CAPTAIN WHITE CHOOSES A MONUMENT.
"Now if they were only like the two little nigger boys that used to go
to school with me, I could crack their heads together and make them
kiss and be friends, but you can't very well do that with ladies," and,
in comical perplexity, Captain White surveyed his two cousins,--one
genuine, the other by adoption, as the latter quickly withdrew from the
room on seeing the former enter it.
"Hippolyta," he said, wheeling around upon Mrs. Prymmer as she
established herself in the sunny window, knitting in hand, "that
daughter-in-law treats you very civilly now, doesn't she?"
"She does," said Mrs. Prymmer.
"You haven't anything to complain of?"
"No, I haven't."
"She doesn't make fun of you?"
"No, she don't."
"Then for the land's sake why don't you talk to her?"
Mrs. Prymmer calmly began to set the heel of a sock for Justin. "What
have I to talk about, Micah?"
"To talk about,--bless my heart, your tongue runs fast enough at other
times. Talk of the weather, the fall of snow, last year's catch of
herring,--anything except such cemetery stillness whenever that girl is
about."
"Well, Micah," she said, diplomatically, "I'll try to oblige you, but
it will be hard work."
"You'll not try," he muttered, "you don't want to,--you're the
confoundedest, most stubborn, pig-headedest sort of a woman I ever
saw. There's nothing for it but my master stroke," and with a happy
indrawing of his breath, he began, "Hippolyta, do you know what I'm
thinking of?"
"No, Micah," she said, placidly.
"Well, I'm thinking of putting up a monument to myself."
"A monument?"
"Yes, a good respectable monument. You see I'm alone in the world.
Suppose I die to-morrow, what do I leave to remember me by?"
Mrs. Prymmer did not venture an answer to this question, so he went on.
"I'd be wiped out,--forgotten. The hands down at the sardine factories
would say, 'He was a finicky boss, we're glad he's gone.' Some of the
boys would remark, 'A queer coot that, he always held a good hand at
cards, and didn't like to play against the grain of the table.' But
for the general public,--now say, Hippolyta, what would keep my memory
green with them?"
"Your monument," she said, with a flash of inspiration.
"Precisely; my monument, my good, walking, sober, respectable monument.
It would mourn, and it would weep, and folks would see that I was well
advertised."
Mrs. Prymmer did not exactly take in his conception of a walking
monument, but she held her peace and calmly picked up a dropped stitch.
"Now, in order that my monument should be able to know something of
me and take some interest in advertising me after I'm gone, it's
absolutely necessary that it should know something of me while I am
alive, Hippolyta."
"Oh, yes," she said, as indulgently as if she were speaking to a child
whose mind was taking a wandering and aimless ramble into unknown
fields of speculation.
"Therefore, I've got to make acquaintance with it; it has got to make
acquaintance with me. Now some people--French people in particular--go
and sit in their tombs and look at their coffins. I've no fancy for
that. Let my friends attend to all that after I'm gone, but I've saved
a smart sum, and I've no objection to cultivating this monument a
little bit while I live."
"Micah," said Mrs. Prymmer, in a curious voice, "what is this monument?"
"And what should it be but a nice healthy widow? What better
advertisement does a man want after he's gone than a good sizeable
woman walking into the biggest church in town with her eyes cast down
and her veil streaming after her? Suppose I'm a stranger in a pew,
'Whose widow is that?' I ask. 'Captain White's.' 'Who was Captain
White?' 'Potts's boss down at the sardine factories.' 'How much did he
leave?' 'So much.' 'What kind of a fellow was he?' 'Not bad.' 'Tombs
and gravestones, that's a fine-looking widow. You'll not forget him
while she's about.' Do you catch on, Hippolyta?"
She did catch on. He had planted a mine at her feet, he held a match in
his hand, he was about to apply it to the fuse, and where would she be?
"Yes," he continued, in assumed dejection, "in order to have this
monument I've got to make it fast in my lifetime by the lashings of
matrimony. What do you say, Hippolyta, do you think it a good scheme?"
She could say nothing, for she was in utter consternation.
"And then," he continued, reflectively, "I've no objection to a
little happiness before I slip over the side of this shaky old ship
of Death in Life. I've been watching this son of yours. He likes to
be razzled-dazzled, and I'd like to be razzled-dazzled, too, when I
come home from the factory after the moil and toil of the day, and the
breakneck work of trying to upset every other man in my chase for that
last dollar. I'd like to find a comfortable little creature ready to
chuck me under the chin and say, 'Lovey dovey, you're the smartest boy
of the crowd.'"
This talk seemed immoral to Mrs. Prymmer, yet she was too dazed to
resent it. She was going to lose her boarder, and her fingers suddenly
grew cold and nervously unplucked the bars of her knitting.
"Lawks-a-daisy!" he exclaimed. "See what you're a-doing, Hippolyta.
Here, drop that," and, taking her ravelled work from her, he deposited
it on the table.
"Micah," she said, running her tongue over her dry lips, "Micah, who is
she?"
"This little monument,--oh, a snug-sized woman a thought over my own
age."
"A bold-faced hussy," hissed Mrs. Prymmer.
"Soft, now, soft--don't be hard on her. You may have to live with her,
and she's made of the best Maine blue-black slate, warranted to outlast
any slate in the world, and that will give you some sharp notches if
you run against it."
Mrs. Prymmer's lower jaw got beyond her control, and began to sag
hopelessly. If another bride were introduced into her house she might
as well be thinking of her own tombstone.
"Come, now, what'll you take her for?" said Captain White, waggishly.
"Your lowest bid."
The mention of money was a slight restorative. "Twenty dollars apiece,"
gasped a cracked voice, "twenty dollars apiece."
"Come, now, Hippolyta, that's hard on her. She'll be as mute to you as
a stained-glass window. She ain't like me. She'll never trouble you
coming in late at night or nagging about her food."
Mrs. Prymmer angrily hurled a boarding-house sentiment at him, "I'd
rather take twenty men than one woman."
"That don't sound proper," he replied, rebukingly, "and shows a
staggering amount of ignorance of men-critters. Why, if you knew the
badness of me, for example, you'd turn me out of your house to-morrow."
"I don't believe it," she said, stoutly.
"It's true, Hippolyta. If you knew what diabolical, heathenish things
men are up to you'd scream from morning to night, and only stop long
enough to take refreshments."
Again her husky voice assured him that she didn't believe him.
"Do you believe the newspapers?"
She told him that she did.
"Who writes all those awful things?"
She did not answer, and he exclaimed, triumphantly, "Men,--men write
'em, men do 'em, and worse things,--things so hair-lifting that they
dassent publish 'em. If I could reveal to you the secrets of this here
breast," and he struck himself a smart blow on the chest, and looked
fearfully over his shoulder, "you could keep me from ever raising a
monument to myself, for they'd have me shut up in a place where they'd
never let me out to choose one."
"Micah," she said, with a shriek, "get out! I'm afraid of you," and she
retreated precipitately from him toward the table, where she dropped
into a chair.
A sudden change came over her companion. He struck an attitude of
exaggerated admiration, and exclaimed, "Hippolyta, you might go on the
stage,--I never saw such acting."
In fascinated confusion she stared speechlessly at him.
"You're an astonishing woman," he cried, skipping to the hearth-rug,
and extending both hands toward her. "I never saw such nerve, such
coolness."
She looked in her lap for her knitting, and seeing it was not there
picked rashly at her apron.
"For," he went on, with a final flourish, "bad as I am, black as are
my vices, they are a pale cream-colour beside yours, for there is one
crime I have not dared to commit, and it lies light as a feather on
your soul.
"Why don't you ask what crime it is?" he inquired, after a short period
of silence.
She replied convulsively that she didn't want to know.
"But you've got to know. It's for the good of your soul. Hold up your
head now, and I'll whisper it in your ear. It isn't a word for housetop
use," and, creeping close to her, he uttered a ghostly "Murder!"
She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came from it, and in
terrified, fascinated speechlessness she began slowly backing away
from him, propelling her chair on its hind legs around the table and
followed by him airily perched on another.
Micah had gone crazy. There was no doubt about it. He had no thought of
marriage. Her best plan was to escape from the room without irritating
him. Now he was silly, and, with his head on one side, was speaking
in a foolish voice, "Cousin Hippolyta, who sits behind the parlour
window curtains, pretending to knit, and casting sly looks at the old
widowers and bachelors as they go by?"
These were pretty sane words for an insane man, for they described her
favourite occupation, and she blushed slightly as she looked away from
him.
"Who counts 'em up head by head," he went on, remorselessly, "and
reckons up chances of marriage. Who makes eyes at the old men,
Hippolyta?"
"Hold your tongue, Micah," she said, hysterically.
"Who goes further than that?" he inquired, in a voice so low that it
dropped into an accusing growl. "Who has a prime favourite among the
old men? Who forgets what the good Book says about, 'She that looketh
on a man and planneth on his sick wife's death is a murderess in her
heart.'"
At this merciless exposure of the most hidden secret of her breast,
scarcely breathed even to herself, Mrs. Prymmer collapsed. In her
progress around the table she had reached the point she started from.
Here the upper part of her body subsided in a heap on the table, and
she burst into a flood of tears.
"Good girl," said Captain White, patting the back of her head. "I've
been wanting to see you do this for many a day. There's nothing so
improving as to get down in the gutter with the rest of mankind. You've
been too stuck on your own virtues, Hippolyta."
She continued to weep, and finally, to sob bitterly, and he changed
the tone of his advice. "Hush up, now, hush up. You can't help your
thoughts running ahead to old Deacon Turner's widowship. His wife has
got to die. All the doctors say so, and the woman hasn't got sprawl
enough to live after that. And you needn't bother with the old deacon.
Here's a ready-made bachelor just to hand. It knocks me silly to think,
with your nuptial inclinations, you've never singled me out. You never
thought of me, because I was your cousin. But it's quite fashionable to
marry your cousin, especially in English ports. Hush up, now, Hippy,
hush up, I've got something to tell you."
Mrs. Prymmer would not hush up. No one had ever talked to her like
this. He had shattered the very foundations of her self-righteousness,
and had reduced her to the lowest depths of humility. She felt as if
she could never lift her head again.
"Well, then, go on," he said, agreeably, "but keep one ear open for
what I'm going to say. I've got my weather eye open in the Turner
direction, and I'm not going to let that old man dash in ahead of me.
And you're so everlasting quick in your matrimonial didoes that I've
got to catch opportunity's forelock. Twice you've got ahead of me and
made me mad, though I didn't blame you so much for jumping at Sylvester
Mercer, for you were young and giddy. But you showed a most ugly haste
in flirting your widow's veil at old Zebedee Prymmer. Bad luck to him,
he encouraged you-- Don't stick out your hand; I'll run him down all I
like,--a low, base cotton-seed imitation of genuine olive oil, singing
in his silky voice about 'mansions in the skies,' and then coming out
of prayer-meeting to cheat his neighbours like a house afire. Folks
say to speak no evil of the dead. I say, give it to 'em. Hold 'em up
and rake and rattle 'em. They're where you can't harm 'em, and you may
benefit the living. Spare the living, I say, but rap the dead over the
knuckles if they have deserved it. Hippolyta, will you be my little
monument?"
Her portly frame trembled, and she turned her swollen, comely face
toward him, in dazed inquiry.
"Yes, it's you I want to represent me after I'm gone," he said,
affectionately stroking her hand. "You, with all your faults. My fancy
has run after you ever since you were a dumpling of a girl, with
your hair switching down your back, and I'm not going to lose you a
third time. I'm sorry you've had such a long spell of this confounded
hypocrite business, but I'll knock it all out of you. A little trip
around the world, and a little taste of a few devilries, will make you
have more pity for your fellow creatures, and you'll save your own
soul quicker than you're likely to do now. You've always pretended
to be religious, Hippolyta. You've never enjoyed it, you want to be
converted all over again. It's hateful, narrow-minded saints like you
that keep broad-minded sinners like me out of the kingdom. Do you
suppose I'd go into a church with such as you?--not by a long shot.
You've got to be made over. I'll help you sow some wild oats, and in
the act of reaping maybe you'll repent."
Mrs. Prymmer could not answer him, neither could she lift her head
from the table. However, the sense of what he said pierced her clouded
brain, and she faintly returned the pressure of his hand.
"That old Prymmer spoiled you," he muttered, wrathfully. "You didn't
put on half as much till you married him. Listen, Hippy, till I tell
you the way he was converted. The old fellow was rather ashamed of it
himself, because it was old-timey, but I got it from a lumberman back
in the woods. You remember hearing of the time the New Lights came in
and stirred up the Congregationalists?"
Mrs. Prymmer moved her head.
"Well, old Father Bronson, raging through the woods like a converted
bear and doing lots of good, be it understood, came upon Zebedee
Prymmer's father's log house. He talked conversion and damnation, and
clutching up young Zeb held his little squirming carcass over the open
fire and asked him how he would like to roast in the bad place. Young
Zebedee naturally said he would prefer not to, and then the rascal
thought he was converted, though Father Bronson never told him so.
Now that's the way you've been frightened out of your seven senses.
You don't want to roast, but bless you, Hippy, that ain't conversion.
You want a gentle spirit like your daughter-in-law Derrice, and your
son Justin. Do you suppose he could stand your naggings if he warn't
a Christian? Not a bit of it,--go on now, and try to be a proper one.
I'd like some religion, too. Good life,--it's all we've got here below
that's worth having, except a little love from some creature-- Hippy,
you'll be my little monument?"
"Yes, yes," she murmured, feebly, "but, Micah, maybe I'll go first."
"Then I'll be yours," he said, cheerfully. "But bless you, widows never
die. Come on down-town, Hippy, and we'll choose the ring."
"Micah, I couldn't walk. My limbs are as weak as wool. I guess I'll go
to bed."
"All right, Hippy," he said, "but don't go so far in your humility that
you'll get the pins knocked out from under you. I didn't start to do
that. Cheer up, you've got a soft spot somewhere. You'll be a saint
yet and wear a crown with seven stars," and he gallantly escorted her
to the staircase, admonishing her to tell no one the subject of their
conversation.