Chapter 7

To such ruin does love--the blind, the lawless, the illiterate child--bring the noblest intelligences and the loftiest principles.

THE MOUTH OF THE GIFT HORSE

I

The town of Wakefield was--is--suffering from growing pains--from ingrowing pains, according to its rival, Gatesville.

Wakefield has long been guilty of trying to add a cubit to its stature by taking thought. Established, like thousands of other pools left in the prairies by that tidal wave of humanity sweeping westward in the middle of the last century, it passed its tenth thousand with a rush; then something happened.

For decades the decennial census dismally tolled the same knell of fifteen thousand in round numbers. The annual censuses but echoed the reverberations. A few more cases of measles one year, and the population lapsed a little below the mark; an easy winter, and it slipped a little above. No mandragora of bad times or bad health ever quite brought it so low as fourteen thousand. No fever of prosperity ever sent the temperature quite so high as sixteen thousand.

The iteration got on people's nerves till a commercial association was formed under the name of the Wide-a-Wakefield Club, with a motto of "Boom or Bust." Many individuals accomplished the latter, but the town still failed of the former. The chief activity of the club was in the line of decoying manufacturers over into Macedonia by various bribes.

Its first capture was a cutlery company in another city. Though apparently prosperous, it had fallen foul of the times, and its president adroitly allowed the Wide-a-Wakefield Club to learn that, if a building of sufficient size were offered rent free for a term of years, the cutlery company might be induced to move to Wakefield and conduct its business there, employing at least a hundred laborers, year in, year out.

There was not in all Wakefield a citizen too dull to see the individual and collective advantage of this hundred increase. It meant money in the pocket of every doctor, lawyer, merchant, clothier, boarding-house-keeper, saloon-keeper, soda-water-vender--whom not?

Every establishment in town would profit, from the sanatorium to the "pantatorium"--as the institution for the replenishment of trousers was elegantly styled.

Commercial fervor rose to such heights in Wakefield that in no time at all enough money was subscribed to build a convenient factory and to purchase as many of the shares of cutlery stock as the amiable president cared to print. In due season the manufacture of tableware and penknives began, and the pride of the town was set aglow by the trade-mark stamped on every article issued from the cutlery factory. It was an ingenious emblem--a glorious Cupid in a sash marked "Wakefield," stabbing a miserable Cupid in a sash marked "Sheffield."

It was Sheffield that survived. In fact, the stupid English city probably never heard of the Wakefield Cutlery Company. Nor did Wakefield hear of it long. For the emery dust soon ceased to glisten in the air and the steel died of a distemper.

It was a very real shock to Wakefield, and many a boy that had been meant for college went into his father's store instead, and many a girl who had planned to go East to be polished stayed at home and polished her mother's plates and pans, because the family funds had been invested in the steel-engravings of the cutlery stock certificates. They were very handsome engravings.

Hope languished in Wakefield until a company from Kenosha consented to transport its entire industry thither if it could receive a building rent free. It was proffered, and it accepted, the cutlery works. For a season the neighboring streets were acrid with the aroma of the passionate pickles that were bottled there. And then its briny deeps ceased to swim with knobby condiments. A tin-foil company abode awhile, and yet again a tamale-canning corporation, which in its turn sailed on to the Sargasso Sea of missing industries.

Other factory buildings in Wakefield fared likewise. They were but lodging-houses for transient failures. The population swung with the tide, but always at anchor. The lift which the census received from an artificial-flower company, employing seventy-five hands, was canceled by the demise of a more redolent pork-packing concern of equal pay-roll. People missed it when the wind blew from the west.

But Wakefield hoped on. One day the executive committee of the Wide-a-Wakefield Club, having nothing else to do, met in executive session. There were various propositions to consider. All of them were written on letter-heads of the highest school of commercial art, and all of them promised to endow Wakefield with some epoch-making advantage, provided merely that Wakefield furnish a building rent free, tax free, water free, and subscribe to a certain amount of stock.

The club regarded these glittering baits with that cold and clammy gaze with which an aged trout of many-scarred gills peruses some newfangled spoon.

But if these letters were tabled with suspicion because they offered too much for too little, what hospitality could be expected for a letter which offered still more for still less? The chairman of the committee was Ansel K. Pettibone, whose sign-board announced him as a "practical house-painter and paper-hanger." He read this letter, head-lines and all:

MARK A. SHELBY JOHN R. SHELBY LUKE B. SHELBY

SHELBY PARADISE POWDER COMPANY

SPRINGFIELD, MASS., U. S. A.

MAKES WASHDAY WELCOME. SIDESTEP SUBSTITUTES. WIDE-A-WAKEFIELD CLUB, Wakefield:

DEAR SIRS,--The undersigned was born in your city, and left same about twenty years ago to seek his fortune. I have finally found it after many ups and downs. Us three brothers have jointly perfected and patented the famous Paradise Powder. It is generally conceded to be the grandest thing of its kind ever put on the market, and, in the words of the motto, "Makes Washday Welcome." Ladies who have used it agree that our statement is not excessive when we say, "Once tried, you will use no other."

It is selling at such a rate in the East that I have a personal profit of two thousand dollars a week. We intend to push it in the West, and we were talking of where would be the best place to locate a branch factory at. My brothers mentioned Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha, Denver, and such places, but I said, "I vote for Wakefield." My brothers said I was cracked. I says maybe I am, but I'm going back to my old home town and spend the rest of my life there and my surplus money, too. I want to beautify Wakefield, and as near as I can remember there is room for improvement. It may not be good business, but it is what I want to do. And also what I want to know is, can I rely on the co-operation of the Wide-a-Wakefield Club in doing its share to build up the old town into a genuine metropolis? Also, what would be the probable cost of a desirable site for the factory?

Hoping to receive a favorable reply from you at your earliest convenience, Yours truly, LUKE B. SHELBY.

The chairman's grin had grown wider as he read and read. When he had finished the letter he tossed it along the line. Every member read it and shook with equal laughter.

"I wonder what kind of green goods he sells?" said Joel Spate, the owner of the Bon-Ton Grocery.

"My father used to say to me," said Forshay, of the One-Price Emporium, "whatever else you do, Jake, always suspicion the fellow that offers you something for nothing. There's a nigger in the woodpile some'eres."

"That's so," said Soyer, the swell tailor, who was strong on second thought.

"He says he's goin' to set up a factory here, but he don't ask for rent free, tax free, light free--nothin' free," said the practical house-painter.

"What's the name again?" said Spate.

"Shelby--Luke B. Shelby," answered Pettibone. "Says he used to live here twenty years ago. Ever hear of him? I never did."

Spate's voice came from an ambush of spectacles and whiskers: "I've lived here all m' life--I'm sixty-three next month. I don't remember any such man or boy."

"Me, neither," echoed Soyer, "and I'm here going on thirty-five year."

The heads shook along the line as if a wind had passed over a row of wheat.

"It's some new dodge for sellin' stock," suspicioned One-Price Forshay, who had a large collection of cutlery certificates.

"More likely it's just a scheme to get us talking about his Paradise Powder. Seems to me I've had some of their circulars," said Bon-Ton Spate.

Pettibone, the practical chairman, silenced the gossip with a brisk, "What is the pleasure of the meeting as regards answering it?"

"I move we lay it on the table," said Eberhart of the Furniture Palace.

"I move we lay it under the table," said Forshay, who had a keen sense of humor.

"Order, gentlemen! Order," rapped Pettibone, as the room rocked with the laughter in which Forshay led.

When sobriety was restored it was moved, seconded, and passed that the secretary be instructed to send Shelby a copy of the boom number of the Wakefield _Daily Eagle_.

And in due time the homesick Ulysses, waiting a welcome from Ithaca, received this answer to his letter:

LUKE B. SHELBY, Springfield, Mass.

SIR,--Yours of sixteenth inst. rec'd and contents noted. In reply to same, beg to state are sending last special number _Daily Eagle_, giving full information about city and sites.

Yours truly,

JOEL SPATE, _Secy. Exec. Comm._

Shelby winced. The hand he had held out with pearls of price had been brushed aside. His brothers laughed.

"We said you were cracked. They don't want your old money or your society. Go somewheres where they do."

But Luke B. Shelby had won his success by refusing to be denied, and he had set his heart on refurbishing his old home town. The instinct of place is stronger than any other instinct in some animals, and Shelby was homesick for Wakefield--not for anybody, any house, or any street in particular there, but just for Wakefield.

Without further ado he packed his things and went.

II

There was no brass band to meet him. At the hotel the clerk read his name without emotion. When he required the best two rooms in the hotel, and a bath at that, the clerk looked suspicious:

"Any baggage?"

"Three trunks and a grip."

"What line do you carry? Will you use the sample-room?"

"Don't carry any line. Don't want any sample-room."

He walked out to see the town. It had so much the same look that it seemed to have been embalmed. Here were the old stores, the old signs, apparently the same fly-specked wares in the windows.

He read Doctor Barnby's rusty shingle. Wasn't that the same swaybacked horse dozing at the hitching-post?

Here was the rough hill road where he used to coast as a child. There stood Mrs. Hooker on the lawn with a hose, sprinkling the street, the trees, the grass, the oleander in its tub and the moon-flower on the porch. He seemed to have left her twenty years ago in that attitude with the same arch of water springing from the nozzle.

He paused before the same gap-toothed street-crossing of yore, and he started across it as across the stepping-stones of a dry stream. A raw-boned horse whirled around the corner, just avoiding his toes. It was followed by a bouncing grocery-wagon on the side of whose seat dangled a shirt-sleeved youth who might have been Shelby himself a score of years ago.

Shelby paused to watch. The horse drew up at the home of Doctor Stillwell, the dentist. Before the wagon was at rest the delivery-boy was off and half-way around the side of the house. Mrs. Stillwell opened the screen door to take in the carrots and soap and washing-powder Shelby used to bring her. Shelby remembered that she used washing-powder then. He wondered if she had heard of the "Paradise."

As he hung poised on a brink of memory the screen door flapped shut, the grocery-boy was hurrying back, the horse was moving away, and the boy leaped to his side-saddle seat on the wagon while it was in motion. The delivery-wagons and their Jehus were the only things that moved fast in Wakefield, now as then.

Shelby drifted back to the main street and found the Bon-Ton Grocery where it had been when he deserted the wagon. The same old vegetables seemed to be sprawling outside. The same flies were avid at the strawberry-boxes, which, he felt sure, the grocer's wife had arranged as always, with the biggest on top. He knew that some Mrs. Spate had so distributed them, if it were not the same who had hectored him, for old Spate had a habit of marrying again. His wives lasted hardly so long as his hard-driven horses.

Shelby paused to price some of the vegetables, just to draw Spate into conversation. The old man was all spectacles and whiskers, as he had always been. Shelby thought he must have been born with spectacles and whiskers.

Joel Spate, never dreaming who Shelby was, was gracious to him for the first time in history. He evidently looked upon Shelby as a new-comer who might be pre-empted for a regular customer before Mrs. L. Bowers, the rival grocer, got him. It somehow hurt Shelby's homesick heart to be unrecognized, more than it pleased him to enjoy time's topsy-turvy. Here he was, returned rich and powerful, to patronize the taskmaster who had worked him hard and paid him harder in the old years. Yet he dared not proclaim himself and take his revenge.

He ended the interview by buying a few of the grocer's horrible cigars, which he gave away to the hotel porter later.

All round the town Shelby wandered, trying to be recognized. But age and prosperity had altered him beyond recall, though he himself knew almost every old negro whitewash man, almost every teamster, he met. He was surer of the first names than of the last, for the first names had been most used in his day, and it surprised him to find how clearly he recalled these names and faces, though late acquaintances escaped his memory with ease.

The women, too, he could generally place, though many who had been short-skirted tomboys were now heavy-footed matrons of embonpoint with children at their skirts, children as old as they themselves had been when he knew them. Some of them, indeed, he recognized only by the children that lagged alongside like early duplicates.

As he sauntered one street of homely homes redeemed by the opulence of their foliage, he saw coming his way a woman whose outlines seemed but the enlargement of some photograph in the gallery of remembrance. Before she reached him he identified Phoebe Carew.

Her mother, he remembered, had been widowed early and had eked out a meager income by making chocolate fudge, which the little girl peddled about town on Saturday afternoons. And now the child, though she must be thirty or thereabouts, had kept a certain grace of her youth, a wistful prettiness, a girlish unmarriedness, that marked her as an old maid by accident or choice, not by nature's decree.

He wondered if she, at least, would pay him the compliment of recognition. She made no sign of it as she approached. As she passed he lifted his hat.

"Isn't this Miss Phoebe Carew?"

Wakefield women were not in danger from strangers' advances; she paused without alarm and answered with an inquiring smile:

"Yes."

"You don't remember me?"

She studied him. "I seem to, and yet--"

"I'm Luke Shelby."

"Luke Shelby! Oh yes! Why, how do you do?" She gave him her beautiful hand, but she evidently lacked the faintest inkling of his identity. Time had erased from recollection the boy who used to take her sliding on his sled, the boy who used to put on her skates for her, the boy who used to take her home on his grocery-wagon sometimes, pretending that he was going her way, just for the benizon of her radiant companionship, her shy laughter.

"I used to live here," he said, ashamed to be so forgettable. "My mother was--my stepfather was A. J. Stacom, who kept the hardware-store."

"Oh yes," she said; "they moved away some years ago, didn't they?"

"Yes; after mother died my stepfather went back to Council Bluffs, where we came from in the first place. I used to go to school with you, Phoebe--er--Miss Carew. Then I drove Spate's delivery-wagon for a while before I went East."

"Oh yes," she said; "I think I remember you very well. I'm very glad to see you again, Mr.--Mr. Stacom."

"Shelby," he said, and he was so heartsick that he merely lifted his hat and added, "I'm glad to see you looking so well."

"You're looking well, too," she said, and smiled the gracious, empty smile one visits on a polite stranger. Then she went her way. In his lonely eyes she moved with a goddess-like grace that made clouds of the uneven pavements where he stumbled as he walked with reverted gaze.

He went back to the hotel lonelier than before, in a greater loneliness than Ulysses felt ending his Odyssey in Ithaca. For, at least, Ulysses was remembered by an old dog that licked his hand.

Once in his room, Shelby sank into a patent rocker of most uncomfortable plush. The inhospitable garishness of a small-town hotel's luxury expelled him from the hateful place, and he resumed the streets, taking, as always, determination from rebuff and vowing within himself:

"I'll make 'em remember me. I'll make the name of Shelby the biggest name in town."

On the main street he found one lone, bobtailed street-car waiting at the end of its line, its horse dejected with the ennui of its career, the driver dozing on the step.

Shelby decided to review the town from this seedy chariot; but the driver, surly with sleep, opened one eye and one corner of his mouth just enough to inform him that the next "run" was not due for fifteen minutes.

"I'll change that," said Shelby. "I'll give 'em a trolley, and open cars in summer, too."

He dragged his discouraged feet back to the hotel and asked when dinner would be served.

"Supper's been ready sence six," said the clerk, whose agile toothpick proclaimed that he himself had banqueted.

Shelby went into the dining-room. A haughty head waitress, zealously chewing gum, ignored him for a time, then piloted him to a table where he found a party of doleful drummers sparring in repartee with a damsel of fearful and wonderful coiffure.

She detached herself reluctantly and eventually brought Shelby a supper contained in a myriad of tiny barges with which she surrounded his plate in a far-reaching flotilla.

When he complained that his steak was mostly gristle, and that he did not want his pie yet, Hebe answered:

"Don't get flip! Think you're at the Worldoff?"

Poor Shelby's nerves were so rocked that he condescended to complain to the clerk. For answer he got this:

"Mamie's all right. If you don't like our ways, better build a hotel of your own."

"I guess I will," said Shelby.

He went to his room to read. The gas was no more than darkness made visible. He vowed to change that, too.

He would telephone to the theater. The telephone-girl was forever in answering, and then she was impudent. Besides, the theater was closed. Shelby learned that there was "a movin'-pitcher show going"! He went, and it moved him to the door.

The sidewalks were full of doleful loafers and loaferesses. Men placed their chairs in the street and smoked heinous tobacco. Girls and women dawdled and jostled to and from the ice-cream-soda fountains.

The streets that night were not lighted at all, for the moon was abroad, and the board of aldermen believed in letting God do all He could for the town. In fact, He did nearly all that the town could show of charm. The trees were majestic, the grass was lavishly spread, the sky was divinely blue by day and angelically bestarred at night.

Shelby compared his boyhood impressions with the feelings governing his mind now that it was adult and traveled. He felt that he had grown, but that the town had stuck in the mire. He felt an ambition to lift it and enlighten it. Like the old builder who found Rome brick and left it marble, Shelby determined that the Wakefield which he found of plank he should leave at least of limestone. Everything he saw displeased him and urged him to reform it altogether, and he said:

"I'll change all this. And they'll love me for it."

And he did. But they--did they?

III

One day a greater than Shelby came to Wakefield, but not to stay. It was no less than the President of these United States swinging around the circle in an inspection of his realm, with possibly an eye to the nearing moment when he should consent to re-election. As his special train approached each new town the President studied up its statistics so that he might make his speech enjoyable by telling the citizens the things they already knew. He had learned that those are the things people most like to hear.

His encyclopædia informed him that Wakefield had a population of about fifteen thousand. He could not know how venerable an estimate this was, for Wakefield was still fifteen thousand--now and forever, fifteen thousand and insuperable.

The President had a mental picture of just what such a town of fifteen thousand would look like, and he wished himself back in the White House.

He was met at the train by the usual entertainment committee, which in this case coincided with the executive committee of the Wide-a-Wakefield Club. It had seemed just as well to these members to elect themselves as anybody else.

Mr. Pettibone, the town's most important paper-hanger, was again chairman after some lapses from office. Joel Spate, the Bon-Ton Grocer, was once more secretary, after having been treasurer twice and president once. The One-Price Emporium, however, was now represented by the younger Forshay, son of the founder, who had gone to the inevitable Greenwood at the early age of sixty-nine. Soyer, the swell tailor, had yielded his place to the stateliest man in town, Amasa Harbury, president of the Wakefield Building and Loan Association. And Eberhart, of the Furniture Palace, had been supplanted by Gibson Shoals, the bank cashier.

To the President's surprise the railroad station proved to be, instead of the doleful shed usual in those parts, a graceful edifice of metropolitan architecture. He was to ride in an open carriage, of course, drawn by the two spanking dapples which usually drew the hearse when it was needed. But this was tactfully kept from the President.

There had been some bitterness over the choice of the President's companions in the carriage, since it was manifestly impossible for the entire committee of seven to pile into the space of four, though young Forshay, who had inherited his father's gift of humor, volunteered to ride on the President's lap or hold him on his.

The extra members were finally consoled by being granted the next carriage, an equipage drawn by no less than the noble black geldings usually attached to the chief mourners' carriage.

As the President was escorted to his place he remarked that a trolley-car was waiting at the station.

"I see that Wakefield boasts an electric line," he beamed.

"Yes," said Pettibone, "that's some of Shelby's foolishness."

A look from Spate silenced him, but the President had not caught the slip.

The procession formed behind the town band, whose symphony suffered somewhat from the effort of the musicians to keep one eye on the music and throw the other eye backward at the great visitor.

"What a magnificent building!" said the President as the parade turned a corner. Nobody said anything, and the President read the name aloud. "The Shelby House. A fine hotel!" he exclaimed, as he lifted his hat to the cheers from the white-capped chambermaids and the black-coated waiters in the windows. They were male waiters.