Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee Magic
station-building, for the name of the town, had been put up, but was
veiled by a banner draped over it. Tents were pitched near, in which
people lived waiting for the lot-auction, that they might buy sites for
shops and homes. The waters of the lake shone through the trees a few
rods away; and in imagination I could see the village of the future,
sprinkled about over the beautiful shore. The future villagers gathered
near the platform; and when Jim stepped forward to make the speech of
the occasion, he had a considerable audience.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "our visit is for the purpose of
showing the interest which the Lattimore & Great Western takes and will
continue to take in the towns on its line, and to add a name to what, I
notice, has already become a local habitation. In conferring that name,
we are aware that the future citizens of the place have claims upon us.
So one has been selected which, as time passes, will grow more and more
pleasant to your ears; and one which the person bestowing it regards as
an honor to the town as high as could be conferred in a name. No station
on our lines could have greater claims upon our regard than the
possession of this name. And now, gentlemen--"
Mr. Elkins removed his hat, and we all followed his example. Some one
pulled a cord, the banner fell away, and the name was revealed. It was
"JOSEPHINE." The women looked at it, and turned their eyes on Josie, who
blushed rosily, and shrank back behind her father, who burst into a loud
laugh of unalloyed pleasure.
"I propose three cheers for the town of Josephine," went on Mr. Elkins,
"and for the lady for whom it is named!"
They were real cheers--good hearty ones; followed by an address, in the
name of the town, by a bright young man who pushed forward and with
surprising volubility thanked President Elkins for his selection of the
name, and closed with flowery compliments to the blushing Miss Trescott,
whose identity Jim had disclosed by a bow. He was afterwards a thorn in
our flesh in his practice as a personal-injury lawyer. At the time,
however, we warmed to him, as under his leadership the dwellers in the
tents and round about the waters of Mirror Lake all shook hands with Jim
and Josie.
Cornish stood with a saturnine smile on his face, and glared at some of
the more pointed hits of the young lawyer. Cecil Barr-Smith beamed
radiant pleasure, as he saw the evident linking in this public way of
Jim's name and Josie's. Antonia stood close to Cecil's side, and chatted
vivaciously to him--not with him; for her words seemed to have no
correlation with his.
"Quite like the going away of a bridal party!" said she with exaggerated
gayety, and with a little spitefulness, I thought. "Has any one any
rice?"
"All aboard!" said Corcoran; and the joyful and triumphant party, with
their outward intimacy and their inward warfare of passions and desires,
rolled on toward "Mystery Number Two," which was duly christened
"Cornish," and celebrated in champagne furnished by its godfather.
"Don't you ever drink champagne?" said Cornish, as Josie declined to
partake.
"Never," said she.
"What, _never_?" he went on, Pinaforically.
"My God!" thought I, "the assurance of the man!" And the palm-encircled
alcove at Auriccio's, as it was wont so often to do, came across my
vision, and shut out everything but the Psyche face in its ruddy halo,
speeding by me into the street, and the vexed young man in the faultless
attire slowly following.
Mystery Number Three was "Antonia," a lovely little place in embryo;
"Barslow" came next, followed by "Giddings" and "Tolliver." We were
tired of it when we reached "Hinckley," platted on a farm owned by
Antonia's father, and where we ceased to perform the ceremony of
unveiling. It was a memorable trip, ending with sunset and home. Captain
Tolliver assisted General Lattimore to alight from the train, and they
went arm in arm up to the old General's home.
That night, according to his wont, Jim came to smoke with me in the late
evening. "Let's take a car," said he, "and go up and have a look at the
houses."
These were our new mansions up in Lynhurst Park Addition, now in process
of erection. In the moonlight we could see them dimly, and at a little
distance they looked like masses of ruins--the second childhood of
houses. A stranger could have seen, from the polished columns and the
piles of carved stone, that they were to be expensive and probably
beautiful structures.
"What do you think of the General in the role of Cassandra?" asked Jim,
as we sat in the skeleton room which was to be his library.
"It struck me," said I, "as a particularly artistic bit of croaking!"
"The Captain says frequently," said Jim, his cigar glowing like a
variable star, "that opportunity knocks once. The General, I'm afraid,
knocks all the time. But if it should turn out that he's right about
the--the--dervish-dance ... it would be ... to put it mildly ... a
horse on us, Al, wouldn't it?"
I had no answer to this fanciful speech, and made none. Instead, I told
him of Giddings's love-sickness.
"The philosophy of Iago has broken down," said he, "and the boy is sort
of short-circuited. Antonia can take him in hand, and turn him out full
of confidence; and with that, I'll answer for the lady. That can be
fixed easy, and ought to be. Let's walk back."
"What was it he said?" he asked, as we parted. "'Coma, cold forms, still
hands, and extinction.' Well, if the dervish-dance does wind up in that
sort of thing, it's only a short-cut to the inevitable. Those are pretty
houses up there; we'd have been astounded over them when we used to fish
together on Beaver Creek;--but suppose they are?
"'They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep;
And Bahram, that great hunter--the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep!'
Good-night, Al!"
CHAPTER XV.
Some Affairs of the Heart Considered in their Relation to Dollars and
Cents.
Antonia was sitting in a hammock. Josie and Alice were not far away
watching Cecil Barr-Smith, who was wading into the lake to get
water-lilies for them, contrary to the ordinances of the city of
Lattimore in such cases made and provided. The six were dawdling away
our time one fine Sunday in Lynhurst Park. I forgot to say Mr. Elkins
and myself were discussing affairs of state with Miss Hinckley.
"He's such a ninny," said Antonia.
"Aren't all people when in his forlorn condition?" asked Jim.
Antonia looked away at the clouds, and did not reply.
"But if he had a morsel of the cynical philosophy he boasts of," said
she, "he could see."
"I don't know about that," said Jim lazily, looking over at the other
group; "a woman can conceal her feelings in such a case pretty
completely."
"I don't know about that," echoed Antonia. "I wish I did; it would
simplify things."
"I believe," said I, "that it's a simple enough matter for you to solve
and manage as it is."
"But it's so absurd to bother with!" said she; "and what's the use?"
"Doesn't it seem that way?" said Jim. "And yet you know we brought him
here for a definite purpose; and in his present state he can't make
good. Just read his editorial this morning: it would add gloom to the
proceedings, read at a funeral. We want things whooped up, and he wants
to whoop 'em; but long screeds on 'The Sacred Right of Self-destruction'
hurt things, and bring the paper into disrepute, and crowd out
optimistic matter that we desire. And as long as both families want the
thing brought about, and there is good reason to think that Laura will
not prove eternally immovable, I take it to be an important enough
matter, from the standpoint of dollars and cents, for the exercise of
our diplomacy."
"Well, then," said Antonia, "get the people together on some social
occasion, and we'll try."
"I've thought," said Jim, "of having a house-warming--as soon as the
weather gets so that the very name of the function won't keep folks
away. My house is practically done, you know."
"Just the thing," said Antonia. "There are cosy nooks and deep retreats
enough to make it a sort of labyrinth for the ensnaring of our victims."
"Isn't it a queer thing in language," said Jim, "that these retreats are
the places where advances are made!"
"Not when you consider," said Antonia, "that retreats follow repulses."
"We ought to have the Captain and the General here, if this military
conversation is to continue," said I. "And here comes Cecil. Stop before
he comes, or we shall never get through with the explanation of the
jokes."
This remark elicited the laughter which the puns failed to provoke; for
Cecil was color-blind in all things relating to the American joke. The
humor of _Punch_ appealed to him, and the wit of Sterne and Dean Swift;
but the funny column and the paragrapher's niche of our newspapers he
regarded as purely pathological phenomena. I sometimes feel that Cecil
was right about this. Can the mind which continues to be charmed by
these paragraphic strainings be really sound?--but this is not a
dissertation. Cecil reconciled himself to his position as the local
exemplification of the traditional Englishman whose trains of ideas run
on the freight schedule--and was one of the most popular fellows in
Lattimore. He gloried in his slavery to Antonia, and seemed to glean
hope from the most sterile circumstances.
It was easy to hope, in Lattimore, then. It was not many days after our
talk in the park before I noticed a change for the better in Giddings,
even. Just before Jim's house-warming, he came to me with something like
optimism in his appearance. I started to cheer him up, and went wrong.
"I'm glad to see by your cheerful looks," said I, "that the philosophy
of Iago--"
"Say, now!" cried he, "don't remind me of that, for Heaven's sake!"
"Why, certainly not," said I, "if you object."
"I do object," said he most earnestly; "why, that damned-fool philosophy
may have ruined my life, you know."
"Of course I know what you mean," said I; "but I'm convinced, and so are
all your friends, that if you fail, it'll be your own lack of nerve, and
nothing else, that you'll owe the disaster to. You should--"
"I should have refrained from trampling under foot the dearest ideals of
the only girl-- However, I can't talk of these things to any one,
Barslow. But I have some hope now. Antonia and Josie have both been very
kind lately--and say, Barslow, I see now how little foundation there is
for that old gag about the women hating each other!"
"I've always felt," said I, anxious to draw him out so that I might see
what the conspirators had been doing, "that there's nothing in _that_
idea. But what has changed your view?"
"Antonia, and Josie, and even your wife," said he, "have been keeping up
a regular lobby in my behalf with Laura. They think they've got the deal
plugged up now, so that she'll give me a show again, and--"
"Why, surely," said I; "in my opinion, there never was any need for you
to feel downcast."
"Barslow," he said, with the air of a man who has endured to the limit,
"you are a good fellow, but you make me tired when you talk like that.
Why, four weeks ago I had no more show than a snowball in--in the
crater of Vesuvius. But now I'm encouraged. These girls have been doing
me good, as I just said, and I'm convinced that my series of editorials
on 'The Influence of Christianity on Civilization,' in which I've given
the Church the credit of being the whole thing, has helped some."
"They ought to do good somewhere," said I, "they certainly haven't
boomed Lattimore any."
"Damn Lattimore!" said he bitterly. "When a man's very life--But see
here, Barslow, I know you're not in earnest about this. And I'll be all