Ann Boyd Part 5

"Oh, I see!" And the drummer gave his old friend a playful thumb-thrust in the ribs. "And so you are helping him out with that gun and rod?

Well, that's _one_ way of doing business, but it is far from my method-the method that is forced on me, my boy. When you get to a town on the four-o'clock afternoon train and have to get five sample trunks from the train to a hotel, sc.r.a.p like the devil over who gets to use the best sample-room, finally buy your way in through porters as rascally as you are, then unpack, see the best man in town, sell him, or lose your job, pack again, trunks to excess-baggage scales-more cash and tips, and lies as to weight-and you roll away at midnight and try to nap sitting bolt-upright in the smoker-well, I say, you won't find that sort of thing in the gun-and-fis.h.i.+ng-pole line. It's the sort of work, Chester, that will make you wish you were dead. Good Lord, I don't blame you one bit. In England they would call you one of the gentry, and, being an only son, you could tie up with an heiress and so on to a green old age of high respectability; but as for me, well, I had to dig, and I went in for it."

"I had no idea you would ever become a drummer," Langdon said, as he admired his friend's attire. Such tasty ties, s.h.i.+rts, and bits of jewelry that Masters wore, and such well brushed and pressed clothes were rarely seen in the country, and Langdon still had the good ideas of dress he had brought from college, and this was one extravagance his father cheerfully allowed him.

"It seemed the best thing for me," smiled the drummer. "I have a cousin who is a big stockholder in my house, and he got the job for me. I've been told several times by other members of the firm that I'd have been fired long ago but for that family pull. I've made several mistakes, sold men who were rotten to the core, and caused the house to lose money in several instances, and, well-poker, old man. Do you still play?"

"Not often, out here," said Langdon; "this is about the narrowest, church-going community you ever struck. I suppose you have a good deal of fun travelling about."

"Oh yes, fun enough, of its kind." Masters laughed. "Like a sailor in every port, a drummer tries to have a sweetheart in every town. It makes life endurable; sometimes the dear little things meet you at the train with sweet-smelling flowers and embroidered neckties so long that you have to cut off the ends or double them. Have a cigar-they don't cost me a red cent; expense account stretches like elastic, you know. My house kicked once against my drinking and cigar entries, and I said, all right, I'd sign the pledge and they could tie a blue ribbon on me, if they said the word, but that half my trade, I'd discovered, never could see prices right except through smoke and over a bottle. Then, what do you think? Old man Creighton, head of the firm, deacon in a swell joss-house in Atlanta, winked, drew a long face, and said: 'You'll have to give the boy _some_ freedom, I reckon. We are in this thing to pull it through, boys, and sometimes we may have to fight fire with fire or be left stranded.'"

"He's an up-to-date old fellow," Chester laughed. "I've seen him. He owns some fine horses. When a man does that he's apt to be progressive, no matter how many times he says his prayers a day."

"Yes, for an old duck, Creighton keeps at the head of the procession. I can generally get him to help me out when I get in a tight. He thinks I'm a good salesman. Once, by the skin of my teeth, I sold the champion bill in the history of the house. A new firm was setting up in business in Augusta, and I stocked three floors for them. It tickled old man Creighton nearly to death, for they say he walked the floor all night when the thing was hanging fire. There was a pile of profit in it, and it meant more, even, than the mere sale, for Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, and Louisville men were as thick as flies on the spot. When I wired the news in the firm did a clog-dance in the office, and they were all at the train to meet me, with plug-hats on, and raised sand generally. Old Creighton drew me off to one side and wanted to know how I did it. I told him it was just a trick of mine, and tried to let it go at that, but he pushed me close, and I finally told him the truth. It came about over a game of poker I was playing with the head of the new firm. If I lost I was to pay him a hundred dollars. If he lost I was to get the order. He lost. I think I learned that 'palming' trick from you."

Langdon laughed impulsively as he lighted the drummer's cigar. "And what did the old man say to that?" he inquired.

"It almost floored him." Masters smiled. "He laid his hand on my shoulder. His face was as serious as I've seen it when he was praying in the amen corner at church, but the old duck's eyes were blazing. 'Fred,'

he said, 'I want you to promise me to let that one thing alone-but, good gracious, if Memphis had sold that bill it would have hurt us awfully!'"

"You were always fond of the girls," Chester remarked as he smoked.

"Well, out here in the country is no place for them."

"No place for them! Huh, that's _your_ idea, is it? Well, let me tell you, Chester, I saw on the road as I came on just now simply the prettiest, daintiest, and most graceful creature I ever laid my eyes on.

I've seen them all, too, and, by George, she simply took the rag off the bush. Slender, beautifully formed, willowy, small feet and hands, high instep, big, dreamy eyes, and light-brown hair touched with gold. She came out of a farm-house, walking like a young queen, about half a mile back. I made Ike drive slowly and tried to get her to look at me, but she only raised her eyes once."

"Virginia Hemingway," Chester said, coldly. "Yes, she's pretty. There's no doubt about that."

"You know her, then?" said the drummer, eagerly. "Say, old man, introduce a fellow."

Chester's face hardened. The light of cordiality died out of his eyes.

There was a significant twitching of his lips round his cigar. "I really don't see how I could," he said, after an awkward pause, during which his eyes were averted. "You see, Masters, she's quite young, and it happens that her mother-a lonely old widow-is rather suspicious of men in general, and I seem to have displeased her in some way. You see, all these folks, as a rule, go regularly to meeting, and as I don't go often, why-"

"Oh, I see," the drummer said. "But let me tell you, old chap, suspicious mother or what not, I'd see something of that little beauty if I lived here. Gee whiz! she'd make a Fifth Avenue dress and Easter hat ashamed of themselves anywhere but on her. Look here, Chester, I've always had a sneaking idea that sooner or later I'd be hit deep at first sight by some woman, and I'll be hanged if I know but what that's the matter with me right now. I've seen so many women, first and last, here and there, always in the giddy set, that I reckon if I ever marry I'd rather risk some pure-minded little country girl. Do you know, town girls simply know too much to be interesting. By George, I simply feel like I'd be perfectly happy with a little wife like the girl I saw this morning. I wish you could fix it so I could meet her this trip, or my next."

"I-I simply can't do it, Masters." There was a rising flush of vexation in the young planter's face as he knocked the ashes from his cigar into a nail-keg on the floor. "I don't know her well enough, in the first place, and then, in the next, as I said, her mother is awfully narrow and particular. She scarcely allows the girl out of sight; if you once saw old Jane Hemingway you'd not fancy making love before her eyes."

"Well, I reckon Wilson knows the girl, doesn't he?" the drummer said.

Chester hesitated, a cold, steady gleam of the displeasure he was trying to hide flashed in his eyes.

"I don't know that he knows her well enough for _that_," he replied.

"The people round here think I'm tough enough, but you drummers-huh!

some of them look on you as the very advance agents of destruction."

"That's a fact," Masters sighed, "the profession is getting a black eye in the rural districts. They think we are as bad as show people. By George, there she is now!"

"Yes, that's her," and the young planter glanced towards the front doorway through which Virginia Hemingway was entering. So fixed was the drummer's admiring gaze upon the pretty creature, that he failed to notice that his companion had quietly slipped towards the rear of the store. Chester stood for a moment in the back doorway, and then stepped down outside and made his way into the wood near by. The drummer sauntered behind the counter towards the front, till he was near the show-case at which the girl was making her purchase, and there he stood, allowing the fire of his cigar to die out as he watched her, while Wilson was exhibiting to her a drawer full of thread for her to select from.

"By all that's good and holy, she simply caps the stack!" Masters said to himself; "and to think that these galoots out here in the woods are not onto it. She'd set Peachtree Street on fire. I'm going to meet that girl if I have to put on old clothes and work for day wages in her mother's cornfield. Great goodness! here I am, a hardened ladies' man, feeling cold from head to foot on a hot day like this. I'm hit, by George, I'm hit! Freddy, old boy, this is the thing you read about in books. I wonder if-"

But she was gone. She had tripped out into the suns.h.i.+ne. He saw the yellow light fall on her abundant hair and turn it into a blaze of gold.

As if dreaming, he went to the door and stood looking after her as she moved away on the dusty road.

"I see you are killing time." It was George Wilson at his elbow. "I'll be through here and with you in a minute. My crowd is thinning out now.

That's the way it comes-all in a rush; like a mill-dam broke loose."

"Oh, I'm in no hurry, Wilson," said Masters, his gaze bent upon the bushes behind which Virginia had just disappeared. "Say, now, old man, don't say you won't do it; the fact is, I want to be introduced to that girl-the little daisy you sold the thread to. By glory, she is the prettiest little thing I ever saw."

"Virginia Hemingway!" said the store-keeper. "Yes, she's a regular beauty, and the gentlest, sweetest little trick in seven states. Well, Masters, I'll be straight with you. It's this way. You see, she really _is_ full grown, and old enough to receive company, I reckon, but her mother, the old woman I told you about who hates Ann Boyd so thoroughly-well, she doesn't seem to realize that Virginia is coming on, and so she won't consent to any of the boys going near her. But old Jane can't make nature over. Girls will be girls, and if you put too tight a rein on them they will learn to slip the halter, or some chap will teach them to take the bit in their teeth."

A man came to Wilson holding a sample of syrup on a piece of wrapping-paper, to which he had applied his tongue. "What's this here brand worth?" he asked.

"Sixty-five-best golden drip," was Wilson's reply. "Fill your jug yourself; I'll take your word for it."

"All right, you make a ticket of it-jug holds two gallons," said the customer, and he turned away.

"Say, Wilson, just a minute," cried the drummer; "do you mean that she-"

"Oh, look here now," said the store-keeper. "I don't mean any reflection against that sweet girl, but it has become a sort of established habit among girls here in the mountains, when their folks hold them down too much, for them to meet fellows on the sly, out walking and the like.

Virginia, as I started to say, is full of natural life. She knows she's pretty, and she wouldn't be a woman if she didn't want to be told so-though, to be so good-looking, she is really the most sensible girl I know."

"You mean she has her fancies, then," said Masters, in a tone of disappointment.

"I don't say she has." Wilson had an uneasy glance on a group of women bending over some bolts of calico, one of whom was chewing a sample clipped from a piece to see if it would fade. "But-between me and you now-Langdon Chester has for the last three months been laying for her. I see he's slipped away; I'd bet my hat he saw her just now, and has made a break for some point on the road where he can speak to her."

"Chester? Why, the rascal pretended to me just now that he hardly knew her."

Wilson smiled knowingly. "That's his way. He is as sly as they make 'em.

His daddy was before him. When it comes to dealing with women who strike their fancy they know exactly what they are doing. But Langdon has struck flint-rock in that little girl. He, no doubt, is flirting with all his might, but she'll have him on his knees before he's through with it. A pair of eyes like hers would burn up every mean thought in a man."

The drummer sighed, a deep frown on his brow. "You don't know him as well as I do," he said. "I knew him at college. George, that little trick ought not to be under such a fellow's influence I'm just a travelling man, but-well-"

"Well, what are you going to do about it-even if there _is_ any danger?"

said Wilson. "Get a drink in him, and Langdon, like his father, will fight at the drop of a hat. Conscience? He hasn't any. I sometimes wonder why the Almighty made them like they are, and other men so different, for it is only the men who are not bothered by conscience that have any fun in this life. One of the Chesters could drive a light-hearted woman to suicide and sleep like a log the night she was buried. Haven't I heard the old man laugh about Ann Boyd, and all she's been through? Huh! But I'm not afraid of that little girl's fate. She will take care of herself, and don't you forget it."

"Well, I'm sorry for her," said Masters, "and I'm going to try to meet her. I'm tough, George-I'll play a game of cards and bet on a horse, and say light things to a pretty girl when she throws down the bars-but I draw the line at downright rascality. Once in a while I think of home and my own folks."

"Now you are a-talking." And Wilson hurried away to a woman who sat in a chair holding a bolt of calico in her arms, as if it were her first-born child and the other women were open kidnappers.

Masters stood motionless in the doorway, his eyes on the dusty road that stretched on towards Jane Hemingway's house.

"Yes, she's in bad, _bad_ hands," he said; "and she is the first-I really believe she's the first that ever hit me this hard."

VIII