Arpeggio and Patriotism

by Zona Gale

Arpeggio and Patriotism

BY ZONA GALE

ARPEGGIO SHADD was working in his garden. He was happy. The summer morning was hot and bright. The garden had been neglected for a week. He had on his oldest clothes. And Stack Mayhew and Dodd Purcell, the other two commissioners of Banning, had gone to the city to a commissioners' convention.

"You'd ought to come, too," Stack had admonished him. "If it ain't you that's always sicking us on to do things like other towns, who in time is it?"

"I got to 'tend to my potatoes," Arpeggio offered.

"The circular says them commissioners as don't u-nite with others to talk things over 'ain't got no right to be it," said Dodd Purcell.

"Yes, well, mebbe," said Arpeggio, "but them fellows 'ain't seen the bugs on my early Ohios."

Secretly he was hungering for a day close to the ground.

"They's different ways of being outdoors," Arpeggio had once said. "Some folks slips along over. Some folks takes in the outside of outdoors and never digs down in. But some folks, just the minute they step into outdoors, they just kind of burrow. And that's it. You got to burrow."

And a long time after he added:

"It's considerable of a blessing if you're born the burrowing kind."

Arpeggio was now burrowing. Superficially he was cultivating his early Ohio potatoes. But essentially he was concerned with the green excesses of his garden, the hot playfulness of the sun, and his doves, complaining contentedly on the shed roof or winging soft flights down to the fresh earth at his feet.

"Right round there," he heard his mother's voice. "You'll find him somewheres or other."

The well and a flowering currant hid her and the visitor. Arpeggio worked on until the shadow of the visitor fell upon the hoe. Then Arpeggio looked up, appearing to straighten his back a muscle at a time.

Hernie Nichol stood there, on his way down-town. Hernie was by occupation a livery-stable keeper, and, therefore, by the fortunes of progress and invention, nearly a leisurist. But by nature Hernie was a monarch. He had what social-efficiency experts call qualities of leadership. Or perhaps not so much qualities as quantities. That was it—quantities of leadership Hernie had. In short, at five-and-thirty Hernie Nichol was political boss of Banning.

"Hello, Shadd!" said he. "Can I get a job cultivatin' for you?"

Arpeggio drew a breath of content. "Well, do you know, I like my hoein' so well," he affirmed, "that I'd charge you for the chance."

"Can't even help with the potato-bugs?" Hernie went on, merrily.

"Them bugs," said Arpeggio, "is trained bugs. Them little cusses—"

"Shut up," said Hernie. "I come to talk business."

It did not occur to Arpeggio to suggest a seat, or to Hernie to expect it. He elevated one foot to a saw-horse, shut one eye, selected from somewhere a sliver, dedicate now to dental ministrations. And to the complete bewilderment of his host, Hernie told him that "they" wanted him to run again for city commissioner.

"You do?" said Arpeggio. Wrinkled nose, one lifted brow, parted lips, head at one side, all confessed his amazement. "Why," said he, "you fellows has often give me to understand I act like a—like a horse in office."

"You do," said Hernie, smoothly; "you certainly do. But it's like this, Shadd. The old crowd wants Dodd—see? You can't beat Dodd—we can depend on him. But the reform element"—he made it sound anathema—"they're bound to put in somebody that 'll do us good—see?—and I guess they got it cinched. So, instead of fightin' 'em, we're goin' to leave 'em win out and then stick in you—see?—to hold the balance of power."

"Well, thunder!" said Arpeggio, "I thought you all thought I was crazy, slippin' in uplift on you and all like that—"

"You are," agreed Hernie, "but it's like this—see? Your kind of uplift stuff 'ain't queered nothin'—gettin' a circus here, low license, for the kids, like you done, standin' for a liberary, monkeyin' a little reform in the school—that ain't goin' to hurt nobody. You keep your hand offn the streets and the contracts and the appointments and the appropriations—see?—and you can slip over all the baby reform you want. We ain't too all-fired hidebound. We'll stand for some things—see?—as long as you understand the town is ourn."

On his foot, shod ponderously, Arpeggio knocked the earth from his hoe, extended the implement at arm's-length, and leaned on the handle. He looked at his visitor mildly—almost sleepy was the droop of his slow lids.

"Say," said Arpeggio, "I wouldn't be commissioner to this here town again—not for a dillion dollars. They is dillions, ain't they?"

"Go on," said Hernie, and winked.

"Not," pursued Arpeggio—"not on your ambrotype. Why, man, I wouldn't be bothered!"

"He wants," said Hernie, addressing the unbounded blue, "he wants to be urged—by his lovin' friends."

"Here's Stack and Dodd, chasin' off to some fool commissioners' meetin' this minute, eatin' up their good time. I can't do it. I won't do it. Look at my potatoes—early Ohios- and you can't beat 'em. Look at my strawberries groanin' for attention. I want to raise pigeons. I'm goin' to start an asparagus-bed. I wouldn't be commissioner again for all the graft folks thinks is in it. Go to thunder!" said Arpeggio, and hoed.

Within his loosely molded coat Hernie's shoulders shrank and expanded. He swaggered, he grinned, he came to rest with one hand on a plum-tree bough, one foot, sole out, crossing the other. "Say," said he, "coy one, drop that. It's all right. You shall be urged plenty enough."

"You poor bloke," said Arpeggio, "you can't take straight when you get it. Your ears is tuned to bluff, seems though. I hain't runnin'. Get me?"

Still Hernie grinned and even winked. "I'll tell the crowd how you stand," he said.

"You can tell the crowd," Arpeggio said, "that I 'ain't never once in my life had all the peanuts I could hold. I'm figgerin' on puttin' in a quarter-acre peanuts next year. They're a-goin' to keep me busy."

Still, as Hernie went he continued to smile knowingly. Having never heard of such an attitude, he had no conveniences for its registration. "I'll leave it be known," he had said, with a wave of his elbow and a briefly lowered eyelid, "that you'll think it over."

Arpeggio hoed indignantly. "Leave it be known nothing," he reiterated, to the soft staccato of his movements.

The heat was glorious, penetrating, voluptuous. The odor and hum of summer were besetting. He was swept by that tender humor of the mid-forenoon, part promise, part fulfilment, so that he paused, looked about him, breathed deep, was momentarily in intimate contact with who shall say what bright forces?

Gradually Arpeggio had become aware of a sound which, growing along the highway and mounting, had ceased at his gate. Then voices, shadows through the flowering currant. In some sweet prescience he moved forward and, under morning-glories, was confronted by two whose reality challenged his belief. There on his door-stone Miss Edith Granger, heroine of a complete set of his hopeless dreams and undemonstrated adulations. But however remote and transcendent a man perceives a woman to be, he never quite loses the savor of her presence until he has persuaded himself that it is not she who is remote, but he who has withdrawn from her, for a set of reasons occurring to him late, to be sure, but in time—thank Heaven, in time.

"Ah, Mr. Shadd," said Edith Granger, "are you here? Then you are not going in till this afternoon," and presented him to one of whom, in his exaltation, Arpeggio was but gropingly conscious, as of a glow, a fluff, a vibration, an influence—Miss Fleda Barnett, Judge Barnett's daughter, home from college, to stay in Banning. And, "We're going in now," Miss Granger added, "and we thought your mother might enjoy the ride and the meeting—"

The meeting. At last Arpeggio's mind caught and clung. They must mean the meeting of commissioners, in the city, where Dodd and Stack had gone.

"Oh yes," said he, weakly. "Yes—Ma!" he informally intoned.

Mrs. Shadd, cool-headed, ponderous, appeared, with one finger in a mail-order furniture-house catalogue. She was vast, brown-calicoed, low-collared, and her breathing showed through her abundance. In her face were serene years; lovely affirmations selected with a restrained art—love. For her gentle guests her homage was as honest as a dog's homage. The conjunction of the four was exquisitely dramatic—in delicate inner drama—for Nature here made four climaxes expressive of her best.

The ladies sat in the shade and refused buttermilk. Arpeggio was conscious of the tender rose of Miss Fleda Barnett's linen gown, of the roses nodding in her hat, of her flashing smile. He was exquisitely conscious of the pure whiteness and the tranquil beauty of Miss Edith Granger. And he was poignantly, woundingly conscious of the clothes that he wore. He felt like a school-boy caught digging bait.

"Can't you come with us, Mrs. Shadd?" they were saying. "Do come with us," and enlarged on the wisdom of taking the air.

Mrs. Shadd thought not. She had beans a-baking. She had to get the new parlor furniture picked out while the sale was on. And, thereafter, Arpeggio heard:

"Well, then, you motor over with us, Mr. Shadd. Won't that be better than going over on the interurban, in the heat of the day—?"

All his fastnesses taken, Arpeggio heard himself saying, feebly: Sure. He might as well. Achieved the door, remembering acutely the patches on his garden trousers; returned, immaculate in what were naïvely his best clothes for all occasions. Then into the great bright car at the gate, Miss Barnett at the wheel, Miss Granger and Arpeggio side by side! A hard, white road to skim; twelve miles to unroll between Banning and the city; airs of heaven to breathe; sun and glory to descend; her voice to hear. Who would have said that he would find himself so? Arpeggio, feeling all, was fain to express it. He drew a deep breath.

"Well, I'll be jumped up!" said he.

Even the thought of the commissioners' meeting which he had scrupulously sought to evade could not breathe upon his fine elation.

"You must consider yourself very fortunate, Mr. Shadd—" Miss Granger was saying.

"I do," Arpeggio cut in, with a bow which a jolt of the car rendered, as it were, oblong. This gallantry she acknowledged with a grave inclination of her head.

"—that the annual meeting of town commissioners is so near to Banning. It is a great opportunity."

"Sure," said Arpeggio. "That's right. Sure."

"Are Mr. Purcell and Mr. Mayhew as much interested as you are?" she inquired.

His glance shifted to her a shade uncomfortably. "Oh, Stack and Dodd, they've went to town already. They'll be there," he informed her.

"But of course this afternoon is the meeting that matters," Miss Barnett surprisingly threw back, over shoulder.

"Oh, sure it is. Sure," Arpeggio agreed. (What the dickens was the afternoon meeting to be about?)

Briefly he studied the bright and youthful hair and the white neck of Miss Fleda Barnett. Could she be going to the meeting? Why, but she was dressed good enough to be a actress. You didn't have to fuss with uplift when you was diked that way. Miss Granger was different. She was interested in liberates and all like that. Probably, he adjusted it, Judge Barnett's daughter was coming up to town to do some trading. (The word still lingers, like old essence, on the air of towns like Banning.)

"It will be," Miss Granger advanced, "a great inspiration."

"This," said Arpeggio, "is inspiration enough for me."

That time Miss Granger did not notice; or, if she noticed, gave no sign. "A hundred commissioners from all over the United States," she merely said, "talking of the welfare of the people."

"Go on!" said Arpeggio. "A hundred?"

Nor did she give sign of surprise at his unfamiliarity with this meeting of his to which he was being towed. "At least a hundred," she said, "besides the European commissioners. And all talking of better cities."

European commissioners. Arpeggio had never heard of them. He was deeply beyond his depth. After his fashion, he rescued himself. He smiled his winning, wrinkled, unforgetable smile, and lifted one shoulder.

"Better cities," he said, "better babies. Better berries. Miss Granger, you'd ought to see my new variety of Warfield strawberries. They'll bear next year. I'll bet all you'll bet that one of them berries 'll fill a little coffee-cup. And sweet!—say! Why, them berries—"

Miss Granger listened. She liked to hear Arpeggio talk. His drawl, his droll figures, his flickering brows. And as he talked she smiled and thought, and no one might know where her mind was resting.

"Gee!" said Miss Fleda Barnett, abruptly. "Look at the cars!"

She drew up in the line of machines before the hall where the commissioners were meeting. Arpeggio, being transfixed at her word, scrambled from the car, regarding her. For she was not here for trading—she was going to the meeting. And Arpeggio marveled that a woman who talked like that—free, young, kiddish, he formulated it—and looked like this—he swelled with pride as he handed her to the sidewalk—and drove a car as she drove, should give a hang about a commissioners' convention. What was the game? He touched Miss Edith Granger's hand reverently. She was exquisite, like a woman in a clothier's advertisement of a society event, he thought. Yet here she was, interested, as alert as if she were going to a party. What was the game?

The hall which they entered was filled. Arpeggio stared. How many had turned out. He wondered why. The whole thing had sounded to him inconceivably stupid. In the lobby two or three came forward to speak to Edith Granger. It was she who moved to a table where a bald, bored man sat, behind a few remaining badges. It was she who presented Arpeggio to this man, and the man ornamented Arpeggio with a yellow badge which bore his office and his State in black letters.

"We cannot sit with you, but you can sit with us," Miss Granger said to Arpeggio, graciously. "They have given me a box."

Now Arpeggio had never before sat in a box. His ultimate elegance had been the grand stand, to which, on his election to commissionership, he had graduated from the bleachers. Like Banning, he considered boxes "affected." Anything that was affected, like a teacher who was partial, was beyond consideration. He emerged upon that eyrie with a choking sense that the multitude was looking at him. He sat down abruptly, and all the while he was making sure that the pin in his cravat was safely placed. After him, the ladies fluttered to their seats. But for these three, the box was empty.

"That is he now," said Fleda Barnett, excitedly. "That's Bayliss speaking. How simply splim that we haven't missed him."

Simply splim. Simply splim. Arpeggio said it over, the while he scanned a program which was thrust into his hands. And who was Bayliss?

As a matter of fact, there, just at first, it mattered to him very little who Bayliss was. Arpeggio was deep in other reflections. A box. Affected it might be, but also it was grand. He looked along the row of boxes, at the attentive, even absorbed, faces—men, women, and, above all, young women, who looked—Arpeggio wonderingly took it in—as if they were "nice people." His eye rested contentedly on his companions. His back straightened. He was a commissioner among commissioners, in a box with ladies. Arpeggio was touched by his first sense of social importance. He was glad that he had come. What were they talking, up there on the platform, though?

After all, it seemed, they had missed Bayliss, whoever he was. His address was drawing to a close. Before Arpeggio had fairly discovered that the attention of the audience was centered, not on him, but on Bayliss, he had stopped speaking, and the audience was in motion. They had arrived just before the noon recess.

[Illustration: "I WOULDN'T BE COMMISSIONER AGAIN—NOT FOR A DILLION DOLLARS."]

Turning to address some word to his companions, Arpeggio was struck dumb. For he beheld Miss Fleda Barnett, with her bag open in her lap, in one hand a mirror, in one a powder-puff; and she was unconcernedly powdering her nose, in the faces of the departing multitude. Arpeggio had never seen a woman in the act of powdering her nose. He had seen many who, obviously, had assumed this powder, or had had it assumed for them. But here was Fleda powdering before him, before all. And talking:

"What a corking audience!" she was saying. "A lot of dead-wood fossils in it, of course—on every charity list in the country and don't know yet that they're robbing their towns like bandits. But just look at the rest of them. Every little old up-and-coming worker in the city is here. Isn't it splim?"

The sophomoric, the superstressing, Arpeggio missed. But he looked and listened dumbly. Here was Miss Fleda Barnett acting like a chorus-girl and talking not unlike one, as to phrasing. And yet she was feeling something about the meeting of commissioners from which this commissioner was hopelessly remote. Old standards danced, as if they were being delicately weighed—but by what scale?

"Oh, Mr. Bayliss!" said Edith Granger.

And there was Bayliss—whoever Bayliss was—in their box, and Arpeggio was being presented, was being included in an invitation to lunch, was being drawn along and absorbed by others, waiting in a passage. And there he was at table, in an adjacent café, with, say, a dozen "nice" people, the kind with whom he had wistfully longed to be since, as a youngish man, he had come up alone to the city, with five dollars in his pocket to blow in, and nobody to blow it on. He glowed.

He wist not what he ate. Ordinarily he would have been concerned in agony to know whether he was using the spoon that was the spoon, but never, never concerned quite soon enough to observe another before he made his own choice. Now he was intent on straightening the names of those whom he had met, lest he miss his advantages. One or two he recognized—Cretish, one of the city commissioners; Plunkett, a landscape fellow from New York, whose name he had seen in the head-lines. And a charming woman on his left he now heard addressed as Mrs. Ebens, and divined that she must be the Mrs. Ebens of the city. To her he turned his face in some reverence. Until this moment he would have expected her to be perpetually dressing or driving to a ball. Yet here she was, also. What was the game?

He set himself to be agreeable to Mrs. Ebens. But first he must make sure.

"Mrs. Ebenezer Ebens, I believe," said he. "The wholesale man?"

"Yes," said the lady.

"Well," said Arpeggio, "it's real nice to be eating here alongside of you."

"Thanks," said the lady. "You, I think they told me, are one of the Banning commissioners?"

"I am," said Arpeggio, and straightened shoulders never so little. Here was social prestige for which he had hungered. He was a man among men, women, and commissioners. No need to mention that in a few months he would be out. "Of course," he added, patronizingly, "Banning's a poor little one-horse sort of town."

He was treated to a full look from the handsome and singularly penetrating eyes of Mrs. Ebenezer Ebens.

"Then," she said, "I suppose you are in exactly the position to make it better, are you not?"

Arpeggio laughed enjoyably. Quite a nice come-back, the lady had, it seemed.

"What's the matter with Banning?" she pursued. "How many people has it?"

"Five thousand six hundred and one," replied Arpeggio—he could tell you all the physical statistics of his town. "And you can bet the folks are all right, too," he added. "They're just Old Business, every one of 'em. But the town! Slow? Say!"

Mrs. Ebens touched at her pâte, at the stem of her glass, and finally gave her whole attention to Arpeggio.

"You speak," she said, mildly, "as if the town and the people are separate."

Arpeggio was uncertain how to treat this. So he laughed. That, he had found, was safe and proved you good-natured.

[Illustration: "WELL, THEN, YOU MOTOR OVER WITH US, MR. SHADD"]

"Talkin' of people," he said, easily, "Say! I never saw so many out to this kind o' thing. It's always like pullin' teeth to get folks out to a convention—that don't make 'em any money." It occurred to him to get her point of view. He waved his hand about the table. He leaned toward her. "What's the game?" he confidentially inquired.

But already—or was it not quite already?—she was looking beyond him to Bayliss, and Bayliss was speaking.

"—nice little place," he said, "at the foot of the mountain. Every advantage the earth could yield them. And, by Jove! they turned their faces on the whole prospect and squeezed that little town dry for what they could make it earn."

Miss Fleda Barnett spoke with her air of unflinching ease. "That's like Banning," she said. "Isn't it, Mr. Shadd?"

Whereupon Bayliss turned his mild, considering eyes on Arpeggio and repeated. "Yes, Banning. Tell us, Mr. Shadd, about Banning."

And there was Arpeggio, who, two hours back, had confidently expected to spend the day cultivating the earth, there he was, looking into the faces of at least a dozen "nice" people; and Bayliss—whoever Bayliss was—expected him to tell them about Banning, while Miss Edith Granger and Miss Fleda Barnett were served to salad and listened.

Arpeggio's face did that with which it always met embarrassment. His eyebrows lifted, his eyelids drooped, obscuring his eyes; his mouth, as he spoke, assumed the crooked line of his preparation to smile; and he swallowed.

"Well, sir," he said, "Banning is this kind of place: If two of the business men met on the street, and both spoke to once proposing the same thing, they'd both switch off and claim they misspoke, rather 'n to agree with each other. Every place but Banning they's only four directions. But Banning has got just as many directions to kick out in as it has got folks to do the kickin'."

"No public spirit," said Bayliss.

"Public spirit?" repeated Arpeggio. "Say! If you was to come to Banning with the earth for sale half-price, they wouldn't go in on it together."

"What's the matter with Banning?" asked Bayliss. "Give us your idea of the remedy, Mr. Shadd."

Arpeggio considered, with an air of fairness. What was the matter with Banning?

"What ails it, my idea," he said, "is because it 'ain't got no public spirit. And it 'ain't got no public spirit on account of what ails it."

"Precisely," said Bayliss. And their laughter warmed the heart of Arpeggio like May.

Encouraged, he spoke again. "Banning," said he, "is all right on the morals of the folks. The homes, you understand. It's all right on the business of the merchants. The individual houses, you understand. But when you come to town decency and business co-operation—say! Believe me, there ain't it."

Bayliss nodded absently. "It's the picture of a lot of them," he said.

Positively kindled, Arpeggio went forward. "Banning," said he, with a frown and a sidewise look—"Banning is a very peculiar town, though. In this way—Banning is very, ve-ry conservative."

To his surprise, they all laughed spontaneously, enjoyably.

"Not a little town in the country," said Bayliss, "whose inhabitants won't tell you confidentially that their town is peculiarly conservative."

"Is that so?" said Arpeggio, his jaw dropping.

The talk drifted away from him. Bayliss became absorbed in a housing chart which Miss Granger was showing him. Mrs. Ebens was talking with Plunkett on a river-front improvement. Across the table Miss Fleda Barnett and a good-looking young fellow were discussing the adaptation of the English half-timbered shops to use in small American cities.

The idea was born to Arpeggio that these people were talking of things of which he had never heard. What did he know of the fragments which reached him from Cretish about breathing-spaces and recreation-piers? And yet was he not a commissioner, even as Cretish? He straightened, and looked smilingly from one to another, seeking an opening. But not a conversation was in progress into which he could have dipped to save his life. What in time was a public-welfare committee? He was a city commissioner, but there existed among these others a freemasonry of understanding of things which he had never conjectured. He bit his lips, pressing two fingers flatly upon them, and looked intently at the others.

"They all act so darn familiar with different things," thought Arpeggio.

But it was characteristic of him that he was not scornful of them. He was inquiring, rather, and wholly wistful.

On the way back to the hall he found himself beside Bayliss. And Bayliss was talking on something like this:

[Illustration: "IT'S REAL NICE TO BE EATING HERE ALONGSIDE OF YOU"]

"Business interests have thought they could get along by themselves. If a man had a store, he put in a good stock, advertised well, and thought that was all there was to it. He co-operated in exchange, in banking, and so on—but he sold alone. Naturally, when he began to get the radiant idea of selling co-operation, it's gone to his head and he's abusing it. But wait. It's taken him a long time to see that little string of shops on either side of him. It's taking him still longer to see the rest of the town. The thing is to get 'em all co-operating—the folks and their enterprises and their plans for their children. This isn't just morals. It's good business. By George! it must be wonderful to be the commissioner of a little town these days, and find ways to string things together—"

Arpeggio listened. There were, he felt, things which he ought to be able to say in reply. If he could only think what! Finally he did think of something:

"They's a lot o' new-fangled notions goin' these days," he submitted. "Keeps a fellow jumpin' to clip in on 'em. I like it," he confessed, broadly.

Bayliss, that big Bayliss, suddenly put his hand on the other man's shoulder.

"I'm glad to hear you say so," he said.

In the lobby the party passed Stack Mayhew and Dodo Purcell, leaning stiffly against the wall, and alone. Arpeggio, pressing closer to Bayliss, nodded at them casually with, "How are you, fellows?" and passed grandly on. Then he was overcome to hear Miss Granger's voice:

"Here are Mr. Mayhew and Mr. Purcell! Wait, please. I want you all to meet these two commissioners."

Dodd and Stack, ducking from the shoulders, put out hands to all that party, who greeted them with a casual friendliness greatly puzzling to Arpeggio. Indeterminately, he felt that Dodd and Stack and, just possibly, he himself were different from the others. Yet not one of these was aloof, not one of these, he said it to himself, put on any "side." Could these strangers be making up to him, and to Dodd and Stack? When they were all seated together, Arpeggio's face wore an inquiring frown. What was the game?

On the great canvas stretched across the hall abruptly a picture dawned. A long street, lined with one-and-two-story shops; at the doors groceries and fruits and meat displayed; overhead lights and wires; a half-dozen billboards. He was shot through with the pang of recognition. It was Banning—the main street of Banning. There was the popcorn-wagon. There was the dog-wagon. There was Stilie Bale's, and Jed Thorn's garage, and the bank. A Banning residence street, the schools and other public buildings and the two factories followed. "Typical Town of To-day," the caption said.

As he listened, frowningly, Arpeggio was stung by a phrase of the speaker's:

"The excellent factory sites in such towns will not be long overlooked, but the overcrowding consequent to factory location—"

Factory sites, eh? Factory location. Grand! If Banning just had another factory or two, it 'd make the town—make it. Like enough some of these folks was looking round for a big bonus, or a low tax-rate the first year, and they was for softening up the Banning commissioners. Dodd and Stack it would be easy enough to flatter like the dickens. Miss Granger and Miss Barnett could be taken in, same as angels. But he, Arpeggio, would be onto them fast enough. There couldn't none of 'em take in A. Shadd, if it come to any factory-site proposition. He dreamed a dream of securing a colossal factory for Banning, and this at signal terms, and under the very noses of Stack and Dodd, the practical—

"Look," said Bayliss, as if the great man knew that Arpeggio's attention had wandered.

On the screen stood a noble building—simple, small, but really noble. Not Greek, not ancient, not imported at all. "Banning as Yet Unrealized," the caption said, and "A Possible City Hall." Then came possible other buildings, a library, a municipal theater, a row of little shops uniform and yet various, a strip of park and picnic-ground, a drive round the Point to the little lake. Then the pictures went somewhere else. Went to other little towns whose beautiful, simple buildings, set in green of tree and vine, gave to Arpeggio his first intimation that because a town is little it need not be ugly. But all the time that mention of factory sites haunted Arpeggio. When the lights came back he turned to Bayliss.

"One of you folks interested in a factory proposition in Banning?" it was on his lips to inquire. Before he could utter this, Bayliss spoke to him.

"Miss Granger had those Banning pictures made," he said, "at her own expense. She colored the plates herself—perfect examples of what might be done with the average town. Banning owes Miss Granger a good deal."

Miss Granger had had those pictures made. Arpeggio grasped this, and for a space he considered. Then he turned and looked into the beautiful eyes of Miss Edith Granger. And he was moved, as he had never been moved by tears of woman, to see tears in those beautiful eyes.

"Banning," she said, "might be like that, Mr. Shadd."

Tears—tears in the eyes of this glorious woman because Banning might be like that and was not. What was this? Did people care? Did she care?

"I had Mr. Plunkett over yesterday," she said, "to look about. He saw it—he thinks it can be done. But he says that we must buy up the land beyond the bridge, on the river-front, so that no factory will get in there and spoil everything—"

Arpeggio listened.

"If we could call a meeting while Mr. Bayliss is here in the West," she continued, "he would come and talk about that—he said that he would."

So, then, it wasn't Plunkett or Bayliss—

"And Mrs. Ebens says that her husband is thinking of locating a factory at Banning, but he promises to keep away from the river-front, if we want it for a park—"

Full upon Arpeggio, as he sat groping, Edith Granger turned.

"And you, Mr. Shadd," she said, "are the one to help us."

[Illustration: "BANNING," SHE SAID, "MIGHT BE LIKE THAT, MR. SHADD"]

Through Arpeggio went some terrific new fire of emprise. He knew it, nebulous, unmistakably derived from Miss Edith Granger's tears, yet abruptly convincing him, enlisting him. Operative for her was some force of which he had been all ignorant. It moved upon him, less an idea than an effulgence. He looked about him. Did any of the rest take it the way that she did? His eye swept the row, the hall, and he saw that the people, sitting quiet within the spell which the hour had made, were perhaps not quite as he had facilely imaged them. They were going to sing, and he got to his feet. And, as they sang, something of the incorruptible spirit of that meeting caught the little man, and indefinably he felt the commanding forces which flowed upon that audience.

 

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears—

 

Faint and lovely there came breathing upon him some sense of the incomparable romance stirring in the little towns, the great towns of his land. And he stood shaken by his first sense of the patriotism which builds, builds to music, builds with all the quickening and kindling of marching feet; and builds to-morrow. Was this the way that Miss Granger was feeling? And these others, of the luncheon party? Was this the game?

"It's something the way I felt when I got that circus for the kids of Banning," he pathetically thought.

Arpeggio was in the grasp of a great determination. He was bursting to give it expression. As they made their way up the aisle, his dog-like eyes looked into Edith Granger's and he spoke from the fullness of his heart:

"I'll be jumped up if we don't start somethin'!" he said.

 

Stack and Dodd, it seemed, were also to ride home in the car with Miss Barnett and Miss Granger. While they were bidding the others good-by Miss Fleta Barnett sat waiting at the wheel, and as she waited she powdered her nose. The others parted with happy talk and laughter. Miss Edith Granger, exquisite, serene, stepped to the car. Bayliss called his farewell—the man was genuine, voice and heart. Tentatively Arpeggio grasped it: Here were no reformers, no more than his mother was a reformer when she sought to refurnish her parlor. Here were those who liked the game, who had delight in what they dreamed.

The three men sat in the tonneau, and went down the red ways of sunset, the gold-green ways of smitten leaves and grass.

"Quite some of a meetin'," said Stack. "Must have been a hundred of us commissioners out."

"A lot of nice idees and a lot of rot," said Dodd. "Say, some of those fellows was bugs and bats, wasn't they?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Arpeggio. "I don't know."

He drew down his chin, made his cheek taut, and rubbed it reflectively, audibly.

At the City Hall Stack and Dodd were deposited, and it was then that Stack said:

[Illustration: HE FELT HIMSELF IN GREAT CLEAR SPACES]

"Much obliged for the ride home, I'm sure. Sorry we lied about you, Shadd. We told the ladies you wasn't goin' in."

As the car kept on Arpeggio turned these words in his mind. Then Miss Granger and Miss Barnett had known that he was not— Then they had come to his house on purpose that morning. He looked at their perfect hair, their erect, well-covered shoulders.

They had deliberately carried him off to that meeting.

But he was unresentful and wonderfully content. When, as they went up Cook Street, Miss Granger turned to address him, she found him smiling. As he was set down at his gate he could not resist it.

"Much obliged for kidnappin' me and takin' me over," he said, his droll wrinkled eyes atwinkle.

They gravely bowed, but above the sound of the motor as it rolled away he thought—and could not be quite sure—that he heard Miss Fleda Barnett laugh.

Under the locusts and box-alders bordering the road Arpeggio discerned a figure slouching, swaggering toward him, a good-natured face grinning. It was Hernie Nichol, going home to supper.

"Say!" said Hernie, "I told the fellows you was cinched—with a little due persuadin'."

Arpeggio leaned on the picket gate. His face was serene, even absent. A vine of sweetbriar grew by the fence, and he fingered this sweetbriar and sniffed at his fragrant finger-tips.

"Hello, Hernie!" he said. "Beats all about this stuff, how nice it smells on your hands. Rose geranium same way. Lemon verbena, too. I must get me a lemon verbena—"

"Well," said Hernie, "for cat's sake, get it. I got to eat my supper."

"Say, Hernie," said Arpeggio, and in his eyes Hernie might have observed—and did not do so—a sudden light to visit. "All right. All right!" Arpeggio leaned to say it with an emphasis eloquent, revealing.

Hernie caught the tone.

"You'll run?" he said. "Sure you will. Might as well have it understood between us. Then you can hang off all you want."

And now Arpeggio's voice was so loud that Hernie glanced over shoulder, to the pleasant empty fields and the cows waiting at the bars.

"Might as well have something else understood between us, Nichol," Arpeggio said. "If I get the office again, I'm likely to join in and help turn this town bottom side up—streets, treasury, appointments, appropriations, and the whole cheese."

Hernie smiled. "Sure," he said. "Spout the reform guff all you want beforehand."

Arpeggio regarded him pleasantly.

"You heard what I said," he observed, succinctly. "Remember that I mean it. That's all."

"Queer guy," said Hernie to himself, under more locusts and box-alders, "but safe—safe. He'll get in in a walk, too."

Arpeggio went up the path and looked across his garden of fresh earth and fresh green, two-toned with long shadows and late sun. Doves curved in the air and dipped to the gravel. There breathed the inner perfume of a country afternoon.

But for once he was not conscious of these. His eyes were on the sky beyond the clustered roofs of the little town. Above those roofs, arch upon arch, rose another and a fairer town, which for the first time that day he had visioned, a town of indefinable towers. He felt himself in great, clear spaces, wide, clean spaces, where a man might move free.

The brick-yard whistle blew for six o'clock. A little boy going along the road dragged a stick briskly on the fence pickets. Mrs. Shadd came to the door.

with a knife in her hand. "Corn cakes and syrup," she called. "It's all ready when you are."