Wrecker — Chapter 7 - Irons in the Fire, part 2
And now behold the honorary steward in hour of duty and glory; see me circulate amid crowd, radiating affability and laughter, liberal with my sweetmeats and cigars.
I say unblushing things to hobbledehoy girls, tell shy young persons this is the married people's boat, roguishly ask the abstracted if they are thinking of their sweethearts, offer Paterfamilias a cigar, am struck with the beauty and grow curious about the age of mamma's youngest who (I assure her gaily) will be a man before his mother; or perhaps it may occur to me, from the sensible expression of her face, that she is a person of good counsel, and I ask her earnestly if she knows any particularly pleasant place on the Saucelito or San Rafael coast, for the scene of our picnic is always supposed to be uncertain.
The next moment I am back at my giddy badinage with the young ladies, wakening laughter as I go, and leaving in my wake applausive comments of “Isn't Mr. Dodd a funny gentleman?
” and “O, I think he's just too nice!
” An hour having passed in this airy manner, I start upon my rounds afresh, with a bag full of coloured tickets, all with pins attached, and all with legible inscriptions: “Old Germany,” “California,” “True Love,” “Old Fogies,” “La Belle France,” “Green Erin,” “The Land of Cakes,” “Washington,” “Blue Jay,” “Robin Red-Breast,”--twenty of each denomination; for when it comes to the luncheon, we sit down by twenties.
These are distributed with anxious tact--for, indeed, this is the most delicate part of my functions--but outwardly with reckless unconcern, amidst the gayest flutter and confusion; and are immediately after sported upon hats and bonnets, to the extreme diffusion of cordiality, total strangers hailing each other by “the number of their mess”--so we humorously name it--and the deck ringing with cries of, “Here, all Blue Jays to the rescue!
” or, “I say, am I alone in this blame' ship?
Ain't there no more Californians?
” By this time we are drawing near to the appointed spot.
I mount upon the bridge, the observed of all observers.
“Captain,” I say, in clear, emphatic tones, heard far and wide, “the majority of the company appear to be in favour of the little cove beyond One Tree Point.
” “All right, Mr. Dodd,” responds the captain, heartily; “all one to me.
I am not exactly sure of the place you mean; but just you stay here and pilot me.
” I do, pointing with my wand.
I do pilot him, to the inexpressible entertainment of the picnic; for I am (why should I deny it?
) the popular man.
We slow down off the mouth of a grassy valley, watered by a brook, and set in pines and redwoods.
The anchor is let go; the boats are lowered, two of them already packed with the materials of an impromptu bar; and the Pioneer Band, accompanied by the resplendent asses, fill the other, and move shoreward to the inviting strains of Buffalo Gals, won't you come out to-night?
It is a part of our programme that one of the asses shall, from sheer clumsiness, in the course of this embarkation, drop a dummy axe into the water, whereupon the mirth of the picnic can hardly be assuaged.
Upon one occasion, the dummy axe floated, and the laugh turned rather the wrong way.
In from ten to twenty minutes the boats are along-side again, the messes are marshalled separately on the deck, and the picnic goes ashore, to find the band and the impromptu bar awaiting them.
Then come the hampers, which are piled upon the beach, and surrounded by a stern guard of stalwart asses, axe on shoulder.
It is here I take my place, note-book in hand, under a banner bearing the legend, “Come here for hampers.
” Each hamper contains a complete outfit for a separate twenty, cold provender, plates, glasses, knives, forks, and spoons: an agonized printed appeal from the fevered pen of Pinkerton, pasted on the inside of the lid, beseeches that care be taken of the glass and silver.
Beer, wine, and lemonade are flowing already from the bar, and the various clans of twenty file away into the woods, with bottles under their arms, and the hampers strung upon a stick.
Till one they feast there, in a very moderate seclusion, all being within earshot of the band.
From one till four, dancing takes place upon the grass; the bar does a roaring business; and the honorary steward, who has already exhausted himself to bring life into the dullest of the messes, must now indefatigably dance with the plainest of the women.
At four a bugle-call is sounded; and by half-past behold us on board again, pioneers, corrugated iron bar, empty bottles, and all; while the honorary steward, free at last, subsides into the captain's cabin over a brandy and soda and a book.
Free at last, I say; yet there remains before him the frantic leave-takings at the pier, and a sober journey up to Pinkerton's office with two policemen and the day's takings in a bag.
What I have here sketched was the routine.
But we appealed to the taste of San Francisco more distinctly in particular fetes.
“Ye Olde Time Pycke-Nycke,” largely advertised in hand-bills beginning “Oyez, Oyez!
” and largely frequented by knights, monks, and cavaliers, was drowned out by unseasonable rain, and returned to the city one of the saddest spectacles I ever remember to have witnessed.
In pleasing contrast, and certainly our chief success, was “The Gathering of the Clans,” or Scottish picnic.
So many milk-white knees were never before simultaneously exhibited in public, and to judge by the prevalence of “Royal Stewart” and the number of eagle's feathers, we were a high-born company.
I threw forward the Scottish flank of my own ancestry, and passed muster as a clansman with applause.
There was, indeed, but one small cloud on this red-letter day.
I had laid in a large supply of the national beverage, in the shape of The “Rob Roy MacGregor O” Blend, Warranted Old and Vatted; and this must certainly have been a generous spirit, for I had some anxious work between four and half-past, conveying on board the inanimate forms of chieftains.
To one of our ordinary festivities, where he was the life and soul of his own mess, Pinkerton himself came incognito, bringing the algebraist on his arm.
Miss Mamie proved to be a well-enough-looking mouse, with a large, limpid eye, very good manners, and a flow of the most correct expressions I have ever heard upon the human lip.
As Pinkerton's incognito was strict, I had little opportunity to cultivate the lady's acquaintance; but I was informed afterwards that she considered me “the wittiest gentleman she had ever met.
” “The Lord mend your taste in wit!
” thought I; but I cannot conceal that such was the general impression.
One of my pleasantries even went the round of San Francisco, and I have heard it (myself all unknown) bandied in saloons.
To be unknown began at last to be a rare experience; a bustle woke upon my passage; above all, in humble neighbourhoods.
“Who's that?
” one would ask, and the other would cry, “That!
Why, Dromedary Dodd!
” or, with withering scorn, “Not know Mr. Dodd of the Picnics?
Well!
” and indeed I think it marked a rather barren destiny; for our picnics, if a trifle vulgar, were as gay and innocent as the age of gold; I am sure no people divert themselves so easily and so well: and even with the cares of my stewardship, I was often happy to be there.
Indeed, there were but two drawbacks in the least considerable.
The first was my terror of the hobbledehoy girls, to whom (from the demands of my situation) I was obliged to lay myself so open.
The other, if less momentous, was more mortifying.
In early days, at my mother's knee, as a man may say, I had acquired the unenviable accomplishment (which I have never since been able to lose) of singing _Just before the Battle.
_ I have what the French call a fillet of voice, my best notes scarce audible about a dinner-table, and the upper register rather to be regarded as a higher power of silence: experts tell me besides that I sing flat; nor, if I were the best singer in the world, does _Just before the Battle_ occur to my mature taste as the song that I would choose to sing.
In spite of all which considerations, at one picnic, memorably dull, and after I had exhausted every other art of pleasing, I gave, in desperation, my one song.
From that hour my doom was gone forth.
Either we had a chronic passenger (though I could never detect him), or the very wood and iron of the steamer must have retained the tradition.
At every successive picnic word went round that Mr. Dodd was a singer; that Mr. Dodd sang _Just before the Battle_, and finally that now was the time when Mr. Dodd sang _Just before the Battle;_ so that the thing became a fixture like the dropping of the dummy axe, and you are to conceive me, Sunday after Sunday, piping up my lamentable ditty and covered, when it was done, with gratuitous applause.
It is a beautiful trait in human nature that I was invariably offered an encore.
I was well paid, however, even to sing.
Pinkerton and I, after an average Sunday, had five hundred dollars to divide.
Nay, and the picnics were the means, although indirectly, of bringing me a singular windfall.
This was at the end of the season, after the “Grand Farewell Fancy Dress Gala.
” Many of the hampers had suffered severely; and it was judged wiser to save storage, dispose of them, and lay in a fresh stock when the campaign re-opened.
Among my purchasers was a workingman of the name of Speedy, to whose house, after several unavailing letters, I must proceed in person, wondering to find myself once again on the wrong side, and playing the creditor to some one else's debtor.
Speedy was in the belligerent stage of fear.
He could not pay.
It appeared he had already resold the hampers, and he defied me to do my worst.
I did not like to lose my own money; I hated to lose Pinkerton's; and the bearing of my creditor incensed me.
“Do you know, Mr. Speedy, that I can send you to the penitentiary?
” said I, willing to read him a lesson.
The dire expression was overheard in the next room.
A large, fresh, motherly Irishwoman ran forth upon the instant, and fell to besiege me with caresses and appeals.
“Sure now, and ye couldn't have the heart to ut, Mr. Dodd, you, that's so well known to be a pleasant gentleman; and it's a pleasant face ye have, and the picture of me own brother that's dead and gone.
It's a truth that he's been drinking.
Ye can smell it off of him, more blame to him.
But, indade, and there's nothing in the house beyont the furnicher, and Thim Stock.
It's the stock that ye'll be taking, dear.
A sore penny it has cost me, first and last, and by all tales, not worth an owld tobacco pipe.
” Thus adjured, and somewhat embarrassed by the stern attitude I had adopted, I suffered myself to be invested with a considerable quantity of what is called wild-cat stock, in which this excellent if illogical female had been squandering her hard-earned gold.
It could scarce be said to better my position, but the step quieted the woman; and, on the other hand, I could not think I was taking much risk, for the shares in question (they were those of what I will call the Catamount Silver Mine) had fallen some time before to the bed-rock quotation, and now lay perfectly inert, or were only kicked (like other waste paper) about the kennel of the exchange by bankrupt speculators.
A month or two after, I perceived by the stock-list that Catamount had taken a bound; before afternoon, “thim stock” were worth a quite considerable pot of money; and I learned, upon inquiry, that a bonanza had been found in a condemned lead, and the mine was now expected to do wonders.
Remarkable to philosophers how bonanzas are found in condemned leads, and how the stock is always at freezing-point immediately before!
By some stroke of chance the, Speedys had held on to the right thing;
they had escaped the syndicate; yet a little more, if I had not come to dun them, and Mrs. Speedy would have been buying a silk dress.
I could not bear, of course, to profit by the accident, and returned to offer restitution.
The house was in a bustle; the neighbours (all stock-gamblers themselves) had crowded to condole; and Mrs. Speedy sat with streaming tears, the centre of a sympathetic group.
“For fifteen year I've been at ut,” she was lamenting, as I entered, “and grudging the babes the very milk, more shame to me!
to pay their dhirty assessments.
And now, my dears, I should be a lady, and driving in my coach, if all had their rights; and a sorrow on that man Dodd!
As soon as I set eyes on him, I seen the divil was in the house.
” It was upon these words that I made my entrance, which was therefore dramatic enough, though nothing to what followed.
For when it appeared that I was come to restore the lost fortune, and when Mrs. Speedy (after copiously weeping on my bosom) had refused the restitution, and when Mr. Speedy (summoned to that end from a camp of the Grand Army of the Republic) had added his refusal, and when I had insisted, and they had insisted, and the neighbours had applauded and supported each of us in turn; and when at last it was agreed we were to hold the stock together, and share the proceeds in three parts--one for me, one for Mr. Speedy, and one for his spouse--I will leave you to conceive the enthusiasm that reigned in that small, bare apartment, with the sewing-machine in the one corner, and the babes asleep in the other, and pictures of Garfield and the Battle of Gettysburg on the yellow walls.
Port wine was had in by a sympathiser, and we drank it mingled with tears.
“And I dhrink to your health, my dear,” sobbed Mrs. Speedy, especially affected by my gallantry in the matter of the third share; “and I'm sure we all dhrink to his health--Mr. Dodd of the picnics, no gentleman better known than him; and it's my prayer, dear, the good God may be long spared to see ye in health and happiness!
” In the end I was the chief gainer; for I sold my third while it was worth five thousand dollars, but the Speedys more adventurously held on until the syndicate reversed the process, when they were happy to escape with perhaps a quarter of that sum.
It was just as well; for the bulk of the money was (in Pinkerton's phrase) reinvested; and when next I saw Mrs. Speedy, she was still gorgeously dressed from the proceeds of the late success, but was already moist with tears over the new catastrophe.
“We're froze out, me darlin'!
All the money we had, dear, and the sewing-machine, and Jim's uniform, was in the Golden West; and the vipers has put on a new assessment.
” By the end of the year, therefore, this is how I stood.
I had made By Catamount Silver Mine.....................
,000 By the picnics...............................
3,000 By the lecture...............................
600 By profit and loss on capital in Pinkerton's business......................
1,350 ------ ,950 to which must be added What remained of my grandfather's donation.....................................
8,500 ------ ,450 It appears, on the other hand, that I had spent..........................
4,000 ------- Which thus left me to the good...............
,450 A result on which I am not ashamed to say I looked with gratitude and pride.
Some eight thousand (being late conquest) was liquid and actually tractile in the bank; the rest whirled beyond reach and even sight (save in the mirror of a balance-sheet) under the compelling spell of wizard Pinkerton.
Dollars of mine were tacking off the shores of Mexico, in peril of the deep and the guarda-costas; they rang on saloon-counters in the city of Tombstone, Arizona; they shone in faro-tents among the mountain diggings; the imagination flagged in following them, so wide were they diffused, so briskly they span to the turning of the wizard's crank.
But here, there, or everywhere I could still tell myself it was all mine, and what was more convincing, draw substantial dividends.
My fortune, I called it; and it represented, when expressed in dollars, or even British pounds, an honest pot of money; when extended into francs, a veritable fortune.
Perhaps I have let the cat out of the bag; perhaps you see already where my hopes were pointing, and begin to blame my inconsistency.
But I must first tell you my excuse, and the change that had befallen Pinkerton.
About a week after the picnic to which he escorted Mamie, Pinkerton avowed the state of his affections.
From what I had observed on board the steamer, where methought Mamie waited on him with her limpid eyes, I encouraged the bashful lover to proceed; and the very next evening he was carrying me to call on his affianced.
“You must befriend her, Loudon, as you have always befriended me,” he said, pathetically.
“By saying disagreeable things?
I doubt if that be the way to a young lady's favour,” I replied; “and since this picnicking I begin to be a man of some experience.
” “Yes, you do nobly there; I can't describe how I admire you,” he cried.
“Not that she will ever need it; she has had every advantage.
God knows what I have done to deserve her.
O man, what a responsibility this is for a rough fellow and not always truthful!
” “Brace up, old man, brace up!
” said I. But when we reached Mamie's boarding-house, it was almost with tears that he presented me.
“Here is Loudon, Mamie,” were his words.
“I want you to love him; he has a grand nature.
” “You are certainly no stranger to me, Mr. Dodd,” was her gracious expression.
“James is never weary of descanting on your goodness.
” “My dear lady,” said I, “when you know our friend a little better, you will make a large allowance for his warm heart.
My goodness has consisted in allowing him to feed and clothe and toil for me when he could ill afford it.
If I am now alive, it is to him I owe it; no man had a kinder friend.
You must take good care of him,” I added, laying my hand on his shoulder, “and keep him in good order, for he needs it.
” Pinkerton was much affected by this speech, and so, I fear, was Mamie.
I
admit it was a tactless performance.
“When you know our friend a little better,” was not happily said; and even “keep him in good order, for he needs it” might be construed into matter of offence; but I lay it before you in all confidence of your acquittal: was the general tone of it “patronising”?
Even if such was the verdict of the lady, I cannot but suppose the blame was neither wholly hers nor wholly mine; I cannot but suppose that Pinkerton had already sickened the poor woman of my very name; so that if I had come with the songs of Apollo, she must still have been disgusted.
Here, however, were two finger-posts to Paris.
Jim was going to be married, and so had the less need of my society.
I had not pleased his bride, and so was, perhaps, better absent.
Late one evening I broached the idea to my friend.
It had been a great day for me; I had just banked my five thousand catamountain dollars; and as Jim had refused to lay a finger on the stock, risk and profit were both wholly mine, and I was celebrating the event with stout and crackers.
I began by telling him that if it caused him any pain or any anxiety about his affairs, he had but to say the word, and he should hear no more of my proposal.
He was the truest and best friend I ever had or was ever like to have; and it would be a strange thing if I refused him any favour he was sure he wanted.
At the same time I wished him to be sure; for my life was wasting in my hands.
I was like one from home; all my true interests summoned me away.
I must remind him, besides, that he was now about to marry and assume new interests, and that our extreme familiarity might be even painful to his wife.
--“O no, Loudon; I feel you are wrong there,” he interjected warmly; “she DOES appreciate your nature.
”--So much the better, then, I continued; and went on to point out that our separation need not be for long; that, in the way affairs were going, he might join me in two years with a fortune, small, indeed, for the States, but in France almost conspicuous; that we might unite our resources, and have one house in Paris for the winter and a second near Fontainebleau for summer, where we could be as happy as the day was long, and bring up little Pinkertons as practical artistic workmen, far from the money-hunger of the West.
“Let me go then,” I concluded; “not as a deserter, but as the vanguard, to lead the march of the Pinkerton men.
” So I argued and pleaded, not without emotion; my friend sitting opposite, resting his chin upon his hand and (but for that single interjection) silent.
“I have been looking for this, Loudon,” said he, when I had done.
“It does pain me, and that's the fact--I'm so miserably selfish.
And I believe it's a death blow to the picnics; for it's idle to deny that you were the heart and soul of them with your wand and your gallant bearing, and wit and humour and chivalry, and throwing that kind of society atmosphere about the thing.
But for all that, you're right, and you ought to go.
You may count on forty dollars a week; and if Depew City--one of nature's centres for this State--pan out the least as I expect, it may be double.
But it's forty dollars anyway; and to think that two years ago you were almost reduced to beggary!
” “I WAS reduced to it,” said I. “Well, the brutes gave you nothing, and I'm glad of it now!
” cried Jim.
“It's the triumphant return I glory in!
Think of the master, and that cold-blooded Myner too!
Yes, just let the Depew City boom get on its legs, and you shall go; and two years later, day for day, I'll shake hands with you in Paris, with Mamie on my arm, God bless her!
” We talked in this vein far into the night.
I was myself so exultant in my new-found liberty, and Pinkerton so proud of my triumph, so happy in my happiness, in so warm a glow about the gallant little woman of his choice, and the very room so filled with castles in the air and cottages at Fontainebleau, that it was little wonder if sleep fled our eyelids, and three had followed two upon the office clock before Pinkerton unfolded the mechanism of his patent sofa.
