"Careful of the language around here."
It was never "your" language, but "the" language,--though he
certainly intended no pleasantry. Trueman himself was not a lucky
poker man; he was never ahead of the game on the whole. He played
because he liked it, and he was willing to pay for his amusement.
In general he was large and indifferent about money matters,--
always carried a few hundred-dollar bills in his inside coat-
pocket, and left his coat hanging anywhere,--in his office, in the
bank, in the barber shop, in the cattle-sheds behind the freight
yard.
Now, R. E. Dillon detested gambling, often dropped a contemptuous
word about "poker bugs" before the horse-trader and the billiard-
hall man and the cashier of the other bank. But he never made
remarks of that sort in Trueman's presence. He was a man who
voiced his prejudices fearlessly and cuttingly, but on this and
other matters he held his peace before Trueman. His regard for him
must have been very strong.
During the winter, usually in March, the two friends always took a
trip together, to Kansas City and St. Joseph. When they got ready,
they packed their bags and stepped aboard a fast Santa F? train and
went; the Limited was often signalled to stop for them. Their
excursions made some of the rest of us feel less shut away and
small-townish, just as their fur overcoats and silk shirts did.
They were the only men in Singleton who wore silk shirts. The
other business men wore white shirts with detachable collars, high
and stiff or low and sprawling, which were changed much oftener
than the shirts. Neither of my heroes was afraid of laundry bills.
They did not wear waistcoats, but went about in their shirt-sleeves
in hot weather; their suspenders were chosen with as much care as
their neckties and handkerchiefs. Once when a bee stung my hand in
the store (a few of them had got into the brown-sugar barrel), Mr.
Dillon himself moistened the sting, put baking soda on it, and
bound my hand up with his pocket handkerchief. It was of the
smoothest linen, and in one corner was a violet square bearing his
initials, R. E. D., in white. There were never any handkerchiefs
like that in my family. I cherished it until it was laundered, and
I returned it with regret.
It was in the spring and summer that one saw Mr. Dillon and Mr.
Trueman at their best. Spring began early with us,--often the
first week of April was hot. Every evening when he came back to
the store after supper, Dillon had one of his clerks bring two arm-
chairs out to the wide sidewalk that ran beside the red brick
wall,--office chairs of the old-fashioned sort, with a low round
back which formed a half-circle to enclose the sitter, and
spreading legs, the front ones slightly higher. In those chairs
the two friends would spend the evening. Dillon would sit down and
light a good cigar. In a few moments Mr. Trueman would come across
from Main Street, walking slowly, spaciously, as if he were used to
a great deal of room. As he approached, Mr. Dillon would call out
to him:
"Good evening, J. H. Fine weather."
J. H. would take his place in the empty chair.
"Spring in the air," he might remark, if it were April. Then he
would relight a dead cigar which was always in his hand,--seemed to
belong there, like a thumb or finger.
"I drove up north today to see what the Swedes are doing," Mr.
Dillon might begin. "They're the boys to get the early worm. They
never let the ground go to sleep. Whatever moisture there is, they
get the benefit of it."
"The Swedes are good farmers. I don't sympathize with the way they
work their women."
"The women like it, J. H. It's the old-country way; they're
accustomed to it, and they like it."
"Maybe. I don't like it," Trueman would reply with something like
a grunt.
They talked very much like this all evening; or, rather, Mr. Dillon
talked, and Mr. Trueman made an occasional observation. No one
could tell just how much Mr. Trueman knew about anything, because
he was so consistently silent. Not from diffidence, but from
superiority; from a contempt for chatter, and a liking for silence,
a taste for it. After they had exchanged a few remarks, he and
Dillon often sat in an easy quiet for a long time, watching the
passers-by, watching the wagons on the road, watching the stars.
Sometimes, very rarely, Mr. Trueman told a long story, and it was
sure to be an interesting and unusual one.
But on the whole it was Mr. Dillon who did the talking; he had a
wide-awake voice with much variety in it. Trueman's was thick and
low,--his speech was rather indistinct and never changed in pitch
or tempo. Even when he swore wickedly at the hands who were
loading his cattle into freight cars, it was a mutter, a low, even
growl. There was a curious attitude in men of his class and time,
that of being rather above speech, as they were above any kind of
fussiness or eagerness. But I knew he liked to hear Mr. Dillon
talk,--anyone did. Dillon had such a crisp, clear enunciation, and
he could say things so neatly. People would take a reprimand from
him they wouldn't have taken from anyone else, because he put it so
well. His voice was never warm or soft--it had a cool, sparkling
quality; but it could be very humorous, very kind and considerate,
very teasing and stimulating. Every sentence he uttered was alive,
never languid, perfunctory, slovenly, unaccented. When he made a
remark, it not only meant something, but sounded like something,--
sounded like the thing he meant.
When Mr. Dillon was closeted with a depositor in his private room
in the bank, and you could not hear his words through the closed
door, his voice told you exactly the degree of esteem in which he
held that customer. It was interested, encouraging, deliberative,
humorous, satisfied, admiring, cold, critical, haughty,
contemptuous, according to the deserts and pretensions of his
listener. And one could tell when the person closeted with him was
a woman; a farmer's wife, or a woman who was trying to run a little
business, or a country girl hunting a situation. There was a
difference; something peculiarly kind and encouraging. But if it
were a foolish, extravagant woman, or a girl he didn't approve of,
oh, then one knew it well enough! The tone was courteous, but
cold; relentless as the multiplication table.
All these possibilities of voice made his evening talk in the
spring dusk very interesting; interesting for Trueman and for me.
I found many pretexts for lingering near them, and they never
seemed to mind my hanging about. I was very quiet. I often sat on
the edge of the sidewalk with my feet hanging down and played jacks
by the hour when there was moonlight. On dark nights I sometimes
perched on top of one of the big goods-boxes--we called them "store
boxes,"--there were usually several of these standing empty
on the
sidewalk against the red brick wall.
I liked to listen to those two because theirs was the only
"conversation" one could hear about the streets. The older men
talked of nothing but politics and their business, and the very
young men's talk was entirely what they called "josh"; very
personal, supposed to be funny, and really not funny at all. It
was scarcely speech, but noises, snorts, giggles, yawns, sneezes,
with a few abbreviated words and slang expressions which stood for
a hundred things. The original Indians of the Kansas plains had
more to do with articulate speech than had our promising young men.
To be sure my two aristocrats sometimes discussed politics, and
joked each other about the policies and pretentions of their
respective parties. Mr. Dillon, of course, was a Democrat,--it was
in the very frosty sparkle of his speech,--and Mr. Trueman was a
Republican; his rear, as he walked about the town, looked a little
like the walking elephant labelled "G. O. P." in Puck. But each
man seemed to enjoy hearing his party ridiculed, took it as a
compliment.
In the spring their talk was usually about weather and planting and
pasture and cattle. Mr. Dillon went about the country in his light
buckboard a great deal at that season, and he knew what every
farmer was doing and what his chances were, just how much he was
falling behind or getting ahead.
"I happened to drive by Oscar Ericson's place today, and I saw as
nice a lot of calves as you could find anywhere," he would begin,
and Ericson's history and his family would be pretty thoroughly
discussed before they changed the subject.
Or he might come out with something sharp: "By the way, J. H., I
saw an amusing sight today. I turned in at Sandy Bright's place to
get water for my horse, and he had a photographer out there taking
pictures of his house and barn. It would be more to the point if
he had a picture taken of the mortgages he's put on that farm."
Trueman would give a short, mirthless response, more like a cough
than a laugh.
Those April nights, when the darkness itself tasted dusty (or, by
the special mercy of God, cool and damp), when the smell of burning
grass was in the air, and a sudden breeze brought the scent of wild
plum blossoms,--those evenings were only a restless preparation for
the summer nights,--nights of full liberty and perfect idleness.
Then there was no school, and one's family never bothered about
where one was. My parents were young and full of life, glad to
have the children out of the way. All day long there had been the
excitement that intense heat produces in some people,--a mild
drunkenness made of sharp contrasts; thirst and cold water, the
blazing stretch of Main Street and the cool of the brick stores
when one dived into them. By nightfall one was ready to be quiet.
My two friends were always in their best form on those moonlit
summer nights, and their talk covered a wide range.
I suppose there were moonless nights, and dark ones with but a
silver shaving and pale stars in the sky, just as in the spring.
But I remember them all as flooded by the rich indolence of a full
moon, or a half-moon set in uncertain blue. Then Trueman and
Dillon would sit with their coats off and have a supply of fresh
handkerchiefs to mop their faces; they were more largely and
positively themselves. One could distinguish their features, the
stripes on their shirts, the flash of Mr. Dillon's diamond; but
their shadows made two dark masses on the white sidewalk. The
brick wall behind them, faded almost pink by the burning of
successive summers, took on a carnelian hue at night. Across the
street, which was merely a dusty road, lay an open space, with a
few stunted box-elder trees, where the farmers left their wagons
and teams when they came to town. Beyond this space stood a row of
frail wooden buildings, due to be pulled down any day; tilted,
crazy, with outside stairs going up to rickety second-storey
porches that sagged in the middle. They had once been white, but
were now grey, with faded blue doors along the wavy upper porches.
These abandoned buildings, an eyesore by day, melted together into
a curious pile in the moonlight, became an immaterial structure of
velvet-white and glossy blackness, with here and there a faint
smear of blue door, or a tilted patch of sage-green that had once
been a shutter.
The road, just in front of the sidewalk where I sat and played
jacks, would be ankle-deep in dust, and seemed to drink up the
moonlight like folds of velvet. It drank up sound, too; muffled
the wagon-wheels and hoof-beats; lay soft and meek like the last
residuum of material things,--the soft bottom resting-place.
Nothing in the world, not snow mountains or blue seas, is so
beautiful in moonlight as the soft, dry summer roads in a farming
country, roads where the white dust falls back from the slow wagon-
wheel.
Wonderful things do happen even in the dullest places--in the
cornfields and the wheat-fields. Sitting there on the edge of the
sidewalk one summer night, my feet hanging in the warm dust, I saw
a transit of Venus. Only the three of us were there. It was a hot
night, and the clerks had closed the store and gone home. Mr.
Dillon and Mr. Trueman waited on a little while to watch. It was a
very blue night, breathless and clear, not the smallest cloud from
horizon to horizon. Everything up there overhead seemed as usual,
it was the familiar face of a summer-night sky. But presently we
saw one bright star moving. Mr. Dillon called to me; told me to
watch what was going to happen, as I might never chance to see it
again in my lifetime.
That big star certainly got nearer and nearer the moon,--very
rapidly, too, until there was not the width of your hand between
them--now the width of two fingers--then it passed directly into
the moon at about the middle of its girth; absolutely disappeared.
The star we had been watching was gone. We waited, I do not know
how long, but it seemed to me about fifteen minutes. Then we saw a
bright wart on the other edge of the moon, but for a second only,--
the machinery up there worked fast. While the two men were
exclaiming and telling me to look, the planet swung clear of the
golden disk, a rift of blue came between them and widened very
fast. The planet did not seem to move, but that inky blue space
between it and the moon seemed to spread. The thing was over.
My friends stayed on long past their usual time and talked about
eclipses and such matters.
"Let me see," Mr. Trueman remarked slowly, "they reckon the moon's
about two hundred and fifty thousand miles away from us. I wonder
how far that star is."
"I don't know, J. H., and I really don't much care. When we can
get the tramps off the railroad, and manage to run this town with
one fancy house instead of two, and have a Federal Government that
is as honest as a good banking business, then it will be plenty of
time to turn our attention to the stars."
Mr. Trueman chuckled and took his cigar from between his teeth.
"Maybe the stars will throw some light on all that, if we get the
run of them," he said humorously. Then he added: "Mustn't be a
reformer, R. E. Nothing in it. That's the only time you ever get
off on the wrong foot. Life is what it always has been, always
will be. No use to make a fuss." He got up, said: "Good-night,
R. E.," said good-night to me, too, because this had been an
unusual occasion, and went down the sidewalk with his wide, sailor-
like tread, as if he were walking the deck of his own ship.
When Dillon and Trueman went to St. Joseph, or, as we called it,
St. Joe, they stopped at the same hotel, but their diversions were
very dissimilar. Mr. Dillon was a family man and a good Catholic;
he behaved in St. Joe very much as if he were at home. His sister
was Mother Superior of a convent there, and he went to see her
often. The nuns made much of him, and he enjoyed their admiration
and all the ceremony with which they entertained him. When his two
daughters were going to the convent school, he used to give theatre
parties for them, inviting all their friends.
Mr. Trueman's way of amusing himself must have tried his friend's
patience--Dillon liked to regulate other people's affairs if they
needed it. Mr. Trueman had a lot of poker-playing friends among
the commission men in St. Joe, and he sometimes dropped a good deal
of money. He was supposed to have rather questionable women
friends there, too. The grasshopper men of our town used to say
that Trueman was financial adviser to a woman who ran a celebrated
sporting house. Mary Trent, her name was. She must have been a
very unusual woman; she had credit with all the banks, and never
got into any sort of trouble. She had formerly been head mistress
of a girls' finishing school and knew how to manage young women.
It was probably a fact that Trueman knew her and found her
interesting, as did many another sound business man of that time.
Mr. Dillon must have shut his ears to these rumours,--a measure of
the great value he put on Trueman's companionship.
Though they did not see much of each other on these trips, they
immensely enjoyed taking them together. They often dined together
at the end of the day, and afterwards went to the theatre. They
both loved the theatre; not this play or that actor, but the
theatre,--whether they saw Hamlet or Pinafore. It was an age of
good acting, and the drama held a more dignified position in the
world than it holds today.
After Dillon and Trueman had come home from the city, they used
sometimes to talk over the plays they had seen, recalling the great
scenes and fine effects. Occasionally an item in the Kansas City
Star would turn their talk to the stage.
"J. H., I see by the paper that Edwin Booth is very sick," Mr.
Dillon announced one evening as Trueman came up to take the empty
chair.
"Yes, I noticed." Trueman sat down and lit his dead cigar. "He's
not a young man any more." A long pause. Dillon always seemed to
know when the pause would be followed by a remark, and waited for
it. "The first time I saw Edwin Booth was in Buffalo. It was in
Richard the Second, and it made a great impression on me at the
time." Another pause. "I don't know that I'd care to see him in
that play again. I like tragedy, but that play's a little too
tragic. Something very black about it. I think I prefer Hamlet."
They had seen Mary Anderson in St. Louis once, and talked of it for
years afterwards. Mr. Dillon was very proud of her because she was
a Catholic girl, and called her "our Mary." It was curious that a
third person, who had never seen these actors or read the plays,
could get so much of the essence of both from the comments of two
business men who used none of the language in which such things are