By Georgia Wood Pangborn
The steam had retired, clanking, from the radiator, withdrawing to the cellar like the dragging chain of Marley’s ghost. The blue flame of a Bunsen burner was the only light and heat left. Now and then the wind flung handfuls of spiteful sleet at the window.
“I don’t know anything about ghosts,” said Henrietta, plaintively. “I’m as bad in psychology as mathematics. I might tell about the gray collie, but he was real. Don’t let that chocolate boil over, Isabel.”
Isabel poured out three steaming cups, thick and sweet, for in the young twenties and late teens the appetite is still bizarre.
“I’ll tell it as it happened,” sighed Henrietta. “I don’t believe I could make anything up to save my neck.”
She was small and sad-eyed, with a timid manner, and sat on a wolf-skin, leaning one elbow on its head, which had green eyes of sinister slant, and bristling ears.
“You know who Artaxerxes was?”
“Artaxerxes,” they recited, “was your old wolf-hound who was really benevolent, but everybody was afraid of him, and when he wagged his tail it waved like a cat’s, sinuously, instead of swinging in a clubby, careless way, as a dog’s should.”
“He was white with gray spots,” mused Henrietta; “I suppose his family in Siberia looked like that to match the snow when they went out hunting, and he was shaggy and soft.
“We chained him the night the circus came to town. He heard a lion roar as the train went by at three o’clock, and, at first, I thought we had another lion in the barn. Gracious! If he hadn’t been chained he would have been over the wall and chased that lion to the station.
“I went down to soothe him and see if his chain had given in any of its links. I never saw him so out of temper. Finally he consented to lie down, though he grumbled about it, and the tip of his tail kept twitching, not wagging. He hardly ever wagged it.
“He worried all that day. ‘Don’t you knowthere are bears and lions and tigers and wolves out there?’ he’d say—‘Isn’t it my business to protect you from such things? Do let me go and kill a few. I’ll come right back!’
“We supposed he would stop worrying when the circus went, but instead, he got worse. He explained how it was his business to find out what had become of all those animals. In the evenings, as soon as he was unchained, he would march up and down inside the wall, holding his nose to the wind and every now and then making a low impatient sound in his throat, as if he were worried about something and making plans.
“One morning Farmer Grosman came to our house, very fierce: ‘Your dog’s been killing my sheep.’ We explained that he never got over the six-foot wall, but nothing would do. If he hadn’t done it, who had? If we did not shoot him, he would, and so on.
“Papa was very polite. He said he regretted that he could allow no shooting on the place except what he did himself. ‘You are certainly entitled to shoot any dog or dogs which you may discover molesting your sheep, and I shall exercise the same prerogative in protecting my dog.’
“He said it with that deprecating smile of his—I believe he smiled deprecatingly when he got cut off from his men at Antietam, and fought his way out of a lot of rebels who tried to make him prisoner. He hated Grosman, who was the meanest man in town and starved his horses.
“The man went off growling, and said he’d see the Mayor. We chained Artie up that night. Inthe morning we found his cat, dead, with a half-eaten piece of poisoned meat beside it. Artie thought everything of that cat. He had carried it around in his mouth ever since it was a little kitten. He always had to have his cat, the way a child has to have a doll. Any other cat he’d have sighted half a mile away and chased. But that one was his own, and anything it did was all right. It’s all in being acquainted. Papa sat up all the next night with a shotgun. We heard that the people from the French quarter of the village insisted that Artie got over the wall at night and roamed around and got into mischief. They said they heard him howling up on Mount Phelim, and talked a great deal about what they were going to do to him and us. Those Canucks would have it that he was a man-wolf, and could change about from one thing to another. You can’t argue with them, when they get a notion like that.
“One morning Pete Lancto, who mows the lawn, said he had seen the devil, and that he was like a shaggy dog.
“‘Probably itwasa dog!’ I said. But he told a lot of lies about smelling brimstone and flames coming out of its eyes.
“I said: ‘I guess you weretenet’ (that’s their word for ‘tight’).
“But he hadn’t touched a drop, and had only been to get a new salt codfish at the store.
“‘Well, anyway, if it smelt of brimstone, it wasn’t Artie.’
“But that idiot said: ‘The devil, he can smell brimstone when he wants to—je pense que oui!’
“So I let him alone. You can’t argue with a man who hasn’t any premises to argue from.
“It was my work to go to the village for the mail. I went after supper, about sunset, or a little later.
“The road curves along the side of Mount Phelim, which is not much of a mountain, but rather too big for a hill. When you look south it is as if the trees stood on each others’ heads, and there are wide, open spaces, like a park, so that you can see between the trunks, only by the road the underbrush is thick like a hedge. But on the north side of the road you don’t want to tumble off, for the Powasket runs below, hidden under the tops of trees, so that you only know it’s there from the sound. When I was little, I used to be afraid of that road, because a Canuck nurse-girl had scared me with stories of bears and catamounts and Indians.
“That was why papa had me go for the mail. He never could stand cowards. At first he used to sneak along behind me, and when I got hysterical would saunter up as if he were just out for a walk, and show me how pretty the sunset was over toward Canada, or cluck for squirrels to come out and see what we wanted, or take me up into the woods a little to find Indian pipes like caryatides holding up dead leaves. So it wasn’t very long before I grew to love the walk, and the sound of the wind in the trees, even when it was dark. I got quite friendly with the squirrels, and used to leave little piles of nuts as I went to the village, and when I came back they would be all gone. Therearen’t many squirrels up there that can afford pecans and Brazil-nuts. I suppose they wondered till their heads ached why I left them around so carelessly.
“But when I grew to like it at night, papa began to object. A good many times when I’ve been sitting on the edge of the road swinging my feet over the Powasket, watching the last color going out beyond Canada, and listening to the owls and frogs and things, he has come to meet me and grumbled about ‘going to extremes.’ But I had him, you see, and only laughed. Hadn’t he trained me to do it?
“So about that time he got me Artaxerxes for a chaperone, and he was a good deal of a nuisance, for the village folk disliked him from the first. When they whistled to their own dogs to get them out of his way, how could he tell they weren’t calling to him? And when he’d turn to see what they wanted, they’d think he was coming after them and run, which was nonsense.
“We were keeping Artie chained that week of the sheep-killing fuss. How he hated it! When I stepped upon the horse-block to mount Pixie—I rode most of that week, and he knew I never took him when I took Pixie, because he had a nasty way of snapping at her nose, not meaning anything, but it got on her nerves dreadfully—and when I mounted Pixie and shook my crop at him, he would stand up at the end of his chain, his fore paws beating the air and his tongue hanging out, because he was choking himself so hard; and I’ve often thought he looked more unattractive that way withhis one head than any picture of Cerberus with three.
“It was particularly hard on him now that his cat was dead. We had got him a new kitten, but it wasn’t broken in yet, and couldn’t understand that he didn’t mean anything when he carried it around in his mouth.
“It was that evening that I saw the gray collie the first time. There were long streaks of late sunlight reaching up into the mountain and he was so mixed up in the light and shadow that it was only by chance I saw him at all, he was so like the tree trunks and bowlders; but he happened to be in a place that I knew all about, because it was where papa and I had often sat, and I knew no gray patch of anything belonged just there. It was like finding an animal in one of those old puzzle-pictures, where they’re all mixed up in the branches.
“I reined up and whistled, and called him every name I could think of, but he did not stir, so that I almost thought my eyes were wrong after all; but there was no mistaking those pointed ears cocked toward me. I thought he might be the sheep-killer, though he was such an aristocratic creature, for what can you expect of a dog that’s lost and hungry and unhappy? I’d probably steal something myself if I felt that way. I knew that nobody in our part of the country owned such a dog as that, and I wondered if his master were dead up there on the mountain. There are so many queer accidents—but it was the closed season. The more I wondered, the queerer it seemed.
“All of a sudden, Pixie snorted and plunged so that I was almost thrown, for I wasn’t expecting it, and was leaning over with a loose rein and my arm out toward the collie. I had trusted that mare like my own sister, and had believed her a sensible soul, but she never stopped until she reached the barn, sweating and trembling like anything.
“I was so out of patience that I left her at home with Artie the next time I went for the mail. I planned as I went through the woods how I would make the collie’s acquaintance and bring him home, and how he and Artie would strike up a friendship. They were both such splendid fellows and so lonely. I thought a good deal about it, how I’d manage, for I knew that if I wasn’t careful they’d be more likely to kill each other first—like Balin and Balan, you know—and make up afterward.
“I didn’t meet the collie until I was coming back. It was twilight, and the moon was rather narrow to see by. There was a rustle and snapping in the bushes at the side of the road.
“‘Nice fellow!’ I said, and stopped. I could make out the silhouette of his ears cocked toward me, and a little glimmer where his eyes were. ‘Poor old chap,’ I said, ‘did you lose your folks?’ But he wouldn’t say a word, and backed off when I went toward him, so finally I went on, hoping he would follow, and he did, but slyly, so I could hardly be sure it was he, keeping beside me in the underbrush.
“When I reached the open, and looked back, he was standing in a faint patch of moonlight, in the middle of the road, looking after me with his headdown a little, something the way people look at you under their eyebrows when they’re trying to understand.
“I whistled and called, but it was no use. He stood there as long as I did, and I finally went on without him. But I couldn’t get him off my mind. It seemed such a wild, lonesome life for a dog that must have been brought up in a pleasant home, with regular meals and a fireplace to lie in front of, and probably a girl like me to take him walking. And it seemed as if it must be something queer and tragic to send him off that way by himself. I thought more and more how some young fellow might be lying dead up there on the mountain. I made up a whole story about it that evening. And that night I dreamed I had the collie and found a collar hidden in his ruff, and was trying to read his name on it—but you know how hard it is to read anything in a dream; you look at a letter and it changes to something else, or dances off to one side. Then he seemed to be telling me a long story, the way animals do in dreams, but when I woke up it turned into nonsense.
“I knew he would meet me the next evening, and so I took some of Artie’s dog-biscuit with me, and while the collie padded along the other side of the bushes, tried to reach some through to him, but he wouldn’t touch it, though once he sniffed a little very daintily, and then blew out his breath, as dogs do when they’ve found out all they want to know about a smell. He kept right beside me. As we neared the opening he grew bolder, frisked across the road in front and came up from the other side.As I pretended to pay no attention, he came close behind and touched my elbow, hardly enough to say so, but I felt his breath warm through my sleeve.
“When I came out into the open moonlight he stood as he had before at the edge of the woods, and watched me out of sight. I couldn’t believe that he was the sheep-killer, he seemed so gentle and timid, but I didn’t dare speak of him to any one—it would have seemed like betraying a trust—for I knew that in other people’s minds, if they found out that he was there, it would lie between him and Artie, and as Artie was out of the question, they would take it out in killing the collie anyhow. I felt something the way Southern girls do in novels, when they’re hiding a handsome Union soldier.
“The next evening I started as usual, but just as I got to the woods, Artie came tearing after me, dragging a yard of chain and pretending he thought I wanted him! I could have slapped him, but took it out in being sarcastic, with words he couldn’t understand, and hitched his chain to my belt, so that if he started to be impolite to the other fellow, I could have something to say about it.
“We reached the post-office safely enough, but I was glad he was tight to my belt, for some rough men looked at us in that ugly, suspicious way and said ‘sheep-killer’ once or twice, and ‘loup-garou.’ So I really felt safer when we reached the woods, in spite of dreading the meeting between Artie and the collie.
“But I didn’t hear or see anything of him until we were half-way through, and then, so far off it might have been on top of the mountain, I heard him howl—not exactly a howl, but a queer cry, as if he were calling to something at a distance, kind of sorrowful, but fierce, too. It went down my back like a chip of ice—but I’d hardly heard it when Artie roared in answer, and I was being carried up that mountain at the end of his chain like a cart after a runaway horse.
“And I had thought I could hold him! Gracious! I tried to catch at the branches, but they broke. We went through a patch of blackberries, and there was a mucky little spring, where I fell in the mud and scared the frogs, and I think it must have been half-way up Phelim, where I finally caught tight hold of a tree trunk and my belt broke and Artie went on as if he didn’t know the difference. I don’t know how long it was before I got my breath and began to think. Then I heard them—away off at the top, the frogs singing between as peaceful as could be—but I heard that wicked snarling and knew they were at it—Balin and Balan—and that they were so well matched it was likely to be the death of both, unless I could stop it. I followed the sound and climbed after, though I was all weak and trembling. You can see on my hands now how the thorns had scratched, and my clothes were heavy and sticky with mud. It seemed ages before I got there. I think I was crying.
“I knew I couldn’t do anything, but I picked up the heaviest stick I could find, though all the sticks you can pick up in the woods are as rottenand light as powder. They didn’t seem to know I was there. They were in a little open space, and the moonlight lit up their eyes now and then. I could see that the collie was a more tremendous fellow than I had thought—and then—all of a sudden—I knew!
“And because I knew I didn’t even try to pull Artie away when he got the other fellow by the throat, and held him down, while he got weaker and weaker. I looked at him there in the moonlight, and cried, and wondered how I’d been so stupid.
“While I sat there wringing my hands and waiting for Artie to let go, some men came up and turned a bull’s-eye lantern on me, and seemed so astonished they couldn’t do anything but swear, though each would try to shut the other up, now and then, saying there ‘was a lady present.’
“One of them seemed to think it was funny, and explained what they had said to each other, the way people always do for animals or babies. ‘Siberian wolf and Siberian wolf-hound! Must ’a seemed kin’ o’ natural for them fellers to meet up. ‘Beg pardon,’ says the wolf, ‘ain’t I seen you before?’—and says the pup, ‘I don’t know, but you’re certainly the chap my mammy told me to lick if ever I come acrost you, and, by thunder, I’ll do it!’ Which he did. ‘Will you be so kind, Miss, when your little terrier there has quite finished, to call him off? It’d be rayther indelicate for a stranger to interfere.’
“The other man seemed sorry. ‘Nothing left but his pelt, which is some chewed, but could bemended up into a real elegant rug, which the young lady might be pleased to accept.’”
Henrietta thoughtfully scratched the ears of the rug, and ran her fingers over the rows of beautiful teeth. “This is the collie.”
“But sometimes I wonder just what he had in mind when I felt his breath on my elbow. Most people would say that he was thinking how convenient I would be some evening when no sheep was handy, but I’m not sure. At the time I supposed he was sad and lonesome, and glad of my company. A wolf, after all, is a good deal of a person. He was so frightfully solitary, you see—nobody to answer his gathering cry—half a world away from his own people.”
By Kate Douglas Wiggin
Diadema, wife of Jot Bascom, was sitting at the window of the village watch-tower, so called because it commanded a view of nearly everything that happened in Pleasant River; those details escaping the physical eye being supplied by faith and imagination working in the light of past experience. She sat in the chair of honor, the chair of choice, the high-backed rocker by the southern window, in which her husband’s mother, old Mrs. Bascom, had sat for thirty years, applying a still more powerful intellectual telescope to the doings of her neighbors. Diadema’s seat had formerlybeen on the less desirable side of the little light-stand, where Priscilla Hollis was now installed.
Mrs. Bascom was at work on a new fore-room rug, the former one having been transferred to Miss Hollis’s chamber; for, as the teacher at the brick schoolhouse, a graduate of a Massachusetts normal school and the daughter of a deceased judge, she was a boarder of considerable consequence. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, and the two women were alone. It was a pleasant, peaceful sitting-room, as neat as wax in every part. The floor was covered by a cheerful patriotic rag carpet woven entirely of red, white, and blue rags, and protected in various exposed localities by button rugs—red, white, and blue disks superimposed one on the other.
Diadema Bascom was a person of some sentiment. When her old father, Captain Dennett, was dying, he drew a wallet from under his pillow, and handed her a twenty-dollar bill to get something to remember him by. This unwonted occurrence burned itself into the daughter’s imagination, and when she came as a bride to the Bascom house she refurnished the sitting-room as a kind of monument to the departed soldier, whose sword and musket were now tied to the wall with neatly hemmed bows of bright red cotton.
The chair cushions were of red-and-white glazed patch, the turkey wings that served as hearth brushes were hung against the white-painted chimney-piece with blue skirt braid, and the white shades were finished with home-made scarlet “tossels.” A little whatnot in one corner was ladenwith the trophies of battle. The warrior’s brass buttons were strung on a red picture cord and hung over his daguerreotype on the upper shelf; there was a tarnished shoulder strap, and a flattened bullet that the captain’s jealous contemporaries sworehenever stopped, unless he got it in the rear when he was flying from the foe. There was also a little tin canister in which a charge of powder had been sacredly preserved. The scoffers, again, said that “the cap’n put it in his musket when he went into the war, and kep’ it there till he come out.” These objects were tastefully decorated with the national colors. In fact, no modern æsthete could have arranged a symbolic symphony of grief and glory with any more fidelity to an ideal than Diadema Bascom, in working out her scheme of red, white, and blue.
Rows of ripening tomatoes lay along the ledges of the windows, and a tortoiseshell cat snoozed on one of the broad sills. The tall clock in the corner ticked peacefully. Priscilla Hollis never tired of looking at the jolly red-cheeked moon, the group of stars on a blue ground, the trig little ship, the old house, and the jolly moon again, creeping one after another across the open space at the top.
Jot Bascom was out, as usual, gathering statistics of the last horse trade; little Jot was building “stickin’” houses in the barn; Priscilla was sewing long strips for braiding; while Diadema sat at the drawing-in frame, hook in hand, and a large basket of cut rags by her side.
Not many weeks before she had paid one of her periodical visits to the attic. No housekeeper inPleasant River save Mrs. Jonathan Bascom would have thought of dusting a garret, washing the window and sweeping down the cobwebs once a month, and renewing the camphor bags in the chests twice a year; but notwithstanding this zealous care the moths had made their way into one of her treasure-houses, the most precious of all—the old hair trunk that had belonged to her sister Lovice. Once ensconced there, they had eaten through its hoarded relics, and reduced the faded finery to a state best described by Diadema as “reg’lar riddlin’ sieves.” She had brought the tattered pile down into the kitchen, and had spent a tearful afternoon in cutting the good pieces from the perforated garments. Three heaped-up baskets and a full dish-pan were the result; and as she had snipped and cut and sorted, one of her sentimental projects had entered her mind and taken complete possession there.
“I declare,” she said, as she drew her hooking-needle in and out, “I wouldn’t set in the room with some folks and work on these pieces; for every time I draw in a scrap of cloth Lovice comes up to me for all the world as if she was settin’ on the sofy there. I ain’t told you my plan, Miss Hollis, and there ain’t many I shall tell; but this rug is going to be a kind of a hist’ry of my life and Lovey’s wrought in together, just as we was bound up in one another when she was alive. Her things and mine was laid in one trunk, and the moths sha’n’t cheat me out of ’em altogether. If I can’t look at ’em wet Sundays, and shake ’em out, and have a good cry over ’em, I’ll make ’em up into a kind ofdumb show that will mean something to me, if it don’t to anybody else.
“We was the youngest of thirteen, Lovey and I, and we was twins. There’s never been more’n half o’ me left sence she died. We was born together, played and went to school together, got engaged and married together, and we all but died together, yet we wa’n’t a mite alike. There was an old lady come to our house once that used to say, ‘There’s sister Nabby, now: she’n’ I ain’t no more alike ’n if we wa’n’t two; she’s jest as dif’rent as I am t’other way.’ Well, I know what I want to put into my rag story, Miss Hollis, but I don’t hardly know how to begin.”
Priscilla dropped her needle, and bent over the frame with interest.
“A spray of two roses in the center—there’s the beginning; why, don’t you see, dear Mrs. Bascom?”
“Course I do,” said Diadema, diving to the bottom of the dish-pan. “I’ve got my start now, and don’t you say a word for a minute. The two roses grow out of one stalk; they’ll be Lovey and me, though I’m consid’able more like a potato blossom. The stalk’s got to be green, and here is the very green silk mother walked bride in, and Lovey and I had roundabouts of it afterwards. She had the chicken-pox when we was about four years old, and one of the first things I can remember is climbing up and looking over mother’s footboard at Lovey, all speckled. Mother had let her slip on her new green roundabout over her nightgown, just to pacify her, and there she set playing with the kitten Reuben Granger had brought her. He was onlyten years old then, but he’d begun courting Lovice. The Grangers’ farm joined ours. They had eleven children, and mother and father had thirteen, and we was always playing together. Mother used to tell a funny story about that. We were all little young ones and looked pretty much alike, so she didn’t take much notice of us in the daytime when we was running out ’n’ in; but at night, when the turn-up bedstead in the kitchen was taken down and the trundle-beds were full, she used to count us over, to see if we were all there. One night, when she’d counted thirteen and set down to her sewing, father come in and asked if Moses was all right, for one of the neighbors had seen him playing side of the river about supper-time. Mother knew she’d counted us straight, but she went round with a candle to make sure. Now, Mr. Granger had a head as red as a sumac bush; and when she carried the candle close to the beds to take another tally, there was thirteen children, sure enough, but if there wa’n’t a red-headed Granger right in amongst our boys in the turn-up bedstead! While father set out on a hunt for our Moses, mother yanked the sleepy little red-headed Granger out o’ the middle and took him home, and father found Moses asleep on a pile of shavings under the joiner’s bench.
“They don’t have such families nowadays. One time when measles went all over the village, they never came to us, and Jabe Slocum said there wa’n’t enough measles to go through the Dennett family, so they didn’t start in on ’em. There, I ain’t going to finish the stalk; I’m going to drawin a little here and there all over the rug, while I’m in the sperit of plannin’ it, and then it will be plain work of matching colors and filling out.
“You see the stalk is mother’s dress, and the outside green of the moss roses is the same goods, only it’s our roundabouts. I meant to make ’em red, when I marked the pattern, and then fill out round ’em with a light color; but now I ain’t satisfied with anything but white, for nothing will do in the middle of the rug but our white wedding dresses. I shall have to fill in dark, then, or mixed. Well, that won’t be out of the way, if it’s going to be a true rag story; for Lovey’s life went out altogether, and mine hasn’t been any too gay.
“I’ll begin Lovey’s rose first. She was the prettiest and the liveliest girl in the village, and she had more beaux than you could shake a stick at. I generally had to take what she left over. Reuben Granger was crazy about her from the time she was knee-high; but when he went away to Bangor to study for the ministry, the others had it all their own way. She was only seventeen; she hadn’t ever experienced religion, and she was mischievous as a kitten.
“You remember you laughed, this morning, when Mr. Bascom told about Hogshead Jowett? Well, he used to want to keep company with Lovey; but she couldn’t abide him, and whenever he come to court her she clim’ into a hogshead, and hid till after he’d gone. The boys found it out, and used to call him ‘Hogshead Jowett.’ He was the biggest fool in Foxboro’ Four Corners; and that’s saying consid’able, for Foxboro’ is famous for itsfools, and always has been. There was thirteen of ’em there one year. They say a man come out from Portland, and when he got as fur as Foxboro’ he kep’ inquiring the way to Dunstan; and I declare if he didn’t meet them thirteen fools, one after another, standing in their front dooryards ready to answer questions. When he got to Dunstan, says he, ‘For the Lord’s sake, what kind of a village is it that I’ve just went through? Be theyallfools there?’
“Hogshead was scairt to death whenever he come to see Lovice. One night, when he’d been there once, and she’d hid, as she always done, he come back a second time, and she went to the door, not mistrusting it was him. ‘Did you forget anything?’ says she, sparkling out at him through a little crack. He was all taken aback by seeing her, and he stammered out, ‘Yes, I forgot my han’k’chief; but it don’t make no odds, for I didn’t pay out but fifteen cents for it two year ago, and I don’t make no use of it ’ceptins to wipe my nose on.’ How we did laugh over that! Well, he had a conviction of sin pretty soon afterwards, and p’r’aps it helped his head some; at any rate, he quit farming, and become a Bullockite preacher.
“It seems odd, when Lovice wa’n’t a perfessor herself, she should have drawed the most pious young men in the village, but she did; she had good Orthodox beaux, Free and Close Baptists, Millerites and Adventists, all on her string together; she even had one Cochranite, though the sect had mostly died out. But when Reuben Granger come home, a full-feathered-out minister, he seemed to strike herfancy as he never had before, though they were always good friends from children. He had light hair and blue eyes and fair skin (his business being under cover kep’ him bleached out), and he and Lovey made the prettiest couple you ever see; for she was dark complexioned, and her cheeks no otherways than scarlit the whole durin’ time. She had a change of heart that winter; in fact, she had two of ’em, for she changed hers for Reuben’s, and found a hope at the same time. ’Twas a good, honest conversion, too, though she did say to me she was afraid that if Reuben hadn’t taught her what love was or might be, she’d never have found out enough about it to love God as she’d ought to.
“There, I’ve begun both roses, and hers is ’bout finished. I sha’n’t have more’n enough white alapaca. It’s lucky the moths spared one breadth of the wedding dresses; we was married on the same day, you know, and dressed just alike. Jot wa’n’t quite ready to be married, for he wa’n’t any more forehanded ’bout that than he was ’bout other things; but I told him Lovey and I had kept up with each other from the start, and he’d got to fall into line or drop out of the percession. Now what next?”
“Wasn’t there anybody at the wedding but you and Lovice?” asked Priscilla, with an amused smile.
“Land, yes! The meeting-house was cram jam full. Oh, to be sure! I know what you’re driving at! Well, I have to laugh to think I should have forgot the husbands! They’ll have to be worked into the story, certain; but it’ll be consid’able of a chore, for I can’t make flowers out of coat andpants stuff, and there ain’t any more flowers on this branch, anyway.”
Diadema sat for a few minutes in rapt thought, and then made a sudden inspired dash upstairs, where Miss Hollis presently heard her rummaging in an old chest. She soon came down, triumphant.
“Wa’n’t it a providence I saved Jot’s and Reuben’s wedding ties! And here they are—one yellow and green mixed, and one brown. Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to draw in a butterfly hovering over them two roses, and make it out of the neckties—green with brown spots. That’ll bring in the husbands; and land! I wouldn’t have either of ’em know it for the world. I’ll take a pattern of that lunar moth you pinned on the curtain yesterday.”
Miss Hollis smiled in spite of herself. “You have some very ingenious ideas and some very pretty thoughts, Mrs. Bascom, do you know it?”
“It’s the first time I ever heard tell of it,” said Diadema cheerfully. “Lovey was the pretty-spoken, pretty-appearing one; I was always plain and practical. While I think of it, I’ll draw in a little mite of this red into my carnation pink. It was a red scarf Reuben brought Lovey from Portland. It was the first thing he ever give her, and aunt Hitty said if one of the Abel Grangers give away anything that cost money, it meant business. That was all fol-de-rol, for there never was a more liberal husband, though he was a poor minister; but then they alwaysarepoor, without they’re rich; there don’t seem to be any half-way in ministers.
“We was both lucky that way. There ain’t astingy bone in Jot Bascom’s body. He don’t make much money, but what he does make goes into the bureau drawer, and the one that needs it most takes it out. He never asks me what I done with the last five cents he give me. You’ve never been married, Miss Hollis, and you ain’t engaged, so you don’t know much about it; but I tell you there’s a heap o’ foolishness talked about husbands. If you get the one you like yourself, I don’t know as it matters if all the other women folks in town don’t happen to like him as well as you do; they ain’t called on to do that. They see the face he turns to them, not the one he turns to you. Jot ain’t a very good provider, nor he ain’t a man that’s much use round a farm, but he’s such a fav’rite I can’t blame him. There’s one thing: when he does come home he’s got something to say, and he’s always as lively as a cricket, and smiling as a basket of chips. I like a man that’s good comp’ny, even if he ain’t so forehanded. There ain’t anything specially lovable about forehandedness, when you come to that. I shouldn’t ever feel drawed to a man because he was on time with his work. He’s got such pleasant ways, Jot has! The other afternoon he didn’t get home early enough to milk; and after I done the two cows, I split the kindling and brought in the wood, for I knew he’d want to go to the tavern and tell the boys ’bout the robbery up to Boylston. There ain’t anybody but Jot in this village that has wit enough to find out what’s going on, and tell it in an int’resting way round the tavern fire. And he can do it without being full of cider, too; he don’t need any apple juice to limberhistongue!
“Well, when he come in, he sees the pails of milk, and the full wood-box, and the supper laid out under the screen cloth on the kitchen table, and he come up to me at the sink, and says he, ‘Diademy, you’re the best wife in this county, and the brightest jewel in my crown—that’s whatyouare!’ (He got that idee out of a duet he sings with Almiry Berry.) Now I’d like to know whether that ain’t pleasanter than ’tis to have a man do all the shed ’n’ barn work up smart, and then set round the stove looking as doleful as a last year’s bird’s-nest? Take my advice, Miss Hollis: get a good provider if you can, but anyhow try to find you a husband that’ll keep on courting a little now and then, when he ain’t too busy; it smooths things consid’able round the house.
“There, I got so int’rested in what I was saying, I’ve went on and finished the carnation, and some of the stem, too. Now what comes next? Why, the thing that happened next, of course, and that was little Jot.
“I’ll work in a bud on my rose and one on Lovey’s, and my bud’ll be made of Jot’s first trousers. The goods ain’t very appropriate for a rosebud, but it’ll be mostly covered with green on the outside, and it’ll have to do, for the idee is the most important thing in this rug. When I put him into pants, I hadn’t any cloth in the house, and it was such bad going Jot couldn’t get to Wareham to buy me anything; so I made ’em out of an old gray cashmere skirt, and lined ’em with flannel.”
“Buds are generally the same color as the roses, aren’t they?” ventured Priscilla.
“I don’t care if they be,” said Diadema obstinately. “What’s to hender this bud’s bein’ grafted on? Mrs. Granger was as black as an Injun, but the little Granger children were all red-headed, for they took after their father. But I don’t know; you’ve kind o’ got me out o’ conceit with it. I s’pose I could have taken a piece of his baby blanket; but the moths never et a mite o’ that, and it’s too good to cut up. There’s one thing I can do: I can make the bud with a long stem, and have it growing right up alongside of mine—would you?”
“No, it must be stalk of your stalk, bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, so to speak. I agree with you, the idea is the first thing. Besides, the gray is a very light shade, and I dare say it will look like a bluish white.”
“I’ll try it and see; but I wish to the land the mothshadeat the pinning-blanket, and then I could have used it. Lovey worked the scallops on the aidge for me. My grief! what int’rest she took in my baby clothes! Little Jot was born at Thanksgiving time, and she come over from Skowhegan, where Reuben was settled pastor of his first church. I shall never forget them two weeks to the last day of my life. There was deep snow on the ground. I had that chamber there, with the door opening into this setting-room. Mother and father Bascom kep’ out in the dining-room and kitchen, where the work was going on, and Lovey and the baby and me had the front part of the house to ourselves, with Jot coming in on tiptoe, heaping up wood in the fireplaces so ’t he ’most roasted us out. He don’t forget his chores in time o’ sickness.
“I never took so much comfort in all my days. Jot got one of the Billings girls to come over and help in the housework so ’t I could lay easy ’s long as I wanted to; and I never had such a rest before nor since. There ain’t any heaven in the book o’ Revelations that’s any better than them two weeks was. I used to lay quiet in my good feather bed, fingering the pattern of my best crochet quilt, and looking at the fire-light shining on Lovey and the baby. She’d hardly leave him in the cradle a minute. When I didn’t want him in bed with me, she’d have him in her lap. Babies are common enough to most folks, but Lovey was diff’rent. She’d never had any experience with children, either, for we was the youngest in our family; and it wa’n’t long before we come near being the oldest, too, for mother buried seven of us before she went herself. Anyway, I never saw nobody else look as she done when she held my baby. I don’t mean nothing blasphemious when I say ’twas for all the world like your photograph of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
“The nights come in early, so it was ’most dark at four o’clock. The little chamber was so peaceful! I could hear Jot rattling the milk-pails, but I’d draw a deep breath o’ comfort, for I knew the milk would be strained and set away without my stepping foot to the floor. Lovey used to set by the fire, with a tall candle on the light-stand behind her, and a little white knit cape over her shoulders. She had the pinkest cheeks, and the longest eyelashes, and a mouth like a little red buttonhole; and when she bent over the baby, and sung to him—though his ears wa’n’t open, I guess, for his eyes wa’n’t—thetears o’ joy used to rain down my cheeks. It was pennyrial hymns she used to sing mostly, and the one I remember best was:
“‘Daniel’s wisdom may I know,Stephen’s faith and spirit show;John’s divine communion feel,Moses’ meekness, Joshua’s zeal,Run like the unwearied Paul,Win the day and conquer all.“‘Mary’s love may I possess,Lydia’s tender-heartedness,Peter’s fervent spirit feel,James’s faith by works reveal,Like young Timothy may IEvery sinful passion fly.’
“‘Daniel’s wisdom may I know,Stephen’s faith and spirit show;John’s divine communion feel,Moses’ meekness, Joshua’s zeal,Run like the unwearied Paul,Win the day and conquer all.“‘Mary’s love may I possess,Lydia’s tender-heartedness,Peter’s fervent spirit feel,James’s faith by works reveal,Like young Timothy may IEvery sinful passion fly.’
“‘Daniel’s wisdom may I know,Stephen’s faith and spirit show;John’s divine communion feel,Moses’ meekness, Joshua’s zeal,Run like the unwearied Paul,Win the day and conquer all.
“‘Daniel’s wisdom may I know,
Stephen’s faith and spirit show;
John’s divine communion feel,
Moses’ meekness, Joshua’s zeal,
Run like the unwearied Paul,
Win the day and conquer all.
“‘Mary’s love may I possess,Lydia’s tender-heartedness,Peter’s fervent spirit feel,James’s faith by works reveal,Like young Timothy may IEvery sinful passion fly.’
“‘Mary’s love may I possess,
Lydia’s tender-heartedness,
Peter’s fervent spirit feel,
James’s faith by works reveal,
Like young Timothy may I
Every sinful passion fly.’
“‘Oh, Diademy,’ she’d say, ‘you was always the best, and it’s nothing more’n right the baby should have come to you. P’r’aps God will think I’m good enough some time; and if he does, Diademy, I’ll offer up a sacrifice every morning and every evening. But I’m afraid,’ says she, ‘He thinks I can’t stand any more happiness, and be a faithful follower of the cross. The Bible says we’ve got to wade through fiery floods before we can enter the kingdom. I don’t hardly know how Reuben and I are going to find any to wade through; we’re both so happy, they’d have to be consid’able hot before we took notice, says she, with the dimples all breaking out in her cheek.
“DOES MR. CRESSY LIVE HERE?”—page 361From the drawing by Edwin J. Meeker
“DOES MR. CRESSY LIVE HERE?”
—page 361
From the drawing by Edwin J. Meeker
“And that was true as gospel. She thought everything Reuben done was just right, and he thought everything she done was just right. There wa’n’t nobody else; the world was all Reuben ’n’all Lovey to them. If you could have seen her when she was looking for him to come from Skowhegan! She used to watch at the attic window; and when she seen him at the foot of the hill, she’d up like a squirrel, and run down the road without stopping for anything but to throw a shawl over her head. And Reuben would ketch her up as if she was a child, and scold her for not putting a hat on, and take her under his coat coming up the hill. They was a sight for the neighbors, I must confess, but it wa’n’t one you could hardly disapprove of neither. Aunt Hitty said it was tempting Providence and couldn’t last, and God would visit his wrath on ’em for making idols of sinful human flesh.
“She was right one way—it didn’t last; but nobody can tell me God was punishing of ’em for being too happy. I guess he ain’t got no objection to folks being happy here below, if they don’t forget it ain’t the whole story.
“Well, I must mark in a bud on Lovey’s stalk now, and I’m going to make it of her baby’s long white cloak. I earned the money for it myself, making coats, and put four yards of the finest cashmere into it; for three years after little Jot was born I went over to Skowhegan to help Lovey through her time o’ trial. Time o’ trial! I thought I was happy, but I didn’t know how to be as happy as Lovey did; I wa’n’t made on that pattern.
“When I first showed her the baby (it was a boy, same as mine), her eyes shone like two evening stars. She held up her weak arms, and gathered the little bundle o’ warm flannel into ’em; and whenshe got it close she shut her eyes and moved her lips, and I knew she was taking her lamb to the altar and off’ring it up as a sacrifice. Then Reuben come in. I seen him give one look at the two dark heads laying close together on the white piller, and then go down on his knees by the side of the bed. ’Twa’n’t no place for me; I went off, and left ’em together. We didn’t mistrust it then, but they only had three days more of happiness, and I’m glad I give ’em every minute.”
The room grew dusky as twilight stole gently over the hills of Pleasant River. Priscilla’s lip trembled; Diadema’s tears fell thick and fast on the white rosebud, and she had to keep wiping her eyes as she followed the pattern.
“I ain’t said as much as this about it for five years,” she went on, with a tell-tale quiver in her voice, “but now I’ve got going, I can’t stop. I’ll have to get the weight out o’ my heart somehow.
“Three days after I put Lovey’s baby into her arms the Lord called her home. ‘When I prayed so hard for this little new life, Reuben,’ says she, holding the baby as if she could never let it go, ‘I didn’t think I’d got to give up my own in place of it; but it’s the first fiery flood we’ve had, dear, and though it burns to my feet I’ll tread it as brave as I know how.’
“She didn’t speak a word after that; she just faded away like a snowdrop, hour by hour. And Reuben and I stared one another in the face as if we was dead instead of her, and we went about that house o’ mourning like sleep-walkers for days anddays, not knowing whether we et or slept, or what we done.
“As for the baby, the poor little mite didn’t live many hours after its mother, and we buried ’em together. Reuben and I knew what Lovey would have liked. She gave her life for the baby’s, and it was a useless sacrifice, after all. No, it wa’n’t neither; itcouldn’thave been! You needn’t tell me God’ll let such sacrifices as that come out useless! But anyhow, we had one coffin for ’em both, and I opened Lovey’s arms and laid the baby in ’em. When Reuben and I took our last look, we thought she seemed more’n ever like Mary, the mother of Jesus. There never was another like her, and there never will be. ‘Nonesuch,’ Reuben used to call her.”
There was silence in the room, broken only by the ticking of the old clock and the tinkle of a distant cowbell. Priscilla made an impetuous movement, flung herself down by the basket of rags, and buried her head in Diadema’s gingham apron.
“Dear Mrs. Bascom, don’t cry. I’m sorry, as the children say.”
“No, I won’t more’n a minute. Jot can’t stand it to see me give way. You go and touch a match to the kitchen fire, so ’t the kettle will be boiling, and I’ll have a minute to myself. I don’t know what the neighbors would think to ketch me crying over my drawing-in frame; but the spell’s over now, or ’bout over, and when I can muster up courage I’ll take the rest of the baby’s cloak and put a border of white everlastings round the outside of the rug. It’ll always mean the baby’s birth and Lovey’sdeath to me; but the flowers will remind me it’s life everlasting for both of ’em, and so it’s the most comforting end I can think of.”
It was indeed a beautiful rug when it was finished and laid in front of the sofa in the fore-room. Diadema was very choice of it. When company was expected, she removed it from its accustomed place, and spread it in a corner of the room where no profane foot could possibly tread on it. Unexpected callers were managed by a different method. If they seated themselves on the sofa, she would fear they did not “set easy” or “rest comfortable” there, and suggest their moving to the stuffed chair by the window. The neighbors thought this solicitude merely another sign of Diadema’s “p’ison neatness,” excusable in this case, as there was so much white in the new rug.
The fore-room blinds were ordinarily closed, and the chillness of death pervaded the sacred apartment; but on great occasions, when the sun was allowed to penetrate the thirty-two tiny panes of glass in each window, and a blaze was lighted in the fireplace, Miss Hollis would look in as she went upstairs, and muse a moment over the pathetic little romance of rags, the story of two lives worked into a bouquet of old-fashioned posies, whose gay tints were brought out by a setting of somber threads. Existence had gone so quietly in this remote corner of the world that all its important events, babyhood, childhood, betrothal, marriage, motherhood, with all their mysteries of love and life and death, were chronicled in this narrow space not two yards square.
Diadema came in behind the little school-teacher one afternoon.
“I cal’late,” she said, “that being kep’ in a dark room, and never being tread on, it will last longer ’n I do. If it does, Priscilla, you know that white crape shawl of mine I wear to meetings hot Sundays: that would make a second row of everlastings round the border. You could piece out the linings good and smooth on the under side, draw in the white flowers, and fill ’em round with black to set ’em off. The rug would be han’somer than ever then, and the story—would be finished.”
By Albert Lee
Fred Hallowell was sitting at his desk in theGazetteoffice, looking listlessly out into the City Hall Park, where the biting wind was making the snowflakes dance madly around the leafless trees and in the empty fountain, and he was almost wishing that there would be so few assignments to cover as to allow him an afternoon indoors to write “specials.” The storm was the worst of the season, and as this was the last day of December, it looked as if the old year were going out with a tumultuous train of sleet and snow. But if he had seriously entertained any hopes of enjoying a quiet day, these were dispelled by an office-boy who summoned him to the city desk.
“Good-morning, Mr. Hallowell,” said the cityeditor, cheerfully. “Here is a clipping from an afternoon paper which says that a French family in Houston Street has been dispossessed and is in want. Mr. Wilson called my attention to it because he thinks, from the number given, the house belongs to old Q. C. Baggold. We don’t like Baggold, you know, and if you find he is treating his tenants unfairly we can let you have all the space you want to show him up. At any rate, go over there and see what the trouble is; there is not much going on to-day.”
Fred took the clipping and read it as he walked back to his desk. It was very short—five or six lines only—and the facts stated were about as the city editor had said. The young man got into his overcoat and wrapped himself up warmly, and in a few moments was himself battling against the little blizzard with the other pedestrians whom he had been watching in the City Hall Park from the office windows.
When he reached Houston Street he travelled westward for several blocks, until he came into a very poor district crowded with dingy tenement-houses that leaned against one another in an uneven sort of way, as if they were tired of the sad kind of life they had been witnessing for so many years. The snow that had piled up on the window-sills and over the copings seemed to brighten up the general aspect of the quarter, because it filled in the cracks and chinks of material misery, and made the buildings look at least temporarily picturesque, just as paint and powder for a time may hide the traces of old age and sorrow. Fred foundthe number 179 painted on a piece of tin that had become bent and rusty from long service over a narrow doorway, and as he stood there comparing it with the number given in his clipping, a little girl with a shawl drawn tightly over her head and around her thin little shoulders came out of the dark entrance and stopped on the door-sill for a moment, surprised, no doubt, at the sight of the tall rosy-cheeked young man so warmly clad in a big woollen overcoat that you could have wrapped her up in several times, with goods left over to spare.
“Hello! little girl,” said Fred, quickly. “Does Mr. Cressy live here?”
The child stared for a few seconds at the stranger, and then she answered, bashfully: “Yes, sir. But he has got to go away.”
“But he hasn’t gone yet?” continued Fred; and then noticing that the child, in her short calico skirt, was shivering from the cold, and that her feet were getting wet with the snow, he added, “Come inside a minute and tell me where I can find Mr. Cressy.”
The two stepped into the dark narrow hallway that ran through the house to the stairway in the rear, where a narrow window with a broken pane let in just enough light to prove there was day outside. The little girl leaned against the wall, and looked up at the reporter as if she suspected him of having no good intentions toward the man for whom he was inquiring. Very few strangers ever came into that house to do good, she knew. Most of them came for money—rent money—and sometimesthey came, as a man had come for Mr. Cressy, to tell him he must go.
“What floor does he live on?” asked Fred.
“On the fifth floor, sir,” answered the child. “In the back, sir. But I think he is really going away, sir.”
“Well, no matter about that,” said Fred, smiling. “I will go up and see him. I hope he won’t have to go out in the storm. It is not good for little girls to go out in the storm, either,” he added. “Does your mamma know you are going out?”
“Oh, yes, sir! She has sent me to the Sisters to try to get some medicine.”
“Is she sick?” asked Fred, quickly.
“Yes, sir,” continued the child.
“What floor does she live on? I will stop in and see her.”
“Oh, you’ll see her! She’s in the room, too.”
“Then you are Mr. Cressy’s little girl?”
“Yes, sir.”
So Fred patted her on the head and told her to hurry over to the Sisters in Eleventh Street, and gave her ten cents to ride in the horse-cars; and then he opened the door for her, and as soon as she had left he felt his way back to the staircase and climbed to the fifth floor.
There he knocked upon a door, which was soon opened by a man apparently forty years of age, a man of slightly foreign appearance, with a careworn look, but with as honest a face as you could find anywhere.
“Is this Mr. Cressy?” asked Fred.
“Yes, my name’s Cressy,” replied the man. Hespoke with so slight an accent that it was hardly noticeable.
“I am a reporter from theGazette,” continued Fred.
“Oh!” said the man. “Come in,” and as he spoke he looked somewhat embarrassed and anxious, for this was doubtless the first time he had had any dealings with a newspaper. Lying on a bed in an alcove was a woman who looked very ill, and piled in a corner near the door were a couple of boxes and a few pieces of furniture. The stove had not yet been taken down, and some pale embers in it only just kept the chill off the atmosphere. Fred took off his hat, and led the man across the room toward the window.
“Have you been dispossessed?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the man; “we must leave to-night.”
“Why?” asked the reporter.
Cressy smiled in a ghastly sort of way.
“Because,” he replied—“because I have not a cent to my name, sir, and the landlord has got it in for me—and I must go.”
“Who is your landlord?” asked the reporter.
“Baggold—Q. C. Baggold, the shoe-man.”
“How much do you owe?”
“Twenty dollars—two months’ rent.”
“Were you ever in arrears before?”
“Never.”
“What’s the trouble? Out of work?”
“Yes, sir, I have been. But I’ve got a job now, and I’ll have money on the tenth of the month. But that is not it.”
“What is ‘it,’ then?” continued Fred.
“Well, I’ll tell you. I don’t want this in the paper, but I’ll tell you. Baggold hates me. He knows the woman’s sick, and he takes advantage of my owing him to drive me out. Do you want to know why? Well, I’ll tell you. I worked for him for five years, sir, in his shoe-factory. He brought me over from France to do the fine work. He had a lawsuit about six months ago, and he offered me $500 to lie for him on the stand. I would not do it, sir, and when they called me as a witness I told the truth, and that settled the case, and Baggold had to pay $10,000, sir, for a sly game on a contract. Then he sent me off, and I’ve been looking for a job, and I’ve got behind, and I’m just getting up again, and here he is sending me out into the snow! To-morrow is what we call at home, in France, thejour de l’an—the day of the New Year, sir, and it is a fête. And the little one, here, always looked forward to that day, sir, for a doll or a few sweetmeats; but this time—I don’t think she’ll have a roof for her little head! I have not a place in the world to go to, sir, but to the police station, and there’s the woman on her back!”
Two big tears rolled down the man’s cheeks. Fred felt a lump rising in his throat, and he knew that if he had had twenty dollars in his pocket he would have given it to Cressy. But he did not have twenty dollars, so he coughed vigorously, and put on his hat quickly, and said:
“Well, this is hard, Mr. Cressy. I’ll see what we can do. I must go up town for a while, andthen I’ll come back and see you. Don’t move out in this storm till the last minute.”
As he rushed down the stairs he met the little girl coming back with a big blue bottle of something with a yellow label on it. He stopped and pulled a quarter out of his pocket, thrust it into the child’s hand, and leaped on down the stairs, leaving the little girl more frightened than surprised, as he dashed out into the snow.
He entered the first drug-store he came to and looked up Q. C. Baggold’s address in the directory. It was nearly four o’clock, and he argued the rich shoe-manufacturer would be at his home. The address given in the directory was in a broad street in the fashionable quarter of the city. Half an hour later Fred was pulling at Mr. Baggold’s door-bell. The butler who answered the summons thought Mr. Baggold was in, and took Fred’s card after showing the young man into the parlor. This was a large elegantly furnished room filled with costly ornaments, almost any one of which, if offered for sale, would have brought the amount of Cressy’s debt, or much more.
Presently Mr. Baggold came into the room. He was a short man with a bald head and a sharp nose, and his small eyes were fixed very close to one another under a not very high forehead.
“I am a reporter from theGazette,” began Fred at once. “I have called to see you, Mr. Baggold, about this man Cressy whom you have ordered to be dispossessed.”
“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Baggold, smiling. “My agent has told me something about this matter, butI hardly think it is of sufficient importance to be of interest to the readers of theGazette.”
“The readers of theGazette,” continued Fred “are always interested in good deeds, Mr. Baggold, and especially when these are performed by rich men. I came here hoping you would disavow the action of your agent, and say that the Cressy’s might remain in the room.”
“Nonsense!” replied Mr. Baggold. “I cannot interfere with my agent. I pay him to take care of my rents, and I can’t be looking after fellows who won’t pay. This man Cressy is in arrears, and he must get out.”
“But his wife is sick,” argued Fred.
“Bah!” retorted the other. “That is an old excuse. These scoundrels try all sorts of dodges to cheat a man whom they think has money.”
“This woman is actually sick, Mr. Baggold,” said Fred, severely, “and to drive her out in a storm like this is positive cruelty.”
“Cressy has had two weeks to find other quarters, and to-morrow is the first of the month. I can’t keep him any longer.”
“Yes, to-morrow is the great French fête-day, and you put Cressy in the street.”
“My dear sir,” returned the rich man, “I cannot allow sentiment to interfere with my business. If I did I should never collect rents in Houston Street. And, as I told you before, I do not see that this question is one to interest the public. It is purely a matter of my private business.”
“Very true,” replied Fred; “but I don’t think it would look well in print.”
This statement seemed to startle Mr. Baggold a little, and Fred thought it made him feel uncomfortable. There was a brief silence, after which the rich man said:
“It would depend entirely upon how you put it in print. To tell you the truth, I am not at all in favor of these sensational articles that so many newspapers publish nowadays. Reporters often jump at conclusions before they are familiar with the facts of a case, and it makes things disagreeable for all concerned. Now, if you will only listen to me, sir, I think we can come to an understanding about this Cressy matter. I don’t want anything about it to get into the papers—especially now. I have many reasons, but I cannot give them to you. Yet I think we can come to an understanding,” he repeated, as he looked at Fred and smiled.
“How?” asked the reporter.
“Well,” drawled Mr. Baggold, “there are some points that I may be able to explain to you. Of course I don’t want to put you to any trouble for nothing. If it is worth something to me not to have notoriety thrust upon me, of course, on the other hand, it might be worth something to you to cause the notoriety. But just excuse me a moment.”
Mr. Baggold arose hastily and stepped into a rear room, apparently his library or study.
“H’m,” thought Fred to himself. “This old chap talks as though he were going to offer me money. I’d just like to see him try! I’d give him such a roasting as he has never had before! Someof these crooked old millionaires think that sort of thing works with reporters, but I’ll show him that it does not. I have never known a newspaper man yet that would accept a bribe.”
And as Fred mused in this fashion, Mr. Baggold returned. He bore a long yellow envelope in his hand.
“Here,” he said, “are some papers and other things that I should like to have you look over before you write the article. I think they will influence you in your opinion of the matter. I am sorry I cannot tell you any more just now, but I have an appointment which I must keep. Take these papers and look them over at your leisure, and if you find later this evening that they are not satisfactory, I will talk with you further. Good-afternoon, sir. I hope you will excuse me for the present.”
And so saying he handed the envelope to Fred, bowed pleasantly, and left the room. Fred had been standing near the door, and so he put the envelope in his pocket and went out. He walked a few blocks down the street, and went into the large hotel on the corner in order to get out of the storm and to find some quiet place where he might look over Mr. Baggold’s documents. He was very curious to see what they could be. He found a seat in a secluded corner of the office, and there tore open the envelope. To his disgust, it contained three ten-dollar bills, and a brief note, unsigned, which read,