Many Kingdoms Part 23

"It's a pretty bad joke," he said, "or a b.u.m sort of bid for charity.

In either case you can't waste any more of my--"

But Harrington had sprung to his feet, his blond young face black with pa.s.sion.

"d.a.m.n you!" he hissed, thrusting his head down close to the other's and clinching his fists. "How dahe you-all say I lie o' ask charity? I'd see you-all in h.e.l.l befoah I'd take a cent of youah d.a.m.ned money.

'Ain't you got brains enough in youah haid to see that I've got to the end of mah rope?"

Maxwell was a clever man, educated in the world's university. He knew truth when he met it, and he knew human nature.

"Sit down," he said, quietly, "and tell me about it. I'm sorry I spoke as I did, but you must admit that your proposition was rather startling."

Harrington sat down, still breathing hard in his excitement, but evidently making a resolute effort to control himself.

"That's why I brought it heah," he said, answering the other's last words, "You-all like stahtlin' things, don't you? That's what you print. I'm offerin' you a straight bahgain, suh--a business proposition. If you-all don't want it, say so."

Maxwell smiled in his turn, but there was nothing ironic in the smile, nor in the look he turned on his fellow-man.

"It's not quite as simple as you seem to think," he explained, gently.

"But tell me more about it. What led to this decision? What makes you think suicide is the only way out of your troubles? That's a part of the story, you know. Let me have that first, in a few words.

"It can be told, suh, in three," said the Southerner. His smile had returned. His voice was the cool voice of one who discussed abstract things. "I'm a failyuh. This wold 'ain't no use foh failyuhs. I've given myself all the time and chances I dese'ved, but I cayn't win out, so I've got to _git_ out. The's no one to ca'e. I've no kin, no ons dependin' on me in any way. As foh me, I'm ti'ed; life ain't wuth the effo't."

Maxwell regarded him.

"You don't look like a quitter," he said, thoughtfully.

The boy's face blazed again, but he kept his temper.

"To quit means to give somethin' up," he said, doggedly. "I ain't givin' anythin' up. I 'ain't got anythin' to give up. Life without wo'k, o' interest, o' fren's, o' ambition, o' love--that ain't livin'!

If you-all evah tried it, you'd know. I 'ain't been so chee'ful in yeahs as I've been sence I made up my mind to 'quit,' as you-all call it."

"You've got health, haven't you?" demanded Maxwell. "Yes."

Maxwell brought his hand down on the desk with an air of finality.

"Then you've got everything. Do you mean to tell me that a fellow like you can't earn enough to support himself? If you do, you're talking rot."

Harrington took this with his wide, guileless grin. He was not offended now, for he felt the friendly interest and sympathy under the other's words. His voice when he replied was gentler.

"I ain't sayin' I can't keep body an' soul together, foh maybe I can,"

he conceded. "But I'm sayin' _that_ ain't _life_. I'm sayin' I ain't been fitted fo' wo'k. I 'ain't been educated. I've lived in a log-cabin down in the Virginia mountains all man life. I left thah six weeks ago, after mah mother died. She was the last of ouah family but me. I 'ain't never been to school. She taught me to read in the Bible, an' to write.

I 'ain't nevah read anotheh book except the Bible and Mistah Shakespeah's poems, an' Mistah Pluta'ch's _Lives of Great Men_. I know them by hea't. I don't know whe' she got them o' whe' she came from.

She was different from othah mountain women. I've been No'th six weeks, and I've tried ha'd to find a place whah I could fit in, but th' ain't none. Men must be trained fuh wo'k; I ain't trained. I cayn't go back, foh the's no one thah, an' I hate the mountains."

Maxwell's reply was brief and to the point.

"Think you could learn to run our elevator without killing us all?" he inquired. "Well, you've got to. You've been talking awful guff, you know. Now you're going to work, right here. We need a new man. The one we have has been drunk three days. You're going to run the elevator and get fifteen dollars a week to begin with. Here's your first week's salary in advance. I'll arrange about the job with the superintendent.

I'll give you some books, and you can educate yourself. When you're above elevator work we'll give you something better. You'll probably have my job inside of a year," he ended, jocosely.

The hand of the mountaineer stretched out to him trembled as Maxwell grasped it.

"You ah the only white man I've found in the No'th," said the Southerner, breathlessly. "I'll make good, as they say up heah. But I don't know how I can thank you."

"Don't try," said Maxwell, brusquely. "Be here at eight in the morning.

By nine there will be a few callers I may want you to throw down the shaft."

Thus began the connection between the _Searchlight_ and Bart Harrington, subsequently its most popular employe. Before the week was over all the reporters and most of the editors had casually sought from Maxwell some details concerning his protege, but had received few.

Harrington was a new man, and he came from the Virginia mountains, and was most obliging and altogether engaging. This was all the information acquired even by the indefatigable Miss Mollie Merk, whose success in extracting from individuals information it was their dearest desire to conceal had made her a star member of the _Searchlight's_ staff. It was to Miss Merk, however, that Harrington announced his first important discovery. Leaning across her desk one evening after his successor had taken the "car," the new elevator man touched a subject much upon his mind.

"I got wet the othah day," he began, conversationally, "an' mah landlady let me go to the kitchen to dry mah clothes. I obse'ved as I sat by huh stove that the lid of the wash boilah kept liftin' up, all by itself, an' then I saw 'twas raised by the steam of the hot watah inside. I kep' thinkin' 'bout it, an' it seems to me thah's an idea thah, a soht of ene'gy, you know, that might be used in big ways. I mus' think it out."

Mollie Merk looked at him, vague memories of one James Watts stirring uneasily in her brain.

"There's a good deal written about steam," she said, sympathetically.

"I'll bring you a book on it."

She did, for Harrington was already high in her regard; and quite possibly the volume killed in that youth's aspiring soul the germ of a beautiful hope. But he was to the fore very soon with a discovery of equal weight. This time his confidant was Maxwell.

"Why is it," he asked that busy citizen one evening, "that when I get in the bathtub the water rises highah? Ain't the' some principle the'

that is impo'tant? As I think it ovah--"

Maxwell hurriedly a.s.sured him that there was, and the volume on steam was followed by a treatise on specific gravity, which gave Mr.

Harrington food for reflection for several days. Nevertheless, the discovery that others had been before him did not depress him in the least. He gave the Sunday editor an insight into his views on one occasion when that gentleman was able to convince him that Isaac Newton and not Bart Harrington had discovered the law of gravitation while watching an apple fall from a tree.

"I obse'ved it, too, suh," argued Harrington, st.u.r.dily, defending his position as a scientific discoverer. "Of co'se I see the fo'ce of you'h rema'k that the othah man was _first_. That is unfo'tunate foh me. But does it affect the value of _my_ discovery? It does not, suh."

"There's a good deal in it," Wilson conceded to Maxwell, after he had delightedly repeated this conversation. "Of course, the fellow has an unusual mind. It's a pity he's always a few hundred years behind the time, but, as he hints, that needn't dim our admiration for the quality of his brain fibre."

Maxwell laughed uneasily.

"I can't make up my mind," he admitted, in his turn, "whether he's a genius or a plain fool. He lost his dinner last night explaining to me how the power of Niagara could be applied to practical uses. He was horribly depressed when I told him it not only could be, but was. I let him talk, though, to see what his ideas were, and they were very practical."

"I call that mighty encouraging," said the chief, optimistically. "He's getting down to modern times. After he has discovered the telephone and telegraph and cable and wireless telegraphy he may tackle telepathy and give us something new."

But Harrington indulged in an unexplained digression at this point. He discovered literature and became acquainted with the works of one Charles d.i.c.kens, of whose genius he made himself the sounding trumpet-call for the ears of an indifferent world.

"The's a book called _David Coppe'field_," he confided to Maxwell one night when he had lingered for a chat with his benefactor. "It's great, suh. You should read it sometime, Mistah Maxwell; you would appreciate its wo'th." He outlined the plot then and there, and Maxwell good-naturedly listened, finding his compensation in the enthusiast's original comments on character and situation. This, however, established a bad precedent, and Maxwell was subsequently obliged to hear a careful synopsis of _Little Dorrit, Old Curiosity Shop,_ and _Oliver Twist_, in quick succession, followed by the somewhat painful recitation of most of Gray's _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_--for Harrington was now entering the daisied field of poetry.

It was at this point that Maxwell felt himself constrained to give his protege a few words of advice, the city editor having objected to an enforced hearing of the plot of _Ivanhoe_, and Mollie Merk having admitted that she had climbed six flights of stairs twice a day for a week in preference to hearing the final eighteen stanzas of _Paradise Lost_.

Maxwell explained the situation to his friend as gently as he could one morning when Harrington had interrupted a talk between himself and a distinguished Western editor who was spending a few days in New York.

"You see, old man," he ended, kindly, "this is a big, new world to you, but the rest of us have been living in it all our lives. We've taken in these things you're discovering--or we've had them driven into us at school. So--er--they're not new, and while we appreciate them we haven't got time to go over them all again. When you get up to modern fiction--the things people are reading to-day--"

With one expressive gesture of the hand Mr. Harrington demolished modern fiction.

"_I_ 'ain't got time foh that, Mistah Maxwell," he said, respectfully.

"I read one, and I regret to say, suh, that it was too much. I have looked into othe's, but I go no fu'thah. I have tried to open to you gentlemen the great wo'ks I have discove'ed, an' youah reply is that you-all have read them, suh. I am surprised. Do you give one glance at a picture an' nevah look again? Do you listen once to music, o' must it be something new and mode'n ev'ry time? Last night I heard the composition of a musician named Beethoven, who, I have learned, has been dead foh yeahs. Yet people still listen to his notes. Why don't they read these books of Mistah d.i.c.kens and Mistah Scott and Mistah Shakespeah?"