Stories of a Western Town

by Thanet, Octave

  It was the story of the famine that really captured the audience; and Tommy told it well, with the true Irish fire, in a beautiful voice.

  In the front seat of the parquette a little old man in a wrinkled black broadcloth, with a bald head and a fringe of whisker under his long chin, and a meek little woman, in a red Paisley shawl, wept and laughed by turns. They had taken the deepest interest in every essay and every speech. The old man clapped his large hands (which were encased in loose, black kid gloves) with unflagging vigor. He wore a pair of heavy boots, the soles of which made a noble thud on the floor.

  "Ain't it wonderful the like of them young craters can talk like that!" he cried; "shure, Molly, that young lady who'd the essay—where is it?"—a huge black forefinger travelled down the page—"'Music, The Turkish Patrol,' No—though that's grand, that piece; I'll be spakin' wid Professor Von Keinmitz to bring it when we've the opening. Here 'tis, Molly: 'Tin, Essay. The Darkest Night Brings Out the Stars, Miss Mamie Odenheimer.' Thrue for you, mavourneen! And the sintiments, wasn't they illigant? and the lan-gwidge was as foine as Pat Ronan's speeches or Father—whist! will ye look at the flowers that shlip of a gyirl's gitting! Count 'em, will ye?"

  "Fourteen bouquets and wan basket," says the little woman, "and Mamie Odenheimer, she got seventeen bouquets and two baskets and a sign. Well," she looked anxious, but smiled, "I know of siven bouquets Tommy will git for sure. And that's not countin' what Harry Lossing will do for him. Hiven bless the good heart of him!"

  "Well, I kin count four for him on wan seat," says the man, with a nod of his head toward the gay heap in the woman's lap, "barrin' I ain't on-vaygled into flinging some of thim to the young ladies!"

  Harry Lossing, in the seat behind with his mother and Mrs. Carriswood, giggled at this and whispered in the latter lady's ear, "That's Tommy's father and mother. My, aren't they excited, though! And Tommy's white's a sheet—for fear he'll disappoint them, you know. He has said his piece over twice to me, to-day, he's so scared lest he'll forget. I've got it in my pocket, and I'm going behind when it's his turn, to prompt him. Did you see me winking at him? it sort of cheers him up."

  He was almost as keen over the floral procession as the Fitzmaurices themselves. The Lossing garden had been stripped to the last bud, and levies made on the asparagus-bed, into the bargain, and Mrs. Lossing and Alma and Mrs. Carriswood and Derry and Susy Lossing had made bouquets and baskets and wreaths, and Harry had distributed them among friends in different parts of the house. I say Harry, but, complimented by Mrs. Carriswood, he admitted ingenuously that it was Tommy's idea.

  "Tommy thought they would make more show that way," says Harry, "and they are all on the middle aisle, so his father and mother can see them; Tim O'Halloran has got one for him, too, and Mrs. Macillarney, and she's got some splendid pinies. Picked every last one. They'll make a show!"

  But Harry knew nothing of the most magnificent of his friend's trophies until it undulated gloriously down the aisle, above the heads of two men, white satin ribbons flying, tinfoil shining—an enormous horseshoe of roses and mignonette!

  The parents were both on their feet to crane their necks after it, as it passed them amid the plaudits.

  "Oh, it was YOU, Cousin Margaret; I know it was you," cried Harry.

  He took the ladies over to the Fitzmaurices the minute that the diplomas were given; and, directly, Tommy joined them, attended by two admiring followers laden with the trophies. Mrs. O'Halloran and Mrs. Macillarney and divers of the friends, both male and female, joined the circle. Tommy held quite a little court. He shook hands with all the ladies, beginning with Mrs. Carriswood (who certainly never had found herself before in such a company, jammed between Alderman McGinnis's resplendent new tweeds and Mrs. Macillarney's calico); he affectionately embraced his mother, and he allowed himself to be embraced by Mrs. Macillarney and Mrs. O'Halloran, while Patrick Fitzmaurice shook hands with the alderman.

  "Here's the lady that helped me on me piece, father; she's the lady that sent me the horseshoe, mother. Like to make you acquainted with me father and me mother. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzmaurice, Mrs. Carriswood."

  In these words, Tommy, blushing and happy, presented his happy parents.

  "Sure, I'm proud to meet you, ma'am," said Fitzmaurice, bowing, while his wife courtesied and wiped her eyes.

  They were very grateful, but they were more grateful for the flowers than for the oratorical drilling. No doubt they thought that their Tommy could have done as well in any case; but the splendid horseshoe was another matter!

  Ten years passed before Mrs. Carriswood saw her pupil again. During those years the town had increased and prospered; so had the Lossing Art Furniture Works. It was after Harry Lossing had disappointed his father. This is not saying that he had done anything out of the way; he had simply declined to be the fourth Harry Lossing on the rolls of Harvard College. Instead, he proposed to enter the business and to begin by learning his own trade. He was so industrious, he kept at it with such energy that his first convert was his father—no, I am wrong, Mrs. Carriswood was the first; Mrs. Lossing was not a convert, SHE had believed in Harry from the beginning. But all this was years before Mrs. Carriswood's visit.

  Another of Master Harry's notions was his belief in the necessity of his "meddling"—so his father put it—in the affairs of the town, the state, and the nation, as well as those of the Lossing furniture company. But, though he was pleased to make rather cynical fun of his son's political enthusiasm, esteeming it in a sense a diverting and therefore reprehensible pursuit for a business man, the elder Lossing had a sneaking pride in it, all the same. He liked to bring out Harry's political shrewdness.

  "Fancy, Margaret," says he, "whom do you think Harry has brought over to our side now? The shrewdest ward politician in the town—why, you saw him when he was a boy—Tommy Fitzmaurice."

  Then Mrs. Carriswood remembered; she asked, amused, how was Tommy and where was he?

  "Tommy? Oh, he went to the State university; the old man was bound to send him, and he was more dutiful than some sons. He was graduated with honors, and came back to a large, ready-made justice court's practice. Of course he drifted into criminal practice; but he has made a fine income out of that, and is the shrewdest, some folks say the least scrupulous, political manager in the county. And so, Harry, you have persuaded him to cast in his lot with the party of principle, have you? and he is packing the primaries?"

  "I see nothing dishonest in our trying to get our friends out to vote at the primaries, sir."

  "Of course not, but he may not stop there. However, I want Bailey elected, and I am glad he will work for us; what's his price?"

  Harry blushed a little. "I believe he would like to be city attorney, sir," said he; and Mr. Lossing laughed.

  "Would he make a bad one?" asked Mrs. Carriswood.

  "He would make the best kind of a one," replied Harry, with youthful fervor; "he's a ward politician and all that, I know; but he has it in him to be an uncommon deal more! And I say, sir, do you know that he and the old man will take twenty-five thousand of the stock at par if we turn ourselves into a corporation?"

  "How about this new license measure? won't that bear a little bit hard on the old man?" This from Mr. Lossing, who was biting his cigar in deep thought.

  "That will not prevent his doing his duty; why, the old man for very pride will be the first to obey the law. You'll SEE!"

  Six months later they did see, since it was mostly due to Fitzmaurice's efforts that the reform candidate was elected; as a consequence, Tommy became prosecuting attorney; and, to the amazement of the critics, made the best prosecuting attorney that the city had ever known.

  It was during the campaign that Mrs. Carriswood met him. Her goddaughter, daughter of the friend to whom years ago she described Tommy, was with her. This time Mrs. Carriswood had recently added Florida to her disappointments in climates, and was back, as she told Mrs. Lossing, "with a real sense of relief in a climate that was too bad to make any
pretensions."

  She had brought Miss Van Harlem to see the shops. It may be that she would not have been averse to Harry Lossing's growing interested in young Margaret. She had seen a great deal of Harry while he was East at school, and he remained her first favorite, while Margaret was as good as she was pretty, and had half a million of dollars in her own right. They had seen Harry, and he was showing them through the different buildings or "shops," when a man entered who greeted him cordially, and whom he presented to Mrs. Carriswood. It was Tommy Fitzmaurice, grown into a handsome young man. He brought his heels together and made the ladies a solemn bow. "Pleased to meet you, ladies; how do you like the West?" said Tommy.

  His black locks curled about his ears, which seemed rather small now; he had a good nose and a mobile, clean-shaven face. His hands were very white and soft, and the rim of linen above them was dazzling. His black frock-coat was buttoned snugly about his slim waist. He brushed his face with a fine silk handkerchief, and thereby diffused the fragrance of the best imported cologne among the odors of wood and turpentine. A diamond pin sparkled from his neckscarf. The truth is, he knew that the visitors were coming and had made a state toilet. "He looks half like an actor and half like a clergyman, and he IS all a politician," thought Mrs. Carriswood; "I don't think I shall like him any more." While she thought, she was inclining her slender neck toward him, and the gentlest interest and pleasure beamed out of her beautiful, dark eyes.

  "We like the West, but I have liked it for ten years; this is not my first visit," said Mrs. Carriswood.

  "I have reason to be glad for that, madam. I never made another speech so good."

  He had remembered her; she laughed. "I had thought that you would forget."

  "How could I, when you have not changed at all?"

  "But you have," says Mrs. Carriswood, hardly knowing whether to show the young man his place or not.

  "Yes, ma'am, naturally. But I have not learned how to make a speech yet."

  "Ah, but you make very good ones, Harry tells me."

  "Much obliged, Harry. No, ma'am, Harry is a nice boy; but he doesn't know. I know there is a lot to learn, and I guess a lot to unlearn; and I feel all outside; I don't even know how to get at it. I have wished a thousand times that I could talk with the lady who taught me to speak in the first place." He walked on by her side, talking eagerly. "You don't know how many times I have felt I would give most anything for the opportunity of just seeing you and talking with you; those things you said to me I always remembered." He had a hundred questions evidently stinging his tongue. And some of them seemed to Mrs. Carriswood very apposite.

  "I'm on the outside of such a lot of things," says he. "When I first began to suspect that I was on the outside was when I went to the High School, and sometimes I was invited to Harry's; that was my first acquaintance with cultivated society. You can't learn manners from books, ma'am. I learned them at Harry's. That is,"—he colored and laughed,—"I learned SOME. There's plenty left, I know. Then, I went to the University. Some of the boys came from homes like Harry's, and some of the professors there used to ask us to their houses; and I saw engravings and oil paintings, and heard the conversation of persons of culture. All this only makes me know enough to KNOW I am outside. I can see the same thing with the lawyers, too. There is a set of them that are after another kind of things; that think themselves above me and my sort of fellows. You know all the talk about this being a free and equal country. That's the tallest kind of humbug, madam! It is that. There are sets, one above another, everywhere; big bugs and little bugs, if you will excuse the expression. And you can't influence the big ones without knowing how they feel. A fellow can't be poking in the dark in a speech or anywhere else. Now, these fellows here, they go into politics, sometimes; and there, I tell you, we come the nearest to a fair field and no favor! It is the best fellow gets the prize there—the sharpest-witted, the nerviest, and stanchest. Oh, talk of machine politics! all the soft chaps who ain't willing to get up early in the morning, or to go out in the wet, THEY howl about the primaries and corruption; let them get up and clean the primaries instead of holding their noses! Those fellows, I'm not nice enough for them, but I can beat them every time. They make a monstrous racket in the newspapers, but when election comes on they can't touch side, edge, or bottom!"

  Discoursing in this fashion, with digressions to Harry in regard to the machines, the furniture, and the sales, that showed Mrs. Carriswood that he meant to keep an eye on his twenty odd thousand dollars, he strolled at her side. To Miss Van Harlem he scarcely said three words. In fact, he said exactly three words, uttered as Miss Margaret's silken skirts swung too near a pot of varnish. They were "Look out, miss!" and at the same second, Tommy (who was in advance, with really no call to know of the danger), turned on his heel and whisked the skirts away, turning back to pick up the sentence he had dropped.

  Tommy told Harry that Miss Van Harlem was a very handsome lady, but haughty-looking. Then he talked for half an hour about the cleverness of Mrs. Carriswood.

  "I am inclined to think Tommy will rise." (Mrs. Carriswood was describing the interview to her cousin, the next day.) "What do you think he said to me last of all? 'How,' said he, 'does a man, a gentleman'—it had a touch of the pathetic, don't you know, the little hesitation he made on the word—'how does he show his gratitude to a lady who has done him a great service?' 'Young or old?' I said. 'Oh, a married lady,' he said, 'very much admired, who has been everywhere.' Wasn't that clever of him? I told him that a man usually sent a few flowers. You saw the basket to-day—evidently regardless of expense. And fancy, there was a card, a card with a gilt edge and his name written on it."

  "The card was his mother's. She has visiting cards, now, and pays visits once a year in a livery carriage. Poor Mrs. Fitzmaurice, she is always so scared; and she is such a good soul! Tommy is very good to her."

  "How about the father? Does he still keep that 'nice' saloon?"

  "Yes; but he talks of retiring. They are not poor at all, and Tommy is their only child; the others died. It is hard on the old man to retire, for he isn't so very old in fact, but if he once is convinced that his calling stands in the way of Tommy's career, he won't hesitate a second."

  "Poor people," said Mrs. Carriswood; "do you know, Grace, I can see Tommy's future; he will grow to be a boss, a political boss. He will become rich by keeping your streets always being cleaned—which means never clean—and giving you the worst fire department and police to be obtained for money; and, by and by, a grateful machine will make him mayor, or send him to the Legislature, very likely to Congress, where he will misrepresent the honest State of Iowa. Then he will bloom out in a social way, and marry a gentlewoman, and they will snub the old people who are so proud of him."

  "Well, we shall see," said Mrs. Lossing; "I think better things of Tommy. So does Harry."

  Part of the prophecy was to be speedily fulfilled. Two years later, the Honorable Thomas Fitzmaurice was elected mayor of his city, elected by the reform party, on account of his eminent services—and because he was the only man in sight who had the ghost of a chance of winning. Harry's version was: "Tommy jests at his new principles, but that is simply because he doesn't comprehend what they are. He laughs at reform in the abstract; but every concrete, practical reform he is as anxious as I or anybody to bring about. And he will get them here, too."

  He was as good as his word; he gave the city an admirable administration, with neither fear nor favor. Some of the "boys" still clung to him; these, according to Harry, were the better "boys," who had the seeds of good in them and only needed opportunity and a leader. Tommy did not flag in zeal; rather, as the time went on and he soared out of the criminal courts into big civil cases involving property, he grew up to the level of his admirers' praises. "Tommy," wrote Mr. Lossing, presently, "is beginning to take himself seriously. He has been told so often that he is a young lion of reform, that he begins to study the role in dead earnest. I don't talk this way to Harry, who believes
in him and is training him for the representative for our district. What harm? Verily, his is the faith that will move mountains. Besides, Tommy is now rich; he must be worth a hundred thousand dollars, which makes a man of wealth in these parts. It is time for him to be respectable."

  Notwithstanding this preparation, Mrs. Carriswood (then giving Washington the benefit of her doubts of climate) was surprised one day to receive a perfectly correct visiting card whereon was engraved, "Mr. Thomas Sackville Fitzmaurice, M.C."

  The young lady who was with her lifted her brilliant hazel eyes and half smiled. "Is it the droll young man we met once at Mrs. Lossing's? Pray see him, Aunt Margaret," said Miss Van Harlem.

  Mrs. Carriswood shrugged her shoulders and ordered the man to show him up.

  There entered, in the wake of the butler, a distinguished-looking personage who held out his hand with a perfect copy of the bow that she saw forty times a day. "He is taking himself very seriously," she sighed; "he is precisely like anybody else!" And she felt her interest snuffed out by Tommy's correctness. But, directly, she changed her mind; the unfailing charm of his race asserted itself in Tommy; she decided that he was a delightful, original young man, and in ten minutes they were talking in the same odd confidence that had always marked their relation.

  "How perfectly you are gotten up! Are you INSIDE, now?"

  "Ah, do you remember that?" said he; "that's awfully good of you. Which is so fortunate as to please you, my clothes or my deportment?"

  "Both. They are very good. Where did you get them, Tommy? I shall take the privilege of my age and call you Tommy."

  "Thank you. The clothes? Oh, I asked Harry for the proper thing, and he recommended a tailor. I think Harry gave me the manners, too."

  "And your new principles?" She could not resist this little fling.

  "I owe a great deal in that way to Harry, also," answered he, with gravity.

  Gone were the days of sarcastic ridicule, of visionary politics. Tommy talked of the civil service in the tone of Harry himself. He was actually eloquent.