There once was a Quaker, Orasmus Nute,
With a physog. as stiff as a cowhide boot,
And he skippered a ship from Georgetown, Maine,
In the ’way back days of the pirates’ reign.
And the story I tell it has to do
With Orasmus Nute and a black flag crew—
The tale of the upright course he went
In the face of a certain predicament.
—Ballad of “Orasmus Nute.”
There was at least one secret in his life that “Fig-ger-Four” Avery kept. He never told what inspired Imogene to make her dash for liberty.
Squire Phin didn’t exactly understand the tableau he had beheld, and charitably refrained from mentioning to his brother how music, as rendered by Uncle Wharff, failed to soothe the savage breast. As for Hiram, he did not seem to be interested enough to ask any questions.
Whenever he mentioned the elephant’s escapade to Peak, he referred to the affair with a sort of grim blithesomeness.
Weeks afterward, when the first damp, swirling snow of winter was clotting itself on the windows of the little sitting-room, he sat for a long time, figuring in a grimy account book with a stubby lead pencil. Every once in a while he chuckled.
“J. B. Sawtelle,” he murmured, “items: four begonies and three geraniums mashed in front yard, one washin’ scattered hoorah-ste’-boy—say, Sime, Imogene with a night gown on one tush and a pair of J. B.‘s flannel drawers flyin’ distress from the other, and sheddin’ assorted articles such as found on a well-regulated clothes-line, as she hurrooped down through the beech growth, must have been worth double the price of a high-dive feature.”
His shoulders, hunched in the rocking-chair, shook with suppressed mirth.
Peak, his slippered feet resting on the rail of the Franklin stove, surveyed the shoulders and the back of Hiram’s head with scowling disapproval.
“Some might think you relished chances to throw away money,” he growled, with a freedom of criticism accorded the favourite. Simon now appeared to be settled as a fixture in the showman’s household. The old horse Joachim had died with the first frosts, and the battered van lurched under one of the poplars, exposed to the beating of the elements.
“What bills do you think Imogene incurred on that trip—now, jest for a guess?” demanded Hiram, in high good humour. “I’ve been figgerin’ it for fun.”
“It reely must be a good deal like a joke book,” observed Peak, with fine satire.
“I can set and pee-ruse them figgers,” said Hiram, slapping the little book on his knee and chuckling afresh, “and think how Imogene must have looked passin’ through them way stations, as you might say, and then think how them farmers and old maids and women-folks run and squawked and hollered, and I get fuller of tickles inside than a settin’ hen is full of clucks. The trouble with you is, Sime, you ain’t got no humour.”
“Well, I’ve had mostly troubles in my time, and I ain’t got no forty thousand dollars in the bank, either,” said Peak, sourly.
“Say, you’ve been twittin’ me about that forty thousand a good deal lately,” snorted Hiram, glaring around over the back of the rocking-chair. “You ain’t begretchin’ me my own, be ye?”
“Ev’ry man’s welcome to all he’s got, for all o’ me. I ain’t ever had nothin’. I don’t ever expect to have anything. But I tell ye, a man don’t gain in the long run by slingin’ his money around too permiscuous.”
Hiram whirled in his chair and put his little book into his pocket.
“For more’n a fortnit now, Sime, you’ve been slurrin’ more or less. You’ve got some kind of a duflicker’s egg that you’re settin’ on. Now come off’n the nest and if you’ve got any cacklin’ to do, out with it so that I can join in!”
Simon was too certain of his position as a favourite to be backed down.
“I guess if speech of the people is correct,” he replied sturdily, “it’s well enough known why you’re ticklin’ out when you think of Imogene’s trip up-country.”
“F’r instance, now,” suggested Hiram, his face very hard.
Peak bent and poked the fire, sniffing disdainfully.
“F’r instance, I said,” repeated the showman.
“Say, look-a-here, Hime,” snapped Peak, whirling in his chair in his turn, “do you think for a minute that I don’t know why you’ve been makin’ all these trips up-country lately—and you a-sayin’ that you’ve got to go up and transact a little more bus’ness about them damages of Imogene’s? Now it’s about time to take some of the cuss of the thing off’n that elephant.”
“F’r instance, I said!” yelled Hiram, standing up and clacking his fingers imperiously under Peak’s nose. “Out with it!”
“Don’t you suppose I know that you’re courtin’ that tow-headed widder that’s got a farm and twenty thousand dollars in the bank? Do you think that you can fool me that’s summered and wintered with you? You’re courtin’ her, that’s what you’re doin’, and you’re layin’ it all off onto that elephant. Now don’t give me no more flim-flam. ’Tain’t professional. It’s pickin’ me up for a sucker.”
The narrow eyes of the giant sparkled with suspicion and with the jealousy of the companion who is being supplanted and realises it.
For a little while Hiram stood and glared at him and then sat down in his chair again. Either a sense of guilt, craft or desire to placate a friend caused him to moderate his demeanour.
“See here, Sime,” he began, lighting a cigar to keep himself in countenance, “you have figgered the thing all wrong. You know I ain’t a marryin’ man. You and me neither of us is. I want you to live with me and you’re goin’ to.”
“I should think that the both of us has suffered enough from women as it is,” grumbled the giant. “Both of us knows the other’s troubles with ’em. And now for you to go and ram yourself right into the bramble-bush again, and me here to advise you, makes me mad and disgusted. I’m thinkin’ of you first of all, Hime. I ain’t selfish. But I can see jest how it’s goin’ to be: you’re goin’ to git hitched and then the first thing she’ll do will be to put the spittoon in the woodshed and kick me out-doors. I thought you knowed more than to do it—I honest thought so.”
Peak bowed his head in grief.
“In my whole life long I never was judged right yet by any human bein’,” wailed Hiram. “And now here you go off the handle jest like the rest. You know what Nymp’ Bodfish done to me. You know what I propose to do to Nymp’ Bodfish. That’s all there is to it. He wants her and the twenty thousand, and he’d ’a’ had her a year ago if he wasn’t hangin’ off about bein’ a farmer. He wants her to sell and put the money into a schooner, and he’s jest as much reckonin’ on that as on flood tide when the moon’s right. His heart is set on it. I’m goin’ to make him the sickest man ’tween here and the North Pole.”
“There was a man once that give an elephant a chaw of terbacker,” related Simon, “and when the doctors was tryin’ to fit some of the least mussed-up pieces together at the hospital, he opened his eyes and said: ‘It was a good one on the elephant, wasn’t it?’ and then give one hiccup and died.”
“If you was only jest—well, say, ‘Figger-Four,’ and made such talk to me,” snarled Hiram, “I’d drive you right down through the floor there, like I’d drive a tent peg. But I’m willin’ to argue with you, Sime, and if that don’t show that I’m a friend of yours, then I don’t know what does.” He wiped his flushed face. “You understand, I can’t bust this thing in a minit.”
“Didn’t you yourself ketch him right in a caper that would queer him with any decent woman—lug-gin’ off another man’s wife ’cause he was hired to?”
“Don’t you know that would be givin’ away the trouble of the young Mayos—and them livin’ together now like turtledoves?” roared Hiram. “Look at my brother Phin—one of God’s own gentlemen, if there ever was one. Him a-breakin’ his heart and misjudged and old Willard’s girl passin’ him by be-. cause he smashed King Bradish before her face and eyes—and Bradish with the last word to her! Don’t you suppose my brother could square himself with her by just one word of what he knows? But will he do it after he has passed ’Rissy Mayo his word that so long as she behaves herself he won’t give her away to any livin’ soul? You can say he’s a fool if you want to, but I tell ye, Sime, when a man has got as far along in life as Phin has without breakin’ his solemn word, you can’t blame him if he’d rather gnaw himself inside than have those whom he gives away scorch him outside.”
He had furiously puffed his cigar down to the end. Now he lighted another.
“I never approved of him carin’ a snap for the Willard girl, Sime. I don’t like her. I don’t like the breed. But this lovin’ of folks ain’t to be regulated jest the way you’d like to have it. If my brother can keep his mouth shut about King Bradish’s rottenness when, as you might say, it’s a wife at stake for him, then I guess I can keep still when it’s only a grudge that I’m workin’.”
“Then it ain’t no wife in your case?” pursued Peak, suspiciously.
“I tell ye, all I can do now is to hint,” insisted Hiram, evading the main question. “I’ve jest got her on the anxious seat. It’s the way I struck up her interest first of all. I couldn’t have got near her with a ten-foot pole if I hadn’t got her curiosity started by hints. Then, of course, she wanted to know what I meant and I’ve been puttin’ her off ever since. You never saw a woman so worked up as she is, Sime—never. She can’t hardly stand it till I come again. Then she lets into me to tell her all about Cap Bodfish. She don’t want to leave go of him till she knows definite. I reckon she wants to have him around so as to peel him when she does find out that there really is something in what I hint.” The showman chuckled again. “And it’s kind of what you might call a lingerin’ death for him—one of the slow kind like bein’ gnawed by ants. Ev’ry time he goes up to see her she don’t know whuther to love him or club him off’n the premises—and she blows hot and she blows cold all in one minit, and if he ain’t the wust puzzled man that ever tried to box compass in the sea of matrimony, then I’ll eat the celluloid peel in a side-show lemonade.”
“Don’t he suspect what it all means?” inquired Peak, beginning to appreciate the situation with the malice of a man who has been fooled and enjoys seeing others in the same boat.
“Keeps a-grabbin’ ev’ry which way like a man that hears a moskeeter buzzin’ round him in the night,” giggled Hiram. “I’ve set right in the other room sev’ral times and he didn’t know I was there, and I’ve heard him coax and beg and guess and promise and almost blubber, and me behind the door in t’other room swellin’ up and swellin’ up and then lettin’ it out through my nose easy, and then swellin’ up again. I don’t believe I shall be able to stand very much of that. I’m li’ble to bust some time.”
“I should think it would be well wuth list’nin’ to,” agreed Peak. Then he said artlessly: “I like fun myself. Why can’t I go along with you after this? Then there won’t be no such thing as her gettin’ her cobweb around you.”
“You talk as though I was runnin’ matinées up-country,” said Hiram, the red on his bristly cheeks. He detected Peak’s selfish apprehension, and the giant’s gaze shifted under his scowl. “I never had any trouble in runnin’ my own bus’ness yet and I don’t expect to have to call in understudies right away.”
In considerable dudgeon he marched along to a narrow secretary in the corner and began to mumble figures in an undertone as he went over his accounts. Peak sat gazing into the fire, twirling his huge thumbs thoughtfully.
The sound of some one stamping off snow on the porch broke upon the silence of the two. The visitor came in without knocking and, fumbling his way along the dark entry, opened the sitting-room door.
It was old Sumner Badger, the wet snow splotching his faded overcoat.
“’Pears to be one o’ these ’ere sticky storms,” he observed amiably, pulling a chair up before the stove.
“Yes, seems to hang to you like dollar bills do,” retorted Hiram, snapping around from the secretary and squinting over his glasses. Then he went on with his figuring, talking half aloud. Badger surveyed the back of his head for some time and then said:
“It’s about that money you want to borrow of me, Capt’in.” Badger always bestowed this title in moments when he wanted to placate.
“Then you’ve collected from Willard, have you?” inquired Hiram, gruffly, over his shoulder. “Huh, you’ve been long enough about it. Ever since last fall.”
“Well, I’ve seen the Jedge,” faltered Badger; “jest come from his office to here. He says the town can’t raise no money to take up town notes not till town meetin’ in March. He says it will be made all right to me if I’ll wait. Now he give me to understand that I’d git seven per cent, all hunky if I didn’t hurry things and—no, s’r, honest to Lucifer if I said a word about your wantin’ the money,” he expostulated as Hiram swung angrily to face him.
“I told you I’d kill you if you did,” roared Hiram. “And I didn’t, Capt’in! No, s’r, when it’s money concerned I can keep my mouth shet. Ain’t I kept it shet all these years about the Jedge havin’ it?”
“Let’s see!” remarked Hiram, with a sly look in his eye, as though he wished to test this Palermo voter. “How much money does Palermo owe, anyway?”
“I don’t have the least idee,” blandly returned Badger, crossing his knees. “We all trust the Jedge to ’tend to that. He knows.”
“So you are goin’ to let your money stay with the Judge, hey?”
“Well—blorh hum! Well, as I was sayin’, Jedge Willard seems to be perfickly square about makin’ it right and—and—well, Capt’in, nat’rally it’s—it’s bus’ness—well, to make it an object to shift you might—-there’s the taxes, too——”
“You old harker,” cried Hiram, irefully, “what you want me to say is that I’ll pay you eight per cent.! ‘You’ve been whifflin’ back and forth for two months between Judge Willard and me. I thought you got all ready to die a while ago. What are you waitin’ for—to place your money out at eight per cent, first?”
“I ain’t goin’ to die,” blurted Badger. “A man’s got the right to change his mind, ain’t he? And they’ve found out about that Mis’ Achorn. She used a wax hand to make folks believe ’twas some one dead that was touchin’ ’em and—-”
“Shet up!” barked Hiram. “Do you think I’ve been in the circus line thirty years to need to have fakes explained to me? It’s bus’ness I want to talk with you, Sum. Don’t you read your town report, you fool? Don’t you know that Judge Willard says there over his name that this town owes only a little over two thousand dollars? And yet you know, yourself, that he has borrowed seven thousand from you on a town note! Don’t you stop to think about those things? And now I’ll tell you something to make your hair curl! I have found out that there are twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of town notes held around here by just such old blind moles as you are that he has told to keep still. Lord knows how many more there are. I don’t imagine that some would let it out if you took a knife to ’em.”
He wiped the perspiration from his face and gazed at Badger as though he expected the information to wilt him. The avenger of the wrongs of the Looks was not entirely ready with the thunderbolt that he was forging for the town treasurer of Palermo, but the serenity of the dollar-blinded Badger exasperated him. For a test he wanted to see how one citizen of Palermo would receive the disclosure.
“I tell you your treasurer is fooling the whole of ye!” he shouted. “He has stolen from your town.” The creditor blinked at him. “Now will you sit by and let him fool you with his talk of makin’ it right? Now will you try to screw eight per cent, out of me who’s tryin’ to bring him to the ring bolt? Now will you hand that note over to me or pitch in and collect it yourself?”
To Hiram’s intense astonishment Badger slowly leaned forward, set his elbows on his knees, began to tap his finger-tips together, winked one eye, and smiled shrewdly and composedly.
“Don’t you worry none about Coll Willard,” he said. “He’s a financier.” He rolled the word over his tongue. “His folks was financiers before him. Nobody can’t fool him. He’s sly. So’m I. He’s ready to help the sly folks. You’ve got money, but you ain’t no financier. You’re jest a circus man. And we ain’t your monkeys, here in P’lermo. If you want your nuts pulled out of the fire, pull ’em out yourself.”
Hiram got up and stamped around the room in an ecstasy of rage.
“I’m a good mind to let you all go to Tophet by the short cut, your tails tied together with kerosened rags,” he gasped. “Here I am, givin’ up time and money to save this town from being lugged into bankruptcy, and what do I get? I get laughed at! Damn it!” he stormed, “there’s your last town report! Look for yourself! He’s lied there under oath.”
With the words he threw a pamphlet into Badger’s lap. The old man promptly tossed the report upon the table.
“You’d better stop tryin’ to work out your old grudge on Jedge Willard,” he advised, with a bland sapience that made the showman grit his teeth. “If he finds out that you’re a-slanderin’ him he’s li’ble to have the law on ye.”
“If I should stand up in town meetin’ and call on you to rise and say whether or not you hold a town note for seven thousand dollars, I suppose you’ll lie, won’t you?”
“I shall allus stand behind the man who has allus helped to put some extry dollars in my pocket,” said the old man, stiffly.
Hiram seized him by the arm, hustled him to the door and thrust him out into the entry.
“If you wasn’t rank poison I’d chop you up and feed you to Imogene,” he shouted as he slammed the door. “If you come into my house again I’ll take chances and do it.”
The door opened promptly and the unterrified Badger poked in his head.
“I don’t s’pose you’re goin’ back on your brother Phin as a legal adviser, be ye?” he inquired. “Well, he advised me to hang onto my town note for a while and keep still till I heard from him. It wa’n’t two hours ago that he told me the same thing. Now I——”
But when Hiram clutched a chair with a threatening motion Badger fled.
“Sime,” said the showman, “I’m blasted glad I had them carts painted up. It’s me and you for the road again next season, both of us with our knives out for blood and our little tin dippers held ready to catch it. I’m sick of tryin’ to do favours for anyone. I never saw such an ungrateful town as this one is.”
He looked sullenly out into the driving snow.
“The band seems to be doin’ well,” said Peak. “They’re havin’ three rehearsals a week and are pretty nigh blowin’ their lungs out. You can’t ask nothin’ better from the band than what you’re gittin’.”
Hiram turned from the window and gave his friend and confidant a long and searching stare.
“Peak,” said he, “sometimes when you talk to me I think you’re in with the rest a-tryin’ to do me.”
Simon surveyed him with eyes mutely expostulating.
“Other times I think you are a dummed fool. You can take your pick. Now I am goin’ out to associate with some one that ain’t tryin’ to pick my pocket the whole dog-blessed time nor spreadin’ on hair-oil talk when it ain’t called for.”
He trudged out to the barn where Imogene was spending the winter in dignified ease, occupying a corner of the building that had been sheathed and boarded for her comfort. Here “Figger-Four” Avery tended a little air-tight stove, relegated to the post of menial.
Hiram sat in silent communion with Imogene until the dusk came down. Once in a while he fed to her a lump of candy. Each time she curved down her trunk he poked a thick finger against it roguishly.
“I’ll bet ye know who sent ’em to ye—now, don’t ye?” he would chuckle, when Imogene gazed down on him with amiable blinkings.
“Always a seat for another,
Providin’ we squeeze ’em tight;
Stampin’ in from the smother,
For ’tis snowin’ hard to-night.
Time for a bit o’ smokin’,
Time for another tale,
Time for a little jokin’,
Waitin’ here for the mail.”
—Ballad of “The Grocery Store.”
I think there’s more git-up and ginger in a fife and drum,” said Uncle Lysimachus Buck. He had cocked his ear to listen. Then he held his cane beside his lips and fingered imaginary stops.
The windows of Hobbs’s hall, across the street from Asa Brickett’s store, shed their yellow gleams out upon the crisp winter night. A band rehearsal was going on there. The loafers who hovered about the stove in the store could hear the voice of the leader haranguing his men, then the robust attack on the tune—bass horns bellowing “oomp-pah oomps,” cornets blaring and clarinets wailing; then the false note, the wavering in the melody and the sharp command of a voice, at which the music shredded out into jargon and ceased. More harangue and away they all went again from the start!
“If the dummed calves ever git so they can play a whole piece to once it will be wuth while list’nin’,” growled Marriner Amazeen, settling down once more to his whittling, after he had cocked his ear for a time.
“Near’s I can find out, Hime ain’t lettin’ ’em practise nothin’ but them high-diddle-diddle circus tunes,” observed Uncle Buck. “Now, you take a fife and drum in ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me,’ or a good fiddler in ‘The Devil’s Dream’ or ‘Miss McCloud’s Reel,’ or even an accordion in ‘Alice, Where Be Ye?’ and, by swanny, you’ve got the real old ear-ticklers. But this squeaky-weaky, biff, bang, boom stuff ain’t music no more’n poundin’ on a tin wash-boiler is.”
But when Brickett began knocking a soap box into pieces for firewood, Uncle Buck bawled at him angrily.
“Band tootlin’ don’t keep me warm,” said Brickett, as he stuffed the fuel into the stove. “Any time my system of runnin’ things in this store don’t suit the loafers, said loafers know what they can do.”
“Ain’t no need of goin’ ’round makin’ noise jest for the sake of makin’ it,” replied Buck.
“Then you whistle whilst I pound boxes,” said the storekeeper, grinning, “and p’raps it’ll remind you of a fife and drum.”
“Shet up a little while, won’t ye, now?” asked Micajah Dunham, wistfully. “Here I drive clear in from my place on band-practisin’ nights so’s to git a little music, and you run your clack so that a feller can’t hear.” He sat on the edge of a box, his purchases heaped in his lap, his fur cap on the floor in order that the earlappers might not obstruct his hearing. “Here’s a piece now that they play well,” he added, with the air of conviction of one who had followed faithfully the work of the new Palermo band.
The men around the stove listened, Uncle Buck tapping his cane appreciatively.
“There! Ain’t that good?” sighed Dunham as the band came down the homestretch and wound up the selection in a fine burst of melody.
“I guess there ain’t no doubt but what Wat Mayo is hunky-dory as a musicianer,” agreed Amazeen. “I hear that the Port boys are gittin’ up a band, and they’re even talkin’ of one over to Newry Gore, and are goin’ to have Wat to teach both of ’em. I s’pose it’s all right for him to spend his time that way and earn a dollar, but it don’t seem much like man’s work to me.”
“I s’pose you think the only real bus’ness a man ought to foller is to raise pertaters and fat shotes?” sarcastically observed Dunham. “I tell ye, I admire the Mayo boy’s spunk in makin’ something out of himself instead of a day-labourer. You can’t fit square pegs into round holes. He’s been woke up and put into the job that he fits. Now he’ll amount to some thing. Folks gen’rally amount to something when they git woke up—if it ain’t too late,” he added with a sigh. He snuggled his heap of parcels together on his knees. “I ought to be goin’ home,” he said, half to himself. “But, I swan, I’d like to hear one more tune.”
“You seem to be livin’ pretty well nowadays out to your house,” remarked Uncle Buck, with a sly look at the bundles.
“’Tain’t no more than bringin’ up the gen’ral av’rage, when you think of what we’ve missed to our house,” was Dunham’s stout rejoinder. He was ready nowadays to meet fearlessly the malicious thrusts of his old neighbours, with his new gospel of life.
The music recommenced again across the street. This time the band was playing an accompaniment for a cornet solo by its leader. The notes, dulcet in the distance, seemed almost phrasing a song. Dunham’s eyes moistened with the sudden emotion of his simple nature.
“I know you all have a good deal of fun behind my back about the way I’ve shifted over,” he said, quietly. “I know that it makes you laugh to hear me go ’round preachin’ about gittin’ a little something out of life as you go along. I don’t care if you do laugh. Laugh! The more ye laugh, the less you’ll growl. But me and my wife has woke up, and we don’t care who knows it, and if some of the rest of you would wake up, too, you’d find that the only thing the sun shines for ain’t to raise crops and make freckles.”
“P’raps if all of us could git holt of a ready-made, grown-up daughter, as good as the one you’ve got, we might improve some,” said Buck, with a wink at his associates in “hector.”
“P’raps you could,” Dunham answered, simply and earnestly.
“Well, it makes a pretty good berth for a poor girl, ’Caje,” said a man behind the stove. “Most anyone would like to be adopted into a fam’ly like yours.”
“It ain’t that way, neighbours,” Dunham said softly, his face in the direction of the music. “When we adopted ’Liza Haskell we was gettin’ the best end of the bargain, if ye want to put it on that kind of a basis. We was both all corners before—sharp corners at that. I ain’t backward about ownin’ up—we f’it, me and Esther, like fury, and we didn’t know what was the matter with us. But somehow there don’t seem to be any corners in our house now. Them that ain’t filled with new chairs and pictur’s is all full o’ sunshine. There ain’t a room in the house that looks like it used to—with the furniture standin’ round jest as though it had been used at a funeral last and was where the undertaker arranged it. We didn’t know what the matter was, I say—me and Esther didn’t. We don’t know jest how it’s come about nov. But we do know that we’ve adopted something besides a poor little girl—we’ve adopted sunshine and sweetness and comfort and new notions about livin’ and lovin’ and havin’.”
He stood up and piled his parcels upon his arm.
“That’s the way it is to our house nowadays, neighbours. I used to like to set here the whole ev’nin’ in the store before—but now—well, when I git to thinkin’ about how home is, why, it takes more than them pretty tunes to hold me here. There’s music to our house that’s better than all the brass bands in the world.”
He went out and they heard the jingle of his sleigh-bells threading through the mellow notes of the cornet.
“He was allus sort of a soft old fool when you got under his shell,” scoffed Uncle Buck, grinding his cane against the rusty stove. “What I can’t understand is how Esther ever come ’round as she did. I allus thought she was harder’n nails.”
“Oh, it took Squire Phin to warm her ear-wax,” said Amazeen. “And when you know how to handle a woman like that, why, you’ve got her—that’s all. I cal’late there ain’t a man in the county that understands human natur’ better’n Squire Phin does. He can handle ’em all right when he makes up his mind to.”
Uncle Buck was plainly nettled by Amazeen’s air of easy confidence.
“Well, there’s one woman that he don’t seem to be able to handle—and I reckon he’d like to at that,” he snorted. “Sylvene Willard ain’t hardly spoke to him since he knocked her feller down.”
“I don’t cal’late as how you’ve got any right to call King Bradish her feller,” objected Amazeen.
“I donno why not,” snapped Uncle Buck. “Jedge Willard come right out after that happened and said that Sylvene and King was goin’ to git married at Christmas time, and Sylvene didn’t dispute him. It’s past Christmas time now, to be sure, but as I understand it, King is tied up in New York by bus’ness and ain’t been able to git back since he went away a little spell ago.”
“Little spell ago!” cried Amazeen. “He ain’t been back since he went away that time in the fall when Hime’s el’phunt got loose.”
“Mebbe, but time slides away kind o’ fast,” grudgingly admitted Buck. “Howsomever, they’ll git married all right when he comes back. If Coll Willard says so, then they will, that’s all! Phin Look can’t stop it. His cake was dough when he licked Bradish.”
“As I’ve allus understood the row, King had the right of it,” observed the man behind the stove.
“Why, the Jedge himself told me,” said Buck, “that all King done in the world was to step up to the Squire and call him into line for braggin’ round how he’d cut out King the night before and walked home with Sylvene from the schoolhouse out Dunham’s way. Jedge told me so himself. That’s comin’ pretty straight!”
“Well, now, that don’t seem like Squire Phin Look,” broke in Amazeen, wagging his head decisively. “I’ve heard that version, but it don’t seem like Squire Phin—and we’ve known him a long time, too.”
“He ain’t ever given the lie to the Jedge,” said Buck. “He ain’t ever said aye, yes or no about it. Nat’rally think, then, he must be ashamed of it, wouldn’t ye? I tell ye, boys, when there’s a woman in the case we don’t none of us know what the best of us might do. Squire Phin Look is an almighty nice man, good and kind-hearted and smarter’n a whip. I’ve allus stood up for him, and I was in the scheme——” He checked himself suddenly in some confusion with a side glance at Amazeen. “I was in hopes that the match wouldn’t come off with Bradish. But the Squire went and lost his head and kicked up—-like the best do sometimes when there’s a woman in the case. Sylvene Willard ain’t the woman to stand that kind of bus’ness. You can’t blame her. I say she and Bradish will git married, and you can mark my word on it.”
A man sat on a bit of board that was laid across an unheaded keg of nails. He had been listening, elbows on his knees, his brown hands braiding and unbraiding a length of rope with a sailor’s deftness. This man was Mate Seekins of the A. P. Bristol, home in Palermo for his midwinter lay-off.
“What do they hear here in town from Bradish?” he inquired. There was a suppressed note of meaning in his voice that the little crowd did not catch.
The men about the stove looked at each other. “Nothin’,” at last blurted Uncle Buck.
“What bus’ness is he a-follerin’ of in New York?” asked Seekins.
“As near’s I’ve ever come to it,” said Buck, “him and the Jedge is in some kind of financierin’ together and King’s handlin’ that end of it. But the Jedge don’t put his bus’ness into the Seaside Oracle and King ain’t the kind that writes letters to be read out loud here in Ase’s store,” he added grimly. “I s’pose his mother hears reg’lar and the Jedge and Sylvene, but the Bradishes and the Willards never messed in very thick with their neighbours. Sum and substance is, we don’t know not the first dum thing about King Bradish nor his bus’ness, nor why he closed up bus’ness here in the hurry that he did and got out of the place. And I donno as I care. I never had no use for the skunk, anyway.”
He pared a corner from a black plug of tobacco, stuck it into his cheek and relapsed into dignified silence.
The man on the keg braided at his rope-end.
“I shouldn’t want him to do no gre’t amount of financierin’ for me,” he said at last. “Bradish, I mean.”
“I donno ’bout that,” Amazeen said. “He was allus pretty sharp on a dicker ’round here.”
“I say I shouldn’t want him to do my financierin’ for me,” persisted Mate Seekins.
The group waited for him to go on, but he kept at his braiding.
“Well, you’ve gone that fur. Keep on,” commanded Uncle Buck.
“I ain’t no hand to peddle gossip,” said Seekins.
“Who said ye was?” Lysimachus’s tone was indignant. “And there ain’t no. call for you to hint that we’re gossips here. If you ain’t man enough to dast to say what you know, then keep still and much good may it do you.” But the old man’s eyes gleamed with curiosity. “Half truths are wusser’n whole lies,” he muttered. “I ain’t no hand to talk and tell,” went on Seekins, “but when I say I don’t want him to financier for me I mean to say that I don’t want any man handlin’ my money that keeps drunk as a fiddler’s hoorah.”
The music from across the street bellowed in louder blast, for the store door opened with a bang and Hiram Look came stamping in.
“Do me up a slab of cheese and plenty of crackers, Colonel Brickett,” he called. “Wider’n that,” he snapped as Brickett set his knife on the cheese. “Look’s Cornet Brass Band ain’t eatin’ no half rations so long as old Hime himself is on hand to buy for ’em.”
He beamed on the circle of faces about the stove, for the inspiration of his favourite tunes made him genial.
“How does that sound to you, old turkles?” he cried, with a backward jab of his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Hobbs’s hall. “It’s sort of wakin’ up Palermo, hey?”
“I suppose it will be good enough when they can play without soundin’ like bullfrogs with the croup,” returned Uncle Buck, sulkily. Hiram had come in at just the time when he had edged forward to put some leading questions to Mate Seekins. He turned to the sailor again.
“You was sayin’——” he began.
“You never heard nothin’ in your life before but a melodeon and a jew’s harp, you old Fiji,” shouted Hiram, thrusting forward close to the stove. “There’s about a half dozen of you old mossbacks that ain’t come to enough to appreciate what I’m doin’ for this place. But I’ve got the crowd with me. I’ll show ye in town meeting next March! I can run that band myself, so fur’s that comes to; but I’m goin’ to make some of you old hogs of taxpayers chip in to support it. I’m goin’ to have an article put in appropriating two hundred dollars for band concerts next summer, and I’ll carry it through.”
“This town won’t vote for no such dum foolishness,” retorted Buck. He turned to Seekins again, his curiosity mastering his spirit of controversy.
“You was sayin’ as how——”
“Bet you fifty, and put the money in Brickett’s hands right now,” bellowed Hiram, ever eager for opportunities to browbeat the old men of the village. He dug into his trousers pocket.
“Why don’t you wear that wad o’ money hung round your neck out in plain sight?” demanded Uncle Lysimachus, angrily. “You seem bound and determined to have it under our noses all the whol’ time.”
“Put up your stuff,” cried Hiram. “Make a pool if ye want to. I ain’t afraid of the gang of you.”
He whirled and ran his hale eye along their faces. Dow Babb, who had been chief of the Palermo hand-tub brigade for many years, unhooked his toe from his instep, recrossed his legs and said with decision:
“You can’t run the whole of this town, Hime, even if you are runnin’ a part of it jest now. You wait your turn with your brass band. I’ve been before town meetin’ for four years, now, a-askin’ and implorin’ the voters to appropriate enough to repair Hecla and buy some more hose. They ain’t give me a cent. Now if you go to work and bull through any such article in the warrant as you’re braggin’ you will, then all I’ve got to say is that the next time a fire breaks out in the village, your darned old band can go and play on it. The Hecla comp’ny never will.” Uncle Buck, unable to control himself any longer, got up and pounded his cane on the floor.
“I’ve heard all the tow-rowin’ I want to hear. Here I be tryin’ to talk with Mr. Seekins about something that amounts to something. And ye can’t hear yourself think. Take your cheese and your crackers, Hime Look, and go over and stuff ’em into your toodle-oodlers. Let gentlemun that’s a-talkin’ serious bus’ness go on with their serious bus’ness. Now, Seekins, you said as how you’d seen King Bradish drunker’n a fiddler’s hoorah. What else?”
“I never said I seen him,” returned the man, sullenly.
“It’s the same thing; you meant it. Go ahead.” The old man’s tone was imperious.
Hiram and the rest of the crowd turned to him, inquiry on their faces. The showman leaned forward with especial insistence.
“I ain’t no hand to tattle——”
“You said that before, consarn ye!” This persistent delay that baffled Uncle Buck’s curiosity made him furious.
“No matter what you see or what you didn’t see,” said Hiram. “The idea is, what do you know?” There was no resisting the force of circumstances. “Well,” roared Seekins, “I know that King Bradish is keepin’ full of licker in New York and throwin’ money right and left and over his shoulder—or has been so long’s he had it to throw. He’s gone to Tophet, that’s what he’s done, and if what I hear up at the other end is true, he’s got a string hitched to certain parties in this place and he’s goin’ to drag ’em with him. Now that’s all you’re goin’ to git out of me,” he concluded, throwing the rope-end into the wood-box and rising. “I don’t propose to git into no trouble by talkin’ and tellin’. I’ve seen people that done that. If any’s interested, let ’em go to New York and to the right people and they’ll find out for themselves.”
He pushed through the little circle and went out of the store.
Hiram seized his crackers and cheese and started after him, overtaking the sailor in the middle of the square.
One after the other, the old men blunted their noses against the frosty panes of Brickett’s front window, trying to spy and to hear. But only the mumble of voices reached them, Hiram’s tone insistent, Seekins’s deprecatory.
But at last Hiram slapped him cordially on the back and the two separated. A sudden cessation in the band music showed that the refreshments had arrived in the hall, and the old men yawned about Brickett’s stove and one by one went home.
One or two persons saw Hiram Look drive out of the yard of the old place the next forenoon and take the road toward Square Harbour, his tall hat projecting just above the high back of his sleigh, and fat ear-muffs cosily snuggling his ears.
These one or two asked “Figger-Four” Avery about the showman’s departure, when he came to the store during the day, after a “fig" of tobacco.
“Here’s what he said to me,” stated Avery: “Says he, ‘I’m goin’ to Europe, I-rope and A-rope after wild animiles, and I’ll be back when I git damation good and ready. If you miss feedin’ Imogene on the dot or let the fire git low in the stove, I’ll warp t’other leg for you.’ There! That’s what he said, and if you can git any more out of it than what I have, you’re welcome to. I guess you’d better give me another fig o’ terbacker, Ase, for I’m goin’ to stay pretty clus to that barn till he gits back.”
“I s’pose you know all about el’phunts now, don’t you, Avery?” inquired one of the men who lounged about the stove, toasting their shins.
“Wal, I know this much,” said “Figger-Four,” putting away his weed and buttoning his coat before facing the cold; “I know that an el’phunt wants meals reg’lar—a lot of it, can’t understand a joke and don’t like music on the flute. There may be other things about ’em to know, but they ain’t things that I need in my bus’ness.”