One day I left Pemberton's and took the road to Adrian. It was an afternoon in November. The church in Adrian stands on the edge of the graveyard, in the middle of the village, and there I went about looking for the McCulloch lot, and found it, and there was Madge's stone. It's a flat grey stone. There's many more like it, set along on rows. It seemed a neighbourly sort of place to rest in, if a man chose, after a roaming life. I stood there till the shadow came along across the churchyard from the church steeple. Then it grew dusk, and it seemed like now and then I heard a bell tolling. Aye, it was like a bell tolling. It seemed to me I could hear it. But there was no bell.
Then I came out and went to look for Andrew McCulloch's house. It stands north of the Green, looking across the churchyard. I knocked at the door, then I backed off the step, when it opened, thinking there must be a mistake about the date, and maybe inscriptions on gravestones was exaggerated; there was a girl in the doorway that looked and acted like Madge Pemberton complete. Moreover an old seaman falling off the doorstep didn't seem to upset her balmy calmness. She says:
“What is it?”
“It's Tom Buckingham come home,” I says. “But I guess you're the next generation,” and I asked for Andrew McCulloch.
He's a red-faced man with short side whiskers, a chunky, fussy, and hot-tempered man, but whether Madge Pemberton had managed him, or whether he'd worn her out, I couldn't make up my mind about the likelihood. I sat a while talking with him, and watching Madge McCulloch, his daughter, lay the tea table. I thought how I'd give something to get her to lay the tea table for me as a habit, and I didn't see how that was likely to come about.
Andrew McCulloch appeared to think most people in Adrian would be more to his mind if buried with epitaphs describing them accurate.
It was eight o'clock when I came out and started for Pemberton's. I came past McCulloch's fence, and heard some one speak near by, and there was a man sitting on the top rail near the corner. It was considerable dark.
“Been in to see King Solomon?” he says.
“What's that?” I says.
“Major General McCulloch,” he says. “Why, I believe you stayed to tea! Why, I haven't fetched that in three months!”
“Why not?”
“Oh,” he says, “why, you see, the venerable ecclesiastic he's afraid I'd want to come to breakfast too. He thinks I am a grasshopper and a burden.”
I thought it looked like a promising conversation, and climbed on the fence beside him, and took a look at him in the starlight.
He said his name was “Billy Corliss,” and explained why he sat on the fence. He said it was on account of Andrew McCulloch. He said he and Madge McCulloch were agreed, but Andrew McCulloch wasn't agreeable. That was partly because Andrew wanted Madge to stay where she was, partly because Corliss had no assets or prospects, and partly because Andrew had an unreasonable low opinion of him, as a roaming and unsettled sort. He spoke of Andrew by various and soaring names, implying a high opinion of him, and especially in speaking of Andrew's warm temper, his respect got remarkable. He'd call him maybe, “St. Peter,” in that connection, or maybe “Sitting Bull.” For candour, and opening his mind, and asking the world for sympathy, I took him to be given that way. He said the town of Adrian was divided into two parties on the subject of him, and Madge, and Andrew McCulloch, so I took it Andrew's temper had had some reasonable exercise.
“St. Peter's got a good run of warm language,” he says, “but his fence is chilly. He's got a toothache in his shoes, he has, that man.”
“Why don't you elope?” I says.
“That's the trouble,” he says. “When I ask Madge, 'Why not?' she says, 'Where to?' I'd been thinking I'd take a look around the world and see.”
“Don't you do it,” I says. “When you get around the other side, it's a long way back. It took me thirty years.”
“You don't mean it!” he says. “Why, that wouldn't do.”
“Assets take time,” I says, “but you might get some prospects.”
Then I fell to thinking how it could come about that Madge McCulloch might get into the habit of making tea for me, seeing I was too old to marry her, besides her being spoken for. Then I thought she might do it by keeping a hotel, and I says:
“Speaking of keeping hotels—”
“Who's speaking of it?”
“I am. I kept a hotel once.”
“Seaside?” he says.
“No. Inland a bit.”
“Summer hotel?”
“Aye, summer hotel. Always summer there.”
“Why, she must have paid!”
“Aye, she paid. She was put up in New Bedford,” I says, “and run in South America.”
“You don't mean it!”
“It's a good business if tended to,” I says. “But you don't tend to business, you don't. That's the trouble with you. That hotel fell into the river more'n twenty years ago, and it ain't to the point, but here Madge McCulloch's been jerking the window shade up and down like she had something on her mind.”
“It's a signal,” he says, and with that he dropped off and disappeared toward the back of the house. He left me on the fence.
I thought of the four men that had stood by me most in my time; now one was a miser and smuggler, and got himself hung; and one was a thief, and died of a split wishbone, on what he called “a throne;” and one was a fighter and gambler and poet, and he had a heavy fist, and he turned remorseful into a Burmese monk; and one was Stevey Todd. And Madge Pemberton thought at one time I was all right, but she was wrong there. And I thought how here was Andrew and another Madge, and here was Billy Corliss, and here was the world galloping along lively. I couldn't but admire the way it was so made as to keep going, and me thinking it had come pretty near to a standstill.
By-and-by, Corliss and Madge McCulloch came across the yard from the back of the house, and climbed on the fence, and Madge hooked her feet on the lower rail and talked cheerful. They spread out what was on their minds pretty confident. I never knew a couple so open-minded.
“Billy wants to run away,” she says, “but he doesn't know where to yet, unless it's to be a summer hotel in South America that fell into a river. He thinks it was an interesting hotel,” she says. “Do you think it would be nice? But how would we get there?”
“It's wrong side up now,” I says; and Billy Corliss says, “Why, there's a chance for housekeeping ingenious! Let's be social! 'Sure Mike!' says the dowager duchess, wishing to be democratic. Why, look here!” he says. “What right's a chimney got to be haughty over a cellar?”
“Oh, keep still, Billy!” says Madge McCulloch, and he closed up, sudden but cheerful, as if he'd been hit by a kettle.
I said I wouldn't recommend theHelen Marnow, but I'd recommend hotel keeping as a good and sociable business.
“For,” I says, “the seaman travels around the world seeking profit and entertainment, but the hotel keeper sits at home comfortable, and they come to him. I've been a hotel-keeper in South America” I says, “and might have been one in Greenough for the asking. I chose to be a seaman, and take a look around the world, being foolish and curious. Now, that was a mistake, for the man that bides in his place for the main of his life, has the best of it. He knows as much of the world as another; for if a man goes romping and roaming, and knows no neighbours and no family of his own, why, sure there's a deal of the world that he never knows. That's the moral of me,” I says, “that's the moral of me. Now, as to hotel keeping,” I says, “I liked that business as well as anything I ever did. I liked it well,” I says, and I looked around both sides of me, and stopped, for no Madge and no Billy Corliss was sitting on the fence. Nothing there but lonesome sections of fence.
“Why,” I says, “here's an open-minded couple. And it's an energetic couple. Where in the nation did it go to?”
Then I saw Andrew McCulloch coming down from the front door to the gate, but he turned to the right at the gate, and went stumping away up the street, and Madge and Billy Corliss got up from crouching beside the fence, and Madge says:
“Let's go in and get warm.”
And I says to myself, “It's a couple that's got good sense, too,” for Andrew's fence was chilly.
We went in the house and sat down by the stove.
“As to hotel keeping,” I says, “I've talked that over with Pemberton, and Stevey Todd, who was the man that run the emigrant hotel with me, and Pemberton's agreeable, and Stevey Todd don't argue against it. I've been thinking of building on to Pemberton's, and making a big summer hotel. It stands in sight of the sea, and it's a likely spot. Now,” I says, “hotel keeping is a combination of hospitality and profit. The secret of it is advertising and a peaceable mind to take things as they come. A good hotel keeper is a moderate man. He sees folks coming and going from day to day, and how many does he see as comfortable as himself? Hotel keeping is a good life, you can take my word.”
Then there was a noise in the hall outside, but I went on:
“It's a good life,” I says, and I looked around on both sides of me, and I saw no Madge McCulloch and no Billy Corliss. Nothing but empty chairs, and two open doors behind me.
I says, “That's a singular coincidence.”
By the noise in the hall I judged Andrew McCulloch was come back unexpected, and I judged he might come in ambitious and inquiring, and not easy to take as he came. I started for the open doors, and got through one of them hasty, and shut it behind. It was soon enough to escape Andrew, and too soon to see if it was the right door. It was dark there except for the starlight through a window, showing crockery on shelves. The place was no more than a pantry.
I've been in different circumstances by sea and land, but I didn't recollect at that moment ever being planted in just those, and it seemed to me a couple, that could plant an experienced seaman that way must be ingenious as well as open-minded. I heard Andrew McCulloch talking to himself like the forerunnings of an earthquake, and I says:
“An experienced seaman might get out, but not that way. Experienced seamen don't put off on the windward side. But,” I says, “it seems to me experience and ingenuity could keep a hotel.”
With that I put up the window softly and climbed out and dropped to the ground. I went round the house looking for ingenious couples, and then across the yard, and there they sat on the same fence, with their feet hooked as previous, and they appeared to feel calm and candid.
“As to hotel keeping,” I says, climbing on the fence, “it's a good life,—” and there I stopped.
I looked over at the old churchyard on the Green. It was dark and still over there. The rows of flat tombstones were grey, like planted ghosts. “Hic Jacet” means “here lies,” as I'm told. Those folks that once got their “Hic jacets” over them wouldn't ever get up to argue the statement; but those that left good memories behind, I guessed they were glad of it. As for the living, if they were elderly, they'd best go to bed. With that I got down from the fence.
“Madge,” I says, “do you know why I'm backing you?”
“Yes,” she says, “I know.”
How the nation did she know?
“Happen Billy Corliss may want to run away still” I says, “and maybe you'll be asking, 'Where to?' and maybe he'll remark, 'Pemberton's.' Then if you and he should drop into Pemberton's most any time, with a notion of connubiality, I guess likely he'd have prospects to modify Andrew McCulloch with afterward, 'Pemberton's seaside Hotel. Peaceful Patronage Welcome. No Earthquakes nor Revolutions Allowed.'”
Then I left them on the fence and came back to Greenough.
When Captain Buckingham ended, it was late and dark, the afternoon long gone into evening. The storm still roared around Pemberton's, and we five sat anchored close to the chimney. It might have been a quarter of an hour went by, and it was past time when Pemberton or Stevey Todd should be getting the supper ready, when there came a sudden tumult in the hall without, and some one bounced in, the snow flying after him, and he cried, “I've eloped and I want a minister!” That was how he stated it: “I've eloped and I want a minister!”
Then Pemberton said:
“I dare say now you're right there,” and Captain Buckingham said nothing, nor looked up.
I knew it must be Billy Corliss, though I didn't know him, nor did Uncle Abimelech, nor Stevey Todd. He might have blown down from Labrador, or eloped out of Nova Scotia.
Pemberton and Corliss went out together. Then Stevey Todd spoke up cautiously:
“When I look at it,” he said, “when I asks myself: 'Is he right or is he not?' I don't hear no objections. And further,” he said, leaning forward and speaking low, “it's my opinion there's a woman out there.”
Uncle Abimelech lifted his eyes from the kettle that hung over the fire, and stared about and seemed to be alarmed.
“Where?” said Uncle Abimelech.
Stevey Todd pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. Uncle Abimelech followed the direction slowly along the dark ceiling, and seeing nothing alarming there, seemed relieved. He turned back to the fire and muttered:
“She throwed kettles, some.”
Then Corliss came in again and after him Pemberton, and with them was a tall girl in layers of cloaks and veils, and layers of snow, which being taken off, she came out as balmy and calm as a tropic coast, and enough to make a man forget his old troubles and lay in new ones. Captain Buckingham only looked at her, and said nothing.
Corliss was a slim young man with a candid manner. For two that had run away to look for matrimony in the snow they both seemed remarkably calm. He looked us over, and inquired our names, and appeared to be satisfied with them, and to like the looks of us.
“Why, that's good,” he said. “Now, Miss Madge McCulloch is Mr. Pemberton's granddaughter, as you likely know, and she's ambitious to be Mrs. Billy Corliss. That's a good idea, isn't it? But there are parental objections, hot but reasonable. Parent has no sort of an opinion of me, and wants her to run parental establishment. Both reasonable, aren't they?” he said in his candid way. Madge McCulloch was kneeling before the fire and warming her hands. She looked up and laughed.
“You'd better hurry, Billy, or the minister will be snowed in.”
“Why, that's reasonable, too,” he said, “I was only going to say that those reasons, as stated, were warm;” and he once more went out with Pemberton.
After a time she laughed again.
“If daddy should come here, what do you think would happen?” and she looked at Captain Buckingham, who looked at her and said nothing, his thin brown face as still as an Indian's.
Stevey Todd said cautiously:
“I'd almost think, Miss, in that case, you'd be in hot water.”
“It's in the kettle,” said Uncle Abimelech, and Madge McCulloch, “So it is! I wonder if there's tea.”
Then she and Stevey Todd laid the table, and we sat watching her make tea, and saw no objections.
“Shall I tell you about it?” she said calmly, pouring tea.
“If so be it's agreeable, Miss,” said Stevey Todd; and Uncle Abimelech said, “I takes no sugar in mine,” but Captain Tom was silent.
She said she had run out of the back door before it was beginning to grow dusk, and climbed the fence and gotten into Corliss' sleigh, but she was afraid they were seen by neighbours; so that it appeared likely Andrew McCulloch would hear about their going. “He might come after by-and-by, and do something that would be very hot,—Wouldn't it?”
Stevey Todd said, “It might be as you say, Miss,” and Uncle Abimelech, “It's better when it's hot,” looking into his teacup as if disappointed, but Captain Tom said nothing.
“It was snowing and drifting,” she went on, “and we kept falling into ditches, but at last we saw the light of the hotel by the roadside and were glad.”
So Billy Corliss had come and bounced at the door, and said he wanted a minister, and quite right he was with respect to those circumstances and Madge McCulloch, as Stevey Todd hinted, though cautiously.
When Pemberton and Corliss came back with the minister, it was clear that Pemberton agreed with Stevey Todd on that point. It may be he was not in the habit of agreeing with Andrew McCulloch. Certainly he gave Madge McCulloch away in marriage to Billy Corliss. And she, saying that she wanted a maid-of-honour, chose Uncle Abimelech for that purpose, which seemed scarcely reasonable, but the minister married them and went his way. Then Stevey Todd could not get over thinking he would have been a better maid-of-honour than Uncle Abimelech, more suitable and more according to the talents of each, and he said this, though indirectly and warily; and Uncle Abimelech said that he recollected licking Stevey Todd thirty years back on theHebe Maitland, “took him across his knee and whaled him good;” and Stevey Todd, though cautiously, seemed to hint that some one who might be Abe Dalrimple, couldn't do it again, and in other respects resembled a dry codfish. Billy Corliss stood up and said:
“Gentlemen, the elements are raging. In the town of Adrian the ear of imagination detects explosions. But Pemberton's is dedicated to peace and connubiality.”
Then they retired with their connubiality, and paid us no more attention, and Pemberton, Captain Buckingham, Stevey Todd, Uncle Abimelech, and I sat by the fire.
Uncle Abimelech seemed to have something on his mind that he would like to get off, for his eyes wandered uneasily, and he muttered:
“Kettles.”
“Throwed 'em, did she?” said Pemberton to encourage him, and Uncle Abimelech said:
“Some,” and cast his eyes and jerked his thumb vaguely upward, toward the ceiling.
“If she throws 'em at him—Aye—” He struggled with the thought, bringing it slowly out of dim recesses to the light. “She ought to pour the bilin' off first. It ain't right.”
Silence fell over us again. At last Captain Tom said:
“Supposing a man is loose-jointed in his mind, like Abe, or Billy Corliss a trifle, and gets took back of the ear with something hard, that steadies him, it's no great harm if it's warm.”
“She ought to pour off the bilin',” said Uncle Abimelech uneasily.
After that we sat for a while, each taken with his own thoughts, until Pemberton was knocking out his pipe, like one approaching the idea of a night's rest, when there came a noise in the outer hall, and the wind blew snow under the crack below the inner door. Some one bounced into the room like a storm. He was a short, thickset man with white side whiskers, and looked like an infuriated Santa Claus, for he was covered with snow.
“Most miserable, infernal, impossible night ever made, Mr. Pemberton! Forty thousand devils—-Ah! Give me some of that, hot! Detestable night!”
“It is so, Andrew,” said Pemberton, soothing and agreeable. “You're near right.”
“As referring to weather,” said Stevey Todd, “though not putting it so strong, you might—”
But the newcomer broke in, and beat the table with his fist.
“Weather! No! Not weather. Mr. Pemberton, I'll tell you what's the matter. Here's my daughter run away to be married with the coolest, freshest, limber-tongued young codfish that ever escaped salting. Not if I know it! I'll salt him! I'll pickle him! I will, if my name's McCulloch.”
He puffed hard, and sat down. Stevey Todd looked at Andrew McCulloch, then he looked at the others and winked cautiously, and Pemberton winked back. But Captain Tom did not look up. Uncle Abimelech too kept his eyes on the fire. He seemed to be following his old train of thought, which Andrew McCulloch's coming had started again in his mind, for he began:
“Before I was married, her mother she used to throw kettles at me. They was kettles,” he said bitterly, “with spouts and handles. Aye, afterward she did too, some.”
Andrew McCulloch puffed and looked surprised and Pemberton said:
“Ran in the family?”
“Aye. Then she come across the bay in a rowboat, and I was diggin' clams, and she says. 'If you dasn't come to the house, what dast you do?' I see the minister down the beach, diggin' clams, an' he had eleven children, he had, diggin' clams, and she looked at him too, and I says, 'I das' say he'd rather'n dig clams.' We went fishin' afterward, and got eight barrel o' herring.”
“You don't say!” says Andrew McCulloch, puffing and looked surprised.
Uncle Abimelech kept his eyes fixed on the kettle and wandered away in his mind. Then Captain Tom roused himself, and spoke thoughtfully.
“It was different with me,” he said. “Her parents wanted another one. He was richer, but nowise so good-looking. I says to her, 'Cut and run!' but she wouldn't, as being undutiful. She took him. His name was Jones. He went bankrupt, and got paralysis, and is living still. Her parents died in different poorhouses.”
Pemberton looked surprised at this too, and then thoughtful, and then he winked at Stevey Todd, who passed it back.
“I got my wife out of the back window of a boarding school, second story,” said Pemberton. “She came down the blinds.” And he wiped his face with his coat sleeve.
“Mine came through the cellar,” said Stevey Todd. “She brought a pot of jam in her pocket, or else,” he added cautiously, “or else it was pickles. It might've been pickles, but it runs in my mind it was jam.”
But Pemberton's wife had been a widow first, as he once told me, and Captain Tom's and Stevey Todd's romances didn't run that way, by accounts. But as to Uncle Abimelech, it may be what he said was true.
They all fell silent again, except Andrew McCulloch, who whistled: “Whew, whew, whew!” and pulled his whiskers, now this one and that, and said:
“Bless my soul! You don't mean it!” and fidgeted in his chair. “I didn't suppose it was so usual, I didn't! God bless my soul!”
“It's their nature,” said Captain Buckingham at length. “They're made that way.”
“You don't mean it!”
“The best thing for 'em is hotel keeping.”
“Eh!”
“Nothing like it, you can take my word. 'Pemberton's Hotel. Pemberton and Buckingham, Owners and Proprietors. B. Corliss, Manager. Peace, Propriety, and Patronage.' Aye, that's it. They get restless. If they elopes, let 'em keep a hotel. Nothing like it.”
“Whew, whew!” whistled Andrew McCulloch. “But they've gone!” he says. “See here! How you going to catch 'em? How you going to set 'em to hotel keeping when they elope off your hands? Where've they gone? That's the point. Where've they gone?”
“Up,” said Uncle Abimelech.
“Eh!”
“Connubilated,” said Uncle Abimelech, pointing. “Gone up.”
“Prayed over fifteen minutes,” said Stevey Todd, “which I wouldn't so state without watching the clock.”
“What!” cried Andrew McCulloch. “Do you mean to say, you aided and abetted, Mr. Pemberton—”
“Peace and connubiality was his last words,” went on Stevey Todd, following his train of thought. “Peace and connubiality, he says, and he meant the same.”
“Ain't the same!” said Uncle Abimelech.
“Do you mean to say,” cried Andrew McCulloch—
“Don't throw nothin' till you pour off the bilin',” said Uncle Abimelech uneasily. “It ain't right.”
Andrew McCulloch puffed, “Whew! whew! whew!” as if blowing off the steam of his boiling. Then he said:
“Give me some of that, hot!”
And we all fell silent again.
The kettle sang, the chimney coughed in its throat. One heard outside the whistle of the wind, the moan of the surf far off in the night, and the snow snapping against the windows.
The clock struck ten.