Stories of a Western Town Part 5

"They're shingles, you know," explained Nelson's companion, "with lanterns on them; but aren't they pretty?"

"Yes, they are! I wish you had not told me. It is like a fairy story!"

"Ain't it? But we aren't through; there's more to come. Beautiful fireworks!"

The fireworks, however, were slow of coming. They could see the barge from which they were to be sent; they could watch the movements of the men in white oil-cloth who moved in a ghostly fashion about the barge; they could hear the tap of hammers; but nothing came of it all.

They sat in the darkness, waiting; and there came to Nelson a strange sensation of being alone and apart from all the breathing world with this woman. He did not perceive that Tim had quietly returned with a box which did very well for a seat, and was sitting with his knees against the chair-rungs. He seemed to be somehow outside of all the tumult and the spectacle. It was the vainglorying triumph of this world. He was the soul outside, the soul that had missed its triumph. In his perplexity and loneliness he felt an overwhelming longing for sympathy; neither did it strike Nelson, who believed in all sorts of occult influences, that his confidence in a stranger was unwarranted. He would have told you that his "psychic instincts" never played him false, although really they were traitors from their astral cradles to their astral graves.

He said in a hesitating way: "You must excuse me being kinder dull; I've got some serious business on my mind and I can't help thinking of it."

"Is that so? Well, I know how that is; I have often stayed awake nights worrying about things. Lest I shouldn't suit and all that--especially after mother took sick."

"I s'pose you had to give up and nurse her then?"

"That was what Ebenezer and Ralph were for having me do; but mother--my mother always had so much sense--mother says, 'No, Alma, you've got a good place and a chance in life, you sha'n't give it up. We'll hire a girl. I ain't never lonesome except evenings, and then you will be home.

I should jest want to die,' she says, 'if I thought I kept you in a kind of prison like by my being sick--now, just when you are getting on so well.' There never WAS a woman like my mother!" Her voice shook a little, and Nelson asked gently:

"Ain't your mother living now?"

"No, she died last year." She added, after a little silence, "I somehow can't get used to being lonesome."

"It IS hard," said Nelson. "I lost my wife three years ago."

"That's hard, too."

"My goodness! I guess it is. And it's hardest when trouble comes on a man and he can't go nowhere for advice."

"Yes, that's so, too. But--have you any children?"

"Yes, ma'am; that is, they ain't my own children. Lizzie and I never had any; but these two we took and they are most like my own. The girl is eighteen and the boy rising of fourteen."

"They must be a comfort to you; but they are considerable of a responsibility, too."

"Yes, ma'am," he sighed softly to himself. "Sometimes I feel I haven't done the right way by them, though I've tried. Not that they ain't good children, for they are--no better anywhere. Tim, he will work from morning till night, and never need to urge him; and he never gives me a promise he don't keep it, no ma'am, never did since he was a little mite of a lad. And he is a kind boy, too, always good to the beasts; and while he may speak up a little short to his sister, he saves her many a step. He doesn't take to his studies quite as I would like to have him, but he has a wonderful head for business. There is splendid stuff in Tim if it could only be worked right."

While Nelson spoke, Tim was hunching his shoulders forward in the darkness, listening with the whole of two sharp ears. His face worked in spite of him, and he gave an inarticulate snort.

"Well," the woman said, "I think that speaks well for Tim. Why should you be worried about him?"

"I am afraid he is getting to love money and worldly success too well, and that is what I fear for the girl, too. You see, she is so pretty, and the idols of the tribe and the market, as Bacon calls them, are strong with the young."

"Yes, that's so," the woman a.s.sented vaguely, not at all sure what either Bacon or his idols might be. "Are the children relations of yours?"

"No, ma'am; it was like this: When I was up in Henry County there came a photographic artist to the village near us, and pitched his tent and took tintypes in his wagon. He had his wife and his two children with him. The poor woman fell ill and died; so we took the two children.

My wife was willing; she was a wonderfully good woman, member of the Methodist church till she died. I--I am not a church member myself, ma'am; I pa.s.sed through that stage of spiritual development a long while ago." He gave a wistful glance at his companion's dimly outlined profile. "But I never tried to disturb her faith; it made HER happy."

"Oh, I don't think it is any good fooling with other people's religions," said the woman, easily. "It is just like trying to talk folks out of drinking; n.o.body knows what is right for anybody else's soul any more than they do what is good for anybody else's stomach!"

"Yes, ma'am. You put things very clearly."

"I guess it is because you understand so quickly. But you were saying------"

"That's all the story. We took the children, and their father was killed by the cars the next year, poor man; and so we have done the best we could ever since by them."

"I should say you had done very well by them."

"No, ma'am; I haven't done very well somehow by anyone, myself included, though G.o.d knows I've tried hard enough!"

Then followed the silence natural after such a confession when the listener does not know the speaker well enough to parry abas.e.m.e.nt by denial.

"I am impressed," said Nelson, simply, "to talk with you frankly. It isn't polite to bother strangers with your troubles, but I am impressed that you won't mind."

"Oh, no, I won't mind."

It was not extravagant sympathy; but Nelson thought how kind her voice sounded, and what a musical voice it was. Most people would have called it rather sharp.

He told her--with surprisingly little egotism, as the keen listener noted--the story of his life; the struggle of his boyhood; his random self-education; his years in the army (he had criticised his superior officers, thereby losing the promotion that was coming for bravery in the field); his marriage (apparently he had married his wife because another man had jilted her); his wrestle with nature (whose pranks included a cyclone) on a frontier farm that he eventually lost, having put all his savings into a "Greenback" newspaper, and being thus swamped with debt; his final slow success in paying for his Iowa farm; and his purchase of the new farm, with its resulting disaster. "I've farmed in Kansas," he said, "in Nebraska, in Dakota, in Iowa. I was willing to go wherever the land promised. It always seemed like I was going to succeed, but somehow I never did. The world ain't fixed right for the workers, I take it. A man who has spent thirty years in hard, honest toil oughtn't to be staring ruin in the face like I am to-day. They won't let it be so when we have the single tax and when we farmers send our own men instead of city lawyers, to the Legislature and halls of Congress. Sometimes I think it's the world that's wrong and sometimes I think it's me!"

The reply came in crisp and a.s.sured accents, which were the strongest contrast to Nelson's soft, undecided pipe: "Seems to me in this last case the one most to blame is neither you nor the world at large, but this man Richards, who is asking YOU to pay for HIS farm. And I notice you don't seem to consider your creditor in this business. How do you know she don't need the money? Look at me, for instance; I'm in some financial difficulty myself. I have a mortgage for two thousand dollars, and that mortgage--for which good value was given, mind you--falls due this month. I want the money. I want it bad. I have a chance to put my money into stock at the factory. I know all about the investment; I haven't worked there all these years and not know how the business stands. It is a chance to make a fortune. I ain't likely to ever have another like it; and it won't wait for me to make up my mind forever, either. Isn't it hard on me, too?"

"Lord knows it is, ma'am," said Nelson, despondently; "it is hard on us all! Sometimes I don't see the end of it all. A vast social revolution----"

"Social fiddlesticks! I beg your pardon, Mr. Forrest, but it puts me out of patience to have people expecting to be allowed to make every mortal kind of fools of themselves and then have 'a social revolution' jump in to slue off the consequences. Let us understand each other. Who do you suppose I am?"

"Miss--Miss Almer, ain't it?"

"It's Alma Brown, Mr. Forrest. I saw you coming on the boat and I made Mr. Martin fetch me over to you. I told him not to say my name, because I wanted a good plain talk with you. Well, I've had it. Things are just about where I thought they were, and I told Mr. Lossing so. But I couldn't be sure. You must have thought me a funny kind of woman to be telling you all those things about myself."

Nelson, who had changed color half a dozen times in the darkness, sighed before he said: "No, ma'am; I only thought how good you were to tell me.

I hoped maybe you were impressed to trust me as I was to trust you."

Being so dark Nelson could not see the queer expression on her face as she slowly shook her head. She was thinking: "If I ever saw a babe in arms trying to do business! How did HE ever pay for a farm?" She said: "Well, I did it on purpose; I wanted you to know I wasn't a cruel aristocrat, but a woman that had worked as hard as yourself. Now, why shouldn't you help me and yourself instead of helping Richards? You have confidence in me, you say. Well, show it. I'll give you your mortgage for your mortgage on Richards's farm. Come, can't you trust Richards to me? You think it over."

The hiss of a rocket hurled her words into s.p.a.ce. The fireworks had begun. Miss Brown looked at them and watched Nelson at the same time.

As a good business woman who was also a good citizen, having subscribed five dollars to the carnival, she did not propose to lose the worth of her money; neither did she intend to lose a chance to do business.

Perhaps there was an obscurer and more complex motive lurking in some stray corner of that queer garret, a woman's mind. Such motives--aimless softenings of the heart, unprofitable diversions of the fancy--will seep unconsciously through the toughest business principles of woman.

She was puzzled by the look of exaltation on Nelson's features, illumined as they were by the uncanny light. If the fool man had not forgotten all his troubles just to see a few fireworks! No, he was not that kind of a fool; maybe--and she almost laughed aloud in her pleasure over her own insight--maybe it all made him think of the war, where he had been so brave. "He was a regular hero in the war," Miss Brown concluded, "and he certainly is a perfect gentleman; what a pity he hasn't got any sense!"

She had guessed aright, although she had not guessed deep enough in regard to Nelson. He watched the great wheels of light, he watched the river aflame with Greek fire, then, with a shiver, he watched the bombs bursting into myriads of flowers, into fizzing snakes, into fields of burning gold, into showers of jewels that made the night splendid for a second and faded. They were not fireworks to him; they were a magical phantasmagoria that renewed the incoherent and violent emotions of his youth; again he was in the chaos of the battle, or he was dreaming by his camp-fire, or he was pacing his lonely round on guard. His heart leaped again with the old glow, the wonderful, beautiful worship of Liberty that can do no wrong. He seemed to hear a thousand voices chanting:

"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!"

His turbid musings cleared--or they seemed to him to clear--under the strong reaction of his imagination and his memories. It was all over, the dream and the glory thereof. The splendid young soldier was an elderly, ruined man. But one thing was left: he could be true to his flag.

"A poor soldier, but enlisted for the war," says Nelson, squaring his shoulders, with a lump in his throat and his eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g. "I know by the way it hurts me to think of refusing her that it's a temptation to wrong-doing. No, I can't save myself by sacrificing a brother soldier for humanity. She is just as kind as she can be, but women don't understand business; she wouldn't make allowance for Richards."