In a Little Town Part 17

Everybody you want to talk to is always on the other line."

The President nodded. He understood the ancient war between the simple life and the strenuous. He wished he had left the subject unopened, but Pettibone had warmed to the theme.

"Shelby built an opery-house and brought some first-cla.s.s troupes here.

But this is a religious town, and people don't go much to shows. In the first place, we don't believe in 'em; in the second place, we've been bit by bad shows so often. So his opery-house costs more 'n it takes in.

"Then he laid out the Pastime Park--tried to get up games and things; but the vacant lots always were good enough for baseball. He tried to get people to go out in the country and play golf, too; but it was too much like following the plow. Folks here like to sit on their porches when they're tired.

"He brought an automobile to town--scared most of the horses to death.

Our women folks got afraid to drive because the most reliable old nags tried to climb trees whenever Shelby came honking along. He built two or three monuments to famous citizens, but that made the families of other famous citizens jealous.

"He built that big home of his, but it only makes our wives envious.

It's so far out that the society ladies can't call much. Besides, they feel uneasy with all that glory.

"Mrs. Shelby has a man in a dress-suit to open the door. The rest of us--our wives answer the door-bell themselves. Our folks are kind of afraid to invite Mr. and Mrs. Shelby to their parties for fear they'll criticize; so Mrs. Shelby feels as if she was deserted.

"She thinks her husband is mistreated, too; but--well, Shelby's eccentric. He says we're ungrateful. Maybe we are, but we like to do things our own way. Shelby tried to get us to help boost the town, as he calls it. He offered us stock in his ventures, but we've got taken in so often that--well, once bit is twice shy, you know, Mr. President. So Wakefield stands just about where she did before Shelby came here."

"Not but what Wakefield is enterprising," Mr. Spate repeated.

The President's curiosity overcame his policy. He asked one more question:

"But if you citizens didn't help Mr. Shelby, how did he manage all these--improvements, if I may use the word?"

"Did it all by his lonesome, Mr. President. His income was immense. But he cut into it something terrible. His brothers in the East began to row at the way he poured it out. When he began to draw in advance they were goin' to have him declared incompetent. Even his brothers say he's cracked. Recently they've drawn in on him. Won't let him spend his own money."

A gruesome tone came from among Spate's spectacles and whiskers:

"He won't last long. Health's giving out. His wife told my wife, the other day, he don't sleep nights. That's a bad sign. His pride is set on keepin' everything going, though, and nothing can hold him. He wants the street-cars to run regular, and the telephone to answer quick, even if the town don't support 'em. He's cracked--there's nothing to it."

Amasa Harbury, of the Building and Loan a.s.sociation, leaned close and spoke in a confidential voice:

"He's got mortgages on 'most everything, Mr. President. He's borrowed on all his securities up to the hilt. Only yesterday I had to refuse him a second mortgage on his house. He stormed around about how much he'd put into it. I told him it didn't count how much you put into a hole, it was how much you could get out. You can imagine how much that palace of his would bring in this town on a foreclosure sale--about as much as a white elephant in a china-shop."

"Not but what Wakefield is enterprising," insisted Spate.

The l.u.s.t for gossip had been aroused and Pettibone threw discretion to the winds.

"Shelby was hopping mad because we left him off the committee of welcome, but we thought we'd better stick to our own crowd of represent'ive citizens. Shelby don't really belong to Wakefield, anyway. Still, if you want to meet him, it can be arranged."

"Oh no," said the President. "Don't trouble."

And he was politic--or politician--enough to avoid the subject thenceforward. But he could not get Shelby out of his mind that night as his car whizzed on its way. To be called crazy and eccentric and to be suspected, feared, resisted by the very people he longed to lead--Presidents are not unaware of that ache of unrequited affection.

The same evening Shelby and Phoebe Shelby looked out on their park.

The crowds that had used it as a vantage-ground for the pageant had all vanished, leaving behind a litter of rubbish, firecrackers, cigar stubs, broken shrubs, gouged terraces. Not one of them had asked permission, had murmured an apology or a word of thanks.

For the first time Phoebe Shelby noted that her husband did not take new determination from rebuff. His resolution no longer made a springboard of resistance. He seemed to lean on her a little.

IV

The perennially empty cutlery-works gave the Wide-a-Wakefield Club no rest. Year after year the anxiously awaited census renewed the old note of fifteen thousand and denied the eloquent argument of increased population. The committee in its letters continued to refer to Wakefield as "thriving" rather than as "growing." Its ingeniously evasive circulars finally roused a curiosity in Wilmer Barstow, a manufacturer of refrigerators, dissatisfied with the taxes and freight rates of the city of Clayton.

Barstow was the more willing to leave Clayton because he had suffered there from that reward which is more unkind than the winter wind. He loved a woman and paid court to her, sending her flowers at every possible excuse and besetting her with gifts.

She was not much of a woman--her very lover could see that; but he loved her in his own and her despite. She was unworthy of his jewels as of his infatuation, yet she gave him no courtesy for his gifts. She behaved as if they bored her; yet he knew no other way to win her. The more indifference she showed the more he tried to dazzle her.

At last he found that she was paying court herself to a younger man--a selfish good-for-naught who made fun of her as well as of Barstow, and who borrowed money from her as well as from Barstow.

When Barstow fully realized that the woman had made him not only her own b.o.o.by, but the town joke as well, he could not endure her or the place longer. He cast about for an escape. But he found his factory no trifling baggage to move.

It was on such fertile soil that one of the Wide-a-Wakefield circulars fell.

It chimed so well with Barstow's mood that he decided at least to look the town over.

He came unannounced to make his own observations, like the spies sent into Canaan. The trolley-car that met his train was rusty, paintless, forlorn, untenanted. He took a ramshackle hack to the best hotel. Its sign-board bore this legend: "The Palace, formerly Shelby House--entirely new management."

He saw his baggage bestowed and went out to inspect the factory building described to him. The cutlery-works proved smaller than his needs, and it had a weary look. Not far away he found a far larger factory, idle, empty, closed. The sign declared it to be the Wakefield Branch of the Shelby Paradise Powder Company. He knew the prosperity of that firm and wondered why this branch had been abandoned.

In the course of time the trolley-car overtook him, and he boarded it as a sole pa.s.senger.

The lonely motorman was loquacious and welcomed Barstow as the Ancient Mariner welcomed the wedding guest. He explained that he made but few trips a day and pa.s.sengers were fewer than trips. The company kept it going to hold the franchise, for some day Wakefield would reach sixteen thousand and lift the hoodoo.

The car pa.s.sed an opera-house, with gra.s.s aspiring through the c.h.i.n.ks of the stone steps leading to the boarded-up doors.

The car pa.s.sed the Shelby Block; the legend, "For Rent, apply to Amasa Harbury," hid the list of Shelby enterprises.

The car grumbled through shabby streets to the outskirts of the town, where it sizzled along a singing wire past the drooping fences, the sagging bleachers, and the weedy riot of what had been a pleasure-ground. A few dim lines in the gra.s.s marked the ghost of a baseball diamond, a circular track, and foregone tennis-courts.

Barstow could read on what remained of the tottering fence:

HELBY'S PAST ARK

When the car had reached the end of the line Barstow decided to walk back to escape the garrulity of the motorman, who lived a lonely life, though he was of a sociable disposition.

Barstow's way led him shortly to the edge of a curious demesne, or rather the debris of an estate. A chaos of gra.s.s and weeds thrust even through the rust of the high iron fence about the place. Shrubs that had once been shapely grew raggedly up and swept down into the tall and ragged gra.s.s. A few evergreen trees lifted flowering cones like funeral candles in sconces. What had been a lake with fountains was a great, cracked basin of concrete tarnished with scabious pools thick with the dead leaves of many an autumn.

Barstow entered a fallen gate and walked along paths where his feet slashed through barbaric tangles clutching at him like fingers. As he prowled, wondering what splendor this could have been which was so misplaced in so dull a town and drooping into so early a neglect, birds took alarm and went crying through the branches. There were lithe escapes through the gra.s.s, and from the rim of the lake ugly toads plounced into the pool and set the water-spiders scurrying on their frail catamarans.

Two bronze stags towered knee-deep in verdure; one had a single antler, the other none. A pair of toothless lions brooded over their lost dignity. Between their disconsolate sentry, mounted flight on flight of marble steps to the house of the manor. It lay like an old frigate storm-shattered and flung aground to rot. The hospitable doors were planked shut, the windows, too; the floors of the verandas were broken and the roof was everywhere sunken and insecure.

At the portal had stood two nymphs, now almost cla.s.sic with decay. One of them, toppling helplessly, quenched her bronze torch in weeds. Her sister stood erect in grief like a daughter of Niobe wept into stone.

The scene somehow reminded Barstow of one of Poe's landscapes. It was the corpse of a home. Eventually he noticed a tall woman in black, seated on a bench and gazing down the terraces across the dead lake.

Barstow was tempted to ask her whose place this had been and what its history was, but her mien and her crepe daunted him.

He made his way out of the region, looking back as he went. When he approached the most neighboring house a grocery-wagon came flying down the road. Before it stopped the slanted driver was off the seat and half-way across the yard. In a moment he was back again. Barstow called out: