CHAPTER XX—PALERMO’S “MARCH MEETIN’”
HOW IT WAS PLANNED TO BE RUN, AND HOW IT WAS RUN
When a hen is bound to set
Seems as if ’tain’t etiket
Dousin’ her in water till
She’s connected with a chill.
Seems as though ’twas skursely right
Givin’ her a dreadful fright,
Tyin’ rags around her tail,
Poundin’ on an old tin pail,
Chasin’ her around the yard—
Seems as though ’twas kind of hard
Bein’ kicked and ammed and shooed
‘Cause she wants to raise a brood.
—Meditations by Bill Benson’s Boy.
Palermo’s town house is like a roofed dry goods box, its clapboards unpainted and weather-beaten. It is perched on the gray ledges of Cross Hill in the centre of the town in order to accommodate the three villages, and here in lonely state, with no other building nearer than half a mile, it faces a buffet from every gale and a drenching from every storm. It is opened once each year—for the annual town meeting in March.
Solomon Norton, who combined in his person the duties of Palermo’s hearse driver, sexton and custodian of public buildings, struggled with the rusty padlock on the outer door of the town house, and then stamped in and sniffed at the musty atmosphere. The March sun was just rising, and Solomon Norton was in good season.
“Canned terbacker smoke and left-over speeches,” he growled. “I donno which smells wust.”
He forced up the warped windows and began to sweep with a stout broom. The floor was thickly sprinkled with stale sawdust, in which were flotsam of charred matches, cigar stubs and pipe dottles. The crumpled ballots of last year’s election lay scattered everywhere. In a few moments the March breezes were playing with the dust clouds that rolled from open doors and windows.
The early vanguard of Palermo’s voters was even then on hand—a few men grouped around horses of uncertain age, whose points and pedigrees they were discussing with animation. The first “shift” of the day had already been made, and a tall man with ginger-coloured whiskers was unbuckling the harness from a stump-tailed bay horse. The man who had traded with him was as briskly taking the harness from a rangy gray mare.
“Now honest, Lem,” whined the tall man over his shoulder, “what’s the ‘out’ with her? ’Tain’t fair if you don’t tell me, if it’s anything dang’rous.”
The other man chuckled, and the tall man repeated his plaintive appeal. But it was only after the transfer of harness had been completed that the ex-owner of the gray mare replied:
“It’s understood there ain’t goin’ to be no backin’ outs?” he inquired, after he had again poked a swelling on the stump-tailed horse’s leg and noted with satisfaction that the animal did not wince. “I gen’-rally believe in lettin’ t’other feller find the ‘outs’ for hisself.”
“I ain’t goin’ to cry-baby unless she’s a biter—and swappin’ biters ain’t no fair,” protested the tall man.
“No danger of her bitin’ anything harder’n porridge with them teeth,” said the man called Lem, with great good humour. “I’d jest’s soon tell ye. She’s high pressur’.”
“Wind’s broke, hey?”
“’Ep!”
“Bad?” The tall man eyed the gray mare with interest.
“Wa-a-al,” drawled the other, buckling the ends of his reins and preparing to climb into his waggon, “she ain’t blowed out ary cylinder head yit, but she sartinly does whistle loud enough so’t your wife can git supper ready on to the table after she begins to hear ye comin’.”
The bystanders laughed, and Lem climbed into his waggon in still greater good humour. He turned a beaming face on the new owner of the gray mare.
The aforesaid owner of the gray mare was not a whit disconcerted. He pulled a bit of strap iron from his pocket and pinched it over the mare’s nostrils.
“There’s some ‘outs’ that’s wusser’n whistlin’,” he said mysteriously as he adjusted the strap iron. “You might as well git your laugh in now, Lem. There’s nothin’ like gittin’ in a laugh at one end or t’other of a trade.”
Most of Lem’s gayety left him, and he looked at the stump-tailed horse with some anxiety.
“Now look-a-here, Ben,” said he, “I don’t want no circus animile tucked off onto me to-day, for I’ve took a contract from Hime Look to haul some of the old lamed-up codgers to town meetin’.”
“You didn’t say nothin’ to me about your contracts,” replied the tall man, clawing a freckled hand through his beard. “All I got to say is, lamed-up old codgers better crawl here on their hands and knees instead of ride with you. Now, you know there ain’t goin’ to be no backin’ outs on this trade,” he expostulated as he saw a dubious look come on Lem’s face.
“Who said there was goin’ to be?” retorted the other. He started to lay the reins down across the dasher with the evident intent of getting out to investigate his purchase a little closer, when the horse, who had been peering around at him from the corner of a bloodshot eye, performed a sudden and surprising action. He whirled his stump of a tail as though it worked on a pivot, clutched the reins under it, and started with a jump that lifted both fore wheels of the waggon off the ground.
The man tugged desperately at the reins, his feet against the dasher, but the “webbin’s” remained fixed under the tail, and the horse kept on down the muddy road with speed undiminished. When the outfit went out of sight around a turn the man was down on his knees tugging at the stump and shouting “Whoa!”
“I reckon,” said the possessor of the gray mare, twirling a strand of his ginger-coloured beard into a spill and reflectively tickling his nose, “that Lem has got holt of a pa’snip there that he won’t pull up in no great hurry. That’s a hoss,” he continued, turning to the bystanders, who had watched the runaway with astonished silence, “that I got plastered on to me about three weeks ago and then found out that I’d got holt of that Iron Tail Ike, as they call him. He’s give more folks a h’ist than any other hoss in this county.”
“What will happen to Lem?” inquired one of the men.
“It all depends on how high he flies and what he strikes on when he comes down,” calmly answered the tall man.
“Hoss swappin’ is hoss swappin’, of course,” said another in the group; “but this sellin’ folks blastin’ powder with red hair on it ain’t very neighbourly, as I look at it.”
“Any man that grins at me ’cause he thinks he’s got me stuck and sells himself out to haul voters for that Hiram Look can nat’rally expect to have somethin’ comin’ to him and can’t blame nobody if it comes,” replied the callous tall man. “I’m goin’ to haul men that will vote for law and order in this town and for them that’s allus led us as citerzens ought to be led—and that’s with pride and dignity. This slambangin’ style and tryin’ to throw down good men ain’t my notion, and I’m goin’ out to hunt up folks that think my way.”
He hopped over the wheel, tucked his long legs under the waggon seat, and drove away, the gray mare wheezing past the restraining strap iron.
A man who had been standing in the lee of the town house trying to light his pipe came away coughing and strangling.
“A chap that runs a threshing machine, like I do, can stand a fair amount of dust,” he said, wiping the tears from his eyes; “but I got a couple of whiffs from the tail-end of ‘Wolf’ Doughty’s last year’s speech as it come out o’ that winder there, and I’ll be blamed if it didn’t almost put me out of bus’ness.” The men in the little crowd grinned at him.
“I’m hearin’ that it will be a hotter one that ‘Wolf’ makes this year,” said one of the men. “He’s got most of the Dunham deestrick crowd lined up ag’inst Squire Phin’s clique this year.”
“Hime let him have four hundred on a second mo’gidge,” said another. “You hold a silver dollar in front of ‘Wolf’ and he can’t see over nor around it.”
“Oh, it goes furder back this time,” returned the first speaker. “The Dunham deestrickers ain’t ever forgive the Squire for yankin’ the Haskell girl away from ’em just when they was gittin’ ready to make a meal off her. It’s lucky the women-folks out that way can’t vote. I reckon they’d swing town meetin’ ag’inst him.”
“It’s li’ble to be swung, as ’tis,” rejoined another man. “I tell ye Hime Look is cuttin’ a bigger swath in this town nowadays than most folks realise. It’s money that talks, and he’s been puttin’ out a lot of it one way and another.”
“It’s a fact, ain’t it, that him and the Squire don’t hitch at all?” queried a bystander as he crooked his leg to light a match.
“Wa-a-al,” drawled another voter humorously, “Hime ain’t tried to black the Squire’s eye yit, the same as he has most others in town, but I shouldn’t be a dummed bit surprised if it come to that unless they stop brustlin’ up at each other.”
“Hime wants to look out for his buttons,” observed the man who had lighted his pipe. “’Cordin’ to stories that have passed ’round town since King Bradish went away the shoulder hitters ain’t confined to one branch of the Look fam’ly.”
Solomon Norton came out and got a huge basket of clean sawdust from the tail of his waggon.
“Put on plenty this year, Sol,” called one of the men. “It’ll be needed to sop up the blood.”
The soil of the town-house yard, soggy from the March rains, began to thaw as the sun grew higher and warmer. In increasing numbers waggons gullied and rutted it. Mud dripped from the wheels and was splattered on the backs of the voters. Men arrived in pairs or in fours, in narrow buggies or in double-seated waggons, whose bodies bumped upon the axles as the wheels slumped into the highway honey-pots. The seiners from the Cove road, whose horses were their dories, clubbed together and came in hay-racks. To the front rail of one of these a joker had fastened a sprit-sail, and the lead horse had a pennant floating from a little staff set into his bridle.
Before nine o’clock the yard was well filled with men, most of them assembled in knots that constantly changed personnel as voters trudged through the sticky ooze from one to the other, shouting jovial greetings or mumbling certain confidences in undertone. The town clerk, the selectmen and a constable or two had gone into the town house, trailing mud upon Solomon Norton’s fresh sawdust; but the main body of the voters remained outside. The assemblage wore a general air of expectancy.
But the citizens of Palermo were certainly not expecting one spectacle that day.
When the Willard family carriage scraped its muddy wheels against the platform in front of the town house Squire Phineas Look was the first to lift the flap and step out. He gave his hand to Judge Collamore Willard, whose thin leg trembled as he put out his foot to grope for the platform.
The space before the door was thronged with men, and the Squire, who held the old town treasurer’s arm, waited for them to open a passage.
There was a certain grave dignity on the Squire’s face that morning that the men of Palermo had not been accustomed to see there before. Their old, free-and-easy greeting seemed out of place now. It was not because they were astonished at beholding him in company with Judge Willard. Nor was it the presence of the Judge that restrained them. Somehow, Phin Look was different, and they instinctively realised it. His isolation during the past few months while he had been engrossed in his work, the knowledge that the outside world had begun to give him honour and money, accounted for a part of the respect that Squire Phin suddenly detected in the eyes of his townsmen, but there was something in his bearing more potent still—the intangible aura of the man who had suddenly come to full knowledge of himself and his abilities.
That intangible something had been in his face, in the poise of his body, in the straightening of his shoulders and the lift of his chin ever since he had walked out of the parlour of the Willard house. It is not surprising that the assembled voters of Palermo did not understand it, because Squire Phin did not wholly understand it himself. He passed among them with quiet greetings that made those upon whom they fell grow warm with pleasure and pride. Selfaggrandisement can bestow no such favours. The people of Palermo, unconsciously almost, had suddenly elevated their best citizen to the height his merit but not his modesty claimed. And through that subtle attribute that attaches to such elevations they were correspondingly proud of him.
The voters closed in behind the two and followed them into the town house, mumbling surmises to account for this astonishing situation.
“Politics makes strange bedfellers, so they say,” observed Deacon Burgess, squinting at the Squire and the feeble old man whom he was leading, “but if them two there don’t have nightmares and git to kickin’ each other it will be somethin’ to be talked about in words that ain’t laid down in the dictionary.”
But the surge into the town house was promptly succeeded by a rush for outdoors. The bellow of band music summoned them.
Fully appreciating what the dramatic stood for, Hiram Look had timed his arrival carefully. He wanted all the voters to witness it. His eight horses drew the band chariot, whose gilt and glass were resplendent, even through the mud-streakings. The showman drove, perched upon the high seat, his new silk hat flashing in the March sun. But the hat was dwarfed on that occasion.
Simon Peak sat beside him, and for the first time since Palermo had known him Simon Peak was really erect. It was his initial appearance as drum-major of the “Look Cornet Brass Band.” His trousers were white, his coat was crimson, with huge yellow shoulder knots, and an absolutely gigantic bearskin shako towered from his head. When the big waggon swung into the town-house yard the voters got a peep at the new uniforms of the bandmen and, inspired by the gorgeous spectacle and by the lively music, broke into a cheer.
Hiram’s grim features relaxed. He wheeled his horses skilfully and brought the big cart to a standstill opposite the crowded platform, twisted the reins about the brake bar, arose and removed his hat.
The ruling passion of the mob is the same in Palermo as it is in the metropolis.
“Speech!” yelled the crowd enthusiastically above the blare of the instruments.
“It ain’t no time, gents, for speeches now and here,” said Hiram Look in the first silence. “I only want to present to you, the voters of the town of Palermo, your new brass band, with the tallest drum-major in New England, if not in the whole world. It’s a band that no one can be ashamed of. It has taken enterprise and hard work to get it to goin’. It needs a boost from the voters of this town to keep it goin’. A word to the wise is sufficient. This ain’t no time for speeches, as I’ve just said, but I want to ask you, one and all, to show me and this band here to-day that you appreciate it when a man comes into the place and lets out a few reefs and tries to get the grand old town of Palermo sailin’ on a new tack.”
It was the younger men who cheered now, as they had cheered before. The older voters, from natural gravity and other reasons of a personal nature, were silent. Many of them went back into the town house grumbling about “hitchin’ circus fol-de-rols on to a bus’ness town meetin’.”
This faction, which was a very considerable one, glared when the band marched in behind its Gargantuan major and set the windows to rattling with one of its liveliest airs. In the close, low-ceiled room the uproar of the instruments and the clamour of the drums made hideous din of the music.
“I’ll be deefer’n a haddock if this keeps up,” growled Uncle Lysimachus Buck to Marriner Amazeen. “There don’t seem to be no law and order to nothin’ in this town nowadays. It strikes me it’s about time for P’lermo to set down on Hime Look, and set down so hard that he won’t get the creases out of him for awhile.”
The town clerk, a thin, hump-shouldered little man, stood beside a rickety table on the platform, his huge cane poised ready to pound for order, and waiting with manifest impatience for the band to finish. He began to whack the table the moment the echoes of the music died away, and while the voters were shuffling to their places on the settees read the warrant for the meeting in a shrill voice.
Hiram Look had planned to win the first move that day and elect a moderator from his own faction. The keynote of his canvass had been “Give some one else a show!” His whole campaign had been an attempt to stir factional feeling in town.
“It’s a mighty dead-and-alive place that let’s one clique run it year after year and lead you all by the nose,” he had stormily argued. “You might’s well have an emp’ror for life and be done with it.”
He had promptly won the element that is always jealous of those in authority, almost as promptly enrolled the unstable element that is ready to follow new gods when a band leads the procession, and after a little effort had succeeded in convincing many voters, who had never stopped to think of the matter before, that they were being cheated of their rights of representation in town affairs. He had talked to them until they were bitter with his own bitterness. But he did not let drop one word of the sensation that he planned to precipitate.
The moment the clerk stopped reading “Wolf” Doughty was on his feet with a fiery harangue that wound up in denunciation of the men who had bossed the town so long. He declared that it was time for a new deal, and nominated Deacon Burgess as moderator. The band attempted to play when he finished, but the little clerk rapped it into silence, though he split his table in doing so. The name of Deacon Burgess was uproariously seconded by Hiram’s claque.
But Squire Phin had been prepared for just such an outbreak. He arose and said that he would assume that Mr. Doughty’s remarks had reference to him, who had served the town as moderator for so many years. He reminded the voters that he had acted in the capacity because he had annually been requested to preside by the unanimous voice of the voters. He had always felt that others should share in this honour, he said, and this year he should do what he had before intended to do—refuse the use of his name.
There was so much of gentle rebuke in his tone, and in his air such quiet dignity, that Doughty’s flaming speech became a piece of insolence that the voters were manifestly anxious to repudiate.
At this psychological moment, foreseen by the Squire’s sagacity, one of his lieutenants nominated the teacher of the high school at the upper village, and the natural, sudden impulse of the meeting did the rest.
Deacon Burgess was snowed under.
Hiram Look, in the midst of his adherents, fully understood all the guile under this apparently innocent manoeuvre, and twisted his trailing moustache and glared at his brother with malice.
In a similar manner the rest of Hiram’s slate was broken. He had trained his speakers to go against the opposition with all the force of their lungs and their invective. But the opposition didn’t appear to be there. It was like fighting the summer breeze with a park of artillery. The old office-holders were no longer candidates. New ones appeared, introduced in calm, earnest speeches—men against whom no word could be said. Under such circumstances the assaults by Hiram’s cabal began to sound like bombastic nonsense, and there was too much Yankee hard-headedness in that town meeting to listen patiently.
Violent sentiments were greeted with laughter, and the men who persisted in attacking the old régime were hooted down.
While the tellers were counting votes for the third selectman Hiram signalled his band to play up. But the moderator ordered silence and sent two constables to enforce his commands.
Hiram, endeavouring to shout remonstrance, was threatened with expulsion from the hall. He had lost his grip on the situation.
His supporters had not deserted him, by any means, but they were too confused to act in concert. The new men were better men than their own candidates. They were nominated with a certain spontaneity that disarmed the opposition. Each time the polling was in progress Hiram stood on a settee waving handfuls of ballots and shouting the name of his candidate. But many voters who accepted slips from him secretly dropped them upon the sawdust floor at a word whispered to them as they filed along toward the ballot box.
It was not until the meeting reached the election of a town treasurer that the opposition saw its real opportunity.
The Squire, who had made no nominating speech up to this time, secured recognition from the moderator before Hiram’s lieutenant could struggle to his feet, even though the showman had reached over two settees and thrust a broad hand against his back.
The lawyer walked to the little space before the platform and stood there, his hands behind him, his expression amiable, yet with something of that new determination in it that Palermo had just begun to note.
“The hankering for new brooms is a natural and proper one, fellow-townsmen,” he said, “and I am glad that Palermo has shown so much good sense here to-day. We have chosen an admirable board of town officers up to this time, and I am sure that those still to be elected will be just as good and true men. You are now to choose a treasurer for the town. We have plenty of good material for other officers, but I want to say to you earnestly I am convinced that we have only one man in Palermo who by training and ability is suited to be our treasurer.
“It is an office that requires tact and good judgment, even though the sums that pass through the hands of our treasurer are not large. These qualifications are possessed in abundant measure by the present incumbent of the office. But there is a personal reason why we should reelect Judge Willard, and in a little town like ours—a neighbourhood, you may call it, almost—a personal reason of this nature should sway us. Judge Willard’s father and grandfather before him were town treasurers. The office has become associated with the family name. It will be recalled by you that no Willard has ever charged the town one cent for his services. It is one of those peculiar cases where the rule of rotation in office is overweighed by sentiment. I’ll confess to having sentiment myself about this matter. I’d as soon be a party to cutting down our big elm where Lafayette sat in the shade while his dinner was being cooked at the old tavern.”
His face grew grave.
“I hardly think I need to state to the voters here to-day that the very fact of my standing forth to make this plea for Judge Willard indicates how necessary I think it is to put aside my personal feelings for the sake of the town.”
The expression on the faces of the listeners showed that they fully understood his allusion. It required no very close observation to see that Phineas Look, appealing for his old enemy, had won the majority of his townsmen to his side.
“I had heard that certain persons were planning to make a cowardly attack on him here to-day, and I did not propose to have my attitude toward him misunderstood, townsmen.”
The Squire shouted this.
“In Judge Willard’s presence I apologise for my frankness, but I say to you that he is an old man, to whom certain small things—small honours, if you care to say it—have much significance. I don’t believe the voters of this town will venture to wound an old man by any lack of generosity here to-day. I don’t believe they will listen to attacks made on him to satisfy selfish spite. I ask you, therefore, to treat this aged citizen with the consideration that is due to him. I ask you to nominate him by acclamation.”
He put both of his hands out to them, palms up, and smiled upon them with appeal in his eyes.
“That’s the way I feel about the town treasurer-ship, neighbours, and if the most of you don’t feel that way, too, I shall be disappointed. Will you not make it by acclamation?”
So accustomed were his townsmen to see the Squire at the head of their meetings that there was a chorus of “Ayes!” A half dozen men popped up and seconded his proposal. Squire Phin did not attempt to speak above this clamour, but smilingly motioned toward the moderator and took his seat beside Judge Willard.
The aged treasurer, during the time that the lawyer was speaking, sat twisting his thin hands under his shawl. His head swayed from side to side with a tremulousness that no one had observed in him before. His eyes were fixed appealingly on the face of his sponsor.
“You set down!” roared a voice. The voters turned and beheld Hiram shaking his fist at the man who was striving to present the name of the opposition candidate. “Set down, I tell ye! I’ll ’tend to the rest of this thing myself and do it right.”
“Question! Question!” shouted many voices.
But the showman was not to be choked off. He leaped upon a settee and roared, vibrating his fists above his head, until by dint of bellowing he had driven the others into silence.
“I’m a voter in this town, and I don’t propose to have bus’ness rammed through without discussion. I know how some of you feel toward me. You think that ev’rything I try to do I’m doin’ just to make trouble. You give me the big end to h’ist ev’ry time. But I’m good for it!”
He brandished his long arms above their heads.
Again the voices broke out into cries of “Question! We want to vote!”
“Vote! Vote!” he screamed, unable to control his passion. He had intended to lead up to his sensation more skilfully. In his rage he now fired it at them like a bombshell.
“Vote for what? For a thief to be your town treasurer? For a man that has stolen forty thousand dollars from this town? That’s what you’re votin’ for. I can prove what I say. Now do you want to vote?”
He leaned far over, propping himself on the shoulders of the man in front of him, and gave them look for look. His sound eye blazed.
He thrust out his arm and shook his long finger at the cowering Judge.
“Ask him how many town notes are out with his name on ’em!” he yelled. “Ask him—your honest old town treasurer, who has skun you as he would skin a woodchuck, who has cheated, has stolen———”
But now fifty men were on their feet howling threats and epithets at him.
“What shall I do?” screamed the moderator, leaning from the platform and appealing to the Squire.
“Tell the band to play! Pass the word. Tell the band to play,” the lawyer replied. And the band, not understanding in that din of voices from whom the order had emanated, struck into one of its most clamorous selections, and kept on doggedly despite the hoarse objurgations of Hiram. He finally stood up and wiped his dripping face and let them go on. But he swore under his breath with the vigour of a captain whose own guns had been trained on him.
While he stood there, high on the settee, waiting for the band to play through to the end, Hiram singled out several men in the crowd with his eye, and promptly on the heels of the last blare he shouted:
“Sumner Badger—you, there, Sum Badger! You, Ezra Mayo! You, Nelson Clark! You are hidin’ town notes with Collamore Willard’s name on ’em. You can’t stand up here in town meetin’ and say that you aren’t. This town thinks it only owes two thousand. Ask those men, you voters! They’ve let Collamore Willard have fifteen thousand between ’em. Ask ’em!”
He waited, and the assemblage turned amazed and inquiring gaze on the men.
Badger stood up first.
“I’m free to say, and I’ll swear it on a stack of Bibles, that there ain’t a cent owin’ me from this town.”
“You’re an old liar,” yelled Hiram.
“I’ll bet you five thousand dollars, even money, and put it into the hands of any one you say?” Badger shrieked excitedly. “And there’s a taste of your own med’cine that you’ve been so willin’ to ladle out to the rest of us. Put up or shet up!”
This sturdy retort caught Hiram napping, and his open mouth and the confusion on his face showed it.
The other men whom he had called upon leaped up and made similar overtures of wagers.
The crowd began to laugh boisterously.
For the first few moments the voters had wavered between shocked astonishment and anger. But the town understood so well the showman’s extravagances of speech and actions that on second thought this last performance seemed only another of his prodigious bluffs. Now to behold him badgered in the same fashion in which he had badgered Palermo, and backing away from the bets, was too much for their risibilities. The more they laughed the more utter became his confusion. The whole thing had turned out so differently from what he expected.
“I’ll bet ye five thousand to two,” shrilled Badger, excited by his success and by the applause. “And I’ll stump ye to bet! I’ll stump ye!”
The mirth broke out again, for Hiram pulled out his handkerchief and scrubbed it over his reddening face.
“This has gone far enough, townsmen!” called the Squire. “It isn’t seemly to conduct town affairs in this manner.”
He had mounted the platform, and his firm tones quieted them.
“It isn’t seemly, either, for an irresponsible person to lose his head and make accusations that he cannot back up. It is a deplorable thing that has just happened here, townsmen.”
They all became grave with his gravity.
“No personal feelings of my own shall check me from saying that a man who stands up in a public place and perpetrates criminal libel deserves the severest punishment that the law has for such a crime. But under the circumstances I ask from you this one bit of forbearance: It is that you will forget what this person has said here and allow him to go, on condition that he will not repeat his offence, here or elsewhere. If he does—” the Squire’s face grew hard and stern—“I will prosecute him myself, brother though he be of mine.”
For a moment there was utter silence, and then, with callused palms and thudding boots, the voters roared their applause.
Hiram strode off the settee and into the centre aisle, and was about to speak, his face black with rage.
“Not another word, sir,” the Squire shouted. “Not one word, or I’ll withdraw my protection.”
But Hiram whirled at the door on his way out, unable to repress the furious indignation that surged to his lips. He began to understand the manner in which he had been cheated out of his vengeance. His anger shifted from the voters, who had so blindly followed, to the man who had led them—and that man was his brother.
“I’ll bet ye ten thousand dollars to one that I know who lifted the lid that let the old rat out of his trap,” he shouted. His eye flamed redly on Phineas. “It took ready money to do it. It was your money, Phin Look! Some of it was money that I earnt! Our old father turned in his grave this day. I stand here before the whole of you and tell you, Phin Look, that you are a——”
“Constables, put that man out of this meeting!” commanded the Squire in stentorian tones, and three brawny men who had followed Hiram down the aisle and appeared to be awaiting just such an order hustled the showman out of doors with much alacrity.
Simon Peak marshalled the band behind him, and in a little while the big waggon went rumbling out of the yard.
But the band did not play.
Later in the day, when this business was reached, the articles in the warrant relating to the “Look Cornet Brass Band” and the investigation of the accounts of the town treasurer, as well as the article requiring bondsmen for the same, were killed by a hilarious viva voce vote.
On their homeward way, after a long pause, Squire Look said:
“Judge Willard, you have been able to see some of the visible results to me for my share in helping you compound your felony. You are man enough to understand what it means to go through a public scene like that with a brother, who was right, even if he was misguided. I am ashamed to meet him; I am almost ashamed to look my townsmen in the eye.”
“But you agreed that it would have been worse the other way,” quavered the old man.
“There are people who talk of the right path,” broke out the lawyer impatiently, “as though it were like this village road branching from the four corners here; that all you need to do is to look at the guide-board and go on. I may have got tangled up at that four corners where you and I met the other day, Judge Willard, but I want to tell you that I see a mighty straight road ahead of me now.”
He clutched the old man’s arm and spoke low so that the driver on the other side of the leather flap might not hear.
“You have got to liquidate, Judge. You have got to put every cent of property you have in the world into my hands in order that I may untangle it. You may be town treasurer in name, but not one dollar of the funds shall you handle. The widows and the orphans and the old folks in this town must be paid to the last farthing. You are going out of business—-do you understand? You will resign the town treasurership when I tell you to—and that will be when your books can be safely turned over to some one else. You need not worry about exposure, for the men who were paid and surrendered their town notes to me have their tongues tied fast and solid by methods that I understand how to work. Now for your own tongue! If you breathe one word to your daughter that I supplied the money to square this thing, or that you owe me a cent, I’ll drop you and your affairs as I’d drop a hot plate on to a brick sidewalk. And you know what will happen then!” A moment later the Squire checked the old man’s mingled promises and thanks with an impatient word and sank back into a corner of the carriage. His ponderings could not have been very satisfying, for he scowled and growled.
CHAPTER XXI—WHY HIRAM LOOK WENT OUT OF THE CIRCUS BUSINESS
FOR GOOD AND ALL
Now study the ways of the world, my son; oh, study the ways of life!
It’s the hustling chap that gets the cash or the girl he wants for his wife;
It’s the fellow that spots the place to grab, as Chance goes swinging by,
Who gets his dab in the juiciest place and the biggest plum in the pie.
—Philosophy of S. Peak.
It was almost the first of the warming days of April. Muddy little brooks ran beside the highway, robins bounced along the turf, the waves in the Cove sparkled in the mellow sunshine, and the silver poplars in the Look dooryard bristled with catkins as long as one’s finger. One of them dropped lightly upon the knee of the abstracted Hiram Look, sitting in his chair on the porch, and he jumped and cuffed it, thinking it was a green worm.
“First spring I’ve seen them things for a good many years,” he growled, squinting up into the branches. “For that matter, it’s the first spring I’ve seen a good many things,” he added bitterly. He slouched down in his chair, his hat-brim low over his eyes, smoked his long cigar and watched the approach of Simon Peak, who was picking his way up the muddy road.
“There’s thirty-seven of ’em to-day, Hime,” said Simon, tossing a packet of letters into the showman’s lap. “Some of ’em’s fat, and there ought to be con-sid’able good readin’ for us.” He licked his lips expectantly.
Hiram joggled down the contents of an envelope and nipped off the edge with broad nails. He passed the contents over to Peak, who fixed his spectacles on his nose and promptly began to read aloud, his general air showing that this was a regular daily programme.
****
“‘Look & Peak—Gents: Seeing your ad. respecting show you are going to start out with in near future, I would like side-show privilege for my wife, who is the celebrated Fat Emma, with beard two feet long. She——
“Nothing to it!” growled Hiram, breaking in with disgust. “Tear it up.”
“But there’s some kind of funny stuff about her here,” appealed Simon, running his eye down the page. “It makes good readin’.”
“Frame it, then, if you want to,” retorted the showman gruffly. “I don’t want to listen to no such sculch.” He was nipping at the edge of another envelope.
Simon took advantage of the pause.
“I see your brother steppin’ into Judge Willard’s office same as usual this noon,” he said.
“He can step into Tophet three times a day and fry steak if he wants to,” snapped Hiram ungraciously.
“Well, you asked me to keep tabs on him when I see him go in there, and I’m doin’ it, ain’t I? I don’t see no need of yappin’ my head off when I’m tellin’ you what you wanted me to tell you.” Simon was plainly indignant.
“You show altogether too much relish for stickin’ your nose into other folks’ bus’ness,” said Hiram, still in bad temper.
“You’re gittin’ to be wusser’n a quill-pig to live with,” Simon flung back. “I don’t git more’n two decent words out of you from one day’s end to another. I ain’t no husk door-mat for you to wipe your feet on, even if I am poor and you’ve got your old forty thousand in the bank.”
“You go ahead with your readin’,” barked Hiram, slapping open a letter. “You want to get so that you can unpin that mouth o’ your’n without saying forty thousand dollars ev’ry time, or I may stick my fist down your gullet some day.”
The giant read on sullenly.
“‘Messers. Look & Peak————-’”
“‘Gentlemen Sirs!’” thundered Hiram. “Ain’t I told you more’n five hundred times how to read that? We ain’t ‘Messers.’”
Peak surveyed the tyrant with baleful gaze and started to read again.
While they were absorbed in their quarrel a woman had come tip-toeing up the street past the muddy spots, and now she stood in front of the porch—a thin, wiry, alert woman. Her voice startled them. She tripped a few steps nearer and curtsied with extravagant politeness. Both arose and doffed their plug hats before they saw her face. She tossed her head to throw back a draggly plume that rested against her rouged cheek and stared at them.
“You don’t hold your ages as well as I do, boys,” she commented flippantly.
“It’s the old army game, gents,” squalled the parrot from his cage overhead, excited by this new arrival, gay in colours and ribbons.
“It’s her!” gasped Hiram.
“It’s Signory Rosy-elly!” choked the giant.
She came up and sat down beside them sociably in one of the porch chairs.
“Honest, boys, it was some time before I could place those names,” she chattered. “‘Look & Peak’s Consolidated Aggregation,’ says I to myself. ‘Look & Peak,’ I says. And, thinks I, them two old codgers must have gone to Kingdom Come. ‘Look & Peak,’ says I,” she went on cheerfully, oblivious of the grim stares. “It’s their sons, I says, and so I come right along, for I need the job.”
“Didn’t that ad. say,” demanded Hiram, “that there wa’n’t goin’ to be no personal interviews till later arranged for?”
She poked each in turn with her parasol, “Oh, I knew if it was their boys I’d be taken on after I’d explained the romantic part, which I couldn’t do in a letter. But I don’t have to tell you, boys.” She poked them jocosely again.
“A little old, you say?”
They had not spoken.
“Why, not a bit of it for a jay-town circuit. Of course, it isn’t a three-ringer job for me any more, or else I wouldn’t be down here talking to Look & Peak. But I’m still good for it all—rings, banners, hurdles, rump-cling gallop, and the blazing hoop for the wind-up. You know what I can do, boys. Remember old times. Take me on for old times’ sake.” She gave each one the leer of the faded coquette.
Hiram was the first to recover, for the edge of his regret had been dulled by the long course of treatment he had received from Simon. This worn-out creature completed the job.
“Ain’t you ashamed to face us two?” he rasped. “You that run away from me and ruined him?”
“My sakes!” she cried. “You ain’t so unprofessional as to remember all that silliness against me, are you? I was only a girl then, and you couldn’t expect me to love you—either of you. I’m a poor widow now,” she sighed, “and I need work. You don’t mean to say that you’ve been layin’ up grudges against me all these years—the two of you? What would your wives have said?”
“We never got married,” returned Look and Peak in mournful duet.
“You’re lucky!” she snapped. “I married a cheap, worthless renegade, and he stole my money and ran away. He fell off a trapeze and broke his neck, and I was glad of it.”
“So’m I,” grunted Hiram, casting a soulful glance at Simon. “No, I ain’t, either,” he corrected himself hastily. “I’m sorry he didn’t live to torment you. No,” he roared, “I ain’t sorry for anything, except it was poor Sime Peak’s money the two of you got away with.”
Peak sighed.
“But I want to say to you, Signory Rosy-elly,” went on Hiram, tipping his hat to one side and hooking his thumb into the armhole of his vest, “it wa’n’t my money you got, and it never will be my money you’ll get. You just made the mistake of your life when you run away from me, and you can chew that cud for the rest of your life.”
“He’s got forty thousand dollars in the bank,” hoarsely whispered Simon behind his hand, willing to add his mite to her discomfiture.
“Correct!” agreed Hiram. It was really a moment worth waiting for through the years, he reflected.
“Twenty can play as well as one,” croaked the parrot, his beady eye pressed between the bars of his cage.
The signora glanced up at this new speaker, eyed Absalom with a sage look that he seemed to return, and, after a moment of thought, said:
“Thanks for the suggestion, old chap! Three can play as well as two. Now, Look, you know that I’m always outspoken and straight to the point. No tinderhanded bluff for me. I’m going to sue you for ten thousand!”
“Crack ’em down, gents!” remarked Absalom with grim patness.
Hiram could not resist casting a malevolent stare at the unconscious humourist in the cage.
For one startled moment he stared at the woman in fear, and then, recovering composure, tilted his cigar in the corner of his mouth with cocky assurance.
“I want to know,” he blurted sarcastically. “Breach of promise, I per-sume?”
“Good aim! You’ve rung the bell!” replied the lady coolly.
The impudence of the bare suggestion fetched a gasp from both men.
Hiram was striving to be haughtily indifferent and disdainful. But this thrust was too much for his composure. He felt one of those old-time fits of rage come bristling up the back of his head, the fury of old, when he had tried to wither that same giddy creature in his spasms of jealousy.
But she broke in on him with the same icy assurance that used to put him out of countenance.
“I know all that, Look. But how are you going to prove that I’ve been married? Where are you going to hunt for witnesses? Professional people are like wild geese—roosting on air and moulting their names like feathers. You two are going to seem like a couple of old frauds standing up in court against me! You haven’t got the first elements of acting to you! Observe how I take my cue! Jury a-listening! I’ve been hunting the world over for you. You hid here. Here I find you—I, a poor, deserted woman, whose life has been wrecked by your faithlessness. Me with a crape veil, a sniff in my nose, crushed-creature face make-up and a smart lawyer, such as I have in mind this very minute. And the jury knowing that you’ve got the money! Why, Look, you can save thousands by handing me your bankbook!”
In his fury Hiram grabbed her chair and tipped it forward violently in order to dump her off his sacred porch. She flew out into space with a flutter of skirts, landed as lightly as a cat, and pirouetted on one toe, crooking her arms in the professional pose that invites applause.
“This is the first time Signora Rosyelli, champion bareback rider, ever tried to ride a mule,” she chirped, “but you see she can do it and make her graceful dismount to the music of the band. I’ll be at the tavern down here two days, ready to listen to any kind of talk that combines pleasure and profit. After that you take your own chances.”
She tossed to each of them a kiss from her finger-tips and went switching jauntily down the road.
“That beats Tophet and repeat!” remarked Simon after a time. He had watched her nearly out of sight.
Hiram held his peace.
“What are you goin’ to do?” his friend inquired falteringly at last.
“Fight her!” roared Hiram, leaping to his feet and striding up and down the porch. “Fight her clear’n to the high, consolidated Supreme Court aggregation of the United States, or whatever they call it!”
“Nobody has ever beat her out yit, except Delly-bunko, and we ain’t in his class,” sighed Simon, with much despondency.
“You don’t think, do you, that I’m goin’ to set down and lap my thumb and finger and peel her off ten thousand dollars?’”
“Well, it’s lucky that you’ve got a brother that’s the smartest lawyer in the county,” said Peak, with an attempt at consolation. “He has showed that much out pretty plain, even to me. I never see him manage anywhere, except in town meetin’, but I——”
Hiram had been sunk in reverie, but this unfortunate remark brought him out of it.
“Hain’t I told you never to mention my brother to me except when I ask you to?” he demanded fiercely. “I don’t want any man that I ain’t spoke to for four weeks slung into my face. Hain’t I goin’ to take to the ro’d again to get rid of him? If he was the last lawyer on God’s footstool he couldn’t take a case for me.”
He resumed his striding.
“Why don’t you and she git married, and we’ll all live here happy ever after?” suggested Peak, wistfully, following a period of pondering. “If it was in a book it would end off like that—sure pop!”
“Well, there ain’t no book to this, not by a dum-sight!” replied Hiram tartly.
“But it would settle one thing, and you ain’t hitched up in any other direction,” persisted Simon stubbornly, yet warily. Hiram’s renewed visits up country since he had so definitely and precipitately retired from town affairs in Palermo had again been stirring the jealous fears of the anxious old “grafter.” He feared the widow Abilene Snell with the fear of the bird that sees the hunter approaching its nest.
“I thought I told you never to twit me on that point again,” snarled Hiram, trying to be calm.
“I ain’t twittin’,” expostulated Simon. “If you hadn’t got so touchy lately you would see that I ain’t twittin’. But if you ain’t no idee of gittin’ married up country, why, you——”
“You—shet—up!” shouted Hiram, with a wag of his head for each word.
Long silence followed.
“So you’re bound to go to court?” asked Peak, recovering courage when he saw Hiram peering at him wistfully, as though seeking encouragement.
“Low court—high court—clear’n to the ridge-pole—-clear’n to the cupoly, and then I’ll shin the weather-vane with the Star-Spangled Banner of justice between my teeth.” He slapped his hand on his knee.
“I heard a breach of promise trial once, a long time ago,” related Simon, half closing his eyes in reminiscence. “Of course this ain’t nothin’ to do with you and your case, but I can’t help sayin’ that that trial was the funniest thing I ever heard. I never laughed so hard in my life. It beat a show, that trial did. ’Twas all of twenty years ago, and I’ll bet the people down there laugh yet when they see that feller walk along the street. Them letters he wrote was——Is there letters in your case, Hiram?”
He turned an innocent gaze on the showman.
Hiram mopped his face.
“I—I b’lieve there was,” he faltered. “She flung out somethin’ about havin’ ’em now. Mebbe she has. A cussed woman never loses anything that you want her to.”
“Oh, prob’ly your letters ain’t like his letters,” continued Simon, trying to console. “You’ve got sense about such things.
“But I remember that them letters that that feller wrote was certainly the squashiest—why, ev’ry one of ‘em seemed to woggle jest like a tumbler of jelly—sweet and sloppy, as you might say. It bein’ so long ago when you wrote to her, I don’t suppose you remember just what you wrote, do you?”
His stare was still full of innocence.
Hiram was sitting looking down into a knot-hole, a hot flush crawling up from under his collar. He took off his plug hat and scuffed his wrist across his steaming forehead.
“But prob’ly yours was all good sense,” Simon went on. “Why, there was men lugged right out of that court-room in hysterics, and had to be pounded on the back by dep’ty sheriffs to bring ’em to. I remember one letter called her ‘Ittikins, Pittikins, Popsy Sweet,’ and she was settin’ there in the court-room with a face on her sourer’n a dill pickle. Thought I’d die a-laughin’! Of course you didn’t git no such sculch as that into your letters, and so the trial won’t be funny. But you bein’ so prominunt now and havin’ forty thousand in the bank, and bein’ known to a good many people ’round up country since Imogene’s scrape there took you out amongst folks——”
Hiram couldn’t detect any hidden meaning in Simon’s guileless mien and reference to “up country,” and though he stared hard, he did not interrupt. “As I say, bein’ now, as you might call it, a solid citizen, it will certainly tickle folks somethin’ tremendous if there is any such mushiness in your trial.”
A student in physiognomy might have read that memory was playing havoc with Hiram Look’s resolution.
“I was tryin’ to think,” went on Peak, knuckling his forehead, “what it was that the signory was tellin’ me that time when she rode away with me. She’s such a liar that there ain’t no tellin’ nothin’ by what she says, but it seems to me she told me that you called her something like ‘Sweety-tweety’ or ‘Tweeny-weeny girlikins’—somethin’ like that. She lied, prob’ly, and of course you’d never put anything like that into a letter. How them newspapers do like to string out things—funny kind of things—when a man is prominunt and has got money in the bank! Folks can’t help laughin’—they jest nat’rally can’t, Hime! There you’ll be settin’ in that court-room lookin’ ugly as a gibcat, and her lawyer’ll be readin’ them letters with that kind of sassy——”
Hiram got up, kicked his chair off the porch, and in rage that he couldn’t control he shook his fist under Peak’s nose.
“Twit me another word—just one other word—and I’ll drive that old nose of your’n clear’n up into the roof of your head!”
He stumped away around the corner of the house and disappeared in the barn.
“If the Court ain’t mistook,” soliloquised Simon, settling himself into a more comfortable position in his chair, “Hime Look has got at least three elephants on his hands now. He’s got one out there in the barn with him that eats hay, one down to the tavern that eats money, and one up country that will eat him, if he don’t look out.” Then he spread his handkerchief over his face and went to sleep.
Hiram waked him up an hour or so later.
“Sime,” he said humbly, “I’ve been out there set-tin’ down on the hay and rememberin’ back about what I wrote to her—and it’s all of it pretty clear in my mind, ’cause I never wrote love letters to any one else. And I can’t face it. I can’t set in court and hear it. I couldn’t ever face any one that knowed me here or elsewhere.
“I couldn’t start on the ro’d with a circus and have the nerve to stand in front of the big tent after it and bark like I used to. There’d be somebody there a-knowin’ to it, and they’d grin me out of bus’ness. I’d be backed into the stall. No, I can’t do it. If I git to talkin’ with her again there’ll be murder done. It can’t be known that I’m havin’ any truck with her. I can’t ever see her again. You got to go down, Sime, and see what she’ll compromise for.”
“It has got to be compromised, has it?” asked the other earnestly. A little gleam in his eye showed that he had something on his mind—a doubt that he wanted to satisfy at last.
“Now the only way for us to go into this thing, Hime,” he said, “is for both of us to be square and open. Don’t you yap out at me that I’m nosin’ into your bus’ness or tryin’ to twit. But if you want this whole thing fixed up secret, so that—so that—” he gulped—“so that your widder up country won’t get track of it, then it’s only right for you to tell me whuther your intentions up that way is serious.”
For a little while Hiram scowled at his companion in perfectly fiendish manner.
“You talk about bein’ persistent!” he growled. “Talk about a bull-dog hangin’ to a tramp’s leg! For four months conversation between us ain’t ever took a turn but what you’ve tried to get your little gimlet into me. Now ’cause you’ve got me into a corner you’re out with an auger. Well, I’ll tell you, dum blast ye! I’m courtin’ Mis’ Snell, and I’m goin’ to have her if she’ll have me. There! Chaw on that gumdrop a while!”
The showman glared at Peak and the latter shifted his gaze.
“Much obliged,” he said. “There’s nothin’ like having straight facts to go on.”
He clapped his hat hard onto his head with a hollow tunk.
“What’s the final instructions?” he inquired.
“Nothin’ but to settle it as cheap as you can and shet her blasted mouth,” returned Hiram, setting his elbows on his knees and looking again into the knot-hole.
If he had changed his steady gaze from the knothole two hours later, it was not apparent to Simon Peak when he returned.
“I wrassled with her, Hime, just as tough and tight as though it was my own money that I was handlin’. If I done it right or not I donno. I ain’t ever been used to talkin’ about so much money before. But I’ve got her beat down to,” he drew a long breath, “sixty-six hundred, and she swears she won’t take a cent less. You know how set she gits on a thing!”
Hiram bored him suspiciously with his eye for a moment and snarled:
“It sounds to me as though she was goin’ to get five thousand and you was pers’nally lookin’ after your little old sixteen hundred.”
A couple of tears squeezed out and down over the giant’s flabby cheeks.
“There ain’t a day passed since you got back from up country, Hime, but what you’ve misjudged me some way, somehow. You misjudged me years ago. You’re doin’ it this minit. And it’s all on account of some missabul woman that I’m misjudged. I wish they was all in——”
His voice broke here and he turned away.
Sudden contrition, and as sudden fear that Peak, offended, might desert him in his need, assailed Hiram.
“I ain’t responsible for what I’m sayin’ to-day, Sime,” he pleaded. “You know what has happened to stir me up. I’ve been stirred up all my life, somehow. You’ll have to overlook it in me. There ain’t nobody I ever got along with better’n I have with you—when all is said. I’ll show you later that I appreciate it, too. We’ll get along together all right after this. All is, you must see me through and keep her mouth plugged.”
Then the two tall hats bent together in earnest conference.
That evening one of Hiram Look’s horses, hitched to Hiram’s best carriage, pranced up to the door of Fyles’ tavern, and the thin woman hopped in lightly, snuggled herself down beside Simon Peak, and away they went.
In Simon’s inside pocket was one of Hiram’s bankbooks showing deposits of a generous amount in one of the savings banks at the county shire. Between its leaves was tucked an order signed by Hiram Look, and directing that money should be paid over to Simon Peak, who would be identified by one of the showman’s friends in the city. There were blank spaces in the order for the insertion of the amount of money to be drawn.
“I’m going to show you what I think of you, Sime,” Hiram had declared in a burst of enthusiasm. “You said I misjudged you. Well, here’s showin’ you that I ain’t. I’m goin’ to leave that order blank ’cause I believe in you. I’ll bet you’re friend enough of mine to beat her down another notch. I’ll bet you can do it. Fill in the amount and draw when it’s settled. Stay till you get them letters, put her on a train and come back, and I’ll show ye that Hime Look appreciates a friend in need.”
It was a piece of impulsiveness that worried the showman considerably during the next day or two, as he sat watching for the head of the gray horse to come bobbing around the alders. His hard life had taught him to distrust men’s honesty and faith. He wondered as he sat there what had influenced him to put so much trust in Peak on the spur of the moment.
“It’s on account of gittin’ softened up by women, that’s what it is,” he grunted in soliloquy. “There I was with a tin can tied to my tail and runnin’ around in a circle and afraid of the two of ’em. No, I ain’t afraid of Abby Snell! But it’s wuth more than one five thousand dollars to keep it away from her that I ever fell in love with a circus woman and wrote such letters as——”
Again the red flush came up from under his collar.
“Yes, I have trusted Sime,” he would mumble aloud, after he had stared at the corner of the alders until his eye ached. “I’ve trusted him, I say! But when your old neighbours and your own brother skins you, then it’s time to turn to strangers and get used white. It’s your own folks that do you the wust—it allus has been so, it prob’ly allus will be so. But—-I could go to the shire and ’tend to that bus’ness and crawl back on my hands and knees before this. She was a-goin’ to telegraft for them letters, cuss her!”
On the third day, when “Figger-Four” Avery bobbed back from the post-office with the mail, there was a thick packet among the letters that Hiram opened first with trembling fingers, for he had recognised Simon Peak’s handwriting.
It was the letter wrapped around the bankbook that Hiram tackled first. He skimmed it with his one eye bulging like a rabbit’s. It was in a way an apologetic letter, and yet it was flavoured with a note of complaint. Simon Peak went on to state that he had thought it all over prayerfully. Each time that a woman had come into their affairs he had been misjudged. Now that his suspicions as to the up-country widow had been confirmed, he could plainly see that he would sooner or later be misjudged again and, being old, he could not endure any more griefs of the sort, seeing that Hiram was his best and his only friend. He was too tender-hearted to stand it—and, besides, he had heard that the widow was neater than wax and smarter than a hornet, and under her administration spittoons and general freedom would have to be abandoned. Moreover, he believed that the conscience of Signora Rosyelli had troubled her ever since the episode of the sixteen hundred dollars. Furthermore, letting her have all that money to go away with and do with as she liked wouldn’t be the retribution that she deserved. It was too much money for a woman to handle——
Hiram yanked open the bankbook and glared at the balance. There had been a withdrawal of ten thousand dollars.
In the more crucial moments of his life Hiram Look had frequently refrained from anathema. Some situations were made too matter-of-fact by cursing. Now he stood up, shoved his arms above his head, gulped a half a dozen times, blew out his breath with a “Poof!” and sat down again.
After wiping his forehead with the flat of his hand he went on with the letter.
Simon apologised for having overstepped the first estimates, but explained that he had acted thus for reasons that must appeal to Hiram. The sum was sufficient to make the signora want to stick to him, and that would keep her away from Hiram. He had destroyed the letters and buttoned the money into his inside pocket, and told her if she wanted to enjoy any of it she must marry him. He said that as her husband he should control affairs absolutely. The writer pointed out that this was real retribution to such a woman, and he assured Hiram that he would always strive to make her realise her position daily and hourly. Under such circumstances the small extra amount that he had taken was moderate salary indeed for the services he was rendering an old friend, and he trusted that Hiram would hereafter enjoy life, knowing that a woman who had betrayed him was getting punished for her infidelity.