Part 16

"Back yesterday. Good as new. English business well started. Cyclone in New York papers this morning. Please don't abuse the Maker of it. Look out for His children. Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place. Do you want anything from here? Answer. If not, I start West at once.

"CALEB."

"'Tis evident he hasn't given up his habit of early rising," said Philip, as he gave the despatch to his wife. When she had read it, Grace said:--

"Dear Caleb! His return is absolutely providential, and his despatch is very like him."

"I'm not quite sure of that," Philip replied, shaking his head doubtingly, yet smiling under his mustache. "To be entirely like Caleb, it should have said that the cyclone was a means of grace."

"I think he distinctly intimates as much, where he refers to the Maker of the storm."

"True. Well, he expects an answer, and I will make it exactly as you wish."

Grace rubbed her drowsy eyes and instantly became alert. She looked inquiringly at her husband, and said:--

"Exactly as I wish? May I write it?"

"May you? What a question! Was there ever a time when your wish was not law to me?"

"Never--bless you!--but some laws are hard to bear."

"Not when you make them, sweetheart. Aren't we one? Write the answer."

Grace's eyes became by turns melting, luminous, dancing,--exactly as they had been of old, at the rare times when Philip would come home from the office with a pleasing surprise,--opera-tickets, perhaps, or the promise of an afternoon and night at the seashore, or a moonlight trip on the river. They reminded him of the delightful old times of which they seemed to promise a renewal, and his heart leaped with joy at the hope and belief that the answer Grace would write would break the chains that bound her and him to Claybanks. While Grace wrote, Philip closed his eyes and imagined himself and his wife spending a restful, delightful summer together, far from the heat, dust, shabbiness, and dilapidation of their part of the West. Certainly they would have earned it, and was not the laborer worthy of his hire?

He was aroused from his dreams by a bit of paper thrust into his hand. He opened his eyes and read:--

"Count on me to do as you would in the same circumstances. Will reopen for business at once. Duplicate in New York your purchases of a few weeks ago. Refer to ---- Bank, in which I have a large deposit. Then hurry home.

"PHILIP."

Apparently Philip read and re-read the despatch, for he kept his eyes upon the paper a long time. When finally he looked from it he saw his wife's countenance very pale and strained. He sprang toward her, and exclaimed:--

"My dear girl, you are sacrificing yourself!"

"Oh, no, I am not," Grace whispered.

"Then why are you trembling so violently?--why do you look like a person in the agony of death?"

"Because--because I fear that I am trying to sacrifice you--dooming you for life. The despatch shan't go, for you don't like it. Yet I wrote only what I thought was right. All that you inherited from your uncle was earned here, from the people who have suffered by the cyclone, or must suffer from the troubles that will follow it. 'Twould be heartless--really dishonest--to leave them, wouldn't it? Besides, many of them like us very much, and have learned to look up to us, after a fashion. Perhaps I wrote too hastily; it may not be practicable, but--"

"Trying, at least, will be practicable," said Philip, after a mighty effort against himself. "'When in Rome, do as the Romans do;' when with an angel, follow the angel's lead. I'll hire some one at once to take the despatch to the wire, and then--why, then I'll wonder where to reopen for business until the store can be rebuilt."

"Why won't the warehouse answer? And why don't you go at once to the city?--'tis only a trip of three or four hours, buy a small assortment of groceries and other things most likely to be called for at once, and order a larger stock, by wire, from Chicago? Caleb's purchases will follow quickly. While you're away I'll manage to get the warehouse into some resemblance to a store ready for goods; some men can surely be hired, and I'll get Mr. Truett to help devise such makeshifts as are necessary. You can be back by to-morrow night, if you start at once."

"Upon my word, dear girl, you talk like a business veteran from a cyclone country. If woman's intuitions can yield such business telegrams and plans as you've disclosed within ten minutes, I think it is time for men to go into retirement."

"Women's intuitions, indeed!" Grace murmured, with an accompaniment of closing eyes, yawning, stretching, and other indications of insufficient slumber. "I've lain awake most of the night, wondering what we ought to do and how to do it."

"And your husband stupidly slept!"

"Not being a woman, he wasn't nervous, and I am very glad of it. As for me, I couldn't sleep, so I had to think of something, and I knew of nothing better to think of. But before you go to the city let's get into the buggy and drive over the course of the storm in our county, and see if any one specially needs help."

"And leave the remains of our store smouldering?"

"We can get Mr. Truett to attend to it. Engineers ought to know something about keeping fires down."

"I wonder where he is. I thoughtlessly asked him to breakfast with us this morning. I hope he's not starving somewhere, in anticipation. I hope, also, that we've enough food material in the house to last a day or two; we've the ice-house and warehouse to fall back upon for meats. By the way, isn't it fortunate that I adopted Uncle Jethro's habit of keeping most of the store cash on my person? Otherwise we'd be penniless until the safe could be got from the ruins, and cooled and opened."

While Grace was preparing breakfast Philip hurried about to learn whether any additional casualties of the storm had been reported, and he soon encountered the young engineer, who looked as cheerful as if cyclones were to be reckoned among blessings.

"I've been out on horseback since daylight," said he, "and everything is lovely."

"There's some ground for difference of opinion," replied Philip, looking at the damaged court-house and church.

"I meant at the ditch and the swamps," the young man explained hastily. "In spite of the great rainfall yesterday, the ditch did not overflow, nor is there any standing water in the swamps. That isn't all; enough trees have been knocked down, within three or four miles of town, to make a block pavement for the main street--perhaps enough to pave the road from here to the railway, so that full wagon-loads could be hauled all winter long. But there's still more: the creek has been accidentally dammed, a mile or two from town, by a bridge that the cyclone took from its place and set up on edge in the stream. A little work there, at once, would prepare a head for the water-power which I'm told the town has been palavering about for years, and if you don't want water-power, 'twould supply plenty of good water to be piped to town, to replace the foul stuff from wells that have been polluted by drainage. Doctor Taggess says some of the wells are to blame for many of the troubles charged to malaria."

"Harold Truett," said Philip, "do have mercy upon us! We'll yet hear of you engineers trying to get the inhabitants of a cemetery interested in some of your enterprises. Block pavements, indeed!--and water-power!--and a reservoir!--and pipe-service!--all this to a man whose principal lot of worldly goods is still burning, and in a town not yet a full day past a cyclone!"

"Oh, the town's all right," said Truett, confidently. "At least, the people are. Already they're making the best of it and trying to make repairs, and wondering to one another, in true Western fashion, if the disaster won't make the town widely talked of, and give it a boom."

"They are, eh? Well, I shan't allow the procession to get ahead of me. Do you wish to superintend the transforming of my warehouse into a temporary store, while I hurry away to buy goods? Mrs. Somerton can tell you what we need. You may also see that the fire which is consuming the remains of the old store is kept down or put out. I think the two jobs will keep you very busy."

"Quite likely, but I wish you'd keep that block pavement and water-power and reservoir in mind, and speak to people about them. A town is like a man: if it must make a new start, it might as well start right, and for all it is worth."

"Bless me! You've been here less than two months, yet you talk like a rabid Westerner! Do you chance to know just when and where you caught the fever?"

"Oh, yes," replied the young man, with a laugh. "I got it in New York, while listening to your man, Caleb Wright. I couldn't help it. I forgot to say that now ought to be the time to coax a practical brick-maker to town, and show what the banks of clay are really good for. Do it before the state newspapers stop sending men down here to write about the cyclone, and you'll get a lot of free advertising. And a railway company ought to be persuaded to push a spur down here; they would do it if you had water-power and any mills to use it."

"Anything else? Are all engineers like you?--contriving to turn nothing into something?"

"They ought to be. That's what they were made for. So were other people, though some of them seem slow to understand it. I wish you'd appoint me a reception committee to talk to all newspaper correspondents that come down to write up the horrors. If you'll tell your fellow-citizens to refer all such chaps to me, I'll engage to have the town's natural resources exploited in fine style."

Philip promised, and an hour later when he and Grace were driving rapidly over one of the county roads, Philip said that if Miss Truett were of like temperament to her brother, it was not strange that she was head of a large department. Still, Philip thought it strange that a young man of so much energy and perceptive power should see anything promising in Claybanks.

"'Tis all because of Caleb," Grace replied confidently. "Mr. Truett says that Caleb was quite voluble about the defects of the country, but his truthfulness was fascinating through its uniqueness."

"H'm! 'Tis evident that Caleb was the cause of Truett coming here, so the town is still more deeply in debt to Caleb, who, poor chap, will return to miss everything that he left behind him in his room, and even the roof that sheltered him."

"And he was so attached to his belongings, too!" Grace said. "Do invite him, by wire, to regard our home as his own; he is not the kind of man to abuse the invitation, and I'm sure he will appreciate it."

Within six hours Philip had seen all of his own customers who had been in the track of the storm, he had asked if there was anything in particular he could bring them from the city, and assured them that if they did not make free use of him, they would have only themselves to blame. Naturally, he did not neglect to say that within a week he would have on sale as large an assortment of goods as usual, and one with no "dead stock" in it. Before nightfall, he was in the nearest small city, and purchasing at a rate that made the dealers glad, and he was also ordering freely by wire from Chicago houses that had sold to Jethro Somerton for years, and who felt assured that no mere cyclone and fire could lessen the Somerton power to pay. Twenty-four hours later he was at home, congratulating his wife and Truett on the transformation of the dingy warehouse into a light, clean-appearing room, thanks to hundreds of yards of sheeting that had been tacked overhead in lieu of ceiling, and also to the walls. Counters had been extemporized, and shelving was going up. Some of the contents of the old store had been saved, and the remainder was being drenched by a bucket brigade, under the direction of Truett, who reported that he had had no trouble in securing workmen, for Mrs. Somerton had asked them as a special favor to her, and they had tumbled over one another in their eagerness to respond. As to himself, he had found time to draw exterior and interior plans for a new store to be erected on the old foundations, and he begged permission to begin work as soon as the ruins were cool; for, said he, "Lumber and labor will never be cheaper here than they are now."

"As I remarked before I left, you're a rabid Westerner," Philip said, in admiration of the young man's enthusiasm.

"Give it any name you like," was the reply, "though I'm suggesting only what any Eastern man would do. Besides, I'd like to see everything well started or arranged before Caleb can reach here."

"You seem to have become remarkably fond of Caleb on very short acquaintance," said Philip.

"I have," was the reply, "and since I've learned that he was sent East principally to regain his health, I'd like, in justice to both you and him, that he should find nothing to give him a setback. That's only fair, isn't it?"

"'Tis more than fair. 'Tis very hearty, and greatly to your credit."

"Oh, well; put it that way, if you like."

Philip's goods began to arrive a day later, in farm wagons, moving almost in procession to and from Claybanks and the railway town, and several men worked at unpacking them, while Philip and Grace arranged them on the shelves and under the counters. When Saturday night ended the fourth day, the merchant and his wife were fit to enjoy a day of rest on Sunday. Sunday morning came, and while Philip and Grace were leisurely preparing their breakfast, there was a knock at the door. Philip opened it, and shouted:--

"Grace!"

Grace hurried from the kitchen, embraced a lady whom she saw, and exclaimed:--

"Mary Truett!"

"Mrs. Wright, if you please," replied the lady.

"I beg a thousand pardons!" Grace gasped. She soon recovered herself and looked very roguish as she continued, "Won't you kindly introduce me to the distinguished-looking stranger beside you?"

Then Caleb pushed his hat to the back of his head, slapped his leg noisily, and exclaimed:--

"Distinguished--looking--stranger! Hooray!"

XXIV--HOW IT CAME ABOUT

"NOW, Caleb," said Philip, after the four had been seated at the breakfast table so long that most of the food had disappeared, "tell us all about it. Don't leave out anything."

"All right," said Caleb, after emptying his coffee-cup. "I'll begin at the beginning. I don't s'pose 'tis necessary to tell any of you that New York is a mighty big city, an' London is another, so--"

"New York savors of business, and so does London," said Philip, "and as this is Sunday, I must decline to hear a word about worldly things. I'm amazed that so orthodox a man as you should think of such matters on Sunday."

"Tell him, Caleb," Grace added, "and tell me also, about something heavenly--something angelic, at least--something resembling a special mercy, or a means of grace." As she spoke, she looked so significantly at Mary, that Caleb could no longer pretend to misunderstand.

"Well," said he, "as I came back double when you expected only to see me single, I s'pose a word or two of explanation would only be fair to all concerned. You see, before I started for London I felt pretty well acquainted with Mary, for I'd been in New York two or three weeks. That mightn't seem a long time, to some, in which to form an acquaintance that will last through life an' eternity, but such things depend a lot on the person who's doin' 'em, an', as you know, my principal business for years has been to study human nature in general, an' particularly whatever specimen of it is nearest at hand. In New York it had come to be as natural as breathin', an' mighty interestin' too, especially when the person's p'ints were first-rate, an' I had reason to believe that I was bein' studied at the same time by somebody who had a knack at the business an' didn't have any reason to mean harm to me."

"Any one--any New Yorker, at least,--would have found Caleb an interesting subject,--don't you think so?" said Mary, with a shy look of inquiry.

"I'm very sure that Philip and I did," Grace replied.

"Well, 'twas all of Mrs. Somerton's doin', for she gave me a letter of introduction to Miss Mary Truett: the Lord reward her accordin' to her works, as the Apostle Paul said about Alexander the Coppersmith. I carried a lot of other letters, you'll remember, and every one to whom they were given was quite polite an' obligin'; but business is business, so as soon as the business was done, they were done with me. But Mary wasn't."

"She wasn't allowed to be," Mary whispered.

"I reckon that's so," Caleb admitted; "for somehow I kept wantin' to hear the sound of her voice just once more--just to see what there was about it that made it so different from other voices, so I kept makin' business excuses that I thought were pretty clever an' reasonable-like, an' she was always good-natured enough to take 'em as they were meant."

"What else could she do?" asked Mary, with an appealing look. "The rules against personal acquaintances dropping into the store to chat were quite strict, and applied to heads of departments as well as to other employees. Caleb's plausible manner deceived no one, but he was so odd, at first, and so entertaining, that every one in authority in the store quickly learned to like him, and were glad to see him come in. They would make excuses to saunter near us, and listen to the conversation, and whenever he went out, some of them remained to tease me. They saw through him before I did, and made so much of what they saw that, in the course of time, I had to work hard to rally myself whenever I saw Caleb approaching."

"She did it splendidly, too," said Caleb. "In a little while I got so that my eye could catch her the minute I found myself inside the store, no matter how many people were between us, yet I'm middlin' short, as you know, an' she isn't tall. She'd be talkin' business, as sober as a judge, with somebody, but by the time I got pretty nigh, her face would look like a lot o' Mrs. Somerton's pet flowers--red roses, an' white roses, an' a couple o' rich pansies between, an' around 'em all a great tangle o' gold thread to keep 'em from gettin' away."

"Caleb!" exclaimed Mary. "Your friends want only facts."

"I'm sure he's giving us nothing else," Grace said, looking admiringly at Mary, while Philip added:--

"He's doing it very nicely, too. Bravo, Caleb! Go on."

"Well, she was kind o' curious about the West, like a good many other New Yorkers who hadn't ever been away from home, and one day she asked me if there was any chance out here for a young man who was a civil engineer and landscape architect. She said so much about the young man's smartness an' willingness, an' pluck, an' good nature, that all of a sudden I found myself kind o' hatin' that young man, an' it didn't take me long to find out why, an' when I saw that the trouble was that I was downright jealous of him, I said to myself, 'Caleb, you're an old fool,' an' I put in some good hard prayin' right then an' there. Suddenly she explained that the young man was her brother, an'--well, I reckon there never was a prayer bitten off shorter an' quicker than that prayer was. She wished he could meet me, an' I said that any brother o' hers could command me at any time an' anywhere, so we fixed it that I should call at their house that very evenin'. Well, I liked his looks an' his p'ints in general, an' he asked no end o' the right kind o' questions, an' she helped him. I told 'em ev'rythin', good an' bad--specially the latter--malaria, scattered population, bad roads, poor farming, poor clothes, scarcity of ready cash, all the houses small an' shabby; for up to that time it seemed to me that everybody in New York lived in a palace an' wore Sunday clothes ev'ry day of the week; afterwards I went about with some city missionaries an' policemen, an' came to the conclusion that the poorest man in this town an' county is rich, compared with more than half of the people in New York. But that's gettin' over the fence an' into another field. Her brother was so interested that nothin' would do but that I should go back an' take supper with 'em next evenin' an' continue the talk. Well, 'Barkis was willin',' as a chap in one of your circulatin' library books said. Pity that library's burned; I'll put up half the expense of a new one, for if ever there was a means of grace--"

"It shall be replaced," said Philip, "but--one means of grace at a time. Do go back to the original story."

"Oh! Well, the next day happened to be the one in which I met my old army chum, Jim, who reconstructed me in the way I wrote you about. One consequence of Jim's over-haulin' was that when I got to their house an' walked into their parlor, they didn't know me from Adam; both of 'em stood there, like a couple o' stuck pigs."

"What an elegant expression!" exclaimed Mary.

"You don't say that as if you b'lieved it over an' above hard, my dear, but I do assure you that the expression means a lot to Western people. Pretty soon her brother came to himself an' asked what had happened, an' I said, 'Oh, nothin', except that when I'm in Turkey, an' likely to stay awhile, I try to do as the turkeys do.' Well, things kept goin' on, about that way, for some days, an' between thinkin' 'twas time for that corn-meal to come, an' wishin' that it wasn't, an' wishin' a lot of other things, I was in quite a state o' mind for a while, an' self-examination didn't help me much.

"All the time there kep' runnin' in my mind an old sayin' that your Uncle Jethro was mighty fond of--'There's only one hoss in the world,' an' the most I could do to keep from bein' a plumb fool was to remind myself that that sort of a hoss had some rights of its own that ought to be respected. I showed off my own good p'ints as well as I could, an' I coaxed Mary to go about with me considerable, because Mrs. Somerton had told me that her judgment and taste were remarkably good,--that's the excuse I made,--an' we talked about a lot o' things, an' found we didn't disagree about much. I accidentally let out what I was goin' to England for, an' she got powerful interested in it, for she'd read an' heard lots about the way the poorest English live in big cities, so she thought I was really goin' on missionary work, an' she said she would almost be willing to be a man if she could have such a job.

"She looked so splendid when she said it that I felt plumb electrified--felt just as if a new nerve had suddenly been put into me some way, so I made bold to say that she'd do that sort o' work far better as a woman, an' that there was a way for her to do it, too, if she was willin', an' if her minister would say a few words appropriate to that kind of arrangement."

"That is exactly the way he spoke," said Mary, "and as coolly as if he wasn't saying anything of special importance."

"Caleb's mind is sometimes in the clouds," Grace said, "where everything for the time being appears just as it should be."

"That must be so, I reckon, Mrs. Somerton," said Caleb, "seein' that you say it; but I want to remark that if I was in the clouds that day, I got out of 'em mighty quick, an' down to earth, an' mebbe a mighty sight lower; for Mary suddenly turned very white, an' right away I felt as if Judgment Day had come, an' I'd been roped off among the goats. But all of a sudden she turned rosy, an' said, very gentle-like an' sweet, ''Tis a long way to London, an' you might change your mind on the way.' Said I, ''Tis longer to eternity, but I'll be of the same mind till then, an' after, too.' She was kind o' skittish for a while after that, but she didn't do any kickin', which I took for a good sign."

"Kicking, indeed!" said Mary, studying the decoration of her coffee-cup. "Breathing was all the poor thing dared hope to do."