Chapter 8

"And the streets are lighted by electricity! And paved with brick!" the President said. "Splendid! Splendid! There must be very enterprising citizens in Gatesville--I mean Wakefield." He had visited so many towns!

"That's a handsome office-building," was his next remark. "It's quite metropolitan." The committee vouchsafed no reply, but they could see that he was reading the sign:

THE SHELBY BLOCK: SHELBY INDEPENDENT TELEPHONE COMPANY SHELBY'S PARADISE POWDER COMPANY SHELBY ARTESIAN WELL COMPANY SHELBY PASTIME PARK COMPANY SHELBY OPERA HOUSE COMPANY SHELBY STREET RAILWAY COMPANY

The committee was not used to chatting with Presidents, and even the practical Pettibone, who had voted against him, had an awe of him in the flesh. He decided to vote for him next time; it would be comforting to be able to say, "Oh yes, I know the President well; I used to take long drives with him--once."

There were heartaches in the carriage as the President, who commented on so many things, failed to comment on the banner of welcome over Pettibone's shop, painted by Pettibone's own practical hand; or the gaily bedighted Bon-Ton Grocery with the wonderful arrangement of tomato-cans into the words, "Welcome to Wakefield." The Building and Loan Association had stretched a streamer across the street, too, and the President never noticed it. His eyes and tongue were caught away by the ornate structure of the opera-house.

"Shelby Opera House. So many things named after Mr. Shelby. Is he the founder of the city or--or--"

"No, just one of the citizens," said Pettibone.

"I should be delighted to meet him."

Three votes fell from the Presidential tree with a thud.

Had the committee been able to imagine in advance how Shelbyisms would obtrude everywhere upon the roving eye of the visitor, whose one aim was a polite desire to exclaim upon everything exclaimable, they might have laid out the line of march otherwise.

But it was too late to change now, and they grew grimmer and grimmer as the way led to the stately pleasure-dome which Shelby Khan had decreed and which imported architects and landscape-gardeners had established.

Here were close-razored lawns and terraces, a lake with spouting fountains, statues of twisty nymphs, glaring, many-antlered stags and couchant lions, all among cedar-trees and flower-beds whose perfumes saluted the Presidential nostril like a gentle hurrah.

Emerging through the trees were the roofs, the cupola and ivy-bowered windows of the home of Shelby, most homeless at home. For, after all his munificence, Wakefield did not like him. The only tribute the people had paid him was to boost the prices of everything he bought, from land to labor, from wall-paper to cabbages. And now on the town's great day he had not been included in any of the committees of welcome. He had been left to brood alone in his mansion like a prince in ill favor exiled to his palace.

He did not know that his palace had delighted even the jaded eye of the far-traveled First Citizen. He only knew that his fellow-townsmen sneered at it with dislike.

Shelby was never told by the discreet committeemen in the carriage that the President had exclaimed on seeing his home:

"Why, this is magnificent! This is an estate! I never dreamed that--er--Wakefield was a city of such importance and such wealth. And whose home is this?"

Somebody groaned, "Shelby's."

"Ah yes; Shelby's, of course. So many things here are Shelby's. You must be very proud of Mr. Shelby. Is he there, perhaps?"

"That's him, standing on the upper porch there, waving his hat," Pettibone mumbled.

The President waved his hat at Shelby.

"And the handsome lady is his wife, perhaps?"

"Yes, that's Mrs. Shelby," mumbled Spate. "She was Miss Carew. Used to teach school here."

Phoebe Shelby was clinging to her husband's side. There were tears in her eyes and her hands squeezed mute messages upon his arm, for she knew that his many-wounded heart was now more bitterly hurt than in all his knowledge of Wakefield. He was a prisoner in disgrace gazing through the bars at a festival.

He never knew that the President suggested stopping a moment to congratulate him, and that it was his own old taskmaster Spate who ventured to say that the President could meet him later. Spate could rise to an emergency; the other committeemen thanked him with their eyes.

As the carriage left the border of the Shelby place the President turned his head to stare, for it was beautiful, ambitiously beautiful. And something in the silent attitude of the owner and his wife struck a deeper note in the noisy, gaudy welcome of the other citizens.

"Tell me about this Mr. Shelby," said the President.

Looks were exchanged among the committee. All disliked the task, but finally Spate broke the silence.

"Well, Mr. President, Shelby is a kind of eccentric man. Some folks say he's cracked. Used to drive a delivery-wagon for me. Ran away and tried his hand at nearly everything. Finally, him and his two brothers invented a kind of washing-powder. It was like a lot of others, but they knew how to push it. Borrowed money to advertise it big. Got it started till they couldn't have stopped it if they'd tried. Shelby decided to come back here and establish a branch factory. That tall chimney is it. No smoke comin' out of it to-day. He gave all the hands a holiday in your honor, Mr. President."

The President said: "Well, that's mighty nice of him. So he's come back to beautify his old home, eh? That's splendid--a fine spirit. Too many of us, I'm afraid, forget the old places when ambition carries us away into new scenes. Mr. Shelby must be very popular here."

There was a silence. Mr. Pettibone was too honest, or too something, to let the matter pass.

"Well, I can't say as to that, Mr. President. Shelby's queer. He's very pushing. You can't drive people more 'n so fast. Shelby is awful fussy. Now, that trolley line--he put that in, but we didn't need it."

"Not but what Wakefield is enterprising," Spate added, anxiously.

Pettibone nodded and went on: "People used to think the old bobtailed horse-car--excuse my language--wasn't much, but the trolley-cars are a long way from perfect. Service ain't so very good. People don't ride on 'em much, because they don't run often enough."

The President started to say, "Perhaps they can't run oftener because people don't ride on 'em enough," but something counseled him to silence, and Pettibone continued:

"Same way with the electric light. People that had gas hated to change. He made it cheap, but it's a long way from perfect. He put in an independent telephone. The old one wasn't much good and it was expensive. Now we can have telephones at half the old price. But result is, you've got to have two, or you might just as well not have one. Everybody you want to talk to is always on the other line."

The President nodded. He understood the ancient war between the simple life and the strenuous. He wished he had left the subject unopened, but Pettibone had warmed to the theme.

"Shelby built an opery-house and brought some first-class troupes here. But this is a religious town, and people don't go much to shows. In the first place, we don't believe in 'em; in the second place, we've been bit by bad shows so often. So his opery-house costs more 'n it takes in.

"Then he laid out the Pastime Park--tried to get up games and things; but the vacant lots always were good enough for baseball. He tried to get people to go out in the country and play golf, too; but it was too much like following the plow. Folks here like to sit on their porches when they're tired.

"He brought an automobile to town--scared most of the horses to death. Our women folks got afraid to drive because the most reliable old nags tried to climb trees whenever Shelby came honking along. He built two or three monuments to famous citizens, but that made the families of other famous citizens jealous.

"He built that big home of his, but it only makes our wives envious. It's so far out that the society ladies can't call much. Besides, they feel uneasy with all that glory.

"Mrs. Shelby has a man in a dress-suit to open the door. The rest of us--our wives answer the door-bell themselves. Our folks are kind of afraid to invite Mr. and Mrs. Shelby to their parties for fear they'll criticize; so Mrs. Shelby feels as if she was deserted.

"She thinks her husband is mistreated, too; but--well, Shelby's eccentric. He says we're ungrateful. Maybe we are, but we like to do things our own way. Shelby tried to get us to help boost the town, as he calls it. He offered us stock in his ventures, but we've got taken in so often that--well, once bit is twice shy, you know, Mr. President. So Wakefield stands just about where she did before Shelby came here."

"Not but what Wakefield is enterprising," Mr. Spate repeated.

The President's curiosity overcame his policy. He asked one more question:

"But if you citizens didn't help Mr. Shelby, how did he manage all these--improvements, if I may use the word?"

"Did it all by his lonesome, Mr. President. His income was immense. But he cut into it something terrible. His brothers in the East began to row at the way he poured it out. When he began to draw in advance they were goin' to have him declared incompetent. Even his brothers say he's cracked. Recently they've drawn in on him. Won't let him spend his own money."

A gruesome tone came from among Spate's spectacles and whiskers:

"He won't last long. Health's giving out. His wife told my wife, the other day, he don't sleep nights. That's a bad sign. His pride is set on keepin' everything going, though, and nothing can hold him. He wants the street-cars to run regular, and the telephone to answer quick, even if the town don't support 'em. He's cracked--there's nothing to it."

Amasa Harbury, of the Building and Loan Association, leaned close and spoke in a confidential voice:

"He's got mortgages on 'most everything, Mr. President. He's borrowed on all his securities up to the hilt. Only yesterday I had to refuse him a second mortgage on his house. He stormed around about how much he'd put into it. I told him it didn't count how much you put into a hole, it was how much you could get out. You can imagine how much that palace of his would bring in this town on a foreclosure sale--about as much as a white elephant in a china-shop."

"Not but what Wakefield is enterprising," insisted Spate.

The lust for gossip had been aroused and Pettibone threw discretion to the winds.

"Shelby was hopping mad because we left him off the committee of welcome, but we thought we'd better stick to our own crowd of represent'ive citizens. Shelby don't really belong to Wakefield, anyway. Still, if you want to meet him, it can be arranged."

"Oh no," said the President. "Don't trouble."

And he was politic--or politician--enough to avoid the subject thenceforward. But he could not get Shelby out of his mind that night as his car whizzed on its way. To be called crazy and eccentric and to be suspected, feared, resisted by the very people he longed to lead--Presidents are not unaware of that ache of unrequited affection.

The same evening Shelby and Phoebe Shelby looked out on their park. The crowds that had used it as a vantage-ground for the pageant had all vanished, leaving behind a litter of rubbish, firecrackers, cigar stubs, broken shrubs, gouged terraces. Not one of them had asked permission, had murmured an apology or a word of thanks.

For the first time Phoebe Shelby noted that her husband did not take new determination from rebuff. His resolution no longer made a springboard of resistance. He seemed to lean on her a little.

IV

The perennially empty cutlery-works gave the Wide-a-Wakefield Club no rest. Year after year the anxiously awaited census renewed the old note of fifteen thousand and denied the eloquent argument of increased population. The committee in its letters continued to refer to Wakefield as "thriving" rather than as "growing." Its ingeniously evasive circulars finally roused a curiosity in Wilmer Barstow, a manufacturer of refrigerators, dissatisfied with the taxes and freight rates of the city of Clayton.

Barstow was the more willing to leave Clayton because he had suffered there from that reward which is more unkind than the winter wind. He loved a woman and paid court to her, sending her flowers at every possible excuse and besetting her with gifts.

She was not much of a woman--her very lover could see that; but he loved her in his own and her despite. She was unworthy of his jewels as of his infatuation, yet she gave him no courtesy for his gifts. She behaved as if they bored her; yet he knew no other way to win her. The more indifference she showed the more he tried to dazzle her.

At last he found that she was paying court herself to a younger man--a selfish good-for-naught who made fun of her as well as of Barstow, and who borrowed money from her as well as from Barstow.

When Barstow fully realized that the woman had made him not only her own booby, but the town joke as well, he could not endure her or the place longer. He cast about for an escape. But he found his factory no trifling baggage to move.

It was on such fertile soil that one of the Wide-a-Wakefield circulars fell.

It chimed so well with Barstow's mood that he decided at least to look the town over.

He came unannounced to make his own observations, like the spies sent into Canaan. The trolley-car that met his train was rusty, paintless, forlorn, untenanted. He took a ramshackle hack to the best hotel. Its sign-board bore this legend: "The Palace, formerly Shelby House--entirely new management."

He saw his baggage bestowed and went out to inspect the factory building described to him. The cutlery-works proved smaller than his needs, and it had a weary look. Not far away he found a far larger factory, idle, empty, closed. The sign declared it to be the Wakefield Branch of the Shelby Paradise Powder Company. He knew the prosperity of that firm and wondered why this branch had been abandoned.

In the course of time the trolley-car overtook him, and he boarded it as a sole passenger.

The lonely motorman was loquacious and welcomed Barstow as the Ancient Mariner welcomed the wedding guest. He explained that he made but few trips a day and passengers were fewer than trips. The company kept it going to hold the franchise, for some day Wakefield would reach sixteen thousand and lift the hoodoo.

The car passed an opera-house, with grass aspiring through the chinks of the stone steps leading to the boarded-up doors.

The car passed the Shelby Block; the legend, "For Rent, apply to Amasa Harbury," hid the list of Shelby enterprises.

The car grumbled through shabby streets to the outskirts of the town, where it sizzled along a singing wire past the drooping fences, the sagging bleachers, and the weedy riot of what had been a pleasure-ground. A few dim lines in the grass marked the ghost of a baseball diamond, a circular track, and foregone tennis-courts.

Barstow could read on what remained of the tottering fence:

HELBY'S PAST ARK

When the car had reached the end of the line Barstow decided to walk back to escape the garrulity of the motorman, who lived a lonely life, though he was of a sociable disposition.

Barstow's way led him shortly to the edge of a curious demesne, or rather the débris of an estate. A chaos of grass and weeds thrust even through the rust of the high iron fence about the place. Shrubs that had once been shapely grew raggedly up and swept down into the tall and ragged grass. A few evergreen trees lifted flowering cones like funeral candles in sconces. What had been a lake with fountains was a great, cracked basin of concrete tarnished with scabious pools thick with the dead leaves of many an autumn.

Barstow entered a fallen gate and walked along paths where his feet slashed through barbaric tangles clutching at him like fingers. As he prowled, wondering what splendor this could have been which was so misplaced in so dull a town and drooping into so early a neglect, birds took alarm and went crying through the branches. There were lithe escapes through the grass, and from the rim of the lake ugly toads plounced into the pool and set the water-spiders scurrying on their frail catamarans.

Two bronze stags towered knee-deep in verdure; one had a single antler, the other none. A pair of toothless lions brooded over their lost dignity. Between their disconsolate sentry, mounted flight on flight of marble steps to the house of the manor. It lay like an old frigate storm-shattered and flung aground to rot. The hospitable doors were planked shut, the windows, too; the floors of the verandas were broken and the roof was everywhere sunken and insecure.

At the portal had stood two nymphs, now almost classic with decay. One of them, toppling helplessly, quenched her bronze torch in weeds. Her sister stood erect in grief like a daughter of Niobe wept into stone.

The scene somehow reminded Barstow of one of Poe's landscapes. It was the corpse of a home. Eventually he noticed a tall woman in black, seated on a bench and gazing down the terraces across the dead lake. Barstow was tempted to ask her whose place this had been and what its history was, but her mien and her crêpe daunted him.

He made his way out of the region, looking back as he went. When he approached the most neighboring house a grocery-wagon came flying down the road. Before it stopped the slanted driver was off the seat and half-way across the yard. In a moment he was back again. Barstow called out:

"Whose place is that?"

"Shelby's."

"Did he move away?"

But the horse was already in motion, and the youth had darted after, leaping to the side of the seat and calling back something which Barstow could not hear.

Shelby, who had given the town everything he could, had even endowed it with a ruins.

When Barstow had reached the hotel again he went in to his supper. A head waitress, chewing gum, took him to a table where a wildly coiffed damsel brought him a bewildering array of most undesirable foods in a flotilla of small dishes.

After supper Barstow, following the suit of the other guests, took a chair on the sidewalk, for a little breeze loafed along the hot street. Barstow's name had been seen upon the hotel register and the executive committee of the Wide-a-Wakefield Club waited upon him in an august body.

Mr. Pettibone introduced himself and the others. They took chairs and hitched them close to Barstow, while they poured out in alternate strains the advantages of Wakefield. Barstow listened politely, but the empty factory and the dismantled home of Shelby haunted him and made a dismal background to their advertisements.

It was of the factory that he spoke first:

"The building you wrote me about and offered me rent-free looks a little small and out of date for our plant. I saw Shelby's factory empty. Could I rent that at a reasonable figure, do you suppose?"

The committee leaped at the idea with enthusiasm. Spate laughed through his beard:

"Lord, I reckon the company would rent it to you for almost the price of the taxes."

Then he realized that this was saying just a trifle too much. They began to crawfish their way out. But Barstow said, with unconviction:

"There's only one thing that worries me. Why did Shelby close up his Paradise Powder factory and move away?"

Pettibone urged the reason hastily: "His brothers closed it up for him. They wouldn't stand any more of his extravagant nonsense. They shut down the factory and then shut down on him, too."

"So he gave up his house and moved away?" said Barstow.

"He gave up his house because he couldn't keep it up," said Amasa Harbury. "Taxes were pretty steep and nobody would rent it, of course. It don't belong in a town like Wakefield. Neither did Shelby."

"So he moved away?"

"Moved away, nothin'," sneered Spate. "He went to a boardin'-house and died there. Left his wife a lot of stock in a broken-down street-car line, and a no-good electric-light company, and an independent telephone system that the regulars gobbled up. She's gone back to teachin' school again. We used our influence to get her old job back. We didn't think we ought to blame her for the faults of Shelby."

"And what had Shelby done?"

They told him in their own way--treading on one another's toes in their anxiety; shutting one another up; hunching their chairs together in a tangle as if their slanders were wares they were trying to sell.

But about all that Barstow could make of the matter was that Shelby had been in much such case as his own. He had been hungry for human gratitude, and had not realized that it is won rather by accepting than by bestowing gifts.

Barstow sat and smoked glumly while the committee clattered. He hardly heard what they were at such pains to emphasize. He was musing upon a philosophy of his father's:

"There's an old saying, 'Never look a gift horse in the mouth.' But sayings and doings are far apart. If you can manage to sell a man a horse he'll make the best of the worst bargain; he'll nurse the nag and feed him and drive him easy and brag about his faults. He'll overlook everything from spavin to bots; he'll learn to think that a hamstrung hind leg is the poetry of motion. But a gift horse--Lord love you! If you give a man a horse he'll look him in the mouth and everywhere else. The whole family will take turns with a microscope. They'll kick because he isn't run by electricity, and if he's an Arabian they'll roast him because he holds his tail so high. If you want folks to appreciate anything don't give it to 'em; make 'em work for it and pay for it--double if you can."

* * * * *

Shelby had mixed poetry with business, had given something for nothing; had paid the penalty.

THE OLD FOLKS AT HOME

I

The old road came pouring down from the wooded hills to the westward, flowed round the foot of other hills, skirting a meadow and a pond, and then went on easterly about its business. Almost overhanging the road, like a mill jutting upon its journeyman stream, was an aged house. Still older were the two lofty oaks standing mid-meadow and imaged again in the pond. Younger than oaks or house or road, yet as old as Scripture allots, was the man who stalked across the porch and slumped into a chair. He always slumped into a chair, for his muscles still remembered the days when he had sat only when he was worn out. Younger than oaks, house, road, or man, yet older than a woman wants to be, was the woman in the garden.

"What you doin', Maw?" the man called across the rail, though he could see perfectly well.

"Just putterin' 'round in the garden. What you been doin', Paw?"

"Just putterin' 'round the barn. Better come in out the hot sun and rest your old back."

Evidently the idea appealed to her, for the sunbonnet overhanging the meek potato-flowers like a flamingo's beak rose in air, as she stood erect, or as nearly erect as she ever stood nowadays. She tossed a few uprooted weeds over the lilac-hedge, and, clumping up the steps of the porch, slumped into a chair. Chairs had once been her luxury, too. She carried a dish-pan full of green peas, and as her gaze wandered over the beloved scene her wrinkled fingers were busy among the pods, shelling them expertly, as if they knew their way about alone.

The old man sighed, the deep sigh of ultimate contentment. "Well, Maw, as the fellow says in the circus, here we are again."

"Here we are again, Paw."

They always said the same thing about this time of year, when they wearied of the splendid home they had established as the capital of their estate and came back to the ground from which they had sprung. James Coburn always said:

"Well, Maw, as the fellow says in the circus, here we are again."

And Sarah Gregg Coburn always answered:

"Here we are again, Paw."