Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee Magic
moment later Jim came in, his face graver than I had ever seen it. He
sat down by Mrs. Trescott, and gently took one of her hands.
"Dr. Aylesbury has given him a morphia injection," said he, "and he is
sound asleep. The doctor thinks it best for us to carry him right to his
room. There is a man here from the hospital, who will stay and nurse
him; and the doctor came, too."
Mrs. Trescott started up, saying that she must arrange his room. Soon
the four of us had placed him in bed, where he lay, puffy and purple,
with a sort of pasty pallor overspreading his face. His limbs
occasionally jerked spasmodically; but otherwise he was still under the
spell of the opiate. His wife, now that there was something definite to
do, was self-possessed and efficient, taking the physician's
instructions with ready apprehension. The fact that Bill had now assumed
the character of a patient rather than that of a portent seemed to make
the trouble, somehow, more normal and endurable. The wife and daughter
insisted upon assuming the care of him, but assented to the nurse's
remaining as a help in emergencies. It was nearing dawn when I took my
leave. As I approached the door, I saw Jim and Josie in the hall, and
heard him making some last tenders of aid and comfort before his
departure. He put out his hand, and she clasped it in both of hers.
"I want to thank you," said she, "for what you have done."
"I have done nothing," he replied. "It is what I wish to do that I want
you to think of. I do not know whether I shall ever be able to forgive
myself--"
"No, no!" said she. "You must not talk--you must not allow yourself to
feel in that way. It is unjust--to yourself and to--me--for you to feel
so!"
I advanced to them, but she still stood looking into his face and
holding his hand clasped in hers. There was something of appeal, of an
effort to express more than the words said, in her look and attitude. He
answered her regard by a gaze so pathetically wistful that she averted
her face, pressed his hand, and turned to me.
"Good-night to you both, and thank you both, a thousand times!" said
she.
* * * * *
"I wonder if old Shep's relations and friends," said Jim, as we stood
under the arc light in front of my house, "ever came to forgive the
people who took him away from his flocks and herds."
"After what I've seen in the last few minutes," said I, "I haven't the
least doubt of it."
"Al," said he, "these be troublous times, but if I believed all that
what you say implies, I'd go home happy, if not jolly. And I almost
believe you're right."
"Well," said I, assuming for once the role of the mentor, "I think that
you are foolish to worry about it. We have enough actual, well-defined,
surveyed and platted grief on our hands, without any mooning about
hunting for the speculative variety. Go home, sleep, and bring down a
clear brain for to-morrow's business."
"To-day's," said he gaily. "Tear off yesterday's leaf from the calendar,
Al. For, look! the morn, dressed as usual, 'walks o'er the dew of yon
high eastern hill.'"
CHAPTER XVII.
Relating to the Disposition of the Captives.
It was not later than the next day but one, that I met Giddings, alert,
ingratiating, and natty as ever.
"When am I to have the third stanza?" I inquired, "the one that's 'the
best of all.'"
This question he seemed to take as a rebuke; for he reddened, while he
tried to laugh.
"Barslow," said he, "there isn't any use in our discussing this thing.
You couldn't understand it. A man like you, who can calculate to a hair
just how far he is going and just where to turn back, and--Oh, damn!
There's no use!"
I sympathize with Giddings, at this present moment, in his despair of
making people understand; for I doubt, sometimes, whether it is possible
for me to make the reader understand the conditions with us in Lattimore
at the time when poor Trescott lay there in his fine house, fighting for
life, and for many things more important, and while the wedding
preparations were going forward at the General's house.
To the steady-going, stationary, passionless community these conditions
approach the incomprehensible. No one seemed to doubt the city's future
now. Sometimes the abnormal basis upon which our great new industries
had been established struck the stranger with distrust, if he happened
to have the insight to notice it; but the concerns _were there_ most
undeniably, and had shifted population in their coming, and were turning
out products for the markets of the world.
That they had been evolved magically, and set in operation, not by any
slow process of meeting a felt want, but for this sole purpose of
shifting population, might be, and undoubtedly was, unusual; but given
the natural facilities for carrying the business on, and how did this
forced genesis adversely affect their prospects?
I, for one, could see no reason for apprehension. Yet when the story of
Trescott's maudlin plunging came to our ears, and the effect of his
possible failure received consideration, or I thought of the business
explosion which would follow any open breach between Jim and Cornish
(though this seemed too remote for serious consideration), I began to
ponder on the enormously complex system of credits we had built up.
Besides the regular line of bonds and mortgages growing out of debts due
us on our real-estate sales, and against which we had issued the
debentures and the guaranteed rediscounts of the Grain Belt Trust
Company, the factories, stock yards, terminals, street-car system, and
most of our other properties were pretty heavily bonded. Some of them
were temporarily unproductive, and funds had from time to time to be
provided, from sources other than their own earnings, for the payment of
their interest-charges. On the whole, however, we had been able to carry
the entire line forward from position to position with such success that
the people were kept in a fever, and accessions to our population kept
pouring in which, of their own force, added fuel to the fire of
expectancy.
This one thing began to make me uneasy--there was no place to stop. A
failure among us would quench this expectancy, and values would no
longer increase. And everything was organized on the basis of the
continued crescendo. That was the reason why every uplift in prices had
been followed by a new and strenuous effort on our part to hoist them
still higher. For that reason, we, who had become richer than we had
ever hoped to be, kept toiling on to rear to greater and greater heights
an edifice which the eternal forces of nature itself clutched, to drag
down.
I was the first to suggest this feature in conference. The Trescott
scare had made me more thoughtful. True, outwardly things were more than
ever booming. The very signs on the streets spoke of the boom. It was
"Lumber, Coal, and Real Estate"; "Burbank's Livery, Feed, and Sale
Stable. Office of Burbank Realty Co."; or "Thronson & Larson, Grocers.
Choice Lots in Thronson's Addition." Even Giddings had platted the
"_Herald_ Addition," and was offering a choice quarter-block as a prize
to the person who could guess nearest to the average monthly increase in
values in the addition, as shown by the record of sales. Real estate
appeared as a part of the business of hardware stores and milliners'
shops, so that one was constantly reminded of the heterogeneous
announcements on the signboard of Mr. Wegg. But while all this went on,
and transactions "in dirt" were larger than ever, one could see
indications that there was in them a larger and larger element of
credit, and less and less cash. So one day, at a syndicate conference, I
sought to ease my mind by asking where this thing was to stop, and when
we could hope for a time when the town would not have to be held up by
main strength.
"Why, that's a very remarkable question!" said Mr. Hinckley. "We surely
haven't reached the point where we can think of stopping. Why, with the
history before us of the cities of America which, without half our
natural advantages, have grown to so many times the size of this, I'm
surprised that such a thing should be thought of! Just think of what
Chicago was in '54 when I came through. A village without a harbor,
built along the ditches of a frog-pond! And see it now; see it now!"
There was a little quiver in Mr. Hinckley's voice, a little infirmity of
his chin, which told of advancing years. His ideas were becoming more
fixed. It was plain that the notion of Lattimore's continued and
uninterrupted progress was one to which he would cling with the mild and
unreasoning stubbornness of gentlemanly senility. But Cornish welcomed
the discussion with something like eagerness.
"I'm glad the matter has come up," said he. "We've had a few good years
here; but, in the nature of things, won't the time come when things
will be--slower? We've got our first plans pretty well worked out. The
mills, factories, and live-stock industries are supporting population,
and making tonnage which the railroad is carrying. But what next? We
can't expect to build any more railroads soon. No line of less than five
hundred miles will do any good, strategically speaking, and sending out
stubs just to annex territory for our shippers is too slow and expensive
business for this crowd. Things are booming along now; but the Eastern
banks are getting finicky about paper, and--I think things are going to
be--slower--and that we ought to act accordingly."
There was a long silence, broken only by a dry laugh from Hinckley, and
the remark that Barslow and Cornish must be getting dyspeptic from high
living.
"Well," said Elkins at last, ignoring Hinckley and facing Cornish, "get
down to brass nails! What policy would you adopt?"
"Oh, our present policy is all right," answered he of the Van Dyke
beard--
"Yes, yes!" interjected Hinckley. "My view exactly. A wonderfully
successful policy!"
"--and," Cornish continued, "I would only suggest that we cease
spreading out--not cease talking it, but only just sort of stop doing
it--and begin to realize more rapidly on our holdings. Not so as to
break the market, you understand; but so as to keep the demand fairly
well satisfied."
Mr. Elkins was slow in replying, and when the reply came it was of the
sort which does not answer.
"A most important, not to say momentous question," said he. "Let's
figure the thing over and take it up again soon. We'll not begin to
disagree at this late day. Mr. Hinckley has warned us that he has an
engagement in thirty minutes. It seems to me we ought to dispose of the
matter of the appropriation for the interest on those Belt Lines bonds.
Wade's mash on 'Atkins, Corning & Co.' won't last long in the face of a
default."
Mr. Hinckley staid his thirty minutes and withdrew. Mr. Cornish went to
the telephone and ordered his dog-cart.
"Immediately," he instructed, "over here at the Grain Belt Trust
Building."
"Make it in half an hour, can't you, Cornish?" said Jim. "There are some
more things we ought to go over."
"Say!" shouted Cornish into the transmitter. "Make that in half an hour
instead of at once."
He hung up the telephone, and turned to Elkins inquiringly. Jim was
walking up and down on the rug, his hands clasped behind him.
"Since we've spread out into that string of banks," said he, still
keeping up his walk, "and made Mr. Hinckley the president of each of
'em, he's reverting to his old banker's timidity. Which consists, in all
cases, in an aversion to any change in conditions. To suggest any
change, even from an old, dangerous policy to a new safe one, startles a
'conservative' banker. If we had gone on a little longer with our talk
about shutting off steam and taking the nigger off the safety-valve,