Читать книгу The Lady Doc - Caroline Lockhart - Страница 11

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While Andy P. Symes on his honeymoon was combining business with pleasure in that vague region known as "Back East," and his bride was learning not to fold the hotel napkin or call the waiter "sir," the population of Crowheart was increasing so rapidly that the town had growing pains. Where, last month, the cactus bloomed, tar-paper shacks surrounded by chicken-wire, kid-proof fences was home the next to families of tow-heads.

Crowheart, the citizens of the newly incorporated town told each other, was booming right.

They came in prairie schooners, travel-stained and weary, their horses thin and jaded from the long, heavy pull across the sandy trail of the sagebrush desert. With funds barely sufficient for horse feed and a few weeks' provisions, they came without definite knowledge of conditions or plans. A rumor had reached them back there in Minnesota or Iowa, Nebraska or Missouri, of the opportunities in this new country and, anyway, they wanted to move—where was not a matter of great moment. Others came by rail, all bearing the earmarks of straitened circumstances, and few of them with any but the most vague ideas as to what they had come for beyond the universal expectation of getting rich, somehow, somewhere, some time. They were poor alike, and the first efforts of the head of each household were spent in the construction of a place of shelter for himself and family. The makeshifts of poverty were seldom if ever the subject of ridicule or comment, for most had a sympathetic understanding of the emergencies which made them necessary. Kindness, helpfulness, good-fellowship were in the air.

When Ephriam Baskitt loomed up on the horizon with two freight wagons filled with the dust-covered canned goods of a defunct grocery store and twenty-four hours later was a fixture, nobody saw anything humorous in the headline in the Courier which heralded him as "The Merchant Prince of Crowheart." Two new saloons opened while "Curly" resigned as chef for the Lazy S Outfit to become the orchestra in a new dance hall which arrived about midnight in a prairie schooner.

As Dr. Harpe made friends with the newcomers and continued to ingratiate herself with the old, she sometimes felt that the death of Alice Freoff was not after all the tragedy it had at first seemed. She missed the woman—not the woman so much either, as the association—and there was no one in Crowheart to fill her place, so she was frequently lonely, often bored, with the intensely practical, unsophisticated women whom she attracted strongly. Sometimes she thought of Augusta Kunkel and a derisive smile always curved her lips as she attempted to picture her in a worldly setting and the smile grew when she tried to imagine Symes's sensations while presenting her to his friends. She indulged, too, in speculation as to the outcome of the marriage, but could not venture a prophecy since it was one of those affairs to which no ending would be improbable.

But while Dr. Harpe speculated, observation and the suggestions of Andy P. Symes were working wonders in the appearance of the gawky, long-limbed woman. A session with a hair-dresser had not been wasted, for she had learned to dress her hair in the prevailing mode. Symes had lost no time in rushing her to an establishment where the brown cashmere basque and many gored skirt had been exchanged for a gown of fashionable cut. A pair of French stays developed indications of a figure and the concho-like broach had been discarded, while Augusta herself had learned that black silk mitts had not been greatly in vogue for nearly a quarter of a century. The conspicuous marvel which had displayed the skill of the clairvoyant milliner from South Dakota had been replaced by a hat of good lines and simplicity, and, for the first time in her life, Augusta Kunkel rustled when she walked.

When the transformation was complete, Andy P. Symes sighed in a little more than relief, and mentally observed that in the course of human events he might be able to introduce her to his family.

Nor was Symes himself idle in a land where Capital hung like an over-ripe peach waiting to be plucked by the proper hand. Mr. Symes was convinced that his was the hand, so he lost no opportunity of widening his circle of desirable acquaintances.

In his wide-brimmed Stetson, with his broad shoulders towering above the average man, his genial smile and jovial manners, he was the typical free, big-hearted westerner of the eastern imagination. And he liked the rôle; also he played it well. Symes was essentially a poseur. He loved the limelight like a showman. To be foremost, to lead, was essential to his happiness. He demanded satellites and more satellites. His love of prominence amounted to a passion. Sycophancy was as acceptable as real regard, since each catered to his vanity.

It required money, much money, to live up to the popular conception of the type he chose to represent. To successfully carry out his rôle of the breezy, liberal, unconventional westerner required money enough to include the cabman on the pavement in his invitations to drink, money enough to donate bank notes to bellboys, to wave change to waiters, to occupy boxes where he could lay his conspicuous Stetson upon the rail. Having indulged himself in these delightful extravagances, Symes was suddenly recalled one morning to a realization of the fact that earthly paradises end by a curt notification from his bank that he had overdrawn his account.

This was awkward. It was particularly awkward to Symes because he had no assets. With the singular improvidence which distinguished him he had not provided for this exigency before leaving Crowheart. True, he had made a vague calculation which would seem to indicate that he had sufficient funds to last the trip, but it was more extended than he had anticipated and he had forgotten to deduct the amount of the checks which he had given in payment for the champagne provided in such unstinted quantities by "Hank" Terriberry.

Not only was Symes without reserve funds but he had a large hotel bill owing. Yes, it was high time he was "doing something." "Doing something" to Mr. Symes, meant devising some means of securing an income without physical and no great mental effort, something which should be compatible with the notable House of Symes.

Had he borne any other than that sacred name he would have turned to insurance or a mail order business with the same unerring instinct with which the sunflower turns to the sun, but this avenue was closed to him by the necessity of preserving the dignity of his name. It was necessary for him as a Symes to promote some enterprise which would give him the power and prestige in the community which belonged to him.

Mr. Symes had been East before with this end in view. As he himself observed, "he never went East except to eat oysters and raise money." He had been much more successful as an oyster eater than a promoter. There was that vein of coking coal over beyond the "Limestone Rim"; he nearly landed that, but the investors discovered too soon that it was 150 miles from a railroad. There was an embryo coal mine back in the hills—a fine proposition but open to the same objection. Also an asbestos deposit, valueless for the same reason. He had tried copper prospects with startling assays and had found himself shunned nor had mountains of marble aroused the enthusiasm of Capital. They had listened with marked coldness to his story of a wonderful oil seepage and had turned a deaf ear on natural gas. He had baited a hook with a stratum of gypsum which would furnish the world with cement. Capital had barely sniffed at the bait. Nor had banks of shale adapted to the making of a perfect brick appealed to its jaded palate. But Symes was never at a loss for something to promote, for there was always a nebula of schemes vaguely present in his prolific brain. Irrigation was the opportunity of the moment and he meant to grab it with a strangle hold. He had been dilatory but now he intended to get down to business.

If only he could hang on until he accomplished his end! Symes stopped manicuring his nails with a pin, which he kept in the lapel of his coat for that commendable purpose, and counted his money. He was thankful that since he had overdrawn his account he had done it so liberally as, by strict economy, it would enable him to remain a short while and depart with his credit still unimpaired.

Augusta Symes regarded the pile of crisp banknotes with pleased eyes. She could not recollect ever having seen so much money together before; the proceeds of horse-shoeing and wagon repairs came mostly in silver. Placing the banknotes in his wallet with considerably more than his usual care, Mr. Symes paced the floor of their corner suite with the slow, measured strides of meditation, his noble head sunk upon his breast and his broad brow corrugated in thought. Mrs. Symes's eyes followed him in silent and respectful admiration.

When he stopped, finally, in the middle of the room, the fire of enthusiasm was newly kindled in his eyes and an unconscious squaring of his shoulders announced that he was now prepared to "do something."

Symes really had initial energy and the trait was most apparent when driven by necessity. The first step toward getting his enterprise under way was the bringing together of the people he hoped to interest. He reached for his hat and straightened his scarf before the mirror.

Augusta watched the preparations in some dismay; she dreaded being alone in the great hotel.

"Will you be gone long, Mr. Symes?"

"Good God! Don't call me Mister Symes," he burst out in unexpected exasperation.

Augusta's eyes filled with tears.

"But—but everybody calls you 'Andy' and—and just 'Symes' sounds so familiar. Why can't I call you 'Phidias?'"

"Phidias! Do, by all means, call me Phidias. I dote on Phidias! I love the combination—Phidias Symes. Father was drunk when he named me."

He slammed the door behind him, forgetting to explain that he was not returning for luncheon or dinner so, that evening, while Augusta wandered aimlessly through the rooms, both hungry and anxious yet afraid to venture into the big dining-room, Andy P. Symes was saying with impressive emphasis as he fumbled in a box of cabanas:

"Big opportunities, I am convinced, seldom come more than once to a man."

His guests listened to the trite axiom with the respect due one who has met and grappled successfully with his one great chance. His well-fed appearance, his genial, contented smile, gave an impression of prosperity even when his linen was frayed and his elbows glossy; now in the latest achievement of a good tailor it was difficult to conceive him as being anything less than a millionaire.

"And this," Symes looked squarely in each eager eye in turn, "this, gentlemen, is such an opportunity."

The timid voice of a man who had made a hundred thousand from a patent fly-trap broke the awed silence.

"It sounds good."

"Sounds good! It is good." Mr. Symes clenched his huge fist and emphasized the declaration with a blow upon the table which made the dishes rattle.

"Think of it," he went on, "two hundred thousand acres that can be made to bloom like the rose. An earthly paradise of our own making." The flowery figures were borrowed from a railroad folder but Mr. Symes had grasped them with the avidity of true genius and made them his own. "And how?"

The waiter starting away with a tray load of dishes stopped to learn.

"By the mere introduction of water upon the most fertile soil in the world! Is there anything like it—a miracle worker!" Mr. Symes shut one eye and peered into an empty bottle. "And how can this be done?" He answered himself. "By the expenditure of a ridiculously small amount of money; the absurd sum of $250,000. And look at the returns!"

By the intentness of their gaze it was evident that all were willing enough to look. Symes lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper and swept the air with his outspread fingers.

"A clean million!"

The man who made only six thousand a year selling plumbers' supplies, gulped.

"But who's goin' to buy it?" It was the timid voice of the Fly-trap King.

"Buy it!" The questioner withered before Symes's scorn. "Buy it? Why, the world is land-hungry—crying for land!—and water. But I've considered all that; I've arranged for it," Mr. Symes went on with a touch of impatience. "We'll colonize it. We'll import Russian Jews to raise sugar-beets for the sugar-beet factory which we will establish. They will buy it for $50 an acre cash or $60 an acre with 10 per cent. interest upon the deferred payments. It's very simple."

"But—but—I thought Russian Jews went in mostly for collar buttons, shoe-strings and lace—mercantile enterprises—commercial natures, you know? Besides, where they going to get their money for the first payment?"

Symes curbed his irritation at the piffling objections of the Fly-trap King and responded tolerantly.

"We'll organize a bank and loan 'em the money. If they fail to come through at the specified time the land will return to the company and we'll have their improvements, making them a small allowance for same, at our discretion. We'll lay out a town and build an Opera House, get electric light and street railway franchises—a million? Why, there's millions in sight when you consider the possibilities."

The painting of the roseate picture had flushed Mr. Symes's cheeks; already "Symesville" or "Symeston" rose clear before his mental vision, while his listeners endeavored to calculate their share of the millions when proportioned in accordance with the investment of all their available cash. Certainly the returns were temptingly large and the least optimistic among them believed he could convince his wife of the perfect safety of the investment, the success of which was practically assured by the fact that Andy P. Symes for an infinitesimal salary, as compared to his ability, was willing to assume the management.

A slender, blond gentleman, who derived a satisfactory income from the importation of Scotch woollens and Irish linens, confessed that for years he had cherished a secret desire to do something for mankind, providing he was assured of a reasonable return upon his investment, and, with the King of Brobdingnag, believed that the man who made, say, two sugar-beets grow where only one grew before, rendered an incalculable service to the human race.

The other guests expressed their admiration of the woollen importer's high sentiments, and while they admitted that no such noble impulse governed them they subscribed generously for stock in the company which was formed then and there to apply for the segregation of 200,000 acres of irrigable land.

Mr. Symes talked familiarly of State Land Boards, water rights, flood water, ditches, laterals, subsoil and seepage, the rotation of crops and general productiveness until even the cynical politician who controlled the negro vote in his ward began to realize that it was a liberal education merely to know Andy P. Symes, not to mention the distinction of being associated with him in business.

Inspired by the prospect of once again handling real money, Andy P. Symes talked with an earnestness and fluency which cast a hypnotic spell upon his listeners. Swiftly, graphically, he outlined the future of the country which would be opened up to settlement by this great irrigation project. His florid face turned a deeper red, his eyes sparkled as the winged imagination of the natural promoter began to play. It was of the dirigible kind, Symes's imagination, he could steer it in any direction. It could rise to any heights. It now shot upward and he saw himself at the head of a project which would make his name a household word throughout the State. He saw crowds of Russian Jews crying hosannas as he walked along the street of Symesville; he heard the clang of trolleys; he saw the smoke of factories; he heard the name of Symes upon the lips of little children; he saw, but the dazzling vision made him blink and he leaned back in his chair with the beneficent smile of a man who had just endowed a hospital for crippled children, while he permitted himself to accept a subscription for $15,000 from a guest who had cleared that modest sum in the manufacture of white lead and paint. A slow and laborious process compared to the sale of irrigated land to Russian Jews.

Symes's guests wrung his hand at parting, in silent gratitude at being permitted to get in on the ground floor of what was undoubtedly the greatest money making enterprise still open to investors. And they left him with the assurance of their hearty co-operation and willingness to endeavor to raise the balance among their friends.

While the subscribers for the stock of the Symes Irrigation Project were rousing their wives from their first sleep to gloat with them over the unprecedented good fortune which had thrown the big-hearted and shrewd but honest westerner in their paths, that person was returning from a night lunch cart with two hot frankfurter sandwiches for Augusta concealed in his pocket. The dinner, although so fruitful of results, had seriously reduced the roll of crisp bank notes.

Strict economy was imperative during the days which followed and it became no uncommon occurrence for Andy P. Symes to whisk Augusta into a caravansera where the gentlemen patrons ate large, filling plates of griddle cakes with their hats on. But such are the sordid straits to which the proudest spirits are sometimes reduced and depressing as it was to Andy P. Symes, who winced each time that he seated himself at the varnished pine table upon which the pewter castor was chained to the wall and selected a paper napkin from a glass tumbler, he consoled himself with the thought that it would not be for long. Also it was some little compensation to see traces of animation in Augusta's stolid face, for the atmosphere was vastly more congenial to his wife than that of the fashionable hotel restaurant where her appetite fled before the waiter's observant eye and the bewildering nightmare of a menu.

Invariably upon these humiliating occasions when Symes dined cheek by jowl with hoi polloi who left their spoons in their cups and departed using a toothpick like a peavy, his thoughts turned to his coming triumph in Crowheart. And although his gorge rose at the sight of a large, buck cockroach which scurried across the table and turned to wave a fraternal leg at him before it disappeared, the knowledge that he would soon take his rightful position as that city's leading citizen helped to restore his equanimity.

With an assured income, Company money to spend among the local merchants, work for many applicants, Symes felt that he could do little else than step into the niche which clearly belonged to him. The one smudge upon the picture was Augusta. Her eyes were ever upon him in adoring, dog-like fidelity and it irritated him. Her appearance had altered amazingly, she no longer called him "Mister Symes," and by repeated corrections he had succeeded in inducing her to refrain from folding her hands upon her abdomen, but the plebeian strain, the deficiency of gentle birth betrayed itself in a dozen little ways, by indelicacies none the less irritating because they were trifling.

Symes knew what a gentlewoman should be, for he had mingled with them in the past and he never had thought of his wife as being anything else than well born. Augusta's large knuckled hands, conspicuous in white kid gloves, her long, flat feet, the shiny, bald spots behind her ears, were sources of real mortification to him, and invariably he found himself growing red upon the occasions when it was necessary to present her to his friends.

In the presence of other women she sat bolt upright, a red spot burning on either cheek-bone, her eyes bright with nervous excitement while she answered the careless small talk with preternatural seriousness. At such times Symes himself talked rapidly to hide the gaucheries of her speech, and they were ordeals which he took care should be as few as possible.

If the yoke were chafing already, he asked himself frequently, what would its weight be in a year, five, ten years later?