In a Little Town Part 14

Hope languished in Wakefield until a company from Kenosha consented to transport its entire industry thither if it could receive a building rent free. It was proffered, and it accepted, the cutlery works. For a season the neighboring streets were acrid with the aroma of the pa.s.sionate pickles that were bottled there. And then its briny deeps ceased to swim with k.n.o.bby condiments. A tin-foil company abode awhile, and yet again a tamale-canning corporation, which in its turn sailed on to the Sarga.s.so Sea of missing industries.

Other factory buildings in Wakefield fared likewise. They were but lodging-houses for transient failures. The population swung with the tide, but always at anchor. The lift which the census received from an artificial-flower company, employing seventy-five hands, was canceled by the demise of a more redolent pork-packing concern of equal pay-roll.

People missed it when the wind blew from the west.

But Wakefield hoped on. One day the executive committee of the Wide-a-Wakefield Club, having nothing else to do, met in executive session. There were various propositions to consider. All of them were written on letter-heads of the highest school of commercial art, and all of them promised to endow Wakefield with some epoch-making advantage, provided merely that Wakefield furnish a building rent free, tax free, water free, and subscribe to a certain amount of stock.

The club regarded these glittering baits with that cold and clammy gaze with which an aged trout of many-scarred gills peruses some newfangled spoon.

But if these letters were tabled with suspicion because they offered too much for too little, what hospitality could be expected for a letter which offered still more for still less? The chairman of the committee was Ansel K. Pettibone, whose sign-board announced him as a "practical house-painter and paper-hanger." He read this letter, head-lines and all:

MARK A. SHELBY JOHN R. SHELBY LUKE B. SHELBY

SHELBY PARADISE POWDER COMPANY

SPRINGFIELD, Ma.s.s., U. S. A.

MAKES WASHDAY WELCOME. SIDESTEP SUBSt.i.tUTES.

WIDE-A-WAKEFIELD CLUB, Wakefield:

DEAR SIRS,--The undersigned was born in your city, and left same about twenty years ago to seek his fortune. I have finally found it after many ups and downs. Us three brothers have jointly perfected and patented the famous Paradise Powder. It is generally conceded to be the grandest thing of its kind ever put on the market, and, in the words of the motto, "Makes Washday Welcome." Ladies who have used it agree that our statement is not excessive when we say, "Once tried, you will use no other."

It is selling at such a rate in the East that I have a personal profit of two thousand dollars a week. We intend to push it in the West, and we were talking of where would be the best place to locate a branch factory at. My brothers mentioned Chicago, St.

Louis, Omaha, Denver, and such places, but I said, "I vote for Wakefield." My brothers said I was cracked. I says maybe I am, but I'm going back to my old home town and spend the rest of my life there and my surplus money, too. I want to beautify Wakefield, and as near as I can remember there is room for improvement. It may not be good business, but it is what I want to do. And also what I want to know is, can I rely on the co-operation of the Wide-a-Wakefield Club in doing its share to build up the old town into a genuine metropolis? Also, what would be the probable cost of a desirable site for the factory?

Hoping to receive a favorable reply from you at your earliest convenience, Yours truly, LUKE B. SHELBY.

The chairman's grin had grown wider as he read and read. When he had finished the letter he tossed it along the line. Every member read it and shook with equal laughter.

"I wonder what kind of green goods he sells?" said Joel Spate, the owner of the Bon-Ton Grocery.

"My father used to say to me," said Forshay, of the One-Price Emporium, "whatever else you do, Jake, always suspicion the fellow that offers you something for nothing. There's a n.i.g.g.e.r in the woodpile some'eres."

"That's so," said Soyer, the swell tailor, who was strong on second thought.

"He says he's goin' to set up a factory here, but he don't ask for rent free, tax free, light free--nothin' free," said the practical house-painter.

"What's the name again?" said Spate.

"Shelby--Luke B. Shelby," answered Pettibone. "Says he used to live here twenty years ago. Ever hear of him? I never did."

Spate's voice came from an ambush of spectacles and whiskers: "I've lived here all m' life--I'm sixty-three next month. I don't remember any such man or boy."

"Me, neither," echoed Soyer, "and I'm here going on thirty-five year."

The heads shook along the line as if a wind had pa.s.sed over a row of wheat.

"It's some new dodge for sellin' stock," suspicioned One-Price Forshay, who had a large collection of cutlery certificates.

"More likely it's just a scheme to get us talking about his Paradise Powder. Seems to me I've had some of their circulars," said Bon-Ton Spate.

Pettibone, the practical chairman, silenced the gossip with a brisk, "What is the pleasure of the meeting as regards answering it?"

"I move we lay it on the table," said Eberhart of the Furniture Palace.

"I move we lay it under the table," said Forshay, who had a keen sense of humor.

"Order, gentlemen! Order," rapped Pettibone, as the room rocked with the laughter in which Forshay led.

When sobriety was restored it was moved, seconded, and pa.s.sed that the secretary be instructed to send Shelby a copy of the boom number of the Wakefield _Daily Eagle_.

And in due time the homesick Ulysses, waiting a welcome from Ithaca, received this answer to his letter:

LUKE B. SHELBY, Springfield, Ma.s.s.

SIR,--Yours of sixteenth inst. rec'd and contents noted. In reply to same, beg to state are sending last special number _Daily Eagle_, giving full information about city and sites.

Yours truly,

JOEL SPATE, _Secy. Exec. Comm._

Shelby winced. The hand he had held out with pearls of price had been brushed aside. His brothers laughed.

"We said you were cracked. They don't want your old money or your society. Go somewheres where they do."

But Luke B. Shelby had won his success by refusing to be denied, and he had set his heart on refurbishing his old home town. The instinct of place is stronger than any other instinct in some animals, and Shelby was homesick for Wakefield--not for anybody, any house, or any street in particular there, but just for Wakefield.

Without further ado he packed his things and went.

II

There was no bra.s.s band to meet him. At the hotel the clerk read his name without emotion. When he required the best two rooms in the hotel, and a bath at that, the clerk looked suspicious:

"Any baggage?"

"Three trunks and a grip."

"What line do you carry? Will you use the sample-room?"

"Don't carry any line. Don't want any sample-room."

He walked out to see the town. It had so much the same look that it seemed to have been embalmed. Here were the old stores, the old signs, apparently the same fly-specked wares in the windows.

He read Doctor Barnby's rusty shingle. Wasn't that the same swaybacked horse dozing at the hitching-post?

Here was the rough hill road where he used to coast as a child. There stood Mrs. Hooker on the lawn with a hose, sprinkling the street, the trees, the gra.s.s, the oleander in its tub and the moon-flower on the porch. He seemed to have left her twenty years ago in that att.i.tude with the same arch of water springing from the nozzle.

He paused before the same gap-toothed street-crossing of yore, and he started across it as across the stepping-stones of a dry stream. A raw-boned horse whirled around the corner, just avoiding his toes. It was followed by a bouncing grocery-wagon on the side of whose seat dangled a shirt-sleeved youth who might have been Shelby himself a score of years ago.