Read Ebook: The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers 1758-1775 With Numerous Illustrative Notes by Tomlinson Abraham

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 623 lines and 40178 words, and 13 pages

"If I ever saw you, I didn't know you, of course," she said with unaffected sincerity; "if I had, I should have spoken to you."

"Oh, I never worried about that! But of course it would be all right if you didn't want to remember me. I was an ugly little one-gallus kid with a frowsy head and freckled face. I shouldn't expect you to remember me for my youthful beauty; but you saved me from starvation once; I sat on your fence and watched you eat a large red apple, and traded you my only agate--it was an imitation--for the core."

She laughed, declaring that she could never have been so grasping, and he decided that she was a good fellow. Her manner of ignoring the social chasm that yawned between members of the fashionable Country Club and the Little Ripple Club farther down the river, to which young men who invaded the lower Wabash with sample-cases were acceptable, was wholly in her favor. Her parents had been much poorer than his own: his father had been a teamster; hers had been a common day laborer and a poor stick at that. And recurring to the maternal line, her mother had without shame added to the uncertain family income by taking in washing. His mother, on the other hand, had canned her own fruit and been active in the affairs of the First M.E. Church, serving on committees with the wives of men who owned stores and were therefore of Belleville's aristocracy; she had even been invited to the parsonage to supper.

If Nan Corrigan's parents had not perished in an Ohio River flood, and if Timothy Farley, serving on a flood sufferers' relief committee, had not rescued her from a shanty that was about to topple over by the angry waters, Nan Farley would not be standing there in expensive raiment talking to Jerry Amidon. These facts were not to be ignored and she was conscious of no wish to ignore them.

"I've been fortunate, of course," she said, as though condensing an answer to many questions.

"I guess there's a good deal in luck," he replied easily. "If one of our best tie-hoppers hadn't got killed in a trolley smash-up, I might never have got a chance to try the road. I'd probably have been doing Old Masters with the marking-pot around the shipping-room to the end of time."

His way of putting things amused her, and her smile heightened his admiration of her dimples.

"I suppose you're going fishing when you learn how to manage the fly?" she asked, willing to prolong the talk now that they had disposed of the past.

"You never spoke truer words! It's this way," he continued confidentially: "When I see a fellow doing something I don't know how to do, my heart-action isn't good till I learn the trick. It used to make me sick to have to watch 'em marking boxes at the store, and I began getting down at six A.M. to practice, so when a chance came along I'd be ready to handle the brush. And camping once over Sunday a few miles down this romantic stretch of sandbars, I saw a chap hook a bass with a hand-made fly instead of a worm, and I've been waiting until returning prosperity gave me the price of a box of those toys to try it myself. And here you've caught me in the act. But don't give me away to the sports up there." He indicated the clubhouse with a jerk of the head. "It might injure my credit on the street."

"Oh, I'll not give you away!" she replied in his own key. "But did the man you saw catch the fish that time ever enter more fully into your life? I should think he ought to have known how highly you approved of him."

"Well, I got acquainted with him after that, and he's taken quite a shine to me, if I may say it which shouldn't. The name being Eaton--John Cecil--lawyer by trade."

Her face expressed surprise; then she laughed merrily.

"He's never taken a shine to me; I think he disapproves of me. If he doesn't"--she frowned--"he ought to!"

"Oh, nothing like that!" he declared with his peculiar slangy intonation. "He isn't half as frosty as he looks; he's the greatest ever; says he believes he could have made something out of me if he'd caught me sooner. He works at it occasionally, anyway; trying to purify my grammar--a hard job; says my slang is picturesque and useful for commercial purposes, but little adapted to the politer demands of the drawing-room. You know how Cecil talks? He's a grand talker--sort o' guys you, and you can't get mad."

"I've noticed that," said Nan, with a rueful smile. "You ought to be proud that he takes an interest in you. I suppose it's your sense of humor; he's strong for that."

This compliment, ventured cautiously, clearly pleased Amidon. He stooped, picked up a pebble and sent it skimming over the water.

"He says a sense of humor is essential to one who gropes for the philosophy of life--his very words. I don't know what it means, but he says if I'm good and quit opening all my remarks with 'Listen,' he'll elucidate some day."

Her curiosity was aroused. The social conjunction of John Cecil Eaton and Jeremiah A. Amidon was bewildering.

"He's not in the habit of wasting time on people he doesn't like--me, for example," she remarked, lifting her handkerchief from the bush and shaking it out. "I suppose you met him in a business way?"

"Not much! Politics! I room in his ward, and we met in the Fourth Ward Democratic Club. He tried to smash the Machine in the primary last spring, and I helped clean him up--some job, I can tell you! But he's a good loser, and he says it's his duty to win me over to the Cause of Righteousness. Cecil's a thinker, all right. He says thought isn't regarded as highly nowadays as it used to be; says my feet are well trained now, and I ought to begin using my head. He always wears that solemn front, and you never know when to laugh. Just toys with his funny whiskers and never blinks. Says he tries his jokes on me before he springs 'em at the University Club. I just let him string me; in fact, I've got to; he says I need his chastening hand. Gave me a copy of the Bible, Christmas, and told me to learn the Ten Commandments; said they were going out of fashion pretty fast, and he thought I could build up a reputation for being eccentric by living up to 'em. Says if Moses had made eleven, he couldn't have improved on the job any. Queer way of talking religion, but Cecil's different, any way you look at him."

These revelations as to John Cecil Eaton's admiration for the Ten Commandments, coming from Amidon, were surprising, but not so puzzling as the evident fact that Eaton found Copeland-Farley's young commercial traveler worth cultivating. Amidon was quick to see that he rose in Nan's estimation by reason of Eaton's friendly interest.

"Well, I never get on with him," she confessed, willing to sacrifice herself that Amidon might plume himself the more upon Eaton's partiality.

The John Cecil Eaton thus limned was not the austere person Nan knew. Her Eaton was a sedate gentleman who made cryptic remarks to her at parties and was known to be exceedingly conservative in social matters. Amidon, she surmised, was far too keen to subject himself unwillingly to Eaton's caustic humor, nor was Eaton a man to trouble himself with any one unless he received an adequate return.

"I must be going back," she said, glancing at her watch. Her casual manner of consulting the pretty trinket on her wrist charmed him. He was pleased with himself that he had been able to carry through an interview with so superior a person.

He had never been more at ease in his most brilliant conversations with the prettiest stenographer in the drug house, whose sole aim in life seemed to be to "call him down" for his freshness. Lunch-counter girls, shop-girls, attractive motion-picture cashiers, were an alluring target for his wit, and the more cruelly they snubbed him the more intensely he admired them. But the stimulus of these adventures was not comparable to the exaltation he experienced from this encounter with Nan Farley. If she had pretended not to remember him he would have hated her cordially; as it was, he liked her immensely. Though she lacked the pert "come-back" of girls behind desks and counters, he felt, nevertheless, that she would give a good account of herself in like positions if exposed to the bold raillery of commercial travelers. He was humble before her kindness. She turned away, hesitated an instant, then took a step toward him and put out her hand. There was something of appeal in the look she gave him as their hands touched--the vaguest hint of an appeal. Her eyes narrowed for an instant with the intentness of her gaze as she searched his face for--sympathy, understanding, confidence. Then she withdrew her hand quickly, aware that his admiration was expressing itself with disconcerting frankness in his friendly gray eyes.

"It's been nice to see you again," she said softly. "Good luck!"

"Good luck to you, Miss Farley; I hope to meet you again sometime."

"Thank you; I hope so too."

She nodded brightly and moved off along the path toward the clubhouse. He felt absently for his book of cigarette-papers as he reviewed what she had said and what he had said.

He did not resume his whipping of the river, but restored his rod to its case and turned slowly downstream, not neglecting to lift his eyes to the clubhouse as he drifted by.

THE AFFAIRS OF MRS. COPELAND

In a quiet corner of the club veranda Fanny Copeland and John Cecil Eaton had been conscious of the noisy gayety of Mrs. Kinney's party, and they observed Nan Farley's hurried exit and disappearance.

"Nan doesn't seem to be responding to encores," Eaton remarked. "She's gone off to sulk--bored, probably; prefers to be alone, poor kid! It's outrageous the way those people use her."

"They have to be amused," replied Mrs. Copeland, "and I've heard that Nan can be very funny."

"There are all kinds of fun," Eaton assented dryly. "She's been taking off Uncle Tim again. I don't see that he's getting anything for his money--that is, assuming that she gets his money."

"If she doesn't," said Mrs. Copeland quickly, "she won't be the only person that's disappointed."

Eaton lifted his eyes toward a stretch of woodland beyond the river and regarded it fixedly. Then his gaze reverted to her.

"You think Billy wants to get back the money he paid Farley for the drug business?" he asked, in a colorless, indifferent tone that was habitual.

John Cecil Eaton was nearing the end of his thirties--tall, lean, with a closely trimmed black beard. He was dressed for the links, and his waiting caddy was guarding his bag in the distance and incidentally experimenting at clock golf. Eaton's long fingers were clasped round his head in such manner as to set his cap awry. One was conscious of the deliberate gaze of his eyes; his drawling voice and dry humor suggested a man of leisurely habits. He specialized in patent law--that is to say, having a small but certain income, he was able to discriminate in his choice of cases, and he accepted only those that particularly interested him. He had been educated as a mechanical engineer, and the law was an afterthought. His years at Exeter and the Tech, prolonged by his law course at Harvard, had quickened his speech and modified its Hoosier flavor. He passed for an Eastern man with strangers. He was the fourth of his name in the community, and it was a name, distinguished in war and peace, that was well sprinkled through the pages of Indiana history. Though the Eatons had rendered public service in conspicuous instances they had never been money-makers, and when John heard of the high prices attained by Washington Street property in the early years of the twentieth century he reflected that if his father and grandfather had been a little more sanguine as to the city's future he might have been the richest man in town.

Mrs. Copeland's ironic smile at his last remark had lingered. Their eyes met glancingly; then the gaze of both fell upon the distant treetops. Theirs was an old friendship that rendered unnecessary the filling in of gaps. Eaton was thinking less concretely of her reference to Billy Copeland's designs upon the Farley money than of the abstract fact that a divorced woman might sit upon a club veranda and hear her former spouse's voice raised in joyous exclamation within, and even revert without visible emotion to the possibility of his remarrying.

Times and standards had changed. This was no longer the sober capital it had been, where every one went to church, and particular merit might be acquired by attending prayer-meeting. It was a very different place from what it had been in days well within Eaton's recollection, before the bobtail mule cars yielded to the trolley, or the automobile drove out the sober-going pha?tons and station-wagons that had satisfied the native longing for grandeur. The roster of the Country Club bore testimony of the passing of the old order. The membership committee no longer concerned itself with the ancestry or reputation for sobriety of applicants, or their place of worship, or whether their grandfathers had come to town before the burning of the Morrison Opera House, or even the later conflagration that consumed the Academy of Music. You might speak of late arrivals like the Kinneys with all the scorn you pleased, but they had been recognized by everybody but a few ultra-conservatives; and if Bob Kinney was something of a sport or his wife's New York clothes were a trifle daring for the local taste, such criticisms did not weigh heavily as against the handsome villa in which these same Kinneys had established themselves in the new residential area on the river bluff. Curiosity is a stern foe of snobbishness; and when Mrs. Kinney seemed so "sweet" and had given a thousand dollars to the new Girls' Club, besides endowing a children's room in the Presbyterian Hospital, many very proper and dignified matrons felt fully justified in crossing the Rubicon for an inspection of Mrs. Kinney's new house. Eaton had accepted such things in a philosophic spirit, just as he accepted Kinney's retainer to safeguard the patents on the devices that made Kinney's cement the best on the market and the only brand that would take the finish and tint of tile or marble.

"It seems to be understood that they're waiting for Farley to die so they can be married comfortably," Eaton remarked. "But Farley's a tough old hickory knot. He's capable of hanging on just to spite them."

"He was always very kind to me. I saw a good deal of him and his wife after I came here. He was proud of the business and anxious that Billy should carry it on and keep developing it."

"I always liked the steamboating period of Farley's life," said Eaton, ignoring this frank reference to her former husband, in which he thought he detected a trace of wistfulness; "and he's told me a good deal about it at times. It was much more picturesque than his wholesale-drugging. He never quite got over his river days--he's always been the second mate, bullying the roustabouts."

"He never forgot how to swear," Mrs. Copeland laughed. "He does it adorably."

"There was never anything like him when he's well heated," Eaton continued. "He never means anything--it's just his natural way of talking. His customers rather liked it on the whole--expected him to commit them to the fiery pit every time they came to town and dropped in to see him. When he got stung in a trade--which wasn't often--he'd go into his room and lock the door and curse himself for an hour or two and then go out and raise somebody's wages. A character--a real person, old Uncle Tim!"

The thought of the retired merchant seemed to give Eaton pleasure; a smile played furtively about his lips.

"Then it must have been his wife who used to lure him to church every Sunday morning."

"Not a bit of it! It was the old man himself. He had a superstitious feeling that business would go badly if he cut church. He never swore on Sundays, but made up for it Monday mornings. He's always been a generous backer of foreign missionaries on the theory that by Christianizing the heathen we're widening the market for American commerce. We've had worse men than Farley. I suppose he never told a lie or did an underhanded thing through all the years he was in business. And all he has to leave behind him is his half million or more--and Nan."

"And Nan," Mrs. Copeland repeated with a shrug of her shoulders. "I suppose Mr. Farley knows what's up. He's too shrewd not to know. Clever as Nan is, she could hardly pull the wool over his eyes."

"She's much too clever not to know she can't fool him; but he's immensely fond of her, just as his wife was. And we've got to admit that Nan is a very charming person--a little devilish, but keen and amusing. She's too good for that crowd she's running with--no doubt of that! If Uncle Tim thought she meant to marry Billy, he would take pains to see that she didn't."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet