Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee Magic

or only erred passionately; what was actually said in that palm alcove that night so long ago; whether this man, with the eyes and voice so fascinating to women, would renew his suit in this new life of ours; what Jim would think about it; and, more than all, how Josie herself would regard him. "She ought never to have spoken to him again!" I hear some one say. Ah, Madam, very true. But do you remember any authentic case of a woman who failed to forgive the man whose error or offense had for its excuse the irresistible attraction of her own charms? They were coming back now, still talking. "You dropped out of sight, like a partridge into a thicket," said he. "Some of them said you had gone back to--to--" "To the farm," she prompted. "Well, yes," he conceded; "and others said you had left Chicago for New York; and some, even Paris." "I fail to see the warrant," said Josie, as they approached the limit of earshot, "for any of the people at Madame Lamoreux's giving themselves the trouble to investigate." "So far as that is concerned," said he, "I should think that I--" and his voice quite lost intelligibility. My cigar had gone out, and the cessation of the music ought to have apprised me of the breaking up of the dance, and still I lay looking at the sky and filled with my thoughts. "Here he is," said Alice, "asleep in the hammock! For shame, Albert! This would not have occurred, once!" "I am free to admit that," said I, "but why am I now disturbed?" "We're going on a cruise in the gondola," said Antonia, "and Mr. Elkins says you are lieutenant, and we can't sail without you. Come, it's perfectly beautiful out there." "We're going to the head of navigation and back," said Jim, "and then our revels will be ended. --Hang it!" to me, "they left the skull and crossbones off all the flags!" Mr. Barr-Smith at once engaged the engineer in conversation, and seemed worming from him all his knowledge of the construction of the boat. The rest of us lounged on cushions and seats. We threaded our way up the new pond, winding between clumps of trees, now in broad moonlight, now in deepest shade. The shower had swept over to the northeast, just one dark flounce of its skirt reaching to the zenith. A cool breeze suddenly sprang up from the west, stirred by the suction of the receding storm, and a roar came from the trees on the hilltops. "Better run for port," said Jim; "I'd hate to have Mr. Barr-Smith suffer shipwreck where the charts don't show any water!" As we ran down the open way, the remark seemed less and less of a joke. The gale poured over the hills, and struck the boat like the buffet of a great hand. She heeled over alarmingly, bumped upon a submerged stump, righted, heeled again, this time shipping a little sea, and then the sharp end of a hidden oak-limb thrust up through the bottom, and ripped its way out again, leaving us afloat in the deepest part of the lake, with a spouting fountain in the middle of the vessel, and the chopping waves breaking over the gunwale. All at once, I noticed Cecil Barr-Smith, with his coat off, standing near Antonia, who sat as cool as if she had been out on some quiet road driving her pacers. The boat sank lower in the water, and I had no doubt that she was sinking. Antonia rose, and stretched her hands towards Jim. I do not see how he could avoid seeing this; but he did, and, as if abandoning her to her fate, he leaped to Josie's side. Cornish had seized _her_ by the arm, and seemed about to devote himself to her safety, when Jim, without a word, lifted her in his arms, and leaped lightly upon the forward deck, the highest and driest place on the sinking craft. Then, as everything pointed to a speedy baptism in the lake for all of us, we saw that the very speed of the wind had saved us, and felt the gondola bump broadside upon the dam. Jim sprang to the abutment with Josie, and Cecil Barr-Smith half carried and half led Antonia to the shore. Alice and I sat calmly on the windward rail; and Barr-Smith, laughing with delight, helped us across, one at a time, to the masonry. "I'm glad it turned out no worse," said Jim. "I hope you will all excuse me if I leave you now. I must see Miss Trescott to a safe and dry place. Here's the carriage, Josie!" "Are you quite uninjured?" said Cecil to Antonia, as Mr. Elkins and Josie drove away. "Oh, quite so!" said Antonia, unwittingly adopting Barr-Smith's phrase. "But for a moment I was awfully frightened!" "It looked a little damp, at one time, for farce-comedy," said Cornish. "I wonder how deep it was out there!" "Miss Trescott was quite drenched," said Mr. Barr-Smith, as we got into the carriages. "Too bad, by Jove!" "You may write home," said Antonia, "an account of being shipwrecked in the top of a tree!" "Good, good!" said Cecil, and we all joined in the laugh, until we were suddenly sobered by the fact that Antonia had bowed her head on Alice's lap, and was sobbing as if her heart was broken. CHAPTER XII. In which the Burdens of wealth begin to fall upon Us. If the town be considered as a quiescent body pursuing its unluminous way in space, Mr. Elkins may stand for the impinging planet which shocked it into vibrant life. I suggested this nebular-hypothesis simile to Mr. Giddings, one day, as the germ of an editorial. "It's rather seductive," said he, "but it won't do. Carry your interplanetary collision business to its logical end, and what do you come to? Gaseousness. And that's just what the Angus Falls _Times_, the Fairchild Star, and the other loathsome sheets printed in prairie-dog towns around here accuse us of, now. No; much obliged; but as a field for comparisons the tried old solar system is good enough for the _Herald_." I couldn't help thinking, however, that the thing had some illustrative merit. There was Jim's first impact, felt locally, and jarring things loose. Then came the atomic vivification, the heat and motion, which appeared in the developments which we have seen taking form. After the visit of the Barr-Smiths, and the immigration of Cornish, the new star Lattimore began to blaze in the commercial firmament, the focus of innumerable monetary telescopes, pointed from the observatories of counting-rooms, banks, and offices, far and wide. There was a shifting of the investment and speculative equilibrium, and things began coming to us spontaneously. The Angus Falls railway extension was won only by strenuous endeavor. Captain Tolliver's interviews with General Lattimore, in which he was so ruthlessly "turned down," he always regarded as a sort of creative agony, marking the origin of the roundhouse and machine-shops, and our connection with the great Halliday railway system of which it made us a part. The street-car project went more easily; and, during the autumn, the geological and manufacturing experts sent out to report on the cement-works enterprise, pronounced favorably, and gangs of men, during the winter, were to be seen at work on the foundations of the great buildings by the scarped chalk-hill. The tension of my mind just after the Lynhurst Park affair was such as to attune it to no impulses but the financial vibrations which pulsated through our atmosphere. True, I sometimes felt the wonder return upon me at the finding of the lovers of the art-gallery together once more, in Josie and Cornish; and at other times Antonia's agitation after our escape from shipwreck recurred to me in contrast with her smiling self-possession while the boat was drifting and filling; but mostly I thought of nothing, dreamed of nothing, but trust companies, additions, bonds and mortgages. Mr. Barr-Smith returned to London soon, giving a parting luncheon in his rooms, where wine flowed freely, and toasts of many colors were pushed into the atmosphere. There was one to the President and the Queen, proposed by the host and drunk in bumpers, and others to Mr. Barr-Smith, his brother, and the members of the "Syndicate." The enthusiasm grew steadily in intensity as the affair progressed. Finally Mr. Cecil solemnly proposed "The American Woman." In offering this toast, he said, he was taking long odds, as it was a sport for which he hadn't had the least training; but he couldn't forego the pleasure of paying a tribute where tribute was due. The ladies of America needed no encomiums from him, and yet he was sure that he should give no offense by saying that they were of a type unknown in history. They were up to anything, you know, in the way of intellectuality, and he was sure that in a certain queenly, blonde way they were-- "Hear, hear!" said his brother, and burst into a laugh in which we all joined, while Cecil went on talking, in an uproar which drowned his words, though one could see that he was trying to explain something, and growing very hot in the process. Pearson announced that their train would soon arrive, and we all went down to see them off. Barr-Smith assured us at parting that the tram-road transaction might be considered settled. He believed, too, that his clients might come into the cement project. We were all the more hopeful of this, for the knowledge that he carried somewhere in his luggage a bond for a deed to a considerable interest in the cement lands. Things were coming on beautifully; and it seemed as if Elkins and Cornish, working together, were invincible. We still lived at the hotel, but our architect, "little Ed. Smith, who lived over on the Hayes place" when we were boys, and who was once at Garden City with Jim, was busy with plans for a mansion which we were to build in the new Lynhurst Park Addition the next spring. Mr. Elkins was preparing to erect a splendid house in the same neighborhood. "Can I afford it?" said I, in discussing estimates. "Afford it!" he replied, turning on me in astonishment. "My dear boy, don't you see we are up against a situation that calls on us to bluff to the limit, or lay down? In such a case, luxury becomes a duty, and lavishness the truest economy. Not to spend is to go broke. Lay your Poor Richard on the shelf, and put a weight on him. Stimulate the outgo, and the income'll take care of itself. A thousand spent is five figures to the good. No, while we've as many boom-irons in the fire as we're heating now, to be modest is to be lost." "Perhaps," said I, "you may be right, and no doubt are. We'll talk it over again some time. And your remark about irons in the fire brings up another matter which bothers me. It's something unusual when we don't open up a set of books for some new corporation, during the working day. Aren't we getting too many?" "Do you remember Mule Jones, who lived down near Hickory Grove?" said he, after a long pause. "Well, you know, in our old neighborhood, the mule was regarded with a mixture of contempt, suspicion, and fear, the folks not understanding him very well, and being especially uninformed as to his merits. Therefore, Mule Jones, who dealt in mules, bought, sold, and broke 'em, was a man of mark, and identified in name with his trade, as most people used to be before our time. I was down there one Sunday, and asked him how he managed to break the brutes. 'It's easy,' said he, 'when you know how. I never hook up less'n six of 'em at a time. Then they sort o' neutralize one another. Some on 'em'll be r'arin' an' pitchin', an' some tryin' to run; but they'll be enough of 'em down an' a-draggin' all the time, to keep the enthusiastic ones kind o' suppressed, and give me the castin' vote. It's the only right way to git the bulge on mules.' Whenever you get to worrying about our various companies, think of the Mule Jones system and be calm." "I'm a little shy of being ruled by one case, even though so exactly in point," said I.