Aladdin and Company Part 16

"Out of the ranks came millers, and ground the grain the foragers brought in; came woodmen, and cut the trees; came sawyers, and sawed the lumber. We asked for blacksmiths; and they stepped from the ranks, and made their own tools and the tools of the machinists. We called for machinists; and out of the ranks they stepped, and rebuilt the engines, and made the cars ready for the carpenters. When we wanted carpenters, out of the same ranks of common soldiers they walked, and made the cars.

From the ranks came other men, who took the twisted rails, unwound them from the stumps and unsnarled them from one another, as women unwind yarn, and laid them down fit to carry our trains. And in forty days our message went back to Grant that we had 'stopped and built the road,' and that our engines were even then drawing supplies to his hungry army.

Such was the incomparable army which was commanded by that silent genius of war; and to have been one of such an army is to have lived!"

The withered old hand trembled, as the great past surged back through his mind. We all sat in silence; and I looked at Captain Tolliver, doubtful as to how he would take the old Union general's speech. What the Captain's history had been none of us knew, except that he was a Southerner. When the general ceased, Tolliver was sitting still, with no indication of being conscious of anything special in the conversation, except that a red spot burned in each dark cheek. As the necessity for speech grew with the lengthening silence, he rose and faced General Lattimore.

"Suh," said he, "puhmit a man who was with the victohs of Mana.s.ses; who chahged with mo' sand than sense at Franklin; and who cried like a child aftah Nashville, and isn't ashamed of it, by gad! to offah his hand, and to say that he agrees with you, suh, in youah tribute to the soldiers of the wah, and honahs you, suh, as a fohmah foe, and a worthy one, and he hopes, a future friend!"

Somehow, the Captain's swelling phrases, his sonorous allusions to himself in the third person, had for the moment ceased to be ridiculous.

The environment fitted the expression. The general grasped his hand and shook it. Then Ballard claimed the right, as one of the survivors of Franklin, to a share in the reunion, and they at once removed the strain which had fallen upon us with the General's first speech, by relating stories and fraternizing soldierwise, until Conductor Corcoran called in at the door, "Mystery Number One! All out for the christening!"

As we gathered on the platform, we saw that the signboard on the station-building, for the name of the town, had been put up, but was veiled by a banner draped over it. Tents were pitched near, in which people lived waiting for the lot-auction, that they might buy sites for shops and homes. The waters of the lake shone through the trees a few rods away; and in imagination I could see the village of the future, sprinkled about over the beautiful sh.o.r.e. The future villagers gathered near the platform; and when Jim stepped forward to make the speech of the occasion, he had a considerable audience.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "our visit is for the purpose of showing the interest which the Lattimore & Great Western takes and will continue to take in the towns on its line, and to add a name to what, I notice, has already become a local habitation. In conferring that name, we are aware that the future citizens of the place have claims upon us.

So one has been selected which, as time pa.s.ses, will grow more and more pleasant to your ears; and one which the person bestowing it regards as an honor to the town as high as could be conferred in a name. No station on our lines could have greater claims upon our regard than the possession of this name. And now, gentlemen--"

Mr. Elkins removed his hat, and we all followed his example. Some one pulled a cord, the banner fell away, and the name was revealed. It was "JOSEPHINE." The women looked at it, and turned their eyes on Josie, who blushed rosily, and shrank back behind her father, who burst into a loud laugh of unalloyed pleasure.

"I propose three cheers for the town of Josephine," went on Mr. Elkins, "and for the lady for whom it is named!"

They were real cheers--good hearty ones; followed by an address, in the name of the town, by a bright young man who pushed forward and with surprising volubility thanked President Elkins for his selection of the name, and closed with flowery compliments to the blushing Miss Trescott, whose ident.i.ty Jim had disclosed by a bow. He was afterwards a thorn in our flesh in his practice as a personal-injury lawyer. At the time, however, we warmed to him, as under his leadership the dwellers in the tents and round about the waters of Mirror Lake all shook hands with Jim and Josie.

Cornish stood with a saturnine smile on his face, and glared at some of the more pointed hits of the young lawyer. Cecil Barr-Smith beamed radiant pleasure, as he saw the evident linking in this public way of Jim's name and Josie's. Antonia stood close to Cecil's side, and chatted vivaciously to him--not with him; for her words seemed to have no correlation with his.

"Quite like the going away of a bridal party!" said she with exaggerated gayety, and with a little spitefulness, I thought. "Has any one any rice?"

"All aboard!" said Corcoran; and the joyful and triumphant party, with their outward intimacy and their inward warfare of pa.s.sions and desires, rolled on toward "Mystery Number Two," which was duly christened "Cornish," and celebrated in champagne furnished by its G.o.dfather.

"Don't you ever drink champagne?" said Cornish, as Josie declined to partake.

"Never," said she.

"What, _never_?" he went on, Pinaforically.

"My G.o.d!" thought I, "the a.s.surance of the man!" And the palm-encircled alcove at Auriccio's, as it was wont so often to do, came across my vision, and shut out everything but the Psyche face in its ruddy halo, speeding by me into the street, and the vexed young man in the faultless attire slowly following.

Mystery Number Three was "Antonia," a lovely little place in embryo; "Barslow" came next, followed by "Giddings" and "Tolliver." We were tired of it when we reached "Hinckley," platted on a farm owned by Antonia's father, and where we ceased to perform the ceremony of unveiling. It was a memorable trip, ending with sunset and home. Captain Tolliver a.s.sisted General Lattimore to alight from the train, and they went arm in arm up to the old General's home.

That night, according to his wont, Jim came to smoke with me in the late evening. "Let's take a car," said he, "and go up and have a look at the houses."

These were our new mansions up in Lynhurst Park Addition, now in process of erection. In the moonlight we could see them dimly, and at a little distance they looked like ma.s.ses of ruins--the second childhood of houses. A stranger could have seen, from the polished columns and the piles of carved stone, that they were to be expensive and probably beautiful structures.

"What do you think of the General in the role of Ca.s.sandra?" asked Jim, as we sat in the skeleton room which was to be his library.

"It struck me," said I, "as a particularly artistic bit of croaking!"

"The Captain says frequently," said Jim, his cigar glowing like a variable star, "that opportunity knocks once. The General, I'm afraid, knocks all the time. But if it should turn out that he's right about the--the--dervish-dance ... it would be ... to put it mildly ... a horse on us, Al, wouldn't it?"

I had no answer to this fanciful speech, and made none. Instead, I told him of Giddings's love-sickness.

"The philosophy of Iago has broken down," said he, "and the boy is sort of short-circuited. Antonia can take him in hand, and turn him out full of confidence; and with that, I'll answer for the lady. That can be fixed easy, and ought to be. Let's walk back."

"What was it he said?" he asked, as we parted. "'Coma, cold forms, still hands, and extinction.' Well, if the dervish-dance does wind up in that sort of thing, it's only a short-cut to the inevitable. Those are pretty houses up there; we'd have been astounded over them when we used to fish together on Beaver Creek;--but suppose they are?

"'They say the Lion and the Lizard keep The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep; And Bahram, that great hunter--the Wild a.s.s Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep!'

Good-night, Al!"

CHAPTER XV.

Some Affairs of the Heart Considered in their Relation to Dollars and Cents.

Antonia was sitting in a hammock. Josie and Alice were not far away watching Cecil Barr-Smith, who was wading into the lake to get water-lilies for them, contrary to the ordinances of the city of Lattimore in such cases made and provided. The six were dawdling away our time one fine Sunday in Lynhurst Park. I forgot to say Mr. Elkins and myself were discussing affairs of state with Miss Hinckley.

"He's such a ninny," said Antonia.

"Aren't all people when in his forlorn condition?" asked Jim.

Antonia looked away at the clouds, and did not reply.

"But if he had a morsel of the cynical philosophy he boasts of," said she, "he could see."

"I don't know about that," said Jim lazily, looking over at the other group; "a woman can conceal her feelings in such a case pretty completely."

"I don't know about that," echoed Antonia. "I wish I did; it would simplify things."

"I believe," said I, "that it's a simple enough matter for you to solve and manage as it is."

"But it's so absurd to bother with!" said she; "and what's the use?"

"Doesn't it seem that way?" said Jim. "And yet you know we brought him here for a definite purpose; and in his present state he can't make good. Just read his editorial this morning: it would add gloom to the proceedings, read at a funeral. We want things whooped up, and he wants to whoop 'em; but long screeds on 'The Sacred Right of Self-destruction'

hurt things, and bring the paper into disrepute, and crowd out optimistic matter that we desire. And as long as both families want the thing brought about, and there is good reason to think that Laura will not prove eternally immovable, I take it to be an important enough matter, from the standpoint of dollars and cents, for the exercise of our diplomacy."

"Well, then," said Antonia, "get the people together on some social occasion, and we'll try."

"I've thought," said Jim, "of having a house-warming--as soon as the weather gets so that the very name of the function won't keep folks away. My house is practically done, you know."

"Just the thing," said Antonia. "There are cosy nooks and deep retreats enough to make it a sort of labyrinth for the ensnaring of our victims."

"Isn't it a queer thing in language," said Jim, "that these retreats are the places where advances are made!"

"Not when you consider," said Antonia, "that retreats follow repulses."

"We ought to have the Captain and the General here, if this military conversation is to continue," said I. "And here comes Cecil. Stop before he comes, or we shall never get through with the explanation of the jokes."