CHAPTER XXIII
EVAN CUMMINGS' COURTSHIP
There was frivolous talk and disputation and some serious reasoning, asthe necessary sequence of what had been told. There was discussion as towhat excuse there had been for the demeanor of Mr. Abercrombie, and evensome quiet suggestion to the Banker that, very much to his credit, hecould, himself, imagine things, upon occasions such as this, and that,possibly, he might have risen somewhat to the emergency, but thechaffing was of the listless sort. The sun was not visible save from therear end of the rear car of the train, but its rays deflected, slanted,yellow-red, along the sides of the pass calling the attention of all tothe fact that it was almost supper-time. More hanging together in aWayside Tales companionship? Hardly! They had appetites and theydissolved as dissolve the vapors, or the friends made by letters ofintroduction, or snow on the top of a distillery, or your dreams, orMary when you need her, or anything else. Similes are the cheapestthing on the market! The sum of it was that an afternoon had been killedwithout undue atrocity and now all scattered and prepared themselves andwent in to supper. They enjoyed themselves together and then the ladiesdrifted back to the talking habitat, while the men, or at least a numberof them, found the smoking compartments, either the big one of theCassowary or one of those in other coaches.
There are all kinds of traveling men. This is not generally understood,but it is a fact. The impression has, somehow, obtained that a travelingman or "Drummer," or whatever we should call Dickens' "Bagman" inthe western Hemisphere, is a person who is careless of theconventionalities, who relies upon a certain hardihood in thrustinghimself anywhere into the place of immediate consequence or convenience.Never was a greater mistake in popular opinion. There are blatantcommercial travelers, of course. There will be fools in any part of theworld's work. It is a matter of fact, though, that the man whosebusiness it is to influence mentally other men and women must,necessarily, have tact and understanding and that he must be often morequick of conception and more readily responsive to the proper demand ofhis fellow-creatures than one less extremely educated in certain ways ofthe vagrant world.
The man called upon was one of the greater type. He laughingly acceptedthe situation:
"Yes," he said, "I'll tell you a story, but it is so foolish that I canhardly expect you to believe it. It is merely the story of one man Iknew and of how he got his wife. He did not get her in quite theordinary way. I'll tell you all I know about him, and I've known himalmost from boyhood. I'll tell you everything as it was."
EVAN CUMMINGS' COURTSHIP
I think Evan Cummings had the most remarkable personality of anytraveling man I ever met, a personality which indicated itselfespecially in the closing incident of his love affair. He was agood-looking fellow, of Scotch descent, with all the tenacity of purposeof his race. He was a good man to meet upon the train. When we weregathered in the smoking compartment Evan was as full of spirits as therest, but I noticed that, while taking an active part in theconversation, he never told any of the somewhat risque stories that theair of the smoking compartment too often breeds. Instead, he would telluncanny tales of Scotland in the old days, tales of wizards andwarlocks, and of the strange things to be seen at night on ancientbattle-fields, and we always listened to him with interest. He wasmightily fixed in his views and many a good-natured dispute we had withhim over this or that. Eh, but he was stubborn!
Evan was a good man of business, though, and had a host of friends.Among these was the conductor of a train on which he often traveled andthe friendship developed into such a degree of intimacy that one day theconductor, Luke Johnson, invited him out to dinner with him. Evan,having no particular business on hand that evening, accepted theinvitation.
Johnson's house was in the suburbs, decidedly. It was on the very picketline of the army of houses of the ever-marching city, out on the prairieat least a couple of blocks distant from any other house. A planksidewalk extended to it from the more settled district near and, withits barns and sheds and vine-covered front, it did not have a lonesomelook. Inside Evan found the house quite as prepossessing as itsexterior and he found something else there more prepossessing still.
Johnson's family consisted of himself, his wife, his child, littleGabriel, about four years old, and his sister-in-law, a Miss SalomeHinman. Evan found Mrs. Johnson a pleasant sort of a woman and found inMiss Hinman his undeniable affinity. Stolid as he usually was in thepresence of femininity, he felt, in the very marrow of his bones, thathe was a lost man. That he succumbed so quickly was not altogether to bewondered at. Miss Hinman was pretty, was very slender--what aschool-girl writer would call willowy or lissom or, possibly,svelte--and was wildly devoted to her little nephew, of whom she had thechief care.
Well, Evan didn't waste any time. He contrived it so that he was in thecity often and, as often, was at Johnson's house, making vigorous loveto Miss Salome. Finally, he accepted a good city position with his firmand abandoned the road, just for the sake of being near his sweetheart,though he liked the road better. All would have gone well now, but forthe young lady. He knew she cared for him, for she had admitted it, butshe was a bit of a coquette and couldn't resist the temptation ofplaying a fish so firmly hooked. Urge as Evan might, he could notpersuade her to fix a date for their marriage. She would not absolutelydeny him, but she was elusive. He became desperate. Something must bedone. It was.
One day just as Evan, brooding as he walked, neared the home of hissweetheart to renew his useless pleading, he noticed little Gabrielplaying in the yard with a toy balloon the string of which was tied to abutton-hole of his jacket and which tugged strenuously away at him. Evansat down upon the horse-block in front of the house, watching the boydreamily, and trying to devise a plan to bring Miss Salome to terms,when, all at once, his planning ceased as suddenly as the stopping of aclock. The boy and the balloon had given him an awful inspiration! Hereturned to town.
That evening Evan Cummings bought a toy balloon, some bird-shot and oneof the tiniest of little baskets. In his room at the hotel he attachedthe string of the balloon to the handle of the basket. Then, as theballoon with its burden rose toward the ceiling, he dropped shot aftershot into the little receptacle until the balloon could no longer raiseit. Taking the little basket of shot to the drug store, he had thebasket and shot carefully weighed. He now knew the exact lifting powerof a toy balloon--it was just five ounces. He had seen Gabriel weighedand knew that he tipped the scale at forty-two pounds. The calculationwas easy; sixteen ounces in a pound; sixteen multiplied by forty-twomakes six hundred and seventy-two. Gabriel, therefore, weighed 672ounces: a single toy balloon would lift not quite five ounces; five goesinto six hundred and seventy-two, one hundred and thirty-four times; onehundred and thirty-five toy balloons would lift little Gabriel. The nextday Evan went to a harness shop and had a stout leather harness madewhich would just about fit Gabriel, passing round his small body underthe arms and over his shoulders, from each of which two broad strapsextended upward and met in a strong iron ring. Then he went out andinvested in two hundred and fifty toy balloons--thus adding over anhundred for requirements and contingencies. He bought, also, a stoutpiece of clothesline, fifty feet long, and a thick cord two hundred feetlong, which would, if required, sustain the weight of a man. The nextafternoon he attached the balloons to the clothesline, not all in abunch, but at intervals, that in the event of an accident to one,another would not be affected. At the lower end of the clothesline was astrong steel snap.
At about three o'clock in the afternoon, when he knew Mrs. Johnson wasto be absent in town, Evan hired a covered express-wagon, in which heimprisoned his balloons and was driven near the Johnson's place. A blockor two away from there, he dismissed the driver and wagon and went onalone, the balloons tugging at him fiercely as he walked. He saw littleGabriel playing in the yard, as usual, and called to him. The youth camerunning out and shouted in childish glee when he saw the mountain of redballoons.
"Would you like to take a ride, Gabriel?" asked Evan
kindly.
"Yep, Yep!" cried Gabriel. "Gimme a ride."
Evan carefully and securely adjusted the harness upon the youngster andthen snapped the contrivance at the end of the clothesline into the ringabove the boy's head. He tied one end of his two hundred feet of cordfirmly to the same ring. Holding on to the cord, he eased up gently andhad the satisfaction of seeing Gabriel lifted from his feet.
At the height of thirty feet little Gabriel emitted a sudden bawl suchas a four year-old probably never gave before; at fifty feet his screamswere something startling and when, at last, he hung dangling two hundredfeet above, the string of balloons rising fifty feet higher still, thevolume and loudness of his shrieking seemed scarce diminished by thedistance. He swung and swayed far away up there a wonderful kickingobject, the string of balloons uplifting above him like a pillar offire, the whole forming a wonderful vision against the sky. Evan calmlytied the end of the cord to the hitching staple in the horse-block, thensat down upon the block and drew out and opened his pocket knife.
The front door of the house suddenly flew open and a hysterical youngwoman reached Evan's side in the fraction of an instant. She lookedupwards and shrieked out:
"Oh! Oh! What are you doing with little Gabriel! He'll be killed! Oh!he'll be killed!"
"No he won't," answered Evan, quietly, "I can pull him down at any time.He'll stay where he is--that is unless I cut this cord," he addedreflectively, as he held the blade of his knife against it. "Salome,will you marry me and fix the date for the ceremony now? If you won'tpromise, I'll cut the cord!"
"Oh, you brute! Oh, you murderer! I'll never-- Oh--"
"I tell you he's all right," explained Evan. "Promise when we'll bemarried, and I'll pull him down."
The girl but shrieked the louder and, sinking down, clung pleadingly tohis knees.
"Save him!" she cried. "He'll be killed! Oh, poor little Gabriel!"
"I tell you he won't be killed! Little Gabriel has only gone aloft, tobe nearer his namesake. He's almost up to where 'the cherubim andseraphim continually do sing.' Don't you hear him singing himself,already? Will you fix the date or shall I cut the cord?"
The girl was getting calmer, though quivering all over. She only sobbednow; "He'll be killed! He'll be killed! Oh my poor little Gabriel!"
"I tell you he will not," reiterated Evan. "I don't believe he will bekilled even when I cut the string. He will alight gently somewhere, asthe gas in the balloons gradually exudes, and somebody will take care ofhim. It may not be in this county, but he will alight. When will youmarry me?"
The young woman did not answer.
"Salome," said Evan, now pleadingly. "You know that you love me and thatI love you. Why not stop all this dalliance and coquetting? you know youare going to be my wife. Will you not make it all definite?"
Salome looked up into her lover's eyes, then bowed her head. Finally shelooked up again and sobbed out:
"Y-e-s, only pull down little Gabriel."
"When shall the wedding be? Will the twentieth of next month do?"
"Y-e-s."
Evan closed his pocket knife. Then taking hold of the cord he beganpulling little Gabriel down. As that youth, still loudly bellowing,reached the ground, Salome caught him up and darted into the house withhim. Evan paid slight attention to people who came running to see whatthe red thing aloft had been. He said only that he had been trying anexperiment. Then he gathered up the balloons and carried them into thewoodshed, where they rose in a mass to the roof and stayed there. Thenhe went into the house and had a talk with the indignant Salome. It wasan exciting session, but it ended peaceably.
Well, she married him, as she had promised, for honesty was among hervirtues. She looks upon her husband as a desperate character and, so, isin love with him, of course.
I'm not surprised at the whole business. It was Evan all over.