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Read Ebook: A Fortnight of Folly by Conway Hugh Thompson Maurice
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Ebook has 82 lines and 47872 words, and 2 pages
"We may as well make the most of our last evening together," he said, glancing jovially around.
"We shall have to walk down the mountain in the morning, I suppose," remarked Bartley Hubbard.
"That's jest w'at's the matter," observed the sheriff.
"The weeming, they'll hev kinveyances, young man, so ye kin jest shet up ef ye please," the officer interrupted, with a good-natured wink and a knowing wag of his head.
A disinterested observer would have noted readily enough that the feast was far from a banquet. There was Ferris, for instance, munching a biscuit and sipping his wine and pretending to enjoy Punner's sallies and Cattleton's drolleries, while down in his heart lay the leaden thought, the hideous knowledge of an empty pocket. Indeed the reflection was a common one, weighting down almost every breast at the board.
"For the good heaven's sake, Hubbard," cried Lucas, "do use your influence; quick, please, or I shall collapse."
Bartley Hubbard took hold of her dress and gently pulled her down into her chair.
"The sheriff objects!" he yelled in her ear.
"After dinner?" she resignedly inquired, "well, then after dinner, in the parlor."
When the feast had come to the crumbs, Dunkirk arose and said:
"We all have had a good time at the Hotel Helicon, but our sojourn upon the heights of Mt. Boab has been cut short by a certain chain of mishaps over which we have had no control, and to-morrow we go away, doubtless forever. I feel like saying that I harbor no unpleasant recollections of the days we have spent together."
Cattleton sprung to his feet to move a vote of thanks "to the public-spirited and benevolent man who built this magnificent hotel and threw open its doors to us."
It was carried.
"Now then," said Lucas, adjusting his glasses and speaking in his gravest chest-tones, "I move that it be taken as the sense of this assembly, that it is our duty to draw upon our publisher for money enough to take us home."
The response was overwhelming.
Dunkirk felt the true state of affairs. He arose, his broad face wreathed with genial smiles, and said:
"To the certain knowledge of your unhappy publisher your accounts are already overdrawn, but in view of the rich material you have been gathering of late, your publisher will honor you draughts to the limit of your expenses home."
Never did happier people go to bed. The last sleep in Hotel Helicon proved to be the sweetest.
Far in the night, it is true, some one sang loudly but plaintively under Miss Moyne's window until the sheriff awoke and sallied forth to end the serenade with some remarks about "cracking that eejit's gourd;" but there was no disturbance, the sounds blending sweetly with the dreams of the slumberers. They all knew that it was Crane, poor fellow, who had finally torn himself away from his father's fascinating uncle.
The retreat from Hotel Helicon was picturesque in the extreme. There had been much difficulty in finding vehicles to take the retiring guests down the mountain to the railway station, but Tolliver had come to the rescue with a mule, a horse, a cart, and an ox. These, when added to the rather incongruous collection of wagons and carts from every other available source, barely sufficed. Tolliver led the mule with Ferris on its back, while Miss Crabb and Miss Stackpole occupied the ox-cart, the former acting as driver.
"Good-bye and good luck to ye!" the sheriff called after them. "Mighty sorry ter discommode ye, but juty air juty, an' a officer air no respecter of persons."
Mrs. Nancy Jones Black sat beside Crane in a rickety wagon, and between jolts gave him many a word of wisdom on the subject of strong drink, which the handsome Bourbon poet stowed away for future consideration.
A year later Crane and Peck met at Saratoga and talked over old times. At length coming down to the present, Crane said:
"Oh, well," said Peck, "that goes without the saying. Anybody could succeed with her chance."
"Haven't you heard? Ah, I see that the news has not yet penetrated the wilds of Kentucky. The open secret of Miss Moyne's success lies in the fact that she has married her publisher."
A silence of some minutes followed, during which Crane burned his cigar very rapidly.
"What fools we were," Peck presently ventured, "to be fighting a duel about her!"
"No, sir," said Crane, with a far-away look in his eyes, "no, sir, I would die for her right now."
So the subject was dropped between them forever.
Some of Gaslucky's creditors bought Hotel Helicon at the sheriff's sale, but it proved a barren investment.
The house stands there now, weather-beaten and lonely on the peak of Mt. Boab, all tenantless and forlorn.
As to Tolliver's still-house I cannot say, but at stated intervals Crane receives a small cask marked: "J'yful juice, hannel with keer," which comes from his "Pap's uncle Pete."
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