Double Trouble | Page 2

everything; and I shall be gone but a day on any given date this time; so it's only the usual thing, after all. I shall not leave any address; and don't look for me until I step in at that door! Good-by."
And he walked out of the bank, went home, and began looking over for the last time his cameras, films, tripods and the other paraphernalia of his fad.
"This habit of running off alone, Florian," said Mrs. Baggs, his sister, housekeeper, general manager, and the wife of Baggs--his confidential clerk and silent partner--"gives me an uneasy feeling. If you had only done as I wanted you to do, you'd have had some one----"
"Now, Jennie," said he, "we have settled that question a dozen times, and we can't go over it again if I am to catch the 4:48 train. Keep your eye on the men, and keep Baggs up in the collar, and see that Wilkes and Ranger get their just dues. I must have rest, Jennie; and as for the wife, why, there'll be more some day for this purely speculative family of yours if we---- By the way, there's the whistle at Anderson's crossing. Good-by, my dear!"
On the 4:48 train, at least until it had aged into the 7:30 or 8:00, Mr. Florian Amidon, banker, and most attractive unmarried man of Hazelhurst, was not permitted to forget that his going away was an important event. The fact that he was rich, from the viewpoint of the little mid-western town, unmarried and attractive, easily made his doings important, had nothing remarkable followed. But he had exceptional points as a person of consequence, aside from these. His father had been a scholar, and his mother so much of a grande dame as to have old worm-eaten silks and laces with histories. The Daughters of the American Revolution always went to the Amidons for ancient toggery for their eighteenth-century costumes--and checks for their deficits. The family even had a printed genealogy. Moreover, Florian had been at the head of his class in the high school, had gone through the family alma mater in New England, and been finished in Germany. Hazelhurst, therefore, looked on him as a possession, and thought it knew him.
We, however, may confide to the world that Hazelhurst knew only his outer husk, and that Mr. Amidon was inwardly proud of his psychological hinterland whereof his townsmen knew nothing. To Hazelhurst his celibacy was the banker's caution, waiting for something of value in the matrimonial market: to him it was a bashful and palpitant--almost maidenly--expectancy of the approach of some radiant companion of his soul, like those which spoke to him from the pages of his favorite poets.
This was silly in a mere business man! If found out it would have justified a run on the bank.
To Hazelhurst he was a fixed and integral part of their society: to himself he was a galley-slave chained to the sweep of percentages, interest-tables, cash-balances, and lines of credit, to whom there came daily the vision of a native Arcadia of art, letters and travel. It was good business to allow Hazelhurst to harbor its illusions; it was excellent pastime and good spiritual nourishment for Amidon to harbor his; and one can see how it may have been with some quixotic sense of seeking adventure that he boarded the train.
What followed was so extraordinary that everything he said or did was remembered, and the record is tolerably complete. He talked with Simeon Woolaver, one of his tenants, about the delinquent rent, and gave Simeon a note to Baggs relative to taking some steers in settlement. This was before 5:17, at which time Mr. Woolaver got off at Duxbury.
"He was entirely normal," said Simeon during the course of his examination--"more normal than I ever seen him; an' figgered the shrink on them steers most correct from his standp'int, on a business card with a indelible pencil. He done me out of about eight dollars an' a half. He was exceedin'ly normal--up to 5:17!"
Mr. Amidon also encountered Mrs. Hunter and Miss Hunter in the parlor-car, immediately after leaving Duxbury. Miss Hunter was on her way to the Maine summer resorts with the Senator Fowlers, to whom Mrs. Hunter was taking her. Mrs. Hunter noticed nothing peculiar in his behavior, except the pointed manner in which he passed the chair by Minnie's side, and took the one by herself. This seemed abnormal to Mrs. Hunter, whose egotism had its center in her daughter; but those who remembered the respectful terror with which he regarded women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five failed to see exceptional conduct in this. His lawyer, Judge Blodgett, with whom he went into the buffet at about seven, found him in conversation with these two ladies.
"He seemed embarrassed," said