Part 21 (1/2)
”Writing to my Mexican girl,” said he.
”I thought you had got over that a long time ago?”
”So did I, but I hadn't. I've been trying to please somebody else besides myself in this matter, and I'm done. I'm going to work for Bill now.”
”Take an old man's advice, Billy, and don't write that girl a line--go and see her.”
”Oh, I can fix it all right by letter, and then run down there and see her.”
”Don't do it.”
”I'll risk it.”
A week later Billy and I sat on the veranda of the company's hash-foundry, figuring up our time and smoking our cob meerschaums, when one of the boys who had been to the office, placed two letters in Billy's hands. One of them was directed in the handwriting that used to be on the old Thursday letters. Billy tore it open eagerly--and his own letter to Josephine dropped into his hand. Billy looked at the ground steadily for five minutes, and I pretended not to have seen. Finally he said, half to himself: ”You were right, I ought to have gone myself--but I'll go now, go to-morrow.” Then he opened the other letter.
He read its single page with manifest interest, and when his eyes reached the last line they went straight on, and looked at the ground, and continued to do so for fully five minutes. Without looking up, he said: ”John, I want you to do me two favors.”
”All right,” said I.
Still keeping his eyes on the ground, he said, slowly, as if measuring everything well: ”I'm going up and draw my time, and will leave for Old Mexico on No. 4 to-night. I want you to write to both these parties and tell them that I have gone there and that you have forwarded both these letters. Don't tell 'em that I went after reading 'em.”
”And the other favor, Billy?”
”Read this letter, and see me off to-night.”
The letter read:
”Philadelphia, May 1, 1879.
”DEAR BROTHER WILL: I want you and Mr. A. to go down to Don Juan Arboles's by the first of June. I will be there then. You must be my best man, as I stand up to marry the sweetest, dearest wild-flower of a woman that ever bloomed in a land of beauty. Don't fail me. Josephine will like you for my sake, and you will love her for your brother.
HENRY.”
Most engineers' lives are busy ones and full of accident and incident, and having my full share of both, I had almost forgotten all these points about Billy Howell and his Mexican girl, when they were all recalled by a letter from Billy himself. With his letter was a photograph of a family group--a be-whiskered man of thirty-five, a good-looking woman of twenty, but undoubtedly a Mexican, and a curly-headed baby, perhaps a year old. The letter ran:
”City of Mexico, July 21, 1890.
”DEAR OLD JOHN: I had lost you, and thought that perhaps you had gone over to the majority, until I saw your name and recognized your quill in a story. Write to me; am doing well. I send you a photograph of all there are of the Howell outfit. _No half-breeds for your uncle this time._
”WM. HOWELL.”
THE POLAR ZONE
Very few of my friends know me for a seafaring man, but I sailed the salt seas, man and boy, for nine months and eighteen days, and I know just as much about sailing the hereinbefore mentioned salt seas as I ever want to.
Ever so long ago, when I was young and tender, I used to have fits of wanting to go into business for myself. Along about the front edge of the seventies, pay for ”toting” people and truck over the eastern railroads of New England was not of sufficient plenitude to worry a man as to how he would invest his pay check--it was usually invested before he got it. One of my periodical fits of wanting to go into business for myself came on suddenly one day, when I got home and found another baby in the house. I was right in the very worst spasms of it when my brother Enoch, whom I hadn't seen for seventeen years, walked in on me.
Enoch was fool enough to run away to sea when he was twelve years old--I suppose he was afraid he would get the chance to do something besides whaling. We were born down New Bedford way, where another boy and myself were the only two fellows in the district, for over forty years, who didn't go hunting whales, icebergs, foul smells, and scurvy, up in King Frost's bailiwick, just south of the Pole.