Mr. Crewe's Career — Complete. Winston Churchill
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clear-headed Mr. Tooting, now a little bewildered.
“Nothing, yet,” said Austen, “but I'm thinking seriously of having a sandwich and a piece of apple pie. Will you come along?”
They crossed the square together, Mr. Tooting racking a normally fertile brain for some excuse to reopen the subject. Despairing of that, he decided that any subject would do.
“That Humphrey Crewe up at Leith is smart—smart as paint,” he remarked. “Do you know him?”
“I've seen him,” said Austen. “He's a young man, isn't he?”
“And natty. He knows a thing or two for a millionaire that don't have to work, and he runs that place of his right up to the handle. You ought to hear him talk about the tariff, and national politics. I was passing there the other day, and he was walking around among the flowerbeds. 'Ain't your name Tooting?' he hollered. I almost fell out of the buggy.”
“What did he want?” asked Austen, curiously. Mr. Tooting winked.
“Say, those millionaires are queer, and no mistake. You'd think a fellow that only had to cut coupons wouldn't be lookin' for another job, wouldn't you? He made me hitch my horse, and had me into his study, as he called it, and gave me a big glass of whiskey and soda. A fellow with buttons and a striped vest brought it on tiptoe. Then this Crewe gave me a long yellow cigar with a band on it and told me what the State needed—macadam roads, farmers' institutes, forests, and God knows what. I told him all he had to do was to get permission from old man Flint, and he could have 'em.”
“What did he say to that?”
“He said Flint was an intimate friend of his. Then he asked me a whole raft of questions about fellows in the neighbourhood I didn't know he'd ever heard of. Say, he wants to go from Leith to the Legislature.”
“He can go for all I care,” said Austen, as he pushed open the door of the restaurant.
For a few days Mr. Meader hung between life and death. But he came of a stock which had for generations thrust its roots into the crevices of granite, and was not easily killed by steam-engines. Austen Vane called twice, and then made an arrangement with young Dr. Tredway (one of the numerous Ripton Tredways whose money had founded the hospital) that he was to see Mr. Meader as soon as he was able to sustain a conversation. Dr. Tredway, by the way, was a bachelor, and had been Austen's companion on many a boisterous expedition.
When Austen, in response to the doctor's telephone message, stood over the iron bed in the spick-and-span men's ward of St. Mary's, a wave of that intense feeling he had experienced at the accident swept over him. The farmer's beard was overgrown, and the eyes looked up at him as from caverns of suffering below the bandage. They were shrewd eyes, however, and proved that Mr. Meader had possession of the five senses—nay, of the six. Austen sat down beside the bed.
“Dr. Tredway tells me you are getting along finely,” he said.
“No thanks to the railrud,” answered Mr. Meader; “they done their best.”
“Did you hear any whistle or any bell?” Austen asked.
“Not a sound,” said Mr. Meader; “they even shut off their steam on that grade.”
Austen Vane, like most men who are really capable of a deep sympathy, was not an adept at expressing it verbally. Moreover, he knew enough of his fellow-men to realize that a Puritan farmer would be suspicious of sympathy. The man had been near to death himself, was compelled to spend part of the summer, his bread-earning season, in a hospital, and yet no appeal or word of complaint had crossed his lips.
“Mr. Meader,” said Austen, “I came over here to tell you that in my opinion you are entitled to heavy damages from the railroad, and to advise you not to accept a compromise. They will send some one to you and offer you a sum far below that which you ought in justice to receive, You ought to fight this case.”
“How am I going to pay a lawyer, with a mortgage on my farm?” demanded Mr. Meader.
“I'm a lawyer,” said Austen, “and if you'll take me, I'll defend you without charge.”
“Ain't you the son of Hilary Vane?”
“Yes.”
“I've heard of him a good many times,” said Mr. Meader, as if to ask what man had not. “You're railroad, ain't ye?”
Mr. Meader gazed long and thoughtfully into the young man's face, and the suspicion gradually faded from the farmer's blue eyes.
“I like your looks,” he said at last. “I guess you saved my life. I'm—I'm much obliged to you.”
When Mr. Tooting arrived later in the day, he found Mr. Meader willing to listen, but otherwise strangely non-committal. With native shrewdness, the farmer asked him what office he came from, but did not confide in Mr. Tooting the fact that Mr. Vane's son had volunteered to wring more money from Mr. Vane's client than Mr. Tooting offered him. Considerably bewildered, that gentleman left the hospital to report the affair to the Honourable Hilary, who, at intervals during the afternoon, found himself relapsing into speculation.
Inside of a somewhat unpromising shell, Mr. Zeb Meader was a human being, and no mean judge of men and motives. As his convalescence progressed, Austen Vane fell into the habit of dropping in from time to time to chat with him, and gradually was rewarded by many vivid character sketches of Mr. Meader's neighbours in Mercer and its vicinity. One afternoon, when Austen came into the ward, he found at Mr. Meader's bedside a basket of fruit which looked too expensive and tempting to have come from any dealer's in Ripton.
“A lady came with that,” Mr. Meader explained. “I never was popular before I was run over by the cars. She's be'n here twice. When she fetched it to-day, I kind of thought she was up to some, game, and I didn't want to take it.”
“Up to some game?” repeated Austen.
“Well, I don't know,” continued Mr. Meader, thoughtfully, “the woman here tells me she comes regular in the summer time to see sick folks, but from the way she made up to me I had an idea that she wanted something. But I don't know. Thought I'd ask you. You see, she's railrud.”
“Railroad!”
“She's Flint's daughter.”
Austen laughed.
“I shouldn't worry about that,” he said. “If Mr. Flint sent his daughter with fruit to everybody his railroad injures, she wouldn't have time to do anything else. I doubt if Mr. Flint ever heard of your case.”
Mr. Meader considered this, and calculated there was something in it.
“She was a nice, common young lady, and cussed if she didn't make me laugh, she has such a funny way of talkin'. She wanted to know all about you.”
“What did she want to know?” Austen exclaimed, not unnaturally.
“Well, she wanted to know about the accident, and I told her how you druv up and screwed that thing around my leg and backed the train down. She was a good deal took with that.”
“I think you are inclined to make too much of it,” said Austen.
Three days later, as he was about to enter the ward, Mr. Meader being now the only invalid there, he heard a sound which made him pause in the doorway. The sound was feminine laughter of a musical quality that struck pleasantly on Austen's ear. Miss Victoria Flint was sated beside Mr. Meader's bed, and qualified friendship had evidently been replaced by intimacy since Austen's last visit, for Mr. Meader was laughing, too.
“And now I'm quite sure you have missed your vocation, Mr. Meader,” said Victoria. “You would have made a fortune on the stage.”
“Me a play-actor!” exclaimed the invalid. “How much wages do they git?”
“Untold sums,” she declared, “if they can talk like you.”
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