CHAPTER III

PRESENTING HIRAM BAXTER

Hiram Baxter, whose hidden purposes were responsible for Betty's sudden and momentous journey to London, was, in this year of the first flying machine, one of the few really interesting self-made men to be found in New York City, where such sturdy and picturesque types are rapidly disappearing. At fifty-five Baxter was a big, grizzled fellow, with a pair of straight shoulders, a friendly smile and a way of using the English language that was absolutely and delightfully his own.

"This grammar business ain't much of a trick," he would declare, with his slow characteristic drawl. "I could swing it any time I wanted to, but where's the sense o' wearin' high collars and patent leather boots if yer neck and yer feet ain't comf'table in 'em? Suppose I say to you, 'I like them peaches'? You say those peaches. I say, no, them peaches. You say it's wrong. I say it don't make a hang o' difference, it don't hurt you an' it don't hurt me an' it don't hurt the peaches."

Baxter invariably dressed in simple black garments, including a wide-brimmed soft black hat, that gave him in repose, with his ruddy, rugged visage, somewhat the look of an English bishop, as had been more than once remarked by his episcopal friend of Bunchester.

"It ain't because I like it that I wear black," Hiram sometimes explained, "and it ain't because I'm sad. The fact is black's the only safe color fer me if I want a happy home. Why, if I ever let myself go on colored vests an' striped pants, an' fancy neckties, my wife'd start fer a divorce the next mornin'. Yes, sir."

When Hiram laughed his blue eyes twinkled at you under shaggy black brows and his strong teeth gleamed at you beneath his white mustache; then, perhaps, he resembled a bluff German statesman. But as soon as he spoke you knew he was American through and through, and, somehow, you thought none the less of him for his quaint lapses in speech. Not all the rules of prosody and syntax could alter the fact that Hiram Baxter was a figure of compelling power, a strongly original and lovable man, who inspired immediate confidence in his wonderful resourcefulness.

It was during his recent voyage on the _Lusitania_, in the course of a brisk walk on the upper deck, that Baxter took the Bishop of Bunchester into his confidence regarding certain serious personal matters. Hiram's friendship with the bishop was of long standing, for the American some twenty-eight years before, at the outset of his varied career, had married an English lady, a distant connection of the prelate's, and it had long been the Baxters' custom to divide their year between a comfortable home in Washington Square, New York, and a country place in Surrey, about two hours out of London, where Mrs. Baxter entertained numerous relatives and friends with lavish hospitality.

"I tell ye, Bish," Hiram broke out abruptly, "it ain't by a man's successes that ye can size up his character. No, sir. It's by the mistakes he makes an' the way he faces 'em and gets out of 'em. Why, I know a doctor up in New Hampshire--homeliest feller I ever seen--he got rich makin' cough medicine out o' shingles."

"Bless my soul! Shingles!" the bishop exclaimed.

"Yes, sir; shingles. Good pine shingles. A whole lumber yard full of 'em. He got 'em in foreclosure proceedings--hadn't the first notion what to do with them shingles until he happened to think of cough medicine. That turned the trick. Ever heard of 'Peck's Peerless Pectoral'? It was his invention--stewed it out o' them shingles, every bottle of it; and say, Bish, it's great stuff. Which is what I call makin' the best of yer mistakes, for it ain't every country doctor could see his way to snatchin' victory out of a lot o' discredited pine shingles."

This bit of homely philosophy was received by the distinguished churchman with amused approval.

"Very true, my dear Baxter, but I don't see how this applies to you."

"I'll show ye," chortled Hiram. "Ever hear o' the feller that used to wear detachable cuffs and then went broke because he bought a shirt that had cuffs sewed on? No? It's a fact. Ye see he had to get a swell suit to match the shirt, and a swell fur overcoat to match the suit, and a swell automobile to match the fur overcoat, and the first thing he knew he was such a swell he blew up an' busted."

"What an extraordinary fancy!" exclaimed the bishop, laughing immoderately.

"Fancy nothing. It's a fact," declared Baxter. "And I want to tell you I've been a little that way myself. I've been tryin' to live up to the standards o' my wife an' my wife's relations. That's where I've made my mistake. Yes, sir. I'm only a rough feller, Bish, but--well, I married Eleanor and--you know what she is. Swell English family and--grand ideas, and--you understand. D'ye think I'm stuck on havin' a country place in England? Asbury Park 'd suit me a lot better, but Eleanor wanted it. She said it was the proper thing and--so I took Ipping House, with its ancestral towers and its dungeons and a lot o' blamed foolishness. Excuse me, Bish, but that's what it is. And as fer relatives--" he paused with a grim tightening of the lips.

"My dear Baxter," put in the prelate, "you surely do not regret the old-fashioned English hospitality that you and your excellent wife have been practicing?"

"Well," drawled Hiram, "if old-fashioned English hospitality consists in bein' worked in every conceivable way by a lot of impecunious third cousins that never did a day's work in their lives, then I say it's time old-fashioned English hospitality got inoculated with some new-fashioned American common sense. Why, with Lionel Fitz Brown, my wife's third cousin, and Kate Clendennin, the Countess Kate, and the two Merles and various others, my house is about as much like a home as a Narragansett hotel. Now take Merle."

"Horatio Merle?" interjected the bishop. "You don't mean----"

"Yes, I do," continued Baxter, "the Rev. Horatio Merle, my wife's second cousin once removed. As good a man as ever thumped a Bible--you know what I mean, Bish," Hiram added quickly, mistaking for a sign of disapproval the cough which the reverend auditor had substituted for a chuckle. "Yes, sir, for a downright, pure-hearted Christian you might go through the British Isles with a fine-tooth comb and not find another like Horatio Merle; but what good does that do him? He's lost five preachin' jobs in three years, and for the last six months the only flocks that have had the benefit of his pulpit oratory have been the birds and butterflies at Bainbridge Manor. I tell you, Bish, he missed his vocation. He ought to have been one of them nature sharps."

"I believe you are right," assented the bishop. "Horatio Merle would have made his mark as a naturalist. I never knew a man in whom the love of nature was more beautifully developed. He is a sort of modern St. Francis."

"Modern St. Francis," snorted Hiram. "I don't know who he was, but if he could beat Horatio Merle----"

he broke off with a broad grin. "Say, Bish, did ye hear how Horatio lost his last preachin' job?"

"Why, no. How was that?"

"Seems he was goin' to church one Sunday mornin', and passin' by the canal he saw some boys tryin' to drown a kitten. They'd just hitched a stone around its neck when Merle caught sight of 'em.

"'You young rascals,' he called out, but he was too late, and the next minute the poor little thing splashed into the water. Well, sir, that was too much for Horatio. He knew the church folks were waitin' for him, but he couldn't help it. He just waded into that canal, black clothes and all, and fished out the kitten. Then he went ahead with his religious duties while the water dripped down under his robes and the congregation made up their minds that he was plumb crazy."

"Poor Merle!" reflected the bishop. "And what became of the kitten?"

"Why, he's got him yet. A big black cat now. Martin Luther's his name, and wherever Merle goes there's Martin Luther taggin' after him like Mary's little lamb. Understand, Bish, I like Merle; I like to have him 'round. As far as that goes I like the rest of 'em, but----" Here his face clouded.

"My dear Baxter," said the bishop sympathetically, "I understand these little family annoyances, but after all you're a rich man and----"

"Yes," cut in Hiram, "I'm a rich man, and if I don't look out I'll wake up some fine morning and find myself"--here the fighting spirit flashed in Hiram's honest blue eyes, and with a swing of his powerful shoulders--"no, I won't, either," he added. "I'll beat those Wall Street devils yet; I'll beat 'em at their own game."

Then Baxter, in strict confidence, explained to the bishop the nature of the difficulties in which he innocently found himself, difficulties that put in jeopardy every dollar of his fortune and with it the happiness and welfare of his family.

The prelate followed this narrative with sympathetic interest and concern, and then listened with growing astonishment while Baxter outlined briefly his programme, which, after all, was based on a very simple idea, yet was so unusual that the average person would have at once rejected it as impossible.

Thus the bishop at once objected: "But, my good friend, this is out of the question, quite out of the question."

"Why is it?" persisted Hiram.

"For one thing your wife will never consent."

"Won't she? You wait and see."

"For another thing I feel obliged to say----"

"You feel obliged to say," chuckled Baxter, "that it's a crazy notion. Bet ye four dollars and a quarter that's what ye think. But listen to me, Bish. I've made my fortune doin' crazy things. Once I bought three thousand plug hats at auction in Chicago fer eight hundred dollars, an' I sold 'em at dollar apiece in Denver for a political parade. I've bought busted railroads and watched 'em come up to par. I've bought played-out oil wells an' made 'em spout gold. Why, I even bought an old church once with a haunted graveyard and got square on the marble in it, with all the land as velvet."

"Dear, dear, dear! A haunted graveyard?" murmured the bishop.

"Yes, sir; and I'll put this thing through the same as I did that, because it's a good idea. A big, sound, American idea. Now you just watch me."