Aladdin and Company Part 13

"No," answered he, "strange as it may seem, ma's kinder stuck on comin'

to town to live. How she'll feel after she's tried it fer a month 'r so, with no chickens 'r turkeys 'r milk to look after, I'm dubious; but jest now she seems to be all right."

"Well, what's the matter then?" said I.

"Wal, it's Josie, to tell the truth," said he. "She's sort o' hangin'

back. An' it's for her sake that I want to make the deal! I've told her an' told her that there's no dum sense in raisin' corn on thousand-dollar land; but it's no use, so fur; an' here's the only chanst I'll ever hev, mebbe, a-slippin' by. She ortn't to live her life out on a farm, educated as she is. W'y, did you ever hear how she's been educated?"

I told him that in a general way I knew, but not in detail.

"W'l, I want yeh to know all about it, so's yeh c'n see this movin'

business as it is," said he. "You know I was allus a rough cuss. Herded cattle over there by yer father's south place, an' never went to school.

Ma, Josie's ma, y' know, kep' the Greenwood school, an' crossed the prairie there where I was a-herdin', an' I used to look at her mighty longin' as she went by, when the cattle happened to be clost along the track, which they right often done. You know how them things go. An'

fin'ly one morning a blue racer chased her, as the little whelps will, an' got his dummed little teeth fastened in her dress, an' she a-hyperin' around haff crazy, and a-screamin' every jump, so's't I hed to just grab her, an' hold her till I could get the blasted snake off,--harmless, y' know, but got hooked teeth, an' not a lick o'

sense,--an' he kinder quirled around my arm, an' I nacherally tore him to ribbins a-gittin' of him off. An' then she sort o' dropped off, an'

when she come to, I was a-rubbin' her hands an' temples. Wa'n't that a funny interduction?"

"It's very interesting," said I; "go on."

"W'l you remember ol' Doc Maxfield?" said Bill, well started on a reminiscence. "Wal, he come along, an' said it was the worst case of collapse, whatever that means, that he ever see--her lips an' hands an'

chin all a-tremblin', an' flighty as a loon. Wal, after that I used to take her around some, an' her folks objected becuz I was ignorant, an'

she learnt me some things, an' bein' strong an' a good dancer an' purty good-lookin' she kind o' forgot about my failin's, an' we was married.

Her folks said she'd throwed herself away; but I could buy an' sell the hull set of 'em now!"

This seemed conclusive as to the merits of the case, and I told him as much.

"W'l Josie was born an' growed up," continued Bill, "an' it's her I started to tell about, wa'n't it? She was allus a cute little thing, an'

early she got this art business in her head. She'd read about fellers that had got to be great by paintin' an' carvin', an' it made her wild to do the same thing. Wa'n't there a feller that pulled hair outer the cat to paint Injuns with? Yes, I thought they was; I allus thought they could paint theirselves good enough; but that story an' some others she read an' read when she was a little gal, an' she was allus a-paintin'

an' makin' things with clay. She took a prize at the county fair when she was fourteen, with a picter of Washin'ton crossin' the Delaware--three dollars, by gum! An' then we hed to give her lessons; an' they wasn't any one thet knew anything around here, she said, an'

she went to Chicago. An' I went in to visit her when she hedn't ben there more'n six weeks, on an excursion one convention time, an' I found her all tore up, a good deal as her ma was with the blue racer,--I don't think she's ever ben the same light-hearted little gal sence,--an' from there I took her to New York; an' there she fell in with a nice woman that was awful good to her, an' they went to Europe, an' it cost a heap.

An' you may've noticed thet Josie knows a pile more'n the other women here?"

I admitted that this had occurred to me.

"W'l, she was allus apt to take her head with her," said Bill, "but this travelin' has fixed her like a hoss thet's ben druv in Chicago: nothin'

feazes her, street-cars, bra.s.s bands, circuses, overhead trains--it's all the same to her, she's seen 'em all. Sometimes I git the notion that she'd enjoy things more if she hadn't seen so dum many of 'em an' so much better ones, y' know! Wal, after she'd ben over there a long time, she wrote she was a-comin' home; an' we was tickled to death. Only I was surprised by her writin' that she wanted us to take all them old picters of hern, and put 'em out of sight! An' if you'll b'lieve it, she won't talk picters nor make any sence she got back--only, jest after she got back, she said she didn't see any use o' her goin' on dobbin' good canvas up with good paint, an' makin' nothin' but poor picters; an' she cried some.... I thought it was sing'lar that this art business that she thought was the only thing thet'd ever make her happy was the only thing I ever see her cry about."

"It's the way," said I, "with a great many of our cherished hopes."

"W'l, anyhow, you can see thet it's the wrong thing to put as much time an' money into fixin' a child up f'r a different kind o' life as we hev, an' then keep her on a farm out here. An' thet's why I want you to help this sale through, an' bring influence to bear on her. I give up; I'm all in."

To me Bill seemed entirely in the right. The new era made it absurd for the Trescotts to use their land longer as a farm. Lattimore was changing daily. The streets were gashed with trenches for gas- and water-mains; piled-up materials for curbing, paving, office buildings, new hotels, and all sorts of erections made locomotion a peril; but we were happy.

The water company was organized in our office, the gas and electric-light company in Cornish's; but every spout led into the same bin.

Mr. Hinckley had induced some country dealers who owned a line of local grain-houses to remove to Lattimore and put up a huge terminal elevator for the handling of their trade. Captain Tolliver had been for a long time working upon a project for developing a great water-power, by tunneling across a bend in the river, and utilizing the fall. The building of the elevator attracted the attention of a company of Rochester millers, and almost before we knew it their forces had been added to ours, and the tunnel was begun, with the certainty that a two-thousand-barrel mill would be ready to grind the wheat from the elevator as soon as the flume began carrying water. This tunnel cut through an isthmus between the Brushy Creek valley and the river, and brought to bear on our turbines the head from a ten-mile loop of shoals and riffles. It opened into the gorge near the southern edge of Lynhurst Park, and crossed the Trescott farm. So it was that Bill awoke one day to the fact that his farm was coveted by divers people, who saw in his fields and feed-yards desirable sites for railway tracks, mills, factories, and the cottages of a manufacturing suburb. This it was that had put the Captain, like a blood-hound, on his trial, to the end that he was run to earth in my office, and made his appeal for help in managing Josie.

"There she comes now," said he. "Labor with her, won't yeh?"

"Bring her with us to the hotel," said I, "to take dinner. If my wife and Elkins can't fix the thing, no one can."

So we five dined together, and after dinner discussed the Trescott crisis. Bill put the case, with all a veteran dealer's logic, in its financial aspects.

"But we don't want to be rich," said Josie.

"What've we ben actin' all these years like we have for, then?" inquired Bill. "Seem's if I'd been lab'rin' under a mistake f'r some time past.

When your ma an' me was a-roughin' it out there in the old log-house, an' she a-lookin' out at the Feb'uary stars through the holes in the roof, a-holdin' you, a little baby in bed, we reckoned we was a-doin' of it to sort o' better ourselves in a property way. Wouldn't you 'a'thought so, Jim?"

"Well," said Mr. Elkins, with an air of judicial perpension, "if you had asked me about it, I should have said that, if you wanted to stay poor, you could have held your own better by staying in Pleasant Valley Township as a renter. This was no place to come to if you wanted to conserve your poverty."

"But, pa, we're not adapted to town life and towns," urged Josie. "I'm not, and you are not, and as for mamma, she'll never be contented. Oh, Mr. Elkins, why did you come out here, making us all fortunes which we haven't earned, and upsetting everything?"

"Now, don't blame me, Josie," Jim protested. "You ought to consider the fallacy of the _post hoc, propter hoc_ argument. But to return to the point under discussion. If you could stay there, a rural Amaryllis, sporting in Arcadian shades, having seen you doing it once or twice, I couldn't argue against it, it's so charmingly becoming."

"If that were all the argument--" began Josie.

"It's the most important one--to my mind," said Jim, resuming the discussion, "and you fail on that point; for you can't live in that way long. If you don't sell, the Development Company will condemn grounds for railway tracks and switch-yards; you'll find your fields and meadows all shot to pieces; and your house will be surrounded by warehouses, elevators, and factories. Your larks and bobolinks will be scared off by engines and smokestacks, and your flowers spoiled with soot. Don't parley with fate, but cash in and put your winnings in some safe investment."

"Once I thought I couldn't stay on the old farm a day longer; but I feel otherwise now! What business has this 'progress' of yours to interfere?"

"It pushes you out of the nest," answered Jim. "It gives you the chance of your lives. You can come out into Lynhurst Park Addition, and build your house near the Barslow and Elkins dwellings. We've got about everything there--city water, gas, electric light, sewers, steam heat from the traction plant, beautiful view, lots on an established grade--"

"Don't, don't!" said Josie. "It sounds like the advertis.e.m.e.nts in the _Herald_."

"Well, I was just leading up to a statement of what we lack," continued Jim. "It's the artistic atmosphere. We need a dash of the culture of Paris and Dresden and the place where they have the d.i.n.ky little windmills which look so nice on cream-pitchers, but wouldn't do for one of our farmers a minute. Come out and supply our lack. You owe it to the great cause of the amelioration of local savagery; and in view of my declaration of discipleship, and the effective way in which I have always upheld the standard of our barbarism, I claim that you owe it to me."

"I've abandoned the brush."

"Take it up again."

"I have made a vow."

"Break it!"

She refused to yield, but was clearly yielding. Alice and I showed Trescott, on a plat, the place for his new home. He was quite taken with the idea, and said that ma would certainly be tickled with it.

Josie sat apart with Mr. Elkins, in earnest converse, for a long time.

She looked frequently at her father, Jim constantly at her. Mr. Cornish dropped in for a little while, and joined us in presenting the case for removal. While he was there the girl seemed constrained, and not quite so fully at her ease; and I could detect, I thought, the old tendency to scrutinize his face furtively. When he went away, she turned to Jim more intimately than before, and almost promised that she would become his neighbor in Lynhurst. After the Trescotts' carriage had come and taken them away, Jim told us that it was for her father, and the temptations of idleness in the town, that Miss Trescott feared.

"This fairy-G.o.dmother business," said he, "ain't what the prospectus might lead one to expect. It has its drawbacks. Bill is going to cash in all right, and I think it's for the best; but, Al, we've got to take care of the old man, and see that he doesn't go up in the air."

CHAPTER XIII.

A Sitting or Two in the Game with the World and Destiny.

Our game at Lattimore was one of those absorbing ones in which the sunlight of next morning sifts through the blinds before the players are aware that midnight is past. Day by day, deal by deal, it went on, card followed card in fateful fall upon the table, and we who sat in, and played the World and Destiny with so pitifully small a pile of chips at the outset, saw the World and Destiny losing to us, until our hands could scarcely hold, our eyes hardly estimate, the high-piled stacks of counters which were ours.