MARGARET'S DAUGHTER
Discomfort roused Duncan from his rest at an early hour, the morning following his arrival in Radville. I must confess that the beds in the Bigelow House are no better than they should be; in fact, according to Duncan, not so good. Duncan ought to know; he has slept in one of them, or tried to; a trial thus far to me denied. From what he has said, however, I shudder to think what will become of me should I ever lose the shelter of Miss Carpenter's second-story front and be thrown out into a heartless world to choose between the Bigelow House and Frank Tannehill's Radville Inn....
Duncan arose and consulted the two-dollar watch which he had left on the pine washstand by the window. It was half-past seven o'clock, and that seemed early to him. He was tired and would willingly have turned in again, but a rueful glance at the couch of his night-long vigil sufficed him. He lifted a hand to Heaven and vowed solemnly: "Never again!"
As he bent over the washstand and poured a cupful of water into the china basin, thus emptying the pitcher, he was conscious of a pain in his back; but a thought cheered him. "They must have decent stables in this town," he considered, brightening. "The haymows for mine, after this."
He dressed with scrupulous care, mindful of Kellogg's parting words, the sense of which was that first impressions were most important. "All the same," Duncan thought, "I don't believe they count in a dead-and- alive place like this. There's no one here with sufficient animation to realise I'm in town." This shows how little he understood our little community. A day of enlightenment was in store for him.
Pansy Murphy was scrubbing out the office when he came down for breakfast. She is large, of what is known as a full complexion, good-hearted and energetic. His pause at the foot of the stairs, as he surveyed in dismay the seven seas of soapy water that occupied the floor, aroused her. She sat back suddenly on her heels and looked her fill of him, with her blue Irish eyes very wide, and her mouth a trap. He bowed politely. Pansy saved herself from falling over backwards by a supreme effort, scrubbed her hair out of her eyes with a very wet hand, and gave him "Good-marrin', Misther Dooncan," in a brogue as rich as you could wish for.
He started violently. "Heavens!" he said. "I am discovered!"
"Make yer moind aisy about thot," Pansy assured him. "'Tis known all over town who ye arre, what's yer name, how manny troonks ye've brought wid ye, and th' rayson f'r yer comin' here."
"A comforting thought, thank you," he commented: "to awake to find one's self grown famous over-night!..."
"Now ye know," she returned, emboldened, "what it is to be a big toad in a small puddle."
"I thank you." He nodded again, with a comprehensive survey of the reeking floor. "I'm afraid I do." With which he slipped and slid over to and through the swinging wicker doors of the dining-room.
It was deserted. From the negligée of the tables, littered with the plates and dishes, dreary survivors of a dozen breakfasts, he divined that he was the tardiest guest in the household. A slatternly young woman in a soiled shirt-waist—the waitress—received him with great calm and waved him toward a table by the window, where an unused cover was laid. He went meekly, dogged by her formidable presence. She stood over him and glared down.
"Haman neggs," she said defiantly, "steakan nomlette."
"I'll be a martyr," he told her civilly. "Me for the steak."
She frowned gloomily and tramped away. He folded his hands and, cheered by an appetising aroma of warm water and yellow soap from the office, considered the prospect from the window by his side. Three children and a yellow dog came along and watched him do it, dispassionately reviewing his points in clear young voices. Tracey Tanner ambled into view on the other side of the street and beamed at him generously, his round red face resembling, Duncan thought, more than anything else a summer sun rising through mist. Josie Lockwood (he was to discover her name later) passed with her pert little nose ostentatiously pointed away from him; none the less he detected a gleam in the corner of her eye.... Others went by, singly or in groups, all more or less openly interested in him.
He tried to look unconscious, but with ill success. There was nothing particularly engaging in the view: the broad, dusty street lined with commonplace structures of "frame" and brick, glowing in the morning sunshine. There were, to be sure, cool shadows beneath the trees, but the suggestion was all of summer heat. There was a watering-trough and hitching-rail directly opposite, a little to one side of Hemmenway's feed-store, and there a well-fed mare stood, drooping dejectedly between the shafts of a dilapidated buggy. On the corner was a two-storey brick building with large plate-glass windows on the ground floor for the display of intimate articles of feminine apparel. The black and gold sign above proclaimed it: "The Fair. Dry Goods & Notions. Leonard & Call." Duncan considered it with grave respect. "The scene of my future activities," he observed.
By this time his audience had become too large and friendly for his endurance. He rose and retired to a less public table.
In her own good time the waitress returned with a plate, and a small oval platter in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. She placed them before him with a manner that told him plainly he could never make himself the master of her affections. The small oval platter was discovered to contain a small segment of dark-brown ham and two fried eggs swimming in grease.
Duncan questioned the woman with mute, appealing eyes.
"Steak's run out," she told him curtly.
"Leaving no address?" he inquired with forced gaiety.
A suppressed smile softened her austerity, and she turned away to hide it. "To think," he wondered, "that a sense of humour should inhabit that!" He broke a roll and munched it gloomily, pondering this revelation. "And such humour !" he added, with justice.
After an interval the woman returned. He had refrained from the staple dish. She indicated it with a grimy forefinger.
"Please!" he begged plaintively. "I'm never very hungry in the morning."
"I guess you don't like the table here," she observed icily, clearing away.
"Do you?"
"I don't have to; I live home."
He stared. Could it be possible...?
"I know a good old one, too," he ventured hopefully. "Now here." He drew his coffee cup toward him and began to stir with energy. "You say: 'It looks like rain'; and I'll say: 'Yes, but it tastes a little like coffee.'"
She clattered away indignantly. He rose, depressed, and sighing sought the outer air.
In the course of a forenoon's stroll Radville discovered itself to him in all its squalor and its loveliness. It sits in the centre of a broad valley of rolling meadow-land, studded with infrequent homesteads, broken into rather extensive farms, threaded by a shallow silver stream that gives its all in tribute to the Susquehanna far in the south. The barrier mountains rise about it like the sides of a bowl, with a great V-shaped piece chipped out of the southern wall. This break we call the Gap; through it the railroad comes to us, through it the river escapes. The hills rear high and steep, their swelling flanks cloaked in sombre green and grey, with here and there a bald spot like a splash of ochre where there's been a landslide, climbing directly from the plain, with no foothills. A recluse, I have thought, must have chosen this spot for a town site; sickened of the world, he sought seclusion—and found it here to his heart's content. Until the coke-ovens come, following the miners, with their attendant hordes of Slovaks, Poles and Hungarians, we shall be near to God, for we shall know peace....
The town has been laid out with great rectangularity; the river divides it unequally. On the western bank is the larger community—locally, the Old Town, retaining its characteristics of sobriety, quiet and comfort; here, also, is the business centre—such business as there is. Here Duncan found homely residences sitting back from the street in ample grounds—grounds, perhaps, not very carefully groomed, but in spite of that attractive and pleasant to the eye. With one or two exceptions, none were strongly suggestive of wealth. He detected a trace of ostentation, and no taste whatever, in Lockwood's new villa (I'm told that's the polite designation for the edifice he caused to be erected what time the plague of riches smote him and the old home on Cherry Street became too small for the collective family chest), and there was quiet dignity in the quaintly columned façade of the Bohun mansion, now occupied solely by old Colonel Bohun, lonely and testy, reputed the richest as well as the most miserable man in the county. But as to his wealth, I doubt if rumour runs by more than tradition; Blinky Lockwood's new-found hundred-thousands are growing rapidly toward the million mark, unless Blinky's a worse business man than the town takes him to be.
An old stone arch (whereon lovers linger in the moonlight) spans the stream and links the Old Town with the new, which we sometimes term the Flats, but more often simply Over There. It is a sordid huddle of dingy and down-at-the-heel tenements, housing the poorer working classes and the frankly worthless and ruffianly riff-raff of the neighbourhood. There are eight gin-mills Over There as against two sample-rooms in the Old Town, and of the local constabulary two-thirds lead exciting lives patrolling the Flats; the remaining third is ordinarily to be found dozing in the backroom of Schwartz's, and if roused will answer to the name and title of Pete Willing, Sheriff and Chief of Police.
Duncan reviewed both sides of the municipal face with fine impartiality—the Flats last; and turned back to the Old Town. "There's one thing," he communed as he reached the bridge: "If these people ever find me out they'll run me across the river—sure."
He paused there, looking up and down the valley with contemplative gaze; and it was there I found him.
As is my custom, I had devoted the earlier morning hours to the compilation of that work which is to gain for the name of Littlejohn a trifle more respect than, I fear, it owns in Radville nowadays; and afterwards, again in accordance with habit, had started out for my morning constitutional. As I was about to leave the house Miss Carpenter waylaid me and, in a voice still tremulous from the shock of yesterday, asked me to hunt up Jake Sawyer in the Flats and tell him to come and cut the grass.
I was not in the least unwilling, for the walk was not long, and the morning very pleasant—not too warm, and bright with the smiling spirit of June. I don't remember feeling more cheerful and at peace with the world than when I marched off on my mission. The cloud I might, of course, have anticipated: clouds always come, and a lifetime has taught me to be sceptical of that tale about the silver lining. And even when it came it seemed no more depressing, of no more significant moment, than the cloud shadow that scurries across a wheat-field with no effect other than to enhance the beauty of the sunshine that pursues it.
Old Colonel Bohun was the cloud-shadow of that morning. I met him turning into Main Street from Mortimer—at the head of which his mansion stands. He came down the sidewalk, but with a hint of haste in his manner: a tall old man, bending beneath the burden of his years, his fierce old face and iron-grey hair shaded as always by the black slouch hat with the flapping brim, his rounded shoulders cloaked with the black Inverness cape he wore summer and winter. In spite of his age and evident decrepitude, he bodied forth the spirit of what he had been, and none could pass him without knowledge of his presence; he drew eyes as a magnet draws filings, and drawing, held them in respect. I doubted if there were a man in Radville who could meet the old colonel with anything but a mingling of fear and deference—with one or two exceptions. For myself I hated him heartily, and he, looking down at me from the peak of pride whereon his iron soul perched, despised me with equal intensity. So we got along famously at our infrequent encounters.
This morning I caught a flash of fire from his red-rimmed old eyes, and told myself I was sorry for whoever crossed his path before he returned to his lonely castle. It was his habit at odd intervals to foray down the village streets with one grievance or another rankling in his bosom, seeking some unlucky one upon whose head to wreak his resentment. We had come to recognise the heavy, slow tapping of his thick cane as a harbinger of trouble, even as you might prognosticate a thunderstorm from the rumbling beneath the horizon.
I saw he recognised me and gave him a civil salute, which he returned with a brusque nod and a sharper, "Good-morning, Littlejohn," as he passed. Then he swung into Main Street, paralleling my course on the opposite sidewalk, and wentthump-thumpingalong, darting quick glances hither and yon beneath his heavy brows, like some dark incarnation of perverse pride and passion.
Partly because the sight of him sensibly influenced my mood, and partly because inevitably he made me think of Sam Graham, I turned off at Beech Street, leaving him to pursue his way toward the centre of town. Graham's one-horse drug-store stood on Beech, a block south of Main. That being the least promising location in town for a business of any sort, Sam had naturally selected it when he concluded to set up shop. If Sam had ever in his life displayed any symptoms of business sagacity, Radville would never have recovered from the shock. I believe it was Legrand Gunn, our only really certificated village wit, who coined the epigram: "As useless as to take a prescription to Graham's." The implication being that Graham didn't carry sufficient stock to fill any prescription; which was largely true; he couldn't; he hadn't the money to stock up with. What little he took in from time to time went in part to the support of Betty and himself, but mainly to pay interest on his debts and buy raw materials for models of his thousand-and-one inventions. Most Radvillians firmly believed that Sam has at some time or other in his busy, worthless career invented everything under the sun, practicable or impracticable—the former always a few days after somebody else had taken out patents for the identical device. But at that time no one believed he would ever make a cent out of any one of the children of his ingenious brain; nor was I, in this respect, more credulous than any of my fellow-townsmen.
I lingered a moment outside the shop, thinking of the change that had come over it since the death of Margaret Graham, Betty's mother. For, despite its out-of-the-way location, the shop had not always been unprofitable; while Margaret lived (my heart still ached with the memory of her name) Sam's business had prospered. She had been one of those woman who can rise to any emergency in the interest of her loved ones; the first to realise Sam's improvidence and lack of executive ability, she had taken hold of the business with a firm hand and made it pay—while she lived. It has never ceased to be a source of wondering speculation to me, that she, with her gentle training, so wholly aloof from every thought of commerce or economy, should have proven herself so thorough and level-headed a business woman. There's no accounting for it, indeed, save on the theory that she conceived it a woman's function to make up for man's deficiencies; Sam needed her, so she become his wife; he needed a manager, so she had became that also....
During Margaret's régime, as I say, the shop had thrived. Sam had few ill-wishers in Radville; the trade came his way. Then Betty was born and Margaret died....
Most of this I have on hearsay. I left Radville shortly after their marriage and did not return until some months after Margaret's burial. By that time the shop had begun to show signs of neglect; its stock was decimated, its trade likewise. Sam was struggling with his inventions more fiercely than ever—seeking forgetfulness, I always thought. The business was allowed to take care of itself. He had always a serene faith in his tomorrows.
Now the little shop had been far distanced by the competition of Sothern and Lee. It was twenty years behind the times, as the saying is. Small, darksome, dreary and dingy, it served chiefly as a living-room for Sam, his daughter, and his cronies, as well as for his workshop. He had a bench and a ramshackle lathe in one corner, where you might be sure to find him futilely pottering at almost any hour. He owned the little building—or that portion in it which it were a farce to term the equity above the mortgage—and Betty kept house for him in three rooms above the store.
I saw nothing of him as I stepped across the street, and was wondering if he were at home when, through the small, dark panes of glass in his show windows I discerned his white old head bobbing busily over something on the rear counter. I pushed the door open and entered. He looked up with his never-failing smile of welcome and a wave of his hand.
"Howdy, Homer? Come in. Well, well, I'm glad to see you. Sit down—I think that chair there by the stove will hold together under you."
"What are you doing, Sam?" I asked.
"Fixin' up the sody fountain. 'Meant to get it working last month, Homer, but somehow I kind of forgot."
He rubbed away briskly at the single faucet which protruded above the counter, lathering it briskly with a metal polish that smelt to Heaven.
"Do much sody trade, Sam?"
He paused, passing his worn old fingers reflectively across a chin snowy with a stubble of neglected beard. "No," he allowed thoughtfully, "not so much as we used to, now that Sothern and Lee've got this new-fangled notion of puttin' ice cream in a nickel glass of sody. Most of the young folks go there, now, but still I get a call flow and then—and every little bit helps." He rubbed on ferociously for a moment. "'Course, I'd do more, likely, if I carried a bigger line of flavours."
"How many do you carry?"
"One," he admitted with a sigh, "vanilly."
While I filled my pipe he continued to rub very industriously.
"Why don't you get more?"
He flashed me one of his pale, genial smiles. "I'm thinkin' of it, Homer, soon's I get some money in. Next week, mebbe. There's a man in N'York that mebbe can be int'rested in one of my inventions, Roland Barnette says. Mebbe he'd be willin' to put a little money in it, Roland says, and of course if he does, I'll be able to stock up considerable."
I sighed covertly for him. He rubbed, humming a tuneless rhythm to himself.
"Roland's goin' to write to him about it."
"What invention?" I asked, incredulous.
Sam put down his bottle of polish and came round the counter, beaming; nothing pleases him better than an opportunity to exhibit some one of his innumerable models. "I'll show you, Homer," he volunteered cheerfully, shuffling over to his work-bench. He rasped a match over its surface and applied the flame to a small gas-bracket fixed to the wall. A strong rush of gas extinguished the match, and he turned the flow half off before trying again. This time the vapour caught and settled to a steady, brilliant flame as white as and much softer than acetylene.
"There!" he said in triumph. "What d'ye think of that, Homer?"
"Why," I said, "I didn't know you had an acetylene plant."
"No more have I, Homer."
"But what is that, then?" I demanded.
"It's my invention," he returned proudly.
"I've been workin' on it two years, Homer, and only got it goin' yestiddy. It's going to be a great thing, I tell you."
"But whatisit, Sam?"
"It's gas from crude petroleum, Homer. See ..." he continued, indicating a tank beneath the bench which seemed to be connected with the bracket by a very simple system of piping, broken by a smaller, cylindrical tank. "Ye put the oil in there—just crude, as it comes out of the wells, Homer; it don't need refinin'—and it runs through this and down here to this, where it's vaporised—much the same's they vaporise gasoline for autymobile engines, ye know—and then it just naturally flows up to the bracket—and there ye are."
"It's wonderful, Sam," said I, wondering if it really were.
"And the best part of it is the economy, Homer. A gallon will run one jet six weeks, day in and out. And simple to install. I tell ye—"
"Have you got it patented yet?"
"Yes, siree! took out patents just as soon as it struck me how simple it 'ud be—more than two years ago. Only, of course, it took time to work it out just right, 'specially when I had to stop now and then 'cause I needed money for materials. But it's all right now, Homer, it's all right now."
"And you say Roland Barnette's writing to some one in New York about it?"
"Yes; he promised he would. I explained it to Roland and he seemed real int'rested. He's kind, very kind."
I was inclined to doubt this, and would probably have said something to that effect had not a shadow crossing the window brought me to my feet in consternation. But before I could do more than rise, Colonel Bohun had flung open the door and stamped in. He stopped short at sight of me, misguided by his near-sighted eyes, and singled me out with a threatening wave of his heavy stick.
"Well, sir!" he snarled. "I've come for my answer. Have you sense enough in your addled pate to understand that, man? I've come for my answer!"
"And may have it, whatever it may be, for all of me," I told him.
His face flushed a deeper red. "Oh, it's only you, is it, Littlejohn? I took you for that fool Graham, in this damned dark hole. Where is he?"
I looked to Graham and he followed the direction of my gaze to the work-bench, where Sam stood with his back to it, his worn hands folded quietly before him. He seemed a little whiter than usual, I thought; and perhaps it was only my fancy that made him appear to tremble ever so slightly. For he was quite calm and self-possessed—so much so that I realised for the first time there was another man in Radville besides myself who did not fear old Colonel Bohun.
"I'm here, colonel," he said quietly. "What is it you wish?"
The colonel swung on him, shaking with passion. But he held his tongue until he had mastered himself somewhat: a feat of self-restraint on his part over which I marvel to this day.
"You know well, Graham," he said presently. "You got my letter—the letter I wrote you a week ago?"
"Yes," said Sam, with a start of comprehension. "Yes, I got it."
"Then why the devil, man, don't you answer it?"
Sam's apologetic smile sweetened his face.
"Why," he said haltingly—"I'm sure I meant no offence, but—you see, I'm a very busy man—I forgot it."
"The hell you forgot it. D'ye expect me to believe that, man?"
"I'm afraid you'll have to."
Bohun was speechless for a moment, stricken dumb by a second seizure of fury. But again he calmed himself.
"Very well. I'll swallow that insolence for the present—"
"It wasn't meant as such, I assure—"
"Don't interrupt me! D'you hear? ... I've come for my answer. Yes, I've come down to that, Graham. If you can't accord me the common courtesy of a written reply—I've come to hear it from your mouth."
Sam nodded thoughtfully. "Mebbe," he said, "you forgot you have failed to accord me the common courtesy of any sort of a communication whatever for twenty years, Colonel Bohun. Even when my wife, your daughter, died, you ignored my message asking you to her funeral...."
"Be silent!" screamed the colonel. "Do you think I'm here to bandy words with you, fool? I demand my answer."
"And as for that," continued Sam as evenly as if he had not been interrupted, "your proposition was so preposterous that it could have come only from you, and deserved no answer. But since you want it formally, sir, it's no."
For a moment I feared Bohun would have a stroke. The back of the chair I had just vacated and his stick alone supported him through that dumb, terrible transport. He shook so violently that I looked momentarily to see the chair break beneath him. There was insanity in his eyes. When finally he was able to articulate it was in broken gasps.
"I don't believe it," he stammered. "It's a lie. I don't believe it. It's madness—the girl wouldn't be so mad. ..."
"What is it, father?"
I don't know which of us three was the more startled by that simple question in Betty Graham's voice; Sam, at all events, showed the least surprise; the old colonel wheeled toward the back of the store, his jaw dropping and his eyes protruding as though he were confronted with a ghost. As, in a way, he was: even I had been struck by that strange, heartrending similarity to her mother's tone; and even I trembled a little to hear that voice, as it seemed, from beyond the grave.
Betty stood at the foot of the staircase; alarmed by the noise of the colonel's raging, she had stolen down, unheard by any of us. And in that moment I realised as never before that the girl had more of her mother in her than lay in that marvellous reproduction of Margaret Graham's voice. As she waited there one detected in her pose something of her mother's quiet dignity, in her eyes more than a little of Margaret's tragedy. Of Margaret's beauty I saw scant trace, I own; but in those days my eyes were blinded by the signs of overwork and insufficient nourishment that marred her young features, by the hopeless dowdiness of her garments.
Abruptly she moved swiftly to her father's side and slipped her hand into his. "What is it, father?" she repeated, eyeing Colonel Bohun coldly.
I thought Sam's eyes filled. His lips trembled and he had to struggle to master his voice. He smiled through it all, tenderly at his girl, but there was in that smile the weakness of the child grown old, the dependence of the man whose womanfolk must ever mother him.
"Why, Betty," he said, tremulous—"why, Betty, your grandfather here has been kind enough to offer to take you and educate you and make a lady of you, and—and we were just talking it over, dear, just talking it over."
"Do you mean that?" she flung at Bohun.
He straightened up and held himself well in hand. "Is it the first you have heard of it?"
"Yes." She looked inquiringly at her father.
"Why didn't you tell her?" Bohun persisted harshly. "Were you afraid?"
"No." Sam shook his head slowly. "I wasn't afraid. But it was unnecessary.... You see, Betty, Colonel Bohun is willing to do all this for you on several conditions. You must leave me and never see me again; you mustn't even recognise me should we meet upon the street; you must change your name to Bohun and never permit yourself to be known as Betty Graham. Then you must—"
"Never mind, daddy dear," said the girl. "That is enough. I know now—I understand why you never told me. It's impossible. Colonel Bohun knew that when he made the offer, of course; he made it simply to harass you, daddy. It's his revenge...."
She looked Bohun up and down with a glance of contempt that would have withered another man, poor, wan, haggard little maid of all work that she was.
"And that's your answer, miss?" he snapped, livid with wrath.
"I would not," she told him slowly, "accept a favour from you, sir, if I were starving...."
Bohun drew himself up. "Then starve," he told her; and walked out of the shop.
I gaped after his retreating figure. It seemed impossible, incredible, that he should have taken such an answer without yielding to a fit of insensate passion. And I was still marvelling when I heard Graham saying in a broken voice: "Betty! Betty, my little girl!"
Then I, too, went away, with a mist before my eyes to dim the golden grace of June.
INTRODUCTION TO MISS CARPENTER
On my way back from the Flats I discovered Duncan sitting on the wall of the bridge, moodily donating pebbles to the water. His attitude suggested preoccupation with unhappy reflections, a humour from which the sound of my footsteps roused him. He looked up and caught my eye with an uncertain nod, as though he half recognised me—presumably having casually noticed me at the Bigelow House the previous evening.
"Good-morning," said I cheerfully, with a slight break in my stride intended craftily to convey the impression that I was not altogether averse to a pause for gossip.
He said "Good-morning," sombrely.
"A pleasant day," I observed spontaneously, stopping.
"Yes," he agreed. "By the way, have you a match about you?"
I searched my pockets, found a box and handed it over.
"I've been perishing for a ..." He slid his fingers into a waistcoat pocket, as one who should seek a cigarette-case; but the hand came forth empty. He bit his remark off abruptly, with a blank look in his eyes which was promptly succeeded by an expression of deepest chagrin. He got up and with a little bow returned the box.
"I forgot," he said, apologetic.
"I'm afraid I can't help you out," said I.
"Oh, that's all right. I'd just forgotten that I don't smoke."
I pretended not to notice his disconcertion.
"You're to be congratulated; it's a shameful waste of time and money."
"A filthy habit," said he warmly.
"Indeed, yes," I chanted, finding my pipe and tobacco pouch.
He caught my twinkle as I filled and lighted, and looked away, the shadow of a smile lurking beneath his small, closely clipped moustache.
"I beg your pardon," he said a moment later, regarding me with more interest, "but—do you live here?"
"Certainly. Why?"
"I was sure of it," he replied soberly. "But don't you feel a bit lonesome, sometimes?"
"Not in the least. Radville's one of the most interesting places on this side of the footstool." He sighed. "Indeed," I insisted, "you won't feel any more lonely after you've lived here a while, than I do now, Mr. Duncan."
He opened his eyes at my acquaintance with his name, but jerked his head at me comprehendingly.
"To be sure," he said. "You would know. But I'm only beginning to realise what it feels like to be a marked man."
"I hear you intend to make Radville your permanent residence, Mr. Duncan?"
"It's part of the system," he said obscurely. "It may prove a life sentence."
"Don't you think you'll like it here?"
"Oh, I'm strong for Radville," he declared earnestly. "It's all to the merry ... I beg your pardon."
I stared curiously to see him colour like a school-girl. "What for?"
"My mistake, sir; I forgot myself again. I don't use slang."
"Oh!" I commented, wondering. He was beginning to puzzle me.
In the pause the air began to rock with the heavy clanging of the clock in the Methodist Church steeple.
"That's noon," I said. "We'll have to cut along: dinner's ready."
Duncan immediately replanted himself firmly upon the parapet. "I know it," he said with some indignation.
Again bewildered, I hesitated, but eventually advanced: "Our ways run together, Mr. Duncan, as far as the Bigelow House. My name is Littlejohn—Homer Littlejohn."
He rose again to take my hand and assured me he was glad to make my acquaintance. "But," he added morosely, "I'll be damned if I go back to that hotel before dinner's over.... Great Scott! I forgot again. I don't swear!"
"Have you any other unnatural accomplishments?" I inquired, chuckling.
"I'm so full of 'em I can hardly stick," he assented gloomily. "I don't drink or smoke or swear or play pool or cards, and on Sundays I go to church."
I laughed outright. "You've come to the right place for such exemplary virtues to be fully appreciated, Mr. Duncan."
"That's all right," he said with a return of his indignation, "but it wasn't in the bargain that I should starve to death. Do you realise, Mr. Littlejohn," he continued, warming, "that you behold in me a young man in the prime of health actually on the point of wasting visibly away to a shadow of my former hardy self? It's a fact: I am. For the past two days I've had nothing to eat except railway sandwiches and coffee and the kind of fodder they pitchfork you at the Bigelow House. And I came here with a mind coloured with rosy anticipations of real old-fashioned country cooking. It's an outrage!"
"Look here," said I: "why not come home with me for dinner? I'll be glad to have you, and Miss Carpenter won't mind your coming, I'm sure."
He got up with alacrity. "Those are the first human words I've heard in Radville, sir! I accept with joy and gratitude. Come—lead me to it!"
Now, Miss Carpenter doesn't like her meals delayed; so I would have been inclined to hasten this Mr. Duncan; but he saved me the trouble.
"Miss Carpenter?" he asked without warning, as we hurried up Main Street.
"My landlady, Mr. Duncan."
"She takes boarders? An old maid?" he persisted eagerly.
"An elderly spinster; boarders are her distraction as well as a source of income."
"Do you think she'd take me in, Mr. Littlejohn?"
"I'm sure of it. There's a vacant room ..."
"Does she talk?"
"Moderately."
"Not a regular walking newspaper—no?"
"Not exactly—"
"Then I'm afraid it's no use," he sighed.
I glanced up at his face, but it was inscrutable.
"You—you want a landlady who talks?" I gasped, incredulous.
"It's one of the rules," he said, again obscurely.
I could make nothing of him. And had I any right to introduce to Hetty Carpenter a guest who came without credentials and talked more or less like a lunatic at large?
"Mr. Duncan—" I began, uncomfortable.
"Don't say it," he anticipated me. "I know you think I'm crazy—but I'm not. You would think so, naturally, because you're the only man here who's ever lived away from Radville long enough—not counting those who went to the World's Fair—."
"How did you know?"
"Bigelow told me last night; said you'd be glad to meet somebody from New York. I hope he's right. I'm glad, personally.... You see—May I request that you regard this as confidential?"
"Yes—yes!"
"I've come to Radville to make my fortune."
The confession smote me witless: I could only gape. He nodded confirmation, with a most serious mien. At length I found strength to articulate. "From New York—?"
"Yes. It's a new scheme. You see, Mr. Littlejohn, matters have come to such a state that a city-bred boy practically doesn't stand any show on earth of making good in the cities; your country-bred boys crowd him to the wall, nine times out of ten. They invade us in hordes, fresh from the open, strong, vigorous, clear-headed, ambitious.... What chance have we got? ... I've been figuring it out, you see, and I've come to the conclusion that it's my only salvation to get back to the country and improve some of the opportunities—the golden opportunities—that your boys have neglected, overlooked, in their mad desire to invade the commercial centres of the country."
He seemed very much in earnest; I was watching him as closely as I might without making my scrutiny offensive; and there seemed to be the ring of conviction in his voice, while the expression of his eyes indicated concentrated thought. And how was I to know, then, that the concentration was due to the necessity of invention?
"You follow me, Mr. Littlejohn?"
"I was here first," I corrected. "Still, there's more in what you say than perhaps you realise."
"If I'd made this discovery originally I'd agree with you, sir. But, quite to the contrary, it was pointed out to me by one of the shrewdest business minds in the United States—a man who'd been a country boy to begin with. And I've come to the conclusion that he's right."
"So you're here."
"Here I am."
"And what do you propose doing?"
"I'm reading law, Mr. Littlejohn; that I shall continue. In the meantime, I shall keep my eyes open. At any day, at any amount, the opportunity may present itself, the opportunity I'm looking for."
"Probably you're right," I assented, impressed, as we turned a corner.
A young woman in a very attractive linen gown was strolling toward us, quite prettily engaged with a book which she read as she walked, her fair young head bowed beneath a sunshade which tinted her face becomingly. She gave me a shy smile and a low-voiced greeting as we passed. Only my knowledge of the young woman prevented me from being blinded by her engaging appearance.
"That," said I, when we were out of earshot, "shows you what a furore a good-looking young man can create in a town like this. Josie Lockwood has put on her best bib-and-tucker to go walking in this afternoon, on the off-chance of meeting you, Mr. Duncan."
"Flattery note," he commented. "Who's Josie Lockwood?"
"Daughter of Blinky Lockwood, the richest man in Radville."
"Ah!" he said cryptically.
We had come to Miss Carpenter's. I opened the gate for him, but he stood aside, refusing to precede me. And courtesy in the young folk of to-day warms my old heart.
He had as much for Hetty Carpenter. Within an hour he had insinuated himself into her good graces with a deftness, an ease, that astounded. Within three hours he was established, bag and baggage, in her very best room.
And thirty minutes after she had helped Duncan unpack, Hetty had to run downtown to buy a spool of thread.
A WINDOW IN RADVILLE
A jealous secret, which has never heretofore been divulged, is responsible for the prosperity of the RadvilleCitizen—at least, in very great measure. As the discoverer of this recipe for circulation, I have kept it carefully locked in my guilty bosom for many a year, and if I now betray it I do so without scruple, for theGazetteis now established firmly in a groove of popularity from which you'd find it hard to oust the paper. So here's letting the cat out of the bag:
The policy of theCitizenhas long been to devote its columns mainly to the exploitation of what is known in newspaper terminology as "the local story." Of the news of the great outside world we're parsimonious, recognising the fact that the coronation of King Edward VII. is a matter of much less import to our community than the holocaust which was responsible for the destruction of Sir Higginbottom's new hen-house. Similarly a West Indian tornado involving losses running up into hundreds of thousands of dollars sinks into relative insignificance as compared with the local weather forecast and its probable effect on crops not worth ten thousand; while the enforced abdication of the Sultan of Turkey gets a "stick" (a space in a newspaper column about as long as your forefinger, if you have a small hand) as contrasted with the column and a half assigned to the death of old Colonel Bohun.
Now, naturally, a paper in a small country town can't afford a large and hustling staff of enthusiastic reporters; and very probably theCitizenwould overlook many items and stories of burning local interest were it not for the fact that the population has been cunningly made to serve in a reportorial capacity without either pay or its own knowledge. We literally get our local news by wireless; and from dawn to dark there's a constant supply of it on tap.
It's this way: our editorial rooms are in the second storey of a building overlooking Court House Square. The lower floor is occupied by the Post Office, and in front of the Post Office are a hitching-post and two long, weather-scarred benches, while just across the road—I mean street—on the boundary of the square proper—is a near-bronze drinking-fountain and watering-trough erected from the proceeds of several fairs given by the local branch of the W. C. T. U. Naturally, indeed inevitably, all Radville gravitates to the Post Office, bringing the news with it, and stops to discuss it on the steps or the benches or by the fountain; and the acoustics are admirable. With a window open and scratch-pad handy, the keen-eared scribe at his desk in our offices can hardly fail to pick up every scrap of town information between sunrise and dusk.... Of course, in winter the supply's not so good. Winter before last we all suffered with colds acquired through keeping the windows open; and last winter our circulation fell off surprisingly through keeping them closed. This winter we contemplate cutting a trap-door through the floor for the ostensible purpose of ventilation.
And thus it was that I managed to hear much of Mr. Duncan while I myself was engaged in formulating an estimate of the young man. He engaged the popular imagination no less than mine own, although I was more intimately associated with him—as a fellow-resident at Hetty Carpenter's. My professional duties making their habitual demands upon my time, I saw, it may be, less of him than many of our people. Certainly I learned less of his ways from first-hand knowledge. But from my desk (it's the nearest to the window right above the Post Office door) I was enabled to keep a pretty close line upon his habits and movements, during the first fortnight of his stay in Radville.
At home I saw him with unvarying regularity at meal-times and less frequently after supper. Between whiles he seemed to observe a fairly regular routine: in the morning, after breakfast, he walked abroad for his health's sake; in the afternoon and evening he sequestered himself in his room for the pursuit of his legal studies. About the genuineness of these latter I was long without a question: having been privileged to inspect his room I found it redolent of an atmosphere of highly commendable application. His writing table was a model of neatness, and his store of legal treatises impressed one vastly. That no one, not even Hetty Carpenter, ever saw the room without remarking the open volume of "The Law of Torts," with its numerous pages painstakingly spaced by slips of paper by way of bookmarks, is an attested fact. That it was always the same volume is less widely known.
Less directly (that is to say, via my window) I learned of him compendiously from sources which would have been anonymous but for my long acquaintance with the voices of the townspeople.... I write these pages at my desk at home and, if truth's to be told, somewhat surreptitiously; but with these voices ringing in my memory's ear I seem still to be sitting at my erstwhile desk by the window, looking out over Court House Square, chewing the rubber heel of my pencil the while I listen. It's summer weather and there's a smell in the air of dust and heat; the square simmers and shimmers in unclouded sunshine, its many green plots of grass a trifle grey and haggard with dust, the flagstaff with its two flanking cannon by the bandstand in the middle wavering slightly in the haze of heat; there are two rigs, a farm-wagon and a buckboard, hitched to the post below, and some boys are squirting water on one another by holding their hands over the lips of the fountain across the way. Immediately opposite, on the far side of the square, the Court House rises proudly in all the majesty of its columned front and clapboarded sides; farther along there's the Methodist Church, very severe, with its rows of sheds to one side for the teams of the more rural members. Behind them all bulk our hills, dim and purple against the overwhelming blue of the sky. It's very quiet: there are few sounds, and those few most familiar: the raucous war-cry of a rooster somewhere on the outskirts of town; an intermittent thudding of hoofs in the inch-deep dust of the roadway; Miles Stetson wringing faint but genuine shrieks of agony from his cornet, in a room behind the Opery House on the next street; periodically a shuffle of feet on the sidewalk below; less frequently the whine of the swinging doors at Schwartz's place; above it all, perhaps, the shrill but not unpleasant accents of Angie Tuthill as she pauses on the threshold downstairs and injects surprising information into the nothing-reluctant ears of Mame Garrison.
" ... He's got six suits of clothes, three for summer and three for winter, and two others to wear to parties—one regular full-dress suit and another without any tails on the coat that he told Miss Carpenter was a dinner-coat, but Roland Barnette says he must've meant a Tuxedo, because nobody wears that kind of clothes except at night; so how could it be a dinner-coat?... And Miss Carpenter told Ma he's got twelve striped shirts and eight white ones and dozens of silk socks and two dozen neckties and handkerchiefs till you can't count and...."
Mame punctuates this monologue with a regular and excusable "My land!" and the young voices fade away into the mid-summer afternoon quiet. I am free to resume my interrupted flight of fancy, but I refrain. The atmosphere is soporiferous, hardly conducive to editorial inspiration, and I find the commingled flavours of red-cedar, glue and rubber quite nourishing.
Presently Dr. Mortimer, the minister, comes down the street in company with his deacon, Blinky Lockwood. They are discussing someone in subdued tones, but I catch references to a worthy young man and the vacancy in the choir.
Josie Lockwood rustles into hearing with Bessie Gabriel in tow. Josie is rattling volubly, but with a hint of the confidential in her tone. She insists that: "Of course, I never let on, but every time we meet I can just feel him looking and...."
Bessie interposes: "Why, Tracey Tanner's just crazy for fear he'll take on with Angie."
I can see Josie's head toss at this. "I bet he don't know what Angie Tuthill looks like. That's too absurd..."
"Absurd" is Josie's newest word. It's a very good word, too, but sometimes I fear she will wear it threadbare. It closes her remarks as the two girls dart into the Post Office, and there is peace for a time; then they emerge giggling, and I hear Josie declare: "I'd get Roland Barnette to do it, but he's so jealous. He makes me tired."
Bessie's response is inaudible.
"Well," Josie continues, "I'm simply not going to send them out until I meet him. Father said I could give it a week from Saturday, but I won't unless—"
Bessie interrupts, again inaudibly.
"Of course I could do that, but ... if I just said 'Miss Carpenter and guests' that nosey old Homer Littlejohn'd think I meant him too, and if I only said 'guest' it'd look too pointed. Don't you think so?"
To my relief they pass from hearing, and I feel for my pipe for comfort. Anyway, I never did like Josie Lockwood.... Smoking, I meditate on the astonishing power of personality. Here is Mr. Nathaniel Duncan no more than a fortnight in our midst (the phrase is used callously, as something sacred to country journalism) and, behold! not yet has the town ceased to discuss him. The control he has over the local mind and imagination is certainly wonderful: the more so since he has apparently made no effort to attract attention; rather, I should say, to the contrary. Quiet and unassuming he goes his way, minding his own business as carefully as we would mind it for him, with all the good will in the world, if only we could find out what it is. But we can't leave him alone....
Tracey Tanner interrupts my musings.
"Hello!" he twangs, like a tuneless banjo.
"'Lo, Tracey." This lofty and blase greeting can come from none other than Roland Barnette.
"Where you goin'?"
"Over to the railway station."
"What for?"
"To give you something to talk about. I'm going to send a telegram to a friend of mine in Noo York."
"Aw, you ain't the only one can send telegrams. Sam Graham sent one just now."
"Hedid!"
"Uh-huh. I was sort of hangin' round, when he came in, and I seen him send it myself."
"Sam Graham telegraphing! Do you know; who to, Tracey?" Roland's superiority is wearing thin under contact with his curiosity. This surprising bit of news makes him distinctly more affable and inclined to lower himself to the social level of the son of the livery-stable keeper.
As for myself, I am inclined to lean out of the window and call Tracey up, lest he get out of hearing before I hear the rest of it. Fortunately I am not thus obliged to compromise my dignity. The two are at pause.
"Gimme a cigarette 'nd I'll tell you," bargains Tracey shrewdly. "Lew Parker told me after Sam'd gone."
The deal is put through promptly.
"He was telegraphin' to—Got a match?"
For once I am in sympathy with Roland, whose tone betrays his desire to wring Tracey's exasperating neck.
"Aw, he was only telegraphing to Gresham an' Jones for some sody water syrups."
"Where'd he get the money?" There's fine scorn in Roland's comment.
"I dunno, but he handed Lew a five-dollar bill to pay for the message."
"Well, if Sam Graham's got any money he'd better hold on to it, instead of buying sody-water syrups. I guess Blinky Lockwood'll get after him when he finds it out. He owes Blinky a note at the bank and it's coming due in a day or two and Blinky ain't going to renew, neither."
"Sam seemed cheerful 'nough. Anyhow, it ain't my funeral."
I have now something to think about, indeed, and am more than half inclined to stroll up to Graham's and find out what has happened, on my own account, when the voices of Hi Nutt and Watty the tailor drift up to me. The cronies are coming down for their regular afternoon session on the Post Office benches—a function which takes place daily, just as soon as the sun gets round behind the building, so that the seats are shaded. And I pause, true to the ethics of journalism; it's my duty not to leave just yet.
Surprisingly enough these two likewise are discussing Sam Graham. At least I can deduce nothing else from Hiram's first words, though their subject is for the moment nameless.
"Yes, sir; he's the poorest man in this town."
"Yes," Watty quavers; "yes, I guess he be."
"An' he's got no more business senseintohim than God give a goose."
"No, I guess he ain't."
"Why, look at the way things has run down at his store since Margaret died. She kept things a-runnin' while she was alive."
"Yes, she was a fine woman, Margaret Bohun was."
"An' they ain't no doubt about it, Sam had money into the bank when she died. But ever sinst then it's been all go out and no come in with him. He keeps fussin' and fussin' with them inventions of his, but no one ever heard tell of his gettin' anything out of 'em."
"And what'd he do with all the money he had when Margaret died?"
"Spent it, what he didn't lend and give away and lose endorsin' notes for his friends and then havin' to pay 'em. An' speakin' of notes, I heard Roland Barnette say, t'other day, that old Sam had a note comin' due to the bank, an' Blinky wasn't goin' to renew it any more."
"'Course Sam can't pay it."
"Certainly he can't. I was in his store day before yestiddy an' they wasn't nobody come in for nothin' while I was there. He don't do no business to speak of."
"How long was you there, Hi?"
"From nine o'clock to noon."
"What doin'?"
"Nuthin'; jes' settin' round."
"I seen him to-day goin' into the bank. Guess he must've gone to see Lockwood 'bout thet note."
"Well, I don't envy him his call on Blinky Lockwood none."
"Mebbe he went in to deposit his coupons," Watty chuckled.
Hiram snorted and there was silence while he filled and lit his pipe.
"I hearn tell this mornin'," he resumed, "that Josie Lockwood's goin' to give a party next week."
"Yes, I hearn it too. Angie Tuthill was talkin' 'bout it to Mame Garrison up to Leonard and Call's. She said they was goin' to have the biggest time this town ever see. Goin' to decyrate the grounds with lanterns an' have ice cream sent from Phillydelphy, and cakes, too. Can't make out what's come into Blinky to let that gal of his waste money like that."
"I figger," says Hiram after a sapient pause, "she must be gettin' it up for thet New York dood."
"Duncan?"
"Uh-huh."
"I didn't know he was 'quainted with the Lockwoods."
"I didn't know he was 'quainted with nobody."
"Nobody 'ceptin' Homer Littlejohn an' Hetty Carpenter, an' they don't seem to know much about him. I call him darn cur'us. Hetty says he allus a-settin' in his room, a-studyin' an' a-studyin' an' a-studyin'."
"He goes walkin' mornin's, Hetty told me."
"Wal, he don't come downtown much. Nobody hardly ever sees him 'cept to church."
Hiram ponders this profoundly, finally delivering himself of an opinion which he has never forsaken. "I claim he's a s'picious character."
"Don't look to me as though he knew 'nough to be much of anythin'."
"Wal, now, if he's a real student an' they ain't no outs 'bout him, what in tarnation's he doin' here? Thet's jest what I'd like to have somebody tell me, Watty."
"Hetty sez he sez he wants a quiet place to study."
Hiram snorts with scorn. "Oh, fid-del! You don't catch no Noo York young feller a-settlin' down in Radville unless he's crazy or somethin' worse."
"'Tain't no use tellin' Hetty Carpenter thet." "No; if anybody sez a word agin him she shets 'em right up."
"'Tain't only Hetty, but all the wimmin's on his side."
"Thet's proof enough to me he ain't right." "Wimmin," says Watty, as the result of a period of philosophical consideration, "is all crazy about clothes. When a feller's got good clothes you can't make them see no harm into him, no matter what he is. I pressed some of Duncan's last Satiddy. I never see clothes—such goods and linin's. They was made for him, too—made by a tailor on Fifth Avenue, Noo York. I fergit the name now."
"Wal, Roland Barnette sez they ain't stylish. He sez they're too much like an undertaker's gitup."
"Wal, Roland oughter know. He's the fanciest dressed-up feller in the county."
"Yes, I guess he be."
The subject apparently languishes, but I know that it still occupies their sage meditations; and presently this is demonstrated by Hiram, who expectorates liberally by way of preface.
"When this cuss Duncan fust come here," he says with a self-contained chuckle, "ev'rybody but me figgered he had stacks of money. Guess they be singin' a different tune, now, sinst he's been goin' round askin' for work."
This is news to me, and I sit up, sharing Watty's astonishment.
"Be he a-doin' thet, Hiram?"
"That's what he's been a-doin'."
"Funny I missed hearin' about it."
"He only started this mornin'. He went to Sothern and Lee's and Leonard and Call's and Godfrey's—'nd then I guess he must 'ev quit discouraged. They wouldn't none of them give him nothin'. Leastways, thet's what they said after he'd gone out. He didn't give anybody a reel chance to say anythin'. I was in Leonard and Call's and he came in an' asked for a job, but the minute Len looked at him he turned right round and slunk out without a-waitin' for Len to say a word." Hiram smoked in huge enjoyment of the retrospect. "He's the curiousest critter we ever had in this town."
"Yes," agrees Watty, "I guess he be."
At this juncture comes an interruption; Tracey Tanner returns, hot-foot. Either he has been running, or his breathlessness is due to excitement. Before the two upon the bench he pauses in agitated glee, a bearer of tremendous tidings.
"Hello," he pants.
"Now, you Tracey Tanner," Hiram cuts in sharply, "you run 'long an' don't be a-botherin' round. Seems like a body never can git a chance to rest, with you children allus a-buttin' in—"
"Aw, shet up," says Tracey dispassionately. "I only wanted to tell you the news."
Watty quavers: "What news, Tracey?"
"Well," says the boy, "I'll tell you, Watty, but I wouldn't 've told him after what he said."
"But what's the news, Tracey?" There is suspense in the iteration.
"Well, seein's it's you, Watty—"
"You Tracey Tanner, you run 'long and stop your jokin'!" interrupts Hiram with authority.
"'Tain't no joke; it's news, I'm tellin' you. Sa-ay, what d'ye think, Watty?"
"Yes, Tracey, yes? What is it, boy?"
"Thet—Noo—York—dood," drawls Tracey, "is a-workin' for Sam Graham!"
A dramatic pause ensues. I rise and find my coat.
"Tracey Tanner," shrills Hiram, "be you a-tellin' the truth?"
"Kiss my hand and cross my heart and vow Honest Injun, I seen him up there just now in the store, Watty, tendin' the sody fountain."
"Wal," says Hiram, rising, "I don't believe a word of it, but if it's true we better be goin' round to see, Watty, 'cause it ain't a-goin' to last long. He won't stay after he finds out Sam ain't got no money to pay his wages with."