There existed in Brookville two separate and distinct forums for the
discussion of topics of public and private interest. These were the
barroom of the village tavern, known as the Brookville House, and Henry
Daggett’s General Store, located on the corner opposite the old Bolton
Bank Building. Mr. Daggett, besides being Brookville’s leading
merchant, was also postmaster, and twice each day withdrew to the
official privacy of the office for the transaction of United States
business. The post office was conveniently located in one corner of Mr.
Daggett’s store and presented to the inquiring eye a small glass
window, which could be raised and lowered at will by the person behind
the partition, a few numbered boxes and a slit, marked “Letters.”
In the evening of the day on which Miss Lydia Orr had visited the old
Bolton house in company with Deacon Whittle, both forums were in full
blast. The wagon-shed behind the Brookville House sheltered an unusual
number of “rigs,” whose owners, after partaking of liquid refreshment
dispensed by the oily young man behind the bar, by common consent
strolled out to the veranda where a row of battered wooden armchairs
invited to reposeful consideration of the surprising events of the past
few days.
The central chair supported the large presence of “Judge” Fulsom, who
was dispensing both information and tobacco juice.
“The practice of the legal profession,” said the Judge, after a brief
period devoted to the ruminative processes, “is full of surprises.”
Having spoken, Judge Fulsom folded his fat hands across the somewhat
soiled expanse of his white waistcoat and relapsed into a weighty
silence.
“They was sayin’ over to the post office this evening that the young
woman that cleaned up the church fair has bought the old Bolton place.
How about it, Jedge?”
Judge Fulsom grunted, as he leveled a displeased stare upon the
speaker, a young farmer with a bibulous eye and slight swagger of
defiance. At the proper moment, with the right audience, the Judge was
willing to impart information with lavish generosity. But any attempt
to force his hand was looked upon as a distinct infringement of his
privilege.
“You want to keep your face shut, Lute, till th’ Jedge gets ready to
talk,” counseled a middle-aged man who sat tilted back in the next
chair. “Set down, son, and cool off.”
“Well, you see I got to hurry along,” objected the young farmer
impatiently, “and I wanted to know if there was anything in it. Our
folks had money in the old bank, an’ we’d give up getting anything more
out the smash years ago. But if the Bolton place has actually been
sold—”
He finished with a prolonged whistle.
The greatness in the middle chair emitted a grunt.
“Humph!” he muttered, and again, “Hr-m-m-ph!”
“It would be surprising,” conceded the middle-aged man, “after all
these years.”
“Considerable many of th’ creditors has died since,” piped up a lean
youth who was smoking a very large cigar. “I s’pose th’ children of all
such would come in for their share—eh, Judge?”
Judge Fulsom frowned and pursed his lips thoughtfully.
“The proceedings has not yet reached the point you mention, Henry,” he
said. “You’re going a little too fast.”
Nobody spoke, but the growing excitement took the form of a shuffling
of feet. The Judge deliberately lighted his pipe, a token of mental
relaxation. Then from out the haze of blue smoke, like the voice of an
oracle from the seclusion of a shrine, issued the familiar recitative
tone for which everybody had been waiting.
“Well, boys, I’ll tell you how ’twas: Along about ten minutes of twelve
I had my hat on my head, and was just drawing on my linen duster with
the idea of going home to dinner, when I happened to look out of my
office window, and there was Deacon Whittle—and the girl, just coming
up th’ steps. In five minutes more I’d have been gone, most likely for
the day.”
“Gosh!” breathed the excitable young farmer.
The middle-aged man sternly motioned him to keep silence.
“I s’pose most of you boys saw her at the fair last night,” proceeded
the Judge, ignoring the interruption. “She’s a nice appearing young
female; but nobody’d think to look at her—”
He paused to ram down the tobacco in the glowing bowl of his pipe.
“Well, as I was saying, she’d been over to the Bolton house with the
Deacon. Guess we’ll have to set the Deacon down for a right smart
real-estate boomer. We didn’t none of us give him credit for it. He’d
got the girl all worked up to th’ point of bein’ afraid another party’d
be right along to buy the place. She wanted an option on it.”
“Shucks!” again interrupted the young farmer disgustedly. “Them options
ain’t no good. I had one once on five acres of timber, and—”
“Shut up, Lute!” came in low chorus from the spell-bound audience.
“Wanted an option,” repeated Judge Fulsom loudly, “just till I could
fix up the paper. ‘And, if you please,’ said she, ‘I’d like t’ pay five
thousand dollars for the option, then I’d feel more sure.’ And before
I had a chance to open my mouth, she whips out a check-book.”
“Gr-reat jumping Judas!” cried the irrepressible Lute, whose other name
was Parsons. “Five thousand dollars! Why, the old place ain’t worth no
five thousand dollars!”
Judge Fulsom removed his pipe from his mouth, knocked out the
half-burned tobacco, blew through the stem, then proceeded to fill and
light it again. From the resultant haze issued his voice once more,
bland, authoritative, reminiscent.
“Well, now, son, that depends on how you look at it. Time was when
Andrew Bolton wouldn’t have parted with the place for three times that
amount. It was rated, I remember, at eighteen thousand, including live
stock, conveyances an’ furniture, when it was deeded over to the
assignees. We sold out the furniture and stock at auction for about
half what they were worth. But there weren’t any bidders worth
mentioning for the house and land. So it was held by the
assignees—Cephas Dix, Deacon Whittle and myself—for private sale. We
could have sold it on easy terms the next year for six thousand; but in
process of trying to jack up our customer to seven, we lost out on the
deal. But now—”
Judge Fulsom arose, brushed the tobacco from his waistcoat front and
cleared his throat.
“Guess I’ll have to be getting along,” said he; “important papers to
look over, and—”
“A female woman, like her, is likely to change her mind before tomorrow
morning,” said the middle-aged man dubiously. “And I heard Mrs. Solomon
Black had offered to sell her place to the young woman for twenty-nine
hundred—all in good repair and neat as wax. She might take it into her
head to buy it.”
“Right in the village, too,” growled Lute Parsons. “Say, Jedge, did you
give her that option she was looking for? Because if you did she can’t
get out of it so easy.”
Judge Fulsom twinkled pleasantly over his bulging cheeks.
“I sure did accommodate the young lady with the option, as aforesaid,”
he vouchsafed. “And what’s more, I telephoned to the Grenoble Bank to
see if her check for five thousand dollars was O. K.... Well; so long,
boys!”
He stepped ponderously down from the piazza and turned his broad back
on the row of excited faces.
“Hold on, Jedge!” the middle-aged man called after him. “Was her check
any good? You didn’t tell us!”
The Judge did not reply. He merely waved his hand.
“He’s going over to the post office,” surmised the lean youth, shifting
the stub of his cigar to the corner of his mouth in a knowing manner.
He lowered his heels to the floor with a thud and prepared to follow.
Five minutes later the bartender, not hearing the familiar hum of
voices from the piazza, thrust his head out of the door.
“Say!” he called out to the hatchet-faced woman who was writing down
sundry items in a ledger at a high desk. “The boys has all cleared out.
What’s up, I wonder?”
“They’ll be back,” said the woman imperturbably, “an’ more with ’em.
You want t’ git your glasses all washed up, Gus; an’ you may as well
fetch up another demijohn out the cellar.”
Was it foreknowledge, or merely coincidence which at this same hour led
Mrs. Solomon Black, frugally inspecting her supplies for tomorrow
morning’s breakfast, to discover that her baking-powder can was empty?
“I’ll have to roll out a few biscuits for their breakfast,” she
decided, “or else I’ll run short of bread for dinner.”
Her two boarders, Lydia Orr and the minister, were sitting on the
piazza, engaged in what appeared to be a most interesting conversation,
when Mrs. Black unlatched the front gate and emerged upon the street,
her second-best hat carefully disposed upon her water-waves.
“I won’t be gone a minute,” she paused to assure them; “I just got to
step down to the grocery.”
A sudden hush fell upon a loud and excited conversation when Mrs.
Solomon Black, very erect as to her spinal column and noticeably
composed and dignified in her manner, entered Henry Daggett’s store.
She walked straight past the group of men who stood about the door to
the counter, where Mr. Daggett was wrapping in brown paper two large
dill pickles dripping sourness for a small girl with straw-colored
pig-tails.
Mr. Daggett beamed cordially upon Mrs. Black, as he dropped two copper
pennies in his cash-drawer.
“Good evening, ma’am,” said he. “What can I do for you?”
“A ten-cent can of baking-powder, if you please,” replied the lady
primly.
“Must take a lot of victuals to feed them two boarders o’ yourn,”
hazarded Mr. Daggett, still cordially, and with a dash of confidential
sympathy in his voice.
Mr. Daggett had, by virtue of long association with his wife, acquired
something of her spontaneous warm-heartedness. He had found it useful
in his business.
“Oh, they ain’t neither of ’em so hearty,” said Mrs. Black, searching
in her pocket-book with the air of one who is in haste.
“We was just speakin’ about the young woman that’s stopping at your
house,” murmured Mr. Daggett. “Let me see; I disremember which kind of
bakin’-powder you use, Mis’ Black.”
“The Golden Rule brand, if you please, Mr. Daggett.”
“H’m; let me see if I’ve got one of them Golden Rules left,” mused Mr.
Daggett.... “I told the boys I guessed she was some relation of th’
Grenoble Orrs, an’ mebbe—”
“Well; she ain’t,” denied Mrs. Black crisply.
“M-m-m?” interrogated Mr. Daggett, intent upon a careful search among
the various canned products on his shelf. “How’d she happen to come to
Brookville?”
Mrs. Black tossed her head.
“Of course it ain’t for me to say,” she returned, with a dignity which
made her appear taller than she really was. “But folks has heard of the
table I set, ’way to Boston.”
“You don’t say!” exclaimed Mr. Daggett. “So she come from Boston, did
she? I thought she seemed kind of—”
“I don’t know as there’s any secret about where she _come_ from,”
returned Mrs. Black aggressively. “I never s’posed there was. Folks
ain’t had time to git acquainted with her yit.”
“That’s so,” agreed Mr. Daggett, as if the idea was a new and valuable
one. “Yes, ma’am; you’re right! we ain’t none of us had time to git
acquainted.”
He beamed cordially upon Mrs. Black over the tops of his spectacles.
“Looks like we’re going to git a chance to know her,” he went on. “It
seems the young woman has made up her mind to settle amongst us. Yes,
ma’am; we’ve been hearing she’s on the point of buying property and
settling right down here in Brookville.”
An excited buzz of comment in the front of the store broke in upon this
confidential conversation. Mrs. Black appeared to become aware for the
first time of the score of masculine eyes fixed upon her.
“Ain’t you got any of the Golden Rule?” she demanded sharply. “That
looks like it to me—over in behind them cans of tomatoes. It’s got a
blue label.”
“Why, yes; here ’tis, sure enough,” admitted Mr. Daggett. “I guess I
must be losing my eyesight.... It’s going to be quite a chore to fix up
the old Bolton house,” he added, as he inserted the blue labeled can of
reputation in a red and yellow striped paper bag.
“That ain’t decided,” snapped Mrs. Black. “She could do better than to
buy that tumble-down old shack.”
“So she could; so she could,” soothed the postmaster. “But it’s going
to be a good thing for the creditors, if she can swing it. Let me see,
you wa’n’t a loser in the Bolton Bank; was you, Mis’ Black?”
“No; I wa’n’t; my late departed husband had too much horse-sense.”
And having thus impugned less fortunate persons, Mrs. Solomon Black
departed, a little stiffer as to her back-bone than when she entered.
She had imparted information; she had also acquired it. When she had
returned rather later than usual from selling her strawberries in
Grenoble she had hurried her vegetables on to boil and set the table
for dinner. She could hear the minister pacing up and down his room in
the restless way which Mrs. Black secretly resented, since it would
necessitate changing the side breadths of matting to the middle of the
floor long before this should be done. But of Lydia Orr there was no
sign. The minister came promptly down stairs at sound of the belated
dinner-bell. But to Mrs. Black’s voluble explanations for the unwonted
hour he returned the briefest of perfunctory replies. He seemed hungry
and ate heartily of the cold boiled beef and vegetables.
“Did you see anything of _her_ this morning?” asked Mrs. Black
pointedly, as she cut the dried-apple pie. “I can’t think what’s become
of her.”
Wesley Elliot glanced up from an absent-minded contemplation of an egg
spot on the tablecloth.
“If you refer to Miss Orr,” said he, “I did see her—in a carriage with
Deacon Whittle.”
He was instantly ashamed of the innocent prevarication. But he told
himself he did not choose to discuss Miss Orr’s affairs with Mrs.
Black.
Just then Lydia came in, her eyes shining, her cheeks very pink; but
like the minister she seemed disposed to silence, and Mrs. Black was
forced to restrain her curiosity.
“How’d you make out this morning?” she inquired, as Lydia, having
hurried through her dinner, rose to leave the table.
“Very well, thank you, Mrs. Black,” said the girl brightly. Then she
went at once to her room and closed the door.
At supper time it was just the same; neither the minister nor the girl
who sat opposite him had anything to say. But no sooner had Mrs. Black
begun to clear away the dishes than the two withdrew to the vine-shaded
porch, as if by common consent.
“She ought to know right off about Fanny Dodge and the minister,” Mrs.
Black told herself.
She was still revolving this in her mind as she walked sedately along
the street, the red and yellow striped bag clasped tightly in both
hands. Of course everybody in the village would suppose she knew all
about Lydia Orr. But the fact was she knew very little. The week
before, one of her customers in Grenoble, in the course of a business
transaction which involved a pair of chickens, a dozen eggs and two
boxes of strawberries, had asked, in a casual way, if Mrs. Black knew
any one in Brookville who kept boarders.
“The minister of our church boards with me,” she told the Grenoble
woman, with pardonable pride. “I don’t know of anybody else that takes
boarders in Brookville.” She added that she had an extra room.
“Well, one of my boarders—a real nice young lady from Boston—has taken
a queer notion to board in Brookville,” said the woman. “She was out
autoing the other day and went through there. I guess the country
’round Brookville must be real pretty this time of year.”
“Yes; it is, real pretty,” she had told the Grenoble woman.
And this had been the simple prelude to Lydia Orr’s appearance in
Brookville.
Wooded hills did not interest Mrs. Black, nor did the meandering of the
silver river through its narrow valley. But she took an honest pride in
her own freshly painted white house with its vividly green blinds, and
in her front yard with its prim rows of annuals and thrifty young
dahlias. As for Miss Lydia Orr’s girlish rapture over the view from her
bedroom window, so long as it was productive of honestly earned
dollars, Mrs. Black was disposed to view it with indulgence. There was
nothing about the girl or her possessions to indicate wealth or social
importance, beyond the fact that she arrived in a hired automobile from
Grenoble instead of riding over in Mrs. Solomon Black’s spring wagon.
Miss Orr brought with her to Brookville one trunk, the contents of
which she had arranged at once in the bureau drawers and wardrobe of
Mrs. Black’s second-best bedroom. It was evident from a private
inspection of their contents that Miss Orr was in mourning.
At this point in her meditations Mrs. Black became aware of an
insistent voice hailing her from the other side of the picket fence.
It was Mrs. Daggett, her large fair face flushed with the exertion of
hurrying down the walk leading from Mrs. Whittle’s house.
“Some of us ladies has been clearing up after the fair,” she explained,
as she joined Mrs. Solomon Black. “It didn’t seem no more than right;
for even if Ann Whittle doesn’t use her parlor, on account of not
having it furnished up, she wants it broom-clean. My! You’d ought to
have seen the muss we swept out.”
“I’d have been glad to help,” said Mrs. Black stiffly; “but what with
it being my day to go over to Grenoble, and my boarders t’ cook for and
all—”
“Oh, we didn’t expect you,” said Abby Daggett tranquilly. “There was
enough of us to do everything.”
She beamed warmly upon Mrs. Black.
“Us ladies was saying we’d all better give you a rising vote of thanks
for bringing that sweet Miss Orr to the fair. Why, ’twas a real success
after all; we took in two hundred and forty-seven dollars and
twenty-nine cents. Ain’t that splendid?”
Mrs. Black nodded. She felt suddenly proud of her share in this
success.
“I guess she wouldn’t have come to the fair if I hadn’t told her about
it,” she admitted. “She only come to my house yesterd’y morning.”
“In an auto?” inquired Abby Daggett eagerly.
“Yes,” nodded Mrs. Black. “I told her I could bring her over in the
wagon just as well as not; but she said she had the man all engaged. I
told her we was going to have a fair, and she said right off she wanted
to come.”
Abby Daggett laid her warm plump hand on Mrs. Black’s arm.
“I dunno when I’ve took such a fancy to anybody at first sight,” she
said musingly. “She’s what I call a real sweet girl. I’m just going to
love her, I know.”
She gazed beseechingly at Mrs. Solomon Black.
“Mebbe you’ll think it’s just gossipy curiosity; but I _would_ like to
know where that girl come from, and who her folks was, and how she
happened to come to Brookville. I s’pose you know all about her; don’t
you?”
Mrs. Solomon Black coughed slightly. She was aware of the distinction
she had already acquired in the eyes of Brookville from the mere fact
of Lydia Orr’s presence in her house.
“If I do,” she began cautiously, “I don’t know as it’s for me to say.”
“Don’t fer pity’s sake think I’m nosey,” besought Abby Daggett almost
tearfully. “You know I ain’t that kind; but I don’t see how folks is
going to help being interested in a sweet pretty girl like Miss Orr,
and her coming so unexpected. And you know there’s them that’ll invent
things that ain’t true, if they don’t hear the facts.”
“She’s from Boston,” said Mrs. Solomon Black grudgingly. “You can tell
Lois Daggett that much, if she’s getting anxious.”
Mrs. Daggett’s large face crimsoned. She was one of those soft, easily
hurt persons whose blushes bring tears. She sniffed a little and raised
her handkerchief to her eyes.
“I was afraid you’d—”
“Well, of course I ain’t scared of you, Abby,” relented Mrs. Black.
“But I says to myself, ‘I’m goin’ to let Lydia Orr stand on her two own
feet in this town,’ I says. She can say what she likes about herself,
an’ there won’t be no lies coming home to roost at _my_ house. I guess
you’d feel the very same way if you was in my place, Abby.”
Mrs. Daggett glanced with childish admiration at the other woman’s
magenta-tinted face under its jetty water-waves. Even Mrs. Black’s
everyday hat was handsomer than her own Sunday-best.
“You always was so smart an’ sensible, Phoebe,” she said mildly. “I
remember ’way back in school, when we was both girls, you always could
see through arithmetic problems right off, when I couldn’t for the life
of me. I guess you’re right about letting her speak for herself.”
“Course I am!” agreed Mrs. Black triumphantly.
She had extricated herself from a difficulty with flying colors. She
would still preserve her reputation for being a close-mouthed woman who
knew a lot more about everything than she chose to tell.
“Anybody can see she’s wearing mournin’,” she added benevolently.
“Oh, I thought mebbe she had a black dress on because they’re stylish.
She did look awful pretty in it, with her arms and neck showing
through. I like black myself; but mourning—that’s different. Poor young
thing, I wonder who it was. Her father, mebbe, or her mother. You
didn’t happen to hear her say, did you, Phoebe?”
Mrs. Solomon Black compressed her lips tightly. She paused at her own
gate with majestic dignity.
“I guess I’ll have to hurry right in, Abby,” said she. “I have my bread
to set.”
Mrs. Solomon Black had closed her gate behind her, noticing as she did
so that Wesley Elliot and Lydia Orr had disappeared from the piazza
where she had left them. She glanced at Mrs. Daggett, lingering
wistfully before the gate.
“Goodnight, Abby,” said she firmly.