him to have. But I left him whole - I had to make bitter acknowledgment
to myself that Louis Devoe was a gentleman worthy of my best blows;
and I swore to give him them. He was a great merchant of the country,
a wealthy importer and exporter. All day he sat in a fastidiously
appointed office, surrounded by works of art and evidences of his high
culture, directing through glass doors and windows the affairs of his
house.
In person he was slender and hardly tall. His small, well-shaped head
was covered with thick, brown hair, trimmed short, and he wore a
thick, brown beard also cut close and to a fine point. His manners
were a pattern.
Before long I had become a regular and a welcome visitor at the
Greene home. I shook my wild habits from me like a worn-out cloak.
I trained for the conflict with the care of a prize-fighter and the
self-denial of a Brahmin.
As for Chloe Greene, I shall weary you with no sonnets to her eyebrow.
She was a splendidly feminine girl, as wholesome as a November pippin,
and no more mysterious than a window-pane. She had whimsical little
theories that she had deduced from life, and that fitted the maxims
of Epictetus like princess gowns. I wonder, after all, if that old
duffer wasn't rather wise!
Chloe had a father, the Reverend Homer Greene, and an intermittent
mother, who sometimes palely presided over a twilight teapot. The
Reverend Homer was a burr-like man with a life-work. He was writing
a concordance to the Scriptures, and had arrived as far as Kings.
Being, presumably, a suitor for his daughter's hand, I was timber for
his literary outpourings. I had the family tree of Israel drilled
into my head until I used to cry aloud in my sleep: "And Aminadab
begat Jay Eye See," and so forth, until he had tackled another book.
I once made a calculation that the Reverend Homer's concordance would
be worked up as far as the Seven Vials mentioned in Revelations about
the third day after they were opened.
Louis Devoe, as well as I, was a visitor and an intimate friend of the
Greenes. It was there I met him the oftenest, and a more agreeable
man or a more accomplished I have never hated in my life.
Luckily or unfortunately, I came to be accepted as a Boy. My
appearance was youthful, and I suppose I had that pleading and
homeless air that always draws the motherliness that is in women and
the cursed theories and hobbies of paterfamilias.
Chloe called me "Tommy," and made sisterly fun of my attempts to
woo her. With Devoe she was vastly more reserved. He was the man of
romance, one to stir her imagination and deepest feelings had her
fancy leaned toward him. I was closer to her, but standing in no
glamour; I had the task before me of winning her in what seems to me
the American way of fighting - with cleanness and pluck and everyday
devotion to break away the barriers of friendship that divided us, and
to take her, if I could, between sunrise and dark, abetted by neither
moonlight nor music nor foreign wiles.
Chloe gave no sign of bestowing her blithe affections upon either of
us. But one day she let out to me an inkling of what she preferred
in a man. It was tremendously interesting to me, but not illuminating
as to its application. I had been tormenting her for the dozenth time
with the statement and catalogue of my sentiments toward her.
"Tommy," said she, "I don't want a man to show his love for me by
leading an army against another country and blowing people off the
earth with cannons."
"If you mean that the opposite way," I answered, "as they say women
do, I'll see what I can do. The papers are full of this diplomatic
row in Russia. My people know some big people in Washington who are
right next to the army people, and I could get an artillery commission
and - "
"I'm not that way," interrupted Chloe. "I mean what I say. It isn't
the big things that are done in the world, Tommy, that count with a
woman. When the knights were riding abroad in their armor to slay
dragons, many a stay-at-home page won a lonesome lady's hand by being
on the spot to pick up her glove and be quick with her cloak when the
wind blew. The man I am to like best, whoever he shall be, must show
his love in little ways. He must never forget, after hearing it once,
that I do not like to have any one walk at my left side; that I detest
bright-colored neckties; that I prefer to sit with my back to a light;
that I like candied violets; that I must not be talked to when I am
looking at the moonlight shining on water, and that I very, very often
long for dates stuffed with English walnuts."
"Frivolity," I said, with a frown. "Any well-trained servant would be
equal to such details."
"And he must remember," went on Chloe, to remind me of what I want
when I do not know, myself, what I want."
"You're rising in the scale," I said. "What you seem to need is a
first-class clairvoyant."
"And if I say that I am dying to hear a Beethoven sonata, and stamp my
foot when I say it, he must know by that that what my soul craves is
salted almonds; and he will have them ready in his pocket."
"Now," said I, "I am at a loss. I do not know whether your soul's
affinity is to be an impresario or a fancy grocer."
Chloe turned her pearly smile upon me.
"Take less than half of what I said as a jest," she went on. "And
don't think too lightly of the little things, Boy. Be a paladin if
you must, but don't let it show on you. Most women are only very big
children, and most men are only very little ones. Please us; don't
try to overpower us. When we want a hero we can make one out of even
a plain grocer the third time he catches our handkerchief before it
falls to the ground."
That evening I was taken down with pernicious fever. That is a kind
of coast fever with improvements and high-geared attachments. Your
temperature goes up among the threes and fours and remains there,
laughing scornfully and feverishly at the cinchona trees and the
coal-tar derivatives. Pernicious fever is a case for a simple
mathematician instead of a doctor. It is merely this formula:
Vitality + the desire to live - the duration of the fever = the
result.
I took to my bed in the two-roomed thatched hut where I had been
comfortably established, and sent for a gallon of rum. That was not
for myself. Drunk, Stamford was the best doctor between the Andes
and the Pacific. He came, sat at my bedside, and drank himself into
condition.
"My boy," said he, "my lily-white and reformed Romeo, medicine will do
you no good. But I will give you quinine, which, being bitter, will
arouse in you hatred and anger - two stimulants that will add ten per
cent. to your chances. You are as strong as a caribou calf, and you
will get well if the fever doesn't get in a knockout blow when you're
off your guard."
For two weeks I lay on my back feeling like a Hindoo widow on a
burning ghat. Old Atasca, an untrained Indian nurse, sat near the
door like a petrified statue of What's-the-Use, attending to her
duties, which were, mainly, to see that time went by without slipping
a cog. Sometimes I would fancy myself back in the Philippines, or, at
worse times, sliding off the horsehair sofa in Sleepytown.
One afternoon I ordered Atasca to vamose, and got up and dressed
carefully. I took my temperature, which I was pleased to find 104.
I paid almost dainty attention to my dress, choosing solicitously
a necktie of a dull and subdued hue. The mirror showed that I was
looking little the worse from my illness. The fever gave brightness
to my eyes and color to my face. And while I looked at my reflection
my color went and came again as I thought of Chloe Greene and the
millions of eons that had passed since I'd seen her, and of Louis
Devoe and the time he had gained on me.
I went straight to her house. I seemed to float rather than walk; I
hardly felt the ground under my feet; I thought pernicious fever must
be a great boon to make one feel so strong.
I found Chloe and Louis Devoe sitting under the awning in front of the
house. She jumped up and met me with a double handshake.
"I'm glad, glad, glad to see you out again!" she cried, every word a
pearl strung on the string of her sentence. "You are well, Tommy - or
better, of course. I wanted to come to see you, but they wouldn't let
me."
"Oh yes," said I, carelessly, "it was nothing. Merely a little fever.
I am out again, as you see."
We three sat there and talked for half an hour or so. Then Chloe
looked out yearningly and almost piteously across the ocean. I could
see in her sea-blue eyes some deep and intense desire. Devoe, curse
him! saw it too.
"What is it?" we asked, in unison.
"Cocoanut-pudding," said Chloe, pathetically. "I've wanted some - oh,
so badly, for two days. It's got beyond a wish; it's an obsession."
"The cocoanut season is over," said Devoe, in that voice of his that
gave thrilling interest to his most commonplace words. "I hardly
think one could be found in Mojada. The natives never use them except
when they are green and the milk is fresh. They sell all the ripe
ones to the fruiterers."
"Wouldn't a broiled lobster or a Welsh rabbit do as well?" I remarked,
with the engaging idiocy of a pernicious-fever convalescent.
Chloe came as near to pouting as a sweet disposition and a perfect
profile would allow her to come.
The Reverend Homer poked his ermine-lined face through the doorway and
added a concordance to the conversation.
"Sometimes," said he, "old Campos keeps the dried nuts in his little
store on the hill. But it would be far better, my daughter, to
restrain unusual desires, and partake thankfully of the daily dishes
that the Lord has set before us."
"Stuff!" said I.
"How was that?" asked the Reverend Homer, sharply.
"I say it's tough," said I, "to drop into the vernacular, that Miss
Greene should be deprived of the food she desires - a simple thing like
kalsomine-pudding. Perhaps," I continued, solicitously, "some pickled
walnuts or a fricassee of Hungarian butternuts would do as well."
Every one looked at me with a slight exhibition of curiosity.
Louis Devoe arose and made his adieus. I watched him until he had
sauntered slowly and grandiosely to the corner, around which he turned
to reach his great warehouse and store. Chloe made her excuses, and
went inside for a few minutes to attend to some detail affecting the
seven-o'clock dinner. She was a passed mistress in housekeeping. I
had tasted her puddings and bread with beatitude.
When all had gone, I turned casually and saw a basket made of
plaited green withes hanging by a nail outside the door-jamb. With
a rush that made my hot temples throb there came vividly to my mind
recollections of the head-hunters - _those grim, flinty, relentless
little men, never seen, but chilling the warmest noonday by the
subtle terror of their concealed presence . . . From time to time,
as vanity or ennui or love or jealousy or ambition may move him,
one creeps forth with his snickersnee and takes up the silent
trail . . . Back he comes, triumphant, bearing the severed, gory head
of his victim . . . His particular brown or white maid lingers, with
fluttering bosom, casting soft tiger's eyes at the evidence of his
love for her_.
I stole softly from the house and returned to my hut. From its
supporting nails in the wall I took a machete as heavy as a butcher's
cleaver and sharper than a safety-razor. And then I chuckled softly
to myself, and set out to the fastidiously appointed private office of
Monsieur Louis Devoe, usurper to the hand of the Pearl of the Pacific.
He was never slow at thinking; he gave one look at my face and another
at the weapon in my hand as I entered his door, and then he seemed
to fade from my sight. I ran to the back door, kicked it open, and
saw him running like a deer up the road toward the wood that began
two hundred yards away. I was after him, with a shout. I remember
hearing children and women screaming, and seeing them flying from the
road.
He was fleet, but I was stronger. A mile, and I had almost come up
with him. He doubled cunningly and dashed into a brake that extended
into a small cañon. I crashed through this after him, and in five
minutes had him cornered in an angle of insurmountable cliffs. There
his instinct of self-preservation steadied him, as it will steady even
animals at bay. He turned to me, quite calm, with a ghastly smile.
"Oh, Rayburn!" he said, with such an awful effort at ease that I was
impolite enough to laugh rudely in his face. "Oh, Rayburn!" said he,
"come, let's have done with this nonsense. Of course, I know it's the
fever and you're not yourself; but collect yourself, man - give me that
ridiculous weapon, now, and let's go back and talk it over."
"I will go back," said I, "carrying your head with me. We will see
how charmingly it can discourse when it lies in the basket at her
door."
"Come," said he, persuasively, "I think better of you than to suppose
that you try this sort of thing as a joke. But even the vagaries of
a fever-crazed lunatic come some time to a limit. What is this talk
about heads and baskets? Get yourself together and throw away that
absurd cane-chopper. What would Miss Greene think of you?" he ended,
with the silky cajolery that one would use toward a fretful child.
"Listen," said I. "At last you have struck upon the right note. What
would she think of me? Listen," I repeated.
"There are women," I said, "who look upon horsehair sofas and currant
wine as dross. To them even the calculated modulation of your
well-trimmed talk sounds like the dropping of rotten plums from a tree
in the night. They are the maidens who walk back and forth in the
villages, scorning the emptiness of the baskets at the doors of the
young men who would win them.
"One such as they," I said, "is waiting. Only a fool would try to win
a woman by drooling like a braggart in her doorway or by waiting upon
her whims like a footman. They are all daughters of Herodias, and to
gain their hearts one must lay the heads of his enemies before them
with his own hands. Now, bend your neck, Louis Devoe. Do not be a
coward as well as a chatterer at a lady's tea-table."
"There, there!" said Devoe, falteringly. "You know me, don't you,
Rayburn?"
"Oh yes," I said, "I know you. I know you. I know you. But the
basket is empty. The old men of the village and the young men, and
both the dark maidens and the ones who are as fair as pearls walk back
and forth and see its emptiness. Will you kneel now, or must we have
a scuffle? It is not like you to make things go roughly and with bad
form. But the basket is waiting for your head."
With that he went to pieces. I had to catch him as he tried to
scamper past me like a scared rabbit. I stretched him out and got a
foot on his chest, but he squirmed like a worm, although I appealed
repeatedly to his sense of propriety and the duty he owed to himself
as a gentleman not to make a row.
But at last he gave me the chance, and I swung the machete.
It was not hard work. He flopped like a chicken during the six or
seven blows that it took to sever his head; but finally he lay still,
and I tied his head in my handkerchief. The eyes opened and shut
thrice while I walked a hundred yards. I was red to my feet with the
drip, but what did that matter? With delight I felt under my hands
the crisp touch of his short, thick, brown hair and close-trimmed
beard.
I reached the house of the Greenes and dumped the head of Louis Devoe
into the basket that still hung by the nail in the door-jamb. I sat
in a chair under the awning and waited. The sun was within two hours
of setting. Chloe came out and looked surprised.
"Where have you been, Tommy?" she asked. "You were gone when I came
out."
"Look in the basket," I said, rising to my feet. She looked, and gave
a little scream - of delight, I was pleased to note.
"Oh, Tommy!" she said. "It was just what I wanted you to do. It's
leaking a little, but that doesn't matter. Wasn't I telling you?
It's the little things that count. And you remembered."
Little things! She held the ensanguined head of Louis Devoe in her
white apron. Tiny streams of red widened on her apron and dripped
upon the floor. Her face was bright and tender.
"Little things, indeed!" I thought again. "The head-hunters are
right. These are the things that women like you to do for them."
Chloe came close to me. There was no one in sight. She looked tip at
me with sea-blue eyes that said things they had never said before.
"You think of me," she said. "You are the man I was describing. You
think of the little things, and they are what make the world worth
living in. The man for me must consider my little wishes, and make me
happy in small ways. He must bring me little red peaches in December
if I wish for them, and then I will love him till June. I will have
no knight in armor slaying his rival or killing dragons for me. You
please me very well, Tommy."
I stooped and kissed her. Then a moisture broke out on my forehead,
and I began to feel weak. I saw the red stains vanish from Chloe's
apron, and the head of Louis Devoe turn to a brown, dried cocoanut.
"There will be cocoanut-pudding for dinner, Tommy, boy," said Chloe,
gayly, "and you must come. I must go in for a little while."
She vanished in a delightful flutter.
Dr. Stamford tramped up hurriedly. He seized my pulse as though it
were his own property that I had escaped with.
"You are the biggest fool outside of any asylum!" he said, angrily.
"Why did you leave your bed? And the idiotic things you've been
doing! - and no wonder, with your pulse going like a sledge-hammer."
"Name some of them," said I.
"Devoe sent for me," said Stamford. "He saw you from his window go to
old Campos' store, chase him up the hill with his own yardstick, and
then come back and make off with his biggest cocoanut."
"It's the little things that count, after all," said I.
"It's your little bed that counts with you just now," said the doctor.
"You come with me at once, or I'll throw up the case. 'You're as
loony as a loon."
So I got no cocoanut-pudding that evening, but I conceived a distrust
as to the value of the method of the head-hunters. Perhaps for many
centuries the maidens of the villages may have been looking wistfully
at the heads in the baskets at the doorways, longing for other and
lesser trophies.
NO STORY
To avoid having this book hurled into corner of the room by the
suspicious reader, I will assert in time that this is not a newspaper
story. You will encounter no shirt-sleeved, omniscient city editor,
no prodigy "cub" reporter just off the farm, no scoop, no story - no
anything.
But if you will concede me the setting of the first scene in the
reporters' room of the _Morning Beacon_, I will repay the favor by
keeping strictly my promises set forth above.
I was doing space-work on the _Beacon_, hoping to be put on a salary.
Some one had cleared with a rake or a shovel a small space for me at
the end of a long table piled high with exchanges, _Congressional
Records_, and old files. There I did my work. I wrote whatever the
city whispered or roared or chuckled to me on my diligent wanderings
about its streets. My income was not regular.
One day Tripp came in and leaned on my table. Tripp was something in
the mechanical department - I think he had something to do with the
pictures, for he smelled of photographers' supplies, and his hands
were always stained and cut up with acids. He was about twenty-five
and looked forty. Half of his face was covered with short, curly red
whiskers that looked like a door-mat with the "welcome" left off. He
was pale and unhealthy and miserable and fawning, and an assiduous
borrower of sums ranging from twenty-five cents to a dollar. One
dollar was his limit. He knew the extent of his credit as well as the
Chemical National Bank knows the amount of H2O that collateral will
show on analysis. When he sat on my table he held one hand with the
other to keep both from shaking. Whiskey. He had a spurious air of
lightness and bravado about him that deceived no one, but was useful
in his borrowing because it was so pitifully and perceptibly assumed.
This day I had coaxed from the cashier five shining silver dollars as
a grumbling advance on a story that the Sunday editor had reluctantly
accepted. So if I was not feeling at peace with the world, at least
an armistice had been declared; and I was beginning with ardor to
write a description of the Brooklyn Bridge by moonlight.
"Well, Tripp," said I, looking up at him rather impatiently, "how goes
it?" He was looking to-day more miserable, more cringing and haggard
and downtrodden than I had ever seen him. He was at that stage of
misery where he drew your pity so fully that you longed to kick him.
"Have you got a dollar?" asked Tripp, with his most fawning look
and his dog-like eyes that blinked in the narrow space between his
high-growing matted beard and his low-growing matted hair.
"I have," said I; and again I said, "I have," more loudly and
inhospitably, "and four besides. And I had hard work corkscrewing
them out of old Atkinson, I can tell you. And I drew them," I
continued, "to meet a want - a hiatus - a demand - a need - an exigency - a
requirement of exactly five dollars."
I was driven to emphasis by the premonition that I was to lose one of
the dollars on the spot.
"I don't want to borrow any," said Tripp, and I breathed again. "I
thought you'd like to get put onto a good story," he went on. "I've
got a rattling fine one for you. You ought to make it run a column
at least. It'll make a dandy if you work it up right. It'll probably
cost you a dollar or two to get the stuff. I don't want anything out
of it myself."
I became placated. The proposition showed that Tripp appreciated past
favors, although he did not return them. If he had been wise enough
to strike me for a quarter then he would have got it.
"What is the story?" I asked, poising my pencil with a finely
calculated editorial air.
"I'll tell you," said Tripp. "It's a girl. A beauty. One of the
howlingest Amsden's Junes you ever saw. Rosebuds covered with dew -
violets in their mossy bed - and truck like that. She's lived on Long
Island twenty years and never saw New York City before. I ran against
her on Thirty-fourth Street. She'd just got in on the East River
ferry. I tell you, she's a beauty that would take the hydrogen out
of all the peroxides in the world. She stopped me on the street and
asked me where she could find George Brown. Asked me where she could
find _George Brown in New York City!_ What do you think of that?
"I talked to her, and found that she was going to marry a young
farmer named Dodd - Hiram Dodd - next week. But it seems that George
Brown still holds the championship in her youthful fancy. George had
greased his cowhide boots some years ago, and came to the city to make
his fortune. But he forgot to remember to show up again at Greenburg,
and Hiram got in as second-best choice. But when it comes to the
scratch Ada - her name's Ada Lowery - saddles a nag and rides eight
miles to the railroad station and catches the 6.45 A.M. train for
the city. Looking for George, you know - you understand about women -
George wasn't there, so she wanted him.
"Well, you know, I couldn't leave her loose in Wolftown-on-the-Hudson.
I suppose she thought the first person she inquired of would say:
'George Brown? - why, yes - lemme see - he's a short man with light-blue
eyes, ain't he? Oh yes - you'll find George on One Hundred and
Twenty-fifth Street, right next to the grocery. He's bill-clerk in
a saddle-and-harness store.' That's about how innocent and beautiful
she is. You know those little Long Island water-front villages like
Greenburg - a couple of duck-farms for sport, and clams and about nine
summer visitors for industries. That's the kind of a place she comes
from. But, say - you ought to see her!
"What could I do? I don't know what money looks like in the morning.
And she'd paid her last cent of pocket-money for her railroad ticket
except a quarter, which she had squandered on gum-drops. She was
eating them out of a paper bag. I took her to a boarding-house on
Thirty-second Street where I used to live, and hocked her. She's in
soak for a dollar. That's old Mother McGinnis' price per day. I'll
show you the house."
"What words are these, Tripp?" said I. "I thought you said you had a
story. Every ferryboat that crosses the East River brings or takes
away girls from Long Island."
The premature lines on Tripp's face grew deeper. He frowned seriously
from his tangle of hair. He separated his hands and emphasized his
answer with one shaking forefinger.
"Can't you see," he said, "what a rattling fine story it would make?
You could do it fine. All about the romance, you know, and describe
the girl, and put a lot of stuff in it about true love, and sling
in a few stickfuls of funny business - joshing the Long Islanders
about being green, and, well - you know how to do it. You ought to
get fifteen dollars out of it, anyhow. And it'll cost you only about
four dollars. You'll make a clear profit of eleven."
"How will it cost me four dollars?" I asked, suspiciously.
"One dollar to Mrs. McGinnis," Tripp answered, promptly, "and two
dollars to pay the girl's fare back home."
"And the fourth dimension?" I inquired, making a rapid mental
calculation.
"One dollar to me," said Tripp. "For whiskey. Are you on?"
I smiled enigmatically and spread my elbows as if to begin writing
again. But this grim, abject, specious, subservient, burr-like wreck
of a man would not be shaken off. His forehead suddenly became
shiningly moist.
"Don't you see," he said, with a sort of desperate calmness, "that
this girl has got to be sent home to-day - not to-night nor to-morrow,
but to-day? I can't do anything for her. You know, I'm the janitor
and corresponding secretary of the Down-and-Out Club. I thought you
could make a newspaper story out of it and win out a piece of money
on general results. But, anyhow, don't you see that she's got to get
back home before night?"
And then I began to feel that dull, leaden, soul-depressing sensation
known as the sense of duty. Why should that sense fall upon one as a
weight and a burden? I knew that I was doomed that day to give up the
bulk of my store of hard-wrung coin to the relief of this Ada Lowery.
But I swore to myself that Tripp's whiskey dollar would not be
forthcoming. He might play knight-errant at my expense, but he would
indulge in no wassail afterward, commemorating my weakness and
gullibility. In a kind of chilly anger I put on my coat and hat.
Tripp, submissive, cringing, vainly endeavoring to please, conducted
me via the street-cars to the human pawn-shop of Mother McGinnis. I
paid the fares. It seemed that the collodion-scented Don Quixote and
the smallest minted coin were strangers.
Tripp pulled the bell at the door of the mouldy red-brick
boarding-house. At its faint tinkle he paled, and crouched as a
rabbit makes ready to spring away at the sound of a hunting-dog.
I guessed what a life he had led, terror-haunted by the coming
footsteps of landladies.
"Give me one of the dollars - quick!" he said.
The door opened six inches. Mother McGinnis stood there with white
eyes - they were white, I say - and a yellow face, holding together at
her throat with one hand a dingy pink flannel dressing-sack. Tripp
thrust the dollar through the space without a word, and it bought us
entry.
"She's in the parlor," said the McGinnis, turning the back of her sack
upon us.
In the dim parlor a girl sat at the cracked marble centre-table
weeping comfortably and eating gum-drops. She was a flawless beauty.
Crying had only made her brilliant eyes brighter. When she crunched
a gum-drop you thought only of the poetry of motion and envied the
senseless confection. Eve at the age of five minutes must have been
a ringer for Miss Ada Lowery at nineteen or twenty. I was introduced,
and a gum-drop suffered neglect while she conveyed to me a naïve
interest, such as a puppy dog (a prize winner) might bestow upon a
crawling beetle or a frog.
Tripp took his stand by the table, with the fingers of one hand spread
upon it, as an attorney or a master of ceremonies might have stood.
But he looked the master of nothing. His faded coat was buttoned
high, as if it sought to be charitable to deficiencies of tie and
linen.
I thought of a Scotch terrier at the sight of his shifty eyes in the
glade between his tangled hair and beard. For one ignoble moment I
felt ashamed of having been introduced as his friend in the presence
of so much beauty in distress. But evidently Tripp meant to conduct
the ceremonies, whatever they might be. I thought I detected in his
actions and pose an intention of foisting the situation upon me as
material for a newspaper story, in a lingering hope of extracting from
me his whiskey dollar.
"My friend" (I shuddered), "Mr. Chalmers," said Tripp, "will tell
you, Miss Lowery, the same that I did. He's a reporter, and he can
hand out the talk better than I can. That's why I brought him with
me." (O Tripp, wasn't it the _silver_-tongued orator you wanted?)
"He's wise to a lot of things, and he'll tell you now what's best
to do."
I stood on one foot, as it were, as I sat in my rickety chair.
"Why - er - Miss Lowery," I began, secretly enraged at Tripp's awkward
opening, "I am at your service, of course, but - er - as I haven't been
apprized of the circumstances of the case, I - er - "
"Oh," said Miss Lowery, beaming for a moment, "it ain't as bad as
that - there ain't any circumstances. It's the first time I've ever
been in New York except once when I was five years old, and I had no
idea it was such a big town. And I met Mr. - Mr. Snip on the street
and asked him about a friend of mine, and he brought me here and asked
me to wait."
"I advise you, Miss Lowery," said Tripp, "to tell Mr. Chalmers all.
He's a friend of mine" (I was getting used to it by this time), "and
he'll give you the right tip."
"Why, certainly," said Miss Ada, chewing a gum-drop toward me. "There
ain't anything to tell except that - well, everything's fixed for me to
marry Hiram Dodd next Thursday evening. Hi has got two hundred acres
of land with a lot of shore-front, and one of the best truck-farms on
the Island. But this morning I had my horse saddled up - he's a white
horse named Dancer - and I rode over to the station. I told 'em at
home I was going to spend the day with Susie Adams. It was a story,
I guess, but I don't care. And I came to New York on the train, and
I met Mr. - Mr. Flip on the street and asked him if he knew where I
could find G - G - "
"Now, Miss Lowery," broke in Tripp, loudly, and with much bad taste,
I thought, as she hesitated with her word, "you like this young man,
Hiram Dodd, don't you? He's all right, and good to you, ain't he?"
"Of course I like him," said Miss Lowery emphatically. "Hi's all
right. And of course he's good to me. So is everybody."
I could have sworn it myself. Throughout Miss Ada Lowery's life all
men would be to good to her. They would strive, contrive, struggle,
and compete to hold umbrellas over her hat, check her trunk, pick up
her handkerchief, and buy for her soda at the fountain.
"But," went on Miss Lowery, "last night I got to thinking about
G - George, and I - "
Down went the bright gold head upon dimpled, clasped hands on the
table. Such a beautiful April storm! Unrestrainedly she sobbed. I
wished I could have comforted her. But I was not George. And I was
glad I was not Hiram - and yet I was sorry, too.
By-and-by the shower passed. She straightened up, brave and half-way
smiling. She would have made a splendid wife, for crying only made
her eyes more bright and tender. She took a gum-drop and began her
story.
"I guess I'm a terrible hayseed," she said between her little gulps
and sighs, "but I can't help it. G - George Brown and I were sweethearts
since he was eight and I was five. When he was nineteen - that was
four years ago - he left Greenburg and went to the city. He said he was
going to be a policeman or a railroad president or something. And then
he was coming back for me. But I never heard from him any more. And
I - I - liked him."
Another flow of tears seemed imminent, but Tripp hurled himself into
the crevasse and dammed it. Confound him, I could see his game. He
was trying to make a story of it for his sordid ends and profit.
"Go on, Mr. Chalmers," said he, "and tell the lady what's the proper
caper. That's what I told her - you'd hand it to her straight. Spiel
up."
I coughed, and tried to feel less wrathful toward Tripp. I saw my
duty. Cunningly I had been inveigled, but I was securely trapped.
Tripp's first dictum to me had been just and correct. The young lady
must be sent back to Greenburg that day. She must be argued with,
convinced, assured, instructed, ticketed, and returned without delay.
I hated Hiram and despised George; but duty must be done. _Noblesse
oblige_ and only five silver dollars are not strictly romantic
compatibles, but sometimes they can be made to jibe. It was mine to
be Sir Oracle, and then pay the freight. So I assumed an air that
mingled Solomon's with that of the general passenger agent of the
Long Island Railroad.
"Miss Lowery," said I, as impressively as I could, "life is rather a
queer proposition, after all." There was a familiar sound to these
words after I had spoken them, and I hoped Miss Lowery had never
heard Mr. Cohan's song. "Those whom we first love we seldom wed. Our
earlier romances, tinged with the magic radiance of youth, often fail
to materialize." The last three words sounded somewhat trite when
they struck the air. "But those fondly cherished dreams," I went
on, "may cast a pleasant afterglow on our future lives, however
impracticable and vague they may have been. But life is full of
realities as well as visions and dreams. One cannot live on memories.
May I ask, Miss Lowery, if you think you could pass a happy - that is,
a contented and harmonious life with Mr. - er - Dodd - if in other ways
than romantic recollections he seems to - er - fill the bill, as I might
say?"
"Oh, Hi's all right," answered Miss Lowery. "Yes, I could get along
with him fine. He's promised me an automobile and a motor-boat. But
somehow, when it got so close to the time I was to marry him, I
couldn't help wishing - well, just thinking about George. Something
must have happened to him or he'd have written. On the day he left,
he and me got a hammer and a chisel and cut a dime into two pieces. I
took one piece and he took the other, and we promised to be true to
each other and always keep the pieces till we saw each other again.
I've got mine at home now in a ring-box in the top drawer of my
dresser. I guess I was silly to come up here looking for him. I
never realized what a big place it is."
And then Tripp joined in with a little grating laugh that he had,
still trying to drag in a little story or drama to earn the miserable
dollar that he craved.
"Oh, the boys from the country forget a lot when they come to the city
and learn something. I guess George, maybe, is on the bum, or got
roped in by some other girl, or maybe gone to the dogs on account of
whiskey or the races. You listen to Mr. Chalmers and go back home,
and you'll be all right."
But now the time was come for action, for the hands of the clock
were moving close to noon. Frowning upon Tripp, I argued gently and
philosophically with Miss Lowery, delicately convincing her of the
importance of returning home at once. And I impressed upon her
the truth that it would not be absolutely necessary to her future
happiness that she mention to Hi the wonders or the fact of her visit
to the city that had swallowed up the unlucky George.
She said she had left her horse (unfortunate Rosinante) tied to a tree
near the railroad station. Tripp and I gave her instructions to mount
the patient steed as soon as she arrived and ride home as fast as
possible. There she was to recount the exciting adventure of a day
spent with Susie Adams. She could "fix" Susie - I was sure of that -
and all would be well.
And then, being susceptible to the barbed arrows of beauty, I warmed
to the adventure. The three of us hurried to the ferry, and there I
found the price of a ticket to Greenburg to be but a dollar and eighty
cents. I bought one, and a red, red rose with the twenty cents for
Miss Lowery. We saw her aboard her ferryboat, and stood watching her
wave her handkerchief at us until it was the tiniest white patch
imaginable. And then Tripp and I faced each other, brought back to
earth, left dry and desolate in the shade of the sombre verities of
life.
The spell wrought by beauty and romance was dwindling. I looked at
Tripp and almost sneered. He looked more careworn, contemptible, and
disreputable than ever. I fingered the two silver dollars remaining
in my pocket and looked at him with the half-closed eyelids of
contempt. He mustered up an imitation of resistance.
"Can't you get a story out of it?" he asked, huskily. "Some sort of
a story, even if you have to fake part of it?"
"Not a line," said I. "I can fancy the look on Grimes' face if I
should try to put over any slush like this. But we've helped the
little lady out, and that'll have to be our only reward."
"I'm sorry," said Tripp, almost inaudibly. "I'm sorry you're out your
money. Now, it seemed to me like a find of a big story, you know -
that is, a sort of thing that would write up pretty well."
"Let's try to forget it," said I, with a praiseworthy attempt at
gayety, "and take the next car 'cross town."
I steeled myself against his unexpressed but palpable desire. He
should not coax, cajole, or wring from me the dollar he craved. I had
had enough of that wild-goose chase.
Tripp feebly unbuttoned his coat of the faded pattern and glossy seams
to reach for something that had once been a handkerchief deep down in
some obscure and cavernous pocket. As he did so I caught the shine
of a cheap silver-plated watch-chain across his vest, and something
dangling from it caused me to stretch forth my hand and seize it
curiously. It was the half of a silver dime that had been cut in
halves with a chisel.
"What!" I said, looking at him keenly.
"Oh yes," he responded, dully. "George Brown, alias Tripp. What's
the use?"
Barring the W. C. T. U., I'd like to know if anybody disapproves of
my having produced promptly from my pocket Tripp's whiskey dollar and
unhesitatingly laying it in his hand.
THE HIGHER PRAGMATISM
I
Where to go for wisdom has become a question of serious import.
The ancients are discredited; Plato is boiler-plate; Aristotle is
tottering; Marcus Aurelius is reeling; Æsop has been copyrighted by
Indiana; Solomon is too solemn; you couldn't get anything out of
Epictetus with a pick.
The ant, which for many years served as a model of intelligence and
industry in the school-readers, has been proven to be a doddering
idiot and a waster of time and effort. The owl to-day is hooted at.
Chautauqua conventions have abandoned culture and adopted diabolo.
Graybeards give glowing testimonials to the venders of patent
hair-restorers. There are typographical errors in the almanacs
published by the daily newspapers. College professors have become -