Stories of a Western Town

by Thanet, Octave

  When the afternoon sunlight waned he put up the horse at a modest little stable where farmers were allowed to bring their own provender. The charges were of the smallest and the place neat and weather-tight, but it had been a long time before Nelson could be induced to use it, because there was a higher-priced stable kept by an ex-farmer and member of the Farmers' Alliance. Only the fact that the keeper of the low-priced stable was a poor orphan girl, struggling to earn an honest livelihood, had moved him.

  They had supper at a restaurant of Tim's discovery, small, specklessly tidy, and as unexacting of the pocket as the stable. It was an excellent supper. But Nelson had no appetite; in spite of an almost childish capacity for being diverted, he could attend to nothing but the question always in his ears: "Richards or me—which?"

  Until it should be time for the spectacle they walked down the hill, and watched the crowds gradually blacken every inch of the river-banks. Already the swarms of lanterns were beginning to bloom out in the dusk. Strains of music throbbed through the air, adding a poignant touch to the excitement vibrating in all the faces and voices about them. Even the stolid Tim felt the contagion. He walked with a jaunty step and assaulted a tune himself. "I tell you, Uncle," says Tim, "it's nice of these folks to be getting up all this show, and giving it for nothing!"

  "Do you think so?" says Nelson. "You don't love your book as I wish you did; but I guess you remember about the ancient Romans, and how the great, rich Romans used to spend enormous sums in games and shows that they let the people in free to—well, what for? Was it to learn them anything or to make them happy? Oh, no, it was to keep down the spirit of liberty, Son, it was to make them content to be slaves! And so it is here. These merchants and capitalists are only looking out for themselves, trying to keep labor down and not let it know how oppressed it is, trying to get people here from everywhere to show what a fine city they have and get their money."

  "Well, 'TIS a fine town," Tim burst in, "a boss town! And they ain't gouging folks a little bit. None of the hotels or the restaurants have put up their prices one cent. Look what a dandy supper we got for twenty-five cents! And ain't the boy at Lumley's grocery given me two tickets to set on the steamboat? There's nothing mean about this town!"

  Nelson made no remark; but he thought, for the fiftieth time, that his farm was too near the city. Tim was picking up all the city boys' false pride as well as their slang. Unconscious Tim resumed his tune. He knew that it was "Annie Rooney" if no one else did, and he mangled the notes with appropriate exhilaration.

  Now, the river was as busy as the land, lights swimming hither and thither; steamboats with ropes of tiny stars bespangling their dark bulk and a white electric glare in the bow, low boats with lights that sent wavering spear-heads into the shadow beneath. The bridge was a blazing barbed fence of fire, and beyond the bridge, at the point of the island, lay a glittering multitude of lights, a fairy fleet with miniature sails outlined in flame as if by jewels.

  Nelson followed Tim. The crowds, the ceaseless clatter of tongues and jar of wheels, depressed the man, who hardly knew which way to dodge the multitudinous perils of the thoroughfare; but Tim used his elbows to such good purpose that they were out of the levee, on the steamboat, and settling themselves in two comfortable chairs in a coign of vantage on deck, that commanded the best obtainable view of the pageant, before Nelson had gathered his wits together enough to plan a path out of the crush.

  "I sized up this place from the shore," Tim sighed complacently, drawing a long breath of relief; "only jest two chairs, so we won't be crowded."

  Obediently, Nelson took his chair. His head sank on his thin chest. Richards or himself, which should he sacrifice? So the weary old question droned through his brain. He felt a tap on his shoulder. The man who roused him was an acquaintance, and he stood smiling in the attitude of a man about to ask a favor, while the expectant half-smile of the lady on his arm hinted at the nature of the favor. Would Mr. Forrest be so kind?—there seemed to be no more seats. Before Mr. Forrest could be kind Tim had yielded his own chair and was off, wriggling among the crowd in search of another place.

  "Smart boy, that youngster of yours," said the man; "he'll make his way in the world, he can push. Well, Miss Alma, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Forrest. I know you will be well entertained by him. So, if you'll excuse me, I'll get back and help my wife wrestle with the kids. They have been trying to see which will fall overboard first ever since we came on deck!"

  Under the leeway of this pleasantry he bowed and retired. Nelson turned with determined politeness to the lady. He was sorry that she had come, she looking to him a very fine lady indeed, with her black silk gown, her shining black ornaments, and her bright black eyes. She was not young, but handsome in Nelson's judgment, although of a haughty bearing. "Maybe she is the principal of the High School," thought he. "Martin has her for a boarder, and he said she was very particular about her melons being cold!"

  But however formidable a personage, the lady must be entertained.

  "I expect you are a resident of the city, ma'am?" said Nelson.

  "Yes, I was born here." She smiled, a smile that revealed a little break in the curve of her cheek, not exactly a dimple, but like one.

  "I don't know when I have seen such a fine appearing lady," thought Nelson. He responded: "Well, I wasn't born here; but I come when I was a little shaver of ten and stayed till I was eighteen, when I went to Kansas to help fight the border ruffians. I went to school here in the Warren Street school-house."

  "So did I, as long as I went anywhere to school. I had to go to work when I was twelve."

  Nelson's amazement took shape before his courtesy had a chance to control it. "I didn't suppose you ever did any work in your life!" cried he.

  "I guess I haven't done much else. Father died when I was twelve and the oldest of five, the next only eight—Polly, that came between Eb and me, died—naturally I had to work. I was a nurse-girl by the day, first; and I never shall forget how kind the woman was to me. She gave me so much dinner I never needed to eat any breakfast, which was a help."

  "You poor little thing! I'm afraid you went hungry sometimes." Immediately he marvelled at his familiar speech, but she did not seem to resent it.

  "No, not so often," she said, musingly; "but I used often and often to wish I could carry some of the nice things home to mother and the babies. After a while she would give me a cookey or a piece of bread and butter for lunch; that I could take home. I don't suppose I'll often have more pleasure than I used to have then, seeing little Eb waiting for sister; and the baby and mother——" She stopped abruptly, to continue, in an instant, with a kind of laugh; "I am never likely to feel so important again as I did then, either. It was great to have mother consulting me, as if I had been grown up. I felt like I had the weight of the nation on my shoulders, I assure you."

  "And have you always worked since? You are not working out now?" with a glance at her shining gown.

  "Oh, no, not for a long time. I learned to be a cook. I was a good cook, too, if I say it myself. I worked for the Lossings for four years. I am not a bit ashamed of being a hired girl, for I was as good a one as I knew how. It was Mrs. Lossing that first lent me books; and Harry Lossing, who is head of the firm now, got Ebenezer into the works. Ebenezer is shipping-clerk with a good salary and stock in the concern; and Ralph is there, learning the trade. I went to the business-college and learned book-keeping, and afterward I learned typewriting and shorthand. I have been working for the firm for fourteen years. We have educated the girls. Milly is married, and Kitty goes to the boarding-school, here."

  "Then you haven't been married yourself?"

  "What time did I have to think of being married? I had the family on my mind, and looking after them."

  "That was more fortunate for your family than it was for my sex," said Nelson, gallantly. He accompanied the compliment by a glance of admiration, extinguished in an eye-flash, for the white radiance that had bathed the deck sudd
enly vanished.

  "Now you will see a lovely sight," said the woman, deigning no reply to his tribute; "listen! That is the signal."

  The air was shaken with the boom of cannon. Once, twice, thrice. Directly the boat-whistles took up the roar, making a hideous din. The fleet had moved. Spouting rockets and Roman candles, which painted above it a kaleidoscopic archway of fire, welcomed by answering javelins of light and red and orange and blue and green flares from the shore; the fleet bombarded the bridge, escorted Neptune in his car, manoeuvred and massed and charged on the blazing city with a many-hued shower of flame.

  After the boats, silently, softly, floated the battalions of lanterns, so close to the water that they seemed flaming water-lilies, while the dusky mirror repeated and inverted their splendor.

  "They're shingles, you know," explained Nelson's companion, "with lanterns on them; but aren't they pretty?"

  "Yes, they are! I wish you had not told me. It is like a fairy story!"

  "Ain't it? But we aren't through; there's more to come. Beautiful fireworks!"

  The fireworks, however, were slow of coming. They could see the barge from which they were to be sent; they could watch the movements of the men in white oil-cloth who moved in a ghostly fashion about the barge; they could hear the tap of hammers; but nothing came of it all.

  They sat in the darkness, waiting; and there came to Nelson a strange sensation of being alone and apart from all the breathing world with this woman. He did not perceive that Tim had quietly returned with a box which did very well for a seat, and was sitting with his knees against the chair-rungs. He seemed to be somehow outside of all the tumult and the spectacle. It was the vainglorying triumph of this world. He was the soul outside, the soul that had missed its triumph. In his perplexity and loneliness he felt an overwhelming longing for sympathy; neither did it strike Nelson, who believed in all sorts of occult influences, that his confidence in a stranger was unwarranted. He would have told you that his "psychic instincts" never played him false, although really they were traitors from their astral cradles to their astral graves.

  He said in a hesitating way: "You must excuse me being kinder dull; I've got some serious business on my mind and I can't help thinking of it."

  "Is that so? Well, I know how that is; I have often stayed awake nights worrying about things. Lest I shouldn't suit and all that—especially after mother took sick."

  "I s'pose you had to give up and nurse her then?"

  "That was what Ebenezer and Ralph were for having me do; but mother—my mother always had so much sense—mother says, 'No, Alma, you've got a good place and a chance in life, you sha'n't give it up. We'll hire a girl. I ain't never lonesome except evenings, and then you will be home. I should jest want to die,' she says, 'if I thought I kept you in a kind of prison like by my being sick—now, just when you are getting on so well.' There never WAS a woman like my mother!" Her voice shook a little, and Nelson asked gently:

  "Ain't your mother living now?"

  "No, she died last year." She added, after a little silence, "I somehow can't get used to being lonesome."

  "It IS hard," said Nelson. "I lost my wife three years ago."

  "That's hard, too."

  "My goodness! I guess it is. And it's hardest when trouble comes on a man and he can't go nowhere for advice."

  "Yes, that's so, too. But—have you any children?"

  "Yes, ma'am; that is, they ain't my own children. Lizzie and I never had any; but these two we took and they are most like my own. The girl is eighteen and the boy rising of fourteen."

  "They must be a comfort to you; but they are considerable of a responsibility, too."

  "Yes, ma'am," he sighed softly to himself. "Sometimes I feel I haven't done the right way by them, though I've tried. Not that they ain't good children, for they are—no better anywhere. Tim, he will work from morning till night, and never need to urge him; and he never gives me a promise he don't keep it, no ma'am, never did since he was a little mite of a lad. And he is a kind boy, too, always good to the beasts; and while he may speak up a little short to his sister, he saves her many a step. He doesn't take to his studies quite as I would like to have him, but he has a wonderful head for business. There is splendid stuff in Tim if it could only be worked right."

  While Nelson spoke, Tim was hunching his shoulders forward in the darkness, listening with the whole of two sharp ears. His face worked in spite of him, and he gave an inarticulate snort.

  "Well," the woman said, "I think that speaks well for Tim. Why should you be worried about him?"

  "I am afraid he is getting to love money and worldly success too well, and that is what I fear for the girl, too. You see, she is so pretty, and the idols of the tribe and the market, as Bacon calls them, are strong with the young."

  "Yes, that's so," the woman assented vaguely, not at all sure what either Bacon or his idols might be. "Are the children relations of yours?"

  "No, ma'am; it was like this: When I was up in Henry County there came a photographic artist to the village near us, and pitched his tent and took tintypes in his wagon. He had his wife and his two children with him. The poor woman fell ill and died; so we took the two children. My wife was willing; she was a wonderfully good woman, member of the Methodist church till she died. I—I am not a church member myself, ma'am; I passed through that stage of spiritual development a long while ago." He gave a wistful glance at his companion's dimly outlined profile. "But I never tried to disturb her faith; it made HER happy."

  "Oh, I don't think it is any good fooling with other people's religions," said the woman, easily. "It is just like trying to talk folks out of drinking; nobody knows what is right for anybody else's soul any more than they do what is good for anybody else's stomach!"

  "Yes, ma'am. You put things very clearly."

  "I guess it is because you understand so quickly. But you were saying———"

  "That's all the story. We took the children, and their father was killed by the cars the next year, poor man; and so we have done the best we could ever since by them."

  "I should say you had done very well by them."

  "No, ma'am; I haven't done very well somehow by anyone, myself included, though God knows I've tried hard enough!"

  Then followed the silence natural after such a confession when the listener does not know the speaker well enough to parry abasement by denial.

  "I am impressed," said Nelson, simply, "to talk with you frankly. It isn't polite to bother strangers with your troubles, but I am impressed that you won't mind."

  "Oh, no, I won't mind."

  It was not extravagant sympathy; but Nelson thought how kind her voice sounded, and what a musical voice it was. Most people would have called it rather sharp.

  He told her—with surprisingly little egotism, as the keen listener noted—the story of his life; the struggle of his boyhood; his random self-education; his years in the army (he had criticised his superior officers, thereby losing the promotion that was coming for bravery in the field); his marriage (apparently he had married his wife because another man had jilted her); his wrestle with nature (whose pranks included a cyclone) on a frontier farm that he eventually lost, having put all his savings into a "Greenback" newspaper, and being thus swamped with debt; his final slow success in paying for his Iowa farm; and his purchase of the new farm, with its resulting disaster. "I've farmed in Kansas," he said, "in Nebraska, in Dakota, in Iowa. I was willing to go wherever the land promised. It always seemed like I was going to succeed, but somehow I never did. The world ain't fixed right for the workers, I take it. A man who has spent thirty years in hard, honest toil oughtn't to be staring ruin in the face like I am to-day. They won't let it be so when we have the single tax and when we farmers send our own men instead of city lawyers, to the Legislature and halls of Congress. Sometimes I think it's the world that's wrong and sometimes I think it's me!"

  The reply came in crisp and assured accents, which were the strongest contrast to N
elson's soft, undecided pipe: "Seems to me in this last case the one most to blame is neither you nor the world at large, but this man Richards, who is asking YOU to pay for HIS farm. And I notice you don't seem to consider your creditor in this business. How do you know she don't need the money? Look at me, for instance; I'm in some financial difficulty myself. I have a mortgage for two thousand dollars, and that mortgage—for which good value was given, mind you—falls due this month. I want the money. I want it bad. I have a chance to put my money into stock at the factory. I know all about the investment; I haven't worked there all these years and not know how the business stands. It is a chance to make a fortune. I ain't likely to ever have another like it; and it won't wait for me to make up my mind forever, either. Isn't it hard on me, too?"

  "Lord knows it is, ma'am," said Nelson, despondently; "it is hard on us all! Sometimes I don't see the end of it all. A vast social revolution——"

  "Social fiddlesticks! I beg your pardon, Mr. Forrest, but it puts me out of patience to have people expecting to be allowed to make every mortal kind of fools of themselves and then have 'a social revolution' jump in to slue off the consequences. Let us understand each other. Who do you suppose I am?"

  "Miss—Miss Almer, ain't it?"

  "It's Alma Brown, Mr. Forrest. I saw you coming on the boat and I made Mr. Martin fetch me over to you. I told him not to say my name, because I wanted a good plain talk with you. Well, I've had it. Things are just about where I thought they were, and I told Mr. Lossing so. But I couldn't be sure. You must have thought me a funny kind of woman to be telling you all those things about myself."

  Nelson, who had changed color half a dozen times in the darkness, sighed before he said: "No, ma'am; I only thought how good you were to tell me. I hoped maybe you were impressed to trust me as I was to trust you."

  Being so dark Nelson could not see the queer expression on her face as she slowly shook her head. She was thinking: "If I ever saw a babe in arms trying to do business! How did HE ever pay for a farm?" She said: "Well, I did it on purpose; I wanted you to know I wasn't a cruel aristocrat, but a woman that had worked as hard as yourself. Now, why shouldn't you help me and yourself instead of helping Richards? You have confidence in me, you say. Well, show it. I'll give you your mortgage for your mortgage on Richards's farm. Come, can't you trust Richards to me? You think it over."