Stories of a Western Town Part 4

Then Nelson, who had been restfully counting on the money from Richards for his own debt, bestirred himself, only to find his patient creditor gone and a woman in his stead who must have her money. He wrote again--sorely against his will--begging Richards to raise the money somehow. Richards's answer was in his pocket, for he wore the best black broadcloth in which he had done honor to the lawyer, yesterday. Richards plainly was wounded; but he explained in detail to Nelson how he (Nelson) could borrow money of the banks on his farm and pay Miss Brown.

There was no bank where Richards could borrow money; and he begged Nelson not to drive his wife and little children from their cherished home. Nelson choked over the pathos when he read the letter to Tim; but Tim only grunted a wish that HE had the handling of that feller. And the lawyer was as little moved as Tim. Miss Brown needed the money, he said.

The banks were not disposed to lend just at present; money, it appeared, was "tight;" so, in the end, Nelson drove home with the face of Failure staring at him between his horses' ears.

There was only one way. Should he make Richards suffer or suffer himself? Did a man have to grind other people or be ground himself?

Meanwhile they had reached the town. The stir of a festival was in the air. On every side bunting streamed in the breeze or was draped across brick or wood. Arches spanned some of the streets, with inscriptions of welcome on them, and swarms of colored lanterns glittered against the sunlight almost as gayly as they would show when they should be lighted at night. Little children ran about waving flags. Grocery wagons and butchers' wagons trotted by with a flash of flags dangling from the horses' harness. The streets were filled with people in their holiday clothes. Everybody smiled. The shopkeepers answered questions and went out on the sidewalks to direct strangers. From one window hung a banner inviting visitors to enter and get a list of hotels and boarding-houses.

The crowd was entirely good-humored and waited outside restaurants, bandying jokes with true Western philosophy. At times the wagons made a temporary blockade in the street, but no one grumbled. Bands of music paraded past them, the escort for visitors of especial consideration.

In a window belonging, the sign above declared, to the Business Men's a.s.sociation, stood a huge doll clad in blue satin, on which was painted a device of Neptune sailing down the Mississippi amid a storm of fireworks. The doll stood in a boat arched about with lantern-decked hoops, and while Nelson halted, unable to proceed, he could hear the voluble explanation of the proud citizen who was interpreting to strangers.

This, Nelson thought, was success. Here were the successful men. The man who had failed looked at them. Eve roused him by a shrill cry, "There they are. There's May and the girls. Let me out quick, Uncle!"

He stopped the horse and jumped out himself to help her. It was the first time since she came under his roof that she had been away from it all night. He cleared his throat for some advice on behavior. "Mind and be respectful to Mrs. Arlington. Say yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am----" He got no further, for Eve gave him a hasty kiss and the crowd brushed her away.

"All she thinks of is wearing fine clothes and going with the fellers!"

said her brother, disdainfully. "If I had to be born a girl, I wouldn't be born at all!"

"Maybe if you despise girls so, you'll be born a girl the next time,"

said Nelson. "Some folks thinks that's how it happens with us."

"Do YOU, Uncle?" asked Tim, running his mind forebodingly over the possible business results of such a belief. "S'posing he shouldn't be willing to sell the pigs to be killed, 'cause they might be some friends of his!" he reflected, with a rising tide of consternation. Nelson smiled rather sadly. He said, in another tone: "Tim, I've thought so many things, that now I've about given up thinking. All I can do is to live along the best way I know how and help the world move the best I'm able."

"You bet _I_ ain't going to help the world move," said the boy; "I'm going to look out for myself!"

"Then my training of you has turned out pretty badly, if that's the way you feel."

A little shiver pa.s.sed over the lad's sullen face; he flushed until he lost his freckles in the red veil and burst out pa.s.sionately: "Well, I got eyes, ain't I? I ain't going to be bad, or drink, or steal, or do things to git put in the penitentiary; but I ain't going to let folks walk all over me like you do; no, sir!"

Nelson did not answer; in his heart he thought that he had failed with the children, too; and he relapsed into that dismal study of the face of Failure.

He had come to the city to show Tim the sights, and, therefore, though like a man in a dream, he drove conscientiously about the gay streets, pointing out whatever he thought might interest the boy, and generally discovering that Tim had the new information by heart already. All the while a question pounded itself, like the beat of the heart of an engine, through the noise and the talk: "Shall I give up Richards or be turned out myself?"

When the afternoon sunlight waned he put up the horse at a modest little stable where farmers were allowed to bring their own provender. The charges were of the smallest and the place neat and weather-tight, but it had been a long time before Nelson could be induced to use it, because there was a higher-priced stable kept by an ex-farmer and member of the Farmers' Alliance. Only the fact that the keeper of the low-priced stable was a poor orphan girl, struggling to earn an honest livelihood, had moved him.

They had supper at a restaurant of Tim's discovery, small, specklessly tidy, and as unexacting of the pocket as the stable. It was an excellent supper. But Nelson had no appet.i.te; in spite of an almost childish capacity for being diverted, he could attend to nothing but the question always in his ears: "Richards or me--which?"

Until it should be time for the spectacle they walked down the hill, and watched the crowds gradually blacken every inch of the river-banks.

Already the swarms of lanterns were beginning to bloom out in the dusk.

Strains of music throbbed through the air, adding a poignant touch to the excitement vibrating in all the faces and voices about them. Even the stolid Tim felt the contagion. He walked with a jaunty step and a.s.saulted a tune himself. "I tell you, Uncle," says Tim, "it's nice of these folks to be getting up all this show, and giving it for nothing!"

"Do you think so?" says Nelson. "You don't love your book as I wish you did; but I guess you remember about the ancient Romans, and how the great, rich Romans used to spend enormous sums in games and shows that they let the people in free to--well, what for? Was it to learn them anything or to make them happy? Oh, no, it was to keep down the spirit of liberty, Son, it was to make them content to be slaves! And so it is here. These merchants and capitalists are only looking out for themselves, trying to keep labor down and not let it know how oppressed it is, trying to get people here from everywhere to show what a fine city they have and get their money."

"Well, 'TIS a fine town," Tim burst in, "a boss town! And they ain't gouging folks a little bit. None of the hotels or the restaurants have put up their prices one cent. Look what a dandy supper we got for twenty-five cents! And ain't the boy at Lumley's grocery given me two tickets to set on the steamboat? There's nothing mean about this town!"

Nelson made no remark; but he thought, for the fiftieth time, that his farm was too near the city. Tim was picking up all the city boys' false pride as well as their slang. Unconscious Tim resumed his tune. He knew that it was "Annie Rooney" if no one else did, and he mangled the notes with appropriate exhilaration.

Now, the river was as busy as the land, lights swimming hither and thither; steamboats with ropes of tiny stars bespangling their dark bulk and a white electric glare in the bow, low boats with lights that sent wavering spear-heads into the shadow beneath. The bridge was a blazing barbed fence of fire, and beyond the bridge, at the point of the island, lay a glittering mult.i.tude of lights, a fairy fleet with miniature sails outlined in flame as if by jewels.

Nelson followed Tim. The crowds, the ceaseless clatter of tongues and jar of wheels, depressed the man, who hardly knew which way to dodge the mult.i.tudinous perils of the thoroughfare; but Tim used his elbows to such good purpose that they were out of the levee, on the steamboat, and settling themselves in two comfortable chairs in a coign of vantage on deck, that commanded the best obtainable view of the pageant, before Nelson had gathered his wits together enough to plan a path out of the crush.

"I sized up this place from the sh.o.r.e," Tim sighed complacently, drawing a long breath of relief; "only jest two chairs, so we won't be crowded."

Obediently, Nelson took his chair. His head sank on his thin chest.

Richards or himself, which should he sacrifice? So the weary old question droned through his brain. He felt a tap on his shoulder. The man who roused him was an acquaintance, and he stood smiling in the att.i.tude of a man about to ask a favor, while the expectant half-smile of the lady on his arm hinted at the nature of the favor. Would Mr.

Forrest be so kind?--there seemed to be no more seats. Before Mr.

Forrest could be kind Tim had yielded his own chair and was off, wriggling among the crowd in search of another place.

"Smart boy, that youngster of yours," said the man; "he'll make his way in the world, he can push. Well, Miss Alma, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Forrest. I know you will be well entertained by him. So, if you'll excuse me, I'll get back and help my wife wrestle with the kids.

They have been trying to see which will fall overboard first ever since we came on deck!"

Under the leeway of this pleasantry he bowed and retired. Nelson turned with determined politeness to the lady. He was sorry that she had come, she looking to him a very fine lady indeed, with her black silk gown, her shining black ornaments, and her bright black eyes. She was not young, but handsome in Nelson's judgment, although of a haughty bearing.

"Maybe she is the princ.i.p.al of the High School," thought he. "Martin has her for a boarder, and he said she was very particular about her melons being cold!"

But however formidable a personage, the lady must be entertained.

"I expect you are a resident of the city, ma'am?" said Nelson.

"Yes, I was born here." She smiled, a smile that revealed a little break in the curve of her cheek, not exactly a dimple, but like one.

"I don't know when I have seen such a fine appearing lady," thought Nelson. He responded: "Well, I wasn't born here; but I come when I was a little shaver of ten and stayed till I was eighteen, when I went to Kansas to help fight the border ruffians. I went to school here in the Warren Street school-house."

"So did I, as long as I went anywhere to school. I had to go to work when I was twelve."

Nelson's amazement took shape before his courtesy had a chance to control it. "I didn't suppose you ever did any work in your life!" cried he.

"I guess I haven't done much else. Father died when I was twelve and the oldest of five, the next only eight--Polly, that came between Eb and me, died--naturally I had to work. I was a nurse-girl by the day, first; and I never shall forget how kind the woman was to me. She gave me so much dinner I never needed to eat any breakfast, which was a help."

"You poor little thing! I'm afraid you went hungry sometimes."

Immediately he marvelled at his familiar speech, but she did not seem to resent it.

"No, not so often," she said, musingly; "but I used often and often to wish I could carry some of the nice things home to mother and the babies. After a while she would give me a cookey or a piece of bread and b.u.t.ter for lunch; that I could take home. I don't suppose I'll often have more pleasure than I used to have then, seeing little Eb waiting for sister; and the baby and mother----" She stopped abruptly, to continue, in an instant, with a kind of laugh; "I am never likely to feel so important again as I did then, either. It was great to have mother consulting me, as if I had been grown up. I felt like I had the weight of the nation on my shoulders, I a.s.sure you."

"And have you always worked since? You are not working out now?" with a glance at her shining gown.

"Oh, no, not for a long time. I learned to be a cook. I was a good cook, too, if I say it myself. I worked for the Lossings for four years. I am not a bit ashamed of being a hired girl, for I was as good a one as I knew how. It was Mrs. Lossing that first lent me books; and Harry Lossing, who is head of the firm now, got Ebenezer into the works.

Ebenezer is shipping-clerk with a good salary and stock in the concern; and Ralph is there, learning the trade. I went to the business-college and learned book-keeping, and afterward I learned typewriting and shorthand. I have been working for the firm for fourteen years. We have educated the girls. Milly is married, and Kitty goes to the boarding-school, here."

"Then you haven't been married yourself?"

"What time did I have to think of being married? I had the family on my mind, and looking after them."

"That was more fortunate for your family than it was for my s.e.x,"

said Nelson, gallantly. He accompanied the compliment by a glance of admiration, extinguished in an eye-flash, for the white radiance that had bathed the deck suddenly vanished.

"Now you will see a lovely sight," said the woman, deigning no reply to his tribute; "listen! That is the signal."

The air was shaken with the boom of cannon. Once, twice, thrice.

Directly the boat-whistles took up the roar, making a hideous din. The fleet had moved. Spouting rockets and Roman candles, which painted above it a kaleidoscopic archway of fire, welcomed by answering javelins of light and red and orange and blue and green flares from the sh.o.r.e; the fleet bombarded the bridge, escorted Neptune in his car, manoeuvred and ma.s.sed and charged on the blazing city with a many-hued shower of flame.

After the boats, silently, softly, floated the battalions of lanterns, so close to the water that they seemed flaming water-lilies, while the dusky mirror repeated and inverted their splendor.