The United States of
America, after looking over its stock of consular timber, selected Mr. John De
Graffenreid Atwood, of Dalesburg, Alabama, for a successor to Willard Geddie,
resigned.
Without prejudice to
Mr. Atwood, it will have to be acknowledged that, in this instance, it was the
man who sought the office. As with the self-banished Geddie, it was nothing
less than the artful smiles of lovely woman that had driven Johnny Atwood to
the desperate expedient of accepting office under a despised Federal Government
so that he might go far, far away and never see again the false, fair face that
had wrecked his young life. The consulship at Coralio seemed to offer a retreat
sufficiently removed and romantic enough to inject the necessary drama into the
pastoral scenes of Dalesburg life.
It was while playing
the part of Cupid's exile that Johnny added his handiwork to the long list of
casualties along the Spanish Main by his famous manipulation of the shoe
market, and his unparalleled feat of elevating the most despised and useless
weed in his own country from obscurity to be a valuable product in
international commerce.
The trouble began, as
trouble often begins instead of ending, with a romance. In Dalesburg there was
a man named Elijah Hemstetter, who kept a general store. His family consisted
of one daughter called Rosine, a name that atoned much for
"Hemstetter." This young woman was possessed of plentiful attractions,
so that the young men of the community were agitated in their bosoms. Among the
more agitated was Johnny, the son of Judge Atwood, who lived in the big
colonial mansion on the edge of Dalesburg.
It would seem that the
desirable Rosine should have been pleased to return the affection of an Atwood,
a name honored all over the state long before and since the war. It does seem
that she should have gladly consented to have been led into that stately but
rather empty colonial mansion. But not so. There was a cloud on the horizon, a
threatening, cumulus cloud, in the shape of a lively and shrewd young farmer in
the neighborhood who dared to enter the lists as a rival to the high-born
Atwood.
One night Johnny
propounded to Rosine a question that is considered of much importance by the
young of the human species. The accessories were all there--moonlight,
oleanders, magnolias, the mockingbird's song. Whether or no the shadow of
Pinkney Dawson, that prosperous young farmer came between them on that occasion
is not known; but Rosine's answer was unfavorable. Mr. John De Graffenreid
Atwood bowed till his hat touched the lawn grass, and went away with his head
high, but with a sore wound in his pedigree and heart. A Hemstetter refuse an
Atwood! Zounds!
Among other accidents
of that year was a Democratic president. Judge Atwood was a warhorse of
Democracy. Johnny persuaded him to set the wheels moving for some foreign
appointment. He would go away--away. Perhaps in years to come Rosine would
think how true, how faithful his love had been, and would drop a tear--maybe in
the cream she would be skimming for Pink Dawson's breakfast.
The wheels of politics
revolved; and Johnny was appointed consul to Coralio. Just before leaving he
dropped in at Hemstetter's to say good-bye. There was a queer, pinkish look
about Rosine's eyes; and had the two been alone, the United States might have
had to cast about for another consul. But Pink Dawson was there, of course,
talking about his 400-acre orchard, and the three-mile alfalfa tract, and the
200-acre pasture. So Johnny shook hands with Rosine as coolly as if he were
only going to run up to Montgomery for a couple of days. They had the royal
manner when they chose, those Atwoods.
"If you happen to
strike anything in the way of a good investment down there, Johnny," said
Pink Dawson, "just let me know, will you? I reckon I could lay my hands on
a few extra thousands 'most any time for a profitable deal."
"Certainly,
Pink," said Johnny, pleasantly. "If I strike anything of that sort I'll
let you in with pleasure."
So Johnny went down to
Mobile and took a fruit steamer for the coast of Anchuria.
When the new consul
arrived in Coralio the strangeness of the scenes diverted him much. He was only
twenty-two; and the grief of youth was not worn like a garment as it is by
older men. It has its seasons when it reigns; and then it is unseated for time
by the assertion of the keen senses.
Billy Keogh and Johnny
seemed to conceive a mutual friendship at once. Keogh took the new consul about
town and presented him to the handful of Americans and the smaller number of
French and Germans who made up the "foreign" contingent. And then, of
course, he had to be more formally introduced to the native officials, and have
his credentials transmitted through an interpreter.
There was something
about the young Southerner that the sophisticated Keogh liked. His manner was
simple almost to boyishness; but he possessed the cool carelessness of a man of
far greater age and experience. Neither uniforms nor titles, red tape nor foreign
languages, mountains nor sea weighed upon his spirits. He was heir to all ages,
an Atwood, of Dalesburg; and you might know every thought conceived to his
bosom.
Geddie came down to
the consulate to explain the duties and workings of the office. He and Keogh
tried to interest the new consul in their description of the work that his
government expected him to perform.
"It's all
right," said Johnnie from the hammock that he had set up as the official
reclining place. "If anything turns up that has to be done I'll let you
fellows do it. You can't expect a Democrat to work during his first term of
holding office."
"You might look
over these headings," suggested Geddie, "of the different lines of
exports you will have to keep account of. The fruit is classified; and there
are the valuable woods, coffee, rubber--"
"That last
account sounds all right," interrupted Mr. Atwood. "Sounds as if it
could be stretched. I want to buy a new flag, a monkey, a guitar and a barrel
of pineapples. Will the rubber account stretch over 'em?"
"That's merely
statistics," said Geddie, smiling. "The expense account is what you
want. It is supposed to have a slight elasticity. The 'stationery' items are
sometimes carelessly audited by the State Department."
"We're wasting
our time," said Keogh. "This man was born to hold office. He
penetrates to the root of the art at one step of his eagle eye. The true genius
of government shows its hand in every word of his speech."
"I didn't take
this job with any intention of working," explained Johnny, lazily. "I
wanted to go somewhere in the world where they didn't talk about farms. There
are none here, are there?"
"Not the kind you
are acquainted with," answered the ex-consul. "There is no such art
here as agriculture. There never was a plow or a reaper within the boundaries
of Anchuria."
"This is the
country for me," murmured the consul, and immediately he fell asleep.
The cheerful tintypist
pursued his intimacy with Johnny in spite of open charges that he did so to
obtain a preemption on a seat in that coveted spot, the rear gallery of the
consulate. But whether his designs were selfish or purely friendly, Keogh
achieved that desirable privilege. Few were the nights on which the two could
not be found reposing there in the sea breeze, with their heels on the railing,
and the cigars and brandy conveniently near.
One evening they sat
thus, mainly silent, for their talk had dwindled before the stilling influence
of an unusual night.
There was a great,
full moon; and the sea mother-of-pearl. Almost every sound was hushed, for the
air was but faintly stirring; and the town lay panting, waiting for the night
to cool. Offshore lay the fruit steamer ~Andador~, of the Vesuvius line,
full-laden and scheduled to sail at six in the morning. There were no loiterers
on the beach. So bright was the moonlight that the two men could see the small
pebbles shining on the beach where the gentle surf wetted them.
Then down the coast,
tacking close to shore, slowly swam a little sloop, white-winged like some
snowy sea fowl. Its course lay within twenty points of the wind's eye; so it
veered in and out again in long, slow strokes like the movements of a graceful
skater.
Again the tactics of
its crew brought it close in shore, this time nearly opposite the consulate;
and then there blew from the sloop clear and surprising notes as if from a horn
of elfland. A fairy bugle it might have been, sweet and silvery and unexpected,
playing with spirit the familiar air of "Home, Sweet Home."
It was a scene set for
the land of the lotus. The authority of the sea and the tropics, the mystery
that attends unknown sails, and the prestige of drifting music on moonlit
waters gave it an anodynous charm. Johnny Atwood felt it, and thought of
Dalesburg; but as soon as Keogh's mind had arrived at a theory concerning the
peripatetic solo he sprang to the railing, and his ear-rending yawp fractured
the silence of Coralio like a cannon shot.
"Mel-lin-ger
a-hoy!"
The sloop was now on
its outward tack; but from it came a clear, answering hail:
"Good-bye,
Billy... go-ing home--bye!"
The ~Andador~ was the
sloop's destination. No doubt some passenger with a sailing permit from some
up-the-coast point had come down in this sloop to catch the regular fruit
steamer on its return trip. Like a coquettish pigeon the little boat tacked on
its eccentric way until at last its white sail was lost to sight against the
larger bulk of the fruiter's side.
"That's old H. P.
Mellinger," explained Keogh, dropping back into his chair. "He's
going back to New York. He was a private secretary of the late hot-foot
president of this grocery and fruit stand that they call a country. His job's
over now; and I guess old Mellinger is glad."
"Why does he
disappear to music, like Zo-zo, the magic queen?" asked Johnny. "Just
to show 'em that he doesn't care?"
"That noise you
heard is a phonograph," said Keogh. "I sold him that. Mellinger had a
graft in this country that was the only thing of its kind in the world. The
tooting machine saved it for him once, and he always carried it around with him
afterward."
"Tell me about
it," demanded Johnny, betraying interest.
"I'm no
disseminator of narratives," said Keogh. "I can use language for
purposes of speech; but when I attempt a discourse the words come out as they
will, and they may make sense when they strike the atmosphere, or they may
not."
"I want to hear
about the graft," persisted Johnny, "You've got no right to refuse.
I've told you all about every man, woman and hitching post in Dalesburg."
"You shall hear
it," said Keogh. "I said my instincts of narrative were perplexed.
Don't you believe it. It's an art I've acquired along with many other of the
graces and sciences."
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