Part 23 (2/2)
This was a sentiment which every one was bound to respect--every one, at least, excepting Hillerton.
”Sounds very well, Peckham,” he said, ”but it won't hold water.”
The most surprising thing about Peckham's little speculations was that they all succeeded. It made the other men rather mad because he did not care more.
”But that's always the way,” Freddy Dillingham remarked, with an air of profound philosophy. ”It's the fellers that don't care a darn that have all the luck.”
When Peckham sold out of the Libby Carew, he doubled his money, and the moment he touched the ”Trailing Arbutus,” up she went. By the first of May he found himself the possessor of nearly three thousand dollars'
worth of ”stuff” distributed among several ventures. Of course, he was credited with five times as much, and the other men began to think that if he did not set up a dogcart pretty soon, or at least a yellow buckboard, they should have their opinion of him. If the truth must be known, Peckham would not have given a nickle for a dozen dog-carts. It was all very well to make a little money; it was the first time he had discovered a taste for anything in the nature of a game, and the higher the stakes came to be, the more worth while it seemed. Nevertheless, his mind, in those days of early May, when he was steadily rising in the esteem of his a.s.sociates, was very little occupied with the calculation of his profits.
He had long since arranged with Hillerton to take part of his vacation the middle of May, and the antic.i.p.ation of that concert was more inspiring to him than all the gold mines in Colorado. As the time drew near, a consuming thirst took possession of him, and not a gambler of them all was the prey to a more feverish impatience than he. He tormented himself with thoughts of every possible disaster which might come to thwart him at the last minute. Visions of a railroad accident which should result in the wholesale destruction of the entire orchestra, haunted his mind. Another great fire might wipe Chicago out of existence. The one thing which his imagination failed to conceive, was the possibility that he, Lewis Peckham, might be deterred from hearing the concert when once it should take place. In the interim he made repeated calculations of the number of hours that must be lived through before May 16th. Hillerton came across a half sheet of paper covered with such calculations, and was somewhat puzzled by the prominence of the figure 24. An odd price to pay for a mining stock. He was afraid it was the ”Adeline Maria,” a notorious swindle. Well, Peckham might as well get his lesson at the hands of the faithless Adeline Maria as by any other means. He was bound to come to grief sooner or later, but that was no business of Hillerton's.
On May 7th, Hillerton came down with pleurisy and Peckham suddenly found himself at the head of affairs. Hillerton had no partner; no one but Peckham could take his place. And in Peckham's moral const.i.tution was a substratum of unshakable fidelity upon which the astute Hillerton had built. Cursing his own unimpeachable sense of duty, Peckham could see but one straw of hope to clutch at. It might be a light case.
He went directly to the doctor's office, and with a feverish anxiety apparent in his voice and bearing, he asked how long Hillerton was likely to be laid up.
”Curious,” thought the doctor during that carefully calculated pause which your experienced pract.i.tioner so well knows the value of. ”Curious how fond folks get of James Hillerton. The fellow looks as though his own brother were at death's door.”
”I think there is nothing serious to apprehend,” he answered soothingly.
”Hillerton has a good const.i.tution. I've no doubt he will be about again by the end of the month.”
Peckham went white to the lips.
”I suppose that's the best you can promise,” he said.
”Yes, but I can promise that safely.”
The confidential clerk went back to the office filled with a profound loathing of life.
”If liquor wasn't so nasty, I'd take to drink,” he said to himself as he sat down at Hillerton's desk and set to work.
The next day was Sunday, and Peckham was at something of a loss what to do with it. He hated the sight of his room. The odor of the straw matting and the pattern of the wallpaper were inextricably a.s.sociated with those antic.i.p.ations which he had been rudely cheated out of. To escape such a.s.sociations he took an electric car to the Bluffs, those rock-bound islands in the prairie sea which lie a couple of miles to the east of the town. There was only one other pa.s.senger besides himself, a man with a gun, who softly whistled a popular air, very much out of tune. Peckham came perilously near kicking the offender, but, happily, the fellow got off just in time, and went strolling across the open with the gun over his shoulder. Once he stooped to pick a flower which he stuck in his b.u.t.tonhole. Queer, thought Peckham, that a man should go picking flowers and whistling out of tune! There were the mountains, too. Some people made a great deal of them--great, stupid ma.s.ses of dumb earth! He remembered he had thought them fine himself the other day when there were shadows on them. But to-day! How the sun glared on their ugly reddish sides! And what was it that had gone wrong anyhow? He could not seem to remember, and on the whole he did not wish to.
Now Lewis Peckham was neither losing his mind, nor had he been drowning his sorrows in the conventional dram. The simple fact of the matter was that he had not slept fifteen minutes consecutively all night long, and his brain was not likely to clear up until he had given it a chance to recuperate. By the time he had left the car and climbed the castellated side of Pine Bluff he was still miserably unhappy, but he had altogether lost track of the cause of his unhappiness. He strayed aimlessly along the gra.s.sy top of the Bluff, away from the road, and down a slight incline, into a sheltered hollow. At the foot of a strange, salmon-colored column of rock was a little group of budding scrub-oaks.
Peckham crawled in among them, and in about thirty seconds he was fast asleep. There he lay for hours. A blue jay, chattering in a pine-tree near at hand, made no impression upon his sleep-deadened ear; a pair of ground squirrels scuttled in and out among the scrub-oaks, peering shyly at the motionless intruder, and squeaked faintly to one another, with vivacious action of nose and tail. They were, perhaps, discussing the availability of a certain inviting coat-pocket for purposes of domestic architecture. An occasional rumble of wheels on the road, a dozen rods away, startled the birds and squirrels, but Peckham slept tranquilly on, and dreamed that the Leitmann Orchestra was playing in the Springtown Opera House, and that he, by reason of his being an early Christian martyr, was forced to roast at the stake just out of hearing of the music.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PINE BLUFF.]
It was well on in the afternoon when he came to himself, to find his boots scorched almost to a crisp in the sun which had been pouring upon them. He pulled himself out from among the scrub-oaks, and got his feet out of the sun. Then he looked at his watch; and after that he looked at the view.
The view was well worth looking at in the mellow afternoon light.
Peckham gazed across the s.h.i.+mmering gold of the plain, to the mountains, which stood hushed into a palpitating blue; the Peak alone, white and ethereal, floating above the foot hills in the sun. Peckham was impressed in spite of himself. It made him think of a weird, mystical strain of music that had sometimes haunted his brain and yet which he had never been able to seize and capture. As he gazed on the soaring, mystical Peak, he remembered his dream, and slowly, but very surely, he perceived that a purpose was forming in his mind, almost without the connivance of his will. He got upon his feet and laughed aloud. A sudden youthful intoxication of delight welled up within him and rang forth in that laugh. Life, for the first time in three years, seemed to him like a glorious thing; an irresistible, a soul-stirring purpose had taken possession of him, and he knew that no obstacle could stand against it.
He started for the town almost on a run, scorning the prosaic cars which harbored pa.s.sengers who whistled out of tune. He struck directly across the intercepting plain, and though he soon had to slacken his pace, his winged thoughts went on before him, and he took no note of the distance.
That evening Peckham sent off a telegram of one hundred and eleven words to Heinrich Leitmann, of the Leitmann Orchestra, and Monday afternoon the following answer came:
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