ain't a health resort - for your whiskers! A Lake Erie fog'd get lost
here in two minutes."
"You said something about a drink," says Goodall.
A few minutes later they line up at a glittering bar, and hang upon the
arm rest. The bartender, blond, heavy, well-groomed, sets out their
drinks, instantly perceiving that he serves two of the Three Thousand.
He observes that one is a middle-aged man, well-dressed, with a lined
and sunken face; the other a mere boy who is chiefly eyes and overcoat.
Disguising well the tedium begotten by many repetitions, the server of
drinks begins to chant the sanitary saga of Santone. "Rather a moist
night, gentlemen, for our town. A little fog from our river, but nothing
to hurt. Repeated Tests."
"Damn your litmus papers," gasps Toledo - "without any - personal offense
intended."
"We've heard of 'em before. Let 'em turn red, white and blue. What we
want is a repeated test of that - whiskey. Come again. I paid for the
last round, Goodall of Memphis."
The bottle oscillates from one to the other, continues to do so, and is
not removed from the counter. The bartender sees two emaciated invalids
dispose of enough Kentucky Belle to floor a dozen cowboys, without
displaying any emotion save a sad and contemplative interest in the
peregrinations of the bottle. So he is moved to manifest a solicitude as
to the consequences.
"Not on your Uncle Mark Hanna," responds Toledo, "will we get drunk.
We've been - vaccinated with whiskey - and - cod liver oil. What would send
you to the police station - only gives us a thirst. S-s-set out another
bottle."
It is slow work trying to meet death by that route. Some quicker way
must be found. They leave the saloon and plunge again into the mist. The
sidewalks are mere flanges at the base of the houses; the street a cold
ravine, the fog filling it like a freshet. Not far away is the Mexican
quarter. Conducted as if by wires along the heavy air comes a guitar's
tinkle, and the demoralizing voice of some señorita singing:
"En las tardes sombrillos del invierro
En el prado a Marar me reclino
Y maldigo mi fausto destino -
Una vida la mas infeliz."
The words of it they do not understand - neither Toledo nor Memphis,
but words are the least important things in life. The music tears the
breasts of the seekers after Nepenthe, inciting Toledo to remark:
"Those kids of mine - I wonder - by God, Mr. Goodall of Memphis, we had
too little of that whiskey! No slow music in mine, if you please. It
makes you disremember to forget."
Hurd of Toledo, here pulls out his watch, and says: "I'm a son of a gun!
Got an engagement for a hack ride out to San Pedro Springs at eleven.
Forgot it. A fellow from Noo York, and me, and the Castillo sisters at
Rhinegelder's Garden. That Noo York chap's a lucky dog - got one whole
lung - good for a year yet. Plenty of money, too. He pays for everything.
I can't afford - to miss the jamboree. Sorry you ain't going along.
Good-by, Goodall of Memphis."
He rounds the corner and shuffles away, casting off thus easily the ties
of acquaintanceship as the moribund do, the season of dissolution being
man's supreme hour of egoism and selfishness. But he turns and calls
back through the fog to the other: "I say, Goodall of Memphis! If you
get there before I do, tell 'em Hurd's a-comin' too. Hurd, of T'leder,
Ah-hia."
Thus Goodall's tempter deserts him. That youth, uncomplaining and
uncaring, takes a spell at coughing, and, recovered, wanders desultorily
on down the street, the name of which he neither knows nor recks. At a
certain point he perceives swinging doors, and hears, filtering between
them a noise of wind and string instruments. Two men enter from the
street as he arrives, and he follows them in. There is a kind of
ante-chamber, plentifully set with palms and cactuses and oleanders. At
little marble-topped tables some people sit, while soft-shod attendants
bring the beer. All is orderly, clean, melancholy, gay, of the German
method of pleasure. At his right is the foot of a stairway. A man there
holds out his hand. Goodall extends his, full of silver, the man selects
therefrom a coin. Goodall goes upstairs and sees there two galleries
extending along the sides of a concert hall which he now perceives to
lie below and beyond the anteroom he first entered. These galleries are
divided into boxes or stalls, which bestow with the aid of hanging lace
curtains, a certain privacy upon their occupants.
Passing with aimless feet down the aisle contiguous to these saucy and
discreet compartments, he is half checked by the sight in one of them of
a young woman, alone and seated in an attitude of reflection. This young
woman becomes aware of his approach. A smile from her brings him to a
standstill, and her subsequent invitation draws him, though hesitating,
to the other chair in the box, a little table between them.
Goodall is only nineteen. There are some whom, when the terrible god
Phthisis wishes to destroy he first makes beautiful; and the boy is
one of these. His face is wax, and an awful pulchritude is born of
the menacing flame in his cheeks. His eyes reflect an unearthly vista
engendered by the certainty of his doom. As it is forbidden man to guess
accurately concerning his fate, it is inevitable that he shall tremble
at the slightest lifting of the veil.
The young woman is well-dressed, and exhibits a beauty of distinctly
feminine and tender sort; an Eve-like comeliness that scarcely seems
predestined to fade.
It is immaterial, the steps by which the two mount to a certain plane of
good understanding; they are short and few, as befits the occasion.
A button against the wall of the partition is frequently disturbed and a
waiter comes and goes at signal.
Pensive beauty would nothing of wine; two thick plaits of her blond hair
hang almost to the floor; she is a lineal descendant of the Lorelei.
So the waiter brings the brew; effervescent, icy, greenish golden. The
orchestra on the stage is playing "Oh, Rachel." The youngsters have
exchanged a good bit of information. She calls him, "Walter" and he
calls her "Miss Rosa."
Goodall's tongue is loosened and he has told her everything about
himself, about his home in Tennessee, the old pillared mansion under
the oaks, the stables, the hunting; the friends he has; down to the
chickens, and the box bushes bordering the walks. About his coming South
for the climate, hoping to escape the hereditary foe of his family. All
about his three months on a ranch; the deer hunts, the rattlers, and the
rollicking in the cow camps. Then of his advent to Santone, where he had
indirectly learned, from a great specialist, that his life's calendar
probably contains but two more leaves. And then of this death-white,
choking night which has come and strangled his fortitude and sent him
out to seek a port amid its depressing billows.
"My weekly letter from home failed to come," he told her, "and I was
pretty blue. I knew I had to go before long and I was tired of waiting.
I went out and bought morphine at every drug store where they would sell
me a few tablets. I got thirty-six quarter grains, and was going back to
my room and take them, but I met a queer fellow on a bridge, who had a
new idea."
Goodall fillips a little pasteboard box upon the table. "I put 'em all
together in there."
Miss Rosa, being a woman, must raise the lid, and gave a slight shiver
at the innocent looking triturates. "Horrid things! but those little,
white bits - they could never kill one!"
Indeed they could. Walter knew better. Nine grains of morphia! Why, half
the amount might.
Miss Rosa demands to know about Mr. Hurd, of Toledo, and is told. She
laughs like a delighted child. "What a funny fellow! But tell me more
about your home and your sisters, Walter. I know enough about Texas and
tarantulas and cowboys."
The theme is dear, just now, to his mood, and he lays before her the
simple details of a true home; the little ties and endearments that so
fill the exile's heart. Of his sisters, one, Alice, furnishes him a
theme he loves to dwell upon.
"She is like you, Miss Rosa," he says. "Maybe not quite so pretty, but,
just as nice, and good, and - "
"There! Walter," says Miss Rosa sharply, "now talk about something
else."
But a shadow falls upon the wall outside, preceding a big, softly
treading man, finely dressed, who pauses a second before the curtains
and then passes on. Presently comes the waiter with a message: "Mr.
Rolfe says - "
"Tell Rolfe I'm engaged."
"I don't know why it is," says Goodall, of Memphis, "but I don't feel as
bad as I did. An hour ago I wanted to die, but since I've met you, Miss
Rosa, I'd like so much to live."
The young woman whirls around the table, lays an arm behind his neck and
kisses him on the cheek.
"You must, dear boy," she says. "I know what was the matter. It was the
miserable foggy weather that has lowered your spirit and mine too - a
little. But look, now."
With a little spring she has drawn back the curtains. A window is in the
wall opposite, and lo! the mist is cleared away. The indulgent moon is
out again, revoyaging the plumbless sky. Roof and parapet and spire are
softly pearl enamelled. Twice, thrice the retrieved river flashes back,
between the houses, the light of the firmament. A tonic day will dawn,
sweet and prosperous.
"Talk of death when the world is so beautiful!" says Miss Rosa, laying
her hand on his shoulder. "Do something to please me, Walter. Go home to
your rest and say: 'I mean to get better,' and do it."
"If you ask it," says the boy, with a smile, "I will."
The waiter brings full glasses. Did they ring? No; but it is well. He
may leave them. A farewell glass. Miss Rosa says: "To your better
health, Walter." He says: "To our next meeting."
His eyes look no longer into the void, but gaze upon the antithesis of
death. His foot is set in an undiscovered country to-night. He is
obedient, ready to go.
"Good night," she says.
"I never kissed a girl before," he confesses, "except my sisters."
"You didn't this time," she laughs, "I kissed you - good night."
"When shall I see you again," he persists.
"You promised me to go home," she frowns, "and get well. Perhaps we
shall meet again soon. Good night."
He hesitates, his hat in hand. She smiles broadly and kisses him once
more upon the forehead. She watches him far down the aisle, then sits
again at the table.
The shadow falls once more against the wall. This time the big, softly
stepping man parts the curtains and looks in. Miss Rosa's eyes meet his
and for half a minute they remain thus, silent, fighting a battle with
that king of weapons. Presently the big man drops the curtains and
passes on.
The orchestra ceases playing suddenly, and an important voice can be
heard loudly talking in one of the boxes farther down the aisle. No
doubt some citizen entertains there some visitor to the town, and Miss
Rosa leans back in her chair and smiles at some of the words she
catches:
"Purest atmosphere - in the world - litmus paper all long - nothing
hurtful - our city - nothing but pure ozone."
The waiter returns for the tray and glasses. As he enters, the girl
crushes a little empty pasteboard box in her hand and throws it in a
corner. She is stirring something in her glass with her hatpin.
"Why, Miss Rosa," says the waiter with the civil familiarity he
uses - "putting salt in your beer this early in the night!"
[Illustration: "Did he go up?" (cartoon from _The Rolling Stone_)]
THE FRIENDLY CALL
[Published in "Monthly Magazine Section," July, 1910.]
When I used to sell hardware in the West, I often "made" a little town
called Saltillo, in Colorado. I was always certain of securing a small
or a large order from Simon Bell, who kept a general store there. Bell
was one of those six-foot, low-voiced products, formed from a union of
the West and the South. I liked him. To look at him you would think he
should be robbing stage coaches or juggling gold mines with both hands;
but he would sell you a paper of tacks or a spool of thread, with ten
times more patience and courtesy than any saleslady in a city department
store.
I had a twofold object in my last visit to Saltillo. One was to sell a
bill of goods; the other to advise Bell of a chance that I knew of by
which I was certain he could make a small fortune.
In Mountain City, a town on the Union Pacific, five times larger than
Saltillo, a mercantile firm was about to go to the wall. It had a
lively and growing custom, but was on the edge of dissolution and ruin.
Mismanagement and the gambling habits of one of the partners explained
it. The condition of the firm was not yet public property. I had my
knowledge of it from a private source. I knew that, if the ready cash
were offered, the stock and good will could be bought for about one
fourth their value.
On arriving in Saltillo I went to Bell's store. He nodded to me, smiled
his broad, lingering smile, went on leisurely selling some candy to a
little girl, then came around the counter and shook hands.
"Well," he said (his invariably preliminary jocosity at every call
I made), "I suppose you are out here making kodak pictures of the
mountains. It's the wrong time of the year to buy any hardware, of
course."
I told Bell about the bargain in Mountain City. If he wanted to take
advantage of it, I would rather have missed a sale than have him
overstocked in Saltillo.
"It sounds good," he said, with enthusiasm. "I'd like to branch out
and do a bigger business, and I'm obliged to you for mentioning it.
But - well, you come and stay at my house to-night and I'll think about
it."
It was then after sundown and time for the larger stores in Saltillo
to close. The clerks in Bell's put away their books, whirled the
combination of the safe, put on their coats and hats and left for their
homes. Bell padlocked the big, double wooden front doors, and we stood,
for a moment, breathing the keen, fresh mountain air coming across the
foothills.
A big man walked down the street and stopped in front of the high porch
of the store. His long, black moustache, black eyebrows, and curly black
hair contrasted queerly with his light, pink complexion, which belonged,
by rights, to a blonde. He was about forty, and wore a white vest,
a white hat, a watch chain made of five-dollar gold pieces linked
together, and a rather well-fitting two-piece gray suit of the cut
that college boys of eighteen are wont to affect. He glanced at me
distrustfully, and then at Bell with coldness and, I thought, something
of enmity in his expression.
"Well," asked Bell, as if he were addressing a stranger, "did you fix up
that matter?"
"Did I!" the man answered, in a resentful tone. "What do you suppose
I've been here two weeks for? The business is to be settled to-night.
Does that suit you, or have you got something to kick about?"
"It's all right," said Bell. "I knew you'd do it."
"Of course, you did," said the magnificent stranger. "Haven't I done it
before?"
"You have," admitted Bell. "And so have I. How do you find it at the
hotel?"
"Rocky grub. But I ain't kicking. Say - can you give me any pointers
about managing that - affair? It's my first deal in that line of
business, you know."
"No, I can't," answered Bell, after some thought. "I've tried all kinds
of ways. You'll have to try some of your own."
"Tried soft soap?"
"Barrels of it."
"Tried a saddle girth with a buckle on the end of it?"
"Never none. Started to once; and here's what I got."
Bill held out his right hand. Even in the deepening twilight, I could
see on the back of it a long, white scar that might have been made by
a claw or a knife or some sharp-edged tool.
"Oh, well," said the florid man, carelessly, "I'll know what to do later
on."
He walked away without another word. When he had gone ten steps he
turned and called to Bell:
"You keep well out of the way when the goods are delivered, so there
won't be any hitch in the business."
"All right," answered Bell, "I'll attend to my end of the line."
This talk was scarcely clear in its meaning to me; but as it did not
concern me, I did not let it weigh upon my mind. But the singularity
of the other man's appearance lingered with me for a while; and as we
walked toward Bell's house I remarked to him:
"Your customer seems to be a surly kind of fellow - not one that you'd
like to be snowed in with in a camp on a hunting trip."
"He is that," assented Bell, heartily. "He reminds me of a rattlesnake
that's been poisoned by the bite of a tarantula."
"He doesn't look like a citizen of Saltillo," I went on.
"No," said Bell, "he lives in Sacramento. He's down here on a little
business trip. His name is George Ringo, and he's been my best
friend - in fact the only friend I ever had - for twenty years."
I was too surprised to make any further comment.
Bell lived in a comfortable, plain, square, two-story white house on the
edge of the little town. I waited in the parlor - a room depressingly
genteel - furnished with red plush, straw matting, looped-up lace
curtains, and a glass case large enough to contain a mummy, full of
mineral specimens.
While I waited, I heard, upstairs, that unmistakable sound instantly
recognized the world over - a bickering woman's voice, rising as her
anger and fury grew. I could hear, between the gusts, the temperate
rumble of Bell's tones, striving to oil the troubled waters.
The storm subsided soon; but not before I had heard the woman say, in
a lower, concentrated tone, rather more carrying than her high-pitched
railings: "This is the last time. I tell you - the last time. Oh, you
WILL understand."
The household seemed to consist of only Bell and his wife and a servant
or two. I was introduced to Mrs. Bell at supper.
At first sight she seemed to be a handsome woman, but I soon perceived
that her charm had been spoiled. An uncontrolled petulance, I
thought, and emotional egotism, an absence of poise and a habitual
dissatisfaction had marred her womanhood. During the meal, she showed
that false gayety, spurious kindliness and reactionary softness that
mark the woman addicted to tantrums. Withal, she was a woman who might
be attractive to many men.
After supper, Bell and I took our chairs outside, set them on the grass
in the moonlight and smoked. The full moon is a witch. In her light,
truthful men dig up for you nuggets of purer gold; while liars squeeze
out brighter colors from the tubes of their invention. I saw Bell's
broad, slow smile come out upon his face and linger there.
"I reckon you think George and me are a funny kind of friends," he said.
"The fact is we never did take much interest in each other's company.
But his idea and mine, of what a friend should be, was always synonymous
and we lived up to it, strict, all these years. Now, I'll give you an
idea of what our idea is.
"A man don't need but one friend. The fellow who drinks your liquor and
hangs around you, slapping you on the back and taking up your time,
telling you how much he likes you, ain't a friend, even if you did play
marbles at school and fish in the same creek with him. As long as you
don't need a friend one of that kind may answer. But a friend, to my
mind, is one you can deal with on a strict reciprocity basis like me and
George have always done.
"A good many years ago, him and me was connected in a number of ways. We
put our capital together and run a line of freight wagons in New Mexico,
and we mined some and gambled a few. And then, we got into trouble of
one or two kinds; and I reckon that got us on a better understandable
basis than anything else did, unless it was the fact that we never had
much personal use for each other's ways. George is the vainest man I
ever see, and the biggest brag. He could blow the biggest geyser in
the Yosemite valley back into its hole with one whisper. I am a quiet
man, and fond of studiousness and thought. The more we used to see
each other, personally, the less we seemed to like to be together. If
he ever had slapped me on the back and snivelled over me like I've
seen men do to what they called their friends, I know I'd have had a
rough-and-tumble with him on the spot. Same way with George. He hated
my ways as bad as I did his. When we were mining, we lived in separate
tents, so as not to intrude our obnoxiousness on each other.
"But after a long time, we begun to know each of us could depend on the
other when we were in a pinch, up to his last dollar, word of honor or
perjury, bullet, or drop of blood we had in the world. We never even
spoke of it to each other, because that would have spoiled it. But we
tried it out, time after time, until we came to know. I've grabbed my
hat and jumped a freight and rode 200 miles to identify him when he was
about to be hung by mistake, in Idaho, for a train robber. Once, I laid
sick of typhoid in a tent in Texas, without a dollar or a change of
clothes, and sent for George in Boise City. He came on the next train.
The first thing he did before speaking to me, was to hang up a little
looking glass on the side of the tent and curl his moustache and rub
some hair dye on his head. His hair is naturally a light reddish. Then
he gave me the most scientific cussing I ever had, and took off his
coat.
"'If you wasn't a Moses-meek little Mary's lamb, you wouldn't have been
took down this way,' says he. 'Haven't you got gumption enough not to
drink swamp water or fall down and scream whenever you have a little
colic or feel a mosquito bite you?' He made me a little mad.
"'You've got the bedside manners of a Piute medicine man,' says I. 'And
I wish you'd go away and let me die a natural death. I'm sorry I sent
for you.'
"'I've a mind to,' says George, 'for nobody cares whether you live or
die. But now I've been tricked into coming, I might as well stay until
this little attack of indigestion or nettle rash or whatever it is,
passes away.'
"Two weeks afterward, when I was beginning to get around again, the
doctor laughed and said he was sure that my friend's keeping me mad all
the time did more than his drugs to cure me.
"So that's the way George and me was friends. There wasn't any sentiment
about it - it was just give and take, and each of us knew that the other
was ready for the call at any time.
"I remember, once, I played a sort of joke on George, just to try him.
I felt a little mean about it afterward, because I never ought to have
doubted he'd do it.
"We was both living in a little town in the San Luis valley, running
some flocks of sheep and a few cattle. We were partners, but, as usual,
we didn't live together. I had an old aunt, out from the East, visiting
for the summer, so I rented a little cottage. She soon had a couple of
cows and some pigs and chickens to make the place look like home. George
lived alone in a little cabin half a mile out of town.
"One day a calf that we had, died. That night I broke its bones, dumped
it into a coarse sack and tied it up with wire. I put on an old shirt,
tore a sleeve 'most out of it, and the collar half off, tangled up my
hair, put some red ink on my hands and spashed some of it over my shirt
and face. I must have looked like I'd been having the fight of my life.
I put the sack in a wagon and drove out to George's cabin. When I
halloed, he came out in a yellow dressing-gown, a Turkish cap and patent
leather shoes. George always was a great dresser.
"I dumped the bundle to the ground.
"Sh-sh!' says I, kind of wild in my way. 'Take that and bury it, George,
out somewhere behind your house - bury it just like it is. And don - '
"'Don't get excited,' says George. 'And for the Lord's sake go and wash
your hands and face and put on a clean shirt.'
"And he lights his pipe, while I drive away at a gallop. The next
morning he drops around to our cottage, where my aunt was fiddling with
her flowers and truck in the front yard. He bends himself and bows and
makes compliments as he could do, when so disposed, and begs a rose bush
from her, saying he had turned up a little land back of his cabin, and
wanted to plant something on it by way of usefulness and ornament. So my
aunt, flattered, pulls up one of her biggest by the roots and gives it
to him. Afterward I see it growing where he planted it, in a place where
the grass had been cleared off and the dirt levelled. But neither George
nor me ever spoke of it to each other again."
The moon rose higher, possibly drawing water from the sea, pixies from
their dells and certainly more confidences from Simms Bell, the friend
of a friend.
"There come a time, not long afterward," he went on, "when I was able to
do a good turn for George Ringo. George had made a little pile of money
in beeves and he was up in Denver, and he showed up when I saw him,
wearing deer-skin vests, yellow shoes, clothes like the awnings in front
of drug stores, and his hair dyed so blue that it looked black in the
dark. He wrote me to come up there, quick - that he needed me, and to
bring the best outfit of clothes I had. I had 'em on when I got the
letter, so I left on the next train. George was - "
Bell stopped for half a minute, listening intently.
"I thought I heard a team coming down the road," he explained. "George
was at a summer resort on a lake near Denver and was putting on as many
airs as he knew how. He had rented a little two-room cottage, and had a
Chihauhau dog and a hammock and eight different kinds of walking sticks.
"'Simms,' he says to me, 'there's a widow woman here that's pestering
the soul out of me with her intentions. I can't get out of her way. It
ain't that she ain't handsome and agreeable, in a sort of style, but her
attentions is serious, and I ain't ready for to marry nobody and settle
down. I can't go to no festivity nor sit on the hotel piazza or mix in
any of the society round-ups, but what she cuts me out of the herd and
puts her daily brand on me. I like this here place,' goes on George,
'and I'm making a hit here in the most censorious circles, so I don't
want to have to run away from it. So I sent for you.'
"'What do you want me to do?' I asks George.
"'Why,' says he, 'I want you to head her off. I want you to cut me out.
I want you to come to the rescue. Suppose you seen a wildcat about for
to eat me, what would you do?'
"'Go for it,' says I.
"'Correct,' says George. 'Then go for this Mrs. De Clinton the same.'
"'How am I to do it?' I asks. 'By force and awfulness or in some gentler
and less lurid manner?'
"'Court her,' George says, 'get her off my trail. Feed her. Take her out
in boats. Hang around her and stick to her. Get her mashed on you if you
can. Some women are pretty big fools. Who knows but what she might take
a fancy to you.'
"'Had you ever thought,' I asks, 'of repressing your fatal fascinations
in her presence; of squeezing a harsh note in the melody of your siren
voice, of veiling your beauty - in other words, of giving her the bounce
yourself?'
"George sees no essence of sarcasm in my remark. He twists his moustache
and looks at the points of his shoes.
"'Well, Simms,' he said, 'you know how I am about the ladies. I can't
hurt none of their feelings. I'm, by nature, polite and esteemful of
their intents and purposes. This Mrs. De Clinton don't appear to be the
suitable sort for me. Besides, I ain't a marrying man by all means.'
"'All right,' said I, 'I'll do the best I can in the case.'
"So I bought a new outfit of clothes and a book on etiquette and made
a dead set for Mrs. De Clinton. She was a fine-looking woman, cheerful
and gay. At first, I almost had to hobble her to keep her from loping
around at George's heels; but finally I got her so she seemed glad to go
riding with me and sailing on the lake; and she seemed real hurt on the
mornings when I forgot to send her a bunch of flowers. Still, I didn't
like the way she looked at George, sometimes, out of the corner of her
eye. George was having a fine time now, going with the whole bunch just
as he pleased. Yes'm," continued Bell, "she certainly was a fine-looking
woman at that time. She's changed some since, as you might have noticed
at the supper table."
"What!" I exclaimed.
"I married Mrs. De Clinton," went on Bell. "One evening while we were
up at the lake. When I told George about it, he opened his mouth and I
thought he was going to break our traditions and say something grateful,
but he swallowed it back.
"'All right,' says he, playing with his dog. 'I hope you won't have too
much trouble. Myself, I'm not never going to marry.'
"That was three years ago," said Bell. "We came here to live. For a year
we got along medium fine. And then everything changed. For two years
I've been having something that rhymes first-class with my name. You
heard the row upstairs this evening? That was a merry welcome compared
to the usual average. She's tired of me and of this little town life and
she rages all day, like a panther in a cage. I stood it until two weeks
ago and then I had to send out The Call. I located George in Sacramento.
He started the day he got my wire."
Mrs. Bell came out of the house swiftly toward us. Some strong
excitement or anxiety seemed to possess her, but she smiled a faint
hostess smile, and tried to keep her voice calm.
"The dew is falling," she said, "and it's growing rather late. Wouldn't
you gentlemen rather come into the house?"
Bell took some cigars from his pocket and answered: "It's most too fine
a night to turn in yet. I think Mr. Ames and I will walk out along the
road a mile or so and have another smoke. I want to talk with him about
some goods that I want to buy."
"Up the road or down the road?" asked Mrs. Bell.
"Down," said Bell.
I thought she breathed a sigh of relief.
When we had gone a hundred yards and the house became concealed by
trees, Bell guided me into the thick grove that lined the road and back
through them toward the house again. We stopped within twenty yards of
the house, concealed by the dark shadows. I wondered at this maneuver.
And then I heard in the distance coming down the road beyond the house,
the regular hoofbeats of a team of horses. Bell held his watch in a ray
of moonlight.
"On time, within a minute," he said. "That's George's way."
The team slowed up as it drew near the house and stopped in a patch of
black shadows. We saw the figure of a woman carrying a heavy valise
move swiftly from the other side of the house, and hurry to the waiting
vehicle. Then it rolled away briskly in the direction from which it had
come.
I looked at Bell inquiringly, I suppose. I certainly asked him no
question.
"She's running away with George," said Bell, simply. "He's kept me
posted about the progress of the scheme all along. She'll get a divorce
in six months and then George will marry her. He never helps anybody
halfway. It's all arranged between them."
I began to wonder what friendship was, after all.
When we went into the house, Bell began to talk easily on other
subjects; and I took his cue. By and by the big chance to buy out the
business in Mountain City came back to my mind and I began to urge it
upon him. Now that he was free, it would be easier for him to make the
move; and he was sure of a splendid bargain.
Bell was silent for some minutes, but when I looked at him I fancied
that he was thinking of something else - that he was not considering the
project.
"Why, no, Mr. Ames," he said, after a while, "I can't make that deal.
I'm awful thankful to you, though, for telling me about it. But I've got
to stay here. I can't go to Mountain City."
"Why?" I asked.
"Missis Bell," he replied, "won't live in Mountain City, She hates the
place and wouldn't go there. I've got to keep right on here in
Saltillo."
"Mrs. Bell!" I exclaimed, too puzzled to conjecture what he meant.
"I ought to explain," said Bell. "I know George and I know Mrs. Bell.
He's impatient in his ways. He can't stand things that fret him, long,
like I can. Six months, I give them - six months of married life, and
there'll be another disunion. Mrs. Bell will come back to me. There's no
other place for her to go. I've got to stay here and wait. At the end of
six months, I'll have to grab a satchel and catch the first train. For
George will be sending out The Call."
[Illustration: "See Tom and the dog." (cartoon from _The Rolling
Stone_)]
A DINNER AT - - [3]
[Footnote 3: See advertising column, "Where to Dine Well,"
in the daily newspapers.]
[The story referred to in this skit appears in "The Trimmed
Lamp" under the same title - "The Badge of Policeman O'Roon."]
The Adventures of an Author With His Own Hero
All that day - in fact from the moment of his creation - Van Sweller had
conducted himself fairly well in my eyes. Of course I had had to make
many concessions; but in return he had been no less considerate. Once
or twice we had had sharp, brief contentions over certain points of
behavior; but, prevailingly, give and take had been our rule.
His morning toilet provoked our first tilt. Van Sweller went about it
confidently.
"The usual thing, I suppose, old chap," he said, with a smile and a
yawn. "I ring for a b. and s., and then I have my tub. I splash a good
deal in the water, of course. You are aware that there are two ways in
which I can receive Tommy Carmichael when he looks in to have a chat
about polo. I can talk to him through the bathroom door, or I can be
picking at a grilled bone which my man has brought in. Which would you
prefer?"
I smiled with diabolic satisfaction at his coming discomfiture.
"Neither," I said. "You will make your appearance on the scene when a
gentleman should - after you are fully dressed, which indubitably private
function shall take place behind closed doors. And I will feel indebted
to you if, after you do appear, your deportment and manners are such
that it will not be necessary to inform the public, in order to appease
its apprehension, that you have taken a bath."
Van Sweller slightly elevated his brows.
"Oh, very well," he said, a trifle piqued. "I rather imagine it concerns
you more than it does me. Cut the 'tub' by all means, if you think best.
But it has been the usual thing, you know."
This was my victory; but after Van Sweller emerged from his apartments
in the "Beaujolie" I was vanquished in a dozen small but well-contested
skirmishes. I allowed him a cigar; but routed him on the question of
naming its brand. But he worsted me when I objected to giving him a
"coat unmistakably English in its cut." I allowed him to "stroll down
Broadway," and even permitted "passers by" (God knows there's nowhere
to pass but by) to "turn their heads and gaze with evident admiration
at his erect figure." I demeaned myself, and, as a barber, gave him a
"smooth, dark face with its keen, frank eye, and firm jaw."
Later on he looked in at the club and saw Freddy Vavasour, polo team
captain, dawdling over grilled bone No. 1.
"Dear old boy," began Van Sweller; but in an instant I had seized him
by the collar and dragged him aside with the scantiest courtesy.
"For heaven's sake talk like a man," I said, sternly. "Do you think it
is manly to use those mushy and inane forms of address? That man is
neither dear nor old nor a boy."
To my surprise Van Sweller turned upon me a look of frank pleasure.
"I am glad to hear you say that," he said, heartily. "I used those
words because I have been forced to say them so often. They really are
contemptible. Thanks for correcting me, dear old boy."
Still I must admit that Van Sweller's conduct in the park that morning
was almost without flaw. The courage, the dash, the modesty, the skill,
and fidelity that he displayed atoned for everything.
This is the way the story runs. Van Sweller has been a gentleman member
of the "Rugged Riders," the company that made a war with a foreign
country famous. Among his comrades was Lawrence O'Roon, a man whom Van
Sweller liked. A strange thing - and a hazardous one in fiction - was that
Van Sweller and O'Roon resembled each other mightily in face, form, and
general appearance. After the war Van Sweller pulled wires, and O'Roon
was made a mounted policeman.
Now, one night in New York there are commemorations and libations by old
comrades, and in the morning, Mounted Policeman O'Roon, unused to potent
liquids - another premise hazardous in fiction - finds the earth bucking
and bounding like a bronco, with no stirrup into which he may insert
foot and save his honor and his badge.
_Noblesse oblige?_ Surely. So out along the driveways and bridle paths
trots Hudson Van Sweller in the uniform of his incapacitated comrade, as
like unto him as one French pea is unto a _petit pois_.
It is, of course, jolly larks for Van Sweller, who has wealth and
social position enough for him to masquerade safely even as a police
commissioner doing his duty, if he wished to do so. But society, not
given to scanning the countenances of mounted policemen, sees nothing
unusual in the officer on the beat.
And then comes the runaway.
That is a fine scene - the swaying victoria, the impetuous, daft horses
plunging through the line of scattering vehicles, the driver stupidly
holding his broken reins, and the ivory-white face of Amy Ffolliott, as
she clings desperately with each slender hand. Fear has come and gone:
it has left her expression pensive and just a little pleading, for life
is not so bitter.
And then the clatter and swoop of Mounted Policeman Van Sweller! Oh, it
was - but the story has not yet been printed. When it is you shall learn
bow he sent his bay like a bullet after the imperilled victoria. A
Crichton, a Croesus, and a Centaur in one, he hurls the invincible
combination into the chase.
When the story is printed you will admire the breathless scene where Van
Sweller checks the headlong team. And then he looks into Amy Ffolliott's
eyes and sees two things - the possibilities of a happiness he has long
sought, and a nascent promise of it. He is unknown to her; but he stands
in her sight illuminated by the hero's potent glory, she his and he hers
by all the golden, fond, unreasonable laws of love and light literature.
Ay, that is a rich moment. And it will stir you to find Van Sweller
in that fruitful nick of time thinking of his comrade O'Roon, who is
cursing his gyrating bed and incapable legs in an unsteady room in a
West Side hotel while Van Sweller holds his badge and his honor.
Van Sweller hears Miss Ffolliott's voice thrillingly asking the name of
her preserver. If Hudson Van Sweller, in policeman's uniform, has saved
the life of palpitating beauty in the park - where is Mounted Policeman
O'Roon, in whose territory the deed is done? How quickly by a word can
the hero reveal himself, thus discarding his masquerade of ineligibility
and doubling the romance! But there is his friend!
Van Sweller touches his cap. "It's nothing, Miss," he says, sturdily;
"that's what we are paid for - to do our duty." And away he rides. But
the story does not end there.
As I have said, Van Sweller carried off the park scene to my decided
satisfaction. Even to me he was a hero when he foreswore, for the sake
of his friend, the romantic promise of his adventure. It was later