Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman. Francis Hopkinson Smith

I tell you”—here the Colonel turned to me—“that she’s going to bring a servant with her this time? The dear woman is gettin’ too old to travel alone, and since Chad has been with me she has felt the need of some one to wait upon her. She has passed some weeks or mo’ in Richmond, she writes, and has greatly enjoyed the change. Make no engagement for Christmas, either one of you. That loveliest of women, suh, will grace our boa’d, and it is her special wish that both of you be present.”

      Fitz crushed the sugar in his glass, remarked that there was not the slightest doubt of his being present, winked at me appreciatingly over the edge of the tumbler, rubbed his paunch slowly with one hand, and with eyes upcast took another sip of the mixture.

      The Virginian to Fitz was a never-ending well of pleasure. The Colonel’s generosity, his almost Quixotic sense of honor, his loyalty to his friends, his tenderness over Chad and his reverence and love for that dear Aunt—who had furnished him really with all the ready money he had spent for years, and who was at the moment caring for the old place at Cartersville while the Colonel was in New York endeavoring to float, through Fitz, the bonds of the Cartersville & Warrentown Railroad—excited not only Fitz’s admiration and love, but afforded the broker the pleasantest of contrasts to the life he led in the Street, a contrast so delightful that Fitz seldom missed at least an evening’s salutation with him. That not a shovel of earth had yet been dug on the line of the Colonel’s Railroad, and that the whole enterprise was one of those schemes well nigh impossible to finance, made no difference to Fitz. He never lost an opportunity to work off the securities whenever there was the slightest opening. The bonds, of course, had not been issued; they had never been printed, in fact. These details would come later—whenever the capitalist or syndicate should begin to look into the enterprise in earnest.

      Up to the moment when this whirl had caught the Street—an event which Klutchem acting for his friends had helped—Fitz had never quite given up the hope that somehow, or in some way, or by some hook or crook, some deluded capitalist, with more money than brains, would lose both by purchasing these same “Garden Spots” as the securities of the Colonel’s proposed road were familiarly called in the Street. That but one single inquiry had thus far ever been made, and that no one of his or anybody else’s customers had ever given them more than a hasty dismissal, had never discouraged Fitz.

      As for the Colonel he was even more sanguine. The dawn of success was already breaking through the darkness and his hopes would soon be realized. Hour after hour he would sit by his fire, building fairy castles in its cheery coals. Almost every night there was a new picture. In each the big bridge over the Tench was already built, bearing his double track road to Warrentown and the sea—he could see every span and pier of it; the town of Fairfax, named after his ancestors, was crowning the plateau; the round-house for his locomotives was almost complete, the wharves and landing docks finished. And in all of these pictures, warm and glowing, there was one which his soul coveted above all others—the return of the proud days of the old Estate: the barns and outbuildings repaired; the fences in order; Carter Hall restored to its former grandeur, and dear Aunt Nancy once more in her high spring coach, with Chad standing by to take her shawl and wraps. These things, and many others as rose colored and inspiring, the Colonel saw night after night in the glow and flash and sparkle of his wood fire.

      No wonder then that Fitz kept hoping against hope; deluding him with promises and keeping up his spirits with any fairy tale his conscience would permit his telling or his ingenuity contrive.

      To-night, however, Fitz’s nerve seemed to have failed him. To the Colonel’s direct inquiry regarding the slight nibble of an English syndicate—(that syndicate which some months later made the Colonel’s fortune and with which Fitz had buoyed up his hopes) the broker had only an evasive answer. The Colonel noticed the altered tone and thought he had divined the cause.

      “You are tired out, Fitz. Isn’t it so? I don’t wonder when I think of the vast commercial problems you are solvin’ every day. Go upstairs, my dear boy, and get into my bed for the night. I won’t have you go home. It’s too cold for you to go out and the snow is driftin’ badly. I’ll take the sofa here.”

      “No, Colonel, I think I’ll toddle along home. I am tired, I guess. I ought to be; I’ve had nothing but hard knocks all day.”

      “Then you shan’t leave my house, suh; I won’t permit it. Chad, go upstairs and get Mr. Fitzpatrick’s chamber ready for the night, and Chad——”

      Fitz laughed. “And have you sleep on that hair-cloth sofa, Colonel?” and he pointed to the sagging lounge.

      “Why not?—I’ve done it befo’. Come, I insist.”

      Fitz was on his feet now and with Chad’s assistance was struggling into his overcoat, which that attentive darky had hung over a chairback that it might dry the easier.

      “I’m going home, Colonel, and to bed,” Fitz said in a positive tone. “I shouldn’t sleep a wink if I knew you were thrashing around on that shake-down, and you wouldn’t either. Good-night”; and holding out his hand to his host, he gave me a tap on my shoulder as he passed my chair and left the room, followed by the Colonel.

      It was only when the Colonel had found Fitz’s rubbers himself and had turned up the collar of his coat and had made it snug around his throat to keep out the snow, and had patted him three times on the shoulder—he only showed that sort of affection to Fitz—and had held the door open until both Fitz and Chad were lost in the gloom of the tunnel, the wind having extinguished the lantern, that the Colonel again resumed his seat by the fire.

      “I must say I’m worried about Fitz, Major. He don’t look right and he don’t act right”—he sighed as he picked up his pipe and sank into his arm-chair until his head rested on its back. “I’m going to have him see a doctor. That’s what I’m going to do, and at once. Do you know of a good doctor, Major?”

      “Medicine won’t help him, Colonel,” I answered. I knew the dear old fellow would not sleep a wink even in his own bed if the idea got into his head that Fitz was ill.

      “What will?”

      “Money.”

      The Colonel looked at me in astonishment.

      “What kind of money?”

      “Any kind that’s worth a hundred cents on the dollar.”

      “Why, what nonsense, Major, I’d take Fitz’s check for a million.”

      “Klutchem won’t.”

      “What’s the scoundrel got to do with it?”

      “Everything, unfortunately. Fitz is short of 10,000 shares of Consolidated Smelting, and Klutchem and his crowd have got about every share of it locked up in their safes. Some of Fitz’s customers have gone back on him, and he’s got to make the fight alone. If smelting goes up another fifteen points to-morrow Fitz goes with it. It’s not a doctor he wants, it’s a banker. Cash, not pills, is what will pull Fitz through.”

      Had a bomb been exploded on the hearth at his feet the Colonel could not have been more astonished. He sat staring into my eyes as I unfolded the story, his face changing with every disclosure; horror at the situation, anger at the man who had caused it, and finally—and this dominated all the others—profound sympathy for the friend he loved. He knew something of the tightening of the grasp of a man like Klutchem and he did not underestimate the gravity of the situation. What Consolidated Smelting represented, or what place it held in the market were unknown quantities to the Colonel. What he really saw was the red flag of the auctioneer floating over the front porch of that friend in Virginia whom the Bank had ruined, and the family silver and old portraits lying in the carts that were to take them away forever. It was part of the damnable system of Northern finance and now Fitzpatrick was to suffer a similar injustice.

      “Fitz in Klutchem’s power! My God, suh!” he burst out at last, “you don’t tell me so! And Fitz never told me a word about it. My po’ Fitz! My po’ Fitz!” he added slowly with quivering lips. “Are