Tiverton

“ It was said that Tilly rode over about jes' so often to get the Tiverton news for her son Leonard, who furnished local items to the Sudleigh "Star;" and, indeed, she made no secret of sitting down in social conclave with a bit of paper and a worn pencil in hand, to jog her memory. She, too, had smooth black hair, but her dark eyes were illumined by no steadfast glow; they snapped and shone with alert intelligence, and her great forehead dominated the rest of her face, scarred with a thousand wrinkles by intensity of nature rather than by time. ”

“ Thus they would rest in a hollow correspondence, the fence between. It all fell out as he ordained, for we in Tiverton are cheerfully willing to give the dead their way. Lax enough is the helpless hand in the fictitious stiffness of its grasp; and we are not the people to deny it holding, by courtesy at least. Soon enough does the sceptre of mortality crumble and fall. ”

“ For kindly as Tiverton proved herself, in the main, and closely welded in union against rival towns, now it seemed as if the hand of every man were raised against his brother. Settlers and Indians were still implacable; neither would ride, save each might slay the other. The Crane boy tossed in bed, swollen to the eyes with an evil tooth; and his exulting mates so besieged Brad Freeman for preferment, that even that philosopher's patience gave way, and he said he'd be hanged if he'd take the elephant out at all, if there was going to be such a to-do about it. ”

“ Tiverton turned, and beheld not Florida Wesley, but a tall man in evening dress. And the man was R. T. Devereux. If that white-faced person of mystery had looked like a melodrama villain in the prosaic surroundings of a seeing New York bus, he looked now like a stage Russian prince in his severely faultless evening attire. Tiverton was forced into reluctant admiration of the man's aspect and bearing. ”

“ Tiverton had started in surprise. Denny saw his friend was no longer looking at him, but staring in wonder at Samuel Tubbs, the announcer. That worthy had just pointed out a particularly large and hideous skyscraper, and was intoning loudly:
“The Whitelawn Building! Erected in nineteen hundred and six. Celebrated as containing the palatial suite of offices of Cyrus Q. Buchanan, the mining king.”
“That's wrong!” declared Tiverton to the driver.
“No,” said Cross, “I'm flattering Tubbs when I say I hate him. But he's the best announcer we've got. He never makes mistakes. ”

“ Then Brad Freeman, as usual in cases outside precedent, became the good angel of Tiverton. He forced his gun on the person nearest at hand—who proved to be Nance Pete—and dashed forward. Seizing the frightened horse by the head, he cramped the wheel scientifically, and turned him round. Then he gave him a smack on the flank, and the carryall went reeling and swaying back into Tiverton, the avant-courrier of the circus. You should have heard Aunt Melissa's account of that ride, an epic moment which she treasured, in awe, to the day of her death. ”

“ Only Brad Freeman, always behindhand, save at some momentary exigency of rod or gun, was fulfilling the prophecy that the last shall be first. For he had, out of the spontaneity of genius, elected to do one deed for that great day, and his work was all but accomplished. In public conclave assembled to discuss the parade, he had offered to make an elephant, to lead the van. Tiverton roared, and then, finding him gravely silent, remained, with gaping mouth, to hear his story. It seemed, then, that Brad had always cherished one dear ambition. He would fain fashion an elephant ”

“ Tiverton would not have given the thing a second glance—a sight-seeing bus being no novelty to him, after three hustling years in New York—but for two faces whose gaze he chanced to catch fixed on himself as he looked upward. The observing faces belonged to two people sitting each on the end of one of the bus' five seats—on the end nearest Tiverton.
One of the two watching passengers was a man; the other, in the seat directly in front of him, a woman. The man's face was of a deathly white hue ”

“ Devereux,” he repeated. “May I introduce myself? I am——”
“Mr. Arthur Tiverton,” interrupted Devereux, with cool and purposed insolence, “of nine-ninety-nine West Eighty-fifth Street. I know. So you can spare yourself the trouble of inventing an alias for my benefit.”
“I don't indulge in the luxury of an alias,” retorted Arthur, in perfect good humor, marveling none the less at the other's knowledge of his name and ad dress; “any more than I can afford to claim as my partner a man who does not even know me by sight. Both those little extravagances cost too much for a poor chap like myself. ”

“ The heart beats fast when we approach a great fruition.
"Pull it! Easy, now! easy!"
The boy pulled, and the elephant moved his trunk. He stretched it out, he drew it in. Never was such a miracle before. And Tiverton, drunk with glory, clapped and shouted until the women folk clutched their sunbonnets and ran to see. No situation since the war had ever excited such ferment. Brad was the hero of his town. But now arose a natural rivalry, the reaction from great, impersonal joy in noble work. What lad, on that final day, should ride within the elephant, and move his trunk? ”

“ Captain Morris, whose knowledge of life is considerable, predicts most favorably of him, and has only one misgiving,—the close intimacy he maintains with Lord George Tiverton. Towards this young nobleman the Captain expresses the greatest distrust and dislike; feelings that I really own seem to me to be frequently tinctured by a degree of prejudice rather than suggested by reason. It is true, no two beings can be less alike than they are. ”

“ This struck Tiverton as strange. That two rooms in a single suite should be allowed to go to waste, where room rents were proverbially high, was incomprehensible. A smaller suite would have saved Devereux much money, and apparently would have served his purpose quite as well.
The only break in the four walls' blank space—except for a door—was made by a sound-proof telephone booth. This Tiverton supposed was a relic of some broker or bucket shop's occupancy of the suite. But a second glance showed him a telephone directory hanging on a nail outside the booth. ”

“ There he lies, in affectionate decorum, beside the brother he hated; and thus does the greater good wipe out the individual wrong.
So now, as in ancient times, we toil steeply up here, with the dead upon his bier; for not often in Tiverton do we depend on that uncouth monstrosity, the hearse. It is not that we do not own one,—a rigid box of that name has belonged to us now for many a year; and when Sudleigh came out with a new one, plumes, trappings, and all, we broached the idea of emulating her. ”

“ What business? She lived up State somewhere. Presumably, as she stopped at the high-priced Idler during her stays in New York, and made daily use of taxicabs, she was a woman of means. Tiverton knew that on the gullibility of well-to-do single women the swindler often thrives.
In a flash the whole matter was clear to Tiverton—Miss Wesley's calls at the office, Devereux's attentions to her, and all. He was “roping” her into one of his swindling schemes; a scheme to rob her of such funds as the crook might cajole her into putting into some wildcat venture or raw fake. ”

“ I never saw him get a tip, either; touring-bus patrons don't often give 'em. So when I hear the slip and see the tip on the same ride, I put them together. What?”
Tiverton recalled the white-faced man's behavior when the bus was passing the Whitelawn Building; and Denny's mention of the torn bill recalled at once the similar section that had fluttered in the man's fingers.
“The fellow who gave your friend Tubbs the half bill was very pale, wasn't he—with a wild-West black mustache?” queried Tiverton. ”

“ They had [Pg 298] all a patriot's pride in upholding white blood against red.
"Well, by gum! then you can look out for your own Injuns!" returned their chief. "My last gun's fired."
Settlers and Indians turned sulkily about; they rode home in two separate factions, and the streets were stilled. Isabel North went faithfully on, making her Priscilla dress, but it seemed, in those days, as if she might remain in her log cabin, unattacked and undefended. Tiverton was to be deprived of its one dramatic spectacle. Young men met one another in the streets, remarked gloomily, "How are ye?" ”

“ Jemima Dodd.
LETTER VIII. JAMES DODD TO LORD GEORGE TIVERTON, M. P., POSTE RESTANTE, BREGENZ. Hotel of All Nations, Baths of Homburg.
My dear Tiverton,—You often said I was a fellow to make a spoon or spoil a—something which I have forgotten—and I begin to fancy that you were a better prophet than that fellow in "Bell's Life" who always predicts the horse that does not win the Oaks. ”

“ Ever since last night he had realized that a man does not treat his business partner or his confederate with the formal courtesy shown by Devereux toward Miss Wesley in that brief three-cornered interview at the Idler. Her behavior toward him then, and his toward her, had been that of two people whose acquaintanceship is still in the earlier stage. Therefore, Tiverton concluded, her visits to this office were unquestionably on business. ”

“ Devereux's eyes shifted from the skyscraper and met Arthur's. In them Tiverton could read both fear and hatred.
“He looks at me as if I were a melodrama hero, and he the heavy villain,” remarked Arthur to Denny, under cover of the badly rattled Tubbs' next announcement. “Why, I wonder?”
“Same reason Sam Tubbs is leery of you,” decided Cross. “They're up to something, and they're wise that you're tabbing their game. Tubbs is afraid you'll report him and get him fired, and maybe prosecuted, too! The other chap's game may be so crooked that it spells jail. ”

“ It is now, with the advance of education, persons of a superior grade who are the dupes of spirit-mediums. Education will not give brains, but it will varnish emptiness.
At Tiverton lived, till a few years ago, "Old Snow," a rather famous "white witch," to whom many persons had recourse, among others a farmer who was a churchwarden and a well-to-do man. I knew him well, and in 1889 believed him to be a doomed man, with a hacking cough, worn to a shred, and bent by weakness. ”

“ But the man did not look at them until he had scrupulously wiped his feet on the husk mat, and stamped them anew. Then he turned down the legs of his trousers, and carefully examined the lank green carpet-bag he had been carrying.
"I guess I trailed it through some o' the drifts," he remarked. "The road's pretty narrer, this season o' the year."
"You give us a real start," said Susan. "We thought be sure 'twas Solomon, an' mebbe the Queen o' Sheba follerin' arter. Why, Solon Slade, you ain't walked way over to Tiverton Street!" ”

“ Buchanan. “He'll be one of the easiest men in New York to find. The Tombs' ledger will be the only directory any one will need to consult for his address. Come!”
He walked to the reception-room door, opened it quietly, and walked in, Tiverton at his heels. The spring on the door closed it behind them.
Twelve or fifteen persons were seated in the room facing the desk at which sat Devereux. Among them were Florida Wesley—the only woman present—and the men whom Tiverton had seen as Devereux's fellow passengers on the two trips aboard the sight seeing automobile. ”

“ There's nothing stuck up about her; there never is about the real first-class ones. It's only the second-raters that treat their work-folks like dogs.”
“You—you say you worked for her?” exclaimed Tiverton.
“Sure—in a way. She stopped for a month at the Idler—a little quiet apartment hotel up on the West Side—last year. My taxi was in the rank there. She liked my careful driving, she said. So she hired me pretty near every day. ”

“ DEVEREUX & CO.,
Mining Properties.
R. T. Devereux. Cyrus Q. Buchanan.
Tiverton was not surprised. He understood the game now. It was not new in the financial district, and several of its former players were even then enjoying the State's hospitality at Sing Sing, Auburn, and Clinton.
He had often heard of the old scheme, on the part of some crook promoter, to pretend that a financier of note was the “company” or the silent partner in his concern; and by the conjuring power of such a name to reap a goodly shearing of wool from the lambs. ”

“ It would be improper, I suppose, to refer to Tiverton without mentioning Lord Palmerston, whose Parliamentary connection with the borough extended from 1835 to 1865—just thirty years.{75} As an Irishman, the popular statesman must have been perfectly at home in the town, which is always lively at election times, and during his early acquaintance with it, had an unenviable reputation as a rival to Donnybrook Fair. Most of the inhabitants had their chosen inn, the tradesmen being accommodated in the parlour, the artisans in the bar, and the labourers in the kitchen ”

“ There's the Poorhouse team fust, an' Sally Flint settin' up straighter 'n a ramrod. An' there's Heman an' Roxy! She don't look a day older'n twenty-five. Proper nice folks, all on 'em, but they make me kind o' homesick jest because they be folks. They do look so sort o' common in their bunnits an' veils, an' I keep thinkin' o' little four-legged creatur's, all fur!" The Tiverton folk saluted them, always cordially, yet each after his kind. They liked Dilly as a product all their own, but one to be partaken of sparingly, like some wild, intoxicating root. ”

“ I can't answer your question about James. Vickars has not replied to my last two letters; and I really see no opening for the boy whatever. I mean to write, however, in a day or two to Lord Muddleton, to whom Lord George is nearly related, and ask for something in the Diplomatic way. Lord G. says it's the only career nowadays does n't require some kind of qualification,—since even in the army they've instituted a species of examination. "Get him made an Attaché somewhere," says Tiverton, "and he must be a 'Plenipo' at last." J. is good-looking, and a great deal of dash about him ”