“A man there was who died of late
Whom angels did impatient wait,
With outstretched arms and smiles of love
To take him to the Realms Above.
“While angels hovered in the skies
Disputing who should bear the prize,
In slipped the Devil like a weasel
And Down Below he kicked old Keazle! ”
—An Epitaph by “Rhymester” Tuttle.
The Squire had pulled his arm-chair into the centre of the broadest patch of sunshine that carpeted the dusty floor of his office. The light flooded his book’s pages until he almost closed his eyes, but he welcomed sunshine this morning. It fitted into his mood. When Brickett started his coffee-grinder there was a certain rhythm about it that set the Squire to whistling. “Hard-Times” Wharff was playing on his tin flute down in the yard of the little brown house behind the currier’s shop, the music serving as his daily relaxation from his meditations on astronomy. Usually the monotonous “toodle-oodle” irritated the Squire. This day he tapped time with his finger on the open page.
He wanted to say something aloud and he glanced up at the “Creosote Supreme Bench.” No, that wasn’t the right kind of an audience! He looked down at the floor. Eli’s steadfast, worshipful gaze caught his. The dog rapped his tail genially.
“Eli,” said the Squire, smiling at him, “when you load your gun to bring down a particular human heart, there isn’t any telling how many others the scatter-fire will hit.”
Then for a little while he sat and dreamed over that walk home along the Cove road, past the pines that whispered and along the shore where the waves seemed to follow them with a sort of a dance step. And neither of them had said a word about love during all the long walk!
In fact, Squire Phin hadn’t said much of anything. It was so good to hear her voice. Since he had talked to her that August day across the iron fence he had been afraid she would think that he was whining and sentimental. To be sure, he reflected, his feelings had been cruelly stirred that day, and that was some excuse; and then, too, he had waited ten years to say even the little that he did say. He was rather proud that he hadn’t raked up the old topic during the walk. This was the pride of New England reserve that distrusts over-much lip service. It had been hard to hold in sometimes along the way, when she praised his courage in handling the affair in the Dunham district and showed her appreciation of other things that he didn’t know she had heard about.
“I suppose some men would have taken advantage and pestered her again with love-talk,” he had pondered as he walked away from the iron gate of the Willard place, “but I reckon I’ll never get fussed up enough again to bother her that way. It’s a tough thing for a woman to feel that she can’t walk with a man without his everlastingly dinging away his own troubles into her ears—and—and there may be a time when she will walk with me again if she realises that I know enough to keep my mouth shut.”
All of which might indicate to those versed in such matters that Squire Phin Look understood litigation better than love-making, which has its own court days, its calendar for service, its notice and its set time for appeal. He, however, felt that he had played the part of chivalry.
So the morning had seemed fair and he had slapped Hiram on the back at breakfast time and had hummed a tune as he walked to his office, and everything had seemed to be music, even the mournful cooing of “Hard-Times’s” tin flute.
And when old Sumner Badger came dragging up the stairs and into the office, and dolorously announced that he was going to die inside of two days and wanted to make his will, the Squire leaned back in his chair and laughed, to the indignant disgust of old Sumner.
“If there’s anything funny about my havin’ a call to the Speret Land I’d be much obleeged if you’d ’loosidate it, Squire Phin Look.” There was a scowl on the old man’s yellow face, and his shock of white hair bristled.
“Die!” echoed the Squire; “why, Sum, who talks of dying with the sun warm overhead, and the waves sparkling out yonder in the Cove, and even Asa Brickett’s coffee-grinder down there playing dance music with every twist of the handle? Never say die, Sum.”
“I donno what’s happened to chirk you up so’t you giggle at your neighbour’s solum warnin’s as have come to ’em, nor I don’t care a ding, Squire Look, but it ain’t right to mix in your own joys with others’ sorrers.”
A close observer might have seen in the lawyer’s countenance a flicker of contrition, as though he had suddenly remembered that every man in Palermo didn’t have such cause for joy as he.
“Sun a-shinin’, you say!” went on Badger, grimly. “Yes, and a sun-dog each side of it like wings on a bat, and a-showin’ that we’re goin’ to have a line gale that will blow the knot-holes out of apple trees. Waves sparklin’, hey? Porgy scum from that stinkin’ Cod Lead fact’ry that they’ve stuck under our noses out our way. Music in a coffee-grinder! And Brickett chargin’ three cents more a pound for Rio than he ever done. There’s some as can laugh at a fun’ral, but they ain’t got no good wit.”
“I never laughed yet at anybody’s troubles, Uncle Sum,” said the Squire, gently; “but you and I, with life still in us, don’t know the day and the hour of our passing out. You’re not going to die.”
“You think you know more about me than my guardeen angel, do you, hah? When my guardeen angel comes a-rappin’ the death knock on my headboard night after night I know what it means.”
The Squire remembered that Badger was a Spiritualist of fervent faith. He made no comment.
“Three times at our circle Mis’ Achorn has seen a shroud around me and angel hands beckoning over my head. You ain’t denyin’ that Mis’ Achorp is the best medium in this country, be ye?”
“Mrs. Achorn is, probably, a good and well-meaning woman, Sum, I have no doubt; but if I were you I wouldn’t let any one scare me into conniptions. It doesn’t pay.”
“I know what I’m talkin’ about,” persisted Badger. “I want to make my will.”
“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t,” the Squire replied, and he pulled a long sheet of paper from the drawer.
“I allus like to know prices before I buy. What will sech a dockyment cost me?”
Sumner Badger was known widely as the “closest figgerer” in Palermo. He often boasted that he had never been extravagant in his life except once when he bought five cents’ worth of peppermint-drops for a girl. He was young then, he said.
“She set and et the whole mess right down, one after the other,” he frequently related, “and that fixed me withher. I wouldn’t have no sech extravagance as that in a wife and so she lost her chance. I went and got me a woman that knowed how to make things spend for what they was wuth.” And on their little farm, denying themselves everything except the barest necessities, the couple had amassed their little competence.
The Squire eyed the old man’s sun-faded clothes and his knotted hands and his seamed, gaunt face, yellow with bile, and he pitied this slave who had half-starved himself, in the midst of his herds and his harvests.
“Poor old gaffer, you’ve sold your cream all along and drunk the skim milk,” he reflected—“a life ordeal worse than Tantalus went through, for Tantalus couldn’t reach what he was hungry for, and all you have had to do was to stick out your hand and dip into bounty.”
He looked long at Badger, his shrewd eyes twinkling with the humour that replaced his momentary pity. Then he answered the old man’s question.
“I’m willing to be reasonable, Sum. Now, what would you say was a fair price for drawing a will?”
“Lawyers’ money comes dretful easy,” growled Badger. “’Tain’t like diggin’ it out of a farm.” He pondered, screwing up his eyes and calculating. “I should say if you’d draw up one that couldn’t be busted I’d be willin’ to pay a shillin’.” He made a move to draw his wallet, but the lawyer put up his hand.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you, Sum. If you’ll carry home to-day a good big piece of steak and eat it with your wife—lots of butter on it—I’ll draw your will for nothing.”
Badger surveyed him dubiously and with sullen suspicion.
“We don’t go much on meat vittles to our house—not with beef prices stuck ’way up where they be.”
“That’s my price. And it’s got to be sirloin, not round.”
The lawyer saw by the expression on Badger’s face that he had anticipated the old man’s prompt thought as to quality.
“Steak’s steak, ain’t it?” he muttered. “I never heard of payin’ a lawyer’s bill in no sech fashion, but”—he sighed—“I’ll do it.”
“And aren’t you going to thank me into the bargain?” demanded the Squire. “I usually get five dollars, at least, for a document of this sort.”
“I reckon it’s lib’ral as law goes, Squire.” He suddenly warmed a bit. “You’ve been reasonable with me. Now I’ll do something for you. You’ve allus kind of cocked your nose up at s’p’tu’lism. I know it. You needn’t tell me! Now it’s goin’ to be worth something for you to reelly know whether there’s anything on the Other Side. So after I arrive there and git a little bit wonted to the place I’ll come back and appear to you and tell you all about it.”
“Oh, no, Sum,” expostulated the lawyer, his face serious. “I couldn’t think of asking you to take all that trouble for a hard old nut like me.”
“But a word from you to the people—you bein’ prominent—sayin’ that you’d seen me—materialised, mebbe; known by knocks, anyway—and I’d said ’twas so-and-so, would carry a good deal of weight and prove that I ain’t been no dum fool to b’lieve in s’p’tu’lism. I say, I’m comin’ back and appear to you and you needn’t think it’s anything strange.”
The Squire leaned forward and shook his finger at Badger.
“Let me advise you on one point, Sum. This advice isn’t going to cost a cent. Now, if you ever get so much as one foot into heaven—even get your fingers through the crack in the door, you stay right there. Don’t you ever take any chances on coming away to visit. They might get to asking leading questions about you the next time you came back to the door.”
“You don’t mean that for a slur, do you?” The old man’s face hardened.
“Let’s get to the business of drawing the will before we go to talking personal, Sum. I don’t have the same ideas as you on some ways of living.”
He wrote the usual heading at the top of the page, dipped his pen and, suddenly looking Badger in the eye, asked bluntly:
“I suppose it all goes to the wife so long as she lives, and after her to your niece, seeing that you have no children. To ’Liza Haskell, poor Ben’s girl, I mean?”
The old man shook his head with determination.
“What! you aren’t going to leave it to your only niece—your dead sister’s child—a little girl that——?”
“This is my will and it’s my own property that I’m willin’,” interrupted the farmer. “You can make it short and right to the point. It’s all goin’ to be turned into cash when I die, and Mirandy will git the interest as long as she lives, to be paid to her by the trustees that I shall name. Then the whole is goin’ to pay for a monnyment over my grave.”
Squire Phin leaned back and stared at the old man.
“Yess’r, a monnyment with my statoot on top and poetry about s’p’tu’lism carved around the bottom. I’ll show ’em that has scoffed and sneered that there is more to it than they thought.”
“But how do you prove anything by putting, say, ten thousand dollars into such infernal foolishness as that?” stormed the Squire.
“It will show that one man believed in it thirteen thousand dollars’ wuth—and that’s all he had and what he’d worked for all his life,” persisted the farmer, stubbornly. He stood up and cracked his fist on the table.
“Now, you can’t change my mind on that one jot or tittle, Squire Phin Look. You put it into any kind of lawyer lingo that will stick, and mind your own business.”
The Squire completed the writing without further comment, but his face was stern and he drove his pen into the inkstand with violent thrusts. Badger during the writing informed him that he wanted him to be one of the trustees. The lawyer paused and frowned at the old man as though he were intending to refuse, then inserted the name.
“And I want you to take these notes,” went on Badger, “and figger the interest up on ’em and put ’em in your safe and keep ’em.”
He passed across the table a dog’s-eared bank-book with a few papers between the leaves. The Squire examined them without particular interest. There were half a dozen for small amounts. But at sight of the last he sat up straighter, studied the document with increasing attention, turned it over and over, and then stared at Badger, arching his eyebrows.
“Where did you get hold of this town note?” he demanded.
“I lent good money for it. I got it right from the man whose name is signed at the bottom—and he’s been town treasurer of Palermo for thirty years. I reckon you know him!”
“Seven thousand dollars!” muttered the Squire. “Why, this town hasn’t——”
“There ain’t nothin’ out of the way, is there, about me havin’ a town note?” Badger went on. He paused a moment, then added, “So long as you’re my lawyer and one of the trustees and I’m goin’ to die and shan’t be lendin’ the money any longer, I tell you that’s a good way to let your money out—on a town note.”
For the first time since he had come into the office his face twisted into something like a smile. He leaned forward and whispered:
“Says the Judge to me, ‘You keep right still about how you’ve lent this money to the town and you won’t git taxed. So long’s it’s between you and me it won’t git onto the assessors’ books.’”
The Squire had the note spread before him and was studying it, his hands clutched into his thick hair, his elbows on the table.
“Yess’r, the Judge says, ‘You’re a friend of mine, Sum, and so long’s you keep still you’ll git your six per cent, and not be taxed on it!’ But there ain’t no need of keepin’ still any longer. I shan’t need extra int’rest. You can collect as soon as I’m dead.”
“Sum,” said the Squire, slowly lifting his eyes to the old man’s face—eyes in which there was a sort of shocked bewilderment, “I don’t want you to say anything about this note. It isn’t to be talked of.”
“But I’ve told Figger-Four Avery about it,” cried Badger, looking scared.
“Figger-Four Avery!” Squire Phin shouted the name. “Why, you might as well have put it into theSeaside Oracle. What do you want to go blurting your affairs for?”
“He was inquirin’ on bus’ness for your brother Hime,” faltered Badger. “He said Hime was borryin’ and lendin’ and was willing to pay seven per cent. Figger-Four is clerkin’ for Hime and gittin’ facts and figgers for him, and you know it jest as well as I do.”
“No, I don’t know——” but the lawyer checked his exclamation, setting his lips hard. He put the bank-book and the notes away in the safe.
“It’s best for you to keep your mouth shut about this,” he said curtly to the old man who followed his movements with frightened stare. “I won’t answer for what may happen to you otherwise.”
He threw up the window and looked out. Uncle Buck and Marriner Amazeen sat on the store platform, their chairs tilted back. They were the lawyer’s regular stand-bys as witnesses of legal papers, and came upstairs at his call.
“Your will, hey?” observed Buck as he pulled his spectacles down from his forehead and looked over the paper preparatory to signing it. “I allus thought you cal’lated on takin’ it all with ye, Sum.”
When his eyes fell on the writing designating the purpose to which the estate was to be applied, he snorted, “Well, it’s about as I reckoned, after all. That’s the next thing to luggin’ it away to Kingdom Come.” He read the clause aloud to Amazeen.
“Statoot to be life-size?” that individual blandly inquired.
“It will be as big’s there’s money for,” replied Badger, stiffly. “It will be sculped out from my photograft and I reckon the sculper can make me nine feet high. There’s risin’ thirteen thousand to do it with.” He gazed at his auditors with triumph.
“Le’s see!” pursued Amazeen, reflectively, “that would make your ear about as big over as a chiny nappy. Before you’ve been standin’ there two days them cussed sparrers will set up housekeepin’ in both ears. And a robin will have a nest under your arm, and there’ll be a crow settin’ on your head ha’f the time. You want to add a codicil there providin’ for about four scarecrow windmills set around over you. You’re goin’ to be almighty uncomfortable if you don’t. A statoot with twine string and feathers sticking out of the ears ain’t going to attract no particular admirin’ interest.”
“If the citerzens of this town stand round and see a thirteen thousand dollar monnyment get all cluttered and gurried up, then they ain’t got no more public sperit than quahaugs,” cried Badger.
Amazeen took Uncle Buck’s place at the table and proceeded to affix his signature. While he wrote he said:
“Mebbe you think you’ve done enough for this town so that the citerzens will stand out there in the grave-yard, turn and turn about, and keep the flies off’n that statoot with a feather duster! But I’m more inclined to think that the youngsters will do it with rocks.”
Badger replied to the sally with violent language, and the debate was becoming acrimonious when the Squire brusquely advised them to continue their dispute out of doors. His tone was harsher than usual, and his face was troubled. The old men went out, Amazeen shouting further directions to Badger, who hurried ahead, advising lightning rods and fire extinguishers and other appurtenances. Uncle Buck greeted each suggestion with a cackle of laughter. Squire Phin heard them pursuing their furious victim across the square, but he listened with abstracted frown, though at another time the grim jests might have amused him.
He took the town note out of the safe and examined it again. Then he pulled down a bundle of small pamphlets bearing the cover inscription, “Town Reports of Palermo.” He studied them with care and at last leaned back in his chair and gazed long at the ceiling.
“If I,” he said, softly, “were town treasurer of Palermo and had borrowed seven thousand dollars simply on my own name as treasurer, after the town had voted that two of the selectmen should sign with the treasurer on town loans, and had continued to pay six per cent, for that money after the town had voted to refund all floating indebtedness at four per cent., and, finally, still owed that seven thousand after making oath in my last report that the town owed less than two thousand dollars, why, I—I couldn’t explain it to myself, much less to the voters of this town.”
Brickett began to grind coffee again.
“Don’t the people of this place buy anything except coffee?” growled the Squire, jumping up and striding around the office. The noise racked his nerves now.
“It can’t be,” he muttered. “It’s some mistake or—or——” The recollection of certain gossip he had heard a year before at the county court regarding alleged dealings in stock by “a prominent Palermo man” and his losses occurred to him, and he remembered that he had stoutly averred that no one in his town ever dealt in stocks. He knew that people outside were usually the first to hear of such things, but this was a story that he didn’t believe. This note was there on his table—a document that demanded explanation—a document that could be explained by a desperate man’s financial stress and in no other way. Men did not take such chances for amusement.
Aquarius Wharff’s little flute piped away insistently.
“What a devilish nuisance that old fool is!” the lawyer growled, and he went along and slammed down the window.
Who properly should demand that explanation? Himself as town agent.
Brickett was now unheading a barrel, and the clamour made the Squire pound his table with a boyish and futile rage. Every noise jarred on him and the sun didn’t shine in at the windows any longer.
There was no doubt about his duty. The note must be shown to the selectmen. He picked it up, put it into his pocketbook, hesitated at the door, then hastily went back to the safe, tucked it into the most remote pigeon-hole, slammed the safe door and whirled the lock knob vigorously.
“No, sir,” he muttered as he went down the stairs, “this isn’t a thing to prick with a crowbar. It needs a fine needle. There’s a woman to be considered first, and, by the gods! there’s no steer-team of selectmen going to walk over her to get to her father—no matter how the land lies.”
He stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked back at his office door with a singular air of apprehension, as though he had left there some ugly and hideous object.
“No, it can’t be.” He stamped his foot upon the turf. “It isn’t the Willard stripe to do a thing like that. He’s a hog, but not a thief. I guess I’ll go and sit under the old poplars and think about it a bit.”
As he walked along the street he remembered what Badger had said about his brother Hiram’s activity in the matter of that town note.
Foster the tinker traversed Maine
From Elkinstown to Kittery Point,
With a rattling pack and a rattling brain,
And a general air of “out of joint.”
A gaunt, old chap with a shambling gait,
A battered hat and rusty clothes,
With grimy digits in sorry state,
And a smooch on the end of his big red nose.
That was the way that Foster went—
Mixture of shrewdness and folly blent,
Mending the pots and pans as ordered,
But leaving the leak in his nob unsoldered.
—From “Ballads of the Wayfarers.”
Hiram was on the porch in his favourite attitude, his chair tipped against the wall, his tall hat on the back of his head, his thumb hooked into the armhole of his vest. He rolled his cigar across his tongue and looked at his brother with a sidewise, suspicious glance as the Squire sat down on the edge of the platform. The lawyer remembered suddenly that he had seen that look on Hiram’s face frequently of late. It was the wary expression of a man who feared that he might be called on to defend himself.
“I thought I’d run up to the house and sit down for a spell, Hime. The loafers down there get on my nerves once in a while.”
The Squire noted the instant relief on Hiram’s face. The cigar rolled back to the other corner of his mouth and perked itself with new assurance.
“I don’t blame you, Phin. That’s why I keep away from Brickett’s. I can jaw ’em off the premises, here, when they get to bothering me.”
The old woman whom Hiram had insisted on adding to the household as maid of all work snapped her dishcloth at the ell window and began chatting with “Figger-Four” Avery, who was varnishing one of the vans. Avery sat down on the cart tongue and gave her his full attention.
“Avery is a fair sample of ’em,” continued Hiram, jerking his head to indicate his servitor. “There ought to be only three days in the week for fellers like him and the rest round here—a rainy day, Sunday and pay-day.”
“It wears on a man like Avery to get up before breakfast and work between meals,” observed the Squire, drily.
At this little jest of his brother’s, Hiram recovered all his composure. It was evident that the Squire wasn’t bringing that dreaded “bone to pick,” he reflected.
“I’m goin’ to have old Skip-bug, there, give the whole outfit a goin’-over, new gilding, new paint, varnish, and a clean scour. Prob’ly I’ll be takin’ to the road again next season, Phin,” he said, with a sigh. “I’ve been studyin’ it over for quite a spell. I’m get-tin’ to realise every day that you’ve drifted your way and I’ve drifted mine, and the things I talk about don’t hit you and the things you talk about——”
“I’m a pretty dry, prosy chap to be a companion to one who has seen the world as you’ve seen it,” the Squire finished the sentence.
“No, it ain’t that, Phin,” blustered Hiram. “The idea is you’ve got education and I ain’t, and I never shall have. There’s only brass and bellow to me, slam-bang like a circus band. So I guess I’ll have Hop-and-fetch-it give the gear a slickin’ and I’ll be movin’ on.” He set his hat down over his eyes and smoked hard.
The Squire did not reply for a time. He had unclasped his jack-knife and was meditatively jabbing it into the decayed wood of the porch platform.
“The Looks are no great hands to make a lot of soft talk to each other or anybody else, Hime,” he said at last. “But I want to say to you that I really hoped you were home to settle here. Half of the house is yours to do with as you like. Neither of us will bother the other one—I hope!”
Hiram gave him another of his suspicious side-glances.
“I’ve heard that you have been making quite a number of investments in town and were looking for more, and so I supposed you had decided to camp here. I wish you would, Hime.”
“Well, I don’t like to have money ’round idle, that’s all,” growled his brother. He waited a moment and then, studying the Squire from the corner of his eye, he said:
“I suppose the old fools ’round here are makin’ all kinds of talk about my lettin’ out a little money. I ain’t said anything to you about it ’cause I reckoned you had business enough of your own to think about.”
“And I find enough in my own affairs to keep me busy, Hime. But”—he turned his gaze full upon his brother—“I’ve found time to wonder why you’ve been trying toborrowmoney from old Sum Badger.” Hiram growled an oath, brought his chair down on its four legs with a clatter, and half rose, with a malignant eye boring the back of Avery, who was unsuspiciously swabbing his brush on the side of the van.
“Oh, it isn’t Figger-Four’s mouth this time, Hime. I’ve been drawing up Sum’s will and he told me about it and left his notes with me.”
Now that the Squire’s gaze showed that he understood the situation, Hiram’s apprehensiveness gave place to bravado.
“And what do you think of that town note that shows that your high and mighty treasurer is a—is—well, whatever the law name is, I say ‘thief’?”
“I am perfectly well able to attend to the business of my clients, and I am not prepared to discuss their private affairs just yet,” returned the Squire, tartly. “It comes pretty near bein’ a town affair, and as I’ve never gained residence anywhere else and am a voter here and have got investments here, it comes pretty near bein’ my affair, too.”
“There are good and sufficient reasons why I don’t want this old family feud carried on any longer, Hiram.” The lawyer stood up, clacked his knife’s blade shut and shoved it into his pocket.
“And I know what the reasons are and I say you’re a devilish fool to have ’em,” cried his brother.
“I have lived in this town all my life, Hiram”—the Squire preserved his temper, though the other was already bristling with wrath. “I intend to live here much longer. I am ready to resent injury just as quickly as you are. But this keeping alive an old fight, when there have been provocations on both sides, is folly and will lower us both in the estimation of the public. I say, you are not going to tramp over innocent persons to get at the object of your grudge.”
Hiram stood up and kicked his chair off the porch.
“Allow me to remind you—not to twit, but to speak the plain truth—that you seem to have waked up pretty late to the fact that you had any vengeance to attend to in this town.”
“And that’s just it,” shouted Hiram. “I stayed away and let the wickin’ be put to you and father. You’ve been ground into the dirt and mallywhacked and spit on, just on account of me. The Look fam’ly has been muck under foot for some folks. And even now, after all that’s past and gone, that old wolf would have my ha’slet out of me if he could get it. There’s a debt due to the Looks, compound int’rest piled on compound int’rest, and by the jumped-up Judas Is-carrot, I’m goin’ to collect it, Phin. You may as well stand out of the way.”
He strode about the little yard before the porch.
“And besides all that, he’s stealin’ from this town, and you know it,” cried Hiram, stopping in his march for a moment.
“There’s other redress for that besides persecution,” replied the Squire. “It isn’t our business as Seth Look’s boys.”
“Itisour bus’ness. And it’s more yours than it is mine. You’re the agent of this town. You’re the man the people trust to see that Palermo gets what’s her just dues. You know she is bein’ robbed. Now, Phin, you either go to work and find out why old Coll Willard is borrowin’ money secretly on town’s notes, and you put it before the people in the right and proper way as you know how to do, or, by mighty, I’ll do it my way and then you’ll see how you stand before the people—you that’s hidin’ a note that you know is crooked.”
Hiram stopped before his brother and breathed hard in his passion. And now the Squire’s repression began to give way. The obstinacy of this stormy petrel of the Look family was maddening.
But, fortunately for both, the unhappy quarrel was interrupted. For some moments there had been approaching behind the alders at the turn of the highway a queer medley of sound—squeaking of whiffle-tree, yawling of dry axle and over all a peculiar moaning. Now a vehicle like a van came in sight. The brothers stood and watched it as it approached them. Avery came hobbling with brush in hand and gaped his surprise.
“Well, P’lermo’s took this time, sartin sure,” he gasped.
’Twas almost a little house on wheels. An elbow of stove funnel stuck out of one side. An old chaise-top was fastened by strings and wire over a seat in front. Dust and mud covered everything with striated coatings, a mask eloquent of wanderings over many soils.
A bony horse, knee-sprung and wheezy, dragged the van at the gait of a caterpillar.
Under the chaise-top was a hunched-up elderly man, gaunt but huge of frame, his knees almost at his chin. Long, grizzled hair fluffed over his shoulders, and little puffs of white whiskers stood out from his tanned cheeks. A fuzzy beaver hat barely covered the bald spot on his head. The reins were looped around his neck. Between his hands, huge as hams, moaned and sucked and snuffled and droned a much-patched accordion. To its accompaniment the man sang words that he fitted to the tune of “Old Dog Tray,” trolling lustily at the end of each verse, “An honest friend is old hoss Joe.”
“Whoa, there! Whup!” screamed Hiram’s parrot, swinging by one foot.
“Ain’t you kind of workin’ a friend to the limit, and a little plus?” inquired Hiram, sarcastically. The old horse, at the parrot’s command, had stopped before the gate, legs straddled, head down, the dust rising in little puffs as he breathed.
“Joachim loves music,” said the stranger, with a mild smile. “He’ll travel all day if I’ll only play and sing to him.”
“Love of music will be the death of Joachim, then,” commented Hiram, briefly.
“Is there a hostelry near by?” asked the other, lifting his tall beaver hat politely. In the atmosphere of rough-and-ready Palermo the little action seemed an exaggeration. With satirical courtesy Hiram lifted his hat—and at the psychological moment the only “plug” hats in the whole town of Palermo saluted each other.
“There’s a hossery down the road, and a mannery, too, all run by old Fyles.”
“Crack ’em down, gents,” rasped the parrot. “Twenty can play as well as one.”
The man under the chaise-top pricked up his ears and cast a rather startled look at the plug hat in the yard. Plug hat in the yard seemed suddenly to recognise some affinity or comradeship in plug hat under the chaise-top. The Squire saw only another of those fantastic wanderers who occasionally went dragging through the village, peddling their wares. He backed slowly to the porch and sat down. His brother trudged out into the road and walked around the outfit, his nose elevated with a curiosity that was almost canine.
At last he planted himself in the highway before the man of the chaise-top, his knuckles on his hips, his eye flashing under brows wrinkled with thought, and stared long and silently.
“Who be I?” he demanded at last.
The stranger surveyed him for a long time, his head drooping lower and lower, until it was hugged between his shoulders.
“You,” he huskily ventured, “so I should jedge, though I ain’t seen you for a good many years, you—I should say—you——”
“Well, up and out with it!”
“You are Look’s Leviathan Circus and Menagerie, H. Look, Proprietor.”
“You win a cigar,” assented Hiram, with a snap of his head. “And as for you, you’re Sime Peak, billed as Mounseer Hercules, and I’m glad you called when you came along.”
There was a grim significance under his words that made the stranger flinch.
“Let’s see!” pursued Hiram, his eyes narrowing, “it’s quite a while to remember back, but didn’t you throw up your job with me kind o’ sudden?”
The man on the van scratched a trembling forefinger through a cheek tuft.
“I don’t exactly recollect how the—how the change came about,” he faltered.
“Well, I do!” Hiram came close and wagged a forefinger up at the man. “You ducked out across country the night of that punkin freshet, when I was mud-bound in that pennyr’yal settlement and the elephant was afraid of the bridges. And you took my dancin’, turkey outfit and a cage of monkeys and a few other things that didn’t belong to you, and—her!” He almost shouted the last word, and then looked around with sudden apprehension that he was overheard by his brother. But the Squire sat on the porch without apparent interest. “What became of her, Sime Peak?” demanded Hiram, hissing the words at him. He seized a spoke of the old, dished wheel and shook the vehicle impatiently. The spoke came away in his hand.
“Never mind it,” quavered the man. “It ain’t nothin’. We’re all comin’ to pieces, me and the whole caboodle. But don’t hit me with it.”
He was eyeing the spoke in Hiram’s clutch.
“What did you steal her for, Sime Peak?”
“There isn’t anything sure about her goin’ away with me,” the other protested weakly.
Hiram yanked away another spoke in the vehemence of his emotions.
“Don’t you lie to me!” he snarled. “The both of you done me when I was tied up with my circus clear’n to the hubs in mud. Mounseer Hercules of the curly hair!” he snorted, and ran a sneering gaze over the outfit. “She wouldn’t chase you very fur now. You took her, I say, a girl I’d lifted off the streets and made the champion lady rider of—and was goin’ to marry and thought more of”—another cautious look at the Squire, “yess’r, thought more of than I did of anyone else in the world. What did you do with her?”
“Well, I was startin’ and she wanted to go along and so I took her aboard. She seemed to want to get away from your show, as near as I could find out.” The giant hugged his knees together and blinked appealingly.
“It must be a bang-up livin’ you’re givin’ her.” Again Hiram disdainfully surveyed the equipage.
“Seems as if you hadn’t heard the latest news,” broke in Peak, his face suddenly clearing of the puckers of apprehension. “She never stuck to me no time—honest to Gawd, Look. She only made believe she was goin’ to marry me. It was so I’d take her along. She ducked out with ev’ry cent of the sixteen hundred I’d saved up and run away with Signor Dellybunko—or whatever his name was—who was waiting for her along the road. Honest, I ain’t seen hide nor hair of her since, nor I don’t ever want to,” he rattled on eagerly, “and I’ve still got the letter that she left for me, and I’ll prove what I say. She said in it that she’d been plannin’ to do the same thing with you, but she had made up her mind that you wasn’t as easy as I was and she couldn’t work you.”
Hiram’s shoulders straightened and he pulled his trailing moustaches with a bit of swagger.
“She was out just to do someone so’s she and Dellybunko could get away with the stuff,” insisted Peak.
“She says so in the letter, and you was smart and I was easy—that’s all!”
“It’s the old army game, gents!” squawked the parrot. He cracked his beak against the bars of the cage.
Hiram shoved his hands into his pockets and with a sort of meditative air of conscious superiority kicked another spoke out of the wheel.
“Hadn’t you just as soon tear pickets off’n the fence, there, or something of that sort?” wistfully asked Peak. “This is all I’ve got left, and, honestly, I’ve never had no great courage to do anything since she run away with that sixteen hundred. I never had no great enterprise and ability like you’ve got, anyway. I just went all to pieces.”
He scrubbed his raspy palms on his upcocked knees.
“I didn’t really want to run away with her, Hiram, but she bossed me into it. I never was no hand to stand up for my rights. I could lift weights and let ‘em crack a marble block on my chest, but anyone with a limber tongue could allus talk me ’round—and I guess they allus can. I wish she’d stuck to you and let me alone.” His big hands trembled on his knees, and his weak face with its flabby chops had the wistful look one sees on a foxhound’s visage. “When did you give up the road?” he asked, evidently willing to change the subject.
“Haven’t given it up,” snapped Hiram, scowling. “There’s the waggons over there, and the round-top and seats are stored, and I’ve got my elephant. I’m liable to buy a lemon and a square hunk of glass and start out again ’most any time.”
Hiram couldn’t help winking his good eye at his old partner in “shenanigan,” though his face hardened again the moment after. Peak chuckled fulsome appreciation, Still eager to placate, he said:
“I don’t suppose you really have to.” He blinked watery eyes at Hiram’s big watch chain with its bunch of charms, and at the ring on his thick finger, with its blazing stone.
“Forty thousand or so in the bank and plenty more out at int’rest,” returned Hiram. He put both thumbs into the armholes of his vest. Then with the patronising air of the “well-fixed” he inquired:
“How are you gettin’ your three squares nowadays?”
“Lecture on Lost Arts and Free Love, mesmerise and cure stutterin’ in one secret lesson, pay in advance,” Peak explained listlessly. “But there ain’t the three squares in no such graft in these times. I ain’t got your head. I wish I’d been as sharp as you are and never let a woman whiffle me into a scrape.” Hiram glowed with the same warmth that he felt when “Figger-Four” daily regaled him with stories of how Myra Willard made life miserable for Kleber with her tongue and her folly. This gossip had been “Figger-Four’s” first recommendation to the notice of the showman, and Avery had sagaciously pursued it. Hiram now looked up at the man on the van with a pride that was gloomy, but none the less apparent.
“Nobody ever come it over me,” he said in low tones, with a side glance to see that Avery didn’t overhear. “Still, another way you look at it, she did come it over me and so did——” He suddenly checked himself.
“But she didn’t come it over you,” insisted Peak. “I’m the one she come it over, and look at me!” He made a despairing gesture that embraced all his pathetic belongings. “You’re the one that’s come out ‘unrivalled, stupendous and triumphant,’ as your full sheeters used to say. If I was any help in steerin’ her away I’m humbly glad of it, Hime, for I allus liked you.”
This gradual assuming of the rôle of benefactor was not entirely to Hiram’s taste, as his frown indicated, but the constant iteration of admiration for his shrewdness and good fortune was having its effect. The old grudge ached less. It was like having opodeldoc stuffed into a bad tooth. Hiram felt as though he would like to listen to a lot more of that comforting talk. Moreover, his showman’s heart was hungry for some of that association of the old days and for a chance to swap old stories.
“Sime,” he cried with a heartiness that surprised even himself, “you’re a poor old devil that’s been abused, and you seem to be all in.” He surveyed the wheezy horse and kicked another spoke from the wheel.
“Crack ’em down, crack ’em down, gents!” squalled the parrot.
“If it wasn’t for Absalom, there, to holler that to me with an occasional ‘Hey, Rube!’ I don’t believe I could stay in this God-forsaken place fifteen minutes. There’s no one here that can talk about anything except ensilage and new-milk cows. Now, what say, Sime? Store your old traps along o’ mine, squat down and take it comfortable a little while. I reckon that you and me can find a few things to talk about that really amount to something.”
The man on the van unhooked the reins from around his neck and let them fall to the ground. But he still hesitated to climb down.
“I should hate to feel that I was a burden on you,” he faltered. “But if there’s any stutterers around here I might earn a little something on the side to help out on my board.”
“Me with forty thousand in the bank takin’ board money from an old friend, or lettin’ a guest of mine graft for his livin’?” snorted Hiram. “Not by a blame sight! You just shut up and h’ist yourself down here and help me unharness old Polyponeesus.”
Hiram introduced his guest to his brother with curt brevity.
“And I guess I’ll do as you hinted this mornin’ about takin’ the other half of the house, Phin,” he said. “I don’t want any friends of mine to be underfoot for you. As long as you suggested splittin’ off, I’ll do it. Old Aunt What’s-Her-Name can do for both of us.”
“I didn’t mean it that way, Hime,” said the Squire, earnestly. “Your friends are my friends and we can all get along comfortably together just as we are.”
“I’d ruther have the side-show privilege than a share in the big show,” persisted the stubborn relative; “it’s your proposition, and I can take a hint.” The presence of Peak and his mute suggestion of the old associations were already having their effect on Hiram’s undisciplined temperament. He had begun to wonder before this if getting acquainted again with a brother after so many years was altogether a success. He had been a bit ashamed in spite of Phineas’s candid forgiveness; this calm, earnest, educated man made him feel ill at ease. Suddenly, he realised perfectly why he had clutched at this stroller and hauled him into this haven.
Hiram always acted first and reflected afterwards. He knew now that he had seized upon this man to hold him between his brother and himself, as he would have interposed a shield. He had anticipated that his brother would interfere in his resolution to “make Coll Willard curl.” For weeks he had been dreading the hour when Phineas would come to him for an understanding. No man knew better than he what the Look grit was, and as he had fully made uphismind to carry out his plan of vengeance, and realised that the Squire would as vigorously oppose him, he had been trembling each noon and night for many days, as he sat upon the porch and watched the lawyer’s approach.
Now he stood up close beside the amiable giant.
“Sime and me is pretty close chums, Phin,” he said, “and we shall be together all the time talkin’ mighty busy, and it ain’t in no ways right for us to be gabblin’ round where you be and takin’ your mind off’n your business. So I’ll have another cook-stove set up in my part and we won’t trouble you a mite.”
He took Peak by the arm and drew him away with some eagerness.
“I want you to come in and see if Imogene remembers you, Sime. Then we’ll look over the carts.”
Avery had been crowding up closely, mutely appealing for an introduction. His jealousy was aroused by the attention that was shown to this new arrival, and he followed them toward the barn as they started away.
“Say, look-a-here, Figger-Four,” said Hiram, whirling on him and speaking with a gruffness that wounded Avery’s devoted heart, “you get back onto your job, there, and you mind it dern close from this time on. I don’t want you trailin’ me no more. You keep your place after this.”
The cripple stood gazing after Hiram until he had slammed the barn door behind him. Then he settled slowly down upon his short leg and turned to the Squire a face on which there was astonishment as well as grief.
“Seems like I never seen a changeabler man,” he observed.
The lawyer looked at the discarded companion a little while, and the poor fellow’s distress was so sincere that he pitied him, even in his own sorrow.
“Don’t mind it too much, Avery,” he said. “Hiram has had a good many things happen in his life to sour him and spoil his disposition. Some day he’ll find out who his real friends are and then you and I will have our innings.”
He put his hands behind his back and walked into the house, and Avery went on with his varnishing. At first his strokes were slow and his face was melancholy. But as he pondered on his insult, his brush flicked faster and soon he was slapping away at a lively gait, keeping time to a song that he hummed, the last two lines running:
“Good boy Phin, he don’t raise time,
But pepper sass is hot and hell’s in Hime."-