CHAPTER XXIII
INTRODUCING G. SELDEN
A bird was perched upon a swaying branch of a slim young
sapling near the fence-supported hedge which bounded the
park, and Mount Dunstan had stopped to look at it and
listen. A soft shower had fallen, and after its passing, the sun
coming through the light clouds, there had broken forth again
in the trees brief trills and calls and fluting of bird notes.
The sward and ferns glittered fresh green under the raindrops;
the young leaves on trees and hedge seemed visibly to uncurl,
the uncovered earth looked richly dark and moist, and sent forth
the fragrance from its deeps, which, rising to a man's nostrils,
stirs and thrills him because it is the scent of life's self.
The bird upon the sapling was a robin, the tiny round body
perched upon his delicate legs, plump and bright plumaged for
mating. He touched his warm red breast with his beak, fluffed
out and shook his feathers, and, swelling his throat, poured
forth his small, entranced song. It was a gay, brief, jaunty
thing, but pure, joyous, gallant, liquid melody. There was
dainty bravado in it, saucy demand and allurement. It was
addressed to some invisible hearer of the tender sex, and
wheresoever she might be hidden--whether in great branch or low
thicket or hedge --there was hinted no doubt in her small wooer's
note that she would hear it and in due time respond. Mount
Dunstan, listening, even laughed at its confident music. The
tiny thing uttering its Call of the World--jubilant in the surety
of answer!
Having flung it forth, he paused a moment and waited,
his small head turned sideways, his big, round, dew-bright black
eye roguishly attentive. Then with more swelling of the throat
he trilled and rippled gayly anew, undisturbed and undoubting,
but with a trifle of insistence. Then he listened, tried again
two or three times, with brave chirps and exultant little
roulades. "Here am I, the bright-breasted, the liquid-eyed,
the slender-legged, the joyous and conquering! Listen to me
--listen to me. Listen and answer in the call of God's world."
It was the joy and triumphant faith in the tiny note of the
tiny thing--Life as he himself was, though Life whose mystery
his man's hand could have crushed--which, while he laughed,
set Mount Dunstan thinking. Spring warmth and spring scents and
spring notes set a man's being in tune with infinite things.
The bright roulade began again, prolonged itself with
renewed effort, rose to its height, and ended. From a bush in
the thicket farther up the road a liquid answer came. And
Mount Dunstan's laugh at the sound of it was echoed by
another which came apparently from the bank rising from the
road on the other side of the hedge, and accompanying the laugh
was a good-natured nasal voice.
"She's caught on. There's no mistake about that. I guess
it's time for you to hustle, Mr. Rob."
Mount Dunstan laughed again. Jem Salter had heard voices
like it, and cheerful slang phrases of the same order in his
ranch days. On the other side of his park fence there was
evidently sitting, through some odd chance, an American of
the cheery, casual order, not sufficiently polished by travel to
have lost his picturesque national characteristics.
Mount Dunstan put a hand on a broken panel of fence and
leaped over into the road.
A bicycle was lying upon the roadside grass, and on the
bank, looking as though he had been sheltering himself under
the hedge from the rain, sat a young man in a cheap bicycling
suit. His features were sharply cut and keen, his cap was
pushed back from his forehead, and he had a pair of shrewdly
careless boyish eves.
Mount Dunstan liked the look of him, and seeing his natural
start at the unheralded leap over the gap, which was quite close
to him, he spoke.
"Good-morning," he said. "I am afraid I startled you."
"Good-morning," was the response. "It was a bit of a
jolt seeing you jump almost over my shoulder. Where did
you come from? You must have been just behind me."
"I was," explained Mount Dunstan. "Standing in the
park listening to the robin."
The young fellow laughed outright.
"Say," he said, "that was pretty fine, wasn't it? Wasn't
he getting it off his chest! He was an English robin, I guess.
American robins are three or four times as big. I liked that
little chap. He was a winner."
"You are an American?"
"Sure," nodding. "Good old Stars and Stripes for mine.
First time I've been here. Came part for business and part
for pleasure. Having the time of my life."
Mount Dunstan sat down beside him. He wanted to hear
him talk. He had liked to hear the ranchmen talk. This one
was of the city type, but his genial conversational wanderings
would be full of quaint slang and good spirits. He was quite
ready to converse, as was made manifest by his next speech.
"I'm biking through the country because I once had an
old grandmother that was English, and she was always talking
about English country, and how green things was, and how
there was hedges instead of rail fences. She thought there was
nothing like little old England. Well, as far as roads and
hedges go, I'm with her. They're all right. I wanted a fellow I
met crossing, to come with me, but he took a Cook's trip
to Paris. He's a gay sort of boy. Said he didn't want any
green lanes in his. He wanted Boolyvard." He laughed again
and pushed his cap farther back on his forehead. "Said I
wasn't much of a sport. I tell YOU, a chap that's got to earn
his fifteen per, and live on it, can't be TOO much of a sport."
"Fifteen per?" Mount Dunstan repeated doubtfully.
His companion chuckled.
"I forgot I was talking to an Englishman. Fifteen dollars
per week--that's what `fifteen per' means. That's what he
told me he gets at Lobenstien's brewery in New York. Fifteen
per. Not much, is it?"
"How does he manage Continental travel on fifteen per?"
Mount Dunstan inquired.
"He's a typewriter and stenographer, and he dug up some
extra jobs to do at night. He's been working and saving two
years to do this. We didn't come over on one of the big liners
with the Four Hundred, you can bet. Took a cheap one, inside
cabin, second class."
"By George!" said Mount Dunstan. "That was American."
The American eagle slightly flapped his wings. The young man
pushed his cap a trifle sideways this time, and flushed a little.
"Well, when an American wants anything he generally
reaches out for it."
"Wasn't it rather--rash, considering the fifteen per?" Mount
Dunstan suggested. He was really beginning to enjoy himself.
"What's the use of making a dollar and sitting on it. I've
not got fifteen per--steady--and here I am."
Mount Dunstan knew his man, and looked at him with
inquiring interest. He was quite sure he would go on. This was
a thing he had seen before--an utter freedom from the insular
grudging reserve, a sort of occult perception of the presence of
friendly sympathy, and an ingenuous readiness to meet it half
way. The youngster, having missed his fellow-traveler, and
probably feeling the lack of companionship in his country rides,
was in the mood for self-revelation.
"I'm selling for a big concern," he said, "and I've got a
first-class article to carry. Up to date, you know, and all
that. It's the top notch of typewriting machines, the Delkoff.
Ever seen it? Here's my card," taking a card from an inside
pocket and handing it to him. It was inscribed:
J. BURRIDGE & SON,
DELKOFF TYPEWRITER CO.
BROADWAY, NEW YORK. G. SELDEN.
"That's my name," he said, pointing to the inscription in
the corner. "I'm G. Selden, the junior assistant of Mr. Jones."
At the sight of the insignia of his trade, his holiday air
dropped from him, and he hastily drew from another pocket an
illustrated catalogue.
"If you use a typewriter," he broke forth, "I can assure you it
would be to your interest to look at this." And as Mount Dunstan
took the proffered pamphlet, and with amiable gravity opened it,
he rapidly poured forth his salesman's patter, scarcely
pausing to take his breath: "It's the most up-to-date machine
on the market. It has all the latest improved mechanical
appliances. You will see from the cut in the catalogue that
the platen roller is easily removed without a long mechanical
operation. All you do is to slip two pins back and off comes
the roller. There is also another point worth mentioning--the
ribbon switch. By using this ribbon switch you can write in
either red or blue ink while you are using only one ribbon.
By throwing the switch on this side, you can use thirteen yards
on the upper edge of the ribbon, by reversing it, you use
thirteen yards on the lower edge--thus getting practically
twenty-six yards of good, serviceable ribbon out of one that is
only thirteen yards long--making a saving of fifty per cent. in
your ribbon expenditure alone, which you will see is quite an
item
to any enterprising firm."
He was obliged to pause here for a second or so, but as
Mount Dunstan exhibited no signs of intending to use violence,
and, on the contrary, continued to inspect the catalogue, he
broke forth with renewed cheery volubility:
"Another advantage is the new basket shift. Also, the
carriage on this machine is perfectly stationary and rigid. On
all other machines it is fastened by a series of connecting bolts
and links, which you will readily understand makes perfect
alignment uncertain. Then our tabulator is a part and parcel
of the instrument, costing you nothing more than the original
price of the machine, which is one hundred dollars--without
discount."
"It seems a good thing," said Mount Dunstan. "If I had
much business to transact, I should buy one."
"If you bought one you'd HAVE business," responded Selden.
"That's what's the matter. It's the up-to-date machines that
set things humming. A slow, old-fashioned typewriter uses a
firm's time, and time's money."
"I don't find it so," said Mount Dunstan. "I have more
time than I can possibly use--and no money."
G. Selden looked at him with friendly interest. His
experience, which was varied, had taught him to recognize
symptoms. This nice, rough-looking chap, who, despite his rather
shabby clothes, looked like a gentleman, wore an expression
Jones's junior assistant had seen many a time before. He had
seen it frequently on the countenances of other junior assistants
who had tramped the streets and met more or less savage rebuffs
through a day's length, without disposing of a single Delkoff,
and thereby adding five dollars to the ten per. It
was the kind of thing which wiped the youth out of a man's
face and gave him a hard, worn look about the eyes. He had
looked like that himself many an unfeeling day before he had
learned to "know the ropes and not mind a bit of hot air."
His buoyant, slangy soul was a friendly thing. He was a
gregarious creature, and liked his fellow man. He felt, indeed,
more at ease with him when he needed "jollying along."
Reticence was not even etiquette in a case as usual as this.
"Say," he broke out, "perhaps I oughtn't to have worried you.
Are you up against it? Down on your luck, I mean," in hasty
translation.
Mount Dunstan grinned a little.
"That's a very good way of putting it," he answered. "I
never heard `up against it' before. It's good. Yes, I'm up
against it.
"Out of a job?" with genial sympathy.
"Well, the job I had was too big for me. It needed
capital." He grinned slightly again, recalling a phrase of his
Western past. "I'm afraid I'm down and out."
"No, you're not," with cheerful scorn. "You're not dead,
are you? S'long as a man's not been dead a month, there's
always a chance that there's luck round the corner. How did
you happen here? Are you piking it?"
Momentarily Mount Dunstan was baffled. G. Selden, recognising
the fact, enlightened him. "That's New York again,"
he said, with a boyish touch of apology. "It means on the
tramp. Travelling along the turnpike. You don't look as if
you had come to that--though it's queer the sort of fellows
you do meet piking sometimes. Theatrical companies that
have gone to pieces on the road, you know. Perhaps--" with
a sudden thought, "you're an actor. Are you?"
Mount Dunstan admitted to himself that he liked the junior
assistant of Jones immensely. A more ingenuously common
young man, a more innocent outsider, it had never been his
blessed privilege to enter into close converse with, but his
very commonness was a healthy, normal thing. It made no
effort to wreathe itself with chaplets of elegance; it was
beautifully unaware that such adornment was necessary. It
enjoyed itself, youthfully; attacked the earning of its bread
with genial pluck, and its good-natured humanness had touched
him. He had enjoyed his talk; he wanted to hear more of it. He
was not in the mood to let him go his way. To Penzance,
who was to lunch with him to-day, he would present a study
of absorbing interest.
"No," he answered. "I'm not an actor. My name is
Mount Dunstan, and this place," with a nod over his shoulder,
"is mine--but I'm up against it, nevertheless."
Selden looked a trifle disgusted. He began to pick up his
bicycle. He had given a degree of natural sympathy, and
this was an English chap's idea of a joke.
"I'm the Prince of Wales, myself," he remarked, "and
my mother's expecting me to lunch at Windsor. So long, me
lord," and he set his foot on the treadle.
Mount Dunstan rose, feeling rather awkward. The point
seemed somewhat difficult to contend.
"It is not a joke," he said, conscious that he spoke rather
stiffly.
"Little Willie's not quite as easy as he looks," was the
cryptic remark of Mr. Selden.
Mount Dunstan lost his rather easily lost temper, which
happened to be the best thing he could have done under the
circumstances.
"Damn it," he burst out. "I'm not such a fool as I evidently
look. A nice ass I should be to play an idiot joke like that.
I'm speaking the truth. Go if you like--and be hanged."
Selden's attention was arrested. The fellow was in earnest.
The place was his. He must be the earl chap he had heard
spoken of at the wayside public house he had stopped at for
a pot of beer. He dismounted from his bicycle, and came
back, pushing it before him, good-natured relenting and
awkwardness combining in his look.
"All right," he said. "I apologise--if it's cold fact. I'm
not calling you a liar."
"Thank you," still a little stiffly, from Mount Dunstan.
The unabashed good cheer of G. Selden carried him lightly
over a slightly difficult moment. He laughed, pushing his
cap back, of course, and looking over the hedge at the sweep
of park, with a group of deer cropping softly in the foreground.
"I guess I should get a bit hot myself," he volunteered
handsomely, "if I was an earl, and owned a place like this,
and a fool fellow came along and took me for a tramp. That
was a pretty bad break, wasn't it? But I did say you didn't
look like it. Anyway you needn't mind me. I shouldn't get
onto Pierpont Morgan or W. K. Vanderbilt, if I met 'em
in the street."
He spoke the two names as an Englishman of his class would
have spoken of the Dukes of Westminster or Marlborough.
These were his nobles--the heads of the great American houses,
and entirely parallel, in his mind, with the heads of any great
house in England. They wielded the power of the world, and
could wield it for evil or good, as any prince or duke might.
Mount Dunstan saw the parallel.
"I apologise, all right," G. Selden ended genially.
"I am not offended," Mount Dunstan answered. "There
was no reason why you should know me from another man.
I was taken for a gamekeeper a few weeks since. I was savage
a moment, because you refused to believe me--and why
should you believe me after all?"
G. Selden hesitated. He liked the fellow anyhow.
"You said you were up against it--that was it. And--and
I've seen chaps down on their luck often enough. Good Lord,
the hard-luck stories I hear every day of my life. And they
get a sort of look about the eyes and mouth. I hate to see
it on any fellow. It makes me sort of sick to come across
it even in a chap that's only got his fool self to blame. I may
be making another break, telling you--but you looked sort of
that way."
"Perhaps," stolidly, "I did." Then, his voice warming,
"It was jolly good-natured of you to think about it at all.
Thank you."
"That's all right," in polite acknowledgment. Then with
another look over the hedge, "Say--what ought I to call you?
Earl, or my Lord?"
"It's not necessary for you to call me anything in
particular--as a rule. If you were speaking of me, you might
say Lord Mount Dunstan."
G. Selden looked relieved.
"I don't want to be too much off," he said. "And I'd
like to ask you a favour. I've only three weeks here, and I
don't want to miss any chances."
"What chance would you like?"
"One of the things I'm biking over the country for, is to
get a look at just such a place as this. We haven't got 'em
in America. My old grandmother was always talking about
them. Before her mother brought her to New York she'd
lived in a village near some park gates, and she chinned about
it till she died. When I was a little chap I liked to hear
her. She wasn't much of an American. Wore a black net
cap with purple ribbons in it, and hadn't outlived her respect
for aristocracy. Gee!" chuckling, "if she'd heard what I
said to you just now, I reckon she'd have thrown a fit. Anyhow
she made me feel I'd like to see the kind of places she
talked about. And I shall think myself in luck if you'll let
me have a look at yours--just a bike around the park, if you
don't object--or I'll leave the bike outside, if you'd rather."
"I don't object at all," said Mount Dunstan. "The fact
is, I happened to be on the point of asking you to come and
have some lunch--when you got on your bicycle."
Selden pushed his cap and cleared his throat.
"I wasn't expecting that," he said. "I'm pretty dusty,"
with a glance at his clothes. "I need a wash and brush up--
particularly if there are ladies."
There were no ladies, and he could be made comfortable.
This being explained to him, he was obviously rejoiced. With
unembarrassed frankness, he expressed exultation. Such luck
had not, at any time, presented itself to him as a possibility
in his holiday scheme.
"By gee," he ejaculated, as they walked under the broad
oaks of the avenue leading to the house. "Speaking of luck,
this is the limit! I can't help thinking of what my grandmother
would say if she saw me."
He was a new order of companion, but before they had
reached the house, Mount Dunstan had begun to find him inspiring
to the spirits. His jovial, if crude youth, his unaffected
acknowledgment of unaccustomedness to grandeur, even when
in dilapidation, his delight in the novelty of the particular
forms of everything about him--trees and sward, ferns and moss,
his open self-congratulation, were without doubt cheerful things.
His exclamation, when they came within sight of the house
itself, was for a moment disturbing to Mount Dunstan's composure.
"Hully gee!" he said. "The old lady was right. All
I've thought about 'em was 'way off. It's bigger than a
museum." His approval was immense.
During the absence in which he was supplied with the
"wash and brush up," Mount Dunstan found Mr. Penzance
in the library. He explained to him what he had encountered,
and how it had attracted him.
"You have liked to hear me describe my Western neighbours,"
he said. "This youngster is a New York development,
and of a different type. But there is a likeness. I have
invited to lunch with us, a young man whom--Tenham, for instance,
if he were here--would call `a bounder.' He is nothing of
the sort. In his junior-assistant-salesman way, he is rather a
fine thing. I never saw anything more decently human than
his way of asking me--man to man, making friends by the
roadside if I was `up against it.' No other fellow I have
known has ever exhibited the same healthy sympathy."
The Reverend Lewis was entranced. Already he was really
quite flushed with interest. As Assyrian character, engraved
upon sarcophogi, would have allured and thrilled him, so was
he allured by the cryptic nature of the two or three American
slang phrases Mount Dunstan had repeated to him. His was
the student's simple ardour.
"Up against it," he echoed. "Really! Dear! Dear! And
that signifies, you say----"
"Apparently it means that a man has come face to face with
an obstacle difficult or impossible to overcome."
"But, upon my word, that is not bad. It is strong figure
of speech. It brings up a picture. A man hurrying to an
end--much desired--comes unexpectedly upon a stone wall.
One can almost hear the impact. He is up against it. Most
vivid. Excellent! Excellent!"
The nature of Selden's calling was such that he was not
accustomed to being received with a hint of enthusiastic welcome.
There was something almost akin to this in the vicar's
courteously amiable, aquiline countenance when he rose to
shake hands with the young man on his entrance. Mr. Penzance was
indeed slightly disappointed that his greeting was not responded
to by some characteristic phrasing. His American was that of Sam
Slick and Artemus Ward, Punch and various English witticisms in
anecdote. Life at the vicarage of Dunstan had not revealed to
him that the model had become archaic.
The revelation dawned upon him during his intercourse
with G. Selden. The young man in his cheap bicycling suit
was a new development. He was markedly unlike an English
youth of his class, as he was neither shy, nor laboriously at his
ease. That he was at his ease to quite an amazing degree
might perhaps have been remotely resented by the insular
mind, accustomed to another order of bearing in its social
inferiors, had it not been so obviously founded on entire
unconsciousness of self, and so mingled with open appreciation
of the unanticipated pleasures of the occasion. Nothing could
have been farther from G. Selden than any desire to attempt
to convey the impression that he had enjoyed the hospitality
of persons of rank on previous occasions. He found indeed a
gleeful point in the joke of the incongruousness of his own
presence amid such surroundings.
"What Little Willie was expecting," he remarked once, to
the keen joy of Mr. Penzance, "was a hunk of bread and
cheese at a village saloon somewhere. I ought to have said
`pub,' oughtn't I? You don't call them saloons here."
He was encouraged to talk, and in his care-free fluency he
opened up many vistas to the interested Mr. Penzance, who
found himself, so to speak, whirled along Broadway, rushed
up the steps of the elevated railroad and struggling to obtain
a seat, or a strap to hang to on a Sixth Avenue train.
The man was saturated with the atmosphere of the hot battle
he lived in. From his childhood he had known nothing but
the fever heat of his "little old New York," as he called it
with affectionate slanginess, and any temperature lower than
that he was accustomed to would have struck him as being
below normal. Penzance was impressed by his feeling of
affection for the amazing city of his birth. He admired, he
adored it, he boasted joyously of its perfervid charm.
"Something doing," he said. "That's what my sort of
a fellow likes--something doing. You feel it right there
when you walk along the streets. Little old New York for
mine. It's good enough for Little Willie. And it never
stops. Why, Broadway at night----"
He forgot his chop, and leaned forward on the table to
pour forth his description. The manservant, standing behind
Mount Dunstan's chair, forgot himself also, thought he was a
trained domestic whose duty it was to present dishes to the
attention without any apparent mental processes. Certainly
it was not his business to listen, and gaze fascinated. This
he did, however, actually for the time unconscious of his
breach of manners. The very crudity of the language used,
the oddly sounding, sometimes not easily translatable slang
phrases, used as if they were a necessary part of any
conversation--the blunt, uneducated bareness of figure--seemed to
Penzance to make more roughly vivid the picture dashed off.
The broad thoroughfare almost as thronged by night as by
day. Crowds going to theatres, loaded electric cars, whizzing
and clanging bells, the elevated railroad rushing and roaring
past within hearing, theatre fronts flaming with electric light,
announcements of names of theatrical stars and the plays
they appeared in, electric light advertisements of brands of
cigars, whiskies, breakfast foods, all blazing high in the night
air in such number and with such strength of brilliancy that
the whole thoroughfare was as bright with light as a ballroom
or a theatre. The vicar felt himself standing in the midst
of it all, blinded by the glare.
"Sit down on the sidewalk and read your newspaper, a book, a
magazine--any old thing you like," with an exultant laugh.
The names of the dramatic stars blazing over entrances to
the theatres were often English names, their plays English
plays, their companies made up of English men and women.
G. Selden was as familiar with them and commented upon
their gifts as easily as if he had drawn his drama from the
Strand instead of from Broadway. The novels piled up in
the stations of what he called "the L" (which revealed itself
as being a New-York-haste abbreviation of Elevated railroad),
were in large proportion English novels, and he had his
ingenuous estimate of English novelists, as well as of all else.
"Ruddy, now," he said; "I like him. He's all right, even
though we haven't quite caught onto India yet."
The dazzle and brilliancy of Broadway so surrounded Penzance that
he found it necessary to withdraw himself and return to his
immediate surroundings, that he might recover from his sense of
interested bewilderment. His eyes fell upon the stern lineaments
of a Mount Dunstan in a costume of the time of Henry VIII. He
was a burly gentleman, whose ruff-shortened thick neck and
haughty fixedness of stare from the background of his portrait
were such as seemed to eliminate him from the scheme of things,
the clanging of electric cars, and the prevailing roar of the L.
Confronted by his gaze, electric light advertisements of
whiskies, cigars, and corsets seemed impossible.
"He's all right," continued G. Selden. "I'm ready to
separate myself from one fifty any time I see a new book of
his. He's got the goods with him."
The richness of colloquialism moved the vicar of Mount
Dunstan to deep enjoyment.
"Would you mind--I trust you won't," he apologised
courteously, "telling me exactly the significance of those two
last sentences. In think I see their meaning, but----"
G. Selden looked good-naturedly apologetic himself.
"Well, it's slang--you see," he explained. "I guess I can't
help it. You--" flushing a trifle, but without any touch of
resentment in the boyish colour, "you know what sort of a
chap I am. I'm not passing myself off as anything but an
ordinary business hustler, am I--just under salesman to a
typewriter concern? I shouldn't like to think I'd got in here
on any bluff. I guess I sling in slang every half dozen
words----."
"My dear boy," Penzance was absolutely moved and he
spoke with warmth quite paternal, "Lord Mount Dunstan
and I are genuinely interested--genuinely. He, because he
knows New York a little, and I because I don't. I am an
elderly man, and have spent my life buried in my books in
drowsy villages. Pray go on. Your American slang has
frequently a delightful meaning--a fantastic hilarity, or common
sense, or philosophy, hidden in its origin. In that it generally
differs from English slang, which--I regret to say--is usually
founded on some silly catch word. Pray go on. When you
see a new book by Mr. Kipling, you are ready to `separate
yourself from one fifty' because he `has the goods with him.' "
G. Selden suppressed an involuntary young laugh.
"One dollar and fifty cents is usually the price of a book,"
he said. "You separate yourself from it when you take it
out of your clothes--I mean out of your pocket--and pay it
over the counter."
"There's a careless humour in it," said Mount Dunstan
grimly. "The suggestion of parting is not half bad. On
the whole, it is subtle."
"A great deal of it is subtle," said Penzance, "though it
all professes to be obvious. The other sentence has a
commercial sound."
"When a man goes about selling for a concern," said the
junior assistant of Jones, "he can prove what he says, if
he has the goods with him. I guess it came from that.
I don't know. I only know that when a man is a straight
sort of fellow, and can show up, we say he's got the goods
with him."
They sat after lunch in the library, before an open window,
looking into a lovely sunken garden. Blossoms were breaking
out on every side, and robins, thrushes, and blackbirds chirped
and trilled and whistled, as Mount Dunstan and Penzance
led G. Selden on to paint further pictures for them.
Some of them were rather painful, Penzance thought. As
connected with youth, they held a touch of pathos Selden
was all unconscious of. He had had a hard life, made
up, since his tenth year, of struggles to earn his living. He
had sold newspapers, he had run errands, he had swept out a
"candy store." He had had a few years at the public school,
and a few months at a business college, to which he went at
night, after work hours. He had been "up against it good and
plenty," he told them. He seemed, however, to have had a
knack of making friends and of giving them "a boost along"
when such a chance was possible. Both of his listeners realised
that a good many people had liked him, and the reason was
apparent enough to them.
"When a chap gets sorry for himself," he remarked once, "he's
down and out. That's a stone-cold fact. There's lots of
hard-luck stories that you've got to hear anyhow. The fellow
that can keep his to himself is the fellow that's likely to get
there."
"Get there?" the vicar murmured reflectively, and Selden
chuckled again.
"Get where he started out to go to--the White House,
if you like. The fellows that have got there kept their hard-
luck stories quiet, I bet. Guess most of 'em had plenty during
election, if they were the kind to lie awake sobbing on their
pillows because their feelings were hurt."
He had never been sorry for himself, it was evident, though
it must be admitted that there were moments when the elderly
English clergyman, whose most serious encounters had been
annoying interviews with cottagers of disrespectful manner,
rather shuddered as he heard his simple recital of days when
he had tramped street after street, carrying his catalogue with
him, and trying to tell his story of the Delkoff to frantically
busy men who were driven mad by the importunate sight of
him, to worried, ill-tempered ones who broke into fury when
they heard his voice, and to savage brutes who were only
restrained by law from kicking him into the street.
"You've got to take it, if you don't want to lose your job.
Some of them's as tired as you are. Sometimes, if you can
give 'em a jolly and make 'em laugh, they'll listen, and you
may unload a machine. But it's no merry jest just at first--
particularly in bad weather. The first five weeks I was with
the Delkoff I never made a sale. Had to live on my ten
per, and that's pretty hard in New York. Three and a half
for your hall bedroom, and the rest for your hash and shoes.
But I held on, and gradually luck began to turn, and I began
not to care so much when a man gave it to me hot."
The vicar of Mount Dunstan had never heard of the "hall
bedroom" as an institution. A dozen unconscious sentences
placed it before his mental vision. He thought it horribly
touching. A narrow room at the back of a cheap lodging
house, a bed, a strip of carpet, a washstand--this the sole
refuge of a male human creature, in the flood tide of youth,
no more than this to come back to nightly, footsore and
resentful of soul, after a day's tramp spent in forcing himself
and his wares on people who did not want him or them,
and who found infinite variety in the forcefulness of their
method of saying so.
"What you know, when you go into a place, is that nobody
wants to see you, and no one will let you talk if they can help
it. The only thing is to get in and rattle off your stunt
before you can be fired out."
Sometimes at first he had gone back at night to the hall
bedroom, and sat on the edge of the narrow bed, swinging his
feet, and asking himself how long he could hold out. But
he had held out, and evidently developed into a good salesman,
being bold and of imperturbable good spirits and temper, and
not troubled by hypersensitiveness. Hearing of the "hall
bedroom," the coldness of it in winter, and the breathless heat
in summer, the utter loneliness of it at all times and seasons,
one could not have felt surprise if the grown-up lad
doomed to its narrowness as home had been drawn into the
electric-lighted gaiety of Broadway, and being caught in its
maelstrom, had been sucked under to its lowest depths. But
it was to be observed that G. Selden had a clear eye, and a
healthy skin, and a healthy young laugh yet, which were all
wonderfully to his credit, and added enormously to one's
liking for him.
"Do you use a typewriter?" he said at last to Mr.
Penzance. "It would cut out half your work with your sermons.
If you do use one, I'd just like to call your attention to the
Delkoff. It's the most up-to-date machine on the market
to-day," drawing out the catalogue.
"I do not use one, and I am extremely sorry to say that
I could not afford to buy one," said Mr. Penzance with
considerate courtesy, "but do tell me about it. I am afraid I
never saw a typewriter."
It was the most hospitable thing he could have done, and
was of the tact of courts. He arranged his pince nez, and
taking the catalogue, applied himself to it. G. Selden's soul
warmed within him. To be listened to like this. To be
treated as a gentleman by a gentleman--by "a fine old swell
like this--Hully gee!"
"This isn't what I'm used to," he said with genuine
enjoyment. "It doesn't matter, your not being ready to buy
now. You may be sometime, or you may run up against
someone who is. Little Willie's always ready to say his piece."
He poured it forth with glee--the improved mechanical
appliances, the cuts in the catalogue, the platen roller, the
ribbon switch, the twenty-six yards of red or blue typing, the
fifty per cent. saving in ribbon expenditure alone, the new
basket shift, the stationary carriage, the tabulator, the
superiority to all other typewriting machines--the price one
hundred dollars without discount. And both Mount Dunstan
and Mr. Penzance listened entranced, examined cuts in the
catalogue, asked questions, and in fact ended by finding that
they must repress an actual desire to possess the luxury. The
joy their attitude bestowed upon Selden was the thing he
would feel gave the finishing touch to the hours which he
would recall to the end of his days as the "time of his life."
Yes, by gee! he was having "the time of his life."
Later he found himself feeling--as Miss Vanderpoel had
felt--rather as if the whole thing was a dream. This came
upon him when, with Mount Dunstan and Penzance, he walked
through the park and the curiously beautiful old gardens.
The lovely, soundless quiet, broken into only by bird notes, or
his companions' voices, had an extraordinary effect on him.
"It's so still you can hear it," he said once, stopping in a
velvet, moss-covered path. "Seems like you've got quiet
shut up here, and you've turned it on till the air's thick with
it. Good Lord, think of little old Broadway keeping it up,
and the L whizzing and thundering along every three minutes,
just the same, while we're standing here! You can't believe it."
It would have gone hard with him to describe to them the
value of his enjoyment. Again and again there came back
to him the memory of the grandmother who wore the black
net cap trimmed with purple ribbons. Apparently she had
remained to the last almost contumaciously British. She had
kept photographs of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort
on her bedroom mantelpiece, and had made caustic, international
comparisons. But she had seen places like this, and her
stories became realities to him now. But she had never thought
of the possibility of any chance of his being shown about by
the lord of the manor himself--lunching, by gee! and talking
to them about typewriters. He vaguely knew that if the
grandmother had not emigrated, and he had been born in
Dunstan village, he would naturally have touched his forehead
to Mount Dunstan and the vicar when they passed him in the
road, and conversation between them would have been an
unlikely thing. Somehow things had been changed by Destiny--
perhaps for the whole of them, as years had passed.
What he felt when he stood in the picture gallery neither
of his companions could at first guess. He ceased to talk, and
wandered silently about. Secretly he found himself a trifle
awed by being looked down upon by the unchanging eyes of
men in strange, rich garments--in corslet, ruff, and doublet,
velvet, powder, curled love locks, brocade and lace. The face
of long-dead loveliness smiled out from its canvas, or withheld
itself haughtily from his salesman's gaze. Wonderful bare white
shoulders, and bosoms clasped with gems or flowers and lace,
defied him to recall any treasures of Broadway to compare with
them. Elderly dames, garbed in stiff splendour, held
stiff, unsympathetic inquiry in their eyes, as they looked back
upon him. What exactly was a thirty shilling bicycle suit
doing there? In the Delkoff, plainly none were interested.
A pretty, masquerading shepherdess, with a lamb and a crook,
seemed to laugh at him from under her broad beribboned straw
hat. After looking at her for a minute or so, he gave a half
laugh himself--but it was an awkward one.
"She's a looker," he remarked. "They're a lot of them
lookers--not all--but a fair show----"
"A looker," translated Mount Dunstan in a low voice to
Penzance, "means, I believe, a young women with good
looks--a beauty."
"Yes, she IS a looker, by gee," said G. Selden, "but--
but--" the awkward half laugh, taking on a depressed touch
of sheepishness, "she makes me feel 'way off--they all do."
That was it. Surrounded by them, he was fascinated but
not cheered. They were all so smilingly, or disdainfully, or
indifferently unconscious of the existence of the human thing
of his class. His aspect, his life, and his desires were as
remote as those of prehistoric man. His Broadway, his L
railroad, his Delkoff--what were they where did they come into
the scheme of the Universe? They silently gazed and lightly
smiled or frowned THROUGH him as he stood. He was probably
not in the least aware that he rather loudly sighed.
"Yes," he said, "they make me feel 'way off. I'm not
in it. But she is a looker. Get onto that dimple in her cheek."
Mount Dunstan and Penzance spent the afternoon in doing their
best for him. He was well worth it. Mr. Penzance was filled
with delight, and saturated with the atmosphere of New York.
"I feel," he said, softly polishing his eyeglasses and almost
affectionately smiling, "I really feel as if I had been walking
down Broadway or Fifth Avenue. I believe that I might find
my way to--well, suppose we say Weber & Field's," and G.
Selden shouted with glee.
Never before, in fact, had he felt his heart so warmed by
spontaneous affection as it was by this elderly, somewhat bald
and thin-faced clergyman of the Church of England. This
he had never seen before. Without the trained subtlety to have
explained to himself the finely sweet and simply gracious deeps
of it, he was moved and uplifted. He was glad he had "come
across" it, he felt a vague regret at passing on his way, and
leaving it behind. He would have liked to feel that perhaps
he might come back. He would have liked to present him
with a Delkoff, and teach him how to run it. He had
delighted in Mount Dunstan, and rejoiced in him, but he had
rather fallen in love with Penzance. Certain American doubts
he had had of the solidity and permanency of England's
position and power were somewhat modified. When fellows
like these two stood at the first rank, little old England was
a pretty safe proposition.
After they had given him tea among the scents and songs
of the sunken garden outside the library window, they set
him on his way. The shadows were lengthening and the
sunlight falling in deepening gold when they walked up the
avenue and shook hands with him at the big entrance gates.
"Well, gentlemen," he said, "you've treated me grand--as
fine as silk, and it won't be like Little Willie to forget it.
When I go back to New York it'll be all I can do to keep from
getting the swell head and bragging about it. I've enjoyed
myself down to the ground, every minute. I'm not the kind
of fellow to be likely to be able to pay you back your kindness,
but, hully gee! if I could I'd do it to beat the band.
Good-bye, gentlemen--and thank you--thank you."
Across which one of their minds passed the thought that
the sound of the hollow impact of a trotting horse's hoofs on
the road, which each that moment became conscious of hearing
was the sound of the advancing foot of Fate? It crossed no
mind among the three. There was no reason why it should.
And yet at that moment the meaning of the regular, stirring
sound was a fateful thing.
"Someone on horseback," said Penzance.
He had scarcely spoken before round the curve of the road
she came. A finely slender and spiritedly erect girl's figure,
upon a satin-skinned bright chestnut with a thoroughbred gait,
a smart groom riding behind her. She came towards them,
was abreast them, looked at Mount Dunstan, a smiling dimple
near her lip as she returned his quick salute.
"Miss Vanderpoel," he said low to the vicar, "Lady
Anstruther's sister."
Mr. Penzance, replacing his own hat, looked after her
with surprised pleasure.
"Really," he exclaimed, "Miss Vanderpoel! What a fine
girl! How unusually handsome!"
Selden turned with a gasp of delighted, amazed recognition.
"Miss Vanderpoel," he burst forth, "Reuben Vanderpoel's
daughter! The one that's over here visiting her sister. Is it
that one--sure?"
"Yes," from Mount Dunstan without fervour. "Lady
Anstruthers lives at Stornham, about six miles from here."
"Gee," with feverish regret. "If her father was there, and
I could get next to him, my fortune would be made."
"Should you," ventured Penzance politely, "endeavour to
sell him a typewriter?"
"A typewriter! Holy smoke! I'd try to sell him ten thousand. A
fellow like that syndicates the world. If I could get next to
him----" and he mounted his bicycle with a laugh.
"Get next," murmured Penzance.
"Get on the good side of him," Mount Dunstan murmured in reply.
"So long, gentlemen, good-bye, and thank you again," called
G. Selden as he wheeled off, and was carried soundlessly down
the golden road.
