did live." And arm in arm they walked back to Ellis Hinton's real town.
As they crossed the railroad tracks, Kelly Jones came ambling down from the station, where a large contingent from the vicinity of the steel highway between Barton and Bloomtown waited for the evening "Accommodation."
"Gimmeny!" he exclaimed, clapping Jap on the shoulder, "I sure was proud of Ellis's boy to-day. Ellis says to me, the day he went away, says he, 'Watch my boy, Kelly. He is goin' to put the electricity in Bloomtown's backbone,' and, by jolly, you done it! I reckon you felt proud," he went on, turning to Isabel, "when Wat Harlow called Jap the man that made Bloomtown a real town, and the crowd yelled, 'Yes.' Well, ma'am, for a minute I shook and grunted. And then the wife said, 'Wait a bit,' so I waited. And when Jap got up and told the folks that not Jap Herron but a greater man than he ever hoped to be, had cradled and nussed Bloomtown and learnt her to walk, I might' nigh split my guzzle yellin' for joy. Did you hear me yellin', 'Hurrah for Ellis's boy!' And did you hear the crowd say it after me?"
As Isabel took his hardened hand in hers, her eyes overflowed.
"Jap is Ellis," she said gently, "to you and to his town. I know it, and I am glad."