A SELF-ELECTED CONSTABLE
If Susanna could ever have been "knocked down with a feather," as she
often averred, she might have been then.
Indignation, consternation, amazement, all the emotions which have to be
expressed in polysyllables, pictured themselves on her countenance as
she paused on the bedroom threshold and looked at the intruder over her
spectacles, through them, and below them. He lay face down upon the
pillows, his dirty boots reposing on her choicest log-cabin quilt, and
his groans fairly chilling the blood even in her veins, used though she
was to the habits of men in illness. Moses, in his groaniest days, had
rarely equalled this.
After the moment's pause her mind worked quickly, and she expressed it
in words, spoken more to herself than to Kate, close beside her.
"He mustn't lie there, that way, with them filthy old shoes on. He acts
as if he was at the p'int o' death, though folks a-dyin' don't gen'ally
caterwaul like that. I bet I know what ails him! It's them pies an'
things he stole! If 'tis, I'm glad of it, serves him right!" she
finished, triumphantly, and in her satisfaction went so far as to
approach the bed and shake the man's shoulder.
At first he paid no attention to her, and his groans did not cease,
though they became rather intermittent, as if the paroxysms of pain were
less frequent. Finally, her voice, now pitched to its shrillest,
penetrated his consciousness, and at her question: "What's the matter
with ye? Got the colic?" he turned upon his side and his face was
revealed.
Then, indeed, did Susanna's countenance undergo a more wonderful change.
All the emotions which had earlier crossed it concentrated in one
prolonged stare, while she felt her strength oozing from her till she
knew she should fall. Her hand left the stranger's shoulder and dropped
limply to her side, her jaw fell, and she would have sunk down upon the
floor had not Katharine slipped a chair forward to receive her. Upon
this she settled, still staring and speechless; and as if he, too, were
profoundly moved, the tramp ceased groaning altogether and fixed his
burning gaze on her. So they remained, and for so long, that Kate grew
frantic, and begged:
"Oh, Susanna! what is wrong? Why do you look at him like that? Why does
he look at you? Is he dying? Do you know him? Does he know you? Can't we
do something for him? It's so dreadful to see anybody suffer. Even he,
poor fellow, who--"
The Widow Sprigg held up a shaking hand protesting against this volley
of questions and answering none. But after a little time the woman in
her got the better of the judge, and, rising, she went to the wall
cupboard and took from it a bottle containing brown fluid and plainly
labelled, "Cholera Mixture. Poison." Pouring a generous dose into a
glass, she diluted it with water and was returning to the bed when
Katharine caught her hand to stay it, crying:
"Why, Susanna! How dare you? That's marked poison!"
The widow shook the girl's hand off, calmly replying:
"My suz! I guess I know what I'm about. That 'cholera mixture' 's one
the old doctor's own prescriptions, an' I've give more of it to more
folks 'an you could shake a stick at. It's marked 'poison' so's to keep
childern like you from meddlin' with it. A dose of it won't hurt nobody,
an' if his malady is the sort I cal'late, I'm treatin' him like the Good
Samaritan would on the Sabbath Day. I've made it a powerful dose, an' I
'low it'll settle his hash one way or other. But I hate to touch him. I
certainly do."
A last faint moan issued from the sufferer, and his eyes turned upon the
girl. He looked so wan and so forlorn that her own natural repugnance
left her, and she caught the medicine-glass from Susanna to present it
to the sick man's lips. He opened them and drank obediently, even
smacking his lips over the fiery mixture, and Kate, having finished her
task, hastily withdrew to the outer room.
But what had come over the Widow Sprigg? Her whole manner had changed.
Fear seemed to have left her and a stern determination taken its place.
Katharine could only observe, wondering, as the mistress of the cottage
caught up a pail, and going to the well drew it full several times,
throwing out all but the last pailful, which she brought back into the
house and set on a table in the bedroom. Beside it she placed a dipper,
and observed:
"That water's all right. Moses, he had the well cleaned out for me only
last month. We always do do it twicet a year, lest somebody comes along
an' drinks it stale. More'n that, the well's fed by a spring, runnin' in
an' out, so really don't need any cleanin', but--"
Such solicitude on account of that detested tramp! It was amazing. Yet
her next procedure was even more so. Going up-stairs, she looked that
the window was shut, and the nail, its only fastening, put in above the
lower sash. Anybody inside could have opened it, of course, but that did
not occur to her. Each of the windows was thus treated, and, beckoning
to Katharine, she led the way out-doors. The door was locked on the
outside and Susanna started homeward. She was no longer a weary or a
sad-faced woman. She was alert, silent, but unmistakably cheerful.
Kate kept close pace with the now swift steps of the housekeeper, and
finally ventured to ask: "Who is he?"
"We may not all hope to be constables, but some of us is constables
without ever runnin' for office! Well, well, well! I shouldn't be
surprised if the end o' the world happens along now, any time," said
Susanna, irrelevantly, and fell into such a brown study that Katy dared
not interrupt her, and the rest of the way home was passed in silence.
The deacon was waiting restlessly. He had not liked to desert his post
and leave the disabled Moses alone in the house. Neither had he liked to
lose his Sunday afternoon nap, well-earned refreshment of a diligent
man. One other thing he had not liked: Moses' flat refusal to discuss
their employer's affairs. This had led to other controversies, and two
disgruntled men were ready to greet the tardy wanderers.
"Hm-m. Thought you never was a-comin' back. That's all the sense a silly
woman has; let her get off grounds an' she don't know when to step on to
'em again. The deacon, he's been purty patient, but--I guess we'll be
better friends if we part for a spell now," was Moses' greeting; and,
instead of resenting it, Susanna said never a word.
In silence she brought him his cup of beef tea. In silence she went out
and fed the poultry; came in and gave Sir Philip his bowl of milk and
Punch his plate of scraps. She had long since taken the feeding of both
animals upon herself, declaring, with some show of truth, that they did
not dare "muss around" for her as they did for Eunice or Kate.
Till it was supper-time she sat in absolute silence beside the
sitting-room window, her eyes fixed upon vacancy, and an expression of
great perplexity.
Katharine bore this as long as she could, then stole softly up to the
hired man's room, careless whether he were asleep or not. She had not
been bidden to secrecy, and, finding him awake, she poured out the story
of the afternoon so fast that her words fairly tripped each other up.
Then Moses made her go back and tell it all over again, and when she had
finished, exclaimed:
"Beats thunder! A silly woman! An' me, a man! Bedrid here, like an old
block of wood, an' her--She thinks she's arrested somebody, Susanna
does! She thinks she's made herself into a constable, does she? Turned
her house into a jail--an' forgot to fasten the winders outside! Ho! Ho!
Silly women!"
The disappointed old fellow got as much enjoyment as he could out of the
situation, and was more than delighted by thought of a tramp's shoes
smirching the log-cabin quilt. It served the widow right, he maintained,
because she had wasted so much labor on the thing. "Bought good new
Merrimac print, she did, an' then set there o' nights a
snip-snip-snippin' it up into little scraps an' sewin' 'em together
again. If a woman'll do that, it's proof what sort o' brains she's got."
Then, with sudden energy, he advised: "Don't you never let her set you a
sewin' patchwork, Kitty Keehoty. It's all on a piece with knittin'
mittens for the Hottentots--a waste of time. A waste o' sinful time, I
mean a sinful waste of--Oh, hum!"
She waited till he had cooled off from his own vexation, and then asked:
"Uncle Moses, will you tell me all about Montgomery's father?"
If she had surprised him before she startled him now. Flashing his keen
old eyes upon her, he asked in return:
"Why do you want to know? Who egged you on to say that?"
"Nobody. Why, surely, nobody at all. But it seems so queer that none
talk of him, yet of his mother speak so often and so lovingly. Aunt
Eunice says she was a Marsden lady, a farmer's daughter, and 'as lovely
as a flower.' Even Madam, who didn't like her at first, grew to be fond
of her and to call her 'my sweet daughter.' But when I asked Monty of
his father, and had told him all about mine, about everything, about the
second Mrs. John, the Snowballs, and all--he just said: 'I guess I'll go
hunt old Whitey,' and off he went, without saying 'excuse me.' His face
was as red as red, and there came a queer look in his eyes as if--as if
he was ashamed. Was his father a wicked man, Uncle Moses?"
Quite diverted by this time from his own vexations, the hired man lay
silently thinking for a moment. Then he said:
"Well, little Kitty Keehoty, I hain't seen that your warm heart gets any
colder toward folks when they get into trouble 'an when they don't. That
tramp, now, that stole your victuals--Oh, I know! I did know last night,
though you didn't know that I knowed--"
"'I saw Esau kissing Kate, Esau saw that I saw,'" quoted this other
Kate, in laughing interruption.
Moses laughed, too, as he was glad to do. He had had enough of gloom and
grumble for that sweet Lord's Day, now so near its close. And though the
story he was going to tell was anything but a bright one, he meant to
tell it in such wise that his young listener should be the tenderer and
more compassionate because of hearing it.
"Well, Keehoty, it's ruther a long yarn. That is, it goes a good way
back, clean to the old Squire's time--no such a Squire as Pettijohn,
forename James, mind ye--but a good, high-sprung, old-fashioned
gentleman; with high-up English blood in his veins, an' a reg'lar
English temper to balance the blood. Never did a dirty trick in his life
nor an unjust one--except to his own and only son. That was Monty's
father, poor little stutterin' shaver! Well, along of his late years the
old Squire had bad feelin's in his head, suffered terr'ble agony, an'
hardly knowed what he did do or say. He got a notion that he was goin'
to be robbed, an' used to carry 'round with him a cur'ous old box that
folks said held his bonds an' money an' the old family jewels that had
been brought over from England a hunderd years afore. If he went
a-ridin'--an' he was the splendidest horseman ever seen in these
parts--he'd have the thing on the saddle afore him. If he druv, 'twould
be in the box o' the carriage-seat. Nobody ever seen the inside that
box, an' 'twas 'lowed there wasn't none could open it, except him an'
the Madam."
"Oh!" gasped Katharine, leaning forward, breathlessly intent. Naturally
such close attention flattered the narrator, who went on with renewed
earnestness:
"The old Squire an' his son didn't hit it off together very well. Never
did from the time Verplanck, 'Planck he was called for short, was born.
He was a good deal like Monty is, only more oneasy--if anybody could be;
an' from the time he could toddle he was hand in glove with Jim
Pettijohn's little tacker, Nate. Nate, he wasn't so smart as some folks.
Not a fool, uther, an' consid'able better'n half-witted, but
queer--queer. He just worshipped Planck Sturtevant, an' where you see
one you see t'other, sure. Well, they growed up, an' Planck got married.
That seemed to 'bout break Nate's heart, an' he got queerer an' queerer.
Old Squire got queerer, too. Nothin' Verplanck could do or say was right
in his father's eyes; an' though he managed to work the farm fairly
well, he never made any money off it, an' that made the old man mad.
Planck, he bore it patient for a spell, 'cause his wife--she that was
Elizabeth Morton from up-mountain--thought the world an' all of the old
folks an' they o' her. She'd been raised on a farm an' could an' did
turn her hand to every sort o' work, but 'twasn't no use. She loved
them, but she loved her husband better; an', one night, after there'd
been more hard talk 'an common 'twixt the Squire an' Verplanck, there
was three folks missin' from Marsden township. They was somethin' else
missin', too, an' that was the queer brass bound box with all the
Squire's money an' vallybles. The hired man told 'bout the box, else
nobody might ever have heard that part. He was carryin' in the day's
wood next mornin' an' overheard the Squire an' the Madam talkin' 'bout
it; him callin' his son a 'thief,' an' forbiddin' his name ever to be
spoke in that house again. She declarin' that no child of them two
honest people could ever be a thief. Hot an' heavy they had it, though
nobody had ever heard them two quarrel afore. An' right on top of that
stalks in Jim Pettijohn--him that's a sort o' Squire, a justice of the
peace, now--an' demands his son. He'd let the feller grow up without
good trainin' or lookin' after of any kind, though 'twas needed bad
enough. All Nate did know, or the little he knowed, was badness an'
deviltry. Why, he used to go with your own pa, Johnny, consid'able, an'
'peared to like him almost as well as he did Verplanck, an' many's the
time I've had the three on my hands a-fishin'. But Johnny didn't tackle
much to ary one them other boys. He was all for trompin' 'round by
himself, drawin' pictur's on whatever come handy, or lyin' under the
trees a-dreamin' the summer days through. In the winter he'd dream afore
the wood fire just the same idle way, an' finally he dreamed himself out
o' Marsden an' run away to be an artist. Eunice, she was set an'
determined he should be a minister, else maybe 'twouldn't never ha'
turned out as it did. But Johnny was good, good clean through to the
core, parson or artist or what not; an' 'twasn't o' him I set out to
tell. An' I must hurry up, anyway, 'cause Susanna she'll be in purty
soon, an' that'll end all our nice time."
"Oh, Uncle Moses! I like Susanna better to-day than I ever did before.
She showed me the real inside of herself, and it isn't half as crusty as
the outside."
"Huh! What'd she do to manage that? She seems powerful still an'
sot-lookin' sence she come back from inspectin' her 'prope'ty.' By the
way, did you happen to notice whuther the slat top to that cistern o'
hers was over the manhole? Out in the open shed, or lean-to? 'Cause
she's a great notion of leavin' it off to 'air'--as if a cistern that
hasn't had no water in it for fifteen twenty years wasn't dry as a
pipe-stem a'ready or needed 'airin''! Gen'ally, after she's been out
there I take a look 'round myself. I wouldn't admire to have anything,
even a tramp, fall down that cistern, though it might not hurt 'em much,
'cause it's shallower 'n it's broad. A real good 'system,' I 'low, even
if that everlastin' Sprigg did build it. But what's the inside o'
Susanna 't you saw an' liked?"
"She showed me her baby's things, an' looked as sad as if it had died
only yesterday. But she showed me, too, her shroud--her _shroud_! Just
think of it, Uncle Moses! And that was horrible."
"Pooh! That's nothin'. Lots of women has 'em laid by. Same's some
fool-men has a coffin built an' kep' handy. As for me, I'm goin' to
worry 'bout things only up till the day o' my death, an' not a minute
beyond. But, I was tellin' of Verplanck Sturtevant, an' must finish the
job. Squire, he had always given the cold shoulder to Jim, an' despised
him out an' out. Jim was crafty an' underhand, Squire was open an' above
board--an' them two kinds don't mix. Still, Jim had been able to get his
claw on the Squire's meat, so to speak; that is, he'd made money
himself, lawin' an' grindin' the face of them worse off 'an he was, an'
the Squire needin' ready cash, to make some improvements he'd better ha'
let alone, Jim advanced it an' Squire give a mortgage. That was the
beginnin', an' now, they say, Pettijohn owns about every acre of the old
Sturtevant property, an' could turn the Madam out any day. Yet, somehow,
he dassent. Indeed, I'd like to see the man could walk straight up to
that old lady an' say: 'Your house is mine. Please to get out.' Out
she'd go at the first word; head up, back straight as one her own hall
chairs, but a look in her eye that that man wouldn't forget in his
lifetime. Verplanck, he was of the same sort--prouder'n Lucifer; an'
even if she'd knowed where to send for him his mother would ha'
understood 'twouldn't done a mite o' good. But she didn't send. She
obeyed her husband to the last say-so. An' he didn't live long after
that, anyway. Elizabeth, she come back, bringin' Monty with her; but
her own folks tell as how there was never a thing said betwixt even them
two, except Elizabeth sayin': 'I've come home, Mother Sturtevant, to
bring your grandson to the old place. I haven't long to live; but
Verplanck will never come till he has made a fortune and redeemed
everything. Let us not talk of him.' They never did. Where he was or
how, his old mother could only guess. Then Elizabeth died and there was
just them two--Madam an' Montgomery--left in the Mansion. Every year she
let Jim Pettijohn get a tighter clutch on the property, till, as I tell
ye, he prob'ly owns all.
"That's all of Monty's father. 'Twas ten years or more ago when
Elizabeth fetched him; why, my sake! it must be full twelve or up'ards,
but time does fly so I forget. I never believed Verplanck stole a thing.
I misdoubt if the box ever was took. The Squire bein' queer might ha'
hid it somewheres, more'n likely. But there's them that does believe,
an' I hear the Madam's amongst 'em. She's searched the Mansion from A to
Izzard, knowin' every crane an' cranny of it, an' found nothin'. So
that's why Monty's face got red when you asked about his father.
Marsden's like every other village, full o' gossip, an' what his
grandmother has tried to keep from him hearin' there's been plenty loose
tongues to let slip. More'n once I've seen the poor little shaver sit
broodin' an' solemn as if his heart was breakin', an' I've fancied he
was thinkin' 'bout his pa. But he ain't one the broodin' kind, thanks
be; an' the very next thing I knowed he'd be up to some mischief or
other, lively as a cricket. But don't you ever let on what I've told ye,
'less he speaks of it himself. I'm glad you're good friends, an' likely
enough he'll out with the hull business an' all he's thought an' felt
about it. If ever he does, Kitty Keehoty, you remember that it's a
woman's part--such women as Eunice an' the Madam an' her that was
Elizabeth Morton--to comfort an' cheer them 'at are downcast. Though I
needn't caution ye, I guess, sence I found out some time ago that you've
got a power o' sympathy in your fly-about little body. Hm-m. I've 'most
talked the legs off the iron pot, hain't I? It's time to quit,
an'--hark! Them's wheels! They're drivin' in here. They're on our
gravel, sure. Look out the winder, child, an' see who 'tis. I'm most too
tuckered out for more comp'ny to-night. The deacon, he's a good man, but
he dreadful fatiguin'."