THE SANTA RITA SHERRY.
Farnham walked down the path to the gate, then turned to go to his own house, with no very definite idea of what direction he was taking. The interview he had just had was still powerfully affecting his senses, he was conscious of no depression from the prompt and decided refusal he had received. He was like a soldier in his first battle who has got a sharp wound which does not immediately cripple him, the perception of which is lost in the enjoyment of a new, keen, and enthralling experience. His thoughts were full of his own avowal, of the beauty of his young mistress, rather than of her coldness. Seeing his riding-whip in his hand, he stared at it an instant, and then at his boots, with a sudden recollection that he had intended to ride. He walked rapidly to the stable, where his horse was still waiting, and rode at a brisk trot out of the avenue for a few blocks, and then struck off into a sandy path that led to the woods by the river-side.
As he rode, his thoughts were at first more of himself than of Alice. He exulted over the discovery that he was in love as if some great and unimagined good fortune had happened to him. "I am not past it, then," he said to himself, repeating the phrase which had leaped from his heart when he saw Alice descending the stairs. "I hardly thought that such a thing could ever happen to me. She is the only one." His thoughts ran back to a night in Heidelberg, when he sat in the shadow of the castle wall with a German student of his acquaintance, and looked far over the valley at the lights of the town and the rippling waves of the Neckar, silvered by the soft radiance of the summer moon.
"Poor Hammerstein! How he raved that night about little Bertha von Eichholz. He called her Die Einzige something like a thousand times. It seemed an absurd thing to say; I knew dozens just like her, with blue eyes and Gretchen braids. But Hammerstein meant it, for he shot himself the week after her wedding with the assessor. But mine is the Only One—though she is not mine. I would rather love her without hope than be loved by any other woman in the world."
A few days before he had been made happy by perceiving that she was no longer a child; now he took infinite pleasure in the thought of her youth; he tilled his mind and his senses with the image of her freshness, her clear, pure color, the outline of her face and form. "She is young and fragrant as spring; she has every bloom and charm of body and soul," he said to himself, as he galloped over the shady woodland road. In his exalted mood, he had almost forgotten how he had left her presence. He delighted in his own roused and wakened passion, as a devotee in his devotions, without considering what was to come of it all. The blood was surging through his veins. He was too strong, his love was too new and wonderful to him, to leave any chance for despair. It was not that he did not consider himself dismissed. He felt that he had played a great stake foolishly, and lost. But the love was there, and it warmed and cheered his heart, like a fire in a great hall, making even the gloom noble.
He was threading a bridle-path which led up a gentle ascent to a hill overlooking the river, when his horse suddenly started back with a snort of terror as two men emerged from the thicket and grasped at his rein. He raised his whip to strike one of them down; the man dodged, and his companion said, "None o' that, or I'll shoot your horse." The sun had set, but it was yet light, and he saw that the fellow had a cocked revolver in his hand.
"Well, what do you want?" he asked.
"I want you to stop where you are and go back," said the man sullenly.
"Why should I go back? My road lies the other way. You step aside and let me pass."
"You can't pass this way. Go back, or I'll make you," the man growled, shifting his pistol to his left hand and seizing Farnham's rein with his right. His intention evidently was to turn the horse around and start him down the path by which he had come. Farnham saw his opportunity and struck the hand that held the pistol a smart blow. The weapon dropped, but went off with a sharp report as it fell. The horse reared and plunged, but the man held firmly to the rein. His companion, joined by two or three other rough-looking men who rushed from the thicket, seized the horse and held him firmly, and pulled Farnham from the saddle. They attempted no violence and no robbery. The man who had held the pistol, a black-visaged fellow with a red face and dyed mustache, after rubbing his knuckles a moment, said: "Let's take it out o' the —— whelp!" But another, to whom the rest seemed to look as a leader, said: "Go slow, Mr. Bowersox; we want no trouble here."
Farnham at this addressed the last speaker and said, "Can you tell me what all this means? You don't seem to be murderers. Are you horse-thieves?"
"Nothing of the kind," said the man. "We are Reformers."
Farnham gazed at him with amazement. He was a dirty-looking man, young and sinewy, with long and oily hair and threadbare clothes, shiny and unctuous. His eyes were red and furtive, and he had a trick of passing his hand over his mouth while he spoke. His mates stood around him, listening rather studiedly to the conversation. They seemed of the lower class of laboring men. Their appearance was so grotesque, in connection with the lofty title their chief had given them, that Farnham could not help smiling, in spite of his anger.
"What is your special line of reform?" he asked,—"spelling, or civil service?"
"We are Labor Reformers," said the spokesman. "We represent the toiling millions against the bloated capitalists and grinding monopolies; we believe that man is better——"
"Yes, no doubt," interrupted Farnham; "but how are you going to help the toiling millions by stopping my horse on the highway?"
"We was holding a meeting which was kep' secret for reasons satisfactory to ourselves. These two gentlemen was posted here to keep out intruders from the lodge. If you had 'a' spoke civil to them, there would have been no harm done. None will be done now if you want to go."
Farnham at once mounted his horse. "I would take it as a great favor," he said, "if you would give me your name and that of the gentleman with the pistol. Where is he, by the way?" he continued. The man they called Bowersox had disappeared from the group around the spokesman. Farnham turned and saw him a little distance away directly behind him. He had repossessed himself of his pistol and held it cocked in his hand.
"What do you want of our names?" the spokesman asked.
Farnham did not again lose sight of Bowersox. It occurred to him that the interview might as well be closed. He therefore said, carelessly, without turning:
"A man has a natural curiosity to know the names of new acquaintances. But no matter, I suppose the police know you," and rode away.
Bowersox turned to Offitt and said, "Why in —— did you let him go? I could have knocked his head off and nobody knowed it."
"Yes," said Offitt, coolly. "And got hung for it."
"It would have been self-defence," said Bowersox. "He hit me first."
"Well, gentlemen," said Offitt, "that closes up Greenwood Lodge. We can't meet in this grass any more. I don't suppose he knows any of us by sight, or he'd have us up to-morrow."
"It was a piece of —— nonsense, comin' out here, anyhow," growled Bowersox, unwilling to be placated. "You haven't done a —— thing but lay around on the grass and eat peanuts and hear Bott chin."
"Brother Bott has delivered a splendid address on 'The Religion of Nature,' and he couldn't have had a better hall than the Canopy to give it under," said Offitt. "And now, gentlemen, we'd better get back our own way."
As Farnham rode home he was not much puzzled by his adventure in the woods. He remembered having belonged, when he was a child of ten, to a weird and mysterious confraternity called "Early Druids," which met in the depths of groves, with ill-defined purposes, and devoted the hours of meeting principally to the consumption of confectionery. He had heard for the past few months of the existence of secret organizations of working-men—wholly outside of the trades-unions and unconnected with them—and guessed at once that he had disturbed a lodge of one of these clubs. His resentment did not last very long at the treatment to which he had been subjected; but still he thought it was not a matter of jest to have the roads obstructed by ruffians with theories in their heads and revolvers in their hands, neither of which they knew how to use. He therefore promised himself to consult with the chief of police the next morning in regard to the matter.
As he rode along, thinking of the occurrence, he was dimly conscious of a pleasant suggestion in something he had seen among the hazel brush, and searching tenaciously in his recollection of the affair, it all at once occurred to him that, among the faces of the men who came out of the thicket in the scuffle, was that of the blonde-bearded, blue-eyed young carpenter who had been at work in his library the day Mrs. Belding and Alice lunched with him. He was pleased to find that the pleasant association led him to memories of his love, but for a moment a cloud passed over him at the thought of so frank and hearty a fellow and such a good workman being in such company. "I must see if I cannot get him out of it," he said to himself, and then reverted again to thoughts of Alice.
Twilight was falling, and its melancholy influence was beginning to affect him. He thought less and less of the joy of his love and more of its hopelessness. By the time he reached his house he had begun to confront the possibility of a life of renunciation, and, after the manner of Americans of fortune who have no special ties, his mind turned naturally to Europe. "I cannot stay here to annoy her," he thought, and so began to plot for the summer and winter, and, in fancy, was at the second cataract of the Nile before his horse's hoofs, ringing on the asphalt of the stable-yard, recalled him to himself.
The next day, he was compelled to go to New York to attend to some matters of business. Before taking the train, he laid his complaint of being stopped on the road before the chief of police, who promised to make vigorous inquisition. Farnham remained several days in New York, and on his return, one warm, bright evening, he found his table prepared and the grave Budsey waiting behind his chair.
He ate his dinner hastily and in silence, with no great zest. "You have not forgot, sir," said Budsey, who was his external conscience in social matters, "that you are going this evening to Mrs. Temple's?"
"I think I shall not go."
"Mr. Temple was here this afternoon, sir, which he said it was most particular. I asked him would he call again. He said no, he was sure of seeing you to-night. But it was most particular, he said."
Budsey spoke in the tone of solemn and respectful tyranny which he always assumed when reminding Farnham of his social duties, and which conveyed a sort of impression to his master that, if he did not do what was befitting, his butler was quite capable of picking him up and deferentially carrying him to the scene of festivity, and depositing him on the door-step.
"What could Temple want to see me about 'most particular'?" Farnham asked himself. "After all, I may as well pass the evening there as anywhere."
Mr. Temple was one of the leading citizens of Buffland. He was the vice-president of the great rolling-mill company, whose smoke darkened the air by day and lighted up the skies at night as with the flames of the nether pit. He was very tall and very slender, with reddish-brown hair, eyes and mustache. Though a man of middle age, his trim figure, his fashionable dress, and his clean shaven cheek and chin gave him an appearance of youth. He was president of the local jockey club, and the joy of his life was to take his place in the judges' stand, and sway the destinies of the lean, keen-faced trainers who drove the trotting horses. He had the eye of a lynx for the detection of any crookedness in driving, and his voice would ring out over the track like the trump of doom, conveying fines and penalties to the luckless trickster who was trying to get some unfair advantage in the start. His voice, a deep basso, rarely was heard, in fact, anywhere else. Though excessively social, he was also extremely silent. He gave delightful dinner-parties and a great many of them, but rarely spoke, except to recommend an especially desirable wine to a favored guest. When he did speak, however, his profanity was phenomenal. Every second word was an oath. To those who were not shocked by it there was nothing more droll and incongruous than to hear this quiet, reserved, well-dressed, gentleman-like person pouring out, on the rare occasions when he talked freely, in a deep, measured, monotonous tone, a flood of imprecations which would have made a pirate hang his head. He had been, as a boy, clerk on a Mississippi River steamboat, and a vacancy occurring in the office of mate, he had been promoted to that place. His youthful face and quiet speech did not sufficiently impose upon the rough deck-hands of that early day. They had been accustomed to harsher modes of address, and he saw his authority defied and in danger. So he set himself seriously to work to learn to swear; and though at first it made his heart shiver a little with horror and his cheek burn with shame, he persevered, as a matter of business, until his execrations amazed the roustabouts. When he had made a fortune, owned a line of steamboats, and finally retired from the river, the habit had been fastened upon him, and oaths became to him the only form of emphatic speech. The hardest work he ever did in his life was, while courting his wife, a Miss Flora Ballston, of Cincinnati, to keep from mingling his ordinary forms of emphasis in his asseverations of affection. But after he was married, and thrown more and more into the company of women, that additional sense, so remarkable in men of his mould, came to him, and he never lapsed, in their presence, into his natural way of speech. Perhaps this was the easier, as he rarely spoke at all when they were by—not that he was in the least shy or timid, but because they, as a rule, knew nothing about stocks, or pig-iron, or wine, or trotting horses,—the only subjects, in his opinion, which could interest any reasonable creature.
When Farnham arrived at his house, it was already pretty well filled with guests. Mr. and Mrs. Temple were at the door, shaking hands with their friends as they arrived, she with a pleasant smile and word from her black eyes and laughing mouth, and he in grave and speechless hospitality.
"Good-evening, Mr. Farnham!" said the good-natured lady. "So glad to see you. I began to be alarmed. So did the young ladies. They were afraid you had not returned. Show yourself in the drawing-room and dispel their fears. Oh, Mr. Harrison, I am so glad you resolved to stay over."
Farnham gave way to the next comer, and said to Mr. Temple, who had pressed his hand in silence:
"Did you want to see me for anything special to-day?"
Mrs. Temple looked up at the word, and her husband said:
"No; I merely wanted you to take a drive with me."
Another arrival claimed Mrs. Temple's attention, and as Farnham moved away, Temple half-whispered in his ear, "Don't go away till I get a chance to speak to you. There is merry and particular bloom of h—— to pay."
The phrase, while vivid, was not descriptive, and Farnham could not guess what it meant. Perhaps something had gone wrong in the jockey club; perhaps Goldsmith Maid was off her feed; perhaps pig-iron had gone up or down a dollar a ton. These were all subjects of profound interest to Temple and much less to Farnham; so he waited patiently the hour of revelation, and looked about the drawing-room to see who was there.
It was the usual drawing-room of provincial cities. The sofas and chairs were mostly occupied by married women, who drew a scanty entertainment from gossip with each other, from watching the proceedings of the spinsters, and chiefly, perhaps, from a consciousness of good clothes. The married men stood grouped in corners and talked of their every-day affairs. The young people clustered together in little knots, governed more or less by natural selection—only the veterans of several seasons pairing off into the discreet retirement of stairs and hall angles. At the further end of the long drawing-room, Farnham's eyes at last lighted upon the object of his quest. Alice sat in the midst of a group of young girls who had intrenched themselves in a corner of the room, and defied all the efforts of skirmishing youths, intent upon flirtation, to dislodge them. They seemed to be amusing themselves very well together, and the correct young men in white cravats and pointed shoes came, chatted, and drifted away. They were the brightest and gayest young girls of the place; and it would have been hard to detect any local color in them. Young as they were, they had all had seasons in Paris and in Washington; some of them knew the life of that most foreign of all capitals, New York. They nearly all spoke French and German better than they did English, for their accent in those languages was very sweet and winning in its incorrectness, while their English was high-pitched and nasal, and a little too loud in company. They were as pretty as girls are anywhere, and they wore dresses designed by Mr. Worth, or his New York rivals, Loque and Chiffon; but they occasionally looked across the room with candid and intelligent envy at maidens of less pretensions, who were better dressed by the local artists.
Farnham was stopped at some distance from the pretty group by a buxom woman standing near the open window, cooling the vast spread of her bare shoulders in a current of air, which she assisted in its office with a red-and-gold Japanese fan.
"Captain Farnham," she said, "when are you going to give that lawn-tennis party you promised so long ago? My character for veracity depends on it. I have told everybody it would be soon, and I shall be disgraced if it is delayed much longer."
"That is the common lot of prophets, Mrs. Adipson," replied Farnham. "You know they say in Wall Street that early and exclusive information will ruin any man. But tell me, how is your club getting on?" he continued disingenuously, for he had not the slightest interest in the club; but he knew that once fairly started on the subject, Mrs. Adipson would talk indefinitely, and he might stand there and torture his heart and delight his eyes with the beauty of Alice Belding.
He carried his abstraction a little too far, however, for the good lady soon perceived, from his wandering looks and vague replies, that she was not holding his attention. So she pettishly released him after following the direction of his eyes, and said, "There, I see you are crazy to go and talk to Miss Dallas. I won't detain you. She is awfully clever, I suppose, though she never took the trouble to be brilliant in my presence; and she is pretty when she wears her hair that way—I never liked those frizzes."
Farnham accepted his release with perhaps a little more gratitude than courtesy, and moved away to take a seat which had just been vacated beside Miss Dallas. He was filled with a boyish delight in Mrs. Adipson's error. "That she should think I was worshipping Miss Dallas from afar! Where do women keep their eyes? To think that anybody should look at Miss Dallas when Alice Belding was sitting beside her." It was pleasant to think, however, that the secret of his unhappy love was safe. Nobody was gossiping about it, and using the name of his beloved in idle conjectures. That was as it should be. His love was sacred from rude comment. He could go and sit by Miss Dallas, so near his beloved that he could see every breath move the lace on her bosom. He could watch the color come and go on her young cheek. He could hear every word her sweet voice uttered, and nobody would know he was conscious of her existence.
Full of this thought, he sat down by Miss Dallas, who greeted him warmly and turned her back upon her friends. By looking over her shining white shoulder, he could see the clear, pure profile of Alice just beyond, so near that he could have laid his hand on the crinkled gold of her hair. He then gave himself up to that duplex act to which all unavowed lovers are prone—the simultaneous secret worship of one woman and open devotion to another. It never occurred to him that there was anything unfair in this, or that it would be as reprehensible to throw the name of Miss Dallas into the arena of gossip as that of Miss Belding. That was not his affair; there was only one person in the universe to be considered by him. And for Miss Dallas's part, she was the last person in the world to suspect any one of being capable of the treason and bad taste of looking over her shoulder at another woman. She was, by common consent, the belle of Buffland. Her father was a widowed clergyman, of good estate, of literary tendencies, of enormous personal vanity, who had abandoned the pulpit in a quarrel with his session several years before, and now occupied himself in writing poems and sketches of an amorous and pietistic nature, which in his opinion embodied the best qualities of Swinburne and Chalmers combined, but which the magazines had thus far steadily refused to print.
He felt himself infinitely superior to the society of Buffland,—with one exception,—and only remained there because his property was not easily negotiable and required his personal care. The one exception was his daughter Euphrasia. He had educated her after his own image. In fact, there was a remarkable physical likeness between them, and he had impressed upon her every trick of speech and manner and thought which characterized himself. This is the young lady who turns her bright, keen, beautiful face upon Farnham, with eyes eager to criticise, a tongue quick to flatter and to condemn, a head stuffed full of poetry and artificial passion, and a heart saved from all danger by its idolatry of her father and herself.
"So glad to see you—one sees so little of you—I can hardly believe my good fortune—how have I this honor?" All this in hard, rapid sentences, with a brilliant smile.
Farnham thought of the last words of Mrs. Adipson, and said, intrepidly, "Well, you know the poets better than I do, Miss Euphrasia, and there is somebody who says, 'Beauty draws us by the simple way she does her hair'—or something like it. That classic fillet was the first thing I saw as I entered the room, and me voici!"
We have already said that the fault of Farnham's conversation with women was the soldier's fault of direct and indiscriminate compliment. But this was too much in Euphrasia's manner for her to object to it. She laughed and said, "You deserve a pensum of fifty lines for such a misquotation. But, dites-donc, monsieur"—for French was one of her favorite affectations, and when she found a man to speak it with, she rode the occasion to death. There had been a crisis in the French ministry a few days before, and she now began a voluble conversation on the subject, ostensibly desiring Farnham's opinion on the crisis, but really seizing the opportunity of displaying her familiarity with the names of the new cabinet. She talked with great spirit and animation, sometimes using her fine eyes point-blank upon Farnham, sometimes glancing about to observe the effect she was creating; which gave Farnham his opportunity to sigh his soul away over her shoulder to where Alice was sweetly and placidly talking with her friends.
She had seen him come in, and her heart had stood still for a moment; but her feminine instinct sustained her, and she had not once glanced in his direction. But she was conscious of every look and action of his; and when he approached the corner where she was sitting, she felt as if a warm and embarrassing ray of sunshine was coming near her, She was at once relieved and disappointed when he sat down by Miss Dallas. She thought to herself: "Perhaps he will never speak to me again. It is all my fault. I threw him away. But it was not my fault. It was his—it was hers. I do not know what to think. He might have let me alone. I liked him so much. I have only been a month out of school. What shall I do if he never speaks to me again?" Yet such is the power which, for self-defence, is given to young maidens that, while these tumultuous thoughts were passing through her mind, she talked and laughed with the girls beside her, and exchanged an occasional word with the young men in pointed shoes, as if she had never known a grief or a care.
Mr. Furrey came up to say good-evening, with his most careful bow. Lowering his voice, he said:
"There's Miss Dallas and Captain Farnham flirting in Italian."
"Are you sure they are flirting?"
"Of course they are. Just look at them!"
"If you are sure they are flirting, I don't think it is right to look at them. Still, if you disapprove of it very much, you might speak to them about it," she suggested, in her sweet, low, serious voice.
"Oh, that would never do for a man of my age," replied Furrey, in good faith. He was very vain of his youth.
"What I wanted to speak to you about was this," he continued. "There is going to be a Ree-gatta on the river the day after to-morrow, and I hope you will grant me the favor of your company. The Wissagewissametts are to row with the Chippagowaxems, and it will be the finest race this year. Billy Raum, you know, is stroke of the———"
Her face was still turned to him, but she had ceased to listen. She was lost in contemplation of what seemed to her a strange and tragic situation. Farnham was so near that she could touch him, and yet so far away that he was lost to her forever. No human being knew, or ever would know, that a few days ago he had offered her his life, and she had refused the gift. Nobody in this room was surprised that he did not speak to her, or that she did not look at him. Nobody dreamed that he loved her, and she would die, she resolved deliberately, before she would let anybody know that she loved him. "For I do love him with my whole heart," she said to herself, with speechless energy, which sent the blood up to her temples, and left her, in another instant, as pale as a lily.
Furrey at that moment had concluded his enticing account of the regatta, and she had quietly declined to accompany him. He moved away, indignant at her refusal, and puzzled by the blush which accompanied it.
"What did that mean?" he mused. "I guess it was because I said the crews rowed in short sleeves."
Farnham also saw the blush, in the midst of a disquisition which Miss Dallas was delivering upon a new poem of François Coppée. He saw the clear, warm color rise and subside like the throbbing of an auroral light in a starry night. He thought he had never seen anything so lovely, but he wondered "what that oaf could have said to make her blush like that. Can it be possible that he——" His brow knitted with anger and contempt.
"Mais, qu'est-ce que vous avez donc?" asked Euphrasia.
Farnham was saved from the necessity of an explanation by Mr. Temple, who came up at that moment, and, laying a hand on Arthur's shoulder, said:
"Now we will go into my den and have a glass of that sherry. I know no less temptation than Tio Pepe could take you away from Miss Dallas."
"Thank you awfully," said the young lady. "Why should you not give Miss Dallas herself an opportunity to decline the Tio Pepe?"
"Miss Dallas shall have some champagne in a few minutes, which she will like very much better. Age and wickedness are required to appreciate sherry."
"Ah! I congratulate your sherry; it is about to be appreciated," said the deserted beauty, tartly, as the men moved away.
They entered the little room which Temple called his den, which was a litter of letter-books, stock-lists, and the advertising pamphlets of wine-merchants. The walls were covered with the portraits of trotting horses; a smell of perpetual tobacco was in the air. Temple unlocked a cupboard, and took out a decanter and some glasses. He filled two, and gave one to Arthur, and held the other under his nose.
"Farnham," he said, with profound solemnity, "if you don't call that the"—(I decline to follow him in the pyrotechnical combination of oaths with which he introduced the next words)—"best sherry you ever saw, then I'm a converted pacer with the ringbone."
Arthur drank his wine, and did not hesitate to admit all that its owner had claimed for it. He had often wondered how such a man as Temple had acquired such an unerring taste.
"Temple," he said, "how did you ever pick up this wine; and, if you will excuse the question, how did you know it when you got it?"
Temple smiled, evidently pleased with the question. "You've been in Spain, haven't you?"
"Yes," said Farnham.
"You know this is the genuine stuff, then?"
"No doubt of it."
"How do you know?"
"The usual way—by seeing and drinking it at the tables of men who know what they are about."
"Well, I have never been out of the United States, and yet I have learned about wine in just the same way. I commenced in New Orleans among the old Spanish and French Creoles, and have kept it up since, here and there. I can see in five minutes whether a man knows anything about his wine. If he does, I remember every word he says—that is my strong point—head and tongue. I can't remember sermons and speeches, but I can remember every syllable that Sam Ward said one night at your grandfather's ten years ago; and if I have once tasted a good wine, I never forget its fashion of taking hold."
This is an expurgated edition of what he said; his profanity kept up a running accompaniment, like soft and distant rolling thunder.
"I got this wine at the sale of the Marquis of Santa Rita. I heard you speak of him, I don't know how long ago, and the minute I read in the paper that he had turned up his toes, I cabled the consul at Cadiz—you know him, a wild Irishman named Calpin—to go to the sale of his effects and get this wine. He cabled back, 'What shall I pay?' I answered, 'Head your dispatch again: Get means get!' Some men have got no sense. I did not mind the price of the wine, but it riled me to have to pay for the two cables."
He poured out another glass and drank it drop by drop, getting, as he said, "the worth of his money every time."
"Have some more?" he said to Farnham.
"No, thank you."
"Then I'll put it away. No use of giving it to men who would prefer sixty-cent whiskey."
Having done this, he turned again to Farnham, and said, "I told you the Old Boy was to pay. This is how. The labor unions have ordered a general strike; day not fixed; they are holding meetings all over town to-night. I'll know more about it after midnight."
"What will it amount to?" asked Farnham.
"Keen savey?" replied Temple, in his Mississippi River Spanish. "The first thing will be the closing of the mills, and putting anywhere from three thousand to ten thousand men on the streets. Then, if the strike gains the railroad men, we shall be embargoed, —— boiling, and safety-valve riveted down."
Farnham had no thought of his imperilled interests. He began instantly to conjecture what possibility of danger there might be of a disturbance of public tranquillity, and to wish that the Beldings were out of town.
"How long have you known this?" he asked.
"Only certainly for a few hours. The thing has been talked about more or less for a month, but we have had our own men in the unions and did not believe it would come to an extremity. To-day, however, they brought ugly reports; and I ought to tell you that some of them concern you."
Farnham lifted his eyebrows inquiringly.
"We keep men to loaf with the tramps and sleep in the boozing kens. One of them told me to-day that at the first serious disturbance a lot of bad eggs among the strikers—not the unionists proper, but a lot of loose fish—intend to go through some of the principal houses on Algonquin Avenue, and they mentioned yours as one of them."
"Thank you. I will try to be ready for them," said Farnham. But, cool and tried as was his courage, he could not help remembering, with something like dread, that Mrs. Belding's house was next to his own, and that in case of riot the two might suffer together.
"There is one thing more I wanted to say," Mr. Temple continued, with a slight embarrassment. "If I can be of any service to you, in case of a row, I want to be allowed to help."
"As to that," Farnham said with a laugh, "you have your own house and stables to look after, which will probably be as much as you can manage."
"No," said Temple, earnestly, "that ain't the case. I will have to explain to you"—and a positive blush came to his ruddy face. "They won't touch me or my property. They say a man who uses such good horses and such bad language as I do—that's just what they say—is one of them, and sha'n't be racketed. I ain't very proud of my popularity, but I am willing to profit by it and I'll come around and see you if anything more turns up. Now, we'll go and give Phrasy Dallas that glass of champagne."
[XII.]
A HOLIDAY NOT IN THE CALENDAR.
The next morning while Farnham was at breakfast he received a note from Mr. Temple in these words:
"Strikes will begin to-day, but will not be general. There will be no disturbance, I think. They don't seem very gritty."
After breakfast he walked down to the City Hall. On every street corner he saw little groups of men in rather listless conversation. He met an acquaintance crossing the street.
"Have you heard the news?" The man's face was flushed with pleasure at having something to tell—"The firemen and stokers have all struck, and run their engines into the round-house at Riverley, five miles out. There won't be a train leave or come in for the present."
"Is that all?"
"No, that ain't a start. The Model Oil men have struck, and are all over the North End, shutting up the other shops. They say there won't be a lick of work done in town the rest of the week."
"Except what Satan finds for idle hands," Farnham suggested, and hastened his steps a little to the municipal buildings.
He found the chief of police in his office, suffering from nervousness and a sense of importance. He began by reminding him of the occurrence of the week before in the wood. The chief waited with an absent expression for the story to end, and then said, "My dear sir, I cannot pay any attention to such little matters with anarchy threatening our city. I must protect life and property, sir—life and property."
"Very well," rejoined Farnham, "I am informed that life and property are threatened in my own neighborhood. Can you detail a few policemen to patrol Algonquin Avenue, in case of a serious disturbance?"
"I can't tell you, my dear sir; I will do the best I can by all sections. Why, man," he cried, in a voice which suddenly grew a shrill falsetto in his agitation, "I tell you I haven't a policeman for every ten miles of street in this town. I can't spare but two for my own house!"
Farnham saw the case was hopeless, and went to the office of the mayor. That official had assumed an attitude expressive of dignified and dauntless energy. He sat in a chair tilted back on its hind feet; the boots of the municipal authority were on a desk covered with official papers; a long cigar adorned his eloquent lips; a beaver hat shaded his eyes.
He did not change his attitude as Farnham entered. He probably thought it could not be changed for the better.
"Good-morning, Mr. Quinlin."
"Good-morning, sirr, to you." This salutation was uttered through teeth shut as tightly as the integrity of the cigar would permit.
"There is a great deal of talk of possible disturbance to-night, in case the strikes extend. My own neighborhood, I am told, has been directly threatened. I called to ask whether, in case of trouble, I could rely on any assistance from the city authorities, or whether we must all look out for ourselves."
The mayor placed his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, and threw his head back so that he could stare at Farnham from below his hat brim. He then said, in a measured voice, as if addressing an assembly: "Sirr! I would have you to know that the working-men of Buffland are not thieves and robbers. In this struggle with capital they have my profound sympathy. I expect their conduct to be that of perr-fect gentlemen. I, at least, will give no orders which may tend to array one class of citizens against another. That is my answer, sirr; I hope it does not disappoint you."
"Not in the least," said Farnham, putting on his hat. "It is precisely what I should have expected of you."
"Thank you, sirr. Call again, sirr."
As Farnham disappeared, the chief magistrate of the city tilted his hat to one side, shut an eye with profoundly humorous significance, and said to the two or three loungers who had been enjoying the scene:
"That is the sort of T-rail I am. That young gentleman voted agin me, on the ground I wasn't high-toned enough."
Farnham walked rapidly to the office of the evening newspaper. He found a man in the counting-room, catching flies and trimming their wings with a large pair of office shears. He said, "Can you put an advertisement for me in your afternoon editions?"
The man laid down his shears, but held on to his fly, and looked at his watch.
"Have you got it ready?"
"No, but I will not be a minute about it."
"Be lively! You haven't got but a minute."
He picked up his scissors and resumed his surgery, while Farnham wrote his advertisement. The man took it, and threw it into a tin box, blew a whistle, and the box disappeared through a hole in the ceiling. A few minutes later the boys were crying the paper in the streets. The advertisement was in these words:
"Veterans, Attention! All able-bodied veterans of the Army of the Potomac, and especially of the Third Army Corps, are requested to meet at seven this evening, at No. — Public Square."
From the newspaper office Farnham went to a gunsmith's. The dealer was a German and a good sportsman, whom Farnham knew very well, having often shot with him in the marshes west of the city. His name was Leopold Grosshammer. There were two or three men in the place when Farnham entered. He waited until they were gone, and then said:
"Bolty, have you two dozen repeating rifles?"
"Ja wohl! Aber, Herr Gott, was machen Sie denn damit?"
"I don't know why I shouldn't tell you. They think there may be a riot in town, and they tell me at the City Hall that everybody must look out for himself. I am going to try to get up a little company of old soldiers for patrol duty."
"All right, mine captain, and I will be the first freiwilliger. But I don't dink you wants rifles. Revolvers and clubs—like the pleecemen—dat's de dicket."
"Have you got them?"
"Oh, yes, and the belts thereto. I got der gondract to furnish 'em to de city."
"Then you will send them, wrapped up in bundles, to my office in the Square, and come yourself there at seven."
"Freilich," said Leopold, his white teeth glistening through his yellow beard at the prospect of service.
Farnham spent an hour or two visiting the proprietors of the large establishments affected by the strikes. He found, as a rule, great annoyance and exasperation, but no panic. Mr. Temple said, "The poor ——— fools! I felt sorry for them. They came up here to me this morning,—their committee, they called it,—and told me they hated it, but it was orders! 'Orders from where?' I asked. 'From the chiefs of sections,' they said; and that was all I could get out of them. Some of the best fellows in the works were on the committee. They put 'em there on purpose. The sneaks and lawyers hung back."
"What will they do if the strike should last?" asked Farnham.
"They will be supported for awhile by the other mills. Our men are the only ones that have struck so far. They were told off to make the move, just as they march out a certain regiment to charge a battery. If we give in, then another gang will strike."
"Do you expect to give in?"
"Between us, we want nothing better than ten days' rest. We want to repair our furnaces, and we haven't a —— thing to do. What I told you this morning holds good. There won't be any riot. The whole thing is solemn fooling, so far."
The next man Farnham saw was in a far less placid frame of mind. It was Jimmy Nelson, the largest grocer in the city. He had a cargo of perishable groceries at the station, and the freight hands would not let them be delivered. "I talked to the rascals," he said. "I asked them what they had against me; that they was injuring Trade!" a deity of which Mr. Nelson always spoke with profound respect. "They laughed in my face, sir. They said, 'That's just our racket. We want to squeeze you respectable merchants till you get mad and hang a railroad president or two!' Yes, sir; they said that to me, and five thousand dollars of my stuff rotting in the depot."
"Why don't you go to the mayor?" asked Farnham, though he could not suppress a smile as he said it.
"Yes, I like that!" screamed Jimmy. "You are laughing at me. I suppose the whole town has heard of it. Well, it's a fact. I went and asked that infernal scoundrel what he was going to do. He said his function was to keep the peace, and there wasn't a word in the statutes about North Carliny water-melons. If I live till he gets out of office, I'll lick him."
"Oh, I think you won't do that, Jimmy."
"You think I won't!" said Nelson, absolutely incandescent with the story of his wrongs. "I'll swear by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that I will thrash the hide off him next spring—if I don't forget it."
Farnham went home, mounted his horse, and rode about the city to see what progress the strike was making. There was little disorder visible on the surface of things. The "sections" had evidently not ordered a general cessation of labor; and yet there were curious signs of demoralization, as if the spirit of work was partially disintegrating and giving way to something not precisely lawless, but rather listless. For instance, a crowd of workmen were engaged industriously and, to all appearance, contentedly upon a large school-building in construction. A group of men, not half their number, approached them and ordered them to leave off work. The builders looked at each other and then at their exhorters in a confused fashion for a moment, and ended by obeying the summons in a sullen and indifferent manner. They took off their aprons, went to the hydrant and washed their hands, then put on their coats and went home in silence and shamefacedness, amid the angry remonstrances of the master-builder. A little farther on Farnham saw what seemed like a burlesque of the last performance. Several men were at work in a hole in the street; the tops of their heads were just visible above the surface. A half-grown, ruffianly boy, with a boot-black's box slung over his shoulder, came up and shouted, "You —— —— rats, come out of that, or we'll knock the scalps off'n you." The men, without even looking to see the source of the summons, threw down their tools and got out of the hole. The boy had run away; they looked about for a moment, as if bewildered, and then one of them, a gray-headed Irishman, said, "Well, we'd better be a lavin' off, if the rest is," and they all went away.
In this fashion it came about that by nightfall all the squares and public places were thronged with an idle and expectant crowd, not actively mischievous or threatening, but affording a vast mass of inflammable material in case the fire should start in any quarter. They gathered everywhere in dense groups, exchanging rumors and surmises, in which fact and fiction were fantastically mingled.
"The rolling-mills all close to-morrow," said a sallow and hollow-eyed tailor. "That'll let loose twenty thousand men on the town,—big, brawny fellows. I'm glad my wife is in Clairfield."
"All you know about it! Clairfield is twice as bad off as here. The machine shops has all struck there, and the men went through the armory this afternoon. They're camped all along Delaware street, every man with a pair of revolvers and a musket."
"You don't say so!" said the schneider, turning a shade more sallow. "I'd better telegraph my wife to come home."
"I wouldn't hurry," was the impassive response. "You don't know where we'll be to-morrow. They have been drilling all day at Riverley, three thousand of 'em. They'll come in to-morrow, mebbe, and hang all the railroad presidents. That may make trouble."
Through these loitering and talking crowds Farnham made his way in the evening to the office which he kept, on the public square of the town, for the transaction of the affairs of his estate. He had given directions to his clerk to be there, and when he arrived found that some half-dozen men had already assembled in answer to his advertisement. Some of them he knew; one, Nathan Kendall, a powerful young man, originally from the north of Maine, now a machinist in Buffland, had been at one time his orderly in the army. Bolty Grosshammer was there, and in a very short time some twenty men were in the room. Farnham briefly explained to them his intention. "I want you," he said, "to enlist for a few days' service under my orders. I cannot tell whether there will be any work to do or not; but it is likely we shall have a few nights of patrol at least. You will get ten dollars apiece anyhow, and ordinary day's wages besides. If any of you get hurt, I will try to have you taken care of."
All but two agreed to the proposition. These two said "they had families and could not risk their skins. When they saw the advertisement they had thought it was something about pensions, or the county treasurer's office. They thought soldiers ought to have the first chance at good offices." They then grumblingly withdrew.
Farnham kept his men for an hour longer, arranging some details of organization, and then dismissed them for twenty-four hours, feeling assured that there would be no disturbance of public tranquillity that night. "I will meet you here to morrow evening," he said, "and you can get your pistols and sticks and your final orders."
The men went out one by one, Bolty and Kendall waiting for a while after they had gone and going out on the sidewalk with Farnham. They had instinctively appointed themselves a sort of bodyguard to their old commander, and intended to keep him in sight until he got home. As they reached the door, they saw a scuffle going on upon the sidewalk. A well-dressed man was being beaten and kicked by a few rough fellows, and the crowd was looking on with silent interest. Farnham sprang forward and seized one of the assailants by the collar; Bolty pulled away another. The man who had been cuffed turned to Kendall, who was standing by to help where help was needed, and cried, "Take me away somewhere; they will have my life;" an appeal which only excited the jeers of the crowd.
"Kendall, take him into my office," said Farnham, which was done in an instant, Farnham and Bolty following. A rush was made,—not very vicious, however,—and the three men got safely inside with their prize, and bolted the door. A few kicks and blows shook the door, but there was no movement to break it down; and the rescued man, when he found himself in safety, walked up to a mirror there was in the room and looked earnestly at his face. It was a little bruised and bloody, and dirty with mud, but not seriously injured.
He turned to his rescuers with an air more of condescension than gratitude. "Gentlemen, I owe you my thanks, although I should have got the better of those scoundrels in a moment. Can you assist me in identifying them?"
"Oh! it is Mayor Quinlin, I believe," said Farnham, recognizing that functionary more by his voice than by his rumpled visage. "No, I do not know who they were. What was the occasion of this assault?"
"A most cowardly and infamous outrage, sir," said the Mayor. "I was walking along the sidewalk to me home, and I came upon this gang of ruffians at your door. Impatient at being delayed,—for my time is much occupied,—I rebuked them for being in me way. One of them turned to me and insolently inquired, 'Do you own this street, or have you just got a lien on it?' which unendurable insult was greeted with a loud laugh from the other ruffians. I called them by some properly severe name, and raised me cane to force a passage,—and the rest you know. Now, gentlemen, is there anything I can do?"
Farnham did not scruple to strike while the iron was hot. He said: "Yes, there is one thing your Honor may do, not so much for us as for the cause of order and good government, violated to-night in your own person. Knowing the insufficiency of the means at your disposal, a few of us propose to raise a subsidiary night-patrol for the protection of life and property during the present excitement. We would like you to give it your official sanction."
"Do I understand it will be without expense to my—to the city government?" Mr. Quinlin was anxious to make a show of economy in his annual message.
"Entirely," Farnham assured him.
"It is done, sir. Come to-morrow morning and get what papers you want. The sperrit of disorder must be met and put down with a bold and defiant hand. Now, gentlemen, if there is a back door to this establishment, I will use it to make me way home."
Farnham showed him the rear entrance, and saw him walking homeward up the quiet street; and, coming back, found Bolty and Kendall writhing with merriment.
"Well, that beats all," said Kendall. "I guess I'll write home like the fellow did from Iowa to his daddy, 'Come out here quick. Mighty mean men gits office in this country.'"
"Yes," assented Bolty. "Dot burgermeister ish better as a circus mit a drick mule."
"Don't speak disrespectfully of dignitaries," said Farnham. "It's a bad habit in soldiers."
When they went out on the sidewalk the crowd had dispersed. Farnham bade his recruits good night and went up the avenue. They waited until he was a hundred yards away, and then, without a word to each other, followed him at that distance till they saw him enter his own gate.
[XIII.]
A BUSY SUNDAY FOR THE MATCHINS.
Matters were not going on pleasantly in the Matchin cottage. Maud's success in gaining an eligible position, as it was regarded among her friends, made her at once an object of greater interest than ever; but her temper had not improved with her circumstances, and she showed herself no more accessible than before. Her father, who naturally felt a certain satisfaction at having, as he thought, established her so well, regarded himself as justified in talking to her firmly and seriously respecting her future. He went about it in the only way he knew. "Mattie," he said one evening, when they happened to be alone together, "when are you and Sam going to make a match?"
She lifted her eyes to him, and shot out a look of anger and contempt from under her long lashes that made her father feel very small and old and shabby.
"Never!" she said, quietly.
"Come, come, now," said the old man; "just listen to reason. Sam is a good boy, and with what he makes and what you make——"
"That has nothing to do with it. I won't discuss the matter any further. We have had it all out before. If it is ever mentioned again, Sam or I will leave this house."
"Hoity-toity, Missy! is that the way you take good advice——" but she was gone before he could say another word. Saul walked up and down the room a few moments, taking very short steps, and solacing his mind by muttering to himself: "Well, that's what I get by having a scholar in the family. Learning goes to the head and the heels—makes 'em proud and skittish."
He punctually communicated his failure to Sam, who received the news with a sullen quietness that perplexed still more the puzzled carpenter.
On a Sunday afternoon, a few days later, he received a visit from Mr. Bott, whom he welcomed, with great deference and some awe, as an ambassador from a ghostly world of unknown dignity. They talked in a stiff and embarrassed way for some time about the weather, the prospect of a rise in wages, and other such matters, neither obviously taking any interest in what was being said. Suddenly Bott drew nearer and lowered his voice, though the two were alone in the shop.
"Mr. Matchin," he said, with an uneasy grin, "I have come to see you about your daughter."
Matchin looked at him with a quick suspicion.
"Well, who's got anything to say against my daughter?"
"Oh, nobody that I know of," said Bott, growing suspicious in his turn. "Has anything ever been said against her?"
"Not as I know," said Saul. "Well, what have you got to say?"
"I wanted to ask how you would like me as a son-in-law?" said Bott, wishing to bring matters to a decision.
Saul stood for a moment without words in his astonishment. He had always regarded Bott as "a professional character," even as a "litrary man"; he had never hoped for so lofty an alliance. And yet he could not say that he wholly liked it. This was a strange creature—highly gifted, doubtless, but hardly comfortable. He was too "thick" with ghosts. One scarcely knew whether he spent most of his time "on earth or in hell," as Saul crudely phrased it. The faint smell of phosphorus that he carried about with him, which was only due to his imperfect ablutions after his séances, impressed Saul's imagination as going to show that Bott was a little too intimate with the under-ground powers. He stood chewing a shaving and weighing the matter in his mind a moment before he answered. He thought to himself, "After all, he is making a living. I have seen as much as five dollars at one of his seeunses." But the only reply he was able to make to Bott's point-blank question was:
"Well, I dunno."
The words were hardly encouraging, but the tone was weakly compliant. Bott felt that his cause was gained, and thought he might chaffer a little.
"Of course," he said, "I would like to have a few things understood, to start with. I am very particular in business matters."
"That's right," said Saul, who began to think that this was a very systematic and methodical man.
"I am able to support a wife, or I would not ask for one," said Bott.
"Exactly," said Saul, with effusion; "that's just what I was saying to myself."
"Oh, you was!" said Bott, scowling and hesitating. "You was, was you?" Then, after a moment's pause, in which he eyed Saul attentively, he continued, "Well—that's so. At the same time, I am a business man, and I want to know what you can do for your girl."
"Not much of anything, Mr. Bott, if you must know. Mattie is makin' her own living."
"Yes. That's all right. Does she pay you for her board?"
"Look here, Mr. Bott, that ain't none of your business yet, anyhow. She don't pay no board while she stays here; but that ain't nobody's business."
"Oh, no offence, sir, none in the world. Only I am a business man, and don't want misunderstandings. So she don't. And I suppose you don't want to part with your last child—now, do you? It's like breaking your heart-strings, now, ain't it?" he said, in his most sentimental lecture voice.
"Well, no, I can't say it is. Mattie's welcome in my house while I live, but of course she'll leave me some day, and I'll wish her joy."
"Why should that be? My dear sir, why should that be?" Bott's voice grew greasy with sweetness and persuasion. "Why not all live together? I will be to you as a son. Maud will soothe your declining years. Let it be as it is, Father Saul."
The old carpenter looked up with a keen twinkle of his eye.
"You and your wife would like to board with us when you are married? Well, mebbe we can arrange that."
This was not quite what Bott expected, but he thought best to say no more on that subject for the moment.
Saul then asked the question that had all along been hovering on his lips.
"Have you spoke to Mattie yet?"
The seer blushed and simpered, "I thought it my duty to speak first to you; but I do not doubt her heart."
"Oh! you don't," said Saul, with a world of meaning. "You better find out. You'll find her in the house."
Bott went to the house, leaving Saul pondering. Girls were queer cattle. Had Mattie given her word to this slab-sided, lanky fellow? Had she given Sam Sleeny the mitten for him? Perhaps she wanted the glory of being Mrs. Professor Bott. Well, she could do as she liked; but Saul swore softly to himself, "If Bott comes to live offen me, he's got to pay his board."
Meanwhile, the seer was walking, not without some inward perturbation, to the house, where his fate awaited him. It would have been hard to find a man more confident and more fatuous; but even such fools as he have their moments of doubt and faltering when they approach the not altogether known. He had not entertained the slightest question of Maud's devotion to him, the night she asked from him the counsel of the spirits. But he had seen her several times since that, and she had never renewed the subject. He was in two minds about it. Sometimes he imagined she might have changed her purpose; and then he would comfort himself with the more natural supposition that maiden modesty had been too much for her, and that she was anxiously awaiting his proffer. He had at last girded up his loins like a man and determined to know his doom. He had first ascertained the amount of Maud's salary at the library, and then, as we see, had endeavored to provide for his subsistence at Saul's expense; and now nothing was wanting but the maiden's consent. He trembled a little, but it was more with hope than fear. He could not make himself believe that there was any danger—but he wished it were over and all were well. He paused as he drew near the door. He was conscious that his hands were disagreeably cold and moist. He took out his handkerchief and wiped them, rubbing them briskly together, though the day was clear and warm, and the perspiration stood beaded on his forehead. But there was no escape. He knocked at the door, which was opened by Maud in person, who greeted him with a free and open kindness that restored his confidence. They sat down together, and Maud chatted gayly and pleasantly about the weather and the news. A New York girl, the daughter of a wealthy furrier, was reported in the newspaper as about to marry the third son of an English earl. Maud discussed the advantages of the match on either side as if she had been the friend from childhood of both parties.
Suddenly, while she was talking about the forthcoming wedding, the thought occurred to Bott, "Mebbe this is a hint for me," and he plunged into his avowal. Turning hot and cold at once, and wringing his moist hands as he spoke, he said, taking everything for granted:
"Miss Maud, I have seen your father and he gives his consent, and you have only to say the word to make us both happy."
"What?"
Anger, surprise, and contempt were all in the one word and in the flashing eyes of the young woman, as she leaned back in her rocking-chair and transfixed her unhappy suitor.
"Why, don't you understand me? I mean——"
"Oh, yes, I see what you mean. But I don't mean; and if you had come to me, I'd have saved you the trouble of going to my father."
"Now, look here," he pleaded, "you ain't a-going to take it that way, are you? Of course, I'd have come to you first if I had 'a' thought you'd preferred it. All I wanted was——"
"Oh," said Maud, with perfect coolness and malice,—for in the last moment she had begun heartily to hate Bott for his presumption,—"I understand what you want. But the question is what I want—and I don't want you."
The words, and still more the cold monotonous tone in which they were uttered, stung the dull blood of the conjurer to anger. His mud-colored face became slowly mottled with red.
"Well, then," he said, "what did you mean by coming and consulting the sperrits, saying you was in love with a gentleman———"
Maud flushed crimson at the memory awakened by these words. Springing from her chair, she opened the door for Bott, and said, "Great goodness! the impudence of some men! You thought I meant you?"
Bott went out of the door like a whipped hound, with pale face and hanging head. As he passed by the door of the shop, Saul hailed him and said with a smile, "What luck?"
Bott did not turn his head, he growled out a deep imprecation and walked away. Matchin was hardly surprised. He mused to himself, "I thought it was funny that Mattie should sack Sam Sleeny for that fellow. I guess he didn't ask the sperrits how the land lay," chuckling over the discomfiture of the seer. Spiritualism is the most convenient religion in the world. You may disbelieve two-thirds of it and yet be perfectly orthodox. Matchin, though a pillar of the faith, always keenly enjoyed the defeat and rout of a medium by his tricksy and rebellious ghosts.
He was still laughing to himself over the retreat of Bott, thinking with some paternal fatuity of the attractiveness and spirit of his daughter, when a shadow fell across him, and he saw Offitt standing before him.
"Why, Offitt. is that you? I did not hear you. You always come up as soft as a spook!"
"Yes, that's me. Where's Sam?"
"Sam's gone to Shady Creek on an excursion with his lodge. My wife went with him."
"I wanted to see him. I think a heap of Sam."
"So do I. Sam is a good fellow."
"Excuse my making so free, Mr. Matchin, but I once thought Sam was going to be a son-in-law of yours."
"Well, betwixt us, Mr. Offitt, I hoped so myself. But you know what girls is. She jest wouldn't."
"So it's all done, is it? No chance for Sam?" Offitt asked eagerly.
"Not as much as you could hold sawdust in your eye," the carpenter answered.
"Well, now, Mr. Matchin, I have got something to say." ("Oh, Lordy," groaned Saul to himself, "here's another one.") "I wouldn't take no advantage of a friend; but if Sam's got no chance, as you say, why shouldn't I try? With your permission, sir, I will."
"Now look ye here, Mr. Offitt. I don't know as I have got anything against you, but I don't know nothing fur you. If it's a fair question, how do you make your livin'?"
"That's all right. First place, I have got a good trade. I'm a locksmith."
"So I have heard you say. But you don't work at it."
"No," Offitt answered; and then, assuming a confidential air, he continued, "As I am to be one of the family, I'll tell you. I don't work at my trade, because I have got a better thing. I am a Reformer."
"You don't say!" exclaimed Saul. "I never heard o' your lecturin'."
"I don't lecture. I am secretary of a grand section of Labor Reformers, and I git a good salary for it."
"Oh, I see," said Saul, not having the least idea of what it all meant. But, like most fathers of his kind, he made no objection to the man's proposal, and told him his daughter was in the house. As Offitt walked away on the same quest where Bott had so recently come to wreck, Saul sat smiling, and nursing his senile vanity with the thought that there were not many mechanics' daughters in Buffland that could get two offers in one Sunday from "professional men." He sat with the contented inertness of old men on his well-worn bench, waiting to see what would be the result of the interview.
"I don't believe she'll have him," he thought. "He ain't half the man that Sam is, nor half the scholar that Bott is."
It was well he was not of an impatient temperament. He sat quietly there for more than an hour, as still as a knot on a branch, wondering why it took Offitt so much longer than Bott to get an answer to a plain question; but it never once occurred to him that he had a right to go into his own house and participate in what conversation was going on. To American fathers of his class, the parlor is sacred when the daughter has company.
There were several reasons why Offitt stayed longer than Bott.
The seer had left Maud Matchin in a state of high excitement and anger. The admiration of a man so splay and ungainly was in itself insulting, when it became so enterprising as to propose marriage. She felt as if she had suffered the physical contact of something not clean or wholesome. Besides, she had been greatly stirred by his reference to her request for ghostly counsel, which had resulted in so frightful a failure and mortification. After Bott had gone, she could not dismiss the subject from her mind. She said to herself, "How can I live, hating a man as I hate that Captain Farnham? How can I breathe the same air with him, blushing like a peony whenever I think of him, and turning pale with shame when I hear his name? That ever I should have been refused by a living man! What does a man want," she asked, with her head thrown back and her nostrils dilated, "when he don't want me?"
As she was walking to and fro, she glanced out of the window and saw Offitt approaching from the direction of the shop. She knew instantly what his errand would be, though he had never before said a word to her out of the common. "I wonder if father has sent him to me—and how many more has he got in reserve there in the shop? Well, I will make short work of this one."
But when he had come in and taken his seat, she found it was not so easy to make short work of him.
Dealing with this one was very different from dealing with the other—about the difference between handling a pig and a panther. Offitt was a human beast of prey—furtive, sly, and elusive, with all his faculties constantly in hand. The sight of Maud excited him like the sight of prey. His small eyes fastened upon her; his sinewy hands tingled to lay hold of her. But he talked, as any casual visitor might, of immaterial things.
Maud, while she chatted with him, was preparing herself for the inevitable question and answer. "What shall I say to him? I do not like him. I never did. I never can. But what shall I do? A woman is of no use in the world by herself. He is not such a dunce as poor Sam, and is not such a gawk as Bott. I wonder whether he would make me mind? I am afraid he would, and I don't know whether I would like it or not. I suppose if I married him I would be as poor as a crow all my days. I couldn't stand that. I won't have him. I wish he would make his little speech and go."
But he seemed in no hurry to go. He was talking volubly about himself, lying with the marvellous fluency which interest and practice give to such men, and Maud presently found herself listening intently to his stories. He had been in Mexico, it seemed. He owned a silver mine there. He got a million dollars out of it, but took it into his head one day to overturn the Government, and was captured and his money taken; barely escaped the garrote by strangling his jailer; owned the mine still, and should go back and get it some day, when he had accomplished certain purposes in this country. There were plenty of people who wished he was gone now. The President had sent for him to come, to Washington; he went, and was asked to breakfast; nobody there but them two; they ate off gold plates like he used to in Mexico; the President then offered him a hundred thousand to leave, was afraid he would make trouble; told the President to make it a million and then he wouldn't. His grandfather was one of the richest men in Europe; his father ran away with his mother out of a palace. "You must have heard of my father, General Offitt, of Georgy? No? He was the biggest slaveholder in the State. I have got a claim against the Government, now, that's good for a million if it's worth a cent; going to Washington next winter to prosecute it."
Maud was now saying to herself, "Why, if half this is true, he is a remarkable man," like many other credulous people, not reflecting that, when half a man says is false, the other half is apt to be also. She began to think it would be worth her while, a red feather in her cap, to refuse such a picturesque person; and then it occurred to her that he had not proposed to marry her, and possibly had no such intention. As his stream of talk, dwelling on his own acts of valor and craft, ran on, she began to feel slightly piqued at its lack of reference to herself. Was this to be a mere afternoon call after all, with no combat and no victory? She felt drawn after awhile to bring her small resources of coquetry into play. She interrupted him with saucy doubts and questions; she cast at him smiles and glances, looking up that he might admire her eyes, and down that her lashes might have their due effect.
He interpreted all these signs in a favorable sense, but still prudently refrained from committing himself, until directly challenged by the blush and simper with which she said:
"I suppose you must have seen a great many pretty ladies in Mexico?"
He waited a moment, looking at her steadily until her eyelids trembled and fell, and then he said, seriously and gravely:
"I used to think so; but I never saw there or anywhere else as pretty a lady as I see at this minute."
This was the first time in her life that Maud had heard such words from a man. Sam Sleeny, with all his dumb worship, had never found words to tell her she was beautiful, and Bott was too grossly selfish and dull to have thought of it. Poor Sleeny, who would have given his life for her, had not wit enough to pay her a compliment. Offitt, whose love was as little generous as the hunger of a tiger, who wished only to get her into his power, who cared not in the least by what means he should accomplish this, who was perfectly willing to have her find out all his falsehoods the day after her wedding, relying upon his brute strength to retain her then,—this conscienceless knave made more progress by these words than Sam by months of the truest devotion. Yet the impression he made was not altogether pleasant. Thirsting for admiration as she did, there was in her mind an indistinct conscious ness that the man was taking a liberty; and in the sudden rush of color to her cheek and brow at Offitt's words, there was at first almost as much anger as pleasure. But she had neither the dignity nor the training required for the occasion, and all the reply she found was:
"Oh, Mr. Offitt, how can you say so?"
"I say so," he answered, with the same unsmiling gravity, "because it's the fact. I have been all over the world. I have seen thousands of beautiful ladies, even queens and markisses, and I never yet saw and I never expect to see such beauty as yours, Miss Maud Matchin, of Buffland."
She still found no means to silence him or defend herself. She said, with an uneasy laugh, "I am sure I don't see where the wonderful beauty is."
"That's because your modesty holds over your beauty. But I see where it is. It's in your eyes, that's like two stars of the night; in your forehead, that looks full of intellect and sense; in your rosy cheeks and smiling lips; in your pretty little hands and feet——" Here she suddenly rolled up her hands in her frilled white apron, and, sitting up straight, drew her feet under her gown. At this performance, they both laughed loud and long, and Maud's nerves were relieved.
"What geese we are," she said at last. "You know I don't believe a word you say."
"Oh, yes, you do. You've got eyes and a looking-glass. Come now, be honest. You know you never saw a girl as pretty as yourself, and you never saw a man that didn't love you on sight."
"I don't know about that."
"Don't all the men you know love you?"
"There is one man I know hates me, and I hate him."
"Who is it? This is very interesting."
Maud was suddenly seized with a desire to tell an adventure, something that might match Offitt's tales of wonder.
"You'll never tell?"
"Hope I may die."
"It's Arthur Farnham!" She had succeeded in her purpose, for Offitt stared at her with looks of amazement. "He once wanted to be rather too attentive to me, and I did not like it. So he hates me, and has tried to injure me."
"And you don't like him very well?"
"I don't. I would owe a good deal to the man who would give him a beating."
"All right. You give me—what?—a kiss, or a lock of your hair, and he shall have his thrashing."
"You do it and bring me the proofs, and we will talk about it."
"Well, I must be off," he said, picking tip his hat. He saw on her face a slight disappointment. He put out his hand to take leave. She folded her arms.
"You needn't be in such a hurry," she said, poutingly. "Mother won't be back for ever so long, and I was half asleep over my book when you came in."
"Oh, very well," he said. "That suits me." He walked deliberately across the room, picked up a chair, and seated himself very near to Maud. She felt her heart beat with something like terror, and regretted asking him to stay. He had been very agreeable, but she was sure he was going to be disagreeable now. She was afraid that if he grew disagreeable she could not manage him as she could the others. Her worst fears were realized with his first words.
"Miss Matchin, if you ask me to stay longer, you must take the consequences. I am going to say to you what I never said to mortal woman before: I love you, and I want you for my wife."
She tried to laugh. "Oh, you do?" but her face grew pale, and her hands trembled.
"Yes, I do; and I am going to have you, too."
He tried to speak lightly, but his voice broke in spite of him.
"Oh, indeed!" she replied, recovering herself with an effort. "Perhaps I'll have something to say about that, Mr. Confidence."
"Of course; excuse me for talking like a fool. Only have me, and you shall have everything else. All that wealth can buy shall be yours. We'll leave this dull place and go around the world seeking pleasure where it can be found, and everybody will envy me my beauteous bride."
"That's very pretty talk, Mr. Offitt; but where is all this wealth to come from?"
He did not resent the question, but heard it gladly, as imposing a condition he might meet. "The money is all right. If I lay the money at your feet, will you go with me? Only give me your promise."
"I promise nothing," said Maud; "but when you are ready to travel, perhaps you may find me in a better humor."
The words seemed to fire him. "That's promise enough for me," he cried, and put out his arms toward her. She struck down his hands, and protested with sudden, cattish energy:
"Let me alone. Don't you come so near me. I don't like it. Now you can go," she added. "I have got a lot to think about."
He thought he would not spoil his success by staying. "Good-by, then," he said, kissing his fingers to her. "Good-by for a little while, my own precious."
He turned at the door. "This is between us, ain't it?"
"Yes, what there is of it," she said, with a smile that took all sting from the words.
He walked to the shop, and wrung the old man's hand. His look of exultation caused Saul to say, "All settled, eh?"
"No," said Offit; "but I have hopes. And now, Mr. Matchin, you know young ladies and the ways of the world. I ask you, as a gentleman, not to say nothing about this, for the present, to nobody."
Saul, proud of his secret, readily promised.