THE SANTA RITA SHERRY.
Farnham walked down the path to the gate, then turned to go to his own house, with no very definite idea of what direction he was taking. The interview he had just had was still powerfully affecting his senses, he was conscious of no depression from the prompt and decided refusal he had received. He was like a soldier in his first battle who has got a sharp wound which does not immediately cripple him, the perception of which is lost in the enjoyment of a new, keen, and enthralling experience. His thoughts were full of his own avowal, of the beauty of his young mistress, rather than of her coldness. Seeing his riding-whip in his hand, he stared at it an instant, and then at his boots, with a sudden recollection that he had intended to ride. He walked rapidly to the stable, where his horse was still waiting, and rode at a brisk trot out of the avenue for a few blocks, and then struck off into a sandy path that led to the woods by the river-side.
As he rode, his thoughts were at first more of himself than of Alice. He exulted over the discovery that he was in love as if some great and unimagined good fortune had happened to him. "I am not past it, then," he said to himself, repeating the phrase which had leaped from his heart when he saw Alice descending the stairs. "I hardly thought that such a thing could ever happen to me. She is the only one." His thoughts ran back to a night in Heidelberg, when he sat in the shadow of the castle wall with a German student of his acquaintance, and looked far over the valley at the lights of the town and the rippling waves of the Neckar, silvered by the soft radiance of the summer moon.
"Poor Hammerstein! How he raved that night about little Bertha von Eichholz. He called her Die Einzige something like a thousand times. It seemed an absurd thing to say; I knew dozens just like her, with blue eyes and Gretchen braids. But Hammerstein meant it, for he shot himself the week after her wedding with the assessor. But mine is the Only One—though she is not mine. I would rather love her without hope than be loved by any other woman in the world."
A few days before he had been made happy by perceiving that she was no longer a child; now he took infinite pleasure in the thought of her youth; he tilled his mind and his senses with the image of her freshness, her clear, pure color, the outline of her face and form. "She is young and fragrant as spring; she has every bloom and charm of body and soul," he said to himself, as he galloped over the shady woodland road. In his exalted mood, he had almost forgotten how he had left her presence. He delighted in his own roused and wakened passion, as a devotee in his devotions, without considering what was to come of it all. The blood was surging through his veins. He was too strong, his love was too new and wonderful to him, to leave any chance for despair. It was not that he did not consider himself dismissed. He felt that he had played a great stake foolishly, and lost. But the love was there, and it warmed and cheered his heart, like a fire in a great hall, making even the gloom noble.
He was threading a bridle-path which led up a gentle ascent to a hill overlooking the river, when his horse suddenly started back with a snort of terror as two men emerged from the thicket and grasped at his rein. He raised his whip to strike one of them down; the man dodged, and his companion said, "None o' that, or I'll shoot your horse." The sun had set, but it was yet light, and he saw that the fellow had a cocked revolver in his hand.
"Well, what do you want?" he asked.
"I want you to stop where you are and go back," said the man sullenly.
"Why should I go back? My road lies the other way. You step aside and let me pass."
"You can't pass this way. Go back, or I'll make you," the man growled, shifting his pistol to his left hand and seizing Farnham's rein with his right. His intention evidently was to turn the horse around and start him down the path by which he had come. Farnham saw his opportunity and struck the hand that held the pistol a smart blow. The weapon dropped, but went off with a sharp report as it fell. The horse reared and plunged, but the man held firmly to the rein. His companion, joined by two or three other rough-looking men who rushed from the thicket, seized the horse and held him firmly, and pulled Farnham from the saddle. They attempted no violence and no robbery. The man who had held the pistol, a black-visaged fellow with a red face and dyed mustache, after rubbing his knuckles a moment, said: "Let's take it out o' the —— whelp!" But another, to whom the rest seemed to look as a leader, said: "Go slow, Mr. Bowersox; we want no trouble here."
Farnham at this addressed the last speaker and said, "Can you tell me what all this means? You don't seem to be murderers. Are you horse-thieves?"
"Nothing of the kind," said the man. "We are Reformers."
Farnham gazed at him with amazement. He was a dirty-looking man, young and sinewy, with long and oily hair and threadbare clothes, shiny and unctuous. His eyes were red and furtive, and he had a trick of passing his hand over his mouth while he spoke. His mates stood around him, listening rather studiedly to the conversation. They seemed of the lower class of laboring men. Their appearance was so grotesque, in connection with the lofty title their chief had given them, that Farnham could not help smiling, in spite of his anger.
"What is your special line of reform?" he asked,—"spelling, or civil service?"
"We are Labor Reformers," said the spokesman. "We represent the toiling millions against the bloated capitalists and grinding monopolies; we believe that man is better——"
"Yes, no doubt," interrupted Farnham; "but how are you going to help the toiling millions by stopping my horse on the highway?"
"We was holding a meeting which was kep' secret for reasons satisfactory to ourselves. These two gentlemen was posted here to keep out intruders from the lodge. If you had 'a' spoke civil to them, there would have been no harm done. None will be done now if you want to go."
Farnham at once mounted his horse. "I would take it as a great favor," he said, "if you would give me your name and that of the gentleman with the pistol. Where is he, by the way?" he continued. The man they called Bowersox had disappeared from the group around the spokesman. Farnham turned and saw him a little distance away directly behind him. He had repossessed himself of his pistol and held it cocked in his hand.
"What do you want of our names?" the spokesman asked.
Farnham did not again lose sight of Bowersox. It occurred to him that the interview might as well be closed. He therefore said, carelessly, without turning:
"A man has a natural curiosity to know the names of new acquaintances. But no matter, I suppose the police know you," and rode away.
Bowersox turned to Offitt and said, "Why in —— did you let him go? I could have knocked his head off and nobody knowed it."
"Yes," said Offitt, coolly. "And got hung for it."
"It would have been self-defence," said Bowersox. "He hit me first."
"Well, gentlemen," said Offitt, "that closes up Greenwood Lodge. We can't meet in this grass any more. I don't suppose he knows any of us by sight, or he'd have us up to-morrow."
"It was a piece of —— nonsense, comin' out here, anyhow," growled Bowersox, unwilling to be placated. "You haven't done a —— thing but lay around on the grass and eat peanuts and hear Bott chin."
"Brother Bott has delivered a splendid address on 'The Religion of Nature,' and he couldn't have had a better hall than the Canopy to give it under," said Offitt. "And now, gentlemen, we'd better get back our own way."
As Farnham rode home he was not much puzzled by his adventure in the woods. He remembered having belonged, when he was a child of ten, to a weird and mysterious confraternity called "Early Druids," which met in the depths of groves, with ill-defined purposes, and devoted the hours of meeting principally to the consumption of confectionery. He had heard for the past few months of the existence of secret organizations of working-men—wholly outside of the trades-unions and unconnected with them—and guessed at once that he had disturbed a lodge of one of these clubs. His resentment did not last very long at the treatment to which he had been subjected; but still he thought it was not a matter of jest to have the roads obstructed by ruffians with theories in their heads and revolvers in their hands, neither of which they knew how to use. He therefore promised himself to consult with the chief of police the next morning in regard to the matter.
As he rode along, thinking of the occurrence, he was dimly conscious of a pleasant suggestion in something he had seen among the hazel brush, and searching tenaciously in his recollection of the affair, it all at once occurred to him that, among the faces of the men who came out of the thicket in the scuffle, was that of the blonde-bearded, blue-eyed young carpenter who had been at work in his library the day Mrs. Belding and Alice lunched with him. He was pleased to find that the pleasant association led him to memories of his love, but for a moment a cloud passed over him at the thought of so frank and hearty a fellow and such a good workman being in such company. "I must see if I cannot get him out of it," he said to himself, and then reverted again to thoughts of Alice.
Twilight was falling, and its melancholy influence was beginning to affect him. He thought less and less of the joy of his love and more of its hopelessness. By the time he reached his house he had begun to confront the possibility of a life of renunciation, and, after the manner of Americans of fortune who have no special ties, his mind turned naturally to Europe. "I cannot stay here to annoy her," he thought, and so began to plot for the summer and winter, and, in fancy, was at the second cataract of the Nile before his horse's hoofs, ringing on the asphalt of the stable-yard, recalled him to himself.
The next day, he was compelled to go to New York to attend to some matters of business. Before taking the train, he laid his complaint of being stopped on the road before the chief of police, who promised to make vigorous inquisition. Farnham remained several days in New York, and on his return, one warm, bright evening, he found his table prepared and the grave Budsey waiting behind his chair.
He ate his dinner hastily and in silence, with no great zest. "You have not forgot, sir," said Budsey, who was his external conscience in social matters, "that you are going this evening to Mrs. Temple's?"
"I think I shall not go."
"Mr. Temple was here this afternoon, sir, which he said it was most particular. I asked him would he call again. He said no, he was sure of seeing you to-night. But it was most particular, he said."
Budsey spoke in the tone of solemn and respectful tyranny which he always assumed when reminding Farnham of his social duties, and which conveyed a sort of impression to his master that, if he did not do what was befitting, his butler was quite capable of picking him up and deferentially carrying him to the scene of festivity, and depositing him on the door-step.
"What could Temple want to see me about 'most particular'?" Farnham asked himself. "After all, I may as well pass the evening there as anywhere."
Mr. Temple was one of the leading citizens of Buffland. He was the vice-president of the great rolling-mill company, whose smoke darkened the air by day and lighted up the skies at night as with the flames of the nether pit. He was very tall and very slender, with reddish-brown hair, eyes and mustache. Though a man of middle age, his trim figure, his fashionable dress, and his clean shaven cheek and chin gave him an appearance of youth. He was president of the local jockey club, and the joy of his life was to take his place in the judges' stand, and sway the destinies of the lean, keen-faced trainers who drove the trotting horses. He had the eye of a lynx for the detection of any crookedness in driving, and his voice would ring out over the track like the trump of doom, conveying fines and penalties to the luckless trickster who was trying to get some unfair advantage in the start. His voice, a deep basso, rarely was heard, in fact, anywhere else. Though excessively social, he was also extremely silent. He gave delightful dinner-parties and a great many of them, but rarely spoke, except to recommend an especially desirable wine to a favored guest. When he did speak, however, his profanity was phenomenal. Every second word was an oath. To those who were not shocked by it there was nothing more droll and incongruous than to hear this quiet, reserved, well-dressed, gentleman-like person pouring out, on the rare occasions when he talked freely, in a deep, measured, monotonous tone, a flood of imprecations which would have made a pirate hang his head. He had been, as a boy, clerk on a Mississippi River steamboat, and a vacancy occurring in the office of mate, he had been promoted to that place. His youthful face and quiet speech did not sufficiently impose upon the rough deck-hands of that early day. They had been accustomed to harsher modes of address, and he saw his authority defied and in danger. So he set himself seriously to work to learn to swear; and though at first it made his heart shiver a little with horror and his cheek burn with shame, he persevered, as a matter of business, until his execrations amazed the roustabouts. When he had made a fortune, owned a line of steamboats, and finally retired from the river, the habit had been fastened upon him, and oaths became to him the only form of emphatic speech. The hardest work he ever did in his life was, while courting his wife, a Miss Flora Ballston, of Cincinnati, to keep from mingling his ordinary forms of emphasis in his asseverations of affection. But after he was married, and thrown more and more into the company of women, that additional sense, so remarkable in men of his mould, came to him, and he never lapsed, in their presence, into his natural way of speech. Perhaps this was the easier, as he rarely spoke at all when they were by—not that he was in the least shy or timid, but because they, as a rule, knew nothing about stocks, or pig-iron, or wine, or trotting horses,—the only subjects, in his opinion, which could interest any reasonable creature.
When Farnham arrived at his house, it was already pretty well filled with guests. Mr. and Mrs. Temple were at the door, shaking hands with their friends as they arrived, she with a pleasant smile and word from her black eyes and laughing mouth, and he in grave and speechless hospitality.
"Good-evening, Mr. Farnham!" said the good-natured lady. "So glad to see you. I began to be alarmed. So did the young ladies. They were afraid you had not returned. Show yourself in the drawing-room and dispel their fears. Oh, Mr. Harrison, I am so glad you resolved to stay over."
Farnham gave way to the next comer, and said to Mr. Temple, who had pressed his hand in silence:
"Did you want to see me for anything special to-day?"
Mrs. Temple looked up at the word, and her husband said:
"No; I merely wanted you to take a drive with me."
Another arrival claimed Mrs. Temple's attention, and as Farnham moved away, Temple half-whispered in his ear, "Don't go away till I get a chance to speak to you. There is merry and particular bloom of h—— to pay."
The phrase, while vivid, was not descriptive, and Farnham could not guess what it meant. Perhaps something had gone wrong in the jockey club; perhaps Goldsmith Maid was off her feed; perhaps pig-iron had gone up or down a dollar a ton. These were all subjects of profound interest to Temple and much less to Farnham; so he waited patiently the hour of revelation, and looked about the drawing-room to see who was there.
It was the usual drawing-room of provincial cities. The sofas and chairs were mostly occupied by married women, who drew a scanty entertainment from gossip with each other, from watching the proceedings of the spinsters, and chiefly, perhaps, from a consciousness of good clothes. The married men stood grouped in corners and talked of their every-day affairs. The young people clustered together in little knots, governed more or less by natural selection—only the veterans of several seasons pairing off into the discreet retirement of stairs and hall angles. At the further end of the long drawing-room, Farnham's eyes at last lighted upon the object of his quest. Alice sat in the midst of a group of young girls who had intrenched themselves in a corner of the room, and defied all the efforts of skirmishing youths, intent upon flirtation, to dislodge them. They seemed to be amusing themselves very well together, and the correct young men in white cravats and pointed shoes came, chatted, and drifted away. They were the brightest and gayest young girls of the place; and it would have been hard to detect any local color in them. Young as they were, they had all had seasons in Paris and in Washington; some of them knew the life of that most foreign of all capitals, New York. They nearly all spoke French and German better than they did English, for their accent in those languages was very sweet and winning in its incorrectness, while their English was high-pitched and nasal, and a little too loud in company. They were as pretty as girls are anywhere, and they wore dresses designed by Mr. Worth, or his New York rivals, Loque and Chiffon; but they occasionally looked across the room with candid and intelligent envy at maidens of less pretensions, who were better dressed by the local artists.
Farnham was stopped at some distance from the pretty group by a buxom woman standing near the open window, cooling the vast spread of her bare shoulders in a current of air, which she assisted in its office with a red-and-gold Japanese fan.
"Captain Farnham," she said, "when are you going to give that lawn-tennis party you promised so long ago? My character for veracity depends on it. I have told everybody it would be soon, and I shall be disgraced if it is delayed much longer."
"That is the common lot of prophets, Mrs. Adipson," replied Farnham. "You know they say in Wall Street that early and exclusive information will ruin any man. But tell me, how is your club getting on?" he continued disingenuously, for he had not the slightest interest in the club; but he knew that once fairly started on the subject, Mrs. Adipson would talk indefinitely, and he might stand there and torture his heart and delight his eyes with the beauty of Alice Belding.
He carried his abstraction a little too far, however, for the good lady soon perceived, from his wandering looks and vague replies, that she was not holding his attention. So she pettishly released him after following the direction of his eyes, and said, "There, I see you are crazy to go and talk to Miss Dallas. I won't detain you. She is awfully clever, I suppose, though she never took the trouble to be brilliant in my presence; and she is pretty when she wears her hair that way—I never liked those frizzes."
Farnham accepted his release with perhaps a little more gratitude than courtesy, and moved away to take a seat which had just been vacated beside Miss Dallas. He was filled with a boyish delight in Mrs. Adipson's error. "That she should think I was worshipping Miss Dallas from afar! Where do women keep their eyes? To think that anybody should look at Miss Dallas when Alice Belding was sitting beside her." It was pleasant to think, however, that the secret of his unhappy love was safe. Nobody was gossiping about it, and using the name of his beloved in idle conjectures. That was as it should be. His love was sacred from rude comment. He could go and sit by Miss Dallas, so near his beloved that he could see every breath move the lace on her bosom. He could watch the color come and go on her young cheek. He could hear every word her sweet voice uttered, and nobody would know he was conscious of her existence.
Full of this thought, he sat down by Miss Dallas, who greeted him warmly and turned her back upon her friends. By looking over her shining white shoulder, he could see the clear, pure profile of Alice just beyond, so near that he could have laid his hand on the crinkled gold of her hair. He then gave himself up to that duplex act to which all unavowed lovers are prone—the simultaneous secret worship of one woman and open devotion to another. It never occurred to him that there was anything unfair in this, or that it would be as reprehensible to throw the name of Miss Dallas into the arena of gossip as that of Miss Belding. That was not his affair; there was only one person in the universe to be considered by him. And for Miss Dallas's part, she was the last person in the world to suspect any one of being capable of the treason and bad taste of looking over her shoulder at another woman. She was, by common consent, the belle of Buffland. Her father was a widowed clergyman, of good estate, of literary tendencies, of enormous personal vanity, who had abandoned the pulpit in a quarrel with his session several years before, and now occupied himself in writing poems and sketches of an amorous and pietistic nature, which in his opinion embodied the best qualities of Swinburne and Chalmers combined, but which the magazines had thus far steadily refused to print.
He felt himself infinitely superior to the society of Buffland,—with one exception,—and only remained there because his property was not easily negotiable and required his personal care. The one exception was his daughter Euphrasia. He had educated her after his own image. In fact, there was a remarkable physical likeness between them, and he had impressed upon her every trick of speech and manner and thought which characterized himself. This is the young lady who turns her bright, keen, beautiful face upon Farnham, with eyes eager to criticise, a tongue quick to flatter and to condemn, a head stuffed full of poetry and artificial passion, and a heart saved from all danger by its idolatry of her father and herself.
"So glad to see you—one sees so little of you—I can hardly believe my good fortune—how have I this honor?" All this in hard, rapid sentences, with a brilliant smile.
Farnham thought of the last words of Mrs. Adipson, and said, intrepidly, "Well, you know the poets better than I do, Miss Euphrasia, and there is somebody who says, 'Beauty draws us by the simple way she does her hair'—or something like it. That classic fillet was the first thing I saw as I entered the room, and me voici!"
We have already said that the fault of Farnham's conversation with women was the soldier's fault of direct and indiscriminate compliment. But this was too much in Euphrasia's manner for her to object to it. She laughed and said, "You deserve a pensum of fifty lines for such a misquotation. But, dites-donc, monsieur"—for French was one of her favorite affectations, and when she found a man to speak it with, she rode the occasion to death. There had been a crisis in the French ministry a few days before, and she now began a voluble conversation on the subject, ostensibly desiring Farnham's opinion on the crisis, but really seizing the opportunity of displaying her familiarity with the names of the new cabinet. She talked with great spirit and animation, sometimes using her fine eyes point-blank upon Farnham, sometimes glancing about to observe the effect she was creating; which gave Farnham his opportunity to sigh his soul away over her shoulder to where Alice was sweetly and placidly talking with her friends.
She had seen him come in, and her heart had stood still for a moment; but her feminine instinct sustained her, and she had not once glanced in his direction. But she was conscious of every look and action of his; and when he approached the corner where she was sitting, she felt as if a warm and embarrassing ray of sunshine was coming near her, She was at once relieved and disappointed when he sat down by Miss Dallas. She thought to herself: "Perhaps he will never speak to me again. It is all my fault. I threw him away. But it was not my fault. It was his—it was hers. I do not know what to think. He might have let me alone. I liked him so much. I have only been a month out of school. What shall I do if he never speaks to me again?" Yet such is the power which, for self-defence, is given to young maidens that, while these tumultuous thoughts were passing through her mind, she talked and laughed with the girls beside her, and exchanged an occasional word with the young men in pointed shoes, as if she had never known a grief or a care.
Mr. Furrey came up to say good-evening, with his most careful bow. Lowering his voice, he said:
"There's Miss Dallas and Captain Farnham flirting in Italian."
"Are you sure they are flirting?"
"Of course they are. Just look at them!"
"If you are sure they are flirting, I don't think it is right to look at them. Still, if you disapprove of it very much, you might speak to them about it," she suggested, in her sweet, low, serious voice.
"Oh, that would never do for a man of my age," replied Furrey, in good faith. He was very vain of his youth.
"What I wanted to speak to you about was this," he continued. "There is going to be a Ree-gatta on the river the day after to-morrow, and I hope you will grant me the favor of your company. The Wissagewissametts are to row with the Chippagowaxems, and it will be the finest race this year. Billy Raum, you know, is stroke of the———"
Her face was still turned to him, but she had ceased to listen. She was lost in contemplation of what seemed to her a strange and tragic situation. Farnham was so near that she could touch him, and yet so far away that he was lost to her forever. No human being knew, or ever would know, that a few days ago he had offered her his life, and she had refused the gift. Nobody in this room was surprised that he did not speak to her, or that she did not look at him. Nobody dreamed that he loved her, and she would die, she resolved deliberately, before she would let anybody know that she loved him. "For I do love him with my whole heart," she said to herself, with speechless energy, which sent the blood up to her temples, and left her, in another instant, as pale as a lily.
Furrey at that moment had concluded his enticing account of the regatta, and she had quietly declined to accompany him. He moved away, indignant at her refusal, and puzzled by the blush which accompanied it.
"What did that mean?" he mused. "I guess it was because I said the crews rowed in short sleeves."
Farnham also saw the blush, in the midst of a disquisition which Miss Dallas was delivering upon a new poem of Francois Coppee. He saw the clear, warm color rise and subside like the throbbing of an auroral light in a starry night. He thought he had never seen anything so lovely, but he wondered "what that oaf could have said to make her blush like that. Can it be possible that he——" His brow knitted with anger and contempt.
"Mais, qu'est-ce que vous avez donc?" asked Euphrasia.
Farnham was saved from the necessity of an explanation by Mr. Temple, who came up at that moment, and, laying a hand on Arthur's shoulder, said:
"Now we will go into my den and have a glass of that sherry. I know no less temptation than Tio Pepe could take you away from Miss Dallas."
"Thank you awfully," said the young lady. "Why should you not give Miss Dallas herself an opportunity to decline the Tio Pepe?"
"Miss Dallas shall have some champagne in a few minutes, which she will like very much better. Age and wickedness are required to appreciate sherry."
"Ah! I congratulate your sherry; it is about to be appreciated," said the deserted beauty, tartly, as the men moved away.
They entered the little room which Temple called his den, which was a litter of letter-books, stock-lists, and the advertising pamphlets of wine-merchants. The walls were covered with the portraits of trotting horses; a smell of perpetual tobacco was in the air. Temple unlocked a cupboard, and took out a decanter and some glasses. He filled two, and gave one to Arthur, and held the other under his nose.
"Farnham," he said, with profound solemnity, "if you don't call that the"—(I decline to follow him in the pyrotechnical combination of oaths with which he introduced the next words)—"best sherry you ever saw, then I'm a converted pacer with the ringbone."
Arthur drank his wine, and did not hesitate to admit all that its owner had claimed for it. He had often wondered how such a man as Temple had acquired such an unerring taste.
"Temple," he said, "how did you ever pick up this wine; and, if you will excuse the question, how did you know it when you got it?"
Temple smiled, evidently pleased with the question. "You've been in Spain, haven't you?"
"Yes," said Farnham.
"You know this is the genuine stuff, then?"
"No doubt of it."
"How do you know?"
"The usual way—by seeing and drinking it at the tables of men who know what they are about."
"Well, I have never been out of the United States, and yet I have learned about wine in just the same way. I commenced in New Orleans among the old Spanish and French Creoles, and have kept it up since, here and there. I can see in five minutes whether a man knows anything about his wine. If he does, I remember every word he says—that is my strong point—head and tongue. I can't remember sermons and speeches, but I can remember every syllable that Sam Ward said one night at your grandfather's ten years ago; and if I have once tasted a good wine, I never forget its fashion of taking hold."
This is an expurgated edition of what he said; his profanity kept up a running accompaniment, like soft and distant rolling thunder.
"I got this wine at the sale of the Marquis of Santa Rita. I heard you speak of him, I don't know how long ago, and the minute I read in the paper that he had turned up his toes, I cabled the consul at Cadiz—you know him, a wild Irishman named Calpin—to go to the sale of his effects and get this wine. He cabled back, 'What shall I pay?' I answered, 'Head your dispatch again: Get means get!' Some men have got no sense. I did not mind the price of the wine, but it riled me to have to pay for the two cables."
He poured out another glass and drank it drop by drop, getting, as he said, "the worth of his money every time."
"Have some more?" he said to Farnham.
"No, thank you."
"Then I'll put it away. No use of giving it to men who would prefer sixty-cent whiskey."
Having done this, he turned again to Farnham, and said, "I told you the Old Boy was to pay. This is how. The labor unions have ordered a general strike; day not fixed; they are holding meetings all over town to-night. I'll know more about it after midnight."
"What will it amount to?" asked Farnham.
"Keen savey?" replied Temple, in his Mississippi River Spanish. "The first thing will be the closing of the mills, and putting anywhere from three thousand to ten thousand men on the streets. Then, if the strike gains the railroad men, we shall be embargoed, —— boiling, and safety-valve riveted down."
Farnham had no thought of his imperilled interests. He began instantly to conjecture what possibility of danger there might be of a disturbance of public tranquillity, and to wish that the Beldings were out of town.
"How long have you known this?" he asked.
"Only certainly for a few hours. The thing has been talked about more or less for a month, but we have had our own men in the unions and did not believe it would come to an extremity. To-day, however, they brought ugly reports; and I ought to tell you that some of them concern you."
Farnham lifted his eyebrows inquiringly.
"We keep men to loaf with the tramps and sleep in the boozing kens. One of them told me to-day that at the first serious disturbance a lot of bad eggs among the strikers—not the unionists proper, but a lot of loose fish—intend to go through some of the principal houses on Algonquin Avenue, and they mentioned yours as one of them."
"Thank you. I will try to be ready for them," said Farnham. But, cool and tried as was his courage, he could not help remembering, with something like dread, that Mrs. Belding's house was next to his own, and that in case of riot the two might suffer together.
"There is one thing more I wanted to say," Mr. Temple continued, with a slight embarrassment. "If I can be of any service to you, in case of a row, I want to be allowed to help."
"As to that," Farnham said with a laugh, "you have your own house and stables to look after, which will probably be as much as you can manage."
"No," said Temple, earnestly, "that ain't the case. I will have to explain to you"—and a positive blush came to his ruddy face. "They won't touch me or my property. They say a man who uses such good horses and such bad language as I do—that's just what they say—is one of them, and sha'n't be racketed. I ain't very proud of my popularity, but I am willing to profit by it and I'll come around and see you if anything more turns up. Now, we'll go and give Phrasy Dallas that glass of champagne."