Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

This unexpected and surprising slang from so grave and dignified a man set everybody to laughing. Miss Nebeker bowed in smiling acknowledgement of what appeared to her to be a flattering anticipation of her humor, and taking her manuscript from some hiding-place in her drapery, made a grimace and began to read. Mrs. Philpot's cat, in the absence of its mistress, had taken up with the elocutionist and now came to rub and purr around her feet while she recited. This was a small matter, but in school or church or lecture-hall, small matters attract attention. The fact that the cat now and again mewed plaintively set some of the audience to smiling and even to laughing.

Such apparent approval of her new rendition thrilled Miss Nebeker to her heart's core. Her voice deepened, her intonations caught the spirit of her mood, and she read wildly well.

Every one who has even a smattering of the _patois_ current in New Jersey, will understand how effective it might be made in the larynx of a cunning elocutionist; and then whoever has had the delicious experience of hearing a genuine Jerseyman play on the jewsharp will naturally jump to a correct conclusion concerning the pathos of the subject which Miss Nebeker had in hand. She felt its influence and threw all her power into it. Heavy as she was, she arose on her tip-toes at the turning point of the story and gesticulated vehemently.

The cat, taken by surprise, leaped aside a pace or two and glared in a half-frightened way, with each separate hair on its tail set stiffly. Of course there was more laughter which the reader took as applause.

"A brace of cats!" exclaimed the historian. "A brace of cats!"

Nobody knew what he meant, but the laughing increased, simply for the reason that there was nothing to laugh at.

Discovering pretty soon that Miss Nebeker really meant no harm by her manoeuvres, the cat went back to rub and purr at her feet. Then Miss Nebeker let down her heel on the cat's tail, at the same time beginning with the pathetic part of _The Jerseyman's Jewsharp_.

The unearthly squall that poor puss gave forth was wholly lost on the excited elocutionist, but it quite upset the audience, who, not wishing to appear rude, used their handkerchiefs freely.

Miss Nebeker paused to give full effect to a touching line.

The cat writhed and rolled and clawed the air and wailed like a lost spirit in its vain endeavor to free its tail; but Miss Nebeker, all unconscious of the situation, and seeing her hearers convulsed and wiping tears from their faces, redoubled her elocutionary artifices and poured incomparable feeling into her voice.

Suddenly the tortured and writhing animal uttered a scream of blood-curdling agony and lunged at Miss Nebeker's ankles with tooth and claw.

She was in the midst of the passage where the dying Jerseyman lifts himself on his elbow and calls for his trusty Jewsharp:

"Gi' me my juice-harp, Sarah Ann----" she was saying, when of a sudden she screamed louder than the cat and bounded into the air, sending her manuscript in fluttering leaves all over the room.

The cat, with level tail and fiery eyes, sailed through the door-way into the hall, and went as if possessed of a devil, bounding up the stairway to Mrs. Philpot's room.

Congratulations were in order, and Lucas insisted upon bellowing in Miss Nebeker's ear his appreciation of the powerful effect produced by the last scene in the little drama.

"If our friends who are out in this rain are finding anything half as entertaining," he thundered, "they needn't mind the drenching."

"But I'm bitten, I'm scratched, I'm hurt," she exclaimed.

Lucas suddenly realized the brutality of his attitude, and hastened to rectify it by collecting the leaves of her manuscript and handing them to her.

"I beg pardon," he said sincerely, "I hope you are not hurt much."

"Just like a cat," she cried, "always under somebody's feet! I do despise them!"

With a burning face and trembling hands she swiftly rearranged the manuscript and assuming the proper attitude asked the audience to be seated again.

"I am bitten and scratched quite severely," she said, "and am suffering great pain, but if you will resume your places I will begin over again."

"Call that cat back, then, quick!" exclaimed Lucas, "it's the star performer in the play."

She proceeded forthwith, setting out on a new journey through the tortuous ways of the poem, and held up very well to the end. What she called New Jersey patois was a trifle flat when put into verse and she lacked the polished buffoonery of a successful dialect reader, wherefore she failed to get along very successfully with her audience in the absence of the cat; still the reading served to kill a good deal of time, by a mangling process.

The storm was over long ago when she had finished, and the sun was flooding the valley with golden splendor. Along the far away mountain ridges some slanting wisps of whitish mist sailed slowly, like aerial yachts riding dark blue billows. The foliage of the trees, lately dusky and drooping, twinkled vividly with a green that was almost dazzling, and the air was deliciously fresh and fragrant.

Everybody went out on the veranda for a turn and a deep breath.

The mail had arrived and by a mistake a bundle of letters bearing the card of George Dunkirk & Co., and addressed to "George Dunkirk, Esq., Hotel Helicon, room 24," was handed to Lucas.

The historian gazed at the superscription, adjusted his glasses and gazed again, and slowly the truth crept into his mind. There were ten or fifteen of the letters. Evidently some of them, as Lucas's experience suggested, had alien letters inclosed within their envelopes, and thus forwarded by the mailing clerk of the firm had at last come to the senior partner at room 24.

"Gaspard Dufour, indeed!" Lucas exclaimed inwardly. "George Dunkirk, rather. This is a pretty kettle of fish!"

He sent the letters up to room 24, to await the return of their proper recipient, and fell to reflecting upon the many, very many and very insulting things that he and nearly all the rest of the hotel guests as well had said in Dufour's hearing about publishers in general and about George Dunkirk & Co., in particular. His face burned with the heat of the retrospect, as he recalled such phrases as "sleek thief," "manipulator of copy-right statements," "Cadmean wolf" "ghoul of literary grave-yards," and a hundred others, applied with utter unrestraint and bandied around, while George Dunkirk was sitting by listening to it all!

He called Ferris to him and imparted his discovery in a stage whisper.

"The dickens!" was all that gentleman could say, as the full text of his address of the other evening rushed upon him.

"It is awkward, devilish awkward," remarked Lucas, wiping his glasses and nervously readjusting them.

A few minutes later two men rode up to the hotel. One of them was a very quiet-looking fellow who dryly stated that he was the high sheriff of Mt. Boab county.

XIX.

Meantime down the ravine in the obscure little still-house our pedestrians were held in durance vile by Tolliver and his obedient moon-shiners.

It was a puzzling situation to all concerned. Far from wishing or intending to harm his prisoners, Tolliver still could not see his way clear to setting them at liberty. On the other hand he was clever enough to perceive that to hold them very long would be sure to lead to disaster, for their friends would institute a search and at the same time telegraph an account of their disappearance all over the country.

"'Pears ter me like I've ketched bigger game 'an my trap'll hold," he thought, as he stood in the door-way surveying his victims.

"What ye all a doin' a monkeyin' round' these yer premerses, anyhow?" he demanded. "W'y c'udn't ye jest wait 'll I sent for ye ter kem yer?"

"It's a sort of surprise party, my dear sir," said Cattleton. "Don't you see?"

"S'prise set o' meddlin' Yankees a foolin' roun' wher' they air not got no business at," responded Tolliver, "that's w'at I calls it."

"Where's your pantry?" inquired Punner, "I'm as hungry as a wolf."

"Hongry, air ye? What'd ye 'spect ter git ter eat at er still-house, anyhow? Hain't ye got no sense er tall? Air ye er plum blasted eejit?"

Tolliver made these inquiries in a voice and manner suggestive of suppressed but utter wrath.

"Oh he's _always_ hungry, he would starve in a feed-store," exclaimed Cattleton. "Don't pay the least attention to him, Mr. Tolliver. He's incurably hungry."

"W'y ef the man's really hongry----" Tolliver began to say in a sympathetic tone.

"Here," interrupted Hubbard gruffly, "let us out of this immediately, can't you? The ladies can't bear this foul air much longer, it's beastly."

"Mebbe hit air you 'at air a running this yer chebang," said Tolliver with a scowl. "I'll jes' let ye out w'en I git ready an' not a minute sooner, nother. So ye've hearn my tin horn."

Miss Stackpole and Miss Crabb made notes in amazing haste.

Hubbard shrugged his heavy shoulders and bit his lip. He was baffled.

"Do you think they'll kill us?" murmured Miss Moyne in Dufour's ear.

Dufour could not answer.

Crane and his "pap's uncle Pete" were still hobnobbing over the jug.

"Yer's a lookin' at ye, boy, an' a hopin' agin hope 'at ye may turn out ter be es likely a man es yer pap," the old man was saying, preliminary to another draught.

Crane was bowing with extreme politeness in acknowledgement of the sentiment, and was saying:

"I am told that I look like my father----"

"Yes, ye do look a leetle like im," interrupted the old man with a leer over the jug, "but l'me say at it air dern leetle, boy, dern leetle!"

Punner overhearing this reply, laughed uproariously. Crane appeared oblivious to the whole force of the joke, however. He was simply waiting for his turn at the jug.

"As I wer' a sayin'," resumed the old man, "yer's er hopin' agin' hope, an' a lookin' at ye----"

"How utterly brutal and disgusting!" cried Mrs. Nancy Jones Black. "I must leave here, I cannot bear it longer! This is nothing but a low, vile dram-shop! Let me pass!"

She attempted to go through the doorway, but Tolliver interfered.

"Stay wher' ye air," he said, in a respectful but very stern tone. "Ye can't git out o' yer jist yit."

"Dear me! Dear me!" wailed Mrs. Black, "what an outrage, what an insult! Are you men?" she cried, turning upon the gentlemen near her, "and will you brook this?"

"Give me your handkerchiefs again," said Cattleton, "and I will once more poke out my head; 'tis all that I can do!"

"Shoot the fust head 'at comes out'n thet ther winder, Dave!" ordered Tolliver, speaking to some one outside.

"I don't care for any handkerchiefs, thank you," said Cattleton, "I've changed my mind."

Miss Moyne was holding Dufour's arm with a nervous clutch, her eyes were full of tears, and she was trembling violently. He strove to quiet her by telling her that there was no danger, that he would shield her, die for her and all that; but Tolliver looked so grim and the situation was so strange and threatening that she could not control herself.

"Goodness! but isn't this rich material," Miss Crabb soliloquized, writing in her little red book with might and main. "Bret Harte never discovered anything better."

Miss Henrietta Stackpole was too busy absorbing the human interest of the interview between the two Cranes, to be more than indirectly aware of anything else that was going on around her.

"Ye needn't be erfeard as ter bein' hurt, boy," said the old man, "not es long es yer pap's uncle Pete air eroun' yer. Hit ain't often 'at I meets up wi' kinfolks downyer, an' w'en I does meet up wi' 'em I treats 'em es er Southern gen'l'man orter treat his kinfolks."

"Precisely so," said Crane, taking another sip, "hospitality is a crowning Southern virtue. When I go up to Louisville Henry Watterson and I always have a good time."

"Spect ye do, boy, spect ye do. Louisville use ter be a roarin' good place ter be at."

Tolliver, whose wits had been hard at work, now proposed what he called "terms o' pay-roll, like what they hed in the war."

"Ef ye'll all take a oath an' swa' at ye'll never tell nothin' erbout nothin," said he, "w'y I'll jest let ye off this yer time."

"That is fair enough," said Dufour, "we are not in the detective service."

"Then," observed Tolliver, "ef I ken git the 'tention of this yer meetin', I move 'at it air yerby considered swore 'at nothin' air ter be said erbout nothin' at no time an' never. Do ye all swa'?"

"Yes!" rang out a chorus of voices.

"Hit air cyarried," said Tolliver, "an' the meetin' air dismissed, sigh er die. Ye kin all go on erbout yer business."

The pedestrians filed out into the open air feeling greatly relieved. Crane lingered to have a few more passages with his sociable and hospitable grand-uncle. Indeed he remained until the rest of the party had passed out of sight up the ravine and he did not reach the hotel until far in the night, when he sang some songs under Miss Moyne's window.

Taken altogether, the pedestrians felt that they had been quite successful in their excursion.

Dufour was happiness itself. On the way back he had chosen for himself and Miss Moyne a path which separated them from the others, giving him an opportunity to say a great deal to her.

Now it is a part of our common stock of understanding that when a man has an excellent and uninterrupted opportunity to say a great deal to a beautiful young woman, he usually does not find himself able to say much; still he rarely fails to make himself understood.

They both looked so self-consciously happy (when they arrived a little later than the rest at Hotel Helicon) that suspicion would have been aroused but for two startling and all-absorbing disclosures which drove away every other thought.

One was the disclosure of the fact that Dufour was not Dufour, but George Dunkirk, and the other was the disclosure of the fact that the high sheriff of Mt. Boab County was in Hotel Helicon on important official business.

Little Mrs. Philpot was the first to discover that the great publisher really had not practiced any deception as to his name. Indeed her album showed that the signature therein was, after all, George Dunkirk and not Gaspard Dufour. The autograph was not very plain, it is true, but it was decipherable and the mistake was due to her own bad reading.

If the sheriff had been out of the question the humiliation felt by the authors, for whom Dunkirk was publisher and who had talked so outrageously about him, would have crushed them into the dust; but the sheriff was there in his most terrible form, and he forced himself upon their consideration with his quiet but effective methods of legal procedure.

XX.

"Gaslucky has been caught in a wheat corner at Chicago," Lucas explained, "and has been squeezed to death."

"Dead!" cried Punner, "it's a great loss. We'll have to hold a meeting and pass res----"

"We'll have to get out of this place in short order," said Lucas, "the sheriff has levied an attachment on the hotel and all it contains."

"What!"

"How's that?"

"Do you mean that the house is to be shut up and we turned out?"

"Just that," said Lucas. "The sheriff has invoiced every thing, even the provisions on hand. He says that we can't eat another bite here."

"And I'm starving even now!" exclaimed Punner. "I could eat most anything. Let's walk round to Delmonico's, Cattleton."

"But really, what can we do?" demanded Ferris, dolefully enough.

"Go home, of course," said Cattleton.

Ferris looked blank and stood with his hands thrust in his pockets.

"I can't go home," he presently remarked.

"Why?"

"I haven't money enough to pay my way."

"By George! neither have I!" exclaimed Cattleton with a start.

"That is precisely my fix," said Lucas gravely.

"You echo my predicament," said Peck.

"My salary is suspended during my absence," said Punner, with his eyes bent on the floor.

Little Mrs. Philpot was speechless for a time as the force of the situation broke upon her.

"Squeezed in a wheat corner?" inquired Miss Stackpole, "what do you mean by that?"

"I mean that Gaslucky got sheared in the big deal the other day at Chicago," Lucas explained.

"Got sheared?"

"Yes, the bulls sat down on him."

"Oh, you mean a speculation--a--"

"Yes, Gaslucky was in for all he was worth, and they run it down on him and flattened him. A gas-man's no business in wheat, especially in Chicago; they spread him out, just as the sheriffs proceedings have flattened all our hopes for the present."

"It's just outrageous!" cried little Mrs. Philpot, finding her voice. "He should have notified us, so that--"

"They didn't notify him, I guess," said Cattleton.

"No, he found it out afterwards," remarked Lucas, glancing gloomily toward where Dunkirk and Miss Moyne stood, apparently in light and pleasant conversation.

Viewed in any light the predicament was a peculiar and distressing one to the guests of Hotel Helicon. The sheriff, a rather ignorant, but very stubborn and determined man, held executions and writs of attachment sued out by Gaslucky creditors, which he had proceeded to levy on the hotel and on all the personalty visible in it belonging to the proprietor.

"'Course," said he, "hit'll be poorty hard on you'ns, but I can't help it, I've got ter do my juty, let it hurt whoever it will. Not er thing kin ye tech at's in this yer tavern, 'ceptin' what's your'n, that air's jest how it air. So now mind w'at yer a doin'."

The servants were idle, the dining-room closed, the kitchen and pantries locked up. Never was there a more doleful set of people. Mrs. Nancy Jones Black thought of playing a piece of sacred music, but she found the grand piano locked, with its key deep in the sheriff's pocket.

The situation was made doubly disagreeable when at last the officer informed the guests that they would have to vacate their rooms forthwith, as he should proceed at once to close up the building.

"Heavens, man, are you going to turn us out into the woods?" demanded Peck.

"Woods er no woods," he replied, "ye'll hev ter git out'n yer, right off."

"But the ladies, Mr. Sheriff," suggested Punner, "no Southern gentleman can turn a lady out of doors."

The officer actually colored with the force of the insinuation. He stood silent for some time with his eyes fixed on the floor. Presently he looked up and said:

"The weeming kin stay till mornin'."

"Well they must have something to eat," said Punner. "They can't starve."

"Thet's so," the sheriff admitted, "they kin hev a bite er so."

"And we----"

"You men folks cayn't hev a dorg gone mouthful, so shet up!"

"Well," observed Cattleton, dryly, "it appears the odds is the difference between falling into the hands of moonshiners and coming under the influence of a lawful sheriff."

"I know a little law," interposed Bartley Hubbard with a sullen emphasis, "and I know that this sheriff has no right to tumble us out of doors, and for my part----"

"Fur yer part," said the sheriff coolly, "fur yer part, Mister, ef ye fool erlong o' me I'll crack yer gourd fur ye."

"You'll do what?"

"I'll stave in yer piggin."

"I don't understand."

"W'y, blame yer ignorant hide, wha' wer' ye borned and fotch up? I'll jest knock the everlastin' head off'n ye, _thet's_ 'zac'ly w'at I says. Mebbe ye don't understan' _thet_?"

"Yes," said Hubbard, visibly shrinking into himself, "I begin to suspect your meaning."

Miss Crabb was taking notes with enthusiastic rapidity.

Dunkirk called the sheriff to him and a long conference was held between them, the result of which was presently announced.

"I heve thort it over," said the quiet officer of the law, "an' es hit appear thet w'at grub air on han' an' done cooked might spile afore it c'u'd be sold, therefore I proclamate an' say at you'ns kin stay yer tell termorrer an' eat w'at's cooked, but tech nothin' else."

Cattleton and Punner applauded loudly. To everybody the announcement was a reprieve of no small moment, and a sigh of relief rustled through the groups of troubled guests. Those who had been down the ravine were very tired and hungry; the thought of a cold luncheon to them was the vision of a feast.

Dunkirk had a basket of wine brought down from his room and he made the sheriff sit beside him at the table.

"We may as well make the most of our last evening together," he said, glancing jovially around.

"We shall have to walk down the mountain in the morning, I suppose," remarked Bartley Hubbard.

"That's jest w'at's the matter," observed the sheriff.

"But the ladies, my dear sir, the ladies----" began Punner.

"The weeming, they'll hev kinveyances, young man, so ye kin jest shet up ef ye please," the officer interrupted, with a good-natured wink and a knowing wag of his head.

A disinterested observer would have noted readily enough that the feast was far from a banquet. There was Ferris, for instance, munching a biscuit and sipping his wine and pretending to enjoy Punner's sallies and Cattleton's drolleries, while down in his heart lay the leaden thought, the hideous knowledge of an empty pocket. Indeed the reflection was a common one, weighting down almost every breast at the board.

One little incident did make even Ferris forget himself for a moment or two, it was when deaf Miss Nebeker misinterpreted some remark made by Hubbard and arose with a view to reciting _The Jerseyman's Jewsharp_, with a new variation, "Oh, Jerseyman Joe had a Jewsharp of gold," she began, in her most melodious drawl. She could not hear the protesting voices of her friends and she misinterpreted the stare of the sheriff.

"For the good heaven's sake, Hubbard," cried Lucas, "do use your influence; quick, please, or I shall collapse."

Bartley Hubbard took hold of her dress and gently pulled her down into her chair.

"The sheriff objects!" he yelled in her ear.

"After dinner?" she resignedly inquired, "well, then after dinner, in the parlor."

When the feast had come to the crumbs, Dunkirk arose and said:

"We all have had a good time at the Hotel Helicon, but our sojourn upon the heights of Mt. Boab has been cut short by a certain chain of mishaps over which we have had no control, and to-morrow we go away, doubtless forever. I feel like saying that I harbor no unpleasant recollections of the days we have spent together."

Cattleton sprung to his feet to move a vote of thanks "to the public-spirited and benevolent man who built this magnificent hotel and threw open its doors to us."

It was carried.

"Now then," said Lucas, adjusting his glasses and speaking in his gravest chest-tones, "I move that it be taken as the sense of this assembly, that it is our duty to draw upon our publisher for money enough to take us home."

The response was overwhelming.

Dunkirk felt the true state of affairs. He arose, his broad face wreathed with genial smiles, and said:

"To the certain knowledge of your unhappy publisher your accounts are already overdrawn, but in view of the rich material you have been gathering of late, your publisher will honor you draughts to the limit of your expenses home."

Never did happier people go to bed. The last sleep in Hotel Helicon proved to be the sweetest.

Far in the night, it is true, some one sang loudly but plaintively under Miss Moyne's window until the sheriff awoke and sallied forth to end the serenade with some remarks about "cracking that eejit's gourd;" but there was no disturbance, the sounds blending sweetly with the dreams of the slumberers. They all knew that it was Crane, poor fellow, who had finally torn himself away from his father's fascinating uncle.

XXI.

The retreat from Hotel Helicon was picturesque in the extreme. There had been much difficulty in finding vehicles to take the retiring guests down the mountain to the railway station, but Tolliver had come to the rescue with a mule, a horse, a cart, and an ox. These, when added to the rather incongruous collection of wagons and carts from every other available source, barely sufficed. Tolliver led the mule with Ferris on its back, while Miss Crabb and Miss Stackpole occupied the ox-cart, the former acting as driver.

"Good-bye and good luck to ye!" the sheriff called after them. "Mighty sorry ter discommode ye, but juty air juty, an' a officer air no respecter of persons."

Mrs. Nancy Jones Black sat beside Crane in a rickety wagon, and between jolts gave him many a word of wisdom on the subject of strong drink, which the handsome Bourbon poet stowed away for future consideration.

Dunkirk and Miss Moyne rode upon the "hounds" of a naked wood-wain, as happy as two blue-birds in April, while Bartley Hubbard, with little Mrs. Philpot and her child and some other ladies, was in an old weather-beaten barouche, a sad relic of the _ante-bellum_ times. For the rest there were vehicles of every sort save the comfortable sort, and all went slowly winding and zig-zagging down Mt. Boab toward the valley and the river. Why pursue them? Once they all looked up from far down the slope and saw Hotel Helicon shining like a castle of gold in the flood of summer sunlight. Its verandas were empty, its windows closed, but the flag on its wooden tower still floated bravely in the breeze, its folds appearing to touch the soft gray-blue sky.

* * * * *

A year later Crane and Peck met at Saratoga and talked over old times. At length coming down to the present, Crane said:

"Of all of us who were guests on Mt. Boab, Miss Moyne is the only one who has found success. Her story, _On The Heights_, is in its seventieth edition."

"Oh, well," said Peck, "that goes without the saying. Anybody could succeed with her chance."

"_Her_ chance, why do you say that?"

"Haven't you heard? Ah, I see that the news has not yet penetrated the wilds of Kentucky. The open secret of Miss Moyne's success lies in the fact that she has married her publisher."

A silence of some minutes followed, during which Crane burned his cigar very rapidly.

"What fools we were," Peck presently ventured, "to be fighting a duel about her!"

"No, sir," said Crane, with a far-away look in his eyes, "no, sir, I would die for her right now."

So the subject was dropped between them forever.

Some of Gaslucky's creditors bought Hotel Helicon at the sheriff's sale, but it proved a barren investment.

The house stands there now, weather-beaten and lonely on the peak of Mt. Boab, all tenantless and forlorn.

As to Tolliver's still-house I cannot say, but at stated intervals Crane receives a small cask marked: "J'yful juice, hannel with keer," which comes from his "Pap's uncle Pete."

THE END.

THE TALE OF A SCULPTOR

BY HUGH CONWAY

THE TALE OF A SCULPTOR.