of vanity went all over her; and then she looked Ramonti in the eyes,
and a tremendous throb went through her heart. She hadn't expected that
throb. It took her by surprise. The musician had become a big factor in
her life, and she hadn't been aware of it.
"Mr. Ramonti," she said sorrowfully (this was not on the stage,
remember; it was in the old home near Abingdon Square), "I'm awfully
sorry, but I'm a married woman."
And then she told him the sad story of her life, as a heroine must do,
sooner or later, either to a theatrical manager or to a reporter.
Ramonti took her hand, bowed low and kissed it, and went up to his room.
Helen sat down and looked mournfully at her hand. Well she might. Three
suitors had kissed it, mounted their red roan steeds and ridden away.
In an hour entered the mysterious stranger with the haunting eyes. Helen
was in the willow rocker, knitting a useless thing in cotton-wool. He
ricocheted from the stairs and stopped for a chat. Sitting across the
table from her, he also poured out his narrative of love. And then he
said: "Helen, do you not remember me? I think I have seen it in your
eyes. Can you forgive the past and remember the love that has lasted
for twenty years? I wronged you deeply - I was afraid to come back to
you - but my love overpowered my reason. Can you, will you, forgive me?"
Helen stood up. The mysterious stranger held one of her hands in a
strong and trembling clasp.
There she stood, and I pity the stage that it has not acquired a scene
like that and her emotions to portray.
For she stood with a divided heart. The fresh, unforgettable, virginal
love for her bridegroom was hers; the treasured, sacred, honored memory
of her first choice filled half her soul. She leaned to that pure
feeling. Honor and faith and sweet, abiding romance bound her to it. But
the other half of her heart and soul was filled with something else - a
later, fuller, nearer influence. And so the old fought against the new.
And while she hesitated, from the room above came the soft, racking,
petitionary music of a violin. The hag, music, bewitches some of the
noblest. The daws may peck upon one's sleeve without injury, but whoever
wears his heart upon his tympanum gets it not far from the neck.
This music and the musician caller her, and at her side honor and the
old love held her back.
"Forgive me," he pleaded.
"Twenty years is a long time to remain away from the one you say you
love," she declared, with a purgatorial touch.
"How could I tell?" he begged. "I will conceal nothing from you. That
night when he left I followed him. I was mad with jealousy. On a dark
street I struck him down. He did not rise. I examined him. His head had
struck a stone. I did not intend to kill him. I was mad with love and
jealousy. I hid near by and saw an ambulance take him away. Although you
married him, Helen - "
"_Who Are You?_" cried the woman, with wide-open eyes, snatching her
hand away.
"Don't you remember me, Helen - the one who has always loved you best? I
am John Delaney. If you can forgive - "
But she was gone, leaping, stumbling, hurrying, flying up the stairs
toward the music and him who had forgotten, but who had known her for
his in each of his two existences, and as she climbed up she sobbed,
cried and sang: "Frank! Frank! Frank!"
Three mortals thus juggling with years as though they were billiard
balls, and my friend, the reporter, couldn't see anything funny in it!
XII
A RAMBLE IN APHASIA
My wife and I parted on that morning in precisely our usual manner. She
left her second cup of tea to follow me to the front door. There she
plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of
woman to proclaim ownership) and bade me to take care of my cold. I had
no cold. Next came her kiss of parting - the level kiss of domesticity
flavored with Young Hyson. There was no fear of the extemporaneous,
of variety spicing her infinite custom. With the deft touch of long
malpractice, she dabbed awry my well-set scarf pin; and then, as I
closed the door, I heard her morning slippers pattering back to her
cooling tea.
When I set out I had no thought or premonition of what was to occur.
The attack came suddenly.
For many weeks I had been toiling, almost night and day, at a famous
railroad law case that I won triumphantly but a few days previously. In
fact, I had been digging away at the law almost without cessation for
many years. Once or twice good Doctor Volney, my friend and physician,
had warned me.
"If you don't slacken up, Bellford," he said, "you'll go suddenly to
pieces. Either your nerves or your brain will give way. Tell me,
does a week pass in which you do not read in the papers of a case of
aphasia - of some man lost, wandering nameless, with his past and his
identity blotted out - and all from that little brain clot made by
overwork or worry?"
"I always thought," said I, "that the clot in those instances was really
to be found on the brains of the newspaper reporters."
Doctor Volney shook his head.
"The disease exists," he said. "You need a change or a rest. Court-room,
office and home - there is the only route you travel. For recreation
you - read law books. Better take warning in time."
"On Thursday nights," I said, defensively, "my wife and I play cribbage.
On Sundays she reads to me the weekly letter from her mother. That law
books are not a recreation remains yet to be established."
That morning as I walked I was thinking of Doctor Volney's words. I was
feeling as well as I usually did - possibly in better spirits than usual.
I woke with stiff and cramped muscles from having slept long on the
incommodious seat of a day coach. I leaned my head against the seat and
tried to think. After a long time I said to myself: "I must have a name
of some sort." I searched my pockets. Not a card; not a letter; not a
paper or monogram could I find. But I found in my coat pocket nearly
$3,000 in bills of large denomination. "I must be some one, of course,"
I repeated to myself, and began again to consider.
The car was well crowded with men, among whom, I told myself, there must
have been some common interest, for they intermingled freely, and seemed
in the best good humor and spirits. One of them - a stout, spectacled
gentleman enveloped in a decided odor of cinnamon and aloes - took the
vacant half of my seat with a friendly nod, and unfolded a newspaper.
In the intervals between his periods of reading, we conversed, as
travelers will, on current affairs. I found myself able to sustain the
conversation on such subjects with credit, at least to my memory. By and
by my companion said:
"You are one of us, of course. Fine lot of men the West sends in this
time. I'm glad they held the convention in New York; I've never been
East before. My name's R. P. Bolder - Bolder & Son, of Hickory Grove,
Missouri."
Though unprepared, I rose to the emergency, as men will when put to it.
Now must I hold a christening, and be at once babe, parson and parent.
My senses came to the rescue of my slower brain. The insistent odor of
drugs from my companion supplied one idea; a glance at his newspaper,
where my eye met a conspicuous advertisement, assisted me further.
"My name," said I, glibly, "is Edward Pinkhammer. I am a druggist, and
my home is in Cornopolis, Kansas."
"I knew you were a druggist," said my fellow traveler, affably. "I saw
the callous spot on your right forefinger where the handle of the pestle
rubs. Of course, you are a delegate to our National Convention."
"Are all these men druggists?" I asked, wonderingly.
"They are. This car came through from the West. And they're your
old-time druggists, too - none of your patent tablet-and-granule
pharmashootists that use slot machines instead of a prescription desk.
We percolate our own paregoric and roll our own pills, and we ain't
above handling a few garden seeds in the spring, and carrying a side
line of confectionery and shoes. I tell you Hampinker, I've got an idea
to spring on this convention - new ideas is what they want. Now, you
know the shelf bottles of tartar emetic and Rochelle salt Ant. et Pot.
Tart. and Sod. et Pot. Tart. - one's poison, you know, and the other's
harmless. It's easy to mistake one label for the other. Where do
druggists mostly keep 'em? Why, as far apart as possible, on different
shelves. That's wrong. I say keep 'em side by side, so when you want
one you can always compare it with the other and avoid mistakes. Do you
catch the idea?"
"It seems to me a very good one," I said.
"All right! When I spring it on the convention you back it up. We'll
make some of these Eastern orange-phosphate-and-massage-cream professors
that think they're the only lozenges in the market look like hypodermic
tablets."
"If I can be of any aid," I said, warming, "the two bottles of - er - "
"Tartrate of antimony and potash, and tartrate of soda and potash."
"Shall henceforth sit side by side," I concluded, firmly.
"Now, there's another thing," said Mr. Bolder. "For an excipient in
manipulating a pill mass which do you prefer - the magnesia carbonate or
the pulverised glycerrhiza radix?"
"The - er - magnesia," I said. It was easier to say than the other word.
Mr. Bolder glanced at me distrustfully through his spectacles.
"Give me the glycerrhiza," said he. "Magnesia cakes."
"Here's another one of these fake aphasia cases," he said, presently,
handing me his newspaper, and laying his finger upon an article. "I
don't believe in 'em. I put nine out of ten of 'em down as frauds. A man
gets sick of his business and his folks and wants to have a good time.
He skips out somewhere, and when they find him he pretends to have lost
his memory - don't know his own name, and won't even recognize the
strawberry mark on his wife's left shoulder. Aphasia! Tut! Why can't
they stay at home and forget?"
I took the paper and read, after the pungent headlines, the following:
"DENVER, June 12. - Elwyn C. Bellford, a prominent lawyer, is
mysteriously missing from his home since three days ago, and all
efforts to locate him have been in vain. Mr. Bellford is a well-known
citizen of the highest standing, and has enjoyed a large and
lucrative law practice. He is married and owns a fine home and the
most extensive private library in the State. On the day of his
disappearance, he drew quite a large sum of money from his bank. No
one can be found who saw him after he left the bank. Mr. Bellford
was a man of singularly quiet and domestic tastes, and seemed to
find his happiness in his home and profession. If any clue at all
exists to his strange disappearance, it may be found in the fact
that for some months he has been deeply absorbed in an important
law case in connection with the Q. Y. and Z. Railroad Company. It
is feared that overwork may have affected his mind. Every effort
is being made to discover the whereabouts of the missing man."
"It seems to me you are not altogether uncynical, Mr. Bolder," I said,
after I had read the despatch. "This has the sound, to me, of a genuine
case. Why should this man, prosperous, happily married, and respected,
choose suddenly to abandon everything? I know that these lapses of
memory do occur, and that men do find themselves adrift without a name,
a history or a home."
"Oh, gammon and jalap!" said Mr. Bolder. "It's larks they're after.
There's too much education nowadays. Men know about aphasia, and they
use it for an excuse. The women are wise, too. When it's all over they
look you in the eye, as scientific as you please, and say: 'He
hypnotized me.'"
Thus Mr. Bolder diverted, but did not aid, me with his comments and
philosophy.
We arrived in New York about ten at night. I rode in a cab to a hotel,
and I wrote my name "Edward Pinkhammer" in the register. As I did so
I felt pervade me a splendid, wild, intoxicating buoyancy - a sense of
unlimited freedom, of newly attained possibilities. I was just born into
the world. The old fetters - whatever they had been - were stricken from
my hands and feet. The future lay before me a clear road such as an
infant enters, and I could set out upon it equipped with a man's
learning and experience.
I thought the hotel clerk looked at me five seconds too long. I had no
baggage.
"The Druggists' Convention," I said. "My trunk has somehow failed to
arrive." I drew out a roll of money.
"Ah!" said he, showing an auriferous tooth, "we have quite a number of
the Western delegates stopping here." He struck a bell for the boy.
I endeavored to give color to my role.
"There is an important movement on foot among us Westerners," I said,
"in regard to a recommendation to the convention that the bottles
containing the tartrate of antimony and potash, and the tartrate of
sodium and potash be kept in a contiguous position on the shelf."
"Gentleman to three-fourteen," said the clerk, hastily. I was whisked
away to my room.
The next day I bought a trunk and clothing, and began to live the life
of Edward Pinkhammer. I did not tax my brain with endeavors to solve
problems of the past.
It was a piquant and sparkling cup that the great island city held up to
my lips. I drank of it gratefully. The keys of Manhattan belong to him
who is able to bear them. You must be either the city's guest or its
victim.
The following few days were as gold and silver. Edward Pinkhammer, yet
counting back to his birth by hours only, knew the rare joy of having
come upon so diverting a world full-fledged and unrestrained. I sat
entranced on the magic carpets provided in theatres and roof-gardens,
that transported one into strange and delightful lands full of
frolicsome music, pretty girls and grotesque drolly extravagant parodies
upon human kind. I went here and there at my own dear will, bound by
no limits of space, time or comportment. I dined in weird cabarets, at
weirder _tables d'hote_ to the sound of Hungarian music and the wild
shouts of mercurial artists and sculptors. Or, again, where the night
life quivers in the electric glare like a kinetoscopic picture, and the
millinery of the world, and its jewels, and the ones whom they adorn,
and the men who make all three possible are met for good cheer and the
spectacular effect. And among all these scenes that I have mentioned I
learned one thing that I never knew before. And that is that the key to
liberty is not in the hands of License, but Convention holds it. Comity
has a toll-gate at which you must pay, or you may not enter the land
of Freedom. In all the glitter, the seeming disorder, the parade, the
abandon, I saw this law, unobtrusive, yet like iron, prevail. Therefore,
in Manhattan you must obey these unwritten laws, and then you will be
freest of the free. If you decline to be bound by them, you put on
shackles.
Sometimes, as my mood urged me, I would seek the stately, softly
murmuring palm rooms, redolent with high-born life and delicate
restraint, in which to dine. Again I would go down to the waterways in
steamers packed with vociferous, bedecked, unchecked love-making clerks
and shop-girls to their crude pleasures on the island shores. And there
was always Broadway - glistening, opulent, wily, varying, desirable
Broadway - growing upon one like an opium habit.
One afternoon as I entered my hotel a stout man with a big nose and a
black mustache blocked my way in the corridor. When I would have passed
around him, he greet me with offensive familiarity.
"Hello, Bellford!" he cried, loudly. "What the deuce are you doing in
New York? Didn't know anything could drag you away from that old book
den of yours. Is Mrs. B. along or is this a little business run alone,
eh?"
"You have made a mistake, sir," I said, coldly, releasing my hand from
his grasp. "My name is Pinkhammer. You will excuse me."
The man dropped to one side, apparently astonished. As I walked to the
clerk's desk I heard him call to a bell boy and say something about
telegraph blanks.
"You will give me my bill," I said to the clerk, "and have my baggage
brought down in half an hour. I do not care to remain where I am annoyed
by confidence men."
I moved that afternoon to another hotel, a sedate, old-fashioned one on
lower Fifth Avenue.
There was a restaurant a little way off Broadway where one could be
served almost _al fresco_ in a tropic array of screening flora. Quiet
and luxury and a perfect service made it an ideal place in which to take
luncheon or refreshment. One afternoon I was there picking my way to a
table among the ferns when I felt my sleeve caught.
"Mr. Bellford!" exclaimed an amazingly sweet voice.
I turned quickly to see a lady seated alone - a lady of about thirty,
with exceedingly handsome eyes, who looked at me as though I had been
her very dear friend.
"You were about to pass me," she said, accusingly. "Don't tell me you
do not know me. Why should we not shake hands - at least once in fifteen
years?"
I shook hands with her at once. I took a chair opposite her at the
table. I summoned with my eyebrows a hovering waiter. The lady was
philandering with an orange ice. I ordered a _creme de menthe_. Her hair
was reddish bronze. You could not look at it, because you could not look
away from her eyes. But you were conscious of it as you are conscious of
sunset while you look into the profundities of a wood at twilight.
"Are you sure you know me?" I asked.
"No," she said, smiling. "I was never sure of that."
"What would you think," I said, a little anxiously, "if I were to tell
you that my name is Edward Pinkhammer, from Cornopolis, Kansas?"
"What would I think?" she repeated, with a merry glance. "Why, that you
had not brought Mrs. Bellford to New York with you, of course. I do wish
you had. I would have liked to see Marian." Her voice lowered
slightly - "You haven't changed much, Elwyn."
I felt her wonderful eyes searching mine and my face more closely.
"Yes, you have," she amended, and there was a soft, exultant note in
her latest tones; "I see it now. You haven't forgotten. You haven't
forgotten for a year or a day or an hour. I told you you never could."
I poked my straw anxiously in the _creme de menthe_.
"I'm sure I beg your pardon," I said, a little uneasy at her gaze. "But
that is just the trouble. I have forgotten. I've forgotten everything."
She flouted my denial. She laughed deliciously at something she seemed
to see in my face.
"I've heard of you at times," she went on. "You're quite a big lawyer
out West - Denver, isn't it, or Los Angeles? Marian must be very proud of
you. You knew, I suppose, that I married six months after you did. You
may have seen it in the papers. The flowers alone cost two thousand
dollars."
She had mentioned fifteen years. Fifteen years is a long time.
"Would it be too late," I asked, somewhat timorously, "to offer you
congratulations?"
"Not if you dare do it," she answered, with such fine intrepidity that
I was silent, and began to crease patterns on the cloth with my thumb
nail.
"Tell me one thing," she said, leaning toward me rather eagerly - "a
thing I have wanted to know for many years - just from a woman's
curiosity, of course - have you ever dared since that night to touch,
smell or look at white roses - at white roses wet with rain and dew?"
I took a sip of _creme de menthe_.
"It would be useless, I suppose," I said, with a sigh, "for me to repeat
that I have no recollection at all about these things. My memory is
completely at fault. I need not say how much I regret it."
The lady rested her arms upon the table, and again her eyes disdained
my words and went traveling by their own route direct to my soul. She
laughed softly, with a strange quality in the sound - it was a laugh of
happiness - yes, and of content - and of misery. I tried to look away from
her.
"You lie, Elwyn Bellford," she breathed, blissfully. "Oh, I know you
lie!"
I gazed dully into the ferns.
"My name is Edward Pinkhammer," I said. "I came with the delegates to
the Druggists' National Convention. There is a movement on foot for
arranging a new position for the bottles of tartrate of antimony and
tartrate of potash, in which, very likely, you would take little
interest."
A shining landau stopped before the entrance. The lady rose. I took her
hand, and bowed.
"I am deeply sorry," I said to her, "that I cannot remember. I could
explain, but fear you would not understand. You will not concede
Pinkhammer; and I really cannot at all conceive of the - the roses and
other things."
"Good-by, Mr. Bellford," she said, with her happy, sorrowful smile, as
she stepped into her carriage.
I attended the theatre that night. When I returned to my hotel, a quiet
man in dark clothes, who seemed interested in rubbing his finger nails
with a silk handkerchief, appeared, magically, at my side.
"Mr. Pinkhammer," he said, giving the bulk of his attention to his
forefinger, "may I request you to step aside with me for a little
conversation? There is a room here."
"Certainly," I answered.
He conducted me into a small, private parlor. A lady and a gentleman
were there. The lady, I surmised, would have been unusually good-looking
had her features not been clouded by an expression of keen worry and
fatigue. She was of a style of figure and possessed coloring and
features that were agreeable to my fancy. She was in a traveling dress;
she fixed upon me an earnest look of extreme anxiety, and pressed an
unsteady hand to her bosom. I think she would have started forward, but
the gentleman arrested her movement with an authoritative motion of his
hand. He then came, himself, to meet me. He was a man of forty, a little
gray about the temples, and with a strong, thoughtful face.
"Bellford, old man," he said, cordially, "I'm glad to see you again. Of
course we know everything is all right. I warned you, you know, that you
were overdoing it. Now, you'll go back with us, and be yourself again in
no time."
I smiled ironically.
"I have been 'Bellforded' so often," I said, "that it has lost its edge.
Still, in the end, it may grow wearisome. Would you be willing at all to
entertain the hypothesis that my name is Edward Pinkhammer, and that I
never saw you before in my life?"
Before the man could reply a wailing cry came from the woman. She sprang
past his detaining arm. "Elwyn!" she sobbed, and cast herself upon me,
and clung tight. "Elwyn," she cried again, "don't break my heart. I am
your wife - call my name once - just once. I could see you dead rather
than this way."
I unwound her arms respectfully, but firmly.
"Madam," I said, severely, "pardon me if I suggest that you accept a
resemblance too precipitately. It is a pity," I went on, with an amused
laugh, as the thought occurred to me, "that this Bellford and I could
not be kept side by side upon the same shelf like tartrates of sodium
and antimony for purposes of identification. In order to understand the
allusion," I concluded airily, "it may be necessary for you to keep an
eye on the proceedings of the Druggists' National Convention."
The lady turned to her companion, and grasped his arm.
"What is it, Doctor Volney? Oh, what is it?" she moaned.
He led her to the door.
"Go to your room for a while," I heard him say. "I will remain and talk
with him. His mind? No, I think not - only a portion of the brain. Yes,
I am sure he will recover. Go to your room and leave me with him."
The lady disappeared. The man in dark clothes also went outside, still
manicuring himself in a thoughtful way. I think he waited in the hall.
"I would like to talk with you a while, Mr. Pinkhammer, if I may," said
the gentleman who remained.
"Very well, if you care to," I replied, "and will excuse me if I take it
comfortably; I am rather tired." I stretched myself upon a couch by a
window and lit a cigar. He drew a chair nearby.
"Let us speak to the point," he said, soothingly. "Your name is not
Pinkhammer."
"I know that as well as you do," I said, coolly. "But a man must have a
name of some sort. I can assure you that I do not extravagantly admire
the name of Pinkhammer. But when one christens one's self suddenly, the
fine names do not seem to suggest themselves. But, suppose it had been
Scheringhausen or Scroggins! I think I did very well with Pinkhammer."
"Your name," said the other man, seriously, "is Elwyn C. Bellford. You
are one of the first lawyers in Denver. You are suffering from an attack
of aphasia, which has caused you to forget your identity. The cause of
it was over-application to your profession, and, perhaps, a life too
bare of natural recreation and pleasures. The lady who has just left the
room is your wife."
"She is what I would call a fine-looking woman," I said, after a
judicial pause. "I particularly admire the shade of brown in her hair."
"She is a wife to be proud of. Since your disappearance, nearly two
weeks ago, she has scarcely closed her eyes. We learned that you were in
New York through a telegram sent by Isidore Newman, a traveling man from
Denver. He said that he had met you in a hotel here, and that you did
not recognize him."
"I think I remember the occasion," I said. "The fellow called me
'Bellford,' if I am not mistaken. But don't you think it about time,
now, for you to introduce yourself?"
"I am Robert Volney - Doctor Volney. I have been your close friend for
twenty years, and your physician for fifteen. I came with Mrs. Bellford
to trace you as soon as we got the telegram. Try, Elwyn, old man - try to
remember!"
"What's the use to try?" I asked, with a little frown. "You say you are
a physician. Is aphasia curable? When a man loses his memory does it
return slowly, or suddenly?"
"Sometimes gradually and imperfectly; sometimes as suddenly as it went."
"Will you undertake the treatment of my case, Doctor Volney?" I asked.
"Old friend," said he, "I'll do everything in my power, and will have
done everything that science can do to cure you."
"Very well," said I. "Then you will consider that I am your patient.
Everything is in confidence now - professional confidence."
"Of course," said Doctor Volney.
I got up from the couch. Some one had set a vase of white roses on the
centre table - a cluster of white roses, freshly sprinkled and fragrant.
I threw them far out of the window, and then I laid myself upon the
couch again.
"It will be best, Bobby," I said, "to have this cure happen suddenly.
I'm rather tired of it all, anyway. You may go now and bring Marian in.
But, oh, Doc," I said, with a sigh, as I kicked him on the shin - "good
old Doc - it was glorious!"
XIII
A MUNICIPAL REPORT
The cities are full of pride,
Challenging each to each -
This from her mountainside,
That from her burthened beach.
R. KIPLING.
Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville,
Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the United States
that are "story cities" - New York, of course, New Orleans, and,
best of the lot, San Francisco. - FRANK NORRIS.
East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians.
Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a
State. They are the Southerners of the West. Now, Chicagoans are no less
loyal to their city; but when you ask them why, they stammer and speak
of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows Building. But Californians go into
detail.
Of course they have, in the climate, an argument that is good for half
an hour while you are thinking of your coal bills and heavy underwear.
But as soon as they come to mistake your silence for conviction, madness
comes upon them, and they picture the city of the Golden Gate as the
Bagdad of the New World. So far, as a matter of opinion, no refutation
is necessary. But, dear cousins all (from Adam and Eve descended), it
is a rash one who will lay his finger on the map and say: "In this town
there can be no romance - what could happen here?" Yes, it is a bold and
a rash deed to challenge in one sentence history, romance, and Rand and
McNally.
NASHVILLE - A city, port of delivery, and the capital of the
State of Tennessee, is on the Cumberland River and on the
N. C. & St. L. and the L. & N. railroads. This city is regarded
as the most important educational centre in the South.
I stepped off the train at 8 P.M. Having searched the thesaurus in vain
for adjectives, I must, as a substitution, hie me to comparison in the
form of a recipe.
Take a London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts; gas leaks 20 parts;
dewdrops gathered in a brick yard at sunrise, 25 parts; odor of
honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix.
The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville
drizzle. It is not so fragrant as a moth-ball nor as thick as pea-soup;
but 'tis enough - 'twill serve.
I went to a hotel in a tumbril. It required strong self-suppression for
me to keep from climbing to the top of it and giving an imitation of
Sidney Carton. The vehicle was drawn by beasts of a bygone era and
driven by something dark and emancipated.
I was sleepy and tired, so when I got to the hotel I hurriedly paid it
the fifty cents it demanded (with approximate lagniappe, I assure you).
I knew its habits; and I did not want to hear it prate about its old
"marster" or anything that happened "befo' de wah."
The hotel was one of the kind described as "renovated." That means
$20,000 worth of new marble pillars, tiling, electric lights and brass
cuspidors in the lobby, and a new L. & N. time table and a lithograph of
Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms above. The management
was without reproach, the attention full of exquisite Southern courtesy,
the service as slow as the progress of a snail and as good-humored as
Rip Van Winkle. The food was worth traveling a thousand miles for. There
is no other hotel in the world where you can get such chicken livers _en
brochette_.
At dinner I asked a Negro waiter if there was anything doing in town. He
pondered gravely for a minute, and then replied: "Well, boss, I don't
really reckon there's anything at all doin' after sundown."
Sundown had been accomplished; it had been drowned in the drizzle long
before. So that spectacle was denied me. But I went forth upon the
streets in the drizzle to see what might be there.
It is built on undulating grounds; and the streets are lighted
by electricity at a cost of $32,470 per annum.
As I left the hotel there was a race riot. Down upon me charged a
company of freedmen, or Arabs, or Zulus, armed with - no, I saw with
relief that they were not rifles, but whips. And I saw dimly a caravan
of black, clumsy vehicles; and at the reassuring shouts, "Kyar you
anywhere in the town, boss, fuh fifty cents," I reasoned that I was
merely a "fare" instead of a victim.
I walked through long streets, all leading uphill. I wondered how those
streets ever came down again. Perhaps they didn't until they were
"graded." On a few of the "main streets" I saw lights in stores here and
there; saw street cars go by conveying worthy burghers hither and yon;
saw people pass engaged in the art of conversation, and heard a burst of
semi-lively laughter issuing from a soda-water and ice-cream parlor.
The streets other than "main" seemed to have enticed upon their borders
houses consecrated to peace and domesticity. In many of them lights
shone behind discreetly drawn window shades; in a few pianos tinkled
orderly and irreproachable music. There was, indeed, little "doing."
I wished I had come before sundown. So I returned to my hotel.
In November, 1864, the Confederate General Hood advanced against
Nashville, where he shut up a National force under General Thomas.
The latter then sallied forth and defeated the Confederates in a
terrible conflict.
All my life I have heard of, admired, and witnessed the fine
marksmanship of the South in its peaceful conflicts in the
tobacco-chewing regions. But in my hotel a surprise awaited me. There
were twelve bright, new, imposing, capacious brass cuspidors in the
great lobby, tall enough to be called urns and so wide-mouthed that the
crack pitcher of a lady baseball team should have been able to throw a
ball into one of them at five paces distant. But, although a terrible
battle had raged and was still raging, the enemy had not suffered.
Bright, new, imposing, capacious, untouched, they stood. But, shades of
Jefferson Brick! the tile floor - the beautiful tile floor! I could not
avoid thinking of the battle of Nashville, and trying to draw, as is my
foolish habit, some deductions about hereditary marksmanship.
Here I first saw Major (by misplaced courtesy) Wentworth Caswell. I knew
him for a type the moment my eyes suffered from the sight of him. A rat
has no geographical habitat. My old friend, A. Tennyson, said, as he so
well said almost everything:
Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip,
And curse me the British vermin, the rat.
Let us regard the word "British" as interchangeable _ad lib_. A rat
is a rat.
This man was hunting about the hotel lobby like a starved dog that had
forgotten where he had buried a bone. He had a face of great acreage,
red, pulpy, and with a kind of sleepy massiveness like that of Buddha.
He possessed one single virtue - he was very smoothly shaven. The mark
of the beast is not indelible upon a man until he goes about with a
stubble. I think that if he had not used his razor that day I would have
repulsed his advances, and the criminal calendar of the world would have
been spared the addition of one murder.
I happened to be standing within five feet of a cuspidor when Major
Caswell opened fire upon it. I had been observant enough to perceive
that the attacking force was using Gatlings instead of squirrel rifles;
so I side-stepped so promptly that the major seized the opportunity to
apologize to a noncombatant. He had the blabbing lip. In four minutes he
had become my friend and had dragged me to the bar.
I desire to interpolate here that I am a Southerner. But I am not one by
profession or trade. I eschew the string tie, the slouch hat, the Prince
Albert, the number of bales of cotton destroyed by Sherman, and plug
chewing. When the orchestra plays Dixie I do not cheer. I slide a little
lower on the leather-cornered seat and, well, order another Wuerzburger
and wish that Longstreet had - but what's the use?
Major Caswell banged the bar with his fist, and the first gun at Fort
Sumter re-echoed. When he fired the last one at Appomattox I began to
hope. But then he began on family trees, and demonstrated that Adam
was only a third cousin of a collateral branch of the Caswell family.
Genealogy disposed of, he took up, to my distaste, his private family
matters. He spoke of his wife, traced her descent back to Eve, and
profanely denied any possible rumor that she may have had relations in
the land of Nod.
By this time I was beginning to suspect that he was trying to obscure
by noise the fact that he had ordered the drinks, on the chance that
I would be bewildered into paying for them. But when they were down he
crashed a silver dollar loudly upon the bar. Then, of course, another
serving was obligatory. And when I had paid for that I took leave of him
brusquely; for I wanted no more of him. But before I had obtained my
release he had prated loudly of an income that his wife received, and
showed a handful of silver money.
When I got my key at the desk the clerk said to me courteously: "If that
man Caswell has annoyed you, and if you would like to make a complaint,
we will have him ejected. He is a nuisance, a loafer, and without any
known means of support, although he seems to have some money most the
time. But we don't seem to be able to hit upon any means of throwing him
out legally."
"Why, no," said I, after some reflection; "I don't see my way clear
to making a complaint. But I would like to place myself on record as
asserting that I do not care for his company. Your town," I continued,
"seems to be a quiet one. What manner of entertainment, adventure, or
excitement have you to offer to the stranger within your gates?"
"Well, sir," said the clerk, "there will be a show here next Thursday.
It is - I'll look it up and have the announcement sent up to your room
with the ice water. Good night."
After I went up to my room I looked out the window. It was only about
ten o'clock, but I looked upon a silent town. The drizzle continued,
spangled with dim lights, as far apart as currants in a cake sold at the
Ladies' Exchange.
"A quiet place," I said to myself, as my first shoe struck the ceiling
of the occupant of the room beneath mine. "Nothing of the life here that
gives color and variety to the cities in the East and West. Just a good,
ordinary, humdrum, business town."
Nashville occupies a foremost place among the manufacturing
centres of the country. It is the fifth boot and shoe market
in the United States, the largest candy and cracker manufacturing
city in the South, and does an enormous wholesale drygoods,
grocery, and drug business.
I must tell you how I came to be in Nashville, and I assure you the
digression brings as much tedium to me as it does to you. I was
traveling elsewhere on my own business, but I had a commission from a
Northern literary magazine to stop over there and establish a personal
connection between the publication and one of its contributors, Azalea
Adair.
Adair (there was no clue to the personality except the handwriting) had
sent in some essays (lost art!) and poems that had made the editors
swear approvingly over their one o'clock luncheon. So they had
commissioned me to round up said Adair and corner by contract his or her
output at two cents a word before some other publisher offered her ten
or twenty.
At nine o'clock the next morning, after my chicken livers _en brochette_
(try them if you can find that hotel), I strayed out into the drizzle,
which was still on for an unlimited run. At the first corner I came
upon Uncle Caesar. He was a stalwart Negro, older than the pyramids,
with gray wool and a face that reminded me of Brutus, and a second
afterwards of the late King Cettiwayo. He wore the most remarkable coat
that I ever had seen or expect to see. It reached to his ankles and had
once been a Confederate gray in colors. But rain and sun and age had so
variegated it that Joseph's coat, beside it, would have faded to a pale
monochrome. I must linger with that coat, for it has to do with the
story - the story that is so long in coming, because you can hardly
expect anything to happen in Nashville.
Once it must have been the military coat of an officer. The cape of it
had vanished, but all adown its front it had been frogged and tasseled
magnificently. But now the frogs and tassles were gone. In their stead
had been patiently stitched (I surmised by some surviving "black mammy")
new frogs made of cunningly twisted common hempen twine. This twine
was frayed and disheveled. It must have been added to the coat as a
substitute for vanished splendors, with tasteless but painstaking
devotion, for it followed faithfully the curves of the long-missing
frogs. And, to complete the comedy and pathos of the garment, all