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‏اللغة: English
Port Argent
A Novel

Port Argent A Novel

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 3

take your time, of course," said Wood. "Hang on till you're both satisfied. He's peaceful, only if you scare him to death, he might feel injured."

"Well, I'm glad to oblige him——"

"That's it. Talk to him that way. Fire 'em, of course, but—you'd better make it all right with Freiburger. A man that rides in a cross-country schooner, sometimes he has to join the shoving."

"That's all right."

Hennion smoked in silence a few moments, then took his cigar out and added, "I see."

"I never knew a man that made a living by looking up rows for himself," said Wood, wrinkling his eyes thoughtfully at the coils of smoke, "except one, and that wasn't what you'd call a comfortable living. It was a man named Johnson, in St. Joseph, somewhere about '60. He started in to fight the landlord of the Morton House for his bill, till the landlord was full of knots, and his features painful, and his secretest rheumatism woke up, and his interest in his bill was dead. That was all right, supposing Johnson didn't really have the price. I guess, like enough, he hadn't. But he went round town then making the same arrangement with other folks, a lawyer and a liveryman and others. Sometimes he had to fight, sometimes he didn't, but after a while somebody drew a gun on him, and St. Joseph buried him with a sigh. He never was really comfortable."

Wood wrinkled his eyes, and followed the twists and capers of the smoke with a close interest. Hennion sighted over the points of his shoes at an upper window opposite, where three men were arguing excitedly in what appeared dumb-show.

"Does the parable mean something, particularly St. Joseph's sigh?"

"The parable," said Wood, "particularly St. Joseph's sigh. Yes. It means, if the peaceable man comes out better 'n the warlike, it's because folks get so tired of the warlike."

"Oh!"

"Now, the Preacher, up on Seton Avenue——"

"Aidee?"

"Yes. He's terrible warlike. He says I'm a thief. I say he's a fine man—fine man. He keeps on saying it. I keep on saying it. Folks got kind of tired of him a while ago. He says I'm a disease, now. Well—maybe so. Then I guess this world's got me chronic. Chap comes along with a patent pill, and a new porous plaster, and claims his plaster has the holes arranged in triangles, instead of squares like all previous plasters; he has an air of candid discovery; he says, 'Bless my soul! Your system's out of order.' Sounds interesting once in a while. And then this world gets so tired of him; says, 'I've had a belly-ache eleven thousand years. I wish to God you wouldn't keep giving it new names.' Well,—a couple of years ago the Chronicle was publishing Aidee's speeches on Civic something or other every week. Aidee used to shoot straight but scattering at that time. He'd got too much responsibility for the details of the millennium. Why, when you come right down to it, Dick, Aidee's got as sky-high an opinion of himself as anybody I know. That's natural enough, why, yes. If I could stand up like him, and convert myself into a six-inch pipe of natural gas on the blaze, I'd have the same. Certain, I would. But, there ain't any real democracy in him. He says he'd sit in the gutter with any man. Guess likely he would. I wouldn't. But would he and the other gutter-man hitch. Would they get along together? No, they wouldn't. Aidee's a loose comet that thinks he's the proper conflagration for boiling potatoes. Go on now! He's too warlike. Him and his Independent Reform and his Assembly—oh, well—he wasn't doing any great harm then. He ain't now, either. I told him one time, like this: "I says, 'Fire away anyhow that suits you. But,' I says, 'what makes you think you'd like my job?'"

"'What is your job?' says he.

"'Don't know as I could describe it,' I says, and I was a little stumped. 'It's not that kind. It's complicated.'

"'No,' he says, 'as you understand and work your job, I shouldn't like it.'

"'No more I shouldn't yours. Speaking of which,' I says, 'what is your job?'

"And he was stumped too. He was, for a fact.

"'I don't know as I could describe it. It's not that kind,' he says.

"'Complicated?'

"'Yes.'

"'Well,' I says, 'I shouldn't want to try it. I'd mean all right, but it wouldn't go.' I says, 'There was a man died up here at the city jail last year, and Sol Sweeney, the jailor, he was going to call in a clergyman on the case as being in that line. But then Sweeney thinks, "I can talk it. I've heard 'em." Well, Sweeney's got an idea his intellectuals are all right anyhow. Being a jailor, he says, he's got the habit of meditation. So he starts in."

"Bill, you've been a bad lot."

"Yep."

"There ain't no hope for you, Bill."

"No," says Bill, "there ain't."

"You'll go to that there bad place, Bill." Bill was some bored, but he allowed, "I guess that's right," speaking feeble. "Well, Bill," says Sweeney, "you ought to be thankful you've got a place to go to."'

"Aidee laughed,—he did really,—and after that he looked thoughtful. Fine man, Dick. I sized him up for the things he didn't say. 'Sweeney,' I says, 'he meant all right, and he'd got the general outline of it. But I was going to say, if I tried to run your job for you, thinking anybody could run it with his intentions, I'd make a gone fool of myself, sure.'

"Now see this, Dick. I did make a gone fool of myself, sure. It wasn't any of my business what he didn't know. He's been acting too reasonable since. That's what I wanted to tell you."

"What for?"

"Oh, well," said Wood balmily, "you might run across him. You might be interested to find out what he's up to."

After a few moments of silence Hennion dropped his feet and stood up.

"All right. I won't row with Frei-burger, but I don't see what Aidee's got to do with me," he said, and went out, and up Bank Street, and then turned into Hancock, a street which led back from the river into the residence sections.








CHAPTER II—RICHARD THE SECOND

WHEN Hennion reached his rooms the sunlight was slanting through the maples outside.

He sat down after supper by his windows. The twilight was thickening in the foliage, the sparrows holding noisy caucuses there——

Hennion's father had been a contractor and engineer before him, and before the great war had made the face of the nation more thoughtful with the knowledge of what may happen in well-regulated families.

Once the sun was a pillar of fire and cloud, the land of promise seemed every day attained, and the stars were jubilant. Were ever such broad green plains, strong brown rivers and blue lakes? There was oratory then, and sublime foreheads were smitten against the stars. Such oratory and such a forehead had Henry Champney, in those days. The subject of oratory was the devotion of the forefathers, the promises and attainments of the nation set forth in thrilling statistics. A thousand audiences shuffled and grinned, and went their way to accomplish the more immediate things which the orators had endeavoured to decorate. The admiration of the orator and the public was mutual. There was a difference in type,—and the submerged industrialist, who worked with odd expedients, who jested with his lips, and toiled terribly with brain and hand, admired the difference.

The elder Hennion did not care about "the destinies of the nation." He dredged the channel of that brown river, the Muscadine, drove the piles that held the docks of Port Argent, and dug the east section of the Interstate Canal. The war came, and someone appointed him to something connected with the transportation of commissary. He could not escape the habit of seeing that things did what they were supposed to do. Hennion's supplies were apt to reach the Army of the Cumberland regularly and on scheduled time, it would be hard to tell why.

He

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