Aladdin and Company Part 22

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 s.e.xes, 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 pa.s.s 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 n.o.body 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' h.e.l.l-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 const.i.tuted 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 const.i.tuted 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sumed 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 c.o.c.ktails."

"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 n.i.g.g.e.rs."

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 ent.i.tled 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 n.i.g.g.ah-s.h.i.+nes 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.