The Gentleman From Indiana

B >> Booth Tarkington >> The Gentleman From Indiana

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

"And for the Carlow 'Herald,'" completed the foreman.

The morning following that upon which this conversation took place, the
two gentlemen stood together on the station platform, awaiting the arrival
of the express from Rouen. It was a wet gray day; the wide country lay
dripping under formless wraps of thin mist, and a warm, drizzling rain
blackened the weather-beaten shingles of the station; made clear-
reflecting puddles of the unevenly worn planks of the platform, and
dampened the packing-cases that never went anywhere too thoroughly for
occupation by the station-lounger, and ran in a little crystal stream off
Fisbee's brown cotton umbrella and down Mr. Parker's back. The 'bus
driver, Mr. Bennett, the proprietor of two attendant "cut-unders," and
three or four other worthies whom business, or the lack of it, called to
that locality, availed themselves of the shelter of the waiting-room, but
the gentlemen of the "Herald" were too agitated to be confined, save by
the limits of the horizon. They had reached the station half an hour
before train time, and consumed the interval in pacing the platform under
the cotton umbrella, addressing each other only in monosyllables. Those in
the waiting-room gossiped eagerly, and for the thousandth time, about the
late events, and the tremendous news concerning Fisbee. Judd Bennett
looked out through the rainy doorway at the latter with reverence and a
fine pride of townsmanship, declaring it to be his belief that Fisbee and
Parker were waiting for her at the present moment. It was a lady, and a
bird of a lady, too, else why should Cale Parker be wearing a coat, and be
otherwise dooded and fixed up beyond any wedding? Judd and his friends
were somewhat excited over Parker.

Fisbee was clad in his best shabby black, which lent an air of state to
the occasion, but Mr. Parker--Caleb Parker, whose heart, during his five
years of residence in Plattville, had been steel-proof against all the
feminine blandishments of the town, whose long, lank face had shown
beneath as long, and lanker, locks of proverbially uncombed hair, he who
had for weeks conspicuously affected a single, string-patched suspender,
who never, even upon the Sabbath day, wore a collar or blacked his shoes--
what aesthetic leaven had entered his soul that he donned not a coat alone
but also a waistcoat with checks?--and, more than _that_, a gleaming
celluloid collar?--and, more than that, a brilliant blue tie? What had
this iron youth to do with a rising excitement at train time and brilliant
blue ties?

Also, it might have been inquired if this parade of fashion had no
connection with the simultaneous action of Mr. Ross Schofield; for Ross
was at this hour engaged in decorating the battered chairs in the "Herald"
editorial room with blue satin ribbon, the purchase of which at the Dry
Goods Emporium had been directed by a sudden inspiration of his superior
of the composing force. It was Ross's intention to garnish each chair with
an elaborately tied bow, but, as he was no sailor and understood only the
intricacies of a hard-knot, he confined himself to that species of
ornamentation, leaving, however, very long ends of ribbon hanging down
after the manner of the pendants of rosettes.

It scarcely needs the statement that his labors were in honor of the new
editor-in-chief of the Carlow "Herald." The advent and the purposes of
this personage were, as yet, known certainly to only those of the "Herald"
and to the Briscoes. It had been arranged, however, that Minnie and her
father were not to come to the station, for the journalistic crisis was
immoderately pressing; the "Herald" was to appear on the morrow, and the
new editor wished to plunge directly, and without the briefest
distraction, into the paper's difficulties, now accumulated into a
veritable sea of troubles. The editor was to be delivered to the Briscoes
at eventide and returned by them again at dewy morn; and this was to be
the daily programme. It had been further--and most earnestly--stipulated
that when the wounded proprietor of the ailing journal should be informed
of the addition to his forces, he was not to know, or to have the
slenderest hint of, the sex or identity of the person in charge during his
absence. It was inevitable that Plattville (already gaping to the
uttermost) would buzz voluminously over it before night, but Judge Briscoe
volunteered to prevent the buzz from reaching Rouen. He undertook to
interview whatever citizens should visit Harkless, or write to him--when
his illness permitted visits and letters--and forewarn them of the
incumbent's desires. To-day, the judge stayed at home with his daughter,
who trilled about the house for happiness, and, in their place, the
"Herald" deputation of two had repaired to the station to act as a
reception committee.

Far away the whistle of the express was heard, muffled to sweetness in the
damp, and the drivers, whip in hand, came out upon the platform, and the
loafers issued, also, to stand under the eaves and lean their backs
against the drier boards, preparing to eye the travellers with languid
raillery.

Mr. Parker, very nervous himself, felt the old man's elbow trembling
against his own as the great engine, reeking in the mist, and sending
great clouds of white vapor up to the sky, rushed by them, and came to a
standstill beyond the platform.

Fisbee and the foreman made haste to the nearest vestibule, and were
gazing blankly at its barred approaches when they heard a tremulous laugh
behind them and an exclamation.

"Upstairs and downstairs and in my lady's chamber! Just behind you, dear."

Turning quickly, Parker beheld a blushing and smiling little vision, a
vision with light-brown hair, a vision enveloped in a light-brown rain-
cloak and with brown gloves, from which the handles of a big brown
travelling bag were let fall, as the vision disappeared under the cotton
umbrella, while the smitten Judd Bennett reeled gasping against the
station.

"Dearest," the girl cried to the old man, "you were looking for me between
the devil and deep sea--the parlor-car and the smoker. I've given up
cigars, and I've begun to study economy, so I didn't come on either."

There was but this one passenger for Plattville; two enormous trunks
thundered out of the baggage car onto the truck, and it was the work of no
more than a minute for Judd to hale them to the top of the omnibus (he
well wished to wear them next his heart, but their dimensions forbade the
thought), and immediately he cracked his whip and drove off furiously
through the mud to deposit his freight at the Briscoes'. Parker, Mr.
Fisbee, and the new editor-in-chief set forth, directly after, in one of
the waiting cut-unders, the foreman in front with the driver, and holding
the big brown bag on his knees in much the same manner he would have held
an alien, yet respected, infant.

CHAPTER XIV

A RESCUE

The drizzle and mist blew in under the top of the cut-under as they drove
rapidly into town, and bright little drops sparkled on the fair hair above
the new editor's forehead and on the long lashes above the new editor's
cheeks.

She shook these transient gems off lightly, as she paused in the doorway
of the office at the top of the rickety stairway. Mr. Schofield had just
added the last touch to his decorations and managed to slide into his coat
as the party came up the stairs, and now, perspiring, proud, embarrassed,
he assumed an attitude at once deprecatory of his endeavors and pointedly
expectant of commendation for the results. (He was a modest youth and a
conscious; after his first sight of her, as she stood in the doorway, it
was several days before he could lift his distressed eyes under her
glance, or, indeed, dare to avail himself of more than a hasty and
fluttering stare at her when her back was turned.) As she entered the
room, he sidled along the wall and laughed sheepishly at nothing.

Every chair in the room was ornamented with one of his blue rosettes,
tied carefully (and firmly) to the middle slat of each chair-back. There
had been several yards of ribbon left over, and there was a hard knot of
glossy satin on each of the ink-stands and on the door-knobs; a blue band,
passing around the stovepipe, imparted an antique rakishness suggestive of
the charioteer; and a number of streamers, suspended from a hook in the
ceiling, encouraged a supposition that the employees of the "Herald"
contemplated the intricate festivities of May Day. It needed no genius to
infer that these garnitures had not embellished the editorial chamber
during Mr. Harkless's activity, but, on the contrary, had been put in
place that very morning. Mr. Fisbee had not known of the decorations, and,
as his glance fell upon them, a faint look of pain passed over his brow;
but the girl examined the room with a dancing eye, and there were both
tears and laughter in her heart.

"How beautiful!" she cried. "How beautiful!" She crossed the room and gave
her hand to Ross. "It is Mr. Schofield, isn't it? The ribbons are
delightful. I didn't know Mr. Harkless's room was so pretty."

Ross looked out of the window and laughed as he took her hand (which he
shook with a long up and down motion), but he was set at better ease by
her apparent unrecognition of the fact that the decorations were for her.
"Oh, it ain't much, I reckon," he replied, and continued to look out of
the window and laugh.

She went to the desk and removed her gloves and laid her rain-coat over a
chair near by. "Is this Mr. Harkless's chair?" she asked, and, Fisbee
answering that it was, she looked gravely at it for a moment, passed her
hand gently over the back of it, and then, throwing the rain-cloak over
another chair, said cheerily:

"Do you know, I think the first thing for us to do will be to dust
everything very carefully."

"You remember I was confident she would know precisely where to begin?"
was Fisbee's earnest whisper in the willing ear of the long foreman. "Not
an instant's indecision, was there?"

"No, siree!" replied the other; and, as he went down to the press-room to
hunt for a feather-duster which he thought might be found there, he
collared Bud Tipworthy, who, not admitted to the conclave of his
superiors, was whistling on the rainy stairway. "You hustle and find that
dust brush we used to have. Bud," said Parker. And presently, as they
rummaged in the nooks and crannies about the machinery, he melted to his
small assistant. "The paper is saved, Buddie--saved by an angel in light
brown. You can tell it by the look of her."

"Gee!" said Bud.

Mr. Schofield had come, blushing, to join them. "Say, Cale, did you notice
the color of her eyes?"

"Yes; they're gray."

"I thought so, too, show day, and at Kedge Halloway's lecture; but, say,
Cale, they're kind of changeable. When she come in upstairs with you and
Fisbee, they were jest as blue!--near matched the color of our ribbons."

"Gee!" repeated Mr. Tipworthy.

When the editorial chamber had been made so Beat that it almost glowed--
though it could never be expected to shine as did Fisbee and Caleb Parker
and Ross Schofield that morning--the editor took her seat at the desk and
looked over the few items the gentlemen had already compiled for her
perusal. Mr. Parker explained many technicalities peculiar to the Carlow
"Herald," translated some phrases of the printing-room, and enabled her to
grasp the amount of matter needed to fill the morrow's issue.

When Parker finished, the three incompetents sat watching the little
figure with the expression of hopeful and trusting terriers. She knit her
brow for a second--but she did not betray an instant's indecision.

"I think we should have regular market reports," she announced,
thoughtfully. "I am sure Mr. Harkless would approve. Don't you think he
would?" She turned to Parker.

"Market reports!" Mr. Fisbee exclaimed. "I should never have thought of
market reports, nor, do I imagine, would either of my--my associates. A
woman to conceive the idea of market reports!"

The editor blushed. "Why, who would, dear, if not a woman, or a
speculator, and I'm not a speculator; and neither are you, and that's the
reason you didn't think of them. So, Mr. Parker, as there is so much
pressure, and if you don't mind continuing to act as reporter as well as
compositor until after to-morrow, and if it isn't too wet--you must take
an umbrella--would it be too much bother if you went around to all the
shops--_stores_, I mean--to all the grocers', and the butchers', and that
leather place we passed, the tannery?--and if there's one of those places
where they bring cows, would it be too much to ask you to stop there?--and
at the flour-mill, if it isn't too far?--and at the dry-goods store? And
you must take a blank-book and sharpened pencil, And will you price
everything, please, and jot down how much things are?"

Orders received, the impetuous Parker was departing on the instant, when
she stopped him with a little cry: "But you haven't any umbrella!" And she
forced her own, a slender wand, upon him; it bore a cunningly wrought
handle and its fabric was of glistening silk. The foreman, unable to
decline it, thanked her awkwardly, and, as she turned to speak to Fisbee,
bolted out of the door and ran down the steps without unfolding the
umbrella; and as he made for Mr. Martin's emporium, he buttoned it
securely under his long "Prince Albert," determined that not a drop of
water should touch and ruin so delicate a thing. Thus he carried it,
triumphantly dry, through the course of his reportings of that day.

When he had gone the editor laid her hand on Fisbee's arm. "Dear," she
said, "do you think you would take cold if you went over to the hotel and
made a note of all the arrivals for the last week--and the departures,
too? I noticed that Mr. Harkless always filled two or three--sticks, isn't
it?--with them and things about them, and somehow it 'read' very nicely.
You must ask the landlord all about them; and, if there aren't any, we can
take up the same amount of space lamenting the dull times, just as he used
to. You see I've read the 'Herald' faithfully; isn't it a good thing I
always subscribed for it?" She patted Fisbee's cheek, and laughed gaily
into his mild, vague old eyes.

"It won't be this scramble to 'fill up' much longer. I have plans,
gentlemen," she cried, "and before long we will print news. And we must
buy 'plate matter' instead of 'patent insides'; and I had a talk with the
Associated Press people in Rouen--but that's for afterwhile. And I went to
the hospital this morning before I left. They wouldn't let me see him
again, but they told me all about him, and he's better; and I got Tom to
go to the jail--he was so mystified, he doesn't know what I wanted it for
--and he saw some of those beasts, and I can do a column of description
besides an editorial about them, and I will be fierce enough to suit
Carlow, you may believe that. And I've been talking to Senator Burns--that
is, listening to Senator Burns, which is much stupider--and I think I can
do an article on national politics. I'm not very well up on local issues
yet, but I--" She broke off suddenly. "There! I think we can get out
to-morrow's number without any trouble. By the time you get back from the
hotel, father, I'll have half my stuff written--'written up,' I mean. Take
your big umbrella and go, dear, and please ask at the express office if my
typewriter has come."

She laughed again with sheer delight, like a child, and ran to the corner
and got the cotton umbrella and placed it in the old man's hand. As he
reached the door, she called after him: "Wait!" and went to him and knelt
before him, and, with the humblest, proudest grace in the world, turned up
his trousers to keep them from the mud. Ross Schofield had never
considered Mr. Fisbee a particularly sacred sort of person, but he did
from that moment. The old man made some timid protest, at his daughter's
action, But she answered; "The great ladies used to buckle the Chevalier
Bayard's spurs for him, and you're a great deal nicer than the Chev----
_You haven't any rubbers_! I don't believe _any_ of you have any rubbers!"
And not until both Fisbee and Mr. Schofield had promised to purchase
overshoes at once, and in the meantime not to step in any puddles, would
she let her father depart upon his errand. He crossed the Square with the
strangest, jauntiest step ever seen in Plattville. Solomon Tibbs had a
warm argument with Miss Selina as to his identity. Miss Selina maintaining
that the figure under the big umbrella--only the legs and coat-tails were
visible to them--was that of a stranger, probably an Englishman.

In the "Herald" office the editor turned, smiling, to the paper's
remaining vassal. "Mr. Schofield, I heard some talk in Rouen of an oil
company that had been formed to prospect for kerosene in Carlow County. Do
you know anything about it?"

Ross, surfeited with honor, terror, and possessed by a sweet distress at
finding himself tete-a-tete with the lady, looked at the wall and replied:

"Oh, it's that Eph Watts's foolishness."

"Do you know if they have begun to dig for it yet?"

"Ma'am?" said Ross.

"Have they begun the diggings yet?"

"No, ma'am; I think not. They've got a contrapshun fixed up about three
mile south. I don't reckon they've begun yet, hardly; they're gittin' the
machinery in place. I heard Eph say they'd begin to bore--_dig_, I mean,
ma'am, I meant to say dig----" He stopped, utterly confused and unhappy;
and she understood his manly purpose, and knew him for a gentleman whom
she liked.

"You mustn't be too much surprised," she said; "but in spite of my
ignorance about such things, I mean to devote a good deal of space to the
oil company; it may come to be of great importance to Carlow. We won't go
into it in to-morrow's paper, beyond an item or so; but do you think you
could possibly find Mr. Watts and ask him for some information as to their
progress, and if it would be too much trouble for him to call here some
time to-morrow afternoon, or the day after? I want him to give me an
interview if he will. Tell him, please, he will very greatly oblige us."

"Oh, he'll come all right," answered her companion, quickly. "I'll take
Tibbs's buggy and go down there right off. Eph won't lose no time gittin'
_here_!" And with this encouraging assurance he was flying forth, when he,
like the others, was detained by her solicitous care. She was a born
mother. He protested that in the buggy he would be perfectly sheltered;
besides, there wasn't another umbrella about the place; he _liked_ to get
wet, anyway; had always loved rain. The end of it was that he went away in
a sort of tremor, wearing her rain-cloak over his shoulders, which
garment, as it covered its owner completely when she wore it, hung almost
to his knees. He darted around a corner; and there, breathing deeply,
tenderly removed it; then, borrowing paper and cord at a neighboring
store, wrapped it neatly, and stole back to the printing-office on the
ground floor of the "Herald" building, and left the package in charge of
Bud Tipworthy, mysteriously charging him to care for it as for his own
life, and not to open it, but if the lady so much as set one foot out of
doors before his return, to hand it to her with the message: "He borrowed
another off J. Hankins."

Left alone, the lady went to the desk and stood for a time looking gravely
at Harkless's chair. She touched it gently, as she had touched it once
before that morning, and then she spoke to it as if he were sitting there,
and as she would not have spoken, had he been sitting there.

"You didn't want gratitude, did you?" she whispered, with sad lips.

Soon she smiled at the blue ribbons, patted the chair gaily on the back,
and, seizing upon pencil and pad, dashed into her work with rare energy.
She bent low over the desk, her pencil moving rapidly, and, except for a
momentary interruption from Mr. Tipworthy, she seemed not to pause for
breath; certainly her pencil did not. She had covered many sheets when
her father returned; and, as he came in softly, not to disturb her, she
was so deeply engrossed she did not hear him; nor did she look up when
Parker entered, but pursued the formulation of her fast-flying ideas with
the same single purpose and abandon; so the two men sat and waited while
their chieftainess wrote absorbedly. At last she glanced up and made a
little startled exclamation at seeing them there, and then gave them
cheery greeting. Each placed several scribbled sheets before her, and she,
having first assured herself that Fisbee had bought his overshoes, and
having expressed a fear that Mr. Parker had found her umbrella too small,
as he looked damp (and indeed he _was_ damp), cried praises on their notes
and offered the reporters great applause.

"It is all so splendid!" she cried. "How could you do it so quickly? And
in the rain, too! This is exactly what we need. I've done most of the
things I mentioned, I think, and made a draught of some plans for
hereafter. And about that man's coming out for Congress, I must tell you
it is my greatest hope that he will. We can let it go until he does, and
then----But doesn't it seem to you that it would be a good notion for the
'Herald' to have a woman's page--'For Feminine Readers,' or, 'Of Interest
to Women'--once a week?"

"A woman's page!" exclaimed Fisbee. "I could never have thought of that,
could you, Mr. Parker?"

"And now," she continued, "I think that when I've gone over what I've
written and beat it into better shape I shall be ready for something to
eat. Isn't it almost time for luncheon?"

This simple, and surely natural, inquiry had a singular, devastating
effect upon her hearers. They looked upon each other with fallen jaws and
complete stupefaction. The old man began to grow pale, and Parker glared
about him with a wild eye. Fortunately, the editor was too busy at her
work to notice their agitation; she applied herself to making alterations
here and there, sometimes frowningly crossing out whole lines and even
paragraphs, sometimes smiling and beaming at the writing; and, as she bent
earnestly over the paper, against the darkness of the rainy day, the
glamour about her fair hair was like a light in the room. To the minds of
her two companions, this lustre was a gentle but unbearable accusation;
and each dreaded the moment when her Work should be finished, with a great
dread. There was a small "store-room" adjoining the office, and presently
Mr. Parker, sweating at the brow, walked in there. The old man gave him a
look of despairing reproach, but in a moment the foreman's voice was
heard: "Oh, Mr. Fisbee, can you step here a second?"

"Yes, indeed!" was Fisbee's reply; and he fled guiltily into the "store-
room," and Parker closed the door. They stood knee-deep in the clutter and
lumber, facing each other abjectly.

"Well, we're both done, anyway, Mr. Fisbee," remarked the foreman.

"Indubitably, Mr. Parker," the old man answered; "it is too true."

"Never to think a blame thing about dinner for her!" Parker continued,
remorsefully. "And her a lady that can turn off copy like a rotary
snowplough in a Dakota blizzard! Did you see the sheets she's piled up on
that desk?"

"There is no cafe--nothing--in Plattville, that could prepare food worthy
of her," groaned Fisbee. "Nothing!"

"And we never thought of it. Never made a single arrangement. Never struck
us she didn't live on keeping us dry and being good, I guess."

"How can I go there and tell her that?"

"Lord!"

"She cannot go to the hotel----"

"Well, I guess not! It ain't fit for her. Lum's table is hard enough on a
strong man. Landis doesn't know a good cake from a Fiji missionary
pudding. I don't expect pie is much her style, and, besides, the Palace
Hotel pies--well!--the boss was a mighty uncomplaining man, but I used to
notice his articles on field drainage got kind of sour and low-spirited
when they'd been having more than the regular allowance of pie for dinner.
She can't go there anyway; it's no use; it's after two o'clock, and the
dining-room shuts off at one. I wonder what kind of cake she likes best."

"I don't know," said the perplexed Fisbee. "If we ask her--"

"If we could sort of get it out of her diplomatically, we could telegraph
to Rouen for a good one."

"Ha!" said the other, brightening up. "You try it, Mr. Parker. I fear I
have not much skill in diplomacy, but if you----"

The compositor's mouth drooped at the corners, and he interrupted
gloomily: "But it wouldn't get here till to-morrow."

"True; it would not."

They fell into a despondent reverie, with their chins in their bosoms.
There came a cheerful voice from the next room, but to them it brought no
cheer; in their ears it sounded weak from the need of food and faint with
piteous reproach.

"Father, aren't you coming to have luncheon with me?"

"Mr. Parker, what are we to do?" whispered the old man, hoarsely.

"Is it too far to take her to Briscoes'?"

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23