If we could write upon his gravestun’s face
A list of what he’d done to help this place,
We’d have a roll of honour to his fame,
But we should publish all our village shame.
There’d be a list of heirs and all their fights;
The sorrows and the heart-aches over rights;
There’d be the frowns, the snarls, the sneers and scorn
Out of the leavin’s of our dead men born.
There’d be the threats and mutt’rin’s of divorce
And all the griefs that spring from Trouble’s source.
‘Twas better that this calendar was crossed
With note:—“By order of J. Brown nol pressed.”
That’s how it’s been with her ever sence she come to,” said Mrs. Arad Tolman, with a jab of her head toward the closed door of an inner room. There were moanings and cries on the other side of the door as incoherent as the laments of an animal in distress.
Mrs. Tolman was busy over a brew of herbs that simmered in a little saucepan on the Kleber Willard cook stove. Ranged around the kitchen walls sat men and women. Some of the folks in the yard had hurried home when the tempest broke. Others had taken shelter in the house, making the storm an excuse for their curiosity.
“Sylvene and the Squire is doin’ what they can with her,” went on Mrs. Tolman, stirring at the brew, “but she is in a turrible to-do, now I can tell you! She don’t seem to mind the tunk on her head. That ain’t’ her lamentation. But the way she’s takin’ on about them childern is enough to melt a heart of stone. It was the first thing she began dingin’ away about when she come to—just as if she smelt trouble in the air.”
“What’s been told her about the childern?” inquired Marriner Amazeen, gazing at the closed door with pity on his seamed face.
“Only that they’ve been took care of at the neighbour’s till mornin’. But you can’t stuff that excuse down a mother’s thro’t. Talkin’ and tellin’ don’t fool ’em.”
“They’ve gone to Kingdom Come in that old dory, along with the Judge, and she senses it,” said Uncle Buck, from his corner. “Them sensin’s is mysterious, but they’re so.”
The lightnings were now fluttering in far-flung sheets that lit up the kitchen windows palely. The worst of the tempest was over. But the wind bellowed without and the rain sprayed fiercely upon the dripping panes.
“First it’s the childern and then it’s whiff over and a-takin’ on about Klebe—‘poor, darlin’ Klebe,’ she calls him, ‘out there in the storm and the rain.’ Well, I’d poor darlin’ a man o’ mine that fetched me a clip like that and then run away.”
“Howsomever, Myry’s allus been quite a nagger—quite a nagger at usyal times,” observed Uncle Buck, with mild reproof. “She prob’ly realises now, when her eyes is open by her trouble, that a man can’t be hectored only about so fur.”
Several men in the kitchen looked at their wives with significance in their gaze.
A woman was beginning a dissertation on her views of the marriage situation when there came a beating of wet feet on the stoop without, and a man trudged in, soggy and dripping. The blast threw a fistful of water at his back as he slammed the door behind him.
“They’ve got Klebe,” he announced briefly, standing close to the stove. “How’s the woman?”
“’Tain’t the outside of her head now—it’s the inside of her heart that’s ailin’,” said Mrs. Tolman. “She wants her childern and her husband, spite of what he’s done to her.”
“They caught him up in the Bunganuck woods,” explained the man, replying to rapid questions. “Purday took him and done a good job at it. And the whole pack and possy of ’em was draggleder’n wet mushrats. They’re dryin’ Klebe off down in the s’lectmen’s office now, and I reckon they’ll keep him here to-night and take him to jail ter-morrer.”
“Has he been told about the children?”
“Yas, had to tell him. He’s been fightin’ like a cattymaran ever since he was took, and Purday got tuckered out and told him so’s to break his sperit. And it done it quick, now, I can tell ye!”
“Northin’ from outside?” The question was put with a glance seaward and a mournful inflection of the voice, as though with certainty of the worst.
“Northin’.” The reply was equally mournful.
The little group lowered their heads and sat in silence as at a funeral.
In the hush the door of the inner room opened, and Squire Phin came into the kitchen.
“Have you brought news?” he asked anxiously, putting his hand on the shoulder of the new arrival.
The man repeated his story.
While the Squire stood there with head down, pondering, there was a commotion in the other room. Again the door opened, and a comely woman whose features were twisted by grief and suffering appeared. A cloth was wrapped around her forehead, and her lips were swollen from sobbing. Though Sylvena Willard strove with all her gentle strength to restrain her, the woman tore away and came into the kitchen.
“Bring me my children,” she cried, staring from one to the other with eyes glazed and sunken by woe. “Where’s Klebe? Send him after the children. Something has happened. What is it? Don’t drive me mad, neighbours! What is it?”
Her voice rose in a shriek. She ran first to one man and then to another-, clasping her thin hands around their arms. The men were unresponsive and embarrassed. Hysteria was upon her.
Squire Phin, with his strong hands and his comforting words, was at last able to draw her away toward the inner room.
“Oh, Phineas Look,” she wailed, “tell me where my babies are.”
“They are in God’s hands, child,” he replied, his heart in his tones. “Take courage. I am goin’ away now to bring some one. Take courage.”
While she stared at him with frightened, puzzled gaze he put her into Sylvena Willard’s arms.
“Do your best with her, Sylvie, until I come back,” he whispered. “I am going to get Kleber. The awful load that has come upon this household is one that husband and wife should bear together. Do your best with her, little woman! For I shall be gone a bit of a while. I am going to tell your brother a story that he needs to hear.”
He hurried away.
During the long hour that elapsed the stricken woman sat in the kitchen close by the outer door, motionless and speechless, her eyes fixed on the latch. All of Sylvena’s coaxings could not draw her back to the inner room.
The Squire came first into the room. Behind him was Captain Kleber Willard, and jostling at his back were Deputy Sheriff Purday and his helper, alert and officious. They wore the air of officers who knew that this method of handling a prisoner was not regular, but who had been overmastered by the Squire’s authority. With the group was another man, the venerable pastor of the village church, whom they had overtaken making his way with a lantern along the tempest-strewn street toward the house of mourning.
Willard stepped inside the door, his knees bending lifelessly at each step, his head wagging low between his shoulders.
His bloodshot eyes rolled shamefacedly from countenance to countenance. The solemn regard of his neighbours shifted to the worn floor. They had no consolation for him. His face began to pucker with the grimace of the strong man who is trying to hold back the tears.
“Where are our little ones, Kleber?” His wife had thrown herself upon him. She screamed the question over and over.
“Squire Look—Parson Emmons—some one—oh, for God’s sake—tell her!”
His sobs choked him. With his arm about his wife he stumbled away to a corner of the room, dragging her with him, and while the neighbours sat silent and sympathetic, the women sobbing softly, the men grinding their rough knuckles into their palms, the husband and the wife, their foreheads against the wall, washed away in the first tears they had ever shed in a common woe all the wrack of the petty quarrels, the little heart-burnings, the frettings and the misunderstandings—all so mean and small in this shadow of the mightiest tragedy in their lives.
After many, many minutes they were quiet, and clung to each other like people in the dark, afraid.
Captain Willard trembled until his teeth rattled together. He was nerving himself to face the picture of his guilt and his ingratitude—his crime! That was it! His crime.
It was a picture on which the true light had been shed by Squire Phineas Look, whispering to him in a corner of the selectmen’s office.
For some minutes the lawyer and the clergyman had been conversing apart in an undertone, and now the minister came along to the husband and wife and gently drew them away from the corner.
“Kleber and Myra,” he said, “it was not many years ago that I stood before you in this house in the presence of almost the same neighbours who are here now, and I joined your hands in wedlock. I have watched with sorrow and disappointment the wretched troubles that have come into your home life—needless troubles, foolish troubles. This is not a time for a sermon. But it is a time for a friend to speak a word to you. I could have said much to you before, but I refrained, for I realised that your hearts were stubborn and froward, never having been touched by the softness of true love and forbearance. It is the cruel and chastening hand of trouble that does it now. I believe that now your home and your hearts are swept clean of the anger and pride and selfishness and the little vices that ruin homes. I believe that you are now willing to shoulder together the awful burden that has been placed upon you.”
The woman’s face grew white, and she swayed into her husband’s arms. Willard stood gasping for his breath.
“I married your bodies once before, Kleber and Myra. To-night I am going to marry your hearts and your souls, for, God pity you both, you cannot stand alone and bear this horror.”
The people in the kitchen were too raptly engaged to hear the outside door open. The Squire stood in the shadow near it, and a soft “Hist!” engaged his attention.
Hiram’s head was thrust through the opening. He was bareheaded, his clothing was in shreds, and the lamplight shed feeble gleams on a hideous black and blue circle around his sound eye.
When the Squire advanced on tiptoe Hiram seized his arm, pulled him outside and, softly as he had opened it, he closed the door.
“I’ve got ’em,” he whispered excitedly. “It was a God-awful trip, Phin, but I got ’em! It was old Hime for ’em!”
“You saved them!” gasped his brother.
“Sounder’n nuts. But there wa’n’t no time to spare. Old Judge flat on his back in the dory and them two little children huddled down side of him squealin’ for him to wake up! Heard ’em above the roar of the wind, Phin! I guess it was God’s way of leadin’ me to ’em. I’ve got ’em waitin’ ’round the corner of the house here. When the old Judge come to the second time he was right as a trivet. Didn’t have no idee how he happened to be out in that dory. Kind o’ dreamed he was runnin’ away from a devil or somethin’ and savin’ the children—and I don’t blame him for thinkin’ it was the devil, for that Klebe——”
“Hush, brother,” said the Squire gently; “there have been strange heart-stirrings about here to-day.”
“You’re right, Phin,” replied the showman heartily. “I guess mine’s been stirred, too. ’Cause when I undertook to thank Nymp’ Bodfish at the wharf after we got back for havin’ been so kind and gentlemanly as to take me down the bay and save the Judge and the young ones, he drawed off and got in one pelt at my eye, and I didn’t chase him nor want to. I tell ye, I’ve got jest as good a disposition as any one when I’ve got half a chance to show it.”
He poked the puffiness under his eye and muttered to himself:
“I guess I reelly am gettin’ to be pretty fair-minded, ’cause if he’d a-blacked the two of ’em I’m willin’ to acknowledge that he wouldn’t have been more’n half square with me for what I’ve done to him.”
The suddenness of this news of rescue had dizzied the Squire for a moment, but he now pushed his brother toward the corner of the house with a slap on the back that made Hiram cringe.
“Bring them in, Hime! This is your triumph!” He threw open the kitchen door with a slam that brought the eyes of all in the kitchen around with a startled snap. The minister paused. The father and mother stared in affright.
“Bring them along, brother!” shouted the Squire joyously. “Here’s Hero Hiram Look,” he announced, “and his salvage from the sea!”
One child was asleep in the Judge’s arms. The other clung to Hiram’s hand and blinked at the light streaming from the open door. The mother screamed and would have dashed upon them, but the Squire gently held her back.
“Wait, this is a wedding!” he cried. “Hands together this way! God bless you and yours. Now, Brother Hime, bring the wedding presents.”
“I ain’t a very extry lookin’ sight to come to a weddin’,” said the showman, “but I didn’t come to your first one, Klebe, and I didn’t send no present. All is, I’ve tried to square myself at this second one, and my best wishes for everlastin’ happiness goes along with ’em,” he added wistfully.
He put the sleeping child into the mother’s arms and stood back to let the Judge advance toward his son with the light of forgiveness in his eyes.
“Oh, father!” wept Kleber, stumbling forward and dragging himself on his knees toward the old man. “I didn’t know! I didn’t know until the Squire told me.”
“Stand up, my boy,” said the Judge, putting out his trembling hand. “All of us know better now, and some knowledge is bought at cruel prices.”
It was without a word that Hiram took the hand that Kleber Willard put out to him when he turned from his father after a time. But as they stood there clinging to each other Hiram leaned forward with a flash of humour that relieved the situation, whispering:
“That black eye, Klebe, is the dot, period, full stop, set down after the very last fight of my whole life, and I got it for your sake.”
“Come, people!” called the Squire from the doorway. “Come away with me now. The wedding is over. The night is getting late and the stars are out again.”
He smiled across the room at Sylvena as he said it.
Then he began with jocular pokings to push the folks out of the door, and even subjected Deputy-Sheriff Purday to that treatment when the zealous officer came along to have a private word with him.
“But look-a-here, Squire,” protested Purday, hanging back, “Klebe is really under arrest, you know, and you understand what the law is.”
“Deputy,” the Squire said, holding him by the arm a moment, “under the circumstances the highest law I know of is this: ‘What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’”
He pointed to the mother and the father with the children between them.
“The grand jury of human hearts returns no indictment. Go home.”
He pushed Purday out behind the last straggler and slammed the door and bolted it on the inside.
Slowly he passed, for he stopped to pick
The stones from the road with his old crook stick.
Rolled them left and rolled them right
From early morning till late at night.
And to wondering folk who paused to ask
The reasons that prompted this self-set task
He said, with a smile for their doubting gaze,
“I’m simply helpin’ ye mend your ways!”
It was August again. The flies buzzed lazily in the late afternoon hush, and the knife-nicked bench in the shade cast by Asa Brickett’s store had its accustomed row of old men, who buzzed in conversation as lazily as the flies.
“This has been about the tejousest summer I ever put through,” complained Uncle Lysimachus Buck, after a yawn. “Ev’rything seems to be deader’n the latch on a bulkhead door.”
“Mebbe it’s because Hime Look has settled up country on the Snell farm,” observed Marriner Amazeen with a bit of malice.
“Reports is that he’s givin’ ’em a little flavour of circus right along in that section,” said Dow Babb.
“Feller from that way was tellin’ me that Hime has been doin’ a job of breakin’ up with that el’phunt hitched to the plow. Hime allowed as how P. T. Barnum tells in his book that he used an el’phunt to plow with, and he wa’n’t goin’ to let no P. T.‘s git ahead ofhim. Ev’ry hoss that come along past stuck up ears and tail and tried to climb a tree and pull the tree up after. Feller said that one of the neighbours went to Hime fin’ly and said that he’d been readin’ in some tormented book erruther that in old days the Romans, or some of them old sirs, whoever they be, used to sacrifice animiles when there was any good luck had come to ’em and they wanted to celebrate account of it. Neighbour hinted that marryin’ Abby Snell was good enough luck for any man to brag of, and wanted to know why Hime didn’t offer Imogene up as a sacrifice. Told Hime the neighbours would git up a bee, if he did, and club in with him mighty enthusiastic.”
Babb unlocked his legs and chuckled.
“Hime spoke up and told the neighbour as how ’twas Imogene that had made the match ’tween him and Abby, and that if it come to a choice of gittin’ along without the el’phunt or a cook stove Abby’d let the cook stove go ev’ry time. Didn’t get much satisfaction out of Hime, now I tell ye!”
“I donno of any one that ever did,” said Marriner Amazeen.
“Cap Nymp’ Bodfish licked him once, time o’ the May gale, there,” stated Uncle Buck. “Cap Nymps told me he did.”
“Say, do you s’pose if he’d ever licked Hime Look he’d a-hid off in the woods all next day and then sold theEffortfor a song and scooted to Hackenny, for all we know of him here?” demanded Amazeen. “No, s’r, there was no one ever done Hime Look in this world, except his own brother in town meetin’, and then t’was Look eat Look.”
“Curi’s how things has all come around the last year,” mused Lysimachus. “The Squire married to Sylvene and settled in the Willard house and the old Judge actin’ as proud of him as——”
Brickett interrupted here, coming from the inside of the store, where he had been perusing his daily paper.
“Why shouldn’t he be proud of him?” he demanded, his thumb on an item, his glasses on the end of his nose. “You listen here a minute.”
He began to read in a sing-song manner:
“A well-founded rumour from the State House is to the effect that the Governor has tendered the vacant Supreme Court judgeship to the Hon. Phineas Look, of Palermo. Mr. Look’s legal qualifications are too well known in this State to need comment. It is understood that he is in no sense an active candidate, and the honour has been tendered by the Governor to the Palermo man by the Executive’s initiative, the Governor following his frequently expressed intention of letting certain appointments within his gift seek the man. A Supreme Court judgeship is certainly not an office to be hawked among politicians, and such an appointment will be a credit to the State and the Bar. Mr. Look is——”
Brickett ran his eye down the column.
“There’s pretty nigh a whole colume here about him,” he said. “But there ain’t any need of readin’ it. It’s matters we’re all knowin’ to about him. Papers was lookin’ for somethin’ to fill up with, I persume.”
He flopped the sheet.
“What I wanted in pertickler to call your attention to,” he went on, “was something reel interestin’. It says here that a man has shot himself in a New York lodging-house, and from marks on his clothes and his papers it is supposed that he is King Bradish, who was at one time well known in certain sportin’ quarters. That must be our King Bradish, don’t you s’pose so?”
“Prob’ly,” said Uncle Buck without great interest. “And I’m glad he done it before he’d skun the last cent out of his poor old mother. I guess she ain’t got much left, as it is.”
“Well, signs and wonders never cease,” sighed Marriner Amazeen, relighting his pipe; “as I said when I witnessed Sum Badger’s new will t’other day,” he continued between puffs.
“Haskell’s girl gits it, does she?” asked Babb.
“Yas! Sence ’Caje Dunham whirled ’round and showed some signs of bein’ human, Sum found that he was in a class by himself as the meanest man in town, and he got jealous of ’Caje.”
“It won’t hurt this place none if some of the rest of ’em runs races of the same sort,” said Buck.
The click of the key in the lock above their heads startled them.
Squire Phin was coming down the stairs, shoving the key of his office into his trousers.
“We’ve jest been list’nin’ to some news about you, Squire,” called one of the group on the bench.
Squire Phin came around the corner of the stairway, put his hands behind his back and smiled at them.
“What now, neighbours?” he inquired.
“Says here in Ase’s paper that you’re goin’ to be a judge,” replied Buck.
“Well, thatisnews,” said the Squire, and yet with a quizzical cock to his eyebrows that indicated that he was in no measure surprised.
“Go ’long with you! You knowed it all the time!” snorted Buck.
“I always believe in giving my old neighbours all the news I can when they want it,” the lawyer said humorously, “for news has been scarce in town lately. I’m going to give you something straight now. You will hear this before the newspapers do: I have written to the Governor declining that honour with grateful thanks.”
“Won’t be a judge?” queried Amazeen with astonishment,
“I’d rather be Phin Look, lawyer,” said the Squire, with a queer little glint in his eyes.
“I’ll bet you ten dollars I know why,” snapped Uncle Buck, with the frankness of an old friend. “A man that knows was telling me that all you have to do is set up there in your office and rake in money hand over fist, sellin’ law to the big corporations. And a Supreme Court judge only gits five thousand a year.”
His gimlet eye bored the Squire, and a question that his curiosity had prompted for a long time popped out of his mouth.
“A man what ought to know told me that you was clearin’ fifteen thousand dollars a year out of law. Now, Squire, I stump you to say that he lied. Did he, or didn’t he?”
The lawyer so thoroughly appreciated the character of Uncle Buck that this attack was flavoured for him with delicious humour. He came close to the old man and put his hands on his hips as he straddled before him.
“I’m goin’ to tell you the honest truth, Uncle Lys,” he said.
The inquisitor pulled himself forward.
“If a man is a Supreme Court judge in this State he must be away from home almost three-quarters of his time. Now the straight facts of the case are——”
He whirled on his heel and pointed up the street. They all could see the gate of the Willard place. A woman was standing there waiting, and against her pretty white gown was silhouetted the figure of a shaggy dog.
“Now, the straight facts are, Uncle Lys, my wife wants me home every night to help water the garden. I’ve coaxed and teased, but she won’t let me be a judge.”
A pucker of mirth came around his lips.
“It’s awful to be bossed around that way by a woman, Uncle Lys.”
“Oh, you darnation fool!” snorted the old man, making a swipe at the lawyer with his cane.
Squire Phin dodged in mock terror and went away laughing.
Uncle Aquarius Wharff had come up and taken his favourite position on the platform to study the evening skies.
“How is it looking to-night?” asked the lawyer, kindly humouring the old man’s vagary.
“Clouds is master fine things with the sun-fire behind ’em, ain’t they, Squire?” returned Uncle Wharff. “Look at ’em, all splattered with colours that the cherubim has been busy all day a-mixin’ so’s to have ‘em ready for the sunset time. Blazin’ with glory, that’s what they be! Seems as if you could jump off’n Witch-Run Hill straight into the hereafter. Sometimes it has seemed to me that p’raps the angels do open the gates once in a while at sunset time jest to see if they are well ’iled ag’inst the Gre’t Day of the Hereafter. It’s a spankin’ fine prospect out there now, Squire. You take that mixtur’ of gold and roses and all them colours that make your heart feel swelly inside, and it means settled weather for a long time to come, Squire, for a long time to come!”
The lawyer patted the shoulder of the old man’s sun-faded coat.
“God bless you for a prophet, Uncle Aquarius,” he said gently.
Then he stepped off the platform and started up the street, waving a greeting to the white figure at the gate. She came to meet him, with shining eyes, and they went in hand in hand.