MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS BY EDWARD E. HALE AUTHOR OF "THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY," "IN HIS NAME,' "TEN TIMES ONE is TEN," "HIS LEVEL BEST," "UPS AND DOWNS," "FRANKLIN IN FRANCE," ETC., ETC. BOSTON ROBERTS BROTHERS 1888 Copyright, 1888, BY EDWARD E. HALE. JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE. MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. CHAPTER I. MR. TANGIER stood at the door of his office, with his hand on the handle, about to go out. " Say to Mr. Willoughby that the deed will be ready at nine to-morrow morning ; that I will have witnesses here, so that his sons need not come." " Yes, sir," said the intelligent office-boy, who stood respectfully, and fixed " Willoughby " in his memory, by processes known to himself. " If Mr. Sennett comes in, ask him to wait, if it is possible ; say I have only gone to lunch, and will be back at two." "Yes, sir," said the intelligent office-boy, and, by mental hooks known to him, fastened " Sennett " next to " Willoughby " in the mental box. " Take a press-copy of the two letters on my desk, then address them, give them both to George for the mail, and make a neat copy, as if in my handwriting, of the long one, for the mail, also. Make that from the press-copy ; there is not time for you to copy it direct." " Yes, sir," said the boy again, and Mr. Tangier left the room. The office-boy had but just time to call 2061839 8 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. George, who was his boy, to bid him wet some pamper, when Mr. Tangier returned. He had met Mr. Sennett and had brought him back with him. The office-boy gathered up the long letter and the short letter, and was retiring to his lair, so that the gentlemen might be alone, when Mr. Tangier called him back. "If Mr. Willoughby comes, show him into the sitting-room, give him the paper and the ' Forum/ and ask him if he will have the kindness to wait a few minutes. Do not call me if you can help it." And, as the boy retired, Mr. Tangier turned to Mr. Sennett and said, " I liked the looks of the captain more than you did. His story is horribly improbable, and probably true. I told him " and here the boy was obliged to shut the door, and neither he nor this reader will ever know what the captain's story was. The office-boy made the copies of the long letter and the short. He sent George to the post-office with both, and then addressed himself to his other task of copying ten pages of the long letter, in Mr. Tangier's handwriting. While he did this, Mr. Willoughby came, and was put into the comfortable " sitting-room." A fellow of the copying-clerk's came from Curtis & Choate and made an appointment for a consultation at three the next day; the chairman of a reception committee came up to know if Mr. Tangier would be a vice- president at a public meeting for the reception of Baron Kittening ; the junior partner of Severance & Hildreth came to retain Mr. Tangier, and to ask for an appointment. Punctually at two, Mr. Heeren came in, who was Mr. Tangier's junior partner. He MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 9 had finished his lunch, and the attentive, observant, and intelligent office-boy subsided, on the moment, into all his native obscurity. He gave to Mr. Heeren a memorandum of the visits he had received, and the requests which had been made. He covered his copy, only begun, in his portfolio. He told Mr. Heeren who was in the inner office, and where Mr. Willoughby was, and he went for his lunch. As he went, the cheerful office-boy reflected that, though he should only have fish-balls, followed by two doughnuts, for his lunch, while the chief could have, if he chose, roast turkey, followed by peach pie, followed by frozen pudding, and these, at that mo- ment, happened to be the ideal bill of fare in the office-boy's mind, he reflected, I say, that he, the office-boy, had a chance to eat the fish-balls, while Mr. Tangier had no chance to eat those other dainties. Had the copying-clerk's thoughts expressed them- selves in words, he would have said, " A Fish-Ball in the Mouth is worth a Turkey on the Wing," and so a new proverb would have been born. Mr. Heeren went to soothe Mr. Willoughby's indig- nation in the reception-room. Mr. Willoughby was an important person, or thought he was, and even in that office must not be snubbed. For a moment, there- fore, George, the slave of the slave of the copying- clerk of the clerk of the junior partner of the firm, reigned at the head of the hierarchy in the outer room. The hierarchy, however, had been reduced to one person, when there were no visitors. George was that lowest person in this world, who can give orders to no one. In a moment Mr. Sennett came out with Mr. Tan- 10 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. gier, talking as earnestly as they went in. It was clear enough, even to George, that the case was more perplexing than the average. He explained to his master, whom he did not often address personally, how the other parts of the machine were at work, and where ; and then, as Mr. Tangier took his hat again, but turned back to his inner office for his gloves, George received at the door two foreign-looking gen- tlemen, who presented their cards, which he took to Mr. Tangier. That gentleman came out, with perfect cordiality, welcomed them both, led them into the inner office, and again the door was shut. George reigned alone once more till the copying- clerk returned from his fish-balls. In a few minutes more Mr. Heeren came in, and finding that the chief had shut the door, took his seat at a desk he had in the outer room. The copying-clerk completed the letter in Mr. Tangier's handwriting, and then began, with a type-writer, on the regular correspondence of the morning, writing from his short-hand notes. One and another visitor, in steady succession, called, and made their appointments, as before. At half-past three the foreign gentlemen left. "George," said Mr. Tangier, "I am too late for my lunch. Go across to Hyde's and bid them send up a bowl of soup, whatever there is, and a cup of coffee. Mr. Grace will be here before I can go." And, as George left on this errand, Mr. Grace came, was welcomed, and took his turn in the inner office. When the waiter from Hyde's came in with his tray, Mr. Heeren sent him back, and bade him duplicate the order, that there might be the pretence of asking Mr. Grace to join in this hurried repast. MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 11 The two cups of coffee and the two bowls of soup were sent in, and from that time forth no one even knocked on the outside of the door of the inner office. Visitors came and went. Mr. Heeren soothed them, or encouraged them, or postponed them until to-morrow, or to a day certain, or indefinitely. The student came in who had been at work all the morning in the Eeg- istry of Deeds. He sat at his desk, plotting, so to speak, the results of his investigations. The copying- clerk copied, in one fashion or another, as the exi- gencies of the case required. Even George copied, also, in such methods as he had acquired, not the best known, but gradually improving, and he took such lessons as were suggested by the copying-clerk. He was even permitted to try the type-writer, when the copying-clerk was at work with a more primi- tive instrument, called a steel pen. But no one ever suggested an appeal, not for one moment, to Mr. Tangier. All men and boys knew that Mr. Grace was there by appointment of great significance, and all boys and men knew that Mr. Grace was making his will. At half-past five, George found it difficult to with- draw his attention from the window and the street outside. In the dignified discipline of this office, he made no report whatever of his observations. But even the copying-clerk was so impressed by George's continued study of outward Nature, that he was obliged to cross the room to raise the curtain. And it was noticed that, even to his jaded eye, the spec- tacle on which he looked attracted him for a minute from the type-writer. Even the student then found it necessary to cross to that side of the room to take 12 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. down a volume, either of Crotius or of Pickering, and his eye lingered for a moment on the little crowd without. Mr. Grace's carriage was waiting, as long as the police would let it stand; then it moved slowly up and down the street, and waited again. A foot- man in livery behind, and another in front with the coachman, attracted the attention of the news- boys and other pirates of the street, and so quite A little crowd of loafers had assembled on the side- But the horses pawed without avail, and the police compelled even Mr. Grace's carriage to pass onf once and again ; and once and again the group dispersed, to form again when the carriage stopped again, before, at six o'clock, the conference was over. The inner office was opened to the sight of man again, and Mr. Tangier led his important client even to the head of the stairs. Mr. Grace walked but slowly, and George and the office-boy and the student and Mr. Heeren all thought that he needed all the help Mr. Tangier could offer him, and they did not wonder that both footmen. helped him into the carriage. Indeed, I think no one of them would have changed places with Mr. Grace. George did wish that his pay might be raised from three dollars to three and a half; the copying-clerk wished that his salary, instead of fifty dollars a month, was sixty; the student hoped that when the year ended Mr. Heeren might make some offer of what should happen when he entered at the bar ; Mr. Hee- ren even had dreams that, if Mr. Tangier were obliged to go to Europe in that delicate matter of the Jef- freys' Trust, the whole office would be intrusted to MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 13 him. Bat neither George, nor the copying-clerk, nor the student, nor Mr. Heeren, wished to change places with Mr. Grace, as .Mr. Tangier helped him to the stairs ; though Mr. Grace was known, of all men, to have the most beautiful house in the town, a charming family, and to be the lord of untold millions. 14 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. CHAPTER II. EiST of all did Mr. Tangier wish this. Tired, oh, so tired, faint, without know- ing what the word faint meant, Mr. Tangier turned back from the stairway, and met all the others with an anxious, manufactured smile. " I am sorry to have kept you all so late," said he, as he put on his gloves to go, at last. He looked up to the office clock, as if he was personally guilty be- cause it had so far passed five o'clock, which was the time when the door should have been locked behind them all. And he went downstairs and walked to the street-car which was to take him to his pretty home just out of town. Oh, how tired he was ! Not in his feet or legs, but in every part of him which perceived, or remembered, or thought, or hoped, or in any sort enjoyed. It would have been better for him, and he knew it would have been better for him, to walk the five miles which parted him from Glendean. But even for that he had not time. He knew that he had missed the car ( which he relied upon, and that at best he should be late for his dinner. Once in the car he had a faint, faint hope that no one would know him. He remembered that hero of Hawthorne's, who wore the black veil in all horse- MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 15 cars of his day, so that people might not recognize him and speak to him. Poor, baited, and harried Mr. Tangier wished that he dared wear such a protecting veil. But that was not to be. One of his neighbors who had been away for mouths took the next seat, and saluted him at once. Poor Mr. Tangier knew that he was, himself, in for a conversation five miles long. Once more he braced himself up. Indeed, he knew that "there was no act of parliament that he should be happy." He was glad to see Mr. Curtis looking so full in the face, and with a good sunburnt coloi-, and he said so. " You are a great stranger, Mr. Curtis. I am glad to see you looking so well." But, alas, poor Mr. Curtis was not well, and never would be, and he knew it. He gave his hand cor- dially to the other, but said a little slowly, and with that wretched evidence that speaking occurred with pain and did not come easily, "I look better than I am. Paralysis, you know." " Indeed, you do not show it," said poor Tangier, as cheerfully as he could. " If if you saw me saw me get along with- out my left hand, or try or try to, you would know," said Mr. Curtis, who seemed determined not to accept any of the commonplace conversations of every-day civility. Mr. Tangier was courageous, and he could brace up to most duties of society. But five miles of symp- toms, and one story of failure, was more than he dared to stand, and when the car stopped first he bade Mr. Curtis good-by, and left it hastily. He walked half 16 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. across the town, and rang the bell at the door of his life-long friend, his classmate, and his physician, Mor- ton. To his joy he found Morton in, in a dressing- jacket, with his feet on a foot-rest, and his back to the sunset, which glorified the bay. Morton did not even pretend to rise. " How are you, old fellow ! " cried he. " What luck to be in there is your chair, and there is another for your feet. No man ever did anything worth doing, with his feet on the ground. So I will not stand up, even for you." He put down the copy of the London " Truth," which he was looking at, and lay back in the easy-chair, the picture of repose. Mr. Tangier felt the subtle influence of the place, and the easy manner of his host, as his host meant he should. He could not at once plunge into the story of his ailments and worries as he had meant to do. He sank into the easy-chair at which Morton pointed, and before he knew it he was sipping a cup of tea which some attendant had brought in. Before he knew it again, they were both talking Bulgarian politics, and then discussing Gladstone, and then Morton was de- scribing Gambetta, and then they fell back on some old story of college times. The spells of the magician began to work, and when at seven o'clock Mrs. Mor- ton came in, pretty and cheerful, and summoned them to dinner, Tangier found himself quite alert, ready to laugh with her, to give her his arm, and to lead her in. A long, merry, cheerful family dinner followed, and Mr. Tangier was really a new man when, two hours after, Mrs. Morton said, " We shall find it pleasanter in the red parlor," and led the way. MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS, 17 "You must excuse me," said Mr. Tangier. "I should have been at my house two hours ago. Mrs. Colquitt will scold me awfully, when I coine. And now I want a word with your husband." So the two men went back to the doctor's comfortable library. They sat down as before; Mr. Tangier declined a cigar, and the doctor did not light one. "I did not come to dine," said Tangier at once, " and I did not mean to stay ten minutes. I wanted to talk to you again about my sleep, or what you would call ' insomnia.' . Since I saw you, I have had some new experience." And at some length he went into the details of his overworked life, his late meals, his failing appetite, and his sleepless nights. He was a little annoyed that Dr. Morton asked no questions, and even affected to be a little bored. When Mr. Tangier had wholly done, he said, " And that is about all." " Yes," said Morton, " is it ? I do not quite know why you want to tell it to me ? " " Who in the world should I tell it to ? You do not suppose I talk my ailments to all the world like poor Curtis." " No," said Morton, " that is just what I do not sup- pose. So I do not know why you bring them here why I must hear them." " You ! " cried the other ; " because you are my medi- cal adviser. I have come to you for advice. You must tell me how to get rid of these things." "My dear fellow," said Morton, "do be serious. I am your friend ; I am your very good friend j but I am not your physician." 2 18 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. " You, not rny physician ! Why not ? When did that happen ? " " I have not been your physician since since April 28," and he looked at his note-book. "You came on the 27th, for advice, much as you come now. I gave the best advice I could. You did not take it. That was the end. Simply, my dear fellow, I will not be responsible for a patient who does not give me his confidence." " Confidence, my dear friend," said Tangier, amused at the other's manner, "I have absolute confidence in you. Do you suppose there is another man in the country to whom I would have told what I have told to you ? " " No ! perhaps not. But it is a confidence of lips. You do not obey me. I tell you that you are killing yourself ; you laugh, and say you know better. I tell you to change your manner of life. You go on just as you did before. If you were not a man of sense, .1 should say you really believed that I had a bottle labelled 'Health' in yonder, and had only to give you five teaspoonfuls and you would be well. There is no such bottle. For my part, I will not have the disgrace of being the medical adviser to a man who will not obey me. Your case is not mine. You can go to any one else you like : I shall not be wounded." Tangier was certainly staggered by the earnestness with which his friend spoke. For two minutes neither spoke. Then Tangier said, "You suggested my going to Europe." " Yes ; if you would go to Spain, or JSTaxos, or Arch- angel, or somewhere where there are no mails, where MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 19 your Mr. Heeren would not be sending immediate de- livery letters, and cables a mile long, after you every day." " I hate Europe as a medicine," said Tangier. "I should think you would. There are as good Spains, and Naxoses, and Archangels, within sixty miles of you ; if only you cut the wire behind you, as they say Grant did once or was it Sherman ? " " That would be better," said the other. " Where shall it be ? You shall say." " No," said Morton, " it shall not smell of this shop. You know that woman who said she thought when she was a child that asafoetida was the smell of doctors. One place is as good for you as another, so there is no door-bell, no mail, and no telegraph. Give such or- ders to your clerk as you know how to give. Go off for a month, and then come and see me again." " Morton, you are a trump. Let me have to-morrow to give the orders, and the next day you shall see me no more ! " And they parted. 20 MR- TANGIER'S VACATIONS. CHAPTER III. AND the next day Mr. Tangier gave the orders. "He gave them with a vengeance," as the copying-clerk said to George, almost in a whisper, so overcome with awe was he. Mr. Tangier told Mr. Heeren that he was to be away for a month. " I am not going salmon fishing to Lab- rador, but it is just as if I were. Nothing is to be sent after me, and nobody. This is the 29th of May ; on the 30th of June you will see me. We will write the necessary notes now, and to-night I shall bid you good-by. It will be your business to show that the office can do just as well without me as with me." This he said, with his old good-natured, open smile, which rejoiced Mr. Heeren more than anything he had seen on that care-worn face for six weeks before. Then Mr. Tangier looked up a letter from Mrs. Dunster. It was an office letter, six months old. He had had to give some advice, as an old friend of her father's, about the probate of a will, and he had gladly given it. He remembered perfectly well that she had said, when she wrote to thank him, that if he ever wanted to run away from noise and smoke, he had better come to them, and hear the whippoorwills and bull-frogs. That was in late summer. There would be no bull-frogs now. MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 21 The letter proved to say still what it said before, and Mr. Tangier wrote this letter : DEAR MRS. DUNSTER, The time has come. I shall take my carpet-bag to-morrow and go into retreat. Please find somebody who has a nice room for me, and you may as well not mention my name. Indeed, I should be glad if no one knew where to mail a letter to me. Truly yours, JEFFREY TANGIER. Then Mr. Tangier put this letter in his pocket. He rang for the railway guide, and this lay on his desk when the copying-clerk came in to " take " the letters. Mr. Tangier and Mr. Heeren dictated one hundred and fourteen letters that day, explaining that he was called suddenly out of town. At lunch he disappeared, and for one month the office saw him no more. " I will start to-morrow morning," said Mr. Tangier. He took his guide again, and began the difficult study of the minute and hour of his train. The university of the future will have foundations in college, to support teachers who shall understand time-tables, and show young men how to use them. Mr. Tangier had studied other things, and worked out only with difficulty the problem before him. It was, in his case, specially complicated. He lived so far out of town that, as he well knew, he could more easily strike the local station of the Cattaraugus road than go into the city and start from the great central terminus. He knew perfectly well that to make his connections in the interior he must take the early train out of town. He did not know whether, or if, or how, the local station would ac- commodate him. 22 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. He began, as he always did, by study on the wrong side of the page. After he had made one or two memoranda, which he himself could not reconcile, he found he was reading down where he should be read- ing up, and that he must find another set of columns. Here time did go forward and not backward, as it had seemed before. And here, accordingly, he found, as he had feared, that the early train out of town ran as an express for thirty miles, and that he could not take it at his station. His next affair then was to see what train, yet ear- lier, would take him up to Wentworth Junction the Suez of his part of the world where every traveller, from every quarter of that world, changed his train for another train, at certain hours pre- ordained. Clear it was, now, that other people lived who had his necessities. Early as was the early express, there was a local train still earlier. " These people under- stand their business," said Mr. Tangier, not displeased. "I am not the only man who has done this thing." Till this moment he had supposed he was, so mad indeed, as it seemed to him, was the rising, almost with the sun, to go on this visit to an unknown region, to try this strange adventure with these unknown friends. But he was determined. From the moment when he gave his word to Morton, this thing was sure. Midnight or sunrise, he would start when the fates directed. Nor did he even congratulate himself that they had decided on sunrise rather than midnight. He hunted up a peculiar portmanteau, which still bore the custom-house permit of his last landing from MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 23 Europe, and which he had not seen since the day it took in the last waifs and strays from his state-room on the " Germanic." He opened it ; and there still lay, in the bottom of it, the card of that Colorado cattle-man he used to walk the deck with. He remembered grim- ly how he had sunk half an hour in hunting among his papers for this man's address. Here it was. He packed, or thought he packed. He wound up his watch, and it was after midnight. This was the be- ginning, then, of his obedience to Morton's instruc- tions, and of securing regular sleep by beginning to undress at half-past nine. He knew he must be out of bed at quarter-past five. Five hours' sleep was to be the beginning of Morton's new regimen for sleeping. But the machine did its duty. By that mysterious law, which nobody yet understands, he woke at quarter- past five, just so far as to pull out his watch from his pillow and to strike it. " Five and a quarter," said the faithful slave, just as the faithful machine made up of nerve, and sinew, and bone, had said ; and in new wonder at that miracle of consent, Mr. Tangier kicked off the bed-clothes. He stood erect and said aloud, " The faithful Donjon clock had numbered two, And Wallace tower had sworn the tale was true." He staggered across to the pitcher and bowl. He sponged his head with the sharp, cold water which stood ready, and the happy moment of morning om- nipotence began. "Fortune favors the brave," he said, almost aloud, as he let the door swing behind him, and with his little hand-bag stepped out into the delicious morning air. He had let the housekeeper make him a cup of 24 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. coffee and a bit of toast, but he was rather a convert to French fashions, and he had meant not to take his proper breakfast until he arrived at Tenterdon. Ten- terdon was the oasis hidden away in the desert, yet not so far from the ocean, where lived Mrs. Dunster, who was the only person in the world who had his secret. " Fortune favors the brave," he said, for he really felt as if this exquisite sweetness of perfume, this softness yet exhilaration in the air, and the mist just doubting whether it would stay or go, were all one special gift, manufactured for him exclusively by the good powers to whom the fortunes of his section of the world were intrusted. Then he saw a young fellow who was hurrying to his street-car that he might be at his post in time, and Mr. Tangier remem- bered that that young man rose at this hour every morning. Perhaps he thought the revelation of sun and sky, and gracious mist, and fragrant air, was all for him. Perhaps it was. Or, more probably, it was for both of them, and for that woman yonder also, who had been " watching " all night with poor Mrs. Doubleday, and had now been relieved by the day nurse. Perhaps it was for all of them. But Mr. Tangier met but few nurses relieved, or clerks beginning. He was just too early even for the seven-o'clock people. In the city where he was a slave, the different work-people might have been di- vided in classes, as they began at seven o'clock, at eight o'clock, at nine o'clock, or at ten. He had always been one of the nine-o'clock kind. Now that he had emancipated himself, he was in action even before the seven-o'clocks, and those of them who lived in his MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 25 pretty Rosedean had to be on the alert at six, or a little after. It was not long after five o'clock now ; and here was Mr. Tangier wondering, and philoso- phizing a little, on that daily waste of beauty and ecstasy of life which for Rosedean let the sun, and the sky, and the wind, and the mists, and the birds, and the trees set the scene every morning for a cele- bration which so few people of the human variety chose to look upon. All the more, however, did Mr. Tangier enjoy the spectacle, now that he was the principal actor. Queer enough, and he noted the queerness as he walked, and wondered that the long rays of the sun in the morning look as they do in the evening, the thing he was reminded of most was, not another morning like this, but a simulated morning at the opera. He had to feel for the name of an exhilarated tenor, whom he remembered as the curtain rose for " Somnambula ; " he remembered the way the stage was set for sunrise, and the gayety of the tenor as he stepped down from the back to the footlights, and sang, " Behold how brightly breaks the morning." And again Mr. Tangier philosophized a little. It was queer that he should have seen the sun rise at the theatre more often than he had seen it in the sky! He had a walk of half an hour, and then he found that he had studied his Pathfinder so ill, and that he had allowed so extravagantly for one delay and an- other which had not taken place, that the station- house was not open. Nay ! great advertisements of 26 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. the trains made it clear that he need not go by that early " succursale," or train of supply, but that the great through express would, after all, pause on the wing, in its majestic flight, to clutch so worthy though so slight an atom as Mr. Tangier. Apparently he was to spend some thirty-five minutes sitting or standing on the steps of the station-house. No ! it was not so written. And Mr. Tangier, who was learning many lessons, now learned one which served him well through all his vacation. Clearly enough, this suburb was astir, though his lovely Rose- dean was asleep. In three minutes all was changed. The ill-tempered station-master appeared, a minute late; it was because he was late that he was ill- natured. In a few minutes more, the first of the in- going trains appeared, and to feed it, men seemed to spring out of the ground, each with a tin lunch-pail in his hand. It passed, and Mr. Tangier was alone again, with the station-master. And now it was, that he learned that that French cup of coffee, with its slice of toast, was but a faint stay for a man who walked in fresh morning air two miles, and had eighty more miles before him. So he asked, a little crestfallen, of a stray lad who appeared with a lunch-pail, whether there was any place where he could find breakfast. "Porter's, of course," said the other, as he might have suggested the pump, had Mr. Tangier asked for water. " Porter's ! " He had hardly thought of the place since they drove across in triumph, to have their Sophomore class supper there ! Could it have looked quite as dingy and snuffy then? MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 27 No matter for looks. He was on the quest for ad- ventures, as Amadis might have been, and here was adventure number one. This was his enchanted castle, and he passed in. The damsel he discovered was not interesting to the eye, but when he asked for breakfast, his question was taken as the question of a fool might have been. Why else should they all be out of their beds, indeed, but to prepare breakfast for anybody who wanted it, for him, if he chose to come, and for fifty others as good as he ? No one said this in words to Mr. Tangier, but this was the lesson he learned. That is to say, it was not till one of the damsels he found, not very tidy of dress nor over-attractive to the eye, ordered him to a seat at a table where sat some others, among seven other tables, at each of which eight men were sitting, it was not till then that it fairly dawned on him, on this morning, that his early rising was not a thing utterly exceptional and extraordinary. But here were sixty other people, at an insignificant wayside inn, who had risen as early as he. And, besides these, that morning train had taken into town five hundred others, many of whom had risen earlier. In a minute more, he had another lesson taught him. It was, that quite as good provision was made for these people's comfort as he was used to have for his own, though it came in different forms. His plate was heavy, but it was clean. His napkin was coarse, but it was clean. 28 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. The tumbler at his side was of pressed glass, but it was clean. In thirty seconds the un-beautiful damsel had brought him a steak which was perfect, a baked po- tato which was perfect, two or three forms of bread which were perfect. She brought him a cup, which could have been fired from a cannon without being broken ; but the coffee in it was better than had been given him at home, better than Hyde's people had sent to him and Mr. Grace the day before. The lesson which Mr. Tangier learned was, that he had better thank God that he was not alone in the world, but that he was one of the People, and to thank God also that the People had very much its own way. He could not but remember, as the un-beautiful girl slammed his breakfast down on the table before him, that at Hyde's, where they would have served it ele- gantly in china, they would have served it cold, after he had waited twenty minutes. The first memoran- dum he was to make in his vacation note-book was to be: "The People will not stand nonsense." MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 29 CHAPTER IV. NO, Mr. Tangier did not take a parlor-car. He always had ridden in one since they were in- vented, but now he was afraid that some one would recognize him, and he had not that convenient black veil which has already been alluded to. He took his seat beside a lonely woman in what is called a first- class car, and once more, as he found himself so com- fortable there, he reflected, as he had done at breakfast, that the public in this country had found out very nearly what it wanted, and was quite sure in the long run to obtain it. He did not take his seat where there was an empty seat beside him, because he was haunted with the terror that some bummer would come along and cry out, enthusiastically, " Why, Tangier, are you here ? " and would sit down by him to entertain and to be entertained for seventy miles. Yes, Mr. Tangier, you are very skilful, but all the same this world is a world of give and take, and you have your part to bear in it. So soon as Mr. Tangier had read, from the first page to the eighth, and from the eighth back to the first, his copy of the " Iris," which was the newspaper he bought simply because he never saw it when he was at home, the woman by whom he sat, whom he had selected as his barrier against conversation, herself addressed him. He was caught in his own trap, but 30 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. that was not the figure which occurred to him. He said to himself that it was like the ass speaking to Balaam, only in a topsy-turvy of his Scripture, the poor man felt as if he was the ass. " Can you tell me," said the woman, in a dialect which showed that she was born in Germany, "can you tell me if this car will go through to Milwaukee, or where shall I have to change ? " Milwaukee ! It was more than a thousand miles away, if Mr. Tangier understood the geography of his country at all, and here was this poor woman who was to ride day and night till she came there. And so the law of give and take asserted itself, and our friend, who just now wanted to be alone, and had tried to separate himself from his kind, forgot such wants, in his curiosity to know why this forlorn woman was going to a place she knew nothing about, in a train of which she knew nothing. Before he knew it, he was the questioner and she was answering. Grad- ually there unfolded all the romance about the sick husband, and the little ones left behind at their grand- father's in Nova Scotia ; and then it proved, for the first time, that those two excellent little children who had met Mr. Tangier's approval already, because they sat so quietly on the seat in front of him, turning over the picture-books with which they were provided, be- longed to the lone woman's caravan. She was leading them across this desert because the father had typhoid fever in Milwaukee, and she must go and nurse him. So was it, that when the lightning express drew up for the first time at Wentworth, where Mr. Tangier was to leave it after his seventy miles' run, he had MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 31 his hands full of telegrams to this man, and that, and another, by whose various offices he thought he could make her transfer simpler when she arrived at Mil- waukee. He was not satisfied until he had provided her and the children with some extra refinements for the luncheons which, as he foresaw, they would have to devour before their thousand miles' ride was over. The lightning train went on its way, and now he was left to inquire where he was, and what was to come next in the comparative loneliness of Wentworth Junction. There were the various buggies, carryalls, and old- fashioned stage-coaches which were to be expected at such a place ; but to none of them did he belong, as he knew, and none of them belonged to him. He placed himself in a favorable position to see aud to be seen, and was accosted, as he expected, after a minute, by an overgrown boy who showed him a card on which his own name was written, and said, with some hesita- tion, " Be you this man ? " Mr. Tangier said he was ; and the boy signified by a gesture that he was the person who was to take him to his new home. Mr. Tangier had sent on by express the trunk which held his books and the most of those earthly possessions with which he was to solace himself at Tenterdon, so that a light carpet-bag made the sum of his impedi- ments now. He was able, without delay, to join his guide in the carriage provided. Here, again, he found a woman sitting, this time a young woman. She explained, briefly enough, that she was the niece of Mrs. Fairbanks, at whose house our friend had taken his quarters. It would appear that she had come over with the overgrown boy for the purpose of supplying 32 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. any brains which might be needed iu the enterprise, and from a certain fear that he had not at command any over-provision of intelligence. As it happened, her service had not been needed; but Mr. Tangier knew enough of the exigencies of such an occasion to know that she had not been wrong in thinking that such exigencies might arise. The country from Wentworth to Tenterdon is not, in itself, singularly picturesque. But the wind was in the southwest, the trees were just beginning to grow green, the earlier wild cherries were just going out of blossom, the earlier peach-trees in an occasional farm- er's orchard were just in their glory, a few straggling apple-blossoms were showing their color, there was no dust in the road, and to poor Mr. Tangier the whole was heaven. He did not care to talk ; he did not care to listen. He did not object to talk, and he did not object to listen. His companion was in much the same mood, apparently. She was probably a good deal more afraid of him than he was of her. Sometimes he asked a question about a bridge, or a pond, or a mill, and then she gave, sensibly enough, a bit of local history. Her voice had been spoiled in some public school, as far as a public school can spoil a voice, so that she talked on a strained, high, and generally unnatural key-note. But Mr. Tangier knew men and women enough not to be surprised at this. Indeed, in the luxury of freedom, leaving his prison cell now for the first time in eleven months, he would have talked good-naturedly to a chimpanzee, or to a gorilla, or, with equal good-nature, he would have let the chim- panzee or the gorilla alone. The house proved to be a comfortable old palace, MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 33 of the days when some sort of business was profitable in Tenterdon which is not profitable now. Privateer- ing, perhaps, or the East Indian trade, or the North- western trade, quien sale ? as our Spanish friends say, and why should Mr. Tangier care ? Enough that in those prosperous days, some prosperous year had been made cheerful for Tenterdou, as the King Log or King Stork of the town, in that day, bade men cut pines and oaks on the Lebanon of the neighbor- hood, rough-hew them to their will, and build for him this comfortable home of six square rooms on each floor, with two or three more in an "L," and bade them make the whole to be three stories high. " Twenty-four large rooms, you see, Mr. Tangier," said the rather pensive Mrs. Fairbanks, who was to be the hostess of our friend, as she showed him to his own apartments, " besides the entry rooms, as we call them." The pensive air intimated, what Mrs. Fair- banks did not say, that the old Satrap who built the house had added at least ten rooms for the single pur- pose of making trouble for her. But she did not yet know Mr. Tangier well enough to launch on that broad subject, the difficulty of dusting these various rooms in summer, and keeping them in order. For him, he hardly listened. There was a large room for him to " sit and write in," as she said. There was one equally large for him to sleep in. His trunk, with the essen- tials of his estate, real and personal, arrived before dinner-time, and Mr. Tangier had soon made those personal arrangements of the rooms by which he knew that he should be comfortable in this new castle. For the afternoon of the day of his arrival yes, and for most of the next day the poor man had no 3 34 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. wish to do a thing. He roused himself up to write Mr. Heeren a note about something which he had for- gotten. Then, as soon as the mail-driver had passed, carrying the few letters of the office to Knox, which was the distributing office, Mr. Tangier remembered something much more important which had been for- gotten. But these were only little gusts on the sur- face of the still sea of his day. The old Satrap who had built the castle had made no piazzas to it. But Mr. Tangier had discovered a lee side t& it, which had evidently been discovered by other explorers. For in this lee side of the old house was an iron staple driven, and not far away was a post driven, and, so soon as Rachel Fairbanks saw that Mr. Tangier had discovered it, she produced a Mexican hammock, -v^ich proved to fit the distance between the post and the staple. And to this hammock Mr. Tangier betook himself. On the ground under him there lay the " Philadelphia Ameri- can," the London " Weekly Times," and the last " Re- vue des Deux Mondes ; " and, even to himself, Mr. Tangier pretended he was reading. But when that night the Recording Angel posted in the Reading Ledger the amount which Mr. Tangier had really read that day, lo ! it was not so much as Jean Campbell had read in " Deestrict Number 10 School-house " hard by. Now Jean Campbell was only five years old, and was by no means sure of all her letters. No; poor Mr. Tangier still felt as he felt that evening after drawing Mr. Grace's will. He felt a good deal as a bloom of iron feels after it has been pounded on the top and pounded on the bottom by a hammer weighing five hundred thousand million tons, and then has been pounded on the right side and MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 35 pounded on the left, and then has had each corner turned up skilfully by the ingenious workman, so that it may be finished off by being pounded four times more. But youth, and time, and the hour, and sunlight, and a southwest wind, and the good God who man- ages all these, in his love of men, will bring all things round if one will wait. And so it happened that on the evening of his second day in Tenterdon, thanks also to good coffee, and a good omelet, and a good steak at breakfast, thanks to good roast mutton and a good apple pudding at dinner, thanks to a brisk horse- back ride in the afternoon, thanks to a tea made up of a dozen achievements of Mrs. Fairbanks and of Kachel Fairbanks, for which no language known to Mr. Tangier had names, thanks to all these, as he sat on the stoop of the castle, just as the sun went down, Mr. Tangier began to remember his duties to mankind. He had not yet gone near to his kind correspondent, Mrs. Dunster, who had opened for him the gates of this paradise of rest; and she, sainted woman, had not come near him. But he knew where she lived. The house had been pointed out to him by Rachel as they came from the station. So Mr. Tangier determined that he would make his duty-call, and express his thanks in the gray twilight ; and he sauntered along the pretty village street, and turned up the avenue, not too carefully tended, to her house. Just as he came to the door, Mrs. Dunster her- self appeared, dressed for a walk, but she offered at once to turn :ack with him. On the instant, he fell- 36 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. that he should not have recognized her, but she knew him without difficulty. The truth probably was that she had been expecting him all day. He declined her invitation to return, and said he would walk with her wherever she was going. But she urged her proposal. " Indeed, it is of no sort of consequence," she said. " I was only going to our week-day meeting." " And why should not I go to the week-day meet- ing ? " said he, laughing. " Or is it one of those mys- terious ' mothers' meetings ' which excite men to such frenzies of curiosity because they are not permitted to attend?" Mrs. Dunster had recovered herself by this time, and had sense enough to be ashamed of what she had said before. She mended it now as well as she could. " There is every reason why you should go ; only, to be frank with you, young men do not generally show much enthusiasm about attending prayer-meetings." Mr. Tangier, just turning thirty, was not above the delicate flattery which classed him with young men. Perhaps he would have gone to the conference meet- ing simply from courtesy to Mrs. Dunster, who was his hostess in Tenterdon, perhaps it would have been so. "What is certain is, that he determined at that mo- ment to go. He was with these people for a month ; he would enter into their life, and live as they lived. This was the social institution provided for the occa- sion, and it should be his as well as theirs. He did not pretend that he was in the habit of at- tending such meetings. He knew perfectly well that he heard the minister, every Sunday, make appoint- ments for them, and that such appointments never MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 37 stirred a fibre of his memory or took three words on the white paper of his tickler. It was a pleasant walk to the vestry of the pretty little meeting-house. They loitered as they went. It was clear enough that there was no enthusiastic rush in the neighborhood of attendants thronging to the meeting. A boy, a little inefficient, was lighting some kerosene lamps which smoked, and which were, in- deed, but a poor substitute for the splendor of the evening glow outside. There were but one or two people in the room. Mrs. Dunster introduced her companion to them, and they sat talking of trifles while a few more dropped in. At last the wheels of a wagon were heard rattling without, and in a mo- ment Mr. Burdett, the minister who was to conduct the meeting, appeared. In a few minutes more he took his place at the reading-desk, asked God's bless- ing, and proposed a hymn. Mrs. Dunster played the tune at a wretched, wheezing little melodeon, and the people all sang, timidly at first, but with more spirit as they went on. Then he gave out another hymn, and another, and the singing was better with each hymn. Mr. Tangier himself had a good enough bari- tone voice, a good ear, and sang correctly. Mr. Bur- dett had a singularly rich and clear tenor. Women generally sing better than men, at such places, and, as each hymn was finished, they all passed to another with more spirit and more. Then Mr. Burdett read two or three Psalms and a passage from the Gospel, sympathetically, and as if he loved it, and then led them all in prayer simple, natural, and true. He sat a moment with his head resting on his hand; and then, in the same simple 38 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. way, as if he were in his own home talking to his wife and children of something which had interested him, spoke of the hopeful feeling which bubbled out from the words he had read, and drew the analogy between this feeling and the sense of joy which he had felt as he drove across, in the sunset, from his own home. It seemed that this home was at Warner, some five miles away. He spoke perhaps four or five minutes, not as if he were forced to, but as if he wanted to. Then he sat still. Every one sat still. Mr. Tangier was so unused to conference meet- ings that he did not know but people were expected to sit still. For his own part, he had been sitting still all day, and he would be glad to sit still all night. But this was not the plan. After a minute or two of serene silence, Mr. Burdett rose and said, " Brother Beecham, will you lead in prayer ? " Brother Beecham rose, and offered what he would have called a prayer. But to Mr. Tangier it seemed as if there was but little heart in the words, as if he had himself heard them before, as if Brother Beecham had committed them to memory to use when he was asked to. In a word, poor Mr. Tangier was conscious that he was not praying, but criticising, and he was very glad when Mr. Beecham sat down. Then Mr. Burdett read another hymn, and they sang ; he gave another, and they sang it better. Then, to Mr. Tan- gier's surprise, Mr. Beecham rose and delivered quite an address. It had nothing to do with hopefulness, it was rather in a vein of despondency, with a tone of wrath. It was devoted, first to abusing the people of the village who had not come to the conference, and then to abusing those who did come. For Mr. MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 89 Beecham said that if those who caine would speak, and make the meetings interesting, and he put the accent on the second e, as if that had something to do with it, the others would attend. For his part, he did not wonder that they stayed away. Mr. Tangier had not had the slightest idea of join- ing in the conversation of the evening. He was a stranger, and it had not occurred to him that any man or woman was to talk, as a duty. But he did not mean to have the people round him abused. And so he said, very frankly and simply, that for his own part he had particularly enjoyed the silence ; that he thought there was far too much talking in the world, of the machine kind ; and that, especially in matters of religion, the less that was said of that sort the better. " I suppose we come here," said he very quietly, " to listen to God, and to know what He may have to say to us. Surely our friends the Quakers are right in thinking that we may hear Him better when there is no other talking." Mr. Tangier did not mean to say anything. But he was wholly used to addressing assemblies much larger than Mr. Burdett's conference meeting, and he felt only more at ease the moment he was on his feet. As soon as he sat down, a lady behind him, with a rich, full contralto voice began to sing, " Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing," and after this, whether Mr. Burdett wished it or not, he had to dismiss the little assembly. Mr. Tangier and Mrs. Dunster had a word with him. He then released his horse, mounted his wagon, and drove to his home, and they walked slowly to hers. 40 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. CHAPTER V. AS they came to the house, a wagon drove up be- hind them, and a hearty voice saluted them. It proved that the speaker was the doctor of the neigh- borhood, Dr. Tillinghast. He jumped from the car- riage, evidently confident that the horse would stand, and joined the other two. " Is this Mr. Tangier ? " he said with the cordiality of a gentleman accustomed to meet all sorts and con- ditions of men. "I have just been calling on you at our good friend Mrs. Fairbanks's ; Miss Rachel told me that I should find you here, so you must re- gard this as my call of hospitality. I come to offer you our all, our meadows, our hills, our prospects, our wild-flowers, our distant beaches, and our neigh- boring river, with all the gayeties of Tenterdon society." Mr. Tangier thanked him, in the same hearty way, and said that Mrs. Dunster had already told him that he was entitled to the freedom of the village. He also spoke of the pleasant talk he had had with this Mr. Burdett whom he had found at the church. " At the church," said the doctor, with the slightest change in tone ; " that is loyal in you, indeed. Frankly, Mr. Tangier, I divide our summer visitors into two classes: First, those who range themselves on the MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 41 side of order; next, those who range themselves no- where, and thus belong, of necessity, to the party of disorder." Tangier laughed. " You remember," said he, " what Byron makes the Devil say : ' He who bows not to God, has bowed to me.' " I The doctor smiled his approval. " It is very good gospel," said he, " whether it come from Byron, or the Devil, or from both. Do not think that I am too serious abput it. Of course, when people come here to play, they come to play. I understand that very well. But here are Mrs. Dunster and I, and Rachel Fairbanks, and Jane Campbell yonder, and five hun- dred other children of God, who are here all the time. I can assure you that we watch pretty closely the manners and customs of the polished people who come to us from the scenes of high civilization. Your friend Mrs. Fairbanks would call them ' the boarders.' She divides the world into two classes : the people of Tenterdon, and 'the boarders.' When I first heard her I thought only of the ' Pirate's Own Book,' with which I was familiar, and the thrilling cry of the sea- fights, 'Boarders to repel boarders.' But if you are skilful in dime literature, you know that there are good ruffians as well as bad ruffians, just as there are good giants and bad giants in the fairy tales. So there are good boarders, like those who come to Ten- terdon for the summer, and bad boarders, like those in the 'Pirate's Own Book.'" By this time they were all seated on Mrs. Dunster's deep piazza. Somebody had brought out two or three rugs, there was a moon, a quarter old, in the sky, and 42 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. there was no temptation to go in. After a little talk, Mr. Tangier recalled the doctor to this matter of the social order of such a scattered town, as it was affected by the annual inroad, for three or four months, of people who had nothing to do but to amuse themselves. " To tell you the truth," said he, " I have thought of this, this evening, quite as much as I have thought of the Scripture lesson. I had around me one of the social institutions of Tenterdon. For the greatest of all possible subjects, for the one subject, indeed, which, rightly presented, interests everybody, there were nine- teen people assembled on a pleasant evening, with a man of genius to talk to them, and with every asso- ciation of the very best memories in their lives to bring them together. Of these nineteen people, well, I should say a dozen had passed that grand climac- teric which Dr. Jackson says is the prime of life, namely, sixty-three years, or thereabouts. Of the rest, two or three were boys and girls, who had come because the old people could not be trusted alone with the horses. So far as the meeting showed any social habit among the people of Tenterdon, it could not be considered as encouraging. Now, tell me what other social institutions are here, summer or winter, which bring these people together in larger places, or which show any heartier desire to know each other, to live in a common life, and to make these to be the best possible of homes." Thus challenged, the doctor and Mrs. Dunster re- viewed with some little care the history of the last year in Tenterdon. They told how many sleigh-rides had been arranged in winter, by which the young peo- MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 43 pie went across to Wors-neck and had a dance there together. They told of the political caucus in the fall, when General Logan spoke to the whole county. They told of the cattle-show in the autumn ; and this seemed to be, on the whole, the great social event of the year. Kather to Mr. Tangier's surprise, for his memories were of a different region and another form of social life, there was, really, no reference to those friendly visitings in which twenty or thirty people should come together to spend an evening, with the single exception of the monthly meeting of the ladies' missionary society, which Mrs. Dunster described with a good deal of spirit and humor. There was a little lull after this somewhat scant programme. Then Mr. Tangier said, " Seriously, are these all the possibilities ? When one remembers that as few people as these, when they gathered to- gether at New Haven, had force enough to build up a commonwealth, to make its laws and so adjust its institutions that everything has worked well there for two hundred and fifty years, one feels as if five hun- dred people here might have better social institutions than these." Dr. Tillinghast took him up with the same serious- ness. " Yes," he said, " all things are possible where there is a leader. Where will you be Sunday after- noon ? If you don't dislike a pleasant drive across the country, I will clear my docket in the morning, and in the afternoon I will take you across to Win- throp, and you shall hear their music there. Then you shall see what grows up on good ground when there has been good planting and good ploughing for half a century." 44 MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. Sunday was fine, and the two started together, two men who had just passed the flush of early manhood. Each, in his own place, was now beginning to feel that he had duties to society. They talked of every- thing as they rode, and they enjoyed everything. Most of all they enjoyed each other. The eight miles seemed only too short as they drove into Win- throp, which proved to be a little town dedicated to the manufacture of shoes, with rather a crude look of freshness in the great shops, scattered among the old houses of the days when farming still paid in that region. " Mr. Dunlap lets me use his horse-shed," said Til- linghast ; and they drove into one of a long series of sheds which the piety of former times had arranged for the horses of Sunday worshippers. Having cared for their beast, they walked across together to the town-hall, a new, unhandsome, brick building, spa- cious and convenient, to which the people of the vil- lage were already thronging. Here they found perhaps a hundred and fifty people, chatting among the chairs and settees. In a minute there came in upon the platform the members of a large orchestra, with their instruments. In all, there were thirty -two pieces, and Mr. Tangier saw, a little to his surprise, that the different performers arranged themselves, and adjusted their instruments, with quite the artistic knowledge of the position, and conscious- ness of their own ability, which he might have ex- pected had he seen Thomas's orchestra in New York. At once the assembly was seated and all conversa- tion stopped. In a moment the leader of the orches- tra tapped with his rod, a few strains were played MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. 45 upon one instrument, and then the whole assembly arose and sung as a choral: " A mighty fortress is our God,"