Aladdin and Company Part 15

"Come into my parlor, and yell for me," said Cornish, "and you may do my turn in police court, too. Come in, and behave yourself!"

I began writing a telegram to my wife, apprising her of our good luck.

The women in our circle knew our hopes, ambitions, and troubles, as the court ladies know the politics of the realm, and there were anxious hearts in Lattimore.

"I'm going down to the telegraph-office with this," said I; "can I take yours, too?"

When I handed the messages in, the man who received them insisted on my reading them over with him to make sure of correct transmission. There was one to Mr. Hinckley, one to Mr. Ballard, and two to Miss Josephine Trescott. One ran thus, "Success seems a.s.sured. Rejoice with me. J. B.

C." The other was as follows: "In game between Railway Giants and Country Jakes here to-day, visiting team wins. Score, 9 to 0. Barslow, catcher, disabled. Crick in neck looking at high buildings. Have Mrs. B.

prepare porous plaster for Sat.u.r.day next. Sell Halliday stock short, and buy L. & G. W. And in name all things good and holy don't tell Giddings!

J. R. E."

CHAPTER XIV.

In which we Learn Something of Railroads, and Attend Some Remarkable Christenings.

And so, in due time, it came to pa.s.s that, our Aladdin having rubbed the magic ring with which his Genius had endowed him, there came, out of some thunderous and smoky realm, peopled with swart kobolds, and lit by the white fire of gushing cupolas and dazzling billets, a train of carriages, drawn by a tamed volcanic demon, on a wonderful way of steel, armed strongly to deliver us from the Castle Perilous in which we were besieged by the Giants. The way was marvelously prepared by theodolite and level, by tented camps of men driving, with shouts and cracking whips, straining teams in circling mazes, about dark pits on gra.s.sy hillsides, and building long, straight banks of earth across swales; by huge machines with iron fists thrusting trunks of trees into the earth; by mighty creatures spinning great steel cobwebs over streams.

At last, a short branch of steel shot off from Pendleton's Pacific Division, grew daily longer and longer, pushed across the level earth-banks, the rows of driven tree-trunks, and the spun steel cobwebs, through the dark pits, nearer and nearer to Lattimore, and at last entered the beleaguered city, amid rejoicings of the populace. Most of whom knew but vaguely the facts of either siege or deliverance; but who shouted, and tossed their caps, and blew the horns and beat the drums, because the _Herald_ in a double-leaded editorial a.s.sured them that this was _the_ event for which Lattimore had waited to be raised to complete parity with her envious rivals. Furthermore, Captain Tolliver, magniloquently enthusiastic, took charge of the cheering, artillery, and band-music, and made a tumultuous success of it.

"He told me," said Giddings, "that when the people of the North can be brought for a moment into that subjection which is proper for the ma.s.ses, 'they make devilish good troops, suh, devilish good troops!'"

And so it also happened that Mr. Elkins found himself the president of a real railway, with all the perquisites that go therewith. Among these being the power to establish town-sites and give them names. The former function was exercised according to the principles usually governing town-site companies, and with ends purely financial in view. The latter was elevated to the dignity of a ceremony. The rails were scarcely laid, when President Elkins invited a choice company to go with him over the line and attend the christening of the stations. He convinced the rest of us of the wisdom of this, by showing us that it would awaken local interest along the line, and prepare the way for the auction sales of lots the next week.

"It's advertising of the choicest kind," said he. "Giddings will sow it far and wide in the press dispatches, and it will attract attention; and attention is what we want. We'll start early, run to the station Pendleton has called Elkins Junction, at the end of the line, lie over for a couple of hours, and come home, bestowing names as we come. Help me select the party, and we'll consider it settled."

As the train was to be a light one, consisting of a buffet-car and a parlor-car, the party could not be very large. The officers of the road, Mr. Adams, who was general traffic manager, and selected by the bondholders, and Mr. Kittrick, the general manager, who was found in Kansas City by Jim, went down first as a matter of course. Captain Tolliver and his wife, the Trescotts, the Hinckleys, with Mr. Cornish and Giddings, were put down by Jim; and to these we added the influential new people, the Alexanders, who came with the cement-works, of which Mr. Alexander was president, Mr. Densmore, who controlled the largest of the elevators, and Mr. Walling, whose mill was the first to utilize the waters of our power-tunnel, and who was the visible representative of millions made in the flouring trade. Smith, our architect, was included, as was Cecil Barr-Smith, sent out by his brother to be superintendent of the street-railway, and looking upon the thing in the light of an exile, comforted by the beautiful native princess Antonia. We left Macdonald out, because he always called the young man "Smith," and could not be brought to forget an early impression that he and the architect were brothers; besides, said Jim, Macdonald was afraid of the cars as he was of the hyphen, being most of the time on the range with the cattle belonging to himself and Hinckley.

Which, being interpreted, meant that Mr. Macdonald would not care to go.

Mr. Ballard was invited on account of his early connection with the L. & G. W. project, although he was holding himself more and more aloof from the new movements, and held forth often upon the value of conservatism.

Miss Addison, who was related to the Lattimore family, was commissioned to invite the old General, who very unexpectedly consented. His son Will, as solicitor for the railway company and one of the directors, was to be one of us if he could. These with their wives and some invited guests from near-by towns made up the party.

We were well acquainted with each other by this time, so that it was quite like a family party or a gathering of old friends. Captain Tolliver was austerely polite to General Lattimore, whose refusal to concern himself with the question as to whether our city grew to a hundred thousand or shrunk to five he accounted for on the ground that a man who had led hired ruffians to trample out the liberty of a brave people must be morally warped.

The General came, tall and spare as ever, wearing his beautiful white moustache and imperial as a Frenchman would wear the cross of the Legion of Honor. He was quite unable to sympathize with our lot-selling, our plenitude of corporations, or our feverish pushing of "developments."

But the building of the railway attracted him. He looked back at the new-made track as we flew along; and his eyes flashed under the bushy white brows. He sat near Josie, and held her in conversation much of the outward trip; but Jim he failed to appreciate, and treated indifferently.

"He is History incarnate," said Mrs. Tolliver, "and cannot rejoice in the pa.s.sing of so much that is a part of himself."

Giddings said that this was probably true; and under the circ.u.mstances he couldn't blame him. He, Giddings, would feel a little sore to see things which were a part of _himself_ going out of date. It was a natural feeling. Whereupon Mrs. Tolliver addressed her remarks very pointedly elsewhere; and Antonia Hinckley privately admonished Giddings not to be mean; and Giddings sought the buffet and smoked. Here I joined him, and over our cigars he confessed to me that life to him was an increasing burden, rapidly becoming intolerable.

We had noticed, I informed him, an occasional note of gloom in his editorials. This ought not to be, now that the real danger to our interests seemed to be over, and we were going forward so wonderfully.

To which he replied that with the gauds of worldly success he had no concern. The editorials I criticised were joyous and ebulliently hilarious compared with those which might be expected in the future. If we could find some blithesome a.s.s to pay him for the _Herald_ enough money to take him out of our scrambled Bedlam of a town, bring the idiot on, and he (Giddings) would arrange things so we could have our touting done as we liked it!

Now the _Herald_ had become a very valuable property, and of all men Giddings had the least reason to speak despitefully of Lattimore; and his frame of mind was a mystery to me, until I remembered that there was supposed to be something amiss between him and Laura Addison. Craftily leading the conversation to the point where confidences were easy, I was rewarded by a pa.s.sionate disclosure on his part, which would have amounted to an outburst, had it not been restrained by the presence of Cornish, Hinckley, and Trescott at the other end of the compartment.

"Oh, pshaw!" said I, "you've no cause for despair. On your own showing, there's every reason for you to hope."

"You don't know the situation, Barslow," he insisted, shaking his head gloomily, "and there's no use in trying to tell you. She's too exalted in her ideals ever to accept me. She's told me things about the qualities she must have in the one who should be nearest to her that just simply shut me out; and I haven't called since. Oh, I tell you, Barslow, sometimes I feel as if I could--Yes, sir, it'll be accepted as the best piece of railroad building for years!"

I was surprised at the sudden transition, until I saw that our fellow pa.s.sengers were crowding to our end of the car in response to the conductor's announcement that we were coming into Elkins Junction. I made a note of Giddings's state of mind, as the subject of a conference with Jim. The _Herald_ was of too much importance to us for this to be neglected. The disciple of Iago must in some way be restored to his normal view of things. I could not help smiling at the vast difference between his view of Laura and mine. I, wrongly perhaps, thought her affectedly pietistic, with ideals likely to be yielding in spirit if the letter were preserved.

Elkins Junction was a platform, a depot, an eating-house, and a Y; and it was nothing else.

"We've come up here," said Jim, "to show you probably the smallest town in the state, and the only one in the world named after me. We wanted to show you the whole line, and Mr. Schwartz felt as if he'd prefer to turn his engine around for the return trip. The last two towns we came through, and hence the first two going back, are old places. The third station is a new town, and Conductor Corcoran will take us back there, where we'll unveil the name of the station, and permit the people to know where they live. While we're doing the sponsorial act, lunch will be prepared and ready for us to discuss during the next run."

On the way back there was a stir of suppressed excitement among the pa.s.sengers.

"It's about this name," said Miss Addison to her seat-mate. "The town is on the sh.o.r.e of Mirror Lake, and they say it will be an important one, and a summer resort; and no one knows what the name is to be but Mr.

Elkins."

"Really, a very odd affair!" said Miss Allen, of Fairchild, Antonia's college friend. "It makes a social function of the naming of a town!"

"Yes," said Mr. Elkins, "and it is one of the really enduring things we can do. Long after the memory of every one here is departed, these villages will still bear the names we give them to-day. If there's any truth in the belief that some people have, that names have an influence for good or evil, the naming of the towns may be important as building the railroad."

I was sitting with Antonia. Miss Allen and Captain Tolliver were with us, our faces turned toward one another. General Lattimore, with Josie and her father, was on the opposite side of the car. Most of the company were sitting or standing near, and the conversation was quite general.

"Oh, it's like a romance!" half whispered Antonia to us. "I envy you men who build roads and make towns. Look at Mr. Elkins, Sadie, as he stands there! He is master of everything; to me he seems as great as Napoleon!"

She neither blushed nor sought to conceal from us her adoration for Jim.

It was the day of his triumph, and a fitting time to acknowledge his kinghood; and her admission that she thought him the greatest, the most excellent of men did not surprise me. Yet, because he was older than she, and had never put himself in a really loverlike att.i.tude toward her, I thought it was simply an exalted girlish regard, and not at all what we usually understand by an affair of the heart. Moreover, at that time such praise as she gave him would not have been thought extravagant in almost any social gathering in Lattimore. Let me confess that to me it does not now seem so ... Cecil Barr-Smith walked out and stood on the platform.

General Lattimore was apparently thinking of the features of the situation which had struck Antonia as romantic.

"You young men," said he, "are among the last of the city-builders and road-makers. My generation did these things differently. We went out with arms in our hands, and hewed out s.p.a.ces in savagery for homes. You don't seem to see it; but you are straining every nerve merely to shift people from many places to one, and there to exploit them. You wind your coils about an inert ma.s.s, you set the dynamo of your power of organization at work, and the inert ma.s.s becomes a great magnet. People come flying to it from the four quarters of the earth, and the first-comers levy tribute upon them, as the price of standing-room on the magnet!"

"I nevah hea'd the real merit and strength and safety of ouah real-estate propositions bettah stated, suh!" said Captain Tolliver ecstatically.

Jim stood looking at the General with sober regard.

"Go on, General," said he.

"Not only that," went on the General, "but people begin forestalling the standing-room, so as to make it scarcer. They gamble on the power of the magnet, and the length of time it will draw. They buy to-day and sell to-morrow; or cast up what they imagine they might sell for, and call the increase profit. Then comes the time when the magnet ceases to draw, or the forestallers, having, in their greed, grasped more than they can keep, offer too much for the failing market, and all at once the thing stops, and the dervish-dance ends in coma, in cold forms and still hands, in misery and extinction!"

There was a pause, during which the old soldier sat looking out of the widow, no one else finding aught to say. Elkins remained standing, and once or twice gave that little movement of the head which precedes speech, but said nothing. Cornish smiled sardonically. Josie looked anxiously at Jim, apprehensive as to how he would take it. At last it was Ballard the conservative who broke silence.

"I hope, General," said he, "that our little movement won't develop into a dervish-dance. Anyhow, you will join in our congratulations upon the completion of the railroad. You know you once did some railroad-building yourself, down there in Tennessee--I know, for I was there. And I've always taken an interest in track-laying ever since."

"So have I," said the General; "that's what brought me out to-day."

"Oh, tell us about it," said Josie, evidently pleased at the change of subject; "tell us about it, please."

"No, no!" he protested, "you may read it better in the histories, written by young fellows who know more about it than we who were there.

You'll find, when you read it, that it was something like this: Grant's host was over around Chattanooga, starving for want of means for carrying in provisions. We were marching eastward to join him, when a message came telling us to stop at Decatur and rebuild the railroad to Nashville. So, without a thought that there was such a thing as an impossibility, we stopped--we seven or eight thousand common Americans, volunteer soldiers, picked at random from the legions of heroes who saved liberty to the world--and without an engineering corps, without tools or implements, with nothing except what any like number of our soldiers had, we stopped and built the road. That is all. The rails had been heated, and wound about trees and stumps. The cross-ties were burned to heat the rails. The cars had been destroyed by fire, and their warped ironwork thrown into ditches. The engines lay in sc.r.a.p-heaps at the bottoms of ravines and rivers. The bridges were gone. Out of the chaos to which the structure had been resolved, there was nothing left but the road-bed.

"When I think of what we did, I know that with liberty and intelligence men with their naked hands could, in short s.p.a.ce, re-create the destroyed wealth of the world. We made tools of the sc.r.a.ps of iron and steel we found along the line. We felled trees. We impressed little sawmills and sawed the logs into timbers for bridges and cars. Out of the battle-scarred and march-worn ranks came creative and constructive genius in such profusion as to astound us, who thought we knew them so well. Those blue-coated fellows, enlisted and serving as food for powder, and used to destruction, rejoiced in once more feeling the thrill there is in making things."