Stories of a Western Town

by Thanet, Octave

  The hiss of a rocket hurled her words into space. The fireworks had begun. Miss Brown looked at them and watched Nelson at the same time. As a good business woman who was also a good citizen, having subscribed five dollars to the carnival, she did not propose to lose the worth of her money; neither did she intend to lose a chance to do business. Perhaps there was an obscurer and more complex motive lurking in some stray corner of that queer garret, a woman's mind. Such motives—aimless softenings of the heart, unprofitable diversions of the fancy—will seep unconsciously through the toughest business principles of woman.

  She was puzzled by the look of exaltation on Nelson's features, illumined as they were by the uncanny light. If the fool man had not forgotten all his troubles just to see a few fireworks! No, he was not that kind of a fool; maybe—and she almost laughed aloud in her pleasure over her own insight—maybe it all made him think of the war, where he had been so brave. "He was a regular hero in the war," Miss Brown concluded, "and he certainly is a perfect gentleman; what a pity he hasn't got any sense!"

  She had guessed aright, although she had not guessed deep enough in regard to Nelson. He watched the great wheels of light, he watched the river aflame with Greek fire, then, with a shiver, he watched the bombs bursting into myriads of flowers, into fizzing snakes, into fields of burning gold, into showers of jewels that made the night splendid for a second and faded. They were not fireworks to him; they were a magical phantasmagoria that renewed the incoherent and violent emotions of his youth; again he was in the chaos of the battle, or he was dreaming by his camp-fire, or he was pacing his lonely round on guard. His heart leaped again with the old glow, the wonderful, beautiful worship of Liberty that can do no wrong. He seemed to hear a thousand voices chanting:

  "In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!"

  His turbid musings cleared—or they seemed to him to clear—under the strong reaction of his imagination and his memories. It was all over, the dream and the glory thereof. The splendid young soldier was an elderly, ruined man. But one thing was left: he could be true to his flag.

  "A poor soldier, but enlisted for the war," says Nelson, squaring his shoulders, with a lump in his throat and his eyes brimming. "I know by the way it hurts me to think of refusing her that it's a temptation to wrong-doing. No, I can't save myself by sacrificing a brother soldier for humanity. She is just as kind as she can be, but women don't understand business; she wouldn't make allowance for Richards."

  He felt a hand on his shoulder; it was Martin apologizing for hurrying Miss Brown; but the baby was fretting and——

  "I'm sorry—yes—well, I wish you didn't have to go!" Nelson began; but a hoarse treble rose from under his elbows: "Say, Mr. Martin, Uncle and me can take Miss Brown home."

  "If you will allow me the pleasure," said Nelson, with the touch of courtliness that showed through his homespun ways.

  "Well, I WOULD like to see the hundred bombs bursting at once and Vulcan at his forge!" said Miss Brown.

  Thus the matter arranged itself. Tim waited with the lady while Nelson went for the horse, nor was it until afterward that Miss Brown wondered why the lad did not go instead of the man. But Tim had his own reasons. No sooner was Nelson out of earshot than he began: "Say, Miss Brown, I can tell you something."

  "Yes?"

  "That Richards is no good; but you can't get Uncle to see it. At least it will take time. If you'll help me we can get him round in time. Won't you please not sell us out for six months and give me a show? I'll see you get your interest and your money, too."

  "You?" Miss Brown involuntarily took a business attitude, with her arms akimbo, and eyed the boy.

  "Yes, ma'am, me. I ain't so very old, but I know all about the business. I got all the figures down—how much we raise and what we got last year. I can fetch them to you so you can see. He is a good farmer, and he will catch on to the melons pretty quick. We'll do better next year, and I'll try to keep him from belonging to things and spending money; and if he won't lend to anybody or start in raising a new kind of crop just when we get the melons going, he will make money sure. He is awful good and honest. All the trouble with him is he needs somebody to take care of him. If Aunt Lizzie had been alive he never would have lent that dead-beat Richards that money. He ought to get married."

  Miss Brown did not feel called on to say anything. Tim continued in a judicial way: "He is awful good and kind, always gets up in the morning to make the fire if I have got something else to do; and he'd think everything his wife did was the best in the world; and if he had somebody to take care of him he'd make money. I don't suppose YOU would think of it?" This last in an insinuating tone, with evident anxiety.

  "Well, I never!" said Miss Brown.

  Whether she was more offended or amused she couldn't tell; and she stood staring at him by the electric light. To her amazement the hard little face began to twitch. "I didn't mean to mad you," Tim grunted, with a quiver in his rough voice. "I've been listening to every word you said, and I thought you were so sensible you'd talk over things without nonsense. Of course I knew he'd have to come and see you Saturday nights, and take you buggy riding, and take you to the theatre, and all such things—first. But I thought we could sorter fix it up between ourselves. I've taken care of him ever since Aunt Lizzie died, and I did my best he shouldn't lend that money, but I couldn't help it; and I did keep him from marrying a widow woman with eight children, who kept telling him how much her poor fatherless children needed a man; and I never did see anybody I was willing—before—and it's—it's so lonesome without Aunt Lizzie!" He choked and frowned. Poor Tim, who had sold so many melons to women and seen so much of back doors and kitchen humors that he held the sex very cheap, he did not realize how hard he would find it to talk of the one woman who had been kind to him! He turned red with shame over his own weakness.

  "You poor little chap!" cried Miss Brown; "you poor little sharp, innocent chap!" The hand she laid on his shoulder patted it as she went on: "Never mind, if I can't marry your uncle, I can help you take care of him. You're a real nice boy, and I'm not mad; don't you think it. There's your uncle now."

  Nelson found her so gentle that he began to have qualms lest his carefully prepared speech should hurt her feelings. But there was no help for it now. "I have thought over your kind offer to me, ma'am," said he, humbly, "and I got a proposition to make to you. It is your honest due to have your farm, yes, ma'am. Well, I know a man would like to buy it; I'll sell it to him, and pay you your money."

  "But that wasn't my proposal."

  "I know it, ma'am. I honor you for your kindness; but I can't risk what—what might be another person's idea of duty about Richards. Our consciences ain't all equally enlightened, you know."

  Miss Brown did not answer a word.

  They drove along the streets where the lanterns were fading. Tim grew uneasy, she was silent so long. On the brow of the hill she indicated a side street and told them to stop the horse before a little brown house. One of the windows was a dim square of red.

  "It isn't quite so lonesome coming home to a light," said Miss Brown.

  As Nelson cramped the wheel to jump out to help her from the vehicle, the light from the electric arc fell full on his handsome face and showed her the look of compassion and admiration, there.

  "Wait one moment," she said, detaining him with one firm hand. "I've got something to say to you. Let Richards go for the present; all I ask of you about him is that you will do nothing until we can find out if he is so bad off. But, Mr. Forrest, I can do better for you about that mortgage. Mr. Lossing will take it for three years for a relative of his and pay me the money. I told him the story."

  "And YOU will get the money all right?"

  "Just the same. I was only trying to help you a little by the other way, and I failed. Never mind."

  "I can't tell you how you make me feel," said Nelson.

  "Please let him bring yo
u some melons to-morrow and make a stagger at it, though," said Tim.

  "Can I?" Nelson's eyes shone.

  "If you want to," said Miss Brown. She laughed; but in a moment she smiled.

  All the way home Nelson saw the same face of Failure between the old mare's white ears; but its grim lineaments were softened by a smile, a smile like Miss Brown's.

  TOMMY AND THOMAS

  IT was while Harry Lossing was at the High School that Mrs. Carriswood first saw Tommy Fitzmaurice. He was not much to see, a long lad of sixteen who had outgrown his jackets and was not yet grown to his ears.

  At this period Mrs. Fitzmaurice was his barber, and she, having been too rash with the shears in one place, had snipped off the rest of his curly black locks "to match;" until he showed a perfect convict's poll, giving his ears all the better chance, and bringing out the rather square contour of his jaws to advantage. He had the true Irish-Norman face; a skin of fine texture, fair and freckled, high cheekbones, straight nose, and wide blue eyes that looked to be drawn with ink, because of their sharply pencilled brows and long, thick, black lashes. But the feature that Mrs. Carriswood noticed was Tommy's mouth, a flexible and delicately cut mouth, of which the lips moved lightly in speaking and seldom were quite in repose.

  "The genuine Irish orator's mouth," thought Mrs. Carriswood.

  Tommy, however, was not a finished orator, and Mrs. Carriswood herself deigned to help him with his graduating oration; Tommy delivering the aforesaid oration from memory, on the stage of the Grand Opera House, to a warm-hearted and perspiring audience of his towns-people, amid tremendous applause and not the slightest prod-dings of conscience.

  Really the speech deserved the applause; Mrs. Carriswood, who had heard half the eloquence of the world, spent three evenings on it; and she has a good memory.

  Her part in the affair always amused her; though, in fact, it came to pass easily. She had the great fortune of the family. Being a widow with no children, and the time not being come when philanthropy beckons on the right hand and on the left to free-handed women, Mrs. Carriswood travelled. As she expressed it, she was searching the globe for a perfect climate. "Not that I in the least expect to find it," said she, cheerfully, "but I like to vary my disappointments; when I get worn out being frozen, winters, I go somewhere to be soaked." She was on her way to California this time, with her English maid, who gave the Lossing domestics many a jolly moment by her inextinguishable panic about red Indians. Mrs. Derry supposed these savages to be lurking on the prairie outside every Western town; and almost fainted when she did chance to turn the corner upon three Kickapoo Indians, splendid in paint and feathers, and peacefully vending the "Famous Kickapoo Sagwa." She had others of the artless notions of the travelling English, and I fear that they were encouraged not only by the cook, the "second girl," and the man-of-all-work, but by Harry and his chum, Tommy; I know she used to tell how she saw tame buffalo "roosting" on the streets, "w'ich they do look that like common cows a body couldn't tell 'em hapart!"

  She had a great opinion of Tommy, a mystery to her mistress for a long time, until one day it leaked out that Tommy "and Master Harry, too," had told her that Tommy's great-grandfather was a lord in the old country.

  "The family seem to have sunk in the world since, Derry," was Mrs. Carriswood's single remark, as she smiled to herself. After Derry was dismissed she picked up a letter, written that day to a friend of hers, and read some passages about Harry and Tommy, smiling again.

  "Harry"—one may look over her pretty shoulder without impertinence, in a story—"Harry," she wrote, "is a boy that I long to steal. Just the kind of boy we have both wanted, Sarah—frank, happy, affectionate. I must tell you something about him. It came out by accident. He has the Western business instincts, and what do you suppose he did? He actually started a wee shop of his own in the corner of the yard (really it is a surprisingly pretty place, and they are quite civilized in the house, gas, hot water, steam heat, all most comfortable), and sold 'pop' and candy and cakes to the boys. He made so much money that he proposed a partnership to the cook and the setting up a little booth in the 'county fair,' which is like our rural cattle shows, you know. The cook (a superior person who borrows books from Mrs. Lossing, but seems very decent and respectful notwithstanding, and broils game to perfection. And SUCH game as we have here, Sarah!)—well, the cook made him cream-cakes, sandwiches, tarts, and candy, and Harry honorably bought all the provisions with his profits from the first venture. You will open your eyes at his father permitting such a thing, but Henry Lossing is a thorough Westerner in some ways, and he looks on it all as a joke. 'Might show the boy how to do business,' he says.

  "Well, they had a ravishing display, so Alma, the cook, and William, the man, assured me—per Derry. All the sadder its fate; for alas! a gang of rowdy boys fell upon Harry, and while he was busy fighting half of them—he is as plucky as his uncle, the general—the other half looted the beautiful stock in trade! They would have despoiled our poor little merchant entirely but for the opportune arrival of a schoolmate who is mightily respected by the rowdies. He knocked one of them down and shouted after the others that he would give every one of them a good thrashing if they did not bring the plunder back; and as he is known to be a lad of his word for good or evil, actually the scamps did return most of the booty, which the two boys brushed off and sold, as far as it went (!) The consequence of the fray has been that Harry is unboundedly grateful to this Tommy Fitzmaurice, and is at present coaching him on his graduating oration. Fitzmaurice has studied hard and won honors, and wants to make a show with his oration, to please his father. 'You see,' says Harry, 'Tommy's father has saved money and is spending it all on Tommy, so's he can be educated. He needs Tommy in the business real bad, but he won't let him come in; he keeps him at school, and he thinks everything of his getting the valedictory, and Tommy, he worked nights studying to get it.' When I asked what was the father's business, Harry grew a bit confused. 'Well, he kept a saloon; but'—Harry hastened to explain—'it was a very nice saloon, never any trouble with the police there; why, Tommy knew every man on the force. And they keep good liquors, too,' said Harry, earnestly; 'throw away all the beer left in the glasses.' 'What else would they do with it?' asked innocent I. 'Why, keep it in a bucket,' said Harry, solemnly, 'and then slip the glass under the counter and half fill out of the bucket, then hold it under the keg LOW, so's the foam will come; that's a trick of the trade, you know. Tommy says his father would SCORN that!' There is a vista opened, isn't there? I was rather shocked at such associates for Harry, and told his mother. Did she think it a good idea to have such a boy coming to the house? a saloon-keeper's son? She did not laugh, as I half expected, but answered quite seriously that she had been looking up Tommy, that he was very much attached to Harry, and that she did not think he would teach him anything bad. He has, I find myself, notions of honor, though they are rather the code of the street. And he picks up things quickly. Once he came to tea. It was amusing to see how he glued his eyes on Harry and kept time with his motions. He used his fork quite properly, only as Harry is a left-handed little fellow, the right-handed Thomas had the more difficulty.

  "He is taking such vast pains with his 'oration' that I felt moved to help him. The subject is 'The Triumph of Democracy,' and Tommy civilly explained that 'democracy' did not mean the Democratic party, but 'just only a government where all the poor folks can get their rights and can vote.'

  "The oration was the kind of spread-eagle thing you might expect; I can see that Tommy has formed himself on the orators of his father's respectable saloon. What he said in comment interested me more. 'Sure, I guess it is the best government, ma'am, though, of course, I got to make it out that way, anyhow. But we come from Ireland, and there they got the other kind, and me granny, she starved in the famine time, she did that—with the fever. Me father walked twenty mile to the Sackville's place, where they gave him some meal, though he wasn't one of their tenants; yes, and the lady told him how he would b
e cooking it. I never will forget that lady!'

  "I saw a dramatic opportunity: would Tommy be willing to tell that story in his speech? He looked at me with an odd look—or so I imagined it! 'Why not?' says he; 'I'd as soon as not tell it to anyone of them, and why not to them all together?' Well, why not, when you come to think of it? So we have got it into the speech; and I, I myself, Sarah, am drilling young Demos-thenes, and he is so apt a scholar that I find myself rather pleasantly employed." Having read her letter, Mrs. Carriswood hesitated a second and then added Derry's information at the bottom of the page. "I suppose the lordly ancestor was one of King James's creation—see Macaulay, somewhere in the second volume. I dare say there is a drop or two of good blood in the boy. He has the manners of a gentleman—but I don't know that I ever saw an Irishman, no matter how low in the social scale, who hadn't."

  Thus it happened that Tommy's valedictory scored a success that is a tradition of the High School, and came to be printed in both the city papers; copies of which journals Tommy's mother has preserved sacredly to this day; and I have no doubt, could one find them, they would be found wrapped around a yellow photograph of the "A Class" of 1870: eight pretty girls in white, smiling among five solemn boys in black, and Tommy himself, as the valedictorian, occupying the centre of the picture in his new suit of broadcloth, with a rose in his buttonhole and his hair cut by a professional barber for the occasion.