His own home town

Contents

CHAPTER

I As the Curtain Rises . • . 9

II Enter the Black Sheep .... 27

Chapter I

RAIN had fallen during the early afternoon, a wind-driven torrent, quite as much to be expected in that section, at that time of the year, as was the midday height of the mercury entirely seasonable. More than a few times the sun had broken through, only to be hidden immediately by the scudding clouds, which, dissolving, drove down in warm sheets, to splinter against the pave ment like long and lancelike shafts of glass. And so, an hour after the storm had blown over as suddenly as it had come, there were still wet patches upon the cobblestones of the station square, even though the gutters had run off the last of the fouled and muddy water. Under the ardent August sun Front Street, to its juncture with Main five blocks north, lay sleek and shimmering, alike a mute reproach to the municipal department whose duty it was to maintain it in some such state of undefiled dignity on week days and a substantiation of "a few remarks" which T. E. Banks— T. Elihu— had risen to voice at the last banquet of the Business Men's Association of Warchester, barely the night before. In spite of the nondescript character of some of the buildings which hemmed it, the broad, unbroken thoroughfare, deserted and Sabbath quiet, presented an aspect bordering upon the stately.

Perhaps to those listeners so unlucky as to be natives of a less blessed community — a special table marked Guests of Warchester had been set aside for them — many of T. Elihu Banks' statements might have savored of eulogy on that festal occasion. To scoff is human, and community patriotism, when it is based upon strictly hard and fast business logic, is not the most difficult thing in the world to under stand. But there had been well-timed irony to offset the extravagance and rob it of all save figurative excellence ; jocularity so seeming intimate that more than one harassed merchant, Hobbs, for instance, of the Hardware, or Wilburt, Drugs and Toilet Sundries, who had come hoping to hear a discussion of better ways and means of avoiding total insol vency, had gone away with a warm feeling instead, located somewhere in the general area beneath the top coat-pocket on the left-hand side. This emotion might best be described as a consciousness of tender, time-hallowed confidences common only to T. Elihu, the town's great man, and each individual who cherished it. So much for the abstract magic of the great man's oratory; concrete example of his

AS THE CURTAIN RISES n

masterly phraseology, in the guise of quoted words themselves, is available.

"I have sat here to-night," — Thus T. Elihu Banks, coming with majestic deliberation to his feet, opened his few remarks — "I have sat here and listened with conflicting emotions to all that our revered and eminently solid townsmen have had to say in regard to Warchester; its welfare, growth, prosperity — past, present and future."

Here he paused to frown upon several of those identical eminently solid ones, who, more or less disturbed by the monthly cash balance, had quite inadvertently allowed personal uncertainty to tinge their utterances anent Warchester, Five Years Ago, To-day and Five Years in the Future. To be sure the frown was playfully fierce and only mock ferocious. It did not betray, either in line of lip or brow, a probability that the Commonwealth Trust — T. Elihu Banks, President — might at no distant date deliberate long over a further extension of paper bearing the indorsement of those very alarmists, who, instead of quailing before its wrath, only straightened in their places at such honorable •mention.

" — I have sat here to-night," to proceed with the remarks, "and, gentlemen, I want to tell you that I am scared! Yes, sir, plumb frightened and dismayed at the imminence of calamity which I am convinced — >. that is to say, a/most convinced — threatens us, our private integrity and continued public existence. Why, if — if it wasn't for the fact that the family sort of likes it here, I'd order my foreman out at the plant to quit work on that new weaveshed of mine; I'd lock up the doors of the Commonwealth; tell Latham, at that table over there in the corner, that he could have my share in the Construction and Contracting Company for any spare change he happened to have in his pocket, and get away from this feeble, tottering old invalid of a town before it goes all to smash!"

"Silence followed," — quoting now from the col umns of the Sunday issue of the Daily Gazette which had come, damp and smelling of ink, fresh from the presses only a few hours after the banquet's breaking up — "silence heavy and a little perturbed. Then laughter pattered around the room, increasing in volume until it shook the rafters as the meaning of Mr. T. Elihu Banks' pungent preface struck home. And when the thunder of mirth and applause had subsided somewhat, radiating the spirit of optimism and indomitable energy which has been so instru mental in making Warchester what she is to-day, our esteemed fellow-townsman swung from the ironical vein of his introduction to a serious and comprehensive analysis of commercial Warchester . . . touching upon the changes, topographic and architectural which the last five years have witnessed, more than a few of which, it should be noted in passing, stand as a monument to his personal love of the beautiful and finer things of life . . . and closing with a prophetic picture of what cooperation and honest endeavor may well be expected to bring, so vividly presented that quite a number of our estimable citizens besides Mr. Banks have decided not to go just yet, but to wait a while and see if things won't take a turn for the better."

This extract, a faithful example of the Gazette's trenchant style, was but a brief bit of the speech itself. Reported verbatim, with a cut of T. Elihu, it filled four columns. For if he was a little chary with vital statistics, such as might have comforted many, he did not slight what the Gazette happily chose to term the topographic and architectural changes. Swinging from the subject of the Trac tion Company's new extension, which inevitably must result in a tide of profit from those rural regions hitherto untapped, to that of the new Main Street pavement, laid by the Construction and Contracting Company, he came by easy stages to a mention of the new home of the Commonwealth Trust. And here he was upon ground safe from foreign criticism, carping or covetous.

When T. Elihu Banks could not himself do a thing he paid the price of the man who he believed could do it for him. Fielding, an architect lately come to Warchester, had dreamed his plans unhandicapped by suggestion or ill-advised economy. And the finished structure, of blue-veined marble, was vindication enough of the wisdom of such methods. Facing down Front Street, the building drew the eye from the chiseled atrocities of red sandstone which flanked it, like a fresh blank picket in a rotted, madly scroll-sawed fence. It dominated that thoroughfare to the very doors of the Union Station, quite overshadowing the martial group in the centre of the Common, a memorial to the valor of native sons in the days of '61.

True enough, this work of art, the product of the Home Granite Yards and T. Elihu Banks' gift to the city, was not a recent improvement, if it was to be accepted as an improvement at all. For a number of years the twice-life-size cannoneer, gun swab in hand, had been gazing defiance at all comers, friend and foe alike, who chanced to alight from any of the amazing number of trains which the principal speaker of the evening stated rolled past their threshold between the meridians, post and ante, but he was no fickle-minded fanatic, faithless to old gods and fawning upon the new. The statue was considered a very fine thing.

"This our monument to the dead and maimed and missing, mellowing now with the years (mellowing applying to the statue, of course). . . The resistless tramp of time which has decimated the ranks of those who survived. . . . The onsweep of events which brooks neither faint heart nor faltering hand!"

It was neatly turned, the transition from romantic clash of arms to the more prosaic but no less terribly real strife of daily business life. Serving as a conclusion it sounded that note of pathos, of deep and human compassion, which sent more than a few home with that warm feeling aforementioned — beneath the top coat-pocket on the left-hand side. As they turned down Main Street, linked arm in arm, Hobbs of the Hardware expressed for the ears of Wilburt, Drugs and Toilet Sundries, fervidly albeit with less elegance than might have been employed, the opinion of all who had been among those present.

"A damned big-hearted man," said Hobbs. He had forgotten, temporarily, his low cash balance. "A damned big-hearted man. Where would you look to find another who has accomplished all that he has and still stayed tender-hearted?"

Wilburt's answer was in tune. "You'd look a long time, and then most likely fail."

And yet, the next morning, after the shower had subsided and the sun come out again, even to one who had not come under the spell of those rounded periods; to put it precisely, in the eyes of the lone commercial traveler upon the Bay State Hotel veranda, the typical, "overgrown town," New England city was far from ugly, far from unpre possessing.

He had been forced to forego his jump to

Providence because he dared not leave town without seeing Latham — J. J. Latham — personally, so one would reasonably have expected him to find nothing of excellence on the scene of his broken schedule. To the contrary, the sporting-page and the funny sheet of the Sunday Gazette perused in all serious ness of soul, and the Banks' address by way of amusement, this stranded alien, chair and stiff straw-hat tilted back at a dangerous angle, brown button shoes upon the rail, let the paper slide to the floor while he sighed his unqualified content.

He squinted from eyes very wise in such a round, cherubic countenance in the direction of the Com mon, pricked here and there with beds of poppies, all as surprisingly brilliant after the rain as a red-figured green carpet in the wake of a vacuum cleaner. The gunner and his mate who stood stanchly by, round shot in hand, would not be overlooked. Feeling the need of oral communion common to his kind the "drummer" addressed his words to this intrepid pair.

"Don't fire, boys," he admonished with indolent amiability, "till you see the whites of their eyes." A moment of thought. "And if you don't mind my asking, maybe you can tell me what's wrong with this town? Quiet and bucolic and restful would have been my verdict — if it wasn't for all these alibis they registered here last night."

Head on one side he waited as if for a reply, but the gunner and his mate failed to unbend from their attitudes of hostile aloofness. A bluebottle fly buzzed with foolish persistence against a screen; flat upon his back on a baggage truck across the square a newsboy now and again opened his lips to drone "Pyper! Globe — Transcrip' — G'zette/" but the iteration was wholly mechanical, the disturbance negligible in the extreme. A peaceful, Sabbath quietude endured until a pair of high-checked gray horses, harnessed to a bulbous, plum upholstered barouche, rounded the Main Street corner and came swinging down Front, the clatter of their feet upon the pavement a marvellous imitation of those hoof-beats which trap drummers were wont to beat out upon their shells, for the added vividness it lent to motion-picture steeds.

Immediately the commercial traveler abandoned fruitless oral curiosity for ocular contemplation. (Even at a distance the turn-out was impressive.) Back in the hotel interior a gong clanged brassily — the first summons to dinner, for the Bay State clung to old custom — but he failed to respond. Quite otherwise he allowed his chair to cant slowly again upon all four legs. And Mr. Dodge, the hotel manager, chancing to glimpse this new attitude of interest, came out from behind his desk and started for the door.

"What is it, a fire?" he called through the open window, truculence in his voice and his manner too, for in his experience guests of the brown clad one's ilk needed no second call, and he distrusted departure from precedent. "Can you see the smoke?"

He reached the open door just as the approaching equipage was entering the zone of its awe-compelling best. The truculence disappeared.

"Oh — ho I" He understood now — yes, indeed! — to be sure ! His exclamation was commendatory, a verbal pat upon the back of the man discerning enough to forego food for such a sight. "Oh — ho! T. Elihu, eh? Now I wonder where he's bound? I hadn't heard that he was running out of town this week."

The commercial traveler leaned forward at that, 'his face less cherubic. In such wise he was accus tomed to meet an argument of cheaper goods from a competitor, but neither of the frock-coated, shinytiled pair upon the rear seat of the barouche appeared aware of his keen gaze, or the worshipful one of Mr. Dodge, whose lips were slightly parted.

T. Elihu Banks, tremendous without being fat, ponderous for all his great height, sat well forward on the plum-colored cushion, stiffly erect and frigidly preoccupied. He fairly overwhelmed the one who shared his state and made him seem wisplike and tiny. His stare dwelt, with a frown near to lowering, upon a point midway between the horizon and the sun, now almost overhead. Yet he caught the first tentative move which Mr. Dodge upon the veranda made toward salutation. A huge and pink and smooth-shaven face was turned in that direction; there was a glimpse of chilly eyes and padded flesh and lips sneering even in repose, while this new position was held for a breath. T. Elihu Banks thereupon inclined his head, a scant but perceptible inch — not necessarily a large effort, though the effect was rather wonderful so far as Mr. Dodge was concerned. Shedding his uncertainty the latter took an impetuous step or two forward; he made as if to reach for his hat, remembered its absence and fell back upon salute instead.

"Ha — ha! Good morning — good morning, sir! Hope you aren't carrying out your threat and leaving us for good I"

There was nothing servile, nothing of calculated flattery in the well-timed pleasantry. It was merely an expression of respect and admiration by one who knew real worth when he looked upon it. That the town's great man failed to respond in kind appar ently discomfited Mr. Dodge not at all. T. Elihu rarely responded to such sallies, he had sufficient to occupy his mind, without the framing of airy persiflage. And for an alternate excuse, had one been required, there was the arrival of the 4.30 express from New York. Roaring into the station at the exact moment when the barouche circled up to the platform, it drowned out the now hopeful cry of the newsboy who had hopped down from the baggage truck and trotted nearer, the laughter of Mr. Dodge, as mechanical and almost as mirthful as the clucking of an aimless hen, and all other indeterminate sounds. When the train had come to a standstill and the din subsided to a thin hiss of escaping steam, Mr. Dodge was heard to be laughing still and talking as well.

"Ha— ha! He's a great joker— T. Elihu. D'yuh read the address he made at the banquet last night to the Business Men's Association? If you haven't y'd better, for it's mighty interestin' readin'. Funny in spots, too — y'd ought to have heard 'em laugh. Said he was humbly proud to be identified with the name of Warchester — and I guess he hasn't got reason to be! He is Warchester. He's made this town what she is. Humbly proud ! I'd like to have the wad he's got together for himself while he's been doing it."

"Humbly proud?" The commercial one meant no sacrilege; he felt that the pause required some answer. "He doesn't exactly hate himself, that's a fact. Why don't he do his running around in an automobile?"

"Can't afford one!" Vast chuckles on the part of Mr. Dodge, who ignored a note of possible disparagement, betrayed the source of this prepos terous statement. "He can't afford one, T. Elihu can't! The wife has one, and her own chauffeur. And his boy drives a low white one with tub seats and no fenders that goes like hell-a-bilin\ Most always has a mighty good-looking girl with him — J. J. Latham's daughter. But T. Elihu's so hard up he says he has to stick to the poor old nags I"

The "drummer" nodded. He renewed his con sideration of the high-checked team, the stiff-necked coachman in buff and blue, the plum upholstery and nickel fittings, from a somewhat different mental angle. Here was undeniable grandeur, neither garish nor blatant, but "old-fashioned" if anything, and unquestionably "solid." He nodded again, appearing to have found a satisfactory reason for such out-of-date whimsy.

"A wise play, T. Elihu," he murmured. "I've got to hand it to you there." And in a louder voice for his host's ear : "Who's the rabbitty looking little cus with him?"

Mr. Dodge had no time to administer rebuke or even to smile pityingly upon one whose lack of culture and discernment permitted him so to characterize the Reverend Watson Duncan. For the big man's failure to clamber out of the barouche was indication that T. Elihu was not leaving town on a short business trip. He was expecting someone on that train. Already a scattering of day-coach passengers — less than the usual quota, for Sunday traffic was light — had bustled into sight, heading toward Main Street and home, hurrying from force of habit.

A moment or two passed without further develop ments. The raucous shouts of the engine crew could be heard from far up the yard where the engine was taking water. Mr. Dodge was on the point of sympathizing aloud with T. Elihu's disappointment, when his intensity of attention was rewarded. The figure which finally breezed around the station corner, preceded by a Pullman porter whose gleaming grin and officious solicitude bespoke a liberal tip, was worth waiting to see.

Vision as applied to things sartorial smacks dis tinctly of the feminine, and though there was nothing in the appearance of this young man in his earliest twenties to warrant such meaning being read into the word as applied to him, vision best describes him. The top-coat of creamy tan which he wore draped over his shoulders in careless ease, in spite of the heat, was of incredible breadth of skirt; a virtue under the circumstances, for far from veiling, it fell back with every stride and puff of wind, so that nothing was lost of the gorgeousness beneath — -a gorgeousness contributed largely by a suit of black and white check, ultra modish and wondrous tight.

Long checkered lapels ran down to a single button a little below the waist line, which the coat clearly defined. The trousers, so narrow that almost all the fulness had been requisitioned by two knife-edge creases, ended a fair two inches above the low tan shoes, in cuffs of the same width. And below the cuffs and above the lapels mauve hose and scarf added a further dash of color. No one needed to be told that the Panama and shoes were expensive. They looked it.

To complete the picture, he was swinging a thick, light-colored stick in one hand as he dashed into view, and leading with the other a white bull-terrier; or to be more exact, doing his best to restrain that high-bred animal which, straining every splendid muscle, fairly towed him in his wake.

"T. Elihu's son, Sidney," the manager of the Bay State flung information to his guest. "Sidney Estabrook Banks. T. Elihu married Sadie Estabrook — Estabrook steel and wire works "

The explanation, however, was superfluous. Any stranger would have marked at first glance the likeness between father and son. There was the same chill light in the eyes, the same full and slightly sneering lips. The younger man's face was not yet florid but only pinkish — a shade not unlike the pink of the terrier's nose and ears. Abounding vitality, quite as exuberant as the dog's, could not overcome a suggestion of heavy-footed weight and padded flesh. It was this very exuberance, on the dog's part, which precipitated the only minor catastrophe that marred the occasion.

T. Elihu and the Reverend Duncan were out upon the platform now. The newsboy, silenced by such opulence, was drawing nearer, mouth wide but hushed. Mr. Dodge foresaw the inevitable just before it happened.

"Git out of the way, there," he whispered franti cally, waving his arms in an unmistakable "shooing" gesture. "Look out — look out "

T. Elihu, attempting to avoid the dog's lusty lunges at the same instant when the newsboy, hoping to get in a surreptitious pat, had edged a little too close, suddenly set one square heel upon a bare foot. The boy howled his anguish to the skies.

At the outcry an expression frankly annoyed and intolerant of such clumsy interruption passed over the Reverend Duncan's countenance. Mr. Dodge's face became darkly suffused.

"There, I knew it!" he growled. "Why don't that fool boy get out from under foot!"

But the question was already bootless. The boy had done so, limpingly, falling back aghast before the rage of the huge one who, in a bull-voice, commanded that he efface himself. Then, ignoring the outstretched hand, T. Elihu seized his son by the shoulders. It was a bearlike embrace, spontaneous, shamelessly hearty and sentimental. The reverend gentleman's approval returned; his expression waxed benign. Even the porter, a child of the theatrical, played up to the best that was in him. His air of importance was increased by half.

The trio turned at length to the barouche. Sidney seated himself back to the driver, beside a pile of luggage liberally besprinkled with labels and a golf-bag and canvas-covered tennis-racket. Now the porter was lifting his cap ; the coachman flirted his whip and the grays started prancingly. The Rev erend Watson Duncan was shaking hands with Sidney as they came around in a splendid circle. One of T. Elihu's remarkably soft and smooth hands lay upon his son's knee. It was an affecting sight. The drummer could not forego a small sigh and over hearing it, Mr. Dodge tore his eyes away to smile patronizingly upon him. Mine host had no way of knowing that the black-and-white checked suit was behind this breath of envy, and not a belated realization of inherent inferiority.

"I tell you it does a man good to see a thing like that once in a while," said Mr. Dodge. "Yes, sir, it certainly does. It — it's a sermon in itself, just as much as any the Reverend Duncan preaches — and he's some preacher, I'm here to state. I remember, now. Somebody did tell me that T. Elihu's son was studyin' too hard, and the old man'd sent for him to come home and rest a while. He's been away to school in New York — summer school. And don't T. Elihu think a lot of that boy? Did yuh see him grab him ? A big-hearted man — a mighty big-hearted man! Where would you look to find one who has accomplished all that he has, and still stayed tender hearted?"

The drummer apparently gave it up without a guess, for he made no immediate reply. A change, slight but significant, had come over this commercial one. He seemed to have grown very pensive.

"Why all the alibi?" was his sole comment, and as this was entirely mental it had no effect upon Mr. Dodge.

The barouche had turned to the right into Main Street, five blocks north; hopping on one foot the newsboy had reached the baggage-truck and was whimpering softly over his bruised toes, before the "drummer" spoke aloud. He jerked his thumb toward another figure in the shadow of the station corner which had come up in time to witness the last act of Sidney's reception — the Reverend Duncan's warm handclasp.

"Who's your other friend?" he asked.

Mr. Dodge halted. He had been about to return indoors. Now, as his gaze followed the drummer's pointing thumb his face hardened. Hatred no less bitter for all that it was impersonal, marred the softness of feature which the "sermon" had engen dered. Oddly enough as he watched this expression grow, the "drummer" seemed to smile.

Chapter II

WARCHESTER'S dingy station-shed, unimpeachably the city gate in spite of the fact that it was never mentioned publicly unless such mention was unavoidable, and then without pride, roared to the passage of many trains. Fastflying mails and expresses, boastful of every luxury and time-saving adjunct, which a feverish age could demand; slow-crawling locals, mean and lowly and seeming conscious of it — they came and went almost without cessation, achieving daily an astonishing total, bringing and bearing away every known man ner of man.

Prominent politicians were wont to shake hands with a delegation of representative citizens from the observation platforms of their specials, or if the election was very close at hand, to linger long enough to extol the town's points of superiority, as well as those of their own doctrines. Few road companies, dramatic or musical, passed without a split week at least at the Palace Theater (the house could be calculated beforehand to a dollar if the attraction had stirred up a metropolitan discussion as to its exact moral status). And now and again the city police surprised evidence that certain quietspoken gentlemen, finding other fields uncongenial, had paused to test the excellence of Warchester time-locks.

There came men of every creed, women of every code; the self-assured and self-seeking; the humble and the hungry; spellbinder and highbinder; brighteyed light o' love and dull-eyed alien ; those who spun their webs and waited; those who toiled and would continue to toil ; the affluent who viewed the eye of the needle through the glass of their own magnified ego, the wretched who wondered why; exhorters beseeching alms for a distant cause, blandly blind to neighborhood need: — rich men and poor men and beggar men, and women in velvet gowns.

Every type that a polyglot civilization could produce drained daily through that dingy station-shed, for Warchester, located upon a trunk-line which connected the two greatest cities on the eastern seaboard, was like an eddy in a stream which never ceased to ebb and flow. Some bits of human flotsam found final lodgment in this backwash; more merely dallied for a time, to be caught up and spun on again by the current, and only one custom seemed common to them all. Each wore his stamp of caste or character upon his sleeve, if not a true one then that which was most likely to prove expeditious and remunerative in the end. Casual classification was therefore easy, a virtue since complicated analysis was going out of vogue.

It was only because the arrival of Sidney Estabrook Banks had set him to moralizing that the "drummer" on the Bay State veranda vouchsafed the solitary figure at the station corner the second glance which led to conjecture.

Obviously he had descended from the same train which had brought that gorgeously attired young gentleman; just as obviously he had not enjoyed the ministrations of the porter and his brush. For his blue serge suit, shiny from long and faithful service, was covered with coal dust and cinders. And yet, just as a largeness of limb and gesture had been Sidney Banks' most compelling bid for notice, so was the first impression he gave one of immaculate cleanliness — a paradoxical thing, when one con sidered that he had come in "riding the blind."

In point of fact the need for water, both inside and out, had been preying upon his mind long before the train pulled into the station. A pause beneath the drip of the water-tank, the moment he crawled down from the forward coach, and not an excess of hand-luggage, had delayed his official appearance and robbed him of all save the last act of Sidney's welcome home — the Reverend Watson Duncan's warm and hearty handclasp.

His throat was free from dust now, his face and hands clean and white with an even pallor which, coupled with his slenderness, made one wonder just how many hours had passed since he had tasted nourishing food; that is, if one was given to idle and fruitless surmise. And slender he was to a surprising degree, thin of waist and wrist and ankle. But either the matter of food was not troubling him, or else he had grown accustomed to a lack of fulness beneath his belt, for he seemed in no hurry.

Aimless would not have described him with exactitude. Indeed, as he stood in the shadow, shifting from one stiff leg to the other, he suggested rather an amiable though puzzled "super" in life's human comedy, watching from the wings the strut ting principals upon the stage, thoughtfully groping for the secret of their acceptance, a little apologetic for his own very existence. A faint smile upon his supersensitive lips, mirthless as tears yet savoring not at all of such emotion, heightened this sugges tion. His eyes were blue and fine and steady, mildly questioning and wistfully self-deprecatory. But his nose, thin and quite long, and one eyelid, were of a different quality. The latter member drawn half shut, a trick of thought apparently or a habit contracted while the scar which ran from brow to hair was healing, gave his face a peculiarly quizzical expression. It looked as though he was winking to himself over some choice and subtle whimsy all his own.