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Title: The Prodigal Village
A Christmas Tale
Author: Irving Bacheller
Release Date: January 30, 2014 [EBook #44796]
Language: English
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THE PRODIGAL VILLAGE
A Christmas Tale
_By_
IRVING BACHELLER
_Author of_
THE LIGHT IN THE CLEARING
A MAN FOR THE AGES, Etc.
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1920
AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS
COPYRIGHT 1920
IRVING BACHELLER
_Printed in the United States of America_
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I WHICH INTRODUCES THE SHEPHERD OF THE BIRDS 1
II THE FOUNDING OF THE PHYLLISTINES 18
III WHICH TELLS OF THE COMPLAINING COIN AND THE MAN
WHO LOST HIS SELF 68
IV IN WHICH MR. ISRAEL SNEED AND OTHER WORKING MEN
RECEIVE A LESSON IN TRUE DEMOCRACY 91
V IN WHICH J. PATTERSON BING BUYS A NECKLACE OF PEARLS 103
VI IN WHICH HIRAM BLENKINSOP HAS A NUMBER OF ADVENTURES 117
VII IN WHICH HIGH VOLTAGE DEVELOPS IN THE CONVERSATION 137
VIII IN WHICH JUDGE CROOKER DELIVERS A FEW OPINIONS 146
IX WHICH TELLS OF A MERRY CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE LITTLE
COTTAGE OF THE WIDOW MORAN 163
THE PRODIGAL VILLAGE
CHAPTER ONE
WHICH INTRODUCES THE SHEPHERD OF THE BIRDS
The day that Henry Smix met and embraced Gasoline Power and went up Main
Street hand in hand with it is not yet forgotten. It was a hasty
marriage, so to speak, and the results of it were truly deplorable.
Their little journey produced an effect on the nerves and the remote
future history of Bingville. They rushed at a group of citizens who were
watching them, scattered it hither and thither, broke down a section of
Mrs. Risley's picket fence and ran over a small boy. At the end of their
brief misalliance, Gasoline Power seemed to express its opinion of Mr.
Smix by hurling him against a telegraph pole and running wild in the
park until it cooled its passion in the fountain pool. In the language
of Hiram Blenkinsop, the place was badly "smixed up." Yet Mr. Smix was
the object of unmerited criticism. He was like many other men in that
quiet village--slow, deliberate, harmless and good-natured. The action
of his intellect was not at all like that of a gasoline engine. Between
the swiftness of the one and the slowness of the other, there was a wide
zone full of possibilities. The engine had accomplished many things
while Mr. Smix's intellect was getting ready to begin to act.
In speaking of this adventure, Hiram Blenkinsop made a wise remark: "My
married life learnt me one thing," said he. "If you are thinkin' of
hitchin' up a wild horse with a tame one, be careful that the tame one
is the stoutest or it will do him no good."
The event had its tragic side and whatever Hiram Blenkinsop and other
citizens of questionable taste may have said of it, the historian has no
intention of treating it lightly. Mr. Smix and his neighbor's fence
could be repaired but not the small boy--Robert Emmet Moran, six years
old, the son of the Widow Moran who took in washing. He was in the
nature of a sacrifice to the new god. He became a beloved cripple, known
as the Shepherd of the Birds and altogether the most cheerful person in
the village. His world was a little room on the second floor of his
mother's cottage overlooking the big flower garden of Judge Crooker--his
father having been the gardener and coachman of the Judge. There were in
this room an old pine bureau, a four post bedstead, an armchair by the
window, a small round nickel clock, that sat on the bureau, a rubber
tree and a very talkative little old tin soldier of the name of Bloggs
who stood erect on a shelf with a gun in his hand and was always looking
out of the window. The day of the tin soldier's arrival the boy had
named him Mr. Bloggs and discovered his unusual qualities of mind and
heart. He was a wise old soldier, it would seem, for he had some sort of
answer for each of the many questions of Bob Moran. Indeed, as Bob knew,
he had seen and suffered much, having traveled to Europe and back with
the Judge's family and been sunk for a year in a frog pond and been
dropped in a jug of molasses, but through it all had kept his look of
inextinguishable courage. The lonely lad talked, now and then, with the
round, nickel clock or the rubber-tree or the pine bureau, but mostly
gave his confidence to the wise and genial Mr. Bloggs. When the spring
arrived the garden, with its birds and flowers, became a source of joy
and companionship for the little lad. Sitting by the open window, he
used to talk to Pat Crowley, who was getting the ground ready for
sowing. Later the slow procession of the flowers passed under the boy's
window and greeted him with its fragrance and color.
But his most intimate friends were the birds. Robins, in the elm tree
just beyond the window, woke him every summer morning. When he made his
way to the casement, with the aid of two ropes which spanned his room,
they came to him lighting on his wrists and hands and clamoring for the
seeds and crumbs which he was wont to feed them. Indeed, little Bob
Moran soon learned the pretty lingo of every feathered tribe that camped
in the garden. He could sound the pan pipe of the robin, the fairy flute
of the oriole, the noisy guitar of the bobolink and the little piccolo
of the song sparrow. Many of these dear friends of his came into the
room and explored the rubber tree and sang in its branches. A colony of
barn swallows lived under the eaves of the old weathered shed on the far
side of the garden. There were many windows, each with a saucy head
looking out of it. Suddenly half a dozen of these merry people would
rush into the air and fill it with their frolic. They were like a lot of
laughing schoolboys skating over invisible hills and hollows.
With a pair of field-glasses, which Mrs. Crooker had loaned to him, Bob
Moran had learned the nest habits of the whole summer colony in that
wonderful garden. All day he sat by the open window with his work, an
air gun at his side. The robins would shout a warning to Bob when a cat
strolled into that little paradise. Then he would drop his brushes,
seize his gun and presently its missile would go whizzing through the
air, straight against the side of the cat, who, feeling the sting of it,
would bound through the flower beds and leap over the fence to avoid
further punishment. Bob had also made an electric search-light out of
his father's old hunting jack and, when those red-breasted policemen
sounded their alarm at night, he was out of bed in a jiffy and sweeping
the tree tops with a broom of light, the jack on his forehead. If he
discovered a pair of eyes, the stinging missiles flew toward them in the
light stream until the intruder was dislodged. Indeed, he was like a
shepherd of old, keeping the wolves from his flock. It was the parish
priest who first called him the Shepherd of the Birds.
Just opposite his window was the stub of an old pine partly covered with
Virginia creeper. Near the top of it was a round hole and beyond it a
small cavern which held the nest of a pair of flickers. Sometimes the
female sat with her gray head protruding from this tiny oriel window of
hers looking across at Bob. Pat Crowley was in the habit of calling
this garden "Moran City," wherein the stub was known as Woodpecker
Tower and the flower bordered path as Fifth Avenue while the widow's
cottage was always referred to as City Hall and the weathered shed as
the tenement district.
What a theater of unpremeditated art was this beautiful, big garden of
the Judge! There were those who felt sorry for Bob Moran but his life
was fuller and happier than theirs. It is doubtful if any of the world's
travelers saw more of its beauty than he.
He had sugared the window-sill so that he always had company--bees and
wasps and butterflies. The latter had interested him since the Judge had
called them "stray thoughts of God." Their white, yellow and blue wings
were always flashing in the warm sunlit spaces of the garden. He loved
the chorus of an August night and often sat by his window listening to
the songs of the tree crickets and katydids and seeing the innumerable
firefly lanterns flashing among the flowers.
His work was painting scenes in the garden, especially bird tricks and
attitudes. For this, he was indebted to Susan Baker, who had given him
paints and brushes and taught him how to use them, and to an unusual
aptitude for drawing.
One day Mrs. Baker brought her daughter Pauline with her--a pretty
blue-eyed girl with curly blonde hair, four years older than Bob, who
was thirteen when his painting began. The Shepherd looked at her with an
exclamation of delight; until then he had never seen a beautiful young
maiden. Homely, ill-clad daughters of the working folk had come to his
room with field flowers now and then, but no one like Pauline. He felt
her hair and looked wistfully into her face and said that she was like
pink and white and yellow roses. She was a discovery--a new kind of
human being. Often he thought of her as he sat looking out of the window
and often he dreamed of her at night.
The little Shepherd of the Birds was not quite a boy. He was a spirit
untouched by any evil thought, unbroken to lures and thorny ways. He
still had the heart of childhood and saw only the beauty of the world.
He was like the flowers and birds of the garden, strangely fair and
winsome, with silken, dark hair curling about his brows. He had large,
clear, brown eyes, a mouth delicate as a girl's and teeth very white and
shapely. The Bakers had lifted the boundaries of his life and extended
his vision. He found a new joy in studying flower forms and in imitating
their colors on canvas.
Now, indeed, there was not a happier lad in the village than this young
prisoner in one of the two upper bedrooms in the small cottage of the
Widow Moran. True, he had moments of longing for his lost freedom when
he heard the shouts of the boys in the street and their feet hurrying by
on the sidewalk. The steadfast and courageous Mr. Bloggs had said: "I
guess we have just as much fun as they do, after all. Look at them
roses."
One evening, as his mother sat reading an old love tale to the boy, he
stopped her.
"Mother," he said, "I love Pauline. Do you think it would be all right
for me to tell her?"
"Never a word," said the good woman. "Ye see it's this way, my little
son, ye're like a priest an' it's not the right thing for a priest."
"I don't want to be a priest," said he impatiently.
"Tut, tut, my laddie boy! It's for God to say an' for us to obey," she
answered.
When the widow had gone to her room for the night and Bob was thinking
it over, Mr. Bloggs remarked that in his opinion they should keep up
their courage for it was a very grand thing to be a priest after all.
Winters he spent deep in books out of Judge Crooker's library and
tending his potted plants and painting them and the thick blanket of
snow in the garden. Among the happiest moments of his life were those
that followed his mother's return from the post-office with _The
Bingville Sentinel_. Then, as the widow was wont to say, he was like a
dog with a bone. To him, Bingville was like Rome in the ancient world or
London in the British Empire. All roads led to Bingville. The _Sentinel_
was in the nature of a habit. One issue was like unto another--as like
as "two chaws off the same plug of tobaccer," a citizen had once said.
Its editor performed his jokes with a wink and a nudge as if he were
saying, "I will now touch the light guitar." Anything important in the
_Sentinel_ would have been as misplaced as a cannon in a meeting-house.
Every week it caught the toy balloons of gossip, the thistledown events
which were floating in the still air of Bingville. The _Sentinel_ was a
dissipation as enjoyable and as inexplicable as tea. It contained
portraits of leading citizens, accounts of sundry goings and comings,
and teas and parties and student frolics.
To the little Shepherd, Bingville was the capital of the world and Mr.
J. Patterson Bing, the first citizen of Bingville, who employed eleven
hundred men and had four automobiles, was a gigantic figure whose shadow
stretched across the earth. There were two people much in his thoughts
and dreams and conversation--Pauline Baker and J. Patterson Bing. Often
there were articles in the _Sentinel_ regarding the great enterprises of
Mr. Bing and the social successes of the Bing family in the metropolis.
These he read with hungry interest. His favorite heroes were George
Washington, St. Francis and J. Patterson Bing. As between the three he
would, secretly, have voted for Mr. Bing. Indeed, he and his friends and
intimates--Mr. Bloggs and the rubber tree and the little pine bureau and
the round nickel clock--had all voted for Mr. Bing. But he had never
seen the great man.
Mr. Bing sent Mrs. Moran a check every Christmas and, now and then, some
little gift to Bob, but his charities were strictly impersonal. He used
to say that while he was glad to help the poor and the sick, he hadn't
time to call on them. Once, Mrs. Bing promised the widow that she and
her husband would go to see Bob on Christmas Day. The little Shepherd
asked his mother to hang his best pictures on the walls and to decorate
them with sprigs of cedar. He put on his starched shirt and collar and
silk tie and a new black coat which his mother had given him. The
Christmas bells never rang so merrily.
The great white bird in the Congregational Church tower--that being
Bob's thought of it--flew out across the valley with its tidings of good
will.
To the little Shepherd it seemed to say:
"Bing--Bing--Bing--Bing--Bing--Bing! Com-ing, Com-ing, Com-ing!!"
Many of the friends of his mother--mostly poor folk of the parish who
worked in the mill--came with simple gifts and happy greetings. There
were those among them who thought it a blessing to look upon the sweet
face of Bob and to hear his merry laughter over some playful bit of
gossip and Judge Crooker said that they were quite right about it. Mr.
and Mrs. J. Patterson Bing were never to feel this blessing. The
Shepherd of the Birds waited in vain for them that Christmas Day. Mrs.
Bing sent a letter of kindly greeting and a twenty-dollar gold piece
and explained that her husband was not feeling "quite up to the mark,"
which was true.
"I'm not going," he said decisively, when Mrs. Bing brought the matter
up as he was smoking in the library an hour or so after dinner. "No
cripples and misery in mine at present, thank you! I wouldn't get over
it for a week. Just send them our best wishes and a twenty-dollar gold
piece."
There were tears in the Shepherd's eyes when his mother helped him into
his night clothes that evening.
"I hate that twenty-dollar gold piece!" he exclaimed.
"Laddie boy! Why should ye be sayin' that?"
The shiny piece of metal was lying on the window-sill. She took it in
her hand.
"It's as cold as a snow-bank!" she exclaimed.
"I don't want to touch it! I'm shivering now," said the Shepherd. "Put
it away in the drawer. It makes me sick. It cheated me out of seeing Mr.
Bing."
CHAPTER TWO
THE FOUNDING OF THE PHYLLISTINES
One little word largely accounted for the success of J. Patterson Bing.
It was the word "no." It saved him in moments which would have been full
of peril for other men. He had never made a bad investment because he
knew how and when to say "no." It fell from his lips so sharply and
decisively that he lost little time in the consideration of doubtful
enterprises. Sometimes it fell heavily and left a wound, for which Mr.
Bing thought himself in no way responsible. There was really a lot of
good-will in him. He didn't mean to hurt any one.
"Time is a thing of great value and what's the use of wasting it in idle
palaver?" he used to say.
One day, Hiram Blenkinsop, who was just recovering from a spree, met
Mr. Bing at the corner of Main and School Streets and asked him for the
loan of a dollar.
"_No sir!_" said Mr. J. Patterson Bing, and the words sounded like two
whacks of a hammer on a nail. "No _sir_," he repeated, the second whack
being now the more emphatic. "I don't lend money to people who make a
bad use of it."
"Can you give me work?" asked the unfortunate drunkard.
"No! But if you were a hired girl, I'd consider the matter."
Some people who overheard the words laughed loudly. Poor Blenkinsop made
no reply but he considered the words an insult to his manhood in spite
of the fact that he hadn't any manhood to speak of. At least, there was
not enough of it to stand up and be insulted--that is sure. After that
he was always racking his brain for something mean to say about J.
Patterson Bing. Bing was a cold-blooded fish. Bing was a scrimper and a
grinder. If the truth were known about Bing he wouldn't be holding his
head so high. Judas Iscariot and J. Patterson Bing were off the same
bush. These were some of the things that Blenkinsop scattered abroad and
they were, to say the least of them, extremely unjust. Mr. Bing's
innocent remark touching Mr. Blenkinsop's misfortune in not being a
hired girl, arose naturally out of social conditions in the village.
Furthermore, it is quite likely that every one in Bingville, including
those impersonal creatures known as Law and Order, would have been much
happier if some magician could have turned Mr. Blenkinsop into a hired
girl and have made him a life member of "the Dish Water Aristocracy," as
Judge Crooker was wont to call it.
The community of Bingville was noted for its simplicity and good sense.
Servants were unknown in this village of three thousand people. It had
lawyers and doctors and professors and merchants--some of whom were
deservedly well known--and J. Patterson Bing, the owner of the pulp
mill, celebrated for his riches; but one could almost say that its most
sought for and popular folk were its hired girls. They were few and
sniffy. They exercised care and discretion in the choice of their
employers. They regulated the diet of the said employers and the
frequency and quality of their entertainments. If it could be said that
there was an aristocracy in the place they were it. First, among the
Who's Who of Bingville, were the Gilligan sisters who worked in the big
brick house of Judge Crooker; another was Mrs. Pat Collins, seventy-two
years of age, who presided in the kitchen of the Reverend Otis
Singleton; the two others were Susan Crowder, a woman of sixty, and a
red-headed girl with one eye, of the name of Featherstraw, both of whom
served the opulent Bings. Some of these hired girls ate with the
family--save on special occasions when city folk were present. Mrs.
Collins and the Gilligans seemed to enjoy this privilege but Susan
Crowder, having had an ancestor who had fought in the Revolutionary War,
couldn't stand it, and Martha Featherstraw preferred to eat in the
kitchen. Indeed there was some warrant for this remarkable situation.
The Gilligan sisters had a brother who was a Magistrate in a large city
and Mrs. Collins had a son who was a successful and popular butcher in
the growing city of Hazelmead.
That part of the village known as Irishtown and a settlement of Poles
and Italians furnished the man help in the mill, and its sons were also
seen more or less in the fields and gardens. Ambition and Education had
been working in the minds of the young in and about Bingville for two
generations. The sons and daughters of farmers and ditch-diggers had
read Virgil and Horace and plodded into the mysteries of higher
mathematics. The best of them had gone into learned professions; others
had enlisted in the business of great cities; still others had gone in
for teaching or stenography.
Their success had wrought a curious devastation in the village and
countryside. The young moved out heading for the paths of glory. Many a
sturdy, stupid person who might have made an excellent plumber, or
carpenter, or farmer, or cook, armed with a university degree and a
sense of superiority, had gone forth in quest of fame and fortune
prepared for nothing in particular and achieving firm possession of it.
Somehow the elective system had enabled them "to get by" in a state of
mind that resembled the Mojave Desert. If they did not care for Latin or
mathematics they could take a course in Hierology or in The Taming of
the Wild Chickadee or in some such easy skating. Bingville was like many
places. The young had fled from the irksome tasks which had roughened
the hands and bent the backs of their parents. That, briefly, accounts
for the fewness and the sniffiness above referred to.
Early in 1917, the village was shaken by alarming and astonishing news.
True, the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and our own enlistment in the World
War and the German successes on the Russian frontier had, in a way,
prepared the heart and intellect of Bingville for shocking events.
Still, these disasters had been remote. The fact that the Gilligan
sisters had left the Crookers and accepted an offer of one hundred and
fifty dollars a month from the wealthy Nixons of Hazelmead was an event
close to the footlights, so to speak. It caused the news of battles to
take its rightful place in the distant background. Men talked of this
event in stores and on street corners; it was the subject of
conversation in sewing circles and the Philomathian Literary Club. That
day, the Bings whispered about it at the dinner table between courses
until Susan Crowder sent in a summons by Martha Featherstraw with the
apple pie. She would be glad to see Mrs. J. Patterson Bing in the
kitchen immediately after dinner. There was a moment of silence in the
midst of which Mr. Bing winked knowingly at his wife, who turned pale as
she put down her pie fork with a look of determination and rose and went
into the kitchen. Mrs. Crowder regretted that she and Martha would have
to look for another family unless their wages were raised from one
hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars a month.
"But, Susan, we all made an agreement for a year," said Mrs. Bing.
Mrs. Crowder was sorry but she and Martha could not make out on the
wages they were getting--everything cost so much. If Mary Gilligan, who
couldn't cook, was worth a hundred dollars a month Mrs. Crowder
considered herself cheap at twice that figure.
Mrs. Bing, in her anger, was inclined to revolt, but Mr. Bing settled
the matter by submitting to the tyranny of Susan. With Phyllis and three
of her young friends coming from school and a party in prospect, there
was nothing else to do.
Maggie Collins, who was too old and too firmly rooted in the village to
leave it, was satisfied with a raise of ten dollars a month. Even then
she received a third of the minister's salary. "His wife being a swell
leddy who had no time for wurruk, sure the boy was no sooner married
than he yelled for help," as Maggie was wont to say.
All this had a decided effect on the economic life of the village.
Indeed, Hiram Blenkinsop, the village drunkard, who attended to the
lawns and gardens for a number of people, demanded an increase of a
dollar a day in his wages on account of the high cost of living,
although one would say that its effect upon him could not have been
serious. For years the historic figure of Blenkinsop had been the
destination and repository of the cast-off clothing and the worn and
shapeless shoes of the leading citizens. For a decade, the venerable
derby hat, which once belonged to Judge Crooker, had survived all the
incidents of his adventurous career. He was, indeed, as replete with
suggestive memories as the graveyard to which he was wont to repair for
rest and recuperation in summer weather. There, in the shade of a locust
tree hard by the wall, he was often discovered with his faithful dog
Christmas--a yellow, mongrel, good-natured cur--lying beside him, and
the historic derby hat in his hand. He had a persevering pride in that
hat. Mr. Blenkinsop showed a surprising and commendable industry under
the stimulation of increased pay. He worked hard for a month, then
celebrated his prosperity with a night of such noisy, riotous joy that
he landed in the lockup with a black eye and a broken nose and an empty
pocket. As usual, the dog Christmas went with him.
When there was a loud yell in the streets at night Judge Crooker used to
say, "It's Hiram again! The poor fellow is out a-Hiraming."
William Snodgrass, the carpenter, gave much thought and reflection to
the good fortune of the Gilligan girls. If a hired girl could earn
twenty-five dollars a week and her board, a skilled mechanic who had to
board himself ought to earn at least fifty. So he put up his prices.
Israel Sneed, the plumber, raised his scale to correspond with that of
the carpenter. The prices of the butcher and grocer kept pace with the
rise of wages. A period of unexampled prosperity set in.
Some time before, the Old Spirit of Bingville had received notice that
its services would no longer be required. It had been an industrious and
faithful Old Spirit. The new generation did not intend to be hard on it.
They were willing to give it a comfortable home as long as it lived. Its
home was to be a beautiful and venerable asylum called The Past. There
it was to have nothing to do but to sit around and weep and talk of
bygone days. The Old Spirit rebelled. It refused to abandon its
appointed tasks.
The notice had been given soon after the new theater was opened in the
Sneed Block, and the endless flood of moving lights and shadows began to
fall on its screen. The low-born, purblind intellects of Bohemian New
York began to pour their lewd fancies into this great stream that flowed
through every city, town and village in the land. They had no more
compunction in the matter than a rattlesnake when it swallows a rabbit.
To them, there were only two great, bare facts in life--male and female.
The males, in their vulgar parlance, were either "wise guys" or
"suckers"! The females were all "my dears."
Much of this mental sewage smelled to heaven. But it paid. It was cheap
and entertaining. It relieved the tedium of small-town life.
Judge Crooker was in the little theater the evening that the Old Spirit
of Bingville received notice to quit. The sons and daughters and even
the young children of the best families in the village were there.
Scenes from the shady side of the great cities, bar-room adventures with
pugilists and porcelain-faced women, the thin-ice skating of illicit
love succeeded one another on the screen. The tender souls of the young
received the impression that life in the great world was mostly
drunkenness, violence, lust, and Great White Waywardness of one kind or
another.
Judge Crooker shook his head and his fist as he went out and expressed
his view to Phyllis and her mother in the lobby. Going home, they called
him an old prude. The knowledge that every night this false instruction
was going on in the Sneed Block filled the good man with sorrow and
apprehension. He complained to Mr. Leak, the manager, who said that he
would like to give clean shows, but that he had to take what was sent
him.
Soon a curious thing happened to the family of Mr. J. Patterson Bing. It
acquired a new god--one that began, as the reader will have observed,
with a small "g." He was a boneless, India-rubber, obedient little god.
For years the need of one like that had been growing in the Bing family.
Since he had become a millionaire, Mr. Bing had found it necessary to
spend a good deal of time and considerable money in New York. Certain of
his banker friends in the metropolis had introduced him to the joys of
the Great White Way and the card room of the Golden Age Club. Always he
had been ill and disgruntled for a week after his return to the homely
realities of Bingville. The shrewd intuitions of Mrs. Bing alarmed her.
So Phyllis and John were packed off to private schools so that the good
woman would be free to look after the imperiled welfare of the lamb of
her flock--the great J. Patterson. She was really worried about him.
After that, she always went with him to the city. She was pleased and
delighted with the luxury of the Waldorf-Astoria, the costumes, the
dinner parties, the theaters, the suppers, the cabaret shows. The latter
shocked her a little at first.
* * * * *
They went out to a great country house, near the city, to spend a
week-end. There was a dinner party on Saturday night. One of the ladies
got very tipsy and was taken up-stairs. The others repaired to the music
room to drink their coffee and smoke. Mrs. Bing tried a cigarette and
got along with it very well. Then there was an hour of heart to heart,
central European dancing while the older men sat down for a night of
bridge in the library. Sunday morning, the young people rode to hounds
across country while the bridge party continued its session in the
library. It was not exactly a restful week-end. J. Patterson and his
wife went to bed, as soon as their grips were unpacked, on their return
to the city and spent the day there with aching heads.
While they were eating dinner that night, the cocktail remarked with the
lips of Mrs. Bing: "I'm getting tired of Bingville."
"Oh, of course, it's a picayune place," said J. Patterson.
"It's so provincial!" the lady exclaimed.
Soon, the oysters and the entree having subdued the cocktail, she
ventured: "But it does seem to me that New York is an awfully wicked
place."
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Godless," she answered. "The drinking and gambling and those dances."
"That's because you've been brought up in a seven-by-nine Puritan
village," J. Patterson growled very decisively. "Why shouldn't people
enjoy themselves? We have trouble enough at best. God gave us bodies to
get what enjoyment we could out of them. It's about the only thing we're
sure of, anyhow."
It was a principle of Mrs. Bing to agree with J. Patterson. And why not?
He was a great man. She knew it as well as he did and that was knowing
it very well indeed. His judgment about many things had been
right--triumphantly and overwhelmingly right. Besides, it was the only
comfortable thing to do. She had been the type of woman who reads those
weird articles written by grass widows on "How to Keep the Love of a
Husband."
So it happened that the Bings began to construct a little god to suit
their own tastes and habits--one about as tractable as a toy dog. They
withdrew from the Congregational Church and had house parties for sundry
visitors from New York and Hazelmead every week-end.
Phyllis returned from school in May with a spirit quite in harmony with
that of her parents. She had spent the holidays at the home of a friend
in New York and had learned to love the new dances and to smoke,
although that was a matter to be mentioned only in a whisper and not in
the presence of her parents. She was a tall, handsome girl with blue
eyes, blonde hair, perfect teeth and complexion, and almost a perfect
figure. Here she was, at last, brought up to the point of a coming-out
party.
It had been a curious and rather unfortunate bringing up that the girl
had suffered. She had been the pride of a mother's heart and the
occupier of that position is apt to achieve great success in supplying a
mother's friends with topics of conversation. Phyllis had been flattered
and indulged. Mrs. Bing was entitled to much credit, having been born of
poor and illiterate parents in a small village on the Hudson a little
south of the Capital. She was pretty and grew up with a longing for
better things. J. Patterson got her at a bargain in an Albany department
store where she stood all day behind the notion counter. "At a bargain,"
it must be said, because, on the whole, there were higher values in her
personality than in his. She had acquired that common Bertha Clay habit
of associating with noble lords who lived in cheap romances and had a
taste for poor but honest girls. The practical J. Patterson hated that
kind of thing. But his wife kept a supply of these highly flavored
novels hidden in the little flat and spent her leisure reading them.
One of the earliest recollections of Phyllis was the caution, "Don't
tell father!" received on the hiding of a book. Mrs. Bing had bought, in
those weak, pinching times of poverty, extravagant things for herself
and the girl and gone in debt for them. Collectors had come at times to
get their money with impatient demands.
The Bings were living in a city those days. Phyllis had been a witness
of many interviews of the kind. All along the way of life, she had heard
the oft-repeated injunction, "Don't tell father!" She came to regard men
as creatures who were not to be told. When Phyllis got into a scrape at
school, on account of a little flirtation, and Mrs. Bing went to see
about it, the two agreed on keeping the salient facts from father.
A dressmaker came after Phyllis arrived to get her ready for the party.
The afternoon of the event, J. Patterson brought the young people of the
best families of Hazelmead by special train to Bingville. The Crookers,
the Witherills, the Ameses, the Renfrews and a number of the most
popular students in the Normal School were also invited. They had the
famous string band from Hazelmead to furnish music, and Smith--an
impressive young English butler whom they had brought from New York on
their last return.
Phyllis wore a gown which Judge Crooker described as "the limit." He
said to his wife after they had gone home: "Why, there was nothing on
her back but a pair of velvet gallowses and when I stood in front of
her my eyes were seared."
"Mrs. Bing calls it high art," said the Judge's wife.
"I call it down pretty close to see level," said the Judge. "When she
clinched with those young fellers and went wrestling around the room she
reminded me of a grape-vine growing on a tree."
This reaction on the intellect of the Judge quite satisfies the need of
the historian. Again the Old Spirit of Bingville had received notice. It
is only necessary to add that the punch was strong and the house party
over the week-end made a good deal of talk by fast driving around the
country in motor-cars on Sunday and by loud singing in boats on the
river and noisy play on the tennis courts. That kind of thing was new to
Bingville.
When it was all over, Phyllis told her mother that Gordon King--one of
the young men--had insulted her when they had been out in a boat
together on Sunday. Mrs. Bing was shocked. They had a talk about it up
in Phyllis' bedroom at the end of which Mrs. Bing repeated that familiar
injunction, "Don't tell father!"
It was soon after the party that Mr. J. Patterson Bing sent for William
Snodgrass, the carpenter. He wanted an extension built on his house
containing new bedrooms and baths and a large sun parlor. The estimate
of Snodgrass was unexpectedly large. In explanation of the fact the
latter said: "We work only eight hours a day now. The men demand it and
they must be taken to and from their work. They can get all they want to
do on those terms."
"And they demand seven dollars and a half a day at that? It's big pay
for an ordinary mechanic," said J. Patterson.
"There's plenty of work to do," Snodgrass answered. "I don't care the
snap o' my finger whether I get your job or not. I'm forty thousand
ahead o' the game and I feel like layin' off for the summer and takin' a
rest."
"I suppose I could get you to work overtime and hurry the job through if
I'm willing to pay for it?" the millionaire inquired.
"The rate would be time an' a half for work done after the eight hours
are up, but it's hard to get any one to work overtime these days."
"Well, go ahead and get all the work you can out of these plutocrats of
the saw and hammer. I'll pay the bills," said J. Patterson.
The terms created a record in Bingville. But, as Mr. Bing had agreed to
them, in his haste, they were established.
Israel Sneed, the plumber, was working with his men on a job at
Millerton, but he took on the plumbing for the Bing house extension, at
prices above all precedent, to be done as soon as he could get to it on
his return. The butcher and grocer had improved the opportunity to raise
their prices for Bing never questioned a bill. He set the pace. Prices
stuck where he put the peg. So, unwittingly, the millionaire had created
conditions of life that were extremely difficult.
Since prices had gone up the village of Bingville had been running down
at the heel. It had been at best and, in the main, a rather shiftless
and inert community. The weather had worn the paint off many houses
before their owners had seen the need of repainting. Not until the rain
drummed on the floor was the average, drowsy intellect of Bingville
roused to action on the roof. It must be said, however, that every one
was busy, every day, except Hiram Blenkinsop, who often indulged in
_ante mortem_ slumbers in the graveyard or went out on the river with
his dog Christmas, his bottle and his fishing rod. The people were
selling goods, or teaming, or working in the two hotels or the machine
shop or the electric light plant or the mill, or keeping the hay off the
lawns, or building, or teaching in the schools. The gardens were
suffering unusual neglect that season--their owners being so profitably
engaged in other work--and the lazy foreigners demanded four dollars and
a half a day and had to be watched and sworn at and instructed, and not
every one had the versatility for this task. The gardens were largely
dependent on the spasmodic industry of schoolboys and old men. So it
will be seen that the work of the community had little effect on the
supply of things necessary to life. Indeed, a general habit of
extravagance had been growing in the village. People were not so careful
of food, fuel and clothing as they had been.
It was a wet summer in Bingville. The day after the rains began,
Professor Renfrew called at the house of the sniffy Snodgrass--the
nouveau riche and opulent carpenter. He sat reading the morning paper
with a new diamond ring on the third finger of his left hand.
"My roof is leaking badly and it will have to be fixed at once," the
Professor announced.
"I'm sorry, I can't do a thing for you now," said Snodgrass. "I've got
so much to do, I don't know which way to turn."
"But you're not working this rainy day, are you?" the Professor asked.
"No, and I don't propose to work in this rain for anybody; if I did I'd
fix my own roof. To tell you the truth, I don't have to work at all! I
calculate that I've got all the money I need. So, when it rains, I
intend to rest and get acquainted with my family."
He was firm but in no way disagreeable about it.
Some of the half-dozen men who, in like trouble, called on him for help
that day were inclined to resent his declaration of independence and his
devotion to leisure, but really Mr. Snodgrass was well within his
rights.
It was a more serious matter when Judge Crocker's plumbing leaked and
flooded his kitchen and cellar. Israel Sneed was in Millerton every day
and working overtime more or less. He refused to put a hand on the
Judge's pipes. He was sorry but he couldn't make a horse of himself and
even if he could the time was past when he had to do it. Judge Crooker
brought a plumber from Hazelmead, sixty miles in a motor-car, and had to
pay seventy dollars for time, labor and materials. This mechanic
declared that there was too much pressure on the pipes, a judgment of
whose accuracy we have abundant proof in the history of the next week or
so. Never had there been such a bursting of pipes and flooding of
cellars. That little lake up in the hills which supplied the water of
Bingville seemed to have got the common notion of moving into the
village. A dozen cellars were turned into swimming pools. Modern
improvements were going out of commission. A committee went to Hazelmead
and after a week's pleading got a pair of young and inexperienced
plumbers to come to Bingville.
"They must 'a' plugged 'em with gold," said Deacon Hosley, when the bill
arrived.
New leaks were forthcoming, but Hiram Blenkinsop conceived the notion of
stopping them with poultices of white lead and bandages of canvas bound
with fine wire. They dripped and many of the pipes of Bingville looked
as if they were suffering from sprained ankles and sore throats, but
Hiram had prevented another deluge.
The price of coal had driven the people of Bingville back to the woods
for fuel. The old wood stoves had been cleaned and set up in the
sitting-rooms and kitchens. The saving had been considerable. Now, so
many men were putting in their time on the house and grounds of J.
Patterson Bing and the new factory at Millerton that the local wood
dealer found it impossible to get the help he needed. Not twenty-five
per cent. of the orders on his books could be filled.
Mr. Bing's house was finished in October. Then Snodgrass announced that
he was going to take it easy as became a man of his opulence. He had
bought a farm and would only work three days a week at his trade. Sneed
had also bought a farm and acquired a feeling of opulence. He was going
to work when he felt like it. Before he tackled any leaking pipes he
proposed to make a few leaks in the deer up in the Adirondacks. So the
roofs and the plumbing had to wait.
Meanwhile, Bingville was in sore trouble. The ancient roof of its
respectability had begun to leak. The beams and rafters in the house of
its spirit were rotting away. Many of the inhabitants of the latter
regarded the great J. Patterson Bing with a kind of awe--like that of
the Shepherd of the Birds. He was the leading citizen. He had done
things. When J. Patterson Bing decided that rest or fresh air was better
for him than bad music and dull prayers and sermons, and that God was
really not much concerned as to whether a man sat in a pew or a rocking
chair or a motor-car on Sunday, he was, probably, quite right. Really,
it was a matter much more important to Mr. Bing and his neighbors than
to God. Indeed, it is not at all likely that the ruler of the universe
was worrying much about them. But when J. Patterson Bing decided in
favor of fun and fresh air, R. Purdy--druggist--made a like decision,
and R. Purdy was a man of commanding influence in his own home. His
daughters, Mabel and Gladys, and his son, Richard, Jr., would not have
been surprised to see him elected President of the United States, some
day, believing that that honor was only for the truly great. Soon Mrs.
Purdy stood alone--a hopeless minority of one--in the household. By much
pleading and nagging, she kept the children in the fold of the church
for a time but, by and by, grew weary of the effort. She was converted
by nervous exhaustion to the picnic Sunday. Her conscience worried her.
She really felt sorry for God and made sundry remarks calculated to
appease and comfort Him.
Now all this would seem to have been in itself a matter of slight
importance. But Orville Gates, the superintendent of the mill, and John
Seaver, attorney at law, and Robert Brown, the grocer, and Pendleton
Ames, who kept the book and stationery store, and William Ferguson, the
clothier, and Darwin Sill, the butcher, and Snodgrass, the carpenter,
and others had joined the picnic caravan led by the millionaire. These
good people would not have admitted it, but the truth is J. Patterson
Bing held them all in the hollow of his hand. Nobody outside his own
family had any affection for him. Outwardly, he was as hard as nails.
But he owned the bank and controlled credits and was an extravagant
buyer. He had given freely for the improvement of the village and the
neighboring city of Hazelmead. His family was the court circle of
Bingville. Consciously or unconsciously, the best people imitated the
Bings.
Judge Crooker was, one day, discussing with a friend the social
conditions of Bingville. In regard to picnic Sundays he made this
remark: "George Meredith once wrote to his son that he would need the
help of religion to get safely beyond the stormy passions of youth. It
is very true!"
The historian was reminded of this saying by the undertow of the life
currents in Bingville. The dances in the Normal School and in the homes
of the well-to-do were imitations of the great party at J. Patterson
Bing's. The costumes of certain of the young ladies were, to quote a
clause from the posters of the Messrs. Barnum and Bailey, still clinging
to the bill-board: "the most daring and amazing bareback performances in
the history of the circus ring." Phyllis Bing, the unrivaled
metropolitan performer, set the pace. It was distinctly too rapid for
her followers. If one may say it kindly, she was as cold and heartless
and beautiful in her act as a piece of bronze or Italian marble. She was
not ashamed of herself. She did it so easily and gracefully and
unconsciously and obligingly, so to speak, as if her license had never
been questioned. It was not so with Vivian Mead and Frances Smith and
Pauline Baker. They limped and struggled in their efforts to keep up. To
begin with, the art of their modiste had been fussy, imitative and
timid. It lacked the master touch. Their spirits were also improperly
prepared for such publicity. They blushed and looked apologies and were
visibly uncomfortable when they entered the dance-hall.
On this point, Judge Crooker delivered a famous opinion. It was: "I feel
sorry for those girls but their mothers ought to be spanked!"
There is evidence that this sentence of his was carried out in due time
and in a most effectual manner. But the works of art which these mothers
had put on exhibition at the Normal School sprang into overwhelming
popularity with the young men and their cards were quickly filled. In
half an hour, they had ceased to blush. Their eyes no longer spoke
apologies. They were new women. Their initiation was complete. They had
become in the language of Judge Crooker, "perfect Phyllistines!"
The dancing tried to be as naughty as that remarkable Phyllistinian
pastime at the mansion of the Bings and succeeded well, if not
handsomely. The modern dances and dress were now definitely established
in Bingville.
Just before the holidays, the extension of the ample home of the
millionaire was decorated, furnished, and ready to be shown. Mrs. Bing
and Phyllis who had been having a fling in New York came home for the
holidays. John arrived the next day from the great Padelford School to
be with the family through the winter recess. Mrs. Bing gave a tea to
the ladies of Bingville. She wanted them to see the improvements and
become aware of her good will. She had thought of an evening party, but
there were many men in the village whom she didn't care to have in her
house. So it became a tea.
The women talked of leaking roofs and water pipes and useless bathrooms
and outrageous costs. Phyllis sat in the Palm Room with the village
girls. It happened that they talked mainly about their fathers. Some had
complained of paternal strictness.
"Men are terrible! They make so much trouble," said Frances Smith. "It
seems as if they hated to see anybody have a good time."
"Mother and I do as we please and say nothing," said Phyllis. "We never
tell father anything. Men don't understand."
Some of the girls smiled and looked into one another's eyes.
There had been a curious undercurrent in the party. It did not break the
surface of the stream until Mrs. Bing asked Mrs. Pendleton Ames, "Where
is Susan Baker?"
A silence fell upon the group around her.
Mrs. Ames leaned toward Mrs. Bing and whispered, "Haven't you heard the
news?"
"No. I had to scold Susan Crowder and Martha Featherstraw as soon as I
got here for neglecting their work and they've hardly spoken to me
since. What is it?"
"Pauline Baker has run away with a strange young man," Mrs. Ames
whispered.
Mrs. Bing threw up both hands, opened her mouth and looked toward the
ceiling.
"You don't mean it," she gasped.
"It's a fact. Susan told me. Mr. Baker doesn't know the truth yet and
she doesn't dare to tell him. She's scared stiff. Pauline went over to
Hazelmead last week to visit Emma Stacy against his wishes. She met the
young man at a dance. Susan got a letter from Pauline last night making
a clean breast of the matter. They are married and stopping at a hotel
in New York."
"My lord! I should think she _would_ be scared stiff," said Mrs. Bing.
"I think there is a good reason for the stiffness of Susan," said Mrs.
Singleton, the wife of the Congregational minister. "We all know that
Mr. Baker objected to these modern dances and the way that Pauline
dressed. He used to say that it was walking on the edge of a precipice."
There was a breath of silence in which one could hear only a faint
rustle like the stir of some invisible spirit.
Mrs. Bing sighed. "He may be all right," she said in a low, calm voice.
"But the indications are not favorable," Mrs. Singleton remarked.
The gossip ceased abruptly, for the girls were coming out of the Palm
Room.
The next morning, Mrs. Bing went to see Susan Baker to offer sympathy
and a helping hand. Mamie Bing was, after all, a good-hearted woman. By
this time, Mr. Baker had been told. He had kicked a hole in the long
looking-glass in Pauline's bedroom and flung a pot of rouge through the
window and scattered talcum powder all over the place and torn a new
silk gown into rags and burnt it in the kitchen stove and left the house
slamming the door behind him. Susan had gone to bed and he had probably
gone to the club or somewhere. Perhaps he would commit suicide. Of all
this, it is enough to say that for some hours there was abundant
occupation for the tender sympathies of Mrs. J. Patterson Bing. Before
she left, Mr. Baker had returned for luncheon and seemed to be quite
calm and self-possessed when he greeted her in the hall below stairs.
On entering her home, about one o'clock, Mrs. Bing received a letter
from the hand of Martha.
"Phyllis told me to give you this as soon as you returned," said the
girl.
"What does this mean?" Mrs. Bing whispered to herself, as she tore open
the envelope.
Her face grew pale and her hands trembled as she read the letter.
"_Dearest Mamma_," it began. "I am going to Hazelmead for luncheon
with Gordon King. I couldn't ask you because I didn't know where
you were. We have waited an hour. I am sure you wouldn't want me to
miss having a lovely time. I shall be home before five. Don't tell
father! He hates Gordon so.
"_Phyllis._"
"The boy who insulted her! My God!" Mrs. Bing exclaimed in a whisper.
She hurried to the door of the butler's pantry. Indignation was in the
sound of her footsteps.
"Martha!" she called.
Martha came.
"Tell James to bring the big car at once. I'm going to Hazelmead."
"Without luncheon?" the girl asked.
"Just give me a sandwich and I'll eat it in my hand."
"I want you to hurry," she said to James as she entered the glowing
limousine with the sandwich half consumed.
They drove at top speed over the smooth, state road to the mill city. At
half past two, Mrs. Bing alighted at the fashionable Gray Goose Inn
where the best people had their luncheon parties. She found Phyllis and
Gordon in a cozy alcove, sipping cognac and smoking cigarettes, with an
ice tub and a champagne bottle beside them. To tell the whole truth, it
was a timely arrival. Phyllis, with no notion of the peril of it, was
indeed having "a lovely time"--the time of her young life, in fact. For
half an hour, she had been hanging on the edge of the giddy precipice of
elopement. She was within one sip of a decision to let go.
Mrs. Bing was admirably cool. In her manner there was little to indicate
that she had seen the unusual and highly festive accessories. She sat
down beside them and said, "My dear, I was very lonely and thought I
would come and look you up. Is your luncheon finished?"
"Yes," said Phyllis.
"Then let us go and get into the car. We'll drop Mr. King at his home."
When at last they were seated in the limousine, the angry lady lifted
the brakes in a way of speaking.
"I am astonished that you would go to luncheon with this young man who
has insulted you," she said.
Phyllis began to cry.
Turning to young Gordon King, the indignant lady added: "I think you are
a disreputable boy. You must never come to my house again--_never_!"
He made no answer and left the car without a word at the door of the
King residence.
There were miles and miles of weeping on the way home. Phyllis had
recovered her composure but began again when her mother remarked, "I
wonder where you learned to drink champagne and cognac and smoke
cigarettes," as if her own home had not been a perfect academy of
dissipation. The girl sat in a corner, her eyes covered with her
handkerchief and the only words she uttered on the way home were these:
"Don't tell father!"
While this was happening, Mr. Baker confided his troubles to Judge
Crooker in the latter's office. The Judge heard him through and then
delivered another notable opinion, to wit: "There are many subjects on
which the judgment of the average man is of little value, but in the
matter of bringing up a daughter it is apt to be sound. Also there are
many subjects on which the judgment of the average woman may be trusted,
but in the matter of bringing up a daughter it is apt to be unsound. I
say this, after some forty years of observation."
"What is the reason?" Mr. Baker asked.
"Well, a daughter has to be prepared to deal with men," the Judge went
on. "The masculine temperament is involved in all the critical problems
of her life. Naturally the average man is pretty well informed on the
subject of men. You have prospered these late years. You have been so
busy getting rich that you have just used your home to eat and sleep in.
You can't do a home any good by eating and snoring and reading a paper
in it."
"My wife would have her own way there," said Baker.
"That doesn't alter the fact that you have neglected your home. You have
let things slide. You wore yourself out in this matter of money-getting.
You were tired when you got home at night--all in, as they say. The bank
was the main thing with you. I repeat that you let things slide at home
and the longer they slide the faster they slide when they're going down
hill. You can always count on that in a case of sliding. The young have
a taste for velocity and often it comes so unaccountably fast that they
don't know what to do with it, so they're apt to get their necks broken
unless there's some one to put on the brakes."
Mr. Emanuel Baker arose and began to stride up and down the room.
"Upon my word, Judge! I don't know what to do," he exclaimed.
"There's only one thing to do. Go and find the young people and give
them your blessing. If you can discover a spark of manhood in the
fellow, make the most of it. The chances are against that, but let us
hope for the best. Above all, I want you to be gentle with Pauline. You
are more to blame than she is."
"I don't see how I can spare the time, but I'll have to," said Baker.
"Time! Fiddlesticks!" the Judge exclaimed. "What a darn fool money
makes of a man! You have lost your sense of proportion, your
appreciation of values. Bill Pritchard used to talk that way to me. He
has been lying twenty years in his grave. He hadn't a minute to spare
until one day he fell dead--then leisure and lots of leisure it would
seem--and the business has doubled since he quit worrying about it. My
friend, you can not take a cent into Paradise, but the soul of Pauline
is a different kind of property. It might be a help to you there. Give
plenty of time to this job, and good luck to you."
The spirit of the old, dead days spoke in the voice of the Judge--spoke
with a kindly dignity. It had ever been the voice of Justice, tempered
with Mercy--the most feared and respected voice in the upper counties.
His grave, smooth-shaven face, his kindly gray eyes, his noble brow with
its crown of white hair were fitting accessories of the throne of
Justice and Mercy.
"I'll go this afternoon. Thank you, Judge!" said Baker, as he left the
office.
Pauline had announced in her letter that her husband's name was Herbert
Middleton. Mr. Baker sent a telegram to Pauline to apprise her of his
arrival in the morning. It was a fatherly message of love and good-will.
At the hotel in New York, Mr. Baker learned that Mr. and Mrs. Middleton
had checked out the day before. Nobody could tell him where they had
gone. One of the men at the porter's desk told of putting them in a
taxicab with their grips and a steamer trunk soon after luncheon. He
didn't know where they went. Mr. Baker's telegram was there unopened. He
called at every hotel desk in the city, but he could get no trace of
them. He telephoned to Mrs. Baker. She had heard nothing from Pauline.
In despair, he went to the Police Department and told his story to the
Chief.
"It looks as if there was something crooked about it," said the Chief.
"There are many cases like this. Just read that."
The officer picked up a newspaper clipping, which lay on his desk, and
passed it to Mr. Baker. It was from the _New York Evening Post_. The
banker read aloud this startling information:
"'The New York police report that approximately 3600 girls have run
away or disappeared from their homes in the past eleven months, and
the Bureau of Missing Persons estimates that the number who have
disappeared throughout the country approximates 68,000.'"
"It's rather astonishing," the Chief went on. "The women seem to have
gone crazy these days. Maybe it's the new dancing and the movies that
are breaking down the morals of the little suburban towns or maybe it's
the excitement of the war. Anyhow, they keep the city supplied with
runaways and vamps. You are not the first anxious father I have seen
to-day. You can go home. I'll put a man on the case and let you know
what happens."
CHAPTER THREE
WHICH TELLS OF THE COMPLAINING COIN AND THE MAN WHO LOST HIS SELF
There was a certain gold coin in a little bureau drawer in Bingville
which began to form a habit of complaining to its master.
"How cold I am!" it seemed to say to the boy. "I was cold when you put
me in here and I have been cold ever since. Br-r-r! I'm freezing."
Bob Moran took out the little drawer and gave it a shaking as he looked
down at the gold piece.
"Don't get rattled," said the redoubtable Mr. Bloggs, who had a great
contempt for cowards.
It was just after the Shepherd of the Birds had heard of a poor widow
who was the mother of two small children and who had fallen sick of the
influenza with no fuel in her house.
"I am cold, too!" said the Shepherd.
"Why, of course you are," the coin answered. "That's the reason I'm
cold. A coin is never any warmer than the heart of its owner. Why don't
you take me out of here and give me a chance to move around?"
Things that would not say a word to other boys often spoke to the
Shepherd.
"Let him go," said Mr. Bloggs.
Indeed it was the tin soldier, who stood on his little shelf looking out
of the window, who first reminded Bob of the loneliness and discomfort
of the coin. As a rule whenever the conscience of the boy was touched
Mr. Bloggs had something to say.
It was late in February and every one was complaining of the cold. Even
the oldest inhabitants of Bingville could not recall so severe a
winter. Many families were short of fuel. The homes of the working folk
were insufficiently heated. Money in the bank had given them a sense of
security. They could not believe that its magic power would fail to
bring them what they needed. So they had been careless of their
allowance of wood and coal. There were days when they had none and could
get none at the yard. Some of them took boards out of their barn floors
and cut down shade trees and broke up the worst of their furniture to
feed the kitchen stove in those days of famine. Some men with hundreds
of dollars in the bank went out into the country at night and stole
rails off the farmers' fences. The homes of these unfortunate people
were ravaged by influenza and many died.
Prices at the stores mounted higher. Most of the gardens had been lying
idle. The farmers had found it hard to get help. Some of the latter,
indeed, had decided that they could make more by teaming at Millerton
than by toiling in the fields, and with less effort. They left the boys
and the women to do what they could with the crops. Naturally the latter
were small. So the local sources of supply had little to offer and the
demand upon the stores steadily increased. Certain of the merchants had
been, in a way, spoiled by prosperity. They were rather indifferent to
complaints and demands. Many of the storekeepers, irritated, doubtless,
by overwork, had lost their former politeness. The two butchers, having
prospered beyond their hopes, began to feel the need of rest. They cut
down their hours of labor and reduced their stocks and raised their
prices. There were days when their supplies failed to arrive. The
railroad service had been bad enough in times of peace. Now, it was
worse than ever.
Those who had plenty of money found it difficult to get a sufficient
quantity of good food, Bingville being rather cut off from other centers
of life by distance and a poor railroad. Some drove sixty miles to
Hazelmead to do marketing for themselves and their neighbors.
Mr. and Mrs. J. Patterson Bing, however, in their luxurious apartment at
the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, knew little of these conditions
until Mr. Bing came up late in March for a talk with the mill
superintendent. Many of the sick and poor suffered extreme privation.
Father O'Neil and the Reverend Otis Singleton of the Congregational
Church went among the people, ministering to the sick, of whom there
were very many, and giving counsel to men and women who were
unaccustomed to prosperity and ill-qualified wisely to enjoy it. One
day, Father O'Neil saw the Widow Moran coming into town with a great
bundle of fagots on her back.
"This looks a little like the old country," he remarked.
She stopped and swung her fagots to the ground and announced: "It do
that an' may God help us! It's hard times, Father. In spite o' all the
money, it's hard times. It looks like there wasn't enough to go
'round--the ships be takin' so many things to the old country."
"How is my beloved Shepherd?" the good Father asked.
"Mother o' God! The house is that cold, he's been layin' abed for a week
an' Judge Crooker has been away on the circuit."
"Too bad!" said the priest. "I've been so busy with the sick and the
dying and the dead I have hardly had time to think of you."
Against her protest, he picked up the fagots and carried them on his own
back to her kitchen.
He found the Shepherd in a sweater sitting up in bed and knitting socks.
"How is my dear boy?" the good Father asked.
"Very sad," said the Shepherd. "I want to do something to help and my
legs are useless."
"Courage!" Mr. Bloggs seemed to shout from his shelf at the window-side
and just then he assumed a most valiant and determined look as he added:
"Forward! march!"
Father O'Neil did what he could to help in that moment of peril by
saying:
"Cheer up, boy. I'm going out to Dan Mullin's this afternoon and I'll
make him bring you a big load of wood. I'll have you back at your work
to-morrow. The spring will be coming soon and your flock will be back in
the garden."
It was not easy to bring a smile to the face of the little Shepherd
those days. A number of his friends had died and others were sick and he
was helpless. Moreover, his mother had told him of the disappearance of
Pauline and that her parents feared she was in great trouble. This had
worried him, and the more because his mother had declared that the girl
was probably worse than dead. He could not quite understand it and his
happy spirit was clouded. The good Father cheered him with merry jests.
Near the end of their talk the boy said: "There's one thing in this room
that makes me unhappy. It's that gold piece in the drawer. It does
nothing but lie there and shiver and talk to me. Seems as if it
complained of the cold. It says that it wants to move around and get
warm. Every time I hear of some poor person that needs food or fuel, it
calls out to me there in the little drawer and says, 'How cold I am! How
cold I am!' My mother wishes me to keep it for some time of trouble that
may come to us, but I can't. It makes me unhappy. Please take it away
and let it do what it can to keep the poor people warm."
"Well done, boys!" Mr. Bloggs seemed to say with a look of joy as if he
now perceived that the enemy was in full retreat.
"There's no worse company, these days, than a hoarded coin," said the
priest. "I won't let it plague you any more."
Father O'Neil took the coin from the drawer. It fell from his fingers
with a merry laugh as it bounded on the floor and whirled toward the
doorway like one overjoyed and eager to be off.
"God bless you, my boy! May it buy for you the dearest wish of your
heart."
"Ha ha!" laughed the little tin soldier for he knew the dearest wish of
the boy far better than the priest knew it.
Mr. Singleton called soon after Father O'Neil had gone away.
"The top of the morning to you!" he shouted, as he came into Bob's room.
"It's all right top and bottom," Bob answered cheerfully.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" the minister went on. "I'm a
regular Santa Claus this morning. I've got a thousand dollars that Mr.
Bing sent me. It's for any one that needs help."
"We'll be all right as soon as our load of wood comes. It will be here
to-morrow morning," said the Shepherd.
"I'll come and cut and split it for you," the minister proposed. "The
eloquence of the axe is better than that of the tongue these days.
Meanwhile, I'm going to bring you a little jag in my wheelbarrow. How
about beefsteak and bacon and eggs and all that?"
"I guess we've got enough to eat, thank you." This was not quite true,
for Bob, thinking of the sick, whose people could not go to market, was
inclined to hide his own hunger.
"Ho, ho!" exclaimed Mr. Bloggs, for he knew very well that the boy was
hiding his hunger.
"Do you call that a lie?" the Shepherd asked as soon as the minister had
gone.
"A little one! But in my opinion it don't count," said Mr. Bloggs. "You
were thinking of those who need food more than you and that turns it
square around. I call it a golden lie--I do."
The minister had scarcely turned the corner of the street, when he met
Hiram Blenkinsop, who was shivering along without an overcoat, the dog
Christmas at his heels.
Mr. Singleton stopped him.
"Why, man! Haven't you an overcoat?" he asked.
"No, sir! It's hangin' on a peg in a pawn-shop over in Hazelmead. It
ain't doin' the peg any good nor me neither!"
"Well, sir, you come with me," said the minister. "It's about dinner
time, anyway, and I guess you need lining as well as covering."
The drunkard looked into the face of the minister.
"Say it ag'in," he muttered.
"I wouldn't wonder if a little food would make you feel better," Mr.
Singleton added.
"A little, did ye say?" Blenkinsop asked.
"Make it a lot--as much as you can accommodate."
"And do ye mean that ye want me to go an' eat in yer house?"
"Yes, at my table--why not?"
"It wouldn't be respectable. I don't want to be too particular but a
tramp must draw the line somewhere."
"I'll be on my best behavior. Come on," said the minister.
The two men hastened up the street followed by the dejected little
yellow dog, Christmas.
Mrs. Singleton and her daughter were out with a committee of the
Children's Helpers and the minister was dining alone that day and, as
usual, at one o'clock, that being the hour for dinner in the village of
Bingville.
"Tell me about yourself," said the minister as they sat down at the
table.
"Myself--did you say?" Hiram Blenkinsop asked as one of his feet crept
under his chair to conceal its disreputable appearance, while his dog
had partly hidden himself under a serving table where he seemed to be
shivering with apprehension as he peered out, with raised hackles, at
the stag's head over the mantel.
"Yes."
"I ain't got any _Self_, sir; it's all gone," said Blenkinsop, as he
took a swallow of water.
"A man without any Self is a curious creature," the minister remarked.
"I'm as empty as a woodpecker's hole in the winter time. The bird has
flown. I belong to this 'ere dog. He's a poor dog. I'm all he's got. If
he had to pay a license on me I'd have to be killed. He's kind to me.
He's the only friend I've got."
Hiram Blenkinsop riveted his attention upon an old warming-pan that hung
by the fireplace. He hardly looked at the face of the minister.
"How did you come to lose your Self?" the latter asked.
"Married a bad woman and took to drink. A man's Self can stand cold an'
hunger an' shipwreck an' loss o' friends an' money an' any quantity o'
bad luck, take it as it comes, but a bad woman breaks the works in him
an' stops his clock dead. Leastways, it done that to me!"
"She is like an arrow in his liver," the minister quoted. "Mr.
Blenkinsop, where do you stay nights?"
"I've a shake-down in the little loft over the ol' blacksmith shop on
Water Street. There are cracks in the gable, an' the snow an' the wind
blows in, an' the place is dark an' smells o' coal gas an' horses' feet,
but Christmas an' I snug up together an' manage to live through the
winter. In hot weather, we sleep under a tree in the ol' graveyard an'
study astronomy. Sometimes, I wish I was there for good."
"Wouldn't you like a bed in a comfortable house?"
"No. I couldn't take the dog there an' I'd have to git up like other
folks."
"Would you think that a hardship?"
"Well, ye see, sir, if ye're layin' down ye ain't hungry. Then, too, I
likes to dilly-dally in bed."
"What may that mean?" the minister asked.
"I likes to lay an' think an' build air castles."
"What kind of castles?"
"Well, sir, I'm thinkin' often o' a time when I'll have a grand suit o'
clothes, an' a shiny silk tile on my head, an' a roll o' bills in my
pocket, big enough to choke a dog, an' I'll be goin' back to the town
where I was brought up an' I'll hire a fine team an' take my ol' mother
out for a ride. An' when we pass by, people will be sayin': 'That's
Hiram Blenkinsop! Don't you remember him? Born on the top floor o' the
ol' sash mill on the island. He's a multi-millionaire an' a great man.
He gives a thousand to the poor every day. Sure, he does!'"
"Blenkinsop, I'd like to help you to recover your lost Self and be a
useful and respected citizen of this town," said Mr. Singleton. "You can
do it if you will and I can tell you how."
Tears began to stream down the cheeks of the unfortunate man, who now
covered his eyes with a big, rough hand.
"If you will make an honest effort, I'll stand by you. I'll be your
friend through thick and thin," the minister added. "There's something
good in you or you wouldn't be having a dream like that."
"Nobody has ever talked to me this way," poor Blenkinsop sobbed. "Nobody
but you has ever treated me as if I was human."
"I know--I know. It's a hard old world, but at last you've found a man
who is willing to be a brother to you if you really want one."
The poor man rose from the table and went to the minister's side and
held out his hand.
"I do want a brother, sir, an' I'll do anything at all," he said in a
broken voice.
"Then come with me," the minister commanded. "First, I'm going to
improve the outside of you."
When they were ready to leave the house, Blenkinsop and his dog had had
a bath and the former was shaved and in clean and respectable garments
from top to toe.
"You look like a new man," said Mr. Singleton.
"Seems like, I felt more like a proper human bein'," Blenkinsop
answered.
Christmas was scampering up and down the hall as if he felt like a new
dog. Suddenly he discovered the stag's head again and slunk into a dark
corner growling.
"A bath is a good sort of baptism," the minister remarked. "Here's an
overcoat that I haven't worn for a year. It's fairly warm, too. Now if
your Old Self should happen to come in sight of you, maybe he'd move
back into his home. I remember once that we had a canary bird that got
away. We hung his cage in one of the trees out in the yard with some
food in it. By and by, we found him singing on the perch in his little
home. Now, if we put some good food in the cage, maybe your bird will
come back. Our work has only just begun."
They went out of the door and crossed the street and entered the big
stone Congregational Church and sat down together in a pew. A soft light
came through the great jeweled windows above the altar, and in the
clearstory, and over the organ loft. They were the gift of Mr. Bing. It
was a quiet, restful, beautiful place.
"I used to stand in the pulpit there and look down upon a crowd of
handsomely dressed people," said Mr. Singleton in a low voice. "'There
is something wrong about this,' I thought. 'There's too much
respectability here. There are no flannel shirts and gingham dresses in
the place. I can not see half a dozen poor people. I wish there was some
ragged clothing down there in the pews. There isn't an out-and-out
sinner in the crowd. Have we set up a little private god of our own that
cares only for the rich and respectable?' I asked myself. 'This is the
place for Hiram Blenkinsop and old Bill Lang and poor Lizzie Quesnelle,
if they only knew it. Those are the kind of people that Jesus cared most
about.' They're beginning to come to us now and we are glad of it. I
want to see you here every Sunday after this. I want you to think of
this place as your home. If you really wish to be my brother, come with
me."
Blenkinsop trembled with strange excitement as he went with Mr.
Singleton down the broad aisle, the dog Christmas following meekly. Man
and minister knelt before the altar. Christmas sat down by his master's
side, in a prayerful attitude, as if he, too, were seeking help and
forgiveness.
"I feel better inside an' outside," said Blenkinsop as they were leaving
the church.
"When you are tempted, there are three words which may be useful to
you. They are these, 'God help me,'" the minister told him. "They are
quickly said and I have often found them a source of strength in time of
trouble. I am going to find work for you and there's a room over my
garage with a stove in it which will make a very snug little home for
you and Christmas."
That evening, as the dog and his master were sitting comfortably by the
stove in their new home, there came a rap at the door. In a moment,
Judge Crooker entered the room.
"Mr. Blenkinsop," said the Judge as he held out his hand, "I have heard
of your new plans and I want you to know that I am very glad. Every one
will be glad."
When the Judge had gone, Blenkinsop put his hand on the dog's head and
asked with a little laugh: "Did ye hear what he said, Christmas? He
called me _Mister_. Never done that before, no sir!"
Mr. Blenkinsop sat with his head upon his hand listening to the wind
that whistled mournfully in the chimney. Suddenly he shouted: "Come in!"
The door opened and there on the threshold stood his Old Self.
It was not at all the kind of a Self one would have expected to see. It
was, indeed, a very youthful and handsome Self--the figure of a
clear-eyed, gentle-faced boy of about sixteen with curly, dark hair
above his brows.
Mr. Blenkinsop covered his face and groaned. Then he held out his hands
with an imploring gesture.
"I know you," he whispered. "Please come in."
"Not yet," the young man answered, and his voice was like the wind in
the chimney. "But I have come to tell you that I, too, am glad."
Then he vanished.
Mr. Blenkinsop arose from his chair and rubbed his eyes.
"Christmas, ol' boy, I've been asleep," he muttered. "I guess it's time
we turned in!"
CHAPTER FOUR
IN WHICH MR. ISRAEL SNEED AND OTHER WORKING MEN RECEIVE A LESSON IN TRUE
DEMOCRACY
Next morning, Mr. Blenkinsop went to cut wood for the Widow Moran. The
good woman was amazed by his highly respectable appearance.
"God help us! Ye look like a lawyer," she said.
"I'm a new man! Cut out the blacksmith shop an' the booze an' the
bummers."
"May the good God love an' help ye! I heard about it."
"Ye did?"
"Sure I did. It's all over the town. Good news has a lively foot, man.
The Shepherd clapped his hands when I told him. Ye got to go straight,
my laddie buck. All eyes are on ye now. Come up an' see the boy. It's
his birthday!"
Mr. Blenkinsop was deeply moved by the greeting of the little Shepherd,
who kissed his cheek and said that he had often prayed for him.
"If you ever get lonely, come and sit with me and we'll have a talk and
a game of dominoes," said the boy.
Mr. Blenkinsop got strength out of the wonderful spirit of Bob Moran and
as he swung his axe that day, he was happier than he had been in many
years. Men and women who passed in the street said, "How do you do, Mr.
Blenkinsop? I'm glad to see you."
Even the dog Christmas watched his master with a look of pride and
approval. Now and then, he barked gleefully and scampered up and down
the sidewalk.
The Shepherd was fourteen years old. On his birthday, from morning until
night, people came to his room bringing little gifts to remind him of
their affection. No one in the village of Bingville was so much beloved.
Judge Crooker came in the evening with ice-cream and a frosted cake.
While he was there, a committee of citizens sought him out to confer
with him regarding conditions in Bingville.
"There's more money than ever in the place, but there never was so much
misery," said the chairman of the committee.
"We have learned that money is not the thing that makes happiness,"
Judge Crooker began. "With every one busy at high wages, and the banks
overflowing with deposits, we felt safe. We ceased to produce the
necessaries of life in a sufficient quantity. We forgot that the all
important things are food, fuel, clothes and comfortable housing--not
money. Some of us went money mad. With a feeling of opulence we refused
to work at all, save when we felt like it. We bought diamond rings and
sat by the fire looking at them. The roofs began to leak and our
plumbing went wrong. People going to buy meat found the shops closed.
Roofs that might have been saved by timely repairs will have to be
largely replaced. Plumbing systems have been ruined by neglect. With all
its money, the town was never so poverty-stricken, the people never so
wretched."
Mr. Sneed, who was a member of the committee, slyly turned the ring on
his finger so that the diamond was concealed. He cleared his throat and
remarked, "We mechanics had more than we could do on work already
contracted."
"Yes, you worked eight hours a day and refused to work any longer. You
were legally within your rights, but your position was ungrateful and
even heartless and immoral. Suppose there were a baby coming at your
house and you should call for the doctor and he should say, 'I'm sorry,
but I have done my eight hours' work to-day and I can't help you.' Then
suppose you should offer him a double fee and he should say, 'No,
thanks, I'm tired. I've got forty thousand dollars in the bank and I
don't have to work when I don't want to.'
"Or suppose I were trying a case for you and, when my eight hours' work
had expired, I should walk out of the court and leave your case to take
care of itself. What do you suppose would become of it? Yet that is
exactly what you did to my pipes. You left them to take care of
themselves. You men, who use your hands, make a great mistake in
thinking that you are the workers of the country and that the rest of us
are your natural enemies. In America, we are all workers! The idle man
is a mere parasite and not at heart an American. Generally, I work
fifteen hours a day.
"This little lad has been knitting night and day for the soldiers
without hope of reward and has spent his savings for yarn. There isn't
a doctor in Bingville who isn't working eighteen hours a day. I met a
minister this afternoon who hasn't had ten hours of sleep in a
week--he's been so busy with the sick, and the dying and the dead. He is
a nurse, a friend, a comforter to any one who needs him. No charge for
overtime. My God! Are we all going money mad? Are you any better than he
is, or I am, or than these doctors are who have been killing themselves
with overwork? Do you dare to tell me that prosperity is any excuse for
idleness in this land of ours, if one's help is needed?"
Judge Crooker's voice had been calm, his manner dignified. But the last
sentences had been spoken with a quiet sternness and with his long, bony
forefinger pointing straight at Mr. Sneed. The other members of the
committee clapped their hands in hearty approval. Mr. Sneed smiled and
brushed his trousers.
"I guess you're right," he said. "We're all off our balance a little,
but what is to be done now?"
"We must quit our plumbing and carpentering and lawyering and banking
and some of us must quit merchandising and sitting in the chimney corner
and grab our saws and axes and go out into the woods and make some fuel
and get it hauled into town," said Judge Crooker. "I'll be one of a
party to go to-morrow with my axe. I haven't forgotten how to chop."
The committee thought this a good suggestion. They all rose and started
on a search for volunteers, except Mr. Sneed. He tarried saying to the
Judge that he wished to consult him on a private matter. It was, indeed,
just then, a matter which could not have been more public although, so
far, the news of it had traveled in whispers. The Judge had learned the
facts since his return.
"I hope your plumbing hasn't gone wrong," he remarked with a smile.
"No, it's worse than that," said Mr. Sneed ruefully.
They bade the little Shepherd good night and went down-stairs where the
widow was still at work with her washing, although it was nine o'clock.
"Faithful woman!" the Judge exclaimed as they went out on the street.
"What would the world do without people like that? No extra charge for
overtime either."
Then, as they walked along, he cunningly paved the way for what he knew
was coming.
"Did you notice the face of that boy?" he asked.
"Yes, it's a wonderful face," said Israel Sneed.
"It's a God's blessing to see a face like that," the Judge went on.
"Only the pure in heart can have it. The old spirit of youth looks out
of his eyes--the spirit of my own youth. When I was fourteen, I think
that my heart was as pure as his. So were the hearts of most of the boys
I knew."
"It isn't so now," said Mr. Sneed.
"I fear it isn't," the Judge answered. "There's a new look in the faces
of the young. Every variety of evil is spread before them on the stage
of our little theater. They see it while their characters are in the
making, while their minds are like white wax. Everything that touches
them leaves a mark or a smirch. It addresses them in the one language
they all understand, and for which no dictionary is needed--pictures.
The flower of youth fades fast enough, God knows, without the withering
knowledge of evil. They say it's good for the boys and girls to know all
about life. We shall see!"
Mr. Sneed sat down with Judge Crooker in the handsome library of the
latter and opened his heart. His son Richard, a boy of fifteen, and
three other lads of the village, had been committing small burglaries
and storing their booty in a cave in a piece of woods on the river bank
near the village. A constable had secured a confession and recovered a
part of the booty. Enough had been found to warrant a charge of grand
larceny and Elisha Potts, whose store had been entered, was clamoring
for the arrest of the boys.
"It reminds me of that picture of the Robbers' Cave that was on the
billboard of our school of crime a few weeks ago," said the Judge. "I'm
tired enough to lie down, but I'll go and see Elisha Potts. If he's
abed, he'll have to get up, that's all. There's no telling what Potts
has done or may do. Your plumbing is in bad shape, Mr. Sneed. The public
sewer is backing into your cellar and in a case of that kind the less
delay the better."
He went into the hall and put on his coat and gloves and took his cane
out of the rack. He was sixty-five years of age that winter. It was a
bitter night when even younger men found it a trial to leave the comfort
of the fireside. Sneed followed in silence. Indeed, his tongue was
shame-bound. For a moment, he knew not what to say.
"I--I'm much o-obliged to you," he stammered as they went out into the
cold wind. "I-I don't care what it costs, either."
The Judge stopped and turned toward him.
"Look here," he said. "Money does not enter into this proceeding or any
motive but the will to help a neighbor. In such a matter overtime
doesn't count."
They walked in silence to the corner. There Sneed pressed the Judge's
hand and tried to say something, but his voice failed him.
"Have the boys at my office at ten o'clock to-morrow morning. I want to
talk to them," said the kindly old Judge as he strode away in the
darkness.
CHAPTER FIVE
IN WHICH J. PATTERSON BING BUYS A NECKLACE OF PEARLS
Meanwhile, the Bings had been having a busy winter in New York. J.
Patterson Bing had been elected to the board of a large bank in Wall
Street. His fortune had more than doubled in the last two years and he
was now a considerable factor in finance.
Mrs. Bing had been studying current events and French and the English
accent and other social graces every morning, with the best tutors, as
she reclined comfortably in her bedchamber while Phyllis went to sundry
shops. Mrs. Crooker had once said, "Mamie Bing has a passion for
self-improvement." It was mainly if not quite true.
Phyllis had been "beating the bush" with her mother at teas and dinners
and dances and theaters and country house parties in and about the city.
The speedometer on the limousine had doubled its mileage since they came
to town. They were, it would seem, a tireless pair of hunters. Phyllis's
portrait had appeared in the Sunday papers. It showed a face and form of
unusual beauty. The supple grace and classic outlines of the latter were
touchingly displayed at the dances in many a handsome ballroom. At last,
they had found a promising and most eligible candidate in Roger
Delane--a handsome stalwart youth, a year out of college. His father was
a well-known and highly successful merchant of an old family which, for
generations, had "belonged"--that is to say, it had been a part of the
aristocracy of Fifth Avenue.
There could be no doubt of this great good luck of theirs--better,
indeed, than Mrs. Bing had dared to hope for--the young man having
seriously confided his intentions to J. Patterson. But there was one
shadow on the glowing prospect; Phyllis had suddenly taken a bad turn.
She moped, as her mother put it. She was listless and unhappy. She had
lost her interest in the chase, so to speak. She had little heart for
teas and dances and dinner parties. One day, her mother returned from a
luncheon and found her weeping. Mrs. Bing went at once to the telephone
and called for the stomach specialist. He came and made a brief
examination and said that it was all due to rich food and late hours. He
left some medicine, advised a day or two of rest in bed, charged a
hundred dollars and went away. They tried the remedies, but Phyllis
showed no improvement. The young man sent American Beauty roses and a
graceful note of regret to her room.
"You ought to be very happy," said her mother. "He is a dear."
"I know it," Phyllis answered. "He's just the most adorable creature I
ever saw in my life."
"For goodness' sake! What is the matter of you? Why don't you brace up?"
Mrs. Bing asked with a note of impatience in her tone. "You act like a
dead fish."
Phyllis, who had been lying on the couch, rose to a sitting posture and
flung one of the cushions at her mother, and rather swiftly.
"How can I brace up?" she asked with indignation in her eyes. "Don't
_you_ dare to scold me."
There was a breath of silence in which the two looked into each other's
eyes. Many thoughts came flashing into the mind of Mrs. Bing. Why had
the girl spoken the word "you" so bitterly? Little echoes of old history
began to fill the silence. She arose and picked up the cushion and threw
it on the sofa.
"What a temper!" she exclaimed. "Young lady, you don't seem to know
that these days are very precious for you. They will not come again."
Then, in the old fashion of women who have suddenly come out of a moment
of affectionate anger, they fell to weeping in each other's arms. The
storm was over when they heard the feet of J. Patterson Bing in the
hall. Phyllis fled into the bathroom.
"Hello!" said Mr. Bing as he entered the door. "I've found out what's
the matter with Phyllis. It's nerves. I met the great specialist, John
Hamilton Gibbs, at luncheon to-day. I described the symptoms. He says
it's undoubtedly nerves. He has any number of cases just like this
one--rest, fresh air and a careful diet are all that's needed. He says
that if he can have her for two weeks, he'll guarantee a cure. I've
agreed to have you take her to his sanitarium in the Catskills
to-morrow. He has saddle horses, sleeping balconies, toboggan slides,
snow-shoe and skating parties and all that."
"I think it will be great," said Phyllis, who suddenly emerged from her
hiding-place and embraced her father. "I'd love it! I'm sick of this old
town. I'm sure it's just what I need."
"I couldn't go to-morrow," said Mrs. Bing. "I simply must go to Mrs.
Delane's luncheon."
"Then I'll ask Harriet to go up with her," said J. Patterson.
Harriet, who lived in a flat on the upper west side, was Mr. Bing's
sister.
Phyllis went to bed dinnerless with a headache. Mr. and Mrs. Bing sat
for a long time over their coffee and cigarettes.
"It's something too dreadful that Phyllis should be getting sick just at
the wrong time," said the madame. "She has always been well. I can't
understand it."
"She's had a rather strenuous time here," said J. Patterson.
"But she seemed to enjoy it until--until the right man came along. The
very man I hoped would like her! Then, suddenly, she throws up her hands
and keels over. It's too devilish for words."
Mr. Bing laughed at his wife's exasperation.
"To me, it's no laughing matter," said she with a serious face.
"Perhaps she doesn't like the boy," J. Patterson remarked.
Mrs. Bing leaned toward him and whispered: "She adores him!" She held
her attitude and looked searchingly into her husband's face.
"Well, you can't say I did it," he answered. "The modern girl is a
rather delicate piece of machinery. I think she'll be all right in a
week or two. Come, it's time we went to the theater if we're going."
Nothing more was said of the matter. Next morning immediately after
breakfast, "Aunt Harriet" set out with Phyllis in the big limousine for
Doctor Gibbs' sanitarium.
Phyllis found the remedy she needed in the ceaseless round of outdoor
frolic. Her spirit washed in the glowing air found refreshment in the
sleep that follows weariness and good digestion. Her health improved so
visibly that her stay was far prolonged. It was the first week of May
when Mrs. Bing drove up to get her. The girl was in perfect condition,
it would seem. No rustic maid, in all the mountain valleys, had lighter
feet or clearer eyes or a more honest, ruddy tan in her face due to the
touch of the clean wind. She had grown as lithe and strong as a young
panther.
They were going back to Bingville next day. Martha and Susan had been
getting the house ready. Mrs. Bing had been preparing what she fondly
hoped would be "a lovely surprise" for Phyllis. Roger Delane was coming
up to spend a quiet week with the Bings--a week of opportunity for the
young people with saddle horses and a new steam launch and a
Peterborough canoe and all pleasant accessories. Then, on the twentieth,
which was the birthday of Phyllis, there was to be a dinner and a house
party and possibly an announcement and a pretty wagging of tongues.
Indeed, J. Patterson had already bought the wedding gift, a necklace of
pearls, and paid a hundred thousand dollars for it and put it away in
his safe. The necklace had pleased him. He had seen many jewels, but
nothing so satisfying--nothing that so well expressed his affection for
his daughter. He might never see its like again. So he bought it against
the happy day which he hoped was near. He had shown it to his wife and
charged her to make no mention of it until "the time was ripe," in his
way of speaking.
Mrs. Bing had promised on her word and honor to respect the confidence
of her husband, with all righteous intention, but on the very day of
their arrival in Bingville, Sophronia (Mrs. Pendleton) Ames called.
Sophronia was the oldest and dearest friend that Mamie Bing had in the
village. The latter enjoyed her life in New York, but she felt always a
thrill at coming back to her big garden and the green trees and the
ample spaces of Bingville, and to the ready, sympathetic confidence of
Sophronia Ames. She told Sophronia of brilliant scenes in the changing
spectacle of metropolitan life, of the wonderful young man and the
untimely affliction of Phyllis, now happily past. Then, in a whisper,
while Sophronia held up her right hand as a pledge of secrecy, she told
of the necklace of which the lucky girl had no knowledge. Now Mrs. Ames
was one of the best of women. People were wont to speak of her, and
rightly, as "the salt of the earth." She would do anything possible for
a friend. But Mamie Bing had asked too much. Moreover, always it had
been understood between them that these half playful oaths were not to
be taken too seriously. Of course, "the fish had to be fed," as Judge
Crooker had once put it. By "the fish," he meant that curious under-life
of the village--the voracious, silent, merciless, cold-blooded thing
which fed on the sins and follies of men and women and which rarely came
to the surface to bother any one.
"The fish are very wise," Judge Crooker used to say. "They know the
truth about every one and it's well that they do. After all, they
perform an important office. There's many a man and woman who think
they've been fooling the fish but they've only fooled themselves."
And within a day or two, the secrets of the Bing family were swimming
up and down the stream of the under-life of Bingville.
Mr. Bing had found a situation in the plant which was new to him. The
men were discontented. Their wages were "sky high," to quote a phrase of
one of the foremen. Still, they were not satisfied. Reports of the
fabulous earnings of the mill had spread among them. They had begun to
think that they were not getting a fair division of the proceeds of
their labor. At a meeting of the help, a radical speaker had declared
that one of the Bing women wore a noose of pearls on her neck worth half
a million dollars. The men wanted more pay and less work. A committee of
their leaders had called at Mr. Bing's office with a demand soon after
his arrival. Mr. Bing had said "no" with a bang of his fist on the
table. A worker's meeting was to be held a week later to act upon the
report of the committee.
Meanwhile, another cause of worry had come or rather returned to him.
Again, Phyllis had begun to show symptoms of the old trouble. Mrs. Bing,
arriving at dusk from a market trip to Hazelmead with Sophronia Ames,
had found Phyllis lying asleep among the cushions on the great couch in
the latter's bedroom. She entered the room softly and leaned over the
girl and looked into her face, now turned toward the open window and
lighted by the fading glow in the western sky and relaxed by sleep. It
was a sad face! There were lines and shadows in it which the anxious
mother had not seen before and--had she been crying? Very softly, the
woman sat down at the girl's side. Darkness fell. Black, menacing
shadows filled the corners of the room. The spirit of the girl betrayed
its trouble in a sorrowful groan as she slept. Roger Delane was coming
next day. There was every reason why Phyllis should be happy. Silently,
Mrs. Bing left the room. She met Martha in the hall.
"I shall want no dinner and Mr. Bing is dining in Hazelmead," she
whispered. "Miss Phyllis is asleep. Don't disturb her."
Then she sat down in the darkness of her own bedroom alone.
CHAPTER SIX
IN WHICH HIRAM BLENKINSOP HAS A NUMBER OF ADVENTURES
The Shepherd of the Birds had caught the plague of influenza in March
and nearly lost his life with it. Judge Crooker and Mr. and Mrs.
Singleton and their daughter and Father O'Neil and Mrs. Ames and Hiram
Blenkinsop had taken turns in the nursing of the boy. He had come out of
it with impaired vitality.
The rubber tree used to speak to him in those days of his depression and
say, "It will be summer soon."
"Oh dear! But the days pass so slowly," Bob would answer with a sigh.
Then the round nickel clock would say cheerfully, "I hurry them along as
fast as ever I can."
"Seems as if old Time was losing the use of his legs," said the
Shepherd. "I wouldn't wonder if some one had run over him with an
automobile."
"Everybody is trying to kill Time these days," ticked the clock with a
merry chuckle.
Bob looked at the clock and laughed. "You've got some sense," he
declared.
"Nonsense!" the clock answered.
"You can talk pretty well," said the boy.
"I can run too. If I couldn't, nobody would look at me."
"The more I look at you the more I think of Pauline. It's a long time
since she went away," said the Shepherd. "We must all pray for her."
"Not I," said the little pine bureau. "Do you see that long scratch on
my side? She did it with a hat pin when I belonged to her mother, and
she used to keep her dolls in my lower drawer."
Mr. Bloggs assumed a look of great alertness as if lie spied the enemy.
"What's the use of worrying?" he quoted.
"You'd better lie down and cover yourself up or you'll never live to see
her or the summer either," the clock warned the Shepherd.
Then Bob would lie down quickly and draw the clothes over his shoulders
and sing of the Good King Wenceslas and The First Noël which Miss Betsy
Singleton had taught him at Christmas time.
All this is important only as showing how a poor lad, of a lively
imagination, was wont to spend his lonely hours. He needed company and
knew how to find it.
Christmas Day, Judge Crooker had presented him with a beautiful copy of
Raphael's _Madonna and Child_.
"It's the greatest theme and the greatest picture this poor world of
ours can boast of," said the Judge. "I want you to study the look in
that mother's face, not that it is unusual. I have seen the like of it
a hundred times. Almost every young mother with a child in her arms has
that look or ought to have it--the most beautiful and mysterious thing
in the world. The light of that old star which led the wise men is in
it, I sometimes think. Study it and you may hear voices in the sky as
did the shepherds of old."
So the boy acquired the companionship of those divine faces that looked
down at him from the wall near his bed and had something to say to him
every day.
Also, another friend--a very humble one--had begun to share his
confidence. He was the little yellow dog, Christmas. He had come with
his master, one evening in March, to spend a night with the sick
Shepherd. Christmas had lain on the foot of the bed and felt the loving
caress of the boy. He never forgot it. The heart of the world, that
loves above all things the touch of a kindly hand, was in this little
creature. Often, when Hiram was walking out in the bitter winds,
Christmas would edge away when his master's back was turned. In a jiffy,
he was out of sight and making with all haste for the door of the Widow
Moran. There, he never failed to receive some token of the generous
woman's understanding of the great need of dogs--a bone or a doughnut or
a slice of bread soaked in meat gravy--and a warm welcome from the boy
above stairs. The boy always had time to pet him and play with him. He
was never fooling the days away with an axe and a saw in the cold wind.
Christmas admired his master's ability to pick up logs of wood and heave
them about and to make a great noise with an axe but, in cold weather,
all that was a bore to him. When he had been missing, Hiram Blenkinsop
found him, always, at the day's end lying comfortably on Bob Moran's
bed.
May had returned with its warm sunlight. The robins had come back. The
blue martins had taken possession of the bird house. The grass had
turned green on the garden borders and was now sprinkled with the golden
glow of dandelions. The leaves were coming but Pat Crowley was no longer
at work in the garden. He had fallen before the pestilence. Old Bill
Rutherford was working there. The Shepherd was at the open window every
day, talking with him and watching and feeding the birds.
Now, with the spring, a new feeling had come to Mr. Hiram Blenkinsop. He
had been sober for months. His Old Self had come back and had imparted
his youthful strength to the man Hiram. He had money in the bank. He was
decently dressed. People had begun to respect him. Every day, Hiram was
being nudged and worried by a new thought. It persisted in telling him
that respectability was like the Fourth of July--a very dull thing
unless it was celebrated. He had been greatly pleased with his own
growing respectability. He felt as if he wanted to take a look at it,
from a distance, as it were. That money in the bank was also nudging and
calling him. It seemed to be lonely and longing for companionship.
"Come, Hiram Blenkinsop," it used to say. "Let's go off together and get
a silk hat and a gold headed cane an' make 'em set up an' take notice.
Suppose you should die sudden an' leave me without an owner?"
The warmth and joy of the springtime had turned his fancy to the old
dream. So one day, he converted his bank balance into "a roll big enough
to choke a dog," and took the early morning train to Hazelmead, having
left Christmas at the Widow Moran's.
In the mill city he bought a high silk hat and a gold headed cane and a
new suit of clothes and a boiled shirt and a high collar and a red
necktie. It didn't matter to him that the fashion and fit of his
garments were not quite in keeping with the silk hat and gold headed
cane. There were three other items in the old dream of splendor--the
mother, the prancing team, and the envious remarks of the onlookers. His
mother was gone. Also there were no prancing horses in Hazelmead, but he
could hire an automobile.
In the course of his celebration he asked a lady, whom he met in the
street, if she would kindly be his mother for a day. He meant well but
the lady, being younger than Hiram and not accustomed to such
familiarity from strangers, did not feel complimented by the question.
They fled from each other. Soon, Hiram bought a big custard pie in a
bake-shop and had it cut into smallish pieces and, having purchased pie
and plate, went out upon the street with it. He ate what he wanted of
the pie and generously offered the rest of it to sundry people who
passed him. It was not impertinence in Hiram; it was pure generosity--a
desire to share his riches, flavored, in some degree, by a feeling of
vanity. It happened that Mr. J. Patterson Bing came along and received a
tender of pie from Mr. Blenkinsop.
"No!" said Mr. Bing, with that old hammer whack in his voice which
aroused bitter memories in the mind of Hiram.
That tone was a great piece of imprudence. There was a menacing gesture
and a rapid succession of footsteps on the pavement. Mr. Bing's retreat
was not, however, quite swift enough to save him. The pie landed on his
shoulder. In a moment, Hiram was arrested and marching toward the lockup
while Mr. Bing went to the nearest drug store to be cleaned and scoured.
A few days later Hiram Blenkinsop arrived in Bingville. Mr. Singleton
met him on the street and saw to his deep regret that Hiram had been
drinking.
"I've made up my mind that religion is good for some folks, but it won't
do for me," said the latter.
"Why not?" the minister asked.
"I can't afford it."
"Have you found religion a luxury?" Mr. Singleton asked.
"It's grand while it lasts, but it's like p'ison gettin' over it," said
Hiram. "I feel kind o' ruined."
"You look it," said the minister, with a glance at Hiram's silk hat and
soiled clothing. "A long spell of sobriety is hard on a man if he quits
it sudden. You've had your day of trial, my friend. We all have to be
tried soon or late. People begin to say, 'At last he's come around all
right. He's a good fellow.' And the Lord says: 'Perhaps he's worthy of
better things. I'll try him and see.'
"That's His way of pushing people along, Hiram. He doesn't want them to
stand still. You've had your trial and failed, but you mustn't give up.
When your fun turns into sorrow, as it will, come back to me and we'll
try again."
Hiram sat dozing in a corner of the bar-room of the Eagle Hotel that
day. He had been ashamed to go to his comfortable room over the garage.
He did not feel entitled to the hospitality of Mr. Singleton. Somehow,
he couldn't bear the thought of going there. His new clothes and silk
hat were in a state which excited the derision of small boys and audible
comment from all observers while he had been making his way down the
street. His money was about gone. The barkeeper had refused to sell him
any more drink. In the early dusk he went out-of-doors. It was almost as
warm as midsummer and the sky was clear. He called at the door of the
Widow Moran for his dog. In a moment, Christmas came down from the
Shepherd's room and greeted his master with fond affection. The two went
away together. They walked up a deserted street and around to the old
graveyard. When it was quite dark, they groped their way through the
weedy, briered aisles, between moss-covered toppling stones, to their
old nook under the ash tree. There Hiram made a bed of boughs, picked
from the evergreens that grow in the graveyard, and lay down upon it
under his overcoat with the dog Christmas. He found it impossible to
sleep, however. When he closed his eyes a new thought began nudging him.
It seemed to be saying, "What are you going to do now, Mr. Hiram
Blenkinsop?"
He was pleased that it seemed to say Mr. Hiram Blenkinsop. He lay for a
long time looking up at the starry moonlit sky, and at the marble,
weather-spotted angel on the monument to the Reverend Thaddeus Sneed,
who had been lying there, among the rude forefathers of the village,
since 1806. Suddenly the angel began to move. Mr. Blenkinsop observed
with alarm that it had discovered him and that its right forefinger was
no longer directed toward the sky but was pointing at his face. The
angel had assumed the look and voice of his Old Self and was saying:
"I don't see why angels are always cut in marble an' set up in
graveyards with nothing to do but point at the sky. It's a cold an'
lonesome business. Why don't you give me a job?"
His Old Self vanished and, as it did so, the spotted angel fell to
coughing and sneezing. It coughed and sneezed so loudly that the sound
went echoing in the distant sky and so violently that it reeled and
seemed to be in danger of falling. Mr. Blenkinsop awoke with a rude jump
so that the dog Christmas barked in alarm. It was nothing but the
midnight train from the south pulling out of the station which was near
the old graveyard. The spotted angel stood firmly in its place and was
pointing at the sky as usual.
It was probably an hour or so later, when Mr. Blenkinsop was awakened by
the barking of the dog Christmas. He quieted the dog and listened. He
heard a sound like that of a baby crying. It awoke tender memories in
the mind of Hiram Blenkinsop. One very sweet recollection was about all
that the barren, bitter years of his young manhood had given him worth
having. It was the recollection of a little child which had come to his
home in the first year of his married life.
"She lived eighteen months and three days and four hours," he used to
say, in speaking of her, with a tender note in his voice.
Almost twenty years, she had been lying in the old graveyard near the
ash tree. Since then the voice of a child crying always halted his
steps. It is probable that, in her short life, the neglected, pathetic
child Pearl--that having been her name--had protested much against a
plentiful lack of comfort and sympathy.
So Mr. Blenkinsop's agitation at the sound of a baby crying somewhere
near him, in the darkness of the old graveyard, was quite natural and
will be readily understood. He rose on his elbow and listened. Again he
heard that small, appealing voice.
"By thunder! Christmas," he whispered. "If that ain't like Pearl when
she was a little, teeny, weeny thing no bigger'n a pint o' beer! Say it
is, sir, sure as sin!"
He scrambled to his feet, suddenly, for now, also, he could distinctly
hear the voice of a woman crying. He groped his way in the direction
from which the sound came and soon discovered the woman. She was
kneeling on a grave with a child in her arms. Her grief touched the
heart of the man.
"Who be you?" he asked.
"I'm cold, and my baby is sick, and I have no friends," she sobbed.
"Yes, ye have!" said Hiram Blenkinsop. "I don't care who ye be. I'm yer
friend and don't ye fergit it."
There was a reassuring note in the voice of Hiram Blenkinsop. Its
gentleness had in it a quiver of sympathy. She felt it and gave to
him--an unknown, invisible man, with just a quiver of sympathy in his
voice--her confidence.
If ever any one was in need of sympathy, she was at that moment. She
felt that she must speak out to some one. So keenly she felt the impulse
that she had been speaking to the stars and the cold gravestones. Here
at last was a human being with a quiver of sympathy in his voice.
"I thought I would come home, but when I got here I was afraid," the
girl moaned. "I wish I could die."
"No, ye don't neither!" said Hiram Blenkinsop. "Sometimes, I've thought
that I hadn't no friends an' wanted to die, but I was just foolin'
myself. To be sure, I ain't had no baby on my hands but I've had
somethin' just as worrisome, I guess. Folks like you an' me has got
friends a-plenty if we'll only give 'em a chance. I've found that out.
You let me take that baby an' come with me. I know where you'll git the
glad hand. You just come right along with me."
The unmistakable note of sincerity was in the voice of Hiram Blenkinsop.
She gave the baby into his arms. He held it to his breast a moment
thinking of old times. Then he swung his arms like a cradle saying:
"You stop your hollerin'--ye gol'darn little skeezucks! It ain't decent
to go on that way in a graveyard an' ye ought to know it. Be ye tryin'
to wake the dead?"
The baby grew quiet and finally fell asleep.
"Come on, now," said Hiram, with the baby lying against his breast. "You
an' me are goin' out o' the past. I know a little house that's next door
to Heaven. They say ye can see Heaven from its winders. It's where the
good Shepherd lives. Christmas an' I know the place--don't we, ol' boy?
Come right along. There ain't no kind o' doubt o' what they'll say to
us."
The young woman followed him out of the old graveyard and through the
dark, deserted streets until they came to the cottage of the Widow
Moran. They passed through the gate into Judge Crooker's garden. Under
the Shepherd's window, Hiram Blenkinsop gave the baby to its mother and
with his hands to his mouth called "Bob!" in a loud whisper. Suddenly a
robin sounded his alarm. Instantly, the Shepherd's room was full of
light. In a moment, he was at the window sweeping the garden paths and
the tree tops with his search-light. It fell on the sorrowful figure of
the young mother with the child in her arms and stopped. She stood
looking up at the window bathed in the flood of light. It reminded the
Shepherd of that glow which the wise men saw in the manger at Bethlehem.
"Pauline Baker!" he exclaimed. "Have you come back or am I dreaming?
It's you--thanks to the Blessed Virgin! It's you! Come around to the
door. My mother will let you in."
It was a warm welcome that the girl received in the little home of the
Widow Moran. Many words of comfort and good cheer were spoken in the
next hour or so after which the good woman made tea and toast and
broiled a chop and served them in the Shepherd's room.
"God love ye, child! So he was a married man--bad 'cess to him an' the
likes o' him!" she said as she came in with the tray. "Mother o' Jesus!
What a wicked world it is!"
The prudent dog Christmas, being afraid of babies, hid under the
Shepherd's bed, and Hiram Blenkinsop lay down for the rest of the night
on the lounge in the cottage kitchen.
An hour after daylight, when the Judge was walking in his garden, he
wondered why the widow and the Shepherd were sleeping so late.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IN WHICH HIGH VOLTAGE DEVELOPS IN THE CONVERSATION
It was a warm, bright May day. There was not a cloud in the sky. Roger
Delane had arrived and the Bings were giving a dinner that evening. The
best people of Hazelmead were coming over in motor-cars. Phyllis and
Roger had had a long ride together that day on the new Kentucky saddle
horses. Mrs. Bing had spent the morning in Hazelmead and had stayed to
lunch with Mayor and Mrs. Stacy. She had returned at four and cut some
flowers for the table and gone to her room for an hour's rest when the
young people returned. She was not yet asleep when Phyllis came into the
big bedroom. Mrs. Bing lay among the cushions on her couch. She partly
rose, tumbled the cushions into a pile and leaned against them.
"Heavens! I'm tired!" she exclaimed. "These women in Hazelmead hang on
to one like a lot of hungry cats. They all want money for one thing or
another--Red Cross or Liberty bonds or fatherless children or tobacco
for the soldiers or books for the library. My word! I'm broke and it
seems as if each of my legs hung by a thread."
Phyllis smiled as she stood looking down at her mother.
"How beautiful you look!" the fond mother exclaimed. "If he didn't
propose to-day, he's a chump."
"But he did," said Phyllis. "I tried to keep him from it, but he just
would propose in spite of me."
The girl's face was red and serious. She sat down in a chair and began
to remove her hat. Mrs. Bing rose suddenly, and stood facing Phyllis.
"I thought you loved him," she said with a look of surprise.
"So I do," the girl answered.
"What did you say?"
"I said no."
"What!"
"I refused him!"
"For God's sake, Phyllis! Do you think you can afford to play with a man
like that? He won't stand for it."
"Let him sit for it then and, mother, you might as well know, first as
last, that I am not playing with him."
There was a calm note of firmness in the voice of the girl. She was
prepared for this scene. She had known it was coming. Her mother was hot
with irritating astonishment. The calmness of the girl in suddenly
beginning to dig a grave for this dear ambition--rich with promise--in
the very day when it had come submissively to their feet, stung like the
tooth of a serpent. She stood very erect and said with an icy look in
her face:
"You young upstart! What do you mean?"
There was a moment of frigid silence in which both of the women began to
turn cold. Then Phyllis answered very calmly as she sat looking down at
the bunch of violets in her hand:
"It means that I am married, mother."
Mrs. Bing's face turned red. There was a little convulsive movement of
the muscles around her mouth. She folded her arms on her breast, lifted
her chin a bit higher and asked in a polite tone, although her words
fell like fragments of cracked ice:
"Married! To whom are you married?"
"To Gordon King."
Phyllis spoke casually as if he were a piece of ribbon that she had
bought at a store.
Mrs. Bing sank into a chair and covered her face with her hands for
half a moment. Suddenly she picked up a slipper that lay at her feet and
flung it at the girl.
"My God!" she exclaimed. "What a nasty liar you are!"
It was not ladylike but, at that moment, the lady was temporarily
absent.
"Mother, I'm glad you say that," the girl answered still very calmly,
although her fingers trembled a little as she felt the violets, and her
voice was not quite steady. "It shows that I am not so stupid at home as
I am at school."
The girl rose and threw down the violets and her mild and listless
manner. A look of defiance filled her face and figure. Mrs. Bing arose,
her eyes aglow with anger.
"I'd like to know what you mean," she said under her breath.
"I mean that if I am a liar, you taught me how to be it. Ever since I
was knee-high, you have been teaching me to deceive my father. I am not
going to do it any longer. I am going to find my father and tell him the
truth. I shall not wait another minute. He will give me better advice
than you have given, I hope."
The words had fallen rapidly from her lips and, as the last one was
spoken, she hurried out of the room. Mrs. Bing threw herself on the
couch where she lay with certain bitter memories, until the new maid
came to tell her that it was time to dress.
She was like one reminded of mortality after coming out of ether.
"Oh, Lord!" she murmured wearily. "I feel like going to bed! How _can_ I
live through that dinner? Please bring me some brandy."
Phyllis learned that her father was at his office whither she proceeded
without a moment's delay. She sent in word that she must see him alone
and as soon as possible. He dismissed the men with whom he had been
talking and invited her into his private office.
"Well, girl, I guess I know what is on your mind," he said. "Go ahead."
Phyllis began to cry.
"All right! You do the crying and I'll do the talking," he went on. "I
feel like doing the crying myself, but if you want the job I'll resign
it to you. Perhaps you can do enough of that for both of us. I began to
smell a rat the other day. So I sent for Gordon King. He came here this
morning. I had a long talk with him. He told me the truth. Why didn't
you tell me? What's the good of having a father unless you use him at
times when his counsel is likely to be worth having? I would have made a
good father, if I had had half a chance. I should like to have been your
friend and confidant in this important enterprise. I could have been a
help to you. But, somehow, I couldn't get on the board of directors. You
and your mother have been running the plant all by yourselves and I
guess it's pretty near bankrupt. Now, my girl, there's no use crying
over spilt tears. Gordon King is not the man of my choice, but we must
all take hold and try to build him up. Perhaps we can make him pay."
"I do not love him," Phyllis sobbed.
"You married him because you wanted to. You were not coerced?"
"No, sir."
"I'm sorry, but you'll have to take your share of the crow with the rest
of us," he went on, with a note of sternness in his tone. "My girl, when
I make a contract I live up to it and I intend that you shall do the
same. You'll have to learn to love and cherish this fellow, if he makes
it possible. I'll have no welching in my family. You and your mother
believe in woman's rights. I don't object to that, but you mustn't think
that you have the right to break your agreements unless there's a good
reason for it. My girl, the marriage contract is the most binding and
sacred of all contracts. I want you to do your best to make this one a
success."
There was the tinkle of the telephone bell. Mr. Bing put the receiver to
his ear and spoke into the instrument as follows:
"Yes, she's here! I knew all the facts before she told me. Mr. Delane?
He's on his way back to New York. Left on the six-ten. Charged me to
present his regrets and farewells to you and Phyllis. I thought it best
for him to know and to go. Yes, we're coming right home to dress. Mr.
King will take Mr. Delane's place at the table. We'll make a clean
breast of the whole business. Brace up and eat your crow with a smiling
face. I'll make a little speech and present Mr. and Mrs. King to our
friends at the end of it. Oh, now, cut out the sobbing and leave this
unfinished business to me and don't worry. We'll be home in three
minutes."
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN WHICH JUDGE CROOKER DELIVERS A FEW OPINIONS
The pride of Bingville had fallen in the dust! It had arisen and gone on
with soiled garments and lowered head. It had suffered derision and
defeat. It could not ever be the same again. Sneed and Snodgrass
recovered, in a degree, from their feeling of opulence. Sneed had become
polite, industrious and obliging. Snodgrass and others had lost heavily
in stock speculation through the failure of a broker in Hazelmead. They
went to work with a will and without the haughty independence which, for
a time, had characterized their attitude. The spirit of the Little
Shepherd had entered the hearts and home of Emanuel Baker and his wife.
Pauline and the baby were there and being tenderly loved and cared for.
But what humility had entered that home! Phyllis and her husband lived
with her parents, Gordon having taken a humble place in the mill. He
worked early and late. The Bings had made it hard for him, finding it
difficult to overcome their resentment, but he stood the gaff, as they
say, and won the regard of J. Patterson although Mrs. Bing could never
forgive him.
In June, there had been a public meeting in the Town Hall addressed by
Judge Crooker and the Reverend Mr. Singleton. The Judge had spoken of
the grinding of the mills of God that was going on the world over.
"Our civilization has had its time of trial not yet ended," he began.
"Its enemies have been busy in every city and village. Not only in the
cities and villages of France and Belgium have they been busy, but in
those of our own land. The Goths and Vandals have invaded Bingville.
They have been destroying the things we loved. The false god is in our
midst. Many here, within the sound of my voice, have a god suited to
their own tastes and sins--an obedient, tractable, boneless god. It is
my deliberate opinion that the dances and costumes and moving pictures
we have seen in Bingville are doing more injury to Civilization than all
the guns of Germany. My friends, you can do nothing worse for my
daughter than deprive her of her modesty and I would rather, far rather,
see you slay my son than destroy his respect for law and virtue and
decency.
"The jazz band is to me a sign of spiritual decay. It is a step toward
the jungle. I hear in it the beating of the tom-tom. It is not music. It
is the barbaric yawp of sheer recklessness and daredevilism, and it is
everywhere.
"Even in our economic life we are dancing to the jazz band and with
utter recklessness. American labor is being more and more absorbed in
the manufacture of luxuries--embroidered frocks and elaborate millinery
and limousines and landaulets and rich upholstery and cord tires and
golf courses and sporting goods and great country houses--so that there
is not enough labor to provide the comforts and necessities of life.
"The tendency of all this is to put the stamp of luxury upon the
commonest needs of man. The time seems to be near when a boiled egg and
a piece of buttered bread will be luxuries and a family of children an
unspeakable extravagance. Let us face the facts. It is up to Vanity to
moderate its demands upon the industry of man. What we need is more
devotion to simple living and the general welfare. In plain
old-fashioned English we need the religion and the simplicity of our
fathers."
Later, in June, a strike began in the big plant of J. Patterson Bing.
The men demanded higher pay and shorter days. They were working under a
contract but that did not seem to matter. In a fight with "scabs" and
Pinkerton men they destroyed a part of the plant. Even the life of Mr.
Bing was threatened! The summer was near its end when J. Patterson Bing
and a committee of the labor union met in the office of Judge Crooker to
submit their differences to that impartial magistrate for adjustment.
The Judge listened patiently and rendered his decision. It was accepted.
When the papers were signed, Mr. Bing rose and said, "Your Honor,
there's one thing I want to say. I have spent most of my life in this
town. I have built up a big business here and doubled the population. I
have built comfortable homes for my laborers and taken an interest in
the education of their children, and built a library where any one could
find the best books to read. I have built playgrounds for the children
of the working people. If I have heard of any case of need, I have done
my best to relieve it. I have always been ready to hear complaints and
treat them fairly. My men have been generously paid and yet they have
not hesitated to destroy my property and to use guns and knives and
clubs and stones to prevent the plant from filling its contracts and to
force their will upon me. How do you explain it? What have I done or
failed to do that has caused this bitterness?"
"Mr. Bing, I am glad that you ask me that question," the old Judge
began. "It gives me a chance to present to you, and to these men who
work for you, a conviction which has grown out of impartial observation
of your relations with each other.
"First, I want to say to you, Mr. Bing, that I regard you as a good
citizen. Your genius and generosity have put this community under great
obligation. Now, in heading toward the hidden cause of your complaint,
I beg to ask you a question at the outset. Do you know that unfortunate
son of the Widow Moran known as the Shepherd of the Birds?"
"I have heard much about him," Mr. Bing answered.
"Do you know him?"
"No. I have had letters from him acknowledging favors now and then, but
I do not know him."
"We have hit at once the source of your trouble," the Judge went on.
"The Shepherd is a representative person. He stands for the poor and the
unfortunate in this village. You have never gone to see him
because--well, probably it was because you feared that the look of him
would distress you. The thing which would have helped and inspired and
gladdened his heart more than anything else would have been the feel of
your hand and a kind and cheering word and sympathetic counsel. Under
those circumstances, I think I may say that it was your duty as a
neighbor and a human being to go to see him. Instead of that you sent
money to him. Now, he never needed money. In the kindest spirit, I ask
you if that money you sent to him in the best of good-will was not, in
fact, a species of bribery? Were you not, indeed, seeking to buy
immunity from a duty incumbent upon you as a neighbor and a human
being?"
Mr. Bing answered quickly, "There are plenty of people who have nothing
else to do but carry cheer and comfort to the unfortunate. I have other
things to do."
"That, sir, does not relieve you of the liabilities of a neighbor and a
human being, in my view. If your business has turned you into a shaft or
a cog-wheel, it has done you a great injustice. I fear that it has been
your master--that it has practised upon you a kind of despotism. You
would better get along with less--far less business than suffer such a
fate. I don't want to hurt you. We are looking for the cause of a
certain result and I can help you only by being frank. With all your
generosity you have never given your heart to this village. Some unkind
people have gone so far as to say that you have no heart. You can not
prove it with money that you do not miss. Money is good but it must be
warmed with sympathy and some degree of sacrifice. Has it never occurred
to you that the warm hand and the cheering word in season are more,
vastly more, than money in the important matter of making good-will?
Unconsciously, you have established a line and placed yourself on one
side of it and the people on the other. Broadly speaking, you are
capital and the rest are labor. Whereas, in fact, you are all working
men. Some of the rest have come to regard you as their natural enemy.
They ought to regard you as their natural friend. Two kinds of
despotism have prevented it. First, there is the despotism of your
business in making you a slave--so much of a slave that you haven't time
to be human; second, there is the despotism of the labor union in
discouraging individual excellence, in demanding equal pay for the
faithful man and the slacker, and in denying the right of free men to
labor when and where they will. All this is tyranny as gross and
un-American as that of George the Third in trying to force his will upon
the colonies. If America is to survive, we must set our faces against
every form of tyranny. The remedy for all our trouble and bitterness is
real democracy which is nothing more or less than the love of men--the
love of justice and fair play for each and all.
"You men should know that every strike increases the burdens of the
people. Every day your idleness lifts the price of their necessities.
Idleness is just another form of destruction. Why could you not have
listened to the counsel of Reason in June instead of in September, and
thus have saved these long months of loss and hardship and bitter
violence? It was because the spirit of Tyranny had entered your heart
and put your judgment in chains. It had blinded you to honor also, for
your men were working under contract. If the union is to command the
support of honest men, it must be honest. It was Tyranny that turned the
treaty with Belgium into a scrap of paper. That kind of a thing will not
do here. Let me assure you that Tyranny has no right to be in this land
of ours. You remind me of the Prodigal Son who had to know the taste of
husks and the companionship of swine before he came to himself. Do you
not know that Tyranny is swine and the fodder of swine? It is simply
human hoggishness.
"I have one thing more to say and I am finished. Mr. Bing, some time
ago you threw up your religion without realizing the effect that such an
act would be likely to produce on this community. You are, no doubt,
aware that many followed your example. I've got no preaching to do. I'm
just going to quote you a few words from an authority no less
respectable than George Washington himself. Our history has made one
fact very clear, namely, that he was a wise and far-seeing man."
Judge Crooker took from a shelf, John Marshall's "Life of Washington,"
and read:
"'_It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary
spring of popular government and let us, with caution, indulge the
supposition that morality can be maintained without religion._
"'_Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for
reputation, for life, if a sense of religious obligation desert the
oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?_"
"Let me add, on my own account, that the treatment you receive from your
men will vary according to their respect for morality and religion.
"They could manage very well with an irreligious master, for you are
only one. But an irreligious mob is a different and highly serious
matter, believe me. Away back in the seventeenth century, John Dryden
wrote a wise sentence. It was this:
"'_I have heard, indeed, of some very virtuous persons who have ended
unfortunately but never of a virtuous nation; Providence is engaged too
deeply when the cause becomes general._
"'If virtue is the price of a nation's life, let us try to keep our own
nation virtuous.'"
Mr. Bing and his men left the Judge's office in a thoughtful mood. The
next day, Judge Crooker met the mill owner on the street.
"Judge, I accept your verdict," said the latter. "I fear that I have
been rather careless. It didn't occur to me that my example would be
taken so seriously. I have been a prodigal and have resolved to return
to my father's house."
"Ho, servants!" said the Judge, with a smile. "Bring forth the best robe
and put it on him and put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet and
bring hither the fatted calf and kill it and let us eat and be merry."
"We shall have to postpone the celebration," said Mr. Bing. "I have to
go to New York to-night, and I sail for England to-morrow. But I shall
return before Christmas."
A little farther on Mr. Bing met Hiram Blenkinsop. The latter had a
plank on his shoulder.
"I'd like to have a word with you," said the mill owner as he took hold
of the plank and helped Hiram to ease it down. "I hear many good things
about you, Mr. Blenkinsop. I fear that we have all misjudged you. If I
have ever said or done anything to hurt your feelings, I am sorry for
it."
Hiram Blenkinsop looked with astonishment into the eyes of the
millionaire.
"I--I guess I ain't got you placed right--not eggzac'ly," said he. "Some
folks ain't as good as they look an' some ain't as bad as they look. I
wouldn't wonder if we was mostly purty much alike, come to shake us
down."
"Let's be friends, anyhow," said Mr. Bing. "If there's anything I can do
for you, let me know."
That evening, as he sat by the stove in his little room over the garage
of Mr. Singleton with his dog Christmas lying beside him, Mr. Blenkinsop
fell asleep and awoke suddenly with a wild yell of alarm.
"What's the matter?" a voice inquired.
Mr. Blenkinsop turned and saw his Old Self standing in the doorway.
"Nothin' but a dream," said Blenkinsop as he wiped his eyes. "Dreamed I
had a dog with a terrible thirst on him. Used to lead him around with a
rope an' when we come to a brook he'd drink it dry. Suddenly I felt an
awful jerk on the rope that sent me up in the air an' I looked an' see
that the dog had turned into an elephant an' that he was goin' like Sam
Hill, an' that I was hitched to him and couldn't let go. Once in a while
he'd stop an' drink a river dry an' then he'd lay down an' rest.
Everybody was scared o' the elephant an' so was I. An' I'd try to cut
the rope with my jack knife but it wouldn't cut--it was so dull. Then
all of a sudden he'd start on the run an' twitch me over the hills an'
mountings, an' me takin' steps a mile long an' scared to death."
"The fact is you're hitched to an elephant," his Old Self remarked. "The
first thing to do is to sharpen your jack knife."
"It's Night an' Silence that sets him goin'," said Blenkinsop. "When
they come he's apt to start for the nighest river. The old elephant is
beginnin' to move."
Blenkinsop put on his hat and hurried out of the door.
CHAPTER NINE
WHICH TELLS OF A MERRY CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE LITTLE COTTAGE OF THE WIDOW
MORAN
Night and Silence are a stern test of wisdom. For years, the fun loving,
chattersome Blenkinsop had been their enemy and was not yet at peace
with them. But Night and Silence had other enemies in the
village--ancient and inconsolable enemies, it must be said. They were
the cocks of Bingville. Every morning they fell to and drove Night and
Silence out of the place and who shall say that they did not save it
from being hopelessly overwhelmed. Day was their victory and they knew
how to achieve it. Noise was the thing most needed. So they roused the
people and called up the lights and set the griddles rattling. The
great, white cock that roosted near the window in the Widow Moran's
hen-house watched for the first sign of weakness in the enemy. When it
came, he sent forth a bolt of sound that tumbled Silence from his throne
and shook the foundations of the great dome of Night. It rang over the
housetops and through every street and alley in the village. That
started the battle. Silence tried in vain to recover his seat. In a
moment, every cock in Bingville was hurling bombs at him. Immediately,
Darkness began to grow pale with fright. Seeing the fate of his ally, he
broke camp and fled westward. Soon the field was clear and every proud
cock surveyed the victory with a solemn sense of large accomplishment.
The loud victorious trumpets sounding in the garden near the window of
the Shepherd awoke him that Christmas morning. The dawn light was on the
windows.
"Merry Christmas!" said the little round nickel clock in a cheerful
tone. "It's time to get up!"
"Is it morning?" the Shepherd asked drowsily, as he rubbed his eyes.
"Sure it's morning!" the little clock answered. "That lazy old sun is
late again. He ought to be up and at work. He's like a dishonest hired
man."
"He's apt to be slow on Christmas morning," said the Shepherd.
"Then people blame me and say I'm too fast," the little clock went on.
"They don't know what an old shirk the sun can be. I've been watching
him for years and have never gone to sleep at my post."
After a moment of silence the little clock went on: "Hello! The old
night is getting a move on it. The cocks are scaring it away. Santa
Claus has been here. He brought ever so many things. The midnight train
stopped."
"I wonder who came," said the Shepherd.
"I guess it was the Bings," the clock answered.
Just then it struck seven.
"There, I guess that's about the end of it," said the little clock.
"Of what?" the Shepherd asked.
"Of the nineteen hundred and eighteen years. You know seven is the
favored number in sacred history. I'm sure the baby would have been born
at seven. My goodness! There's a lot of ticking in all that time. I've
been going only twelve years and I'm nearly worn out. Some young clock
will have to take my job before long."
These reflections of the little clock were suddenly interrupted. The
Shepherd's mother entered with a merry greeting and turned on the
lights. There were many bundles lying about. She came and kissed her son
and began to build a fire in the little stove.
"This'll be the merriest Christmas in yer life, laddie boy," she said,
as she lit the kindlings. "A great doctor has come up with the Bings to
see ye. He says he'll have ye out-o'-doors in a little while."
"Ho, ho! That looks like the war was nearly over," said Mr. Bloggs.
Mrs. Moran did not hear the remark of the little tin soldier so she
rattled on:
"I went over to the station to meet 'em last night. Mr. Blenkinsop has
brought us a fine turkey. We'll have a gran' dinner--sure we will--an' I
axed Mr. Blenkinsop to come an' eat with us."
Mrs. Moran opened the gifts and spread them on the bed. There were books
and paints and brushes and clothing and silver articles and needle-work
and a phonograph and a check from Mr. Bing.
The little cottage had never seen a day so full of happiness. It rang
with talk and merry laughter and the music of the phonograph. Mr.
Blenkinsop had come in his best mood and apparel with the dog
Christmas. He helped Mrs. Moran to set the table in the Shepherd's room
and brought up the platter with the big brown turkey on it, surrounded
by sweet potatoes, all just out of the oven. Mrs. Moran followed with
the jelly and the creamed onions and the steaming coffee pot and new
celery. The dog Christmas growled and ran under the bed when he saw his
master coming with that unfamiliar burden.
"He's never seen a Christmas dinner before. I don't wonder he's kind o'
scairt! I ain't seen one in so long, I'm scairt myself," said Hiram
Blenkinsop as they sat down at the table.
"What's scairin' ye, man?" said the widow.
"'Fraid I'll wake up an' find myself dreamin'," Mr. Blenkinsop answered.
"Nobody ever found himself dreamin' at my table," said Mrs. Moran. "Grab
the carvin' knife an' go to wurruk, man."
"I ain't eggzac'ly used to this kind of a job, but if you'll look out
o' the winder, I'll have it chopped an' split an' corded in a minute,"
said Mr. Blenkinsop.
He got along very well with his task. When they began eating he
remarked, "I've been lookin' at that pictur' of a girl with a baby in
her arms. Brings the water to my eyes, it's so kind o' life like and
nat'ral. It's an A number one pictur'--no mistake."
He pointed at a large painting on the wall.
"It's Pauline!" said the Shepherd.
"Sure she's one o' the saints o' God!" the widow exclaimed. "She's
started a school for the children o' them Eytalians an' Poles. She's
tryin' to make 'em good Americans."
"I'll never forget that night," Mr. Blenkinsop remarked.
"If ye don't fergit it, I'll never mend another hole in yer pants," the
widow answered.
"I've never blabbed a word about it to any one but Mr. Singleton."
"Keep that in yer soul, man. It's yer ticket to Paradise," said the
widow.
"She goes every day to teach the Poles and Italians, but I have her here
with me always," the Shepherd remarked. "I'm glad when the morning comes
so that I can see her again."
"God bless the child! We was sorry to lose her but we have the pictur'
an' the look o' her with the love o' God in her face," said the Widow
Moran.
"Now light yer pipe and take yer comfort, man," said the hospitable
widow, after the dishes were cleared away. "Sure it's more like
Christmas to see a man an' a pipe in the house. Heavens, no! A man in
the kitchen is worse than a hole in yer petticoat."
So Mr. Blenkinsop sat with the Shepherd while the widow went about her
work. With his rumpled hair, clean shaven face, long nose and prominent
ears, he was not a handsome man.
"This is the top notch an' no mistake," he remarked as he lighted his
pipe. "Blenkinsop is happy. He feels like his Old Self. He has no fault
to find with anything or anybody."
Mr. Blenkinsop delivered this report on the state of his feelings with a
serious look in his gray eyes.
"It kind o' reminds me o' the time when I used to hang up my stockin'
an' look for the reindeer tracks in the snow on Christmas mornin'," he
went on. "Since then, my ol' socks have been full o' pain an' trouble
every Christmas."
"Those I knit for ye left here full of good wishes," said the Shepherd.
"Say, when I put 'em on this mornin' with the b'iled shirt an' the suit
that Mr. Bing sent me, my Old Self came an' asked me where I was goin',
an' when I said I was goin' to spen' Christmas with a respectable
fam'ly, he said, 'I guess I'll go with ye,' so here we be."
"The Old Selves of the village have all been kicked out-of-doors," said
the Shepherd. "The other day you told me about the trouble you had had
with yours. That night, all the Old Selves of Bingville got together
down in the garden and talked and talked about their relatives so I
couldn't sleep. It was a kind of Selfland. I told Judge Crooker about it
and he said that that was exactly what was going on in the Town Hall the
other night at the public meeting."
"The folks are drunk--as drunk as I was in Hazelmead last May," said Mr.
Blenkinsop. "They have been drunk with gold and pleasure----"
"The fruit of the vine of plenty," said Judge Crooker, who had just come
up the stairs. "Merry Christmas!" he exclaimed as he shook hands. "Mr.
Blenkinsop, you look as if you were enjoying yourself."
"An' why not when yer Self has been away an' just got back?"
"And you've killed the fatted turkey," said the Judge, as he took out
his silver snuff box. "One by one, the prodigals are returning."
They heard footsteps on the stairs and the merry voice of the Widow
Moran. In a moment, Mr. and Mrs. Bing stood in the doorway.
"Mr. and Mrs. Bing, I want to make you acquainted with my very dear
friend, Robert Moran," said Judge Crooker.
There were tears in the Shepherd's eyes as Mrs. Bing stooped and kissed
him. He looked up at the mill owner as the latter took his hand.
"I am glad to see you," said Mr. Bing.
"Is this--is this Mr. J. Patterson Bing?" the Shepherd asked, his eyes
wide with astonishment.
"Yes, and it is my fault that you do not know me better. I want to be
your friend."
The Shepherd put his handkerchief over his eyes. His voice trembled when
he said: "You have been very kind to us."
"But I'm really hoping to do something for you," Mr. Bing assured him.
"I've brought a great surgeon from New York who thinks he can help you.
He will be over to see you in the morning."
They had a half-hour's visit with the little Shepherd. Mr. Bing, who was
a judge of good pictures, said that the boy's work showed great promise
and that his picture of the mother and child would bring a good price if
he cared to sell it. When they arose to go, Mr. Blenkinsop thanked the
mill owner for his Christmas suit.
"Don't mention it," said Mr. Bing.
"Well, it mentions itself purty middlin' often," Mr. Blenkinsop laughed.
"Is there anything else I can do for you?" the former asked.
"Well, sir, to tell ye the dead hones' truth, I've got a new ambition,"
said Mr. Blenkinsop. "I've thought of it nights a good deal. I'd like to
be sextunt o' the church an' ring that ol' bell."
"We'll see what can be done about it," Mr. Bing answered with a laugh,
as they went down-stairs with Judge Crooker, followed by the dog
Christmas, who scampered around them on the street with a merry growl of
challenge, as if the spirit of the day were in him.
"What is it that makes the boy so appealing?" Mr. Bing asked of the
Judge.
"He has a wonderful personality," Mrs. Bing remarked.
"Yes, he has that. But the thing that underlies and shines through it is
his great attraction."
"What do you call it?" Mrs. Bing asked.
"A clean and noble spirit! Is there any other thing in this world that,
in itself, is really worth having?"
"Compared with him, I recognize that I am very poor indeed," said J.
Patterson Bing.
"You are what I would call a promising young man," the Judge answered.
"If you don't get discouraged, you're going to amount to something. I am
glad because you are, in a sense, the father of the great family of
Bingville."
THE END
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