_ CHAPTER XVIII. The Going Away of Laura and Clifford, and the Departure of Mr. Trescott
"Thet little quirly thing there," said Mr. Trescott, spreading a map out on my library table and pointing with his trembling and knobby forefinger, "is Wolf Nose Crick. It runs into the Cheyenne, down about there, an' 's got worlds o' water fer any sized herds, an' carries yeh back from the river fer twenty-five miles. There's a big spring at the head of it, where the ranch buildin's is; an' there's a clump o' timber there--box elders an' cottonwoods, y' know. Now see the advantage I'll have. Other herds'll hev to traipse back an' forth from grass to water an' from water to grass, a-runnin' theirselves poor; an' all the time I'll hev livin' water right in the middle o' my range."
His wife and daughter had carefully nursed him through the fever, as Dr. Aylesbury called it, and for two weeks Mr. Trescott was seen by no one else. Then from our windows Alice and I could see him about his grounds, at work amongst his shrubbery, or busying himself with his horses and carriages. Josie had transformed herself into a woman of business, and every day she went to her father's office, opened his mail, and held business consultations. Whenever it was necessary for papers to be executed, Josie went with the lawyer and notary to the Trescott home for the signing.
The Trescott and Tolliver business brought her into daily contact with the Captain. He used to open the doors between their offices, and have the mail sorted for Josie when she came in. There was something of homage in the manner in which he received her into the office, and laid matters of business before her. It was something larger and more expansive than can be denoted by the word courtesy or politeness.
"Captain," she would say, with the half-amused smile with which she always rewarded him, "here is this notice from the Grain Belt Trust Company about the interest on twenty-five thousand dollars of bonds which they have advanced to us. Will you please explain it?"
"Sutt'nly, Madam, sutt'nly," replied he, using a form of address which he adopted the first time she appeared as Bill's representative in the business, and which he never cheapened by use elsewhere. "Those bonds ah debentures, which--"
"But what
are debentures, Captain?" she inquired.
"Pahdon me, my deah lady," said he, "fo' not explaining that at fuhst! Those ah the debentures of the Trescott Development Company, fawmed to build up Trescott's Addition. We sold those lands on credit, except fo' a cash payment of one foath the purchase-price. This brought to us, as you can see, Madam, a lahge amount of notes, secured by fuhst mortgages on the Trescott's Addition properties. These notes and mortgages we deposited with the Grain Belt Trust Company, and issued against them the bonds of the Trescott Development Company--debentures--and the G. B. T. people floated these bonds in the East and elsewhah. This interest mattah was an ovahsight; I should have looked out fo' it, and not put the G. B. T. to the trouble of advancing it; but as we have this mawnin' on deposit with them several thousand dollahs from the sale of the Tolliver's Subdivision papah, the thing becomes a mattah of no impo'tance whatevah!"
"But," went on Josie, "how shall we be able to pay the next installment of interest, and the principal, when it falls due?"
"Amply provided foh, my deah Madam," said the Captain, waving his arm; "the defe'ed payments and the interest on them will create an ample sinking fund!"
"But if they don't?" she inquired.
"That such a contingency can possibly arise, Madam," said the Captain in his most impressive orotund, and with his hand thrust into the bosom of his Prince Albert coat, "is something which my loyalty to Lattimore, my faith in my fellow citizens, my confidence in Mr. Elkins and Mr. Barslow, and my regahd fo' my own honah, pledged as it is to those to whom I have sold these properties on the representations I have made as to the prospects of the city, will not puhmit me to admit!"
This seemed to him entirely conclusive, and cut off the investigation. Conversation like this, in which Josie questioned the Captain and seemed ever convinced by his answers, gave her high rank in the Captain's estimation.
"Like most ladies," said he, "Miss Trescott is a little inclined to ovah-conservatism; but unlike most people of both sexes, she is quite able to grasp the lahgest views when explained to huh, and huh mental processes ah unerring. I have nevah failed to make the most complicated situation cleah to huh--nevah!"
And all this time Mr. Trescott was safeguarded at home, looking after his horses, carriages, and grounds, and at last permitted to come over to our house and pass the evening with me occasionally. It was on one of these visits that he spread out the map on the table and explained to me the advantages of his ranch on Wolf Nose Creek. The very thought of the open range and the roaming herds seemed to strengthen him.
"You talk," said I, "as if it were all settled. Are you really going out there?"
"Wal," said he, after some hesitation, "it kind o' makes me feel good to lay plans f'r goin'. I've made the deal with Aleck Macdonald f'r the water front--it's a good spec if I never go near it--an' I guess I'll send a bunch o' steers out to please Josie an' her ma. They're purtendin' to be stuck on goin', an' I've made the bargain to pacify 'em; but, say, do you know what kind of a place it is out on one o' them ranches?"
"In a general way, yes," said I.
"W'l, a general way wun't do," said he. "You've got to git right down to p'ticklers t' know about it, so's to know. It's seventy-five miles from a post-office an' twenty-five to the nearest house. How would you like to hev a girl o' yourn thet you'd sent t' Chicago an' New York and the ol' country, an' spent all colors o' money on so's t' give her all the chanst in the world, go out to a place like that to spend her life?"
"I don't know," said I, for I was in doubt; "it might be all right."
"You wouldn't say that if it was up to you to decide the thing," said he. "W'y it would mean that this girl o' mine, that's fit for to be--wal, you know Josie--would hev to leave this home we've built--that she's built--here, an' go out where there hain't nobody to be seen from week's end to week's end but cowboys, an' once in a while one o' the greasy women o' the dugouts. Do you know what happens to the nicest girls when they don't see the right sort o' men--at all, y' know?"
I nodded. I knew what he meant. Then I shook my head in denial of the danger.
"I don't b'lieve it nuther," said he; "but is it any cinch, now? An' anyhow, she'll be where she wun't ever hear a bit o' music, 'r see a picter, 'r see a friend. She'll swelter in the burnin' sun an' parch in the hot winds in the summer, an' in the winter she'll be shet in by blizzards an' cold weather. She'll see nothin' but kioats, prairie-dogs, sage-brush, an' cactus. An' what fer! Jest for nothin' but me! To git me away from things she's afraid've got more of a pull with me than what she's got. An' I say, by the livin' Lord, I'll go under before I'll give up, an' say I've got as fur down as that!"
It is something rending and tearing to a man like Bill, totally unaccustomed to the expression of sentiment, to give utterance to such depths of feeling. Weak and trembling as he was, the sight of his agitation was painful. I hastened to say to him that I hoped there was no necessity for such a step as the one he so strongly deprecated.
"I d' know," said he dubiously. "I thought one while that I'd never want to go near town, 'r touch the stuff agin. But I'll tell yeh something that happened yisterday!"
He drew up his chair and looked behind him like a child preparing to relate some fearsome tale of goblin or fiend, and went on:
"Josie had the team hitched up to go out ridin', an' I druv around the block to git to the front step. An' somethin' seemed to pull the nigh line when I got to the cawner! It wa'n't that I wanted to go--and don't you say anything about this thing, Mr. Barslow; but somethin' seemed to pull the nigh line an' turn me toward Main Street; an' fust thing I knew, I was a-drivin' hell-bent for O'Brien's place! Somethin' was a-whisperin' to me, 'Go down an' see the boys, an' show 'em that yeh can drink 'r let it alone, jest as yeh see fit!' And the thought come over me o' Josie a-standin' there at the gate waitin' f'r me, an' I set my teeth, an' jerked the hosses' heads around, an' like to upset the buggy a-turnin'. 'You look pale, pa,' says Josie. 'Maybe we'd better not go.' 'No,' says I, 'I'm all right.' But what ... gits me ... is thinkin' that, if I'll be hauled around like that when I'm two miles away, how long would I last ... if onst I was to git right down in the midst of it!"
I could not endure the subject any longer; it was so unutterably fearful to see him making this despairing struggle against the foe so strongly lodged within his citadel. I talked to him of old times and places known to us both, and incidentally called to his mind instances of the recovery of men afflicted as he was. Soon Josie came after him, and Jim dropped in, as he was quite in the habit of doing, making one of those casual and informal little companies which constituted a most distinctive feature of life in our compact little Belgravia.
Josie insisted that life in the cow country was what she had been longing for. She had never shot any one, and had never painted a cowboy, an Indian, or a coyote--things she had always longed to do.
"You must take me out there, pa," said she. "It's the only way to utilize the capital we've foolishly tied up in the department of the fine arts!"
"I reckon we'll hev to do it, then, little gal," said Bill.
"My mind," said Jim, "is divided between your place up on the headwaters of Bitter Creek and Paris. Paris seems to promise pretty well, when this fitful fever of business is over and we've cleaned up the mill run."
Art, he went on, seemed to be a career for which he was really fitted. In the foreground, as a cowboy, or in the middle distance, in his proper person as a tenderfoot, it seemed as if there was a vocation for him. Josie made no reply to this, and Jim went away downcast.
The Addison-Giddings wedding drew on out of the future, and seemed to loom portentously like doom for the devoted Clifford. It may have suggested itself to the reader that Mr. Giddings was an abnormally timid lover. The eternal feminine at this time seemed personified in Laura, and worked upon him like an obsession. I have never seen a case quite like his. The manner in which the marriage was regarded, and the extent to which it was discussed, may have had something to do with this.
The boom period anywhere is essentially an era in which public events dominate those of a private character, and publicity and promotion, hand in hand, occupy the center of the stage. Giddings, as editor and proprietor of the
Herald, was one of the actors on whom the lime-light was pretty constantly focussed. Miss Addison, belonging to the Lattimore family, and prominent in good works, was more widely known than he among Lattimoreans of the old days, sometimes referred to by Mr. Elkins as the trilobites, who constituted a sort of ancient and exclusive caste among us, priding themselves on having become rich by the only dignified and purely automatic mode, that of sitting heroically still, and allowing their lands to rise in value. These regarded Laura as one of themselves, and her marriage as a sacrament of no ordinary character.
Giddings, on the other hand, as the type of the new crowd who had done such wonders, and as the embodiment of its spirit, was dimly sensed by all classes as a sort of hero of obscure origin, who by strong blows had hewed his way to the possession of a princess of the blood. So the interest was really absorbing. Even the
Herald's rival, the
Evening Times, dropped for a time the normal acrimony of its references to the
Herald, and sent a reporter to make a laudatory write-up of the wedding.
On the night before the event, deep in the evening, Giddings and a bibulous friend insisted on having refreshments served to them in the parlor of the clubhouse. This was a violation of rules. Moreover, they had involuntarily assumed sitting postures on the carpet, rendering waiting upon them a breach of decorum as well. At least this was the view of Pearson, who was now attached to the club.
"You must excuse me, gentlemen," he said, "but Ah'm bound to obey rules."
"Bring us," said Giddings, "two cocktails."
"Can't do it, sah," said Pearson, "not hyah, sah!"
"Bring us paper to write resignations on!" said Giddings. "We won't belong to a club where we are bullied by niggers."
Pearson brought the paper.
"They's no rule, suh," said he, "again' suhvin' resignation papah anywhah in the house. But let me say, Mistah Giddings, that Ah wouldn't be hasty: it's a heap hahder to get inter this club now than what it was when you-all come in!"
This suggestion of Pearson's was in every one's mouth as the most amusing story of the time. Even Giddings laughed about it. But all his laughter was hollow.
Some bets were offered that one of two things would happen on the wedding-day: either Giddings (who had formerly been of abstemious habits) would overdo the attempt to nerve himself up to the occasion and go into a vinous collapse, or he would stay sober and take to his heels. Thus, in fear and trembling, did the inexplicable disciple of Iago approach his happiness; but, like most soldiers, when the battle was actually on, he went to the fighting-line dazed into bravery.
It was quite a spectacular affair. The church was a floral grotto, and there were, in great abundance, the adjuncts of ribbon barriers, special electric illuminations, special music, full ritual, ushers, bridesmaids, and millinery. Antonia was chief bridesmaid, and Cornish best man. The severe conformity to vogue, and preservation of good form, were generally attributed to his management. It was a great success.
There was an elaborate supper, of which Giddings partook in a manner which tended to prove that his sense of taste was still in his possession, whatever may have been the case with his other senses. Josie was there, and Jim was her shadow. She was a little pale, but not at all sad; her figure, which had within the past year or so acquired something of the wealth commonly conceded to matronliness, had waned to the slenderness of the day I first saw her in the art-gallery, but now, as then, she was slim, not thin. To two, at least, she was a vision of delight, as one might well see by the look of adoration which Jim poured into her eyes from time to time, and the hungry gaze with which Cornish took in the ruddy halo of her hair, the pale and intellectual face beneath it, and the sensuous curves of the compact little form. For my own part, my vote was for Antonia, for the belle of the gathering; but she sailed through the evening, "like some full-breasted swan," accepting no homage except the slavish devotion of Cecil, whose constant offering of his neck to her tread gave him recognition as entitled to the reward of those who are permitted only to stand and wait.
Mr. Elkins had furnished a special train over the L. & G. W. to make the run with the bridal party to Elkins Junction, connecting there with the east-bound limited on the Pendleton line, thence direct to Elysium.
Laura, rosy as a bride should be, and actually attractive to me for the first time in her life, sat in her traveling-dress trying to look matter-of-fact, and discussing time-tables with her bridegroom, who seemed to find less and less of dream and more of the actual in the situation,--calm returning with the cutaway. Cecil and the coterie of gilded youth who followed him did their share to bring Giddings back to earth by a series of practical jokes, hackneyed, but ever fresh. The largest trunk, after it reached the platform, blossomed out in a sign reading: "The Property of the Bride and Groom. You can Identify the Owners by that Absorbed Expression!" Divers revelatory incidents were arranged to eventuate on the limited train. Precipitation of rice was produced, in modes known to sleight-of-hand only. So much of this occurred that Captain Tolliver showed, by a stately refusal to see the joke, his disapproval of it--a feeling which he expressed in an aside to me.
"Hoss-play of this so't, suh," said he, "ought not to be tolerated among civilized people, and I believe is not! In the state of society in which I was reahed such niggah-shines would mean pistols at ten paces, within fo'ty-eight houahs, with the lady's neahest male relative! And propahly so, too, suh; quite propahly!"
"Shall we go to the train, Albert?" said Alice, as the party made ready to go.
"No," said I, "unless you particularly wish it; we shall go home."
"Mr. Barslow," said one of the maids, "you are wanted at the telephone."
"Is this you, Al?" said Jim's voice over the wire. "I'm up here at Josie's, and I am afraid there's trouble with her father. When we got here we found him gone. Hadn't you better go out and look around for him?"
"Have you any idea where I'm likely to find him?" I asked. I saw at once the significance of Bill's absence. He had taken advantage of the fact of his wife and daughter's going to the wedding, and had yielded to the thing which drew him away from them.
"Try the Club, and then O'Brien's," answered Jim. "If you don't find him in one place or the other, call me up over the 'phone. Call me up anyhow; I'll wait here."
The
Times man heard my end of the conversation, saw me hastily give Alice word as to the errand which kept me from going home with her, observed my preparations for leaving the company, and, scenting news, fell in with me as I was walking toward the Club.
"Any story in this, Mr. Barslow?" he asked.
"Oh, is that you, Watson?" I answered. "I was going on an errand which concerns myself. I was going alone."
"If you're looking for any one," he said, trotting along beside me, "I can find him a good deal quicker than you can, probably. And if there's news in it, I'll get it anyhow; and I'll naturally know it more from your standpoint, and look at it more as you do, if we go together. Don't you think so?"
"See here, Watson," said I, "you may help if you wish. But if you print a word without my consent, I can and will scoop the
Times every day, from this on, with every item of business news coming through our office. Do you understand, and do you promise?"
"Why, certainly," said he. "You've got the thing in your own hands. What is it, anyhow?"
I told him, and found that Trescott's dipsomania was as well known to him as myself.
"He's been throwing money to the fowls for a year or two," he remarked. "It's better than two to one you don't find him at the Club: the atmosphere won't be congenial for him there."
At the Club we found Watson's forecast verified. At O'Brien's our knocking on the door aroused a sleepy bartender, who told us that no one was there, but refused to let us in. Watson called him aside, and they talked together for a few minutes.
"All right," said the reporter, turning away from him, "much obliged, Hank; I believe you've struck it."
Watson was leader now, and I followed him toward Front Street, near the river. He said that Hank, the barkeeper, had told him that Trescott had been in his saloon about nine o'clock, drinking heavily; and from the company he was in, it was to be suspected that he would be steered into a joint down on the river front. We passed through an alley, and down a back basement stairway, came to a door, on which Watson confidently knocked, and which was opened by a negro who let us in as soon as he saw the reporter. The air was sickening with an odor which I then perceived for the first time, and which Watson called the dope smell. There was an indefinable horror about the place, which so repelled me that nothing but my obligation could have held me there. The lights were dim, and at first I could see nothing more than that the sides of the room were divided into compartments by dull-colored draperies, in a manner suggesting the sections of a sleeping-car. There were sounds of dreadful breathings and inarticulate voices, and over all that sickening smell. I saw, flung aimlessly from the crepuscular and curtained recesses, here the hairy brawn of a man's arm, there a woman's leg in scarlet silk stocking, the foot half withdrawn from a red slipper with a high French heel. The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows had opened for me, and I stood as if gazing, with eyes freshly unsealed to its horrors, into some dim inferno, sibilant with hisses, and enwrapped in indeterminate dragon-folds--and I in quest of a lost soul.
"He wouldn't go with his pal, boss," I heard the negro say. "Ah tried to send him home, but he said he had some medicine to take, an' he 'nsisted on stayin'."
As he ceased to speak, I knew that Watson had been interrogating him, and that he was referring to the man we sought.
"Show me where he is," I commanded.
"Yes, boss! Right hyah, sah!"
In an inner room, on a bed, not a pallet like those in the first chamber, was Trescott, his head lying peacefully on a pillow, his hands clasped across his chest. Somehow, I was not surprised to see no evidence of life, no rise and fall of the breast, no sound of breathing. But Watson started forward in amazement, laid his hand for a moment on the pallid forehead, lifted for an instant and then dropped the inert hand, turned and looked fixedly in my face, and whispered, "My God! He's dead!"
As if at some great distance, I heard the negro saying, "He done said he hed ter tek some medicine, boss. Ah hopes you-all won't make no trouble foh me, boss--!"
"Send for a doctor!" said I. "Telephone Mr. Elkins, at Trescott's home!"
Watson darted out, and for an eternity, as it seemed to me, I stood there alone. There was a scurrying of the vermin in the place to snatch up a few valuables and flee, as if they had been the crawling things under some soon-to-be-lifted stone, to whom light was a calamity. I was left with the Stillness before me, and the dreadful breathings and inarticulate voices outside. Then came the clang and rattle of ambulance and patrol, and in came a policeman or two, a physician, a
Herald man and Watson, who was bitterly complaining of Bill for having had the bad taste to die on the morning paper's time.
And soon came Jim, in a carriage, whirled along the street like a racing chariot--with whom I rode home, silent, save for answering his questions. Now the wife, gazing out of her door, saw in the street the Something for which she had peered past me the other night.
The men carried it in at the door, and laid it on the divan. Josie, her arms and shoulders still bare in the dress she had worn to the wedding, broke away from Cornish, who was bending over her and saying things to comfort her, and swept down the hall to the divan where Bill lay, white and still, and clothed with the mystic majesty of death. The shimmering silk and lace of her gown lay all along the rug and over the divan, like drapery thrown there to conceal what lay before us. She threw her arms across the still breast, and her head went down on his.
"Oh, pa! Oh, pa!" she moaned, "you never did any one any harm!... You were always good and kind!... And always loving and forgiving.... And why should they come to you, poor pa ... and take you from the things you loved ... and ... murder you ... like this!"
Jim fell back, as if staggering from a blow. Cornish came forward, and offered to raise up the stricken girl, whose eyes shone in her grief like the eyes of insanity. Alice stepped before Cornish, raised Josie up, and supported her from the room.
* * * * *
Again it was morning, when we--Alice, Jim, and I--sat face to face in our home. An untasted breakfast was spread before us. Jim's eyes were on the cloth, and nothing served to rouse him. I knew that the blow from which he had staggered still benumbed his faculties.
"Come," said I, "we shall need your best thought down at the Grain Belt Building in a couple of hours. This brings things to a crisis. We shall have a terrible dilemma to face, it's likely. Eat and be ready to face it!"
"God!" said he, "it's the old tale over again, Al: throw the dead and wounded overboard to clear the decks, and on with the fight!" _