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THE CELEBRITY

By Winston Churchill



VOLUME 1.

CHAPTER I

I was about to say that I had known the Celebrity from the time he wore
kilts. But I see I shall have to amend that, because he was not a
celebrity then, nor, indeed, did he achieve fame until some time after I
had left New York for the West. In the old days, to my commonplace and
unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never
read me any of his manuscripts, which I can safely say he would have done
had he written any at that time, and therefore my lack of detection of
his promise may in some degree be pardoned. But he had then none of the
oddities and mannerisms which I hold to be inseparable from genius, and
which struck my attention in after days when I came in contact with the
Celebrity. Hence I am constrained to the belief that his eccentricity
must have arrived with his genius, and both after the age of twenty-five.
Far be it from me to question the talents of one upon whose head has been
set the laurel of fame!

When I knew him he was a young man without frills or foibles, with an
excellent head for business. He was starting in to practise law in a
downtown office with the intention of becoming a great corporation
lawyer. He used to drop into my chambers once in a while to smoke, and
was first-rate company. When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover
laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised
to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me. I look upon
notoriety with the same indifference as on the buttons on a man's
shirt-front, or the crest on his note-paper.

When I went West, he fell out of my life. I probably should not have
given him another thought had I not caught sight of his name, in old
capitals, on a daintily covered volume in a book-stand. I had little
time or inclination for reading fiction; my days were busy ones, and
my nights were spent with law books. But I bought the volume out of
curiosity, wondering the while whether he could have written it. I was
soon set at rest, for the dedication was to a young woman of whom I had
often heard him speak. The volume was a collection of short stories. On
these I did not feel myself competent to sit in judgment, for my personal
taste in fiction, if I could be said to have had any, took another turn.
The stories dealt mainly with the affairs of aristocratic young men and
aristocratic young women, and were differentiated to fit situations only
met with in that society which does not have to send descriptions of its
functions to the newspapers. The stories did not seem to me to touch
life. They were plainly intended to have a bracing moral effect, and
perhaps had this result for the people at whom they were aimed. They
left with me the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture,
with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and
whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator. Their charm to me lay
in the manner of the telling, the style, which I am forced to admit was
delightful.

But the book I had bought was a success, a great success, if the
newspapers and the reports of the sales were to be trusted. I read the
criticisms out of curiosity more than any other prompting, and no two of
them were alike: they veered from extreme negative to extreme positive.
I have to confess that it gratified me not a little to find the negatives
for the most part of my poor way of thinking. The positives, on the
other hand, declared the gifted young author to have found a manner of
treatment of social life entirely new. Other critics still insisted it
was social ridicule: but if this were so, the satire was too delicate for
ordinary detection.

However, with the dainty volume my quondam friend sprang into fame. At
the same time he cast off the chrysalis of a commonplace existence. He
at once became the hero of the young women of the country from Portland,
Maine, to Portland, Oregon, many of whom wrote him letters and asked him
for his photograph. He was asked to tell what he really meant by the
vague endings of this or that story. And then I began to hear rumors
that his head was turning. These I discredited, of course. If true,
I thought it but another proof of the undermining influence of feminine
flattery, which few men, and fewer young men, can stand. But I watched
his career with interest.

He published other books, of a high moral tone and unapproachable
principle, which I read carefully for some ray of human weakness, for
some stroke of nature untrammelled by the calling code of polite society.
But in vain.




CHAPTER II

It was by a mere accident that I went West, some years ago, and settled
in an active and thriving town near one of the Great Lakes. The air and
bustle and smack of life about the place attracted me, and I rented an
office and continued to read law, from force of habit, I suppose. My
experience in the service of one of the most prominent of New York
lawyers stood me in good stead, and gradually, in addition to a
heterogeneous business of mines and lumber, I began to pick up a few
clients. But in all probability I should be still pegging away at mines
and lumber, and drawing up occasional leases and contracts, had it not
been for Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, of Philadelphia. Although it has
been specifically written that promotion to a young man comes neither
from the East nor the West, nor yet from the South, Mr. Cooke arrived
from the East, and in the nick of time for me.

I was indebted to Farrar for Mr. Cooke's acquaintance, and this
obligation I have since in vain endeavored to repay. Farrar's profession
was forestry: a graduate of an eastern college, he had gone abroad to
study, and had roughed it with the skilled woodsmen of the Black Forest.
Mr. Cooke, whom he represented, had large tracts of land in these parts,
and Farrar likewise received an income from the state, whose legislature
had at last opened its eyes to the timber depredations and had begun to
buy up reserves. We had rooms in the same Elizabethan building at the
corner of Main and Superior streets, but it was more than a year before I
got farther than a nod with him. Farrar's nod in itself was a repulsion,
and once you had seen it you mentally scored him from the list of your
possible friends. Besides this freezing exterior he possessed a cutting
and cynical tongue, and had but little confidence in the human race.
These qualities did not tend to render him popular in a Western town,
if indeed they would have recommended him anywhere, and I confess to have
thought him a surly enough fellow, being guided by general opinion and
superficial observation. Afterwards the town got to know him, and if it
did not precisely like him, it respected him, which perhaps is better.
And he gained at least a few warm-friends, among whom I deem it an honor
to be mentioned.

Farrar's contempt for consequences finally brought him an unsought-for
reputation. Admiration for him was born the day he pushed O'Meara out
of his office and down a flight of stairs because he had undertaken to
suggest that which should be done with the timber in Jackson County. By
this summary proceeding Farrar lost the support of a faction, O'Meara
being a power in the state and chairman of the forestry board besides.
But he got rid of interference from that day forth.

Oddly enough my friendship with Farrar was an indirect result of the
incident I have just related. A few mornings after, I was seated in my
office trying to concentrate my mind on page twenty of volume ten of the
Records when I was surprised by O'Meara himself, accompanied by two
gentlemen whom I remembered to have seen on various witness stands.
O'Meara was handsomely dressed, and his necktie made but a faint pretence
of concealing the gorgeous diamond in his shirt-front. But his face wore
an aggrieved air, and his left hand was neatly bound in black and tucked
into his coat. He sank comfortably into my wicker chair, which creaked a
protest, and produced two yellow-spotted cigars, chewing the end of one
with much apparent relish and pushing the other at me. His two friends
remained respectfully standing. I guessed at what was coming, and braced
myself by refusing the cigar,--not a great piece of self-denial, by the
way. But a case meant much to me then, and I did seriously regret that
O'Meara was not a possible client. At any rate, my sympathy with Farrar
in the late episode put him out of the question.

O'Meara cleared his throat and began gingerly to undo the handkerchief
on his hand. Then he brought his fist down on the table so that the ink
started from the stand and his cheeks shook with the effort.

"I'll make him pay for this!" he shouted, with an oath.

The other gentlemen nodded their approval, while I put the inkstand in a
place of safety.

"You're a pretty bright young man, Mr. Crocker," he went on, a look of
cunning coming into his little eyes, "but I guess you ain't had too many
cases to object to a big one."

"Did you come here to tell me that?" I asked.

He looked me over queerly, and evidently decided that I meant no
effrontery.

"I came here to get your opinion," he said, holding up a swollen hand,
"but I want to tell you first that I ought to get ten thousand, not a
cent less. That scoundrelly young upstart--"

"If you want my opinion," I replied, trying to speak slowly, "it is that
Mr. Farrar ought to get ten thousand dollars. And I think that would be
only a moderate reward."

I did not feel equal to pushing him into the street, as Farrar had done,
and I have now but a vague notion of what he said and how he got there.
But I remember that half an hour afterwards a man congratulated me openly
in the bank.

That night I found a new friend, although at the time I thought Farrar's
visit to me the accomplishment of a perfunctory courtesy to a man who had
refused to take a case against him. It was very characteristic of Farrar
not to mention this until he rose to go. About half-past eight he
sauntered in upon me, placing his hat precisely on the rack, and we
talked until ten, which is to say that I talked and he commented. His
observations were apt, if a trifle caustic, and it is needless to add
that I found them entertaining. As he was leaving he held out his hand.

"I hear that O'Meara called on you to-day," he said diffidently.

"Yes," I answered, smiling, "I was sorry not to have been able to take
his case."

I sat up for an hour or more, trying to arrive at some conclusion about
Farrar, but at length I gave it up. His visit had in it something
impulsive which I could not reconcile with his manner. He surely owed
me nothing for refusing a case against him, and must have known that my
motives for so doing were not personal. But if I did not understand him,
I liked him decidedly from that night forward, and I hoped that his
advances had sprung from some other motive than politeness. And indeed
we gradually drifted into a quasi-friendship. It became his habit, as he
went out in the morning, to drop into my room for a match, and I returned
the compliment by borrowing his coal oil when mine was out. At such
times we would sit, or more frequently stand, discussing the affairs of
the town and of the nation, for politics was an easy and attractive
subject to us both. It was only in a general way that we touched upon
each other's concerns, this being dangerous ground with Farrar, who was
ever ready to close up at anything resembling a confidence. As for me, I
hope I am not curious, but I own to having had a curiosity about Farrar's
Philadelphia patron, to whom Farrar made but slight allusions. His very
name--Farquhar Fenelon Cooke--had an odd sound which somehow betokened an
odd man, and there was more than one bit of gossip afloat in the town of
which he was the subject, notwithstanding the fact that he had never
honored it with a visit. The gossip was the natural result of Mr.
Cooke's large properties in the vicinity. It has never been my habit,
however, to press a friend on such matters, and I could easily understand
and respect Farrar's reluctance to talk of one from whom he received an
income.

I had occasion, in the May of that year, to make a somewhat long business
trip to Chicago, and on my return, much to my surprise, I found Farrar
awaiting me in the railroad station. He smiled his wonted fraction by
way of greeting, stopped to buy a newspaper, and finally leading me to
his buggy, turned and drove out of town. I was completely mystified at
such an unusual proceeding.

"What's this for?" I asked.

"I shan't bother you long," he said; "I simply wanted the chance to talk
to you before you got to your office. I have a Philadelphia client, a
Mr. Cooke, of whom you may have heard me speak. Since you have been away
the railroad has brought suit against him. The row is about the lands
west of the Washita, on Copper Rise. It's the devil if he loses, for the
ground is worth the dollar bills to cover it. I telegraphed, and he got
here yesterday. He wants a lawyer, and I mentioned you."

There came over me then in a flash a comprehension of Farrar which I had
failed to grasp before. But I was quite overcome at his suggestion.

"Isn't it rather a big deal to risk me on?" I said. "Better go to
Chicago and get Parks. He's an expert in that sort of thing." I am
afraid my expostulation was weak.

"I merely spoke of you," replied Farrar, coolly,--"and he has gone around
to your office. He knows about Parks, and if he wants him he'll probably
take him. It all depends upon how you strike Cooke whether you get the
case or not. I have never told you about him," he added with some
hesitation; "he's a trifle queer, but a good fellow at the bottom.
I should hate to see him lose his land."

"How is the railroad mixed up in it?" I asked.

"I don't know much about law, but it would seem as if they had a pretty
strong case," he answered. He went on to tell me what he knew of the
matter in his clean, pithy sentences, often brutally cynical, as though
he had not a spark of interest in any of it. Mr. Cooke's claim to the
land came from a maternal great-uncle, long since deceased, who had been
a settler in these regions. The railroad answered that they had bought
the land with other properties from the man, also deceased, to whom the
old gentleman was alleged to have sold it. Incidentally I learned
something of Mr. Cooke's maternal ancestry.

We drove back to the office with some concern on my part at the prospect
of so large a case. Sunning himself on the board steps, I saw for the
first time Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke. He was dressed out in broad
gaiters and bright tweeds, like an English tourist, and his face might
have belonged to Dagon, idol of the Philistines. A silver snaffle on a
heavy leather watch guard which connected the pockets of his corduroy
waistcoat, together with a huge gold stirrup in his Ascot tie,
sufficiently proclaimed his tastes. But I found myself continually
returning to the countenance, and I still think I could have modelled a
better face out of putty. The mouth was rather small, thick-tipped, and
put in at an odd angle; the brown eyes were large, and from their habit
of looking up at one lent to the round face an incongruous solemnity.
But withal there was a perceptible acumen about the man which was
puzzling in the extreme.

"How are you, old man?" said he, hardly waiting for Farrar to introduce
me. "Well, I hope." It was pure cordiality, nothing more. He seemed to
bubble over with it.

I said I was well, and invited him inside.

"No," he said; "I like the look of the town. We can talk business here."

And talk business he did, straight and to the point, so fast and
indistinctly that at times I could scarcely follow him. I answered his
rapid questions briefly, and as best I knew how. He wanted to know what
chance he had to win the suit, and I told him there might be other
factors involved beside those of which he had spoken. Plainly, also,
that the character of his great-uncle was in question, an intimation
which he did not appear to resent. But that there was no denying the
fact that the railroad had a strong thing of it, and a good lawyer into
the bargain.

"And don't you consider yourself a good lawyer?" he cut in.

I pointed out that the railroad lawyer was a man of twice my age,
experience, and reputation.

Without more ado, and before either Farrar or myself had time to resist,
he had hooked an arm into each of us, and we were all three marching down
the street in the direction of his hotel. If this was agony for me, I
could see that it was keener agony for Farrar. And although Mr. Farquhar
Fenelon Cooke had been in town but a scant twenty-four hours, it seemed
as if he knew more of its inhabitants than both of us put together.
Certain it is that he was less particular with his acquaintances. He
hailed the most astonishing people with an easy air of freedom, now
releasing my arm, now Farrar's, to salute. He always saluted. He
stopped to converse with a dozen men we had never seen, many of whom
smelled strongly of the stable, and he invariably introduced Farrar as
the forester of his estate, and me as his lawyer in the great quarrel
with the railroad, until I began to wish I had never heard of Blackstone.
And finally he steered us into the spacious bar of the Lake House.

The next morning the three of us were off early for a look at the
contested property. It was a twenty-mile drive, and the last eight miles
wound down the boiling Washita, still high with the melting snows of the
pine lands. And even here the snows yet slept in the deeper hollows.
unconscious of the budding green of the slopes. How heartily I wished
Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke back in Philadelphia! By his eternal accounts
of his Germantown stables and of the blue ribbons of his hackneys he
killed all sense of pleasure of the scene, and set up an irritation that
was well-nigh unbearable. At length we crossed the river, climbed the
foot-hills, and paused on the ridge. Below us lay the quaint inn and
scattered cottages of Asquith, and beyond them the limitless and
foam-flecked expanse of lake: and on our right, lifting from the shore by
easy slopes for a mile at stretch, Farrar pointed out the timbered lands
of Copper Rise, spread before us like a map. But the appreciation of
beauty formed no part of Mr. Cooke's composition,--that is, beauty as
Farrar and I knew it.

"If you win that case, old man," he cried, striking me a great whack
between the shoulder-blades, "charge any fee you like; I'll pay it! And
I'll make such a country-place out of this as was never seen west of New
York state, and call it Mohair, after my old trotter. I'll put a palace
on that clearing, with the stables just over the knoll. They'll beat the
Germantown stables a whole lap. And that strip of level," he continued,
pointing to a thinly timbered bit, "will hold a mile track nicely."

Farrar and I gasped: it was as if we had tumbled into the Washita.

"It will take money, Mr. Cooke," said Farrar, "and you haven't won the
suit yet."

"Damn the money!" said Mr. Cooke, and we knew he meant it.

Over the episodes of that interminable morning it will, be better to pass
lightly. It was spent by Farrar and me in misery. It was spent by Mr.
Farquhar Fenelon Cooke in an ecstasy of enjoyment, driving over and
laying out Mohair, and I must admit he evinced a surprising genius in his
planning, although, according to Farrar, he broke every sacred precept of
landscape gardening again and again. He displayed the enthusiasm of a
pioneer, and the energy of a Napoleon. And if he were too ignorant to
accord to nature a word of praise, he had the grace and intelligence to
compliment Farrar on the superb condition of the forests, and on the
judgment shown in laying out the roads, which were so well chosen that
even in this season they were well drained and dry. That day, too, my
views were materially broadened, and I received an insight into the
methods and possibilities of my friend's profession sufficient to instil
a deeper respect both for it and for him. The crowded spots had been
skilfully thinned of the older trees to give the younger ones a chance,
and the harmony of the whole had been carefully worked out. Now we drove
under dark pines and hemlocks, and then into a lighter relief of birches
and wild cherries, or a copse of young beeches. And I learned that the
estate had not only been paying the taxes and its portion of Farrar's
salary, but also a considerable amount into Mr. Cooke's pocket the while
it was being improved.

Mr. Cooke made his permanent quarters at the Lake House, and soon became
one of the best-known characters about town. He seemed to enjoy his
popularity, and I am convinced that he would have been popular in spite
of his now-famous quarrel with the railroad. His easy command of
profanity, his generous use of money, his predilection for sporting
characters, of whom he was king; his ready geniality and good-fellowship
alike with the clerk of the Lake House or the Mayor, not to mention his
own undeniable personality, all combined to make him a favorite. He had
his own especial table in the dining-room, called all the waiters by
their first names, and they fought for the privilege of attending him.
He likewise called the barkeepers by their first names, and had his own
particular corner of the bar, where none dared intrude, and where he
could almost invariably be found when not in my office. From this corner
he dealt out cigars to the deserving, held stake moneys, decided all
bets, and refereed all differences. His name appeared in the personal
column of one of the local papers on the average of twice a week, or in
lieu thereof one of his choicest stories in the "Notes about Town"
column.

The case was to come up early in July, and I spent most of my time, to
the detriment of other affairs, in preparing for it. I was greatly
hampered in my work by my client, who filled my office with his
tobacco-smoke and that of his friends, and he took it very much for
granted that he was going to win the suit. Fortune had always played
into his hands, he said, and I had no little difficulty in convincing him
that matters had passed from his hands into mine. In this I believe I
was never entirely successful. I soon found, too, that he had no ideas
whatever on the value of discretion, and it was only by repeated threats
of absolute failure that I prevented our secret tactics from becoming the
property of his sporting fraternity and of the town.

The more I worked on the case, the clearer it became to me that Mr.
Farquhar Fenelon Cooke's great-uncle had been either a consummate
scoundrel or a lunatic, and that our only hope of winning must be based
on proving him one or the other; it did not matter much which, for my
expectations at best were small. When I had at length settled to this
conclusion I confided it as delicately as possible to my client, who was
sitting at the time with his feet cocked up on the office table, reading
a pink newspaper.

"Which'll be the easier to prove?" he asked, without looking up.

"It would be more charitable to prove he had been out of his mind," I
replied, "and perhaps easier."

"Charity be damned," said this remarkable man. "I'm after the property."

So I decided on insanity. I hunted up and subpoenaed white-haired
witnesses for miles around. Many of them shook their heads when they
spoke of Mr. Cooke's great-uncle, and some knew more of his private
transactions than I could have wished, and I trembled lest my own
witnesses should be turned against me. I learned more of Mr. Cooke's
great-uncle than I knew of Mr. Cooke himself, and to the credit of my
client be it said that none of his relative's traits were apparent in
him, with the possible exception of insanity; and that defect, if it
existed in the grand-nephew, took in him a milder and less criminal turn.
The old rascal, indeed, had so cleverly worded his deed of sale as to
obtain payment without transfer. It was a trifle easier to avoid being
specific in that country in his day than it is now, and the document was,
in my opinion, sufficiently vague to admit of a double meaning. The
original sale had been made to a man, now dead, whom the railroad had
bought out. The Copper Rise property was mentioned among the other lands
in the will in favor of Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, and the latter had
gone ahead improving them and increasing their output in spite of the
repeated threats of the railroad to bring suit. And it was not until its
present attorney had come in and investigated the title that the railroad
had resorted to the law. I mention here, by the way, that my client was
the sole heir.

But as the time of the sessions drew near, the outlook for me was
anything but bright. It is true that my witnesses were quite willing to
depose that his actions were queer and out of the common, but these
witnesses were for the most part venerable farmers and backwoodsmen:
expert testimony was deplorably lacking. In this extremity it was Mr.
Farquhar Fenelon Cooke himself who came unwittingly to my rescue. He had
bought a horse,--he could never be in a place long without one,--which
was chiefly remarkable, he said, for picking up his hind feet as well as
his front ones. However he may have differed from the ordinary run of
horses, he was shortly attacked by one of the thousand ills to which
every horse is subject. I will not pretend to say what it was. I found
Mr. Cooke one morning at his usual place in the Lake House bar holding
forth with more than common vehemence and profanity on the subject of
veterinary surgeons. He declared there was not a veterinary surgeon in
the whole town fit to hold a certificate, and his listeners nodded an
extreme approval to this sentiment. A grizzled old fellow who kept a
stock farm back in the country chanced to be there, and managed to get a
word in on the subject during one of my client's rare pauses.

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