"Well," said Cornish, stating the point of agreement after the Captain's trouble had been fully discussed, "unfortunately 'the right to be a cussed fool is safe from all devices human,' and there doesn't seem to be any remedy."

It all came, thought I, as Jim and I sat silent after Cornish and the Captain went out, from the fact that Bill's present condition in life gave those tendencies to which he had always been p.r.o.ne to yield, a chance for unrestricted growth. He ought to have staid with his steers.

Cattle and corn were the only things in which he could take an interest sufficiently keen to keep him from drink. These habits of his were enacting the old story of the lop-eared rabbits in Australia--overrunning the country. Bill had been as sober a citizen as one could desire, as long as his house-building occupied his time; and he and Josie had worked together as companionably as they used to do in the hay and wheat. But now he was drifting away from her. Her father should have staid on the farm.

"Do you know," said I, "that Giddings is making about as great a fool of himself as Bill?"

"Yes," said Jim, "but that's because he's in a terrible state of mind about his marriage. If we can keep him from delirium tremens until after the wedding, he'll be all right. Some Italian brain-sharp has written up cases like his, and he'll be all right. But with Bill it's different....

Do you remember our old Shep?"

"No," I returned wonderingly, almost impatiently. "What about him?"

"Well," he mused, "I've been picking up knowledge of men for a while along back; and I've come to prize more highly the personal history of dogs; and Shep was worth a biography for its own sake, to say nothing of the value of a typical case. He was a woolly collie, who would cheerfully have given up his life for the cows and sheep. Anything in his line, that a dog could grasp, Shep knew, and he was busier than a cranberry-merchant the year around, and the happiest thing on the farm.

Then our folks moved to Mayville, and took him along. He wasn't fitted for town life at all. He'd lie on the front piazza, and search the street for cows and sheep, and when one came along he'd stick his sharp nose through the fence, and whine as if some one was whipping him. In less than six weeks he bit a baby; in two months he was the most depraved dog in Mayville, and in three ... he died."

I had no answer for the apologue--not even for the self-condemnatory tone in which he told it. Presently he rose to go, and said that he would not be back.

"Don't forget our date at the club this evening," said he, as he pa.s.sed out. "Your style of diplomacy always seems to win with these down-East bankers. Your experience as rob-ee gives you the right handshake and the subscribed-and-sworn-to look that does their business for 'em every time. Good-by until then."

Our club was the terminal bud of our growth, and was housed in a building of which we were enormously proud. It was managed by a steward imported from New York, whose salary was made large to harmonize with his manners--that being the only way in which the majority of our members felt equal to living up to them. So far as money could make a club, ours was of high rank. There were meat-cooks and pastry-cooks in incredible numbers, under the command of a French chef, who ruled the house committee with a rod of iron. We were all members as a matter of public duty. I have often wondered what the servants, brought from Eastern cities, thought of it all. To see Bill Trescott and Aleck Macdonald going in through the great door, noiselessly swung open for them by an attendant in livery, was a sight to be remembered. The chief ornament of the club was Cornish, who lived there.

"I want to see Mr. Cornish," said I to the servant who took my overcoat, that evening.

"Right this way, sir," said he. "Mr. Giddings is with him. He gave orders for you to be shown up."

Cornish sat at a little round table on which there were some bottles and gla.s.ses. The tipple was evidently ale, and Mr. Giddings was standing opposite, lifting a gla.s.s in one hand and pointing at it with the other, in evident imitation of the att.i.tude in which the late Mr. Gough loved to have himself pictured; but the sentiments of the two speakers were quite different.

"'Turn out more ale; turn up the light!'"

Giddings glanced at the electric light-fixtures, and then looked about as if for a servant to turn them up.

"'I will not go to bed to-night!

For, of all foes that man should dread, The first and worst one is a bed!

Friends I have had, both old and young; Ale have we drunk, and songs we've sung.

Enough you know when this is said, That, one and all, they died in bed!'"

Here Giddings's voice broke with grief, and he stopped to drink the rest of the gla.s.sful, and went on:

"'In bed they died, and I'll not go Where all my friends have perished so!

Go, ye who fain would buried be; But not to-night a bed for me!'"

"Do you often have these Horatian fits?" I inquired.

"Base groveler!" said he, "if you can't rise to the level of the occasion, don't b.u.t.t in."

"'For me to-night no bed prepare, But set me out my oaken chair, And bid me other guests beside The ghosts that shall around me glide!'"

"You will, of course," said Cornish, "permit us to withdraw for the purpose of having our conference with our Eastern friends? If I take your meaning, you'll not be alone."

"Not by a jugful, I'll not be alone!" said Giddings, tossing off another gla.s.s:

"'In curling smoke-wreaths I shall see A fair and gentle company.

Though silent all, fair revelers they, Who leave you not till break of day!

Go, ye who would not daylight see; But not to-night a bed for me!

For I've been born, and I've been wed, And all man's troubles come of bed!'"

Here Giddings sank down in his chair and began weeping.

"The divinest attribute of poetry," said he, "is that of bringing tears.

Let me weep awhile, fellows, and then I'll give you the last stanza.

Last stanza's the best--"

And in the midst of his critique he went to sleep, thereby breaking his rule adopted in "_Dum Vivemus Vigilemus_."

"Is he this way often?" said I to Cornish, as we went down to meet Jim and the bankers.

"Pretty often," said Cornish. "I don't know how I'd amuse my evenings if it weren't for Giddings. He's too far gone to-night, though, to be entertaining. Gets worse, I think, as the wedding-day approaches. Trying to drown his apprehensions, I suspect. Funny fellow, Giddings. But he's all right from noon to nine P.M."

"I think we'll have to organize a dipsomaniacs' hospital for our crowd,"

said I, "if things keep going on as they are tending now! I didn't think Giddings was so many kinds of an a.s.s!"

My complainings were cut short by our entrance into the presence of Mr.

Elkins and the New England bankers. I asked to be excused from partaking of the refreshments which were served. I had seen and heard enough to spoil my appet.i.te. I was agreeably surprised to find that their independent investigations of conditions in Lattimore had convinced them of the safety of their investments. Really, they said, were it not for the pleasure of meeting us here at our home, they should feel that the time and expense of looking us up were wasted. But, handling, as they did, the moneys of estates and numerous savings accounts, their customers were of a cla.s.s in whom timidity and nervousness reach their maximum, and they were obliged to keep themselves in position to give a.s.surances as to the safety of their investments from their personal investigations.

Mr. Hinckley, who was with us, a.s.sured them that his life as a banker enabled him fully to realize the necessity of their carefulness, which we, for our own parts, were pleased to know existed. We were only too glad to exhibit our books to them, make a complete showing as to our condition generally, and even take them to see each individual piece of property covered by our paper. Mr. Hinckley went with them to their hotel, having proposed enough work in the way of investigation to keep them with us for several months. They were to leave on the evening of the next day.

"But," said Jim, as we put on our overcoats to go home, "it shows our good will, you see."

At that moment the steward, with an anxious look, asked Mr. Elkins for a word in private.

"Ask Mr. Barslow if he will kindly step over here," I heard Jim say; and I joined them at once.

"I was just saying, sir, to Mr. Elkins," said the steward, "that ordinarily I'd not think of mentioning such a thing as a gentleman's being indisposed but should see that he was cared for here. But Mr.

Trescott being in such a state, I felt it was a case for his friends or the hospital. He's been--a--seeing things this afternoon; and while he's better now in that regard, his--"

"Have a closed carriage brought at once," said Mr. Elkins. "Al, you'd better go up to the house, and let them know we're coming. I'll take him home!"

I shrank from the meeting with Mrs. Trescott and Josie, more, I think, than if it had been Bill's death which I was to announce. As I approached the house, I got from it, somehow, the impression that it was a place of night-long watchfulness; and I was not surprised by the fact that before I had time to ring or knock at the door Mrs. Trescott herself opened it, with an expression on her face which spoke of long vigils, and of fear pa.s.sing on to certainty. She peered past me for an expected Something on the street. Her leisure and its new habits had a.s.similated her in dress and make-up to the women of the wealthier sort in the city; but there was an immensity of trouble in the agonized eye and the pitiful droop of her mouth, which I should have rejoiced to see exchanged again for the ill-groomed exterior and the old fret of the farm. Her first question ignored all reference to the things leading to my being there, "in the dead vast and middle of the night," but went past me to the core of her trouble, as her eye had gone on from me to the street, in the search for the thing she dreaded.

"Where is he, Mr. Barslow?" said she, in a hushing whisper; "where is he?"

"He is a little sick," said I, "and Mr. Elkins is bringing him home. I came on to tell you." "Then he is not--" she went on, still in that hushed voice, and searching me with her gaze.

"No, I a.s.sure you!" I answered. "He is in no immediate danger, even."

Josie came quietly forward from the dusk of the room beyond, where I saw she had been listening, reminding me, in spite of the incongruity of the idea, of that time when she emerged from the obscurity of her garden, and stood at the foot of the windmill tower, leaning on her father's arm, her hands filled with petunias, the night we first visited the Trescott farm. And then my mind ran back to that other night when she had thrown herself into his arms and begged him to take her away; and he had said, "W'y, yes, little gal, of course I'll take yeh away, if yeh don't like it here!" I think that I, perhaps, was more nearly able than any one else in the world beside herself to gauge her grief at this long death in which she was losing him, and he himself.

She took my hand, pressed it silently, and began caressing her mother and whispering to her things which I could not hear. Mrs. Trescott sat upon a sort of divan, shaking with terrible, soundless sobs, and clasping and unclasping her hands, but making no other gesture. I stood helpless at the hidden abyss of woe so suddenly uncovered before me and until this very moment screened by the conventions which keep our souls apart like prisoners in the cells in some great prison. These two women had been bearing this for a long time, and we, their nearest friends, had stood aloof from them. As I stood thinking of this, the carriage-wheels ground upon the pavement in the _porte cochere_; and a moment later Jim came in, his face graver than I had ever seen it. He sat down by Mrs. Trescott, and gently took one of her hands.