there was frivolous talk and disputation and some serious reasoning, as the necessary sequence of what had been told. there was discussion as to what excuse there had been for the demeanor of mr. abercrombie, and even some quiet suggestion to the banker that, very much to his credit, he could, himself, imagine things, upon occasions such as this, and that, possibly, he might have risen somewhat to the emergency, but the chaffing was of the listless sort. the sun was not visible save from the rear end of the rear car of the train, but its rays deflected, slanted, yellow-red, along the sides of the pass calling the attention of all to the fact that it was almost supper-time. more hanging together in a wayside tales companionship? hardly! they had appetites and they dissolved as dissolve the vapors, or the friends made by letters of introduction, or snow on the top of a distillery, or your dreams, or mary when you need her, or anything else. similes are[306] the cheapest thing on the market! the sum of it was that an afternoon had been killed without undue atrocity and now all scattered and prepared themselves and went in to supper. they enjoyed themselves together and then the ladies drifted back to the talking habitat, while the men, or at least a number of them, found the smoking compartments, either the big one of the cassowary or one of those in other coaches.
there are all kinds of traveling men. this is not generally understood, but it is a fact. the impression has, somehow, obtained that a traveling man or "drummer," or whatever we should call dickens' "bagman" in the western hemisphere, is a person who is careless of the conventionalities, who relies upon a certain hardihood in thrusting himself anywhere into the place of immediate consequence or convenience. never was a greater mistake in popular opinion. there are blatant commercial travelers, of course. there will be fools in any part of the world's work. it is a matter of fact, though, that the man whose business it is to influence mentally other men and women must, necessarily, have tact and understanding and that he must be often more[307] quick of conception and more readily responsive to the proper demand of his fellow-creatures than one less extremely educated in certain ways of the vagrant world.
the man called upon was one of the greater type. he laughingly accepted the situation:
"yes," he said, "i'll tell you a story, but it is so foolish that i can hardly expect you to believe it. it is merely the story of one man i knew and of how he got his wife. he did not get her in quite the ordinary way. i'll tell you all i know about him, and i've known him almost from boyhood. i'll tell you everything as it was."
evan cummings' courtship
i think evan cummings had the most remarkable personality of any traveling man i ever met, a personality which indicated itself especially in the closing incident of his love affair. he was a good-looking fellow, of scotch descent, with all the tenacity of purpose of his race. he was a good man to meet upon the train. when we were gathered in the smoking compartment evan was as full of spirits as the rest, but i noticed that, while taking an active part in the conversation, he never told[308] any of the somewhat risque stories that the air of the smoking compartment too often breeds. instead, he would tell uncanny tales of scotland in the old days, tales of wizards and warlocks, and of the strange things to be seen at night on ancient battle-fields, and we always listened to him with interest. he was mightily fixed in his views and many a good-natured dispute we had with him over this or that. eh, but he was stubborn!
evan was a good man of business, though, and had a host of friends. among these was the conductor of a train on which he often traveled and the friendship developed into such a degree of intimacy that one day the conductor, luke johnson, invited him out to dinner with him. evan, having no particular business on hand that evening, accepted the invitation.
johnson's house was in the suburbs, decidedly. it was on the very picket line of the army of houses of the ever-marching city, out on the prairie at least a couple of blocks distant from any other house. a plank sidewalk extended to it from the more settled district near and, with its barns and sheds and vine-covered front, it did not have a lonesome look. inside evan found the house quite as prepossessing[309] as its exterior and he found something else there more prepossessing still.
johnson's family consisted of himself, his wife, his child, little gabriel, about four years old, and his sister-in-law, a miss salome hinman. evan found mrs. johnson a pleasant sort of a woman and found in miss hinman his undeniable affinity. stolid as he usually was in the presence of femininity, he felt, in the very marrow of his bones, that he was a lost man. that he succumbed so quickly was not altogether to be wondered at. miss hinman was pretty, was very slender—what a school-girl writer would call willowy or lissom or, possibly, svelte—and was wildly devoted to her little nephew, of whom she had the chief care.
well, evan didn't waste any time. he contrived it so that he was in the city often and, as often, was at johnson's house, making vigorous love to miss salome. finally, he accepted a good city position with his firm and abandoned the road, just for the sake of being near his sweetheart, though he liked the road better. all would have gone well now, but for the young lady. he knew she cared for him, for she had admitted it, but she was a bit of a coquette and couldn't resist the temptation of playing a fish[310] so firmly hooked. urge as evan might, he could not persuade her to fix a date for their marriage. she would not absolutely deny him, but she was elusive. he became desperate. something must be done. it was.
one day just as evan, brooding as he walked, neared the home of his sweetheart to renew his useless pleading, he noticed little gabriel playing in the yard with a toy balloon the string of which was tied to a button-hole of his jacket and which tugged strenuously away at him. evan sat down upon the horse-block in front of the house, watching the boy dreamily, and trying to devise a plan to bring miss salome to terms, when, all at once, his planning ceased as suddenly as the stopping of a clock. the boy and the balloon had given him an awful inspiration! he returned to town.
that evening evan cummings bought a toy balloon, some bird-shot and one of the tiniest of little baskets. in his room at the hotel he attached the string of the balloon to the handle of the basket. then, as the balloon with its burden rose toward the ceiling, he dropped shot after shot into the little receptacle until the balloon could no longer raise it. taking the little basket of shot to the drug store, he had[311] the basket and shot carefully weighed. he now knew the exact lifting power of a toy balloon—it was just five ounces. he had seen gabriel weighed and knew that he tipped the scale at forty-two pounds. the calculation was easy; sixteen ounces in a pound; sixteen multiplied by forty-two makes six hundred and seventy-two. gabriel, therefore, weighed 672 ounces: a single toy balloon would lift not quite five ounces; five goes into six hundred and seventy-two, one hundred and thirty-four times; one hundred and thirty-five toy balloons would lift little gabriel. the next day evan went to a harness shop and had a stout leather harness made which would just about fit gabriel, passing round his small body under the arms and over his shoulders, from each of which two broad straps extended upward and met in a strong iron ring. then he went out and invested in two hundred and fifty toy balloons—thus adding over an hundred for requirements and contingencies. he bought, also, a stout piece of clothesline, fifty feet long, and a thick cord two hundred feet long, which would, if required, sustain the weight of a man. the next afternoon he attached the balloons to the clothesline, not all in a bunch, but at intervals,[312] that in the event of an accident to one, another would not be affected. at the lower end of the clothesline was a strong steel snap.
at about three o'clock in the afternoon, when he knew mrs. johnson was to be absent in town, evan hired a covered express-wagon, in which he imprisoned his balloons and was driven near the johnson's place. a block or two away from there, he dismissed the driver and wagon and went on alone, the balloons tugging at him fiercely as he walked. he saw little gabriel playing in the yard, as usual, and called to him. the youth came running out and shouted in childish glee when he saw the mountain of red balloons.
"would you like to take a ride, gabriel?" asked evan kindly.
"yep, yep!" cried gabriel. "gimme a ride."
evan carefully and securely adjusted the harness upon the youngster and then snapped the contrivance at the end of the clothesline into the ring above the boy's head. he tied one end of his two hundred feet of cord firmly to the same ring. holding on to the cord, he eased up gently and had the satisfaction of seeing gabriel lifted from his feet.
at the height of thirty feet little gabriel[313] emitted a sudden bawl such as a four year-old probably never gave before; at fifty feet his screams were something startling and when, at last, he hung dangling two hundred feet above, the string of balloons rising fifty feet higher still, the volume and loudness of his shrieking seemed scarce diminished by the distance. he swung and swayed far away up there a wonderful kicking object, the string of balloons uplifting above him like a pillar of fire, the whole forming a wonderful vision against the sky. evan calmly tied the end of the cord to the hitching staple in the horse-block, then sat down upon the block and drew out and opened his pocket knife.
the front door of the house suddenly flew open and a hysterical young woman reached evan's side in the fraction of an instant. she looked upwards and shrieked out:
"oh! oh! what are you doing with little gabriel! he'll be killed! oh! he'll be killed!"
"no he won't," answered evan, quietly, "i can pull him down at any time. he'll stay where he is—that is unless i cut this cord," he added reflectively, as he held the blade of his knife against it. "salome, will you marry me[314] and fix the date for the ceremony now? if you won't promise, i'll cut the cord!"
"oh, you brute! oh, you murderer! i'll never— oh—"
"i tell you he's all right," explained evan. "promise when we'll be married, and i'll pull him down."
the girl but shrieked the louder and, sinking down, clung pleadingly to his knees.
"save him!" she cried. "he'll be killed! oh, poor little gabriel!"
"i tell you he won't be killed! little gabriel has only gone aloft, to be nearer his namesake. he's almost up to where 'the cherubim and seraphim continually do sing.' don't you hear him singing himself, already? will you fix the date or shall i cut the cord?"
the girl was getting calmer, though quivering all over. she only sobbed now; "he'll be killed! he'll be killed! oh my poor little gabriel!"
"i tell you he will not," reiterated evan. "i don't believe he will be killed even when i cut the string. he will alight gently somewhere, as the gas in the balloons gradually exudes, and somebody will take care of him. it may not[315] be in this county, but he will alight. when will you marry me?"
the young woman did not answer.
"salome," said evan, now pleadingly. "you know that you love me and that i love you. why not stop all this dalliance and coquetting? you know you are going to be my wife. will you not make it all definite?"
salome looked up into her lover's eyes, then bowed her head. finally she looked up again and sobbed out:
"y-e-s, only pull down little gabriel."
"when shall the wedding be? will the twentieth of next month do?"
"y-e-s."
evan closed his pocket knife. then taking hold of the cord he began pulling little gabriel down. as that youth, still loudly bellowing, reached the ground, salome caught him up and darted into the house with him. evan paid slight attention to people who came running to see what the red thing aloft had been. he said only that he had been trying an experiment. then he gathered up the balloons and carried them into the woodshed, where they rose in a mass to the roof and stayed there. then he went into the house and had a talk with the[316] indignant salome. it was an exciting session, but it ended peaceably.
well, she married him, as she had promised, for honesty was among her virtues. she looks upon her husband as a desperate character and, so, is in love with him, of course.
i'm not surprised at the whole business. it was evan all over.
