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In the Midst of Alarms

R >> Robert Barr >> In the Midst of Alarms




The frown on the girl's brow deepened, and Yates was quick to see that
he had lost ground again, if, indeed, he had ever gained any, which he
began to doubt. She evidently did not relish his glib talk about the
university. He was just about to say something deferentially about that
institution, for he was not a man who would speak disrespectfully of
the equator if he thought he might curry favor with his auditor by
doing otherwise, when it occurred to him that Miss Howard's interest
was centered in the man, and not in the university.

"In this world, Miss Howard," he continued, "true merit rarely finds
its reward; at least, the reward shows some reluctance in making itself
visible in time for man to enjoy it. Professor Renmark is a man so
worthy that I was rather astonished to learn that you knew of him. I am
glad for his sake that it is so, for no man more thoroughly deserves
fame than he."

"I know nothing of him," said Margaret, "except what my brother has
written. My brother is a student at the university."

"Is he really? And what is he going in for?"

"A good education."

Yates laughed.

"Well, that is an all-round handy thing for a person to have about him.
I often wish I had had a university training. Still, it is not valued
in an American newspaper office as much as might be. Yet," he added in
a tone that showed he did not desire to be unfair to a man of
education, "I have known some university men who became passably good
reporters in time."

The girl made no answer, but attended strictly to the work in hand. She
had the rare gift of silence, and these intervals of quiet abashed
Yates, whose most frequent boast was that he could outtalk any man on
earth. Opposition, or even abuse, merely served as a spur to his
volubility, but taciturnity disconcerted him.

"Well," he cried at length, with something like desperation, "let us
abandon this animated discussion on the subject of education, and take
up the more practical topic of bread. Would you believe, Miss Howard,
that I am an expert in bread making?"

"I think you said already that you made your bread."

"Ah, yes, but I meant then that I made it by the sweat of my good lead
pencil. Still, I have made bread in my time, and I believe that some of
those who subsisted upon it are alive to-day. The endurance of the
human frame is something marvelous, when you come to think of it. I did
the baking in a lumber camp one winter. Used to dump the contents of a
sack of flour into a trough made out of a log, pour in a pail or two of
melted snow, and mix with a hoe after the manner of a bricklayer's
assistant making mortar. There was nothing small or mean about my bread
making. I was in the wholesale trade."

"I pity the unfortunate lumbermen."

"Your sympathy is entirely misplaced, Miss Howard. You ought to pity me
for having to pander to such appetites as those men brought in from the
woods with them. They never complained of the quality of the bread,
although there was occasionally some grumbling about the quantity. I
have fed sheaves to a threshing machine and logs to a sawmill, but
their voracity was nothing to that of a big lumberman just in from
felling trees. Enough, and plenty of it, is what he wants. No
'tabbledote' for him. He wants it all at once, and he wants it right
away. If there is any washing necessary, he is content to do it after
the meal. I know nothing, except a morning paper, that has such an
appetite for miscellaneous stuff as the man of the woods."

The girl made no remark, but Yates could see that she was interested in
his talk in spite of herself. The bread was now in the pans, and she
had drawn out the table to the middle of the floor; the baking board
had disappeared, and the surface of the table was cleaned. With a
light, deft motion of her two hands she had whisked over its surface
the spotlessly white cloth, which flowed in waves over the table and
finally settled calmly in its place like the placid face of a pond in
the moonlight. Yates realized that the way to success lay in keeping
the conversation in his own hands and not depending on any response. In
this way a man may best display the store of knowledge he possesses, to
the admiration and bewilderment of his audience, even though his store
consists merely of samples like the outfit of a commercial traveler;
yet a commercial traveler who knows his business can so arrange his
samples on the table of his room in a hotel that they give the onlooker
an idea of the vastness and wealth of the warehouses from which they
are drawn.

"Bread," said Yates with the serious air of a very learned man, "is a
most interesting subject. It is a historical subject--it is a biblical
subject. As an article of food it is mentioned oftener in the Bible
than any other. It is used in parable and to point a moral. 'Ye must
not live on bread alone.'"

From the suspicion of a twinkle in the eye of his listener he feared he
had not quoted correctly. He knew he was not now among that portion of
his samples with which he was most familiar, so he hastened back to the
historical aspect of his subject. Few people could skate over thinner
ice than Richard Yates, but his natural shrewdness always caused him to
return to more solid footing.

"Now, in this country bread has gone through three distinct stages, and
although I am a strong believer in progress, yet, in the case of our
most important article of food, I hold that the bread of to-day is
inferior to the bread our mothers used to make, or perhaps, I should
say, our grandmothers. This is, unfortunately, rapidly becoming the age
of machinery--and machinery, while it may be quicker, is certainly not
so thorough as old-fashioned hand work. There is a new writer in
England named Ruskin who is very bitter against machinery. He would
like to see it abolished--at least, so he says. I will send for one of
his books, and show it to you, if you will let me."

"You, in New York, surely do not call the author of 'Modern Painters'
and 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture' a new man. My father has one of
his books which must be nearly twenty years old."

This was the longest speech Margaret had made to him, and, as he said
afterward to the professor in describing its effects, it took him right
off his feet. He admitted to the professor, but not to the girl, that
he had never read a word of Ruskin in his life. The allusion he had
made to him he had heard someone else use, and he had worked it into an
article before now with telling effect. "As Mr. Ruskin says" looked
well in a newspaper column, giving an air of erudition and research to
it. Mr. Yates, however, was not at the present moment prepared to enter
into a discussion on either the age or the merits of the English
writer.

"Ah, well," he said, "technically speaking, of course, Ruskin is not a
new man. What I meant was that he is looked on--ah--in New York as--
that is--you know--as comparatively new--comparatively new. But, as I
was saying about bread, the old log-house era of bread, as I might call
it, produced the most delicious loaf ever made in this country. It was
the salt-rising kind, and was baked in a round, flat-bottomed iron
kettle. Did you ever see the baking kettle of other days?"

"I think Mrs. Bartlett has one, although she never uses it now. It was
placed on the hot embers, was it not?"

"Exactly," said Yates, noting with pleasure that the girl was thawing,
as he expressed it to himself. "The hot coals were drawn out and the
kettle placed upon them. When the lid was in position, hot coals were
put on he top of it. The bread was firm and white and sweet inside,
with the most delicious golden brown crust all around. Ah, that was
bread! but perhaps I appreciated it because I was always hungry in
those days. Then came the alleged improvement of the tin Dutch oven.
That was the second stage in the evolution of bread in this country. It
also belonged to the log-house and open-fireplace era. Bread baked by
direct heat from the fire and reflected heat from the polished tin. I
think our present cast-iron stove arrangement is preferable to that,
although not up to the old-time kettle."

If Margaret had been a reader of the New York _Argus_, she would
have noticed that the facts set forth by her visitor had already
appeared in that paper, much elaborated, in an article entitled "Our
Daily Bread." In the pause that ensued after Yates had finished his
dissertation on the staff of life the stillness was broken by a long
wailing cry. It began with one continued, sustained note, and ended
with a wail half a tone below the first. The girl paid no attention to
it, but Yates started to his feet.

"In the name of--What's that?"

Margaret smiled, but before she could answer the stillness was again
broken by what appeared to be the more distant notes of a bugle.

"The first," she said, "was Kitty Bartlett's voice calling the men home
from the field for dinner. Mrs. Bartlett is a very good housekeeper and
is usually a few minutes ahead of the neighbors with the meals. The
second was the sound of a horn farther up the road. It is what you
would deplore as the age of tin applied to the dinner call, just as
your tin oven supplanted the better bread maker. I like Kitty's call
much better than the tin horn. It seems to me more musical, although it
appeared to startle you."

"Oh, you can talk!" cried Yates with audacious admiration, at which the
girl colored slightly and seemed to retire within herself again. "And
you can make fun of people's historical lore, too. Which do you use--
the tin horn or the natural voice?"

"Neither. If you will look outside, you will see a flag at the top of a
pole. That is our signal."

It flashed across the mind of Yates that this was intended as an
intimation that he might see many things outside to interest him. He
felt that his visit had not been at all the brilliant success he had
anticipated. Of course the quest for bread had been merely an excuse.
He had expected to be able to efface the unfavorable impression he knew
he had made by his jaunty conversation on the Ridge Road the day
before, and he realized that his position was still the same. A good
deal of Yates' success in life came from the fact that he never knew
when he was beaten. He did not admit defeat now, but he saw he had, for
some reason, not gained any advantage in a preliminary skirmish. He
concluded it would be well to retire in good order, and renew the
contest at some future time. He was so unused to anything like a rebuff
that all his fighting qualities were up in arms, and he resolved to
show this unimpressionable girl that he was not a man to be lightly
valued.

As he rose the door from the main portion of the house opened, and
there entered a woman hardly yet past middle age, who had once been
undoubtedly handsome, but on whose worn and faded face was the look of
patient weariness which so often is the result of a youth spent in
helping a husband to overcome the stumpy stubbornness of an American
bush farm. When the farm is conquered, the victor is usually
vanquished. It needed no second glance to see that she was the mother
from whom the daughter had inherited her good looks. Mrs. Howard did
not appear surprised to see a stranger standing there; in fact, the
faculty of being surprised at anything seemed to have left her.
Margaret introduced them quietly, and went about her preparation for
the meal. Yates greeted Mrs. Howard with effusion. He had come, he
said, on a bread mission. He thought he knew something about bread, but
he now learned he came too early in the day. He hoped he might have the
privilege of repeating his visit.

"But you are not going now?" said Mrs. Howard with hospitable anxiety.

"I fear I have already stayed too long," answered Yates lingeringly.
"My partner, Professor Renmark, is also on a foraging expedition at
your neighbors', the Bartletts. He is doubtless back in camp long ago,
and will be expecting me."

"No fear of that. Mrs. Bartlett would never let anyone go when there
is a meal on the way."

"I am afraid I shall be giving extra trouble by staying. I imagine
there is quite enough to do in every farmhouse without entertaining any
chance tramp who happens along. Don't you agree with me for once, Miss
Howard?"

Yates was reluctant to go, and yet he did not wish to stay unless
Margaret added her invitation to her mother's. He felt vaguely that his
reluctance did him credit, and that he was improving. He could not
remember a time when he had not taken without question whatever the
gods sent, and this unaccustomed qualm of modesty caused him to suspect
that there were depths in his nature hitherto unexplored. It always
flatters a man to realize that he is deeper than he thought.

Mrs. Howard laughed in a subdued manner because Yates likened himself
to a tramp, and Margaret said coldly:

"Mother's motto is that one more or less never makes any difference."

"And what is your motto, Miss Howard?"

"I don't think Margaret has any," said Mrs. Howard, answering for her
daughter. "She is like her father. She reads a great deal and doesn't
talk much. He would read all the time, if he did not have to work. I
see Margaret has already invited you, for she has put an extra plate on
the table."

"Ah, then," said Yates, "I shall have much pleasure in accepting both
the verbal and the crockery invitation. I am sorry for the professor at
his lonely meal by the tent; for he is a martyr to duty, and I feel
sure Mrs. Bartlett will not be able to keep him."

Before Mrs. Howard could reply there floated in to them, from the
outside, where Margaret was, a cheery voice which Yates had no
difficulty in recognizing as belonging to Miss Kitty Bartlett.

"Hello, Margaret!" she said. "Is he here?"

The reply was inaudible.

"Oh, you know whom I mean. That conceited city fellow."

There was evidently an admonition and a warning.

"Well, I don't care if he does. I'll tell him so to his face. It might
do him good."

Next moment there appeared a pretty vision in the doorway. On the fair
curls, which were flying about her shoulders, had been carelessly
placed her brother's straw hat, with a broad and torn brim. Her face
was flushed with running; and of the fact that she was a very lovely
girl there was not the slightest doubt.

"How de do?" she said to Mrs. Howard, and, nodding to Yates, cried: "I
knew you were here, but I came over to make sure. There's going to be
war in our house. Mother's made a prisoner of the professor already,
but he doesn't know it. He thinks he's going back to the tent, and
she's packing up the things he wanted, and doing it awfully slow, till
I get back. He said you would be sure to be waiting for him out in the
woods. We both told him there was no fear of that. You wouldn't leave a
place where there was good cooking for all the professors in the
world."

"You are a wonderful judge of character, Miss Bartlett," said Yates,
somewhat piqued by her frankness.

"Of course I am. The professor knows ever so much more than you, but he
doesn't know when he's well off, just the same. You do. He's a quiet,
stubborn man."

"And which do you admire the most, Miss Bartlett--a quiet, stubborn
man, or one who is conceited?"

Miss Kitty laughed heartily, without the slightest trace of
embarrassment. "Detest, you mean. I'm sure I don't know. Margaret,
which is the most objectionable?"

Margaret looked reproachfully at her neighbor on being thus suddenly
questioned, but said nothing.

Kitty, laughing again, sprang toward her friend, dabbed a little kiss,
like the peck of a bird, on each cheek, cried: "Well, I must be off, or
mother will have to tie up the professor to keep him," and was off
accordingly with the speed and lightness of a young fawn.

"Extraordinary girl," remarked Yates, as the flutter of curls and
calico dress disappeared.

"She is a good girl," cried Margaret emphatically.

"Bless me, I said nothing to the contrary. But don't you think she is
somewhat free with her opinions about other people?" asked Yates.

"She did not know that you were within hearing when she first spoke,
and after that she brazened it out. That's her way. But she's a kind
girl and good-hearted, otherwise she would not have taken the trouble
to come over here merely because your friend happened to be surly."

"Oh, Renny is anything but surly," said Yates, as quick to defend his
friend as she was to stand up for hers. "As I was saying a moment ago,
he is a martyr to duty, and if he thought I was at the camp, nothing
would keep him. Now he will have a good dinner in peace when he knows I
am not waiting for him, and a good dinner is more than he will get when
I take to the cooking."

By this time the silent signal on the flagpole had done its work, and
Margaret's father and brother arrived from the field. They put their
broad straw hats on the roof of the kitchen veranda, and, taking water
in a tin basin from the rain barrel, placed it on a bench outside and
proceeded to wash vigorously.

Mr. Howard was much more interested in his guest than his daughter had
apparently been. Yates talked glibly, as he could always do if he had a
sympathetic audience, and he showed an easy familiarity with the great
people of this earth that was fascinating to a man who had read much of
them, but who was, in a measure, locked out of the bustling world.
Yates knew many of the generals in the late war, and all of the
politicians. Of the latter there was not an honest man among them,
according to the reporter; of the former there were few who had not
made the most ghastly mistakes. He looked on the world as a vast hoard
of commonplace people, wherein the men of real genius were buried out
of sight, if there were any men of genius, which he seemed to doubt,
and those on the top were there either through their own intrigues or
because they had been forced up by circumstances. His opinions
sometimes caused a look of pain to cross the face of the older man, who
was enthusiastic in his quiet way, and had his heroes. He would have
been a strong Republican if he had lived in the States; and he had
watched the four-years' struggle, through the papers, with keen and
absorbed interest. The North had been fighting, in his opinion, for the
great and undying principle of human liberty, and had deservedly won.
Yates had no such delusion. It was a politicians' war, he said.
Principle wasn't in it. The North would have been quite willing to let
slavery stand if the situation had not been forced by the firing on
Fort Sumter. Then the conduct of the war did not at all meet the
approval of Mr. Yates.

"Oh, yes," he said, "I suppose Grant will go down into history as a
great general. The truth is that he simply knew how to subtract. That
is all there is in it. He had the additional boon of an utter lack of
imagination. We had many generals who were greater than Grant, but they
were troubled with imaginations. Imagination will ruin the best general
in the world. Now, take yourself, for example. If you were to kill a
man unintentionally, your conscience would trouble you all the rest of
your life. Think how you would feel, then, if you were to cause the
death of ten thousand men all in a lump. It would break you down. The
mistake an ordinary man makes may result in the loss of a few dollars,
which can be replaced; but if a general makes a mistake, the loss can
never be made up, for his mistakes are estimated by the lives of men.
He says 'Go' when he should have said 'Come.' He says 'Attack' when he
should have said 'Retreat.' What is the result? Five, ten, or fifteen
thousand men, many of them better men than he is, left dead on the
field. Grant had nothing of this feeling. He simply knew how to
subtract, as I said before. It is like this: You have fifty thousand
men and I have twenty-five thousand. When I kill twenty-five thousand
of your men and you kill twenty-five thousand of my men, you have
twenty-five thousand left and I have none. You are the victor, and the
thoughtless crowd howls about you, but that does not make you out the
greatest general by a long shot. If Lee had had Grant's number, and
Grant had Lee's, the result would have been reversed. Grant set himself
to do this little sum in subtraction, and he did it--did it probably as
quickly as any other man would have done it, and he knew that when it
was done the war would have to stop. That's all there was to it."

The older man shook his head. "I doubt," he said, "if history will take
your view either of the motives of those in power or of the way the war
was carried on. It was a great and noble struggle, heroically fought by
those deluded people who were in the wrong, and stubbornly contested at
immense self-sacrifice by those who were in the right."

"What a pity it was," said young Howard to the newspaper man, with a
rudeness that drew a frown from his father, "that you didn't get to
show 'em how to carry on the war."

"Well," said Yates, with a humorous twinkle in his eye, "I flatter
myself that I would have given them some valuable pointers. Still, it
is too late to bemoan their neglect now."

"Oh, you may have a chance yet," continued the unabashed young man.
"They say the Fenians are coming over here this time sure. You ought
to volunteer either on our side or on theirs, and show how a war ought
to be carried on."

"Oh, there's nothing in the Fenian scare! They won't venture over. They
fight with their mouths. It's the safest way."

"I believe you," said the youth significantly.

Perhaps it was because the boy had been so inconsiderate as to make
these remarks that Yates received a cordial invitation from both Mr.
and Mrs. Howard to visit the farm as often as he cared to do so. Of
this privilege Yates resolved to avail himself, but he would have
prized it more if Miss Margaret had added her word--which she did not,
perhaps because she was so busy looking after the bread. Yates knew,
however, that with a woman apparent progress is rarely synonymous with
real progress. This knowledge soothed his disappointment.

As he walked back to the camp he reviewed his own feelings with
something like astonishment. The march of events was rapid even for
him, who was not slow in anything he undertook.

"It is the result of leisure," he said to himself. "It is the first
breathing time I have had for fifteen years. Not two days of my
vacation gone, and here I am hopelessly in love!"




CHAPTER VII.


Yates had intended to call at the Bartletts' and escort Renmark back to
the woods; but when he got outside he forgot the existence of the
professor, and wandered somewhat aimlessly up the side road, switching
at the weeds that always grow in great profusion along the ditches of a
Canadian country thoroughfare. The day was sunny and warm, and as Yates
wandered on in the direction of the forest he thought of many things.
He had feared that he would find life deadly dull so far from New York,
without even the consolation of a morning-paper, the feverish reading
of which had become a sort of vice with him, like smoking. He had
imagined that he could not exist without his morning paper, but he now
realized that it was not nearly so important a factor in life as he had
supposed; yet he sighed when he thought of it, and wished he had one
with him of current date. He could now, for the first time in many
years, read a paper without that vague fear which always possessed him
when he took up an opposition sheet, still damp from the press. Before
he could enjoy it his habit was to scan it over rapidly to see if it
contained any item of news which he himself had missed the previous
day. The impending "scoop" hangs over the head of the newspaper man
like the sword so often quoted. Great as the joy of beating the
opposition press is, it never takes the poignancy of the sting away
from a beating received. If a terrible disaster took place, and another
paper gave fuller particulars than the _Argus_ did, Yates found
himself almost wishing the accident had not occurred, although he
recognized such a wish as decidedly unprofessional.

Richard's idea of the correct spirit in a reporter was exemplified by
an old broken-down, out-of-work morning newspaper man, who had not long
before committed suicide at an hour in the day too late for the evening
papers to get the sensational item. He had sent in to the paper for
which he formerly worked a full account of the fatality, accurately
headed and sub-headed; and, in his note to the city editor, he told why
he had chosen the hour of 7 P.M. as the time for his departure from an
unappreciative world.

"Ah, well," said Yates under his breath, and suddenly pulling himself
together, "I mustn't think of New York if I intend to stay here for a
couple of weeks. I'll be city-sick the first thing I know, and then
I'll make a break for the metropolis. This will never do. The air here
is enchanting, it fills a man with new life. This is the spot for me,
and I'll stick to it till I'm right again. Hang New York! But I mustn't
think of Broadway or I'm done for."

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