A DECLARATION OF WAR
The room was a large apartment with smoke-cured and age-blackened beams
in the ceiling. This was the ancient tap-room of the tavern, which had
been built at that pre-Revolutionary time when the stuffed catamount,
with its fangs and claws bared to the York State officers, crouched on
top of the staff at Bennington--for Polktown was one of the oldest
settlements in these "Hampshire Grants."
No noisier or more ill-favored crew, Janice Day thought, could ever
have been gathered under the roof of the Inn, than she now saw as she
pushed open the screen. Tobacco smoke poisoned the air, floating in
clouds on a level with the men's heads, and blurring the lamplight.
There was a crowd of men and boys at the door of the dance hall. At
the bar was another noisy line. It was evident that Joe Bodley had
merely run from behind the bar for a moment to stop, if he could,
Hopewell Drugg's departure. Hopewell was flushed, hatless, and
trembling. Whether he was intoxicated or ill, the fact remained that
he was not himself.
The storekeeper clung with both hands to the neck of his violin. A
greasy-looking, black-haired fellow held on to the other end of the
instrument, and was laughing in the face of the expostulating Frank
Bowman, displaying a wealth of white teeth, and the whites of his eyes,
as well. He was a foreigner of some kind. Janice had never seen him
before, and she believed he must be the "foxy-looking" man Frank had
previously mentioned.
It was, however, Joe Bodley, whom the indignant young girl confronted
when she came so suddenly into the room. Most of the men present paid
no attention to the quarreling group at the entrance.
"Come now, Hopewell, be a sport," the young barkeeper was saying.
"It's early yet, and we want to hear more of your fiddling. Give us
that 'Darling, I Am Growing Old' stuff, with all the variations.
Sentiment! Sentiment! Oh, hullo! Evening, Miss! What can I do for
you?"
He said this last impudently enough, facing Janice. He was a
fat-faced, smoothly-shaven young man--little older than Frank Bowman,
but with pouches under his eyes and the score of dissipation marked
plainly in his countenance. He had unmeasured impudence and bravado in
his eyes and in his smile.
"I have come to speak to Mr. Drugg," Janice said, and she was glad she
could say it unshakenly, despite her secret emotions. She would not
give this low fellow the satisfaction of knowing how frightened she
really was.
Frank Bowman's back was to the door. Perhaps this was well, for he
would have hesitated to do just what was necessary had he known Janice
was in the room. The young engineer had not been bossing a
construction gang of lusty, "two-fisted" fellows for six months without
many rude experiences.
"So, you won't let go, eh?" he gritted between his teeth to the smiling
foreigner.
With his left hand in his collar, Frank jerked the man toward him,
thrust his own leg forward, and then pitched the fellow backward over
his knee. This act broke the man's hold upon Drugg's violin and he
crashed to the floor, striking the back of his head soundly.
"All right, Mr. Drugg," panted Frank. "Get out."
But it was Janice, still confronting Bodley, that actually freed the
storekeeper from his enemies. Her eyes blazed with indignation into
the bartender's own. His fat, white hand dropped from Hopewell's arm.
"Oh, if the young lady's really come to take you home to the missus, I
s'pose we'll have to let you go," he said, with a nasty laugh. "But no
play, no pay, you understand."
Janice drew the bewildered Hopewell out of the door, and Frank quickly
followed. Few in the room had noted the incident at all.
The three stood a minute on the porch, the mist drifting in from the
lake and wetting them. The engineer finally took the umbrella from
Janice and raised it to shelter her.
"They--they broke two of the strings," muttered Hopewell, with thought
for nothing but his precious violin.
"You'd better cover it up, or it will be wet; and that won't do any
fiddle any good," growled Frank, rather disgusted with the storekeeper.
But there was something queer about Hopewell's condition that both
puzzled Janice and made her pity him.
"He is not intoxicated--not as other men are," she whispered to the
engineer.
"I don't know that he is," said Frank. "But he's made us trouble
enough. Come on; let's get him home."
Drugg was trying to shelter the precious violin under his coat.
"He has no hat and the fiddle bag is gone," said Janice.
"I'm not going back in there," said the civil engineer decidedly. And
then he chuckled, adding:
"That fellow I tipped over will be just about ready to fight by now. I
reckon he thinks differently now about the 'white-headed kid,' as he
called me. You see," Frank went on modestly, "I was something of a
boxer at the Tech school, and I've had to keep my wits about me with
those 'muckers' of the railroad construction gang."
"Oh, dear, me! I think there must be something very tigerish in all of
us," sighed Janice. "I was glad when I saw that black-haired man go
down. What did he want Hopewell's violin for?"
"Don't know. Just meanness, perhaps. They doctored Hopewell's drink
somehow, and he was acting like a fool and playing ridiculously."
They could talk plainly before the storekeeper, for he really did not
know what was going on. His face was blank and his eyes staring, but
he had buttoned the violin beneath the breast of his coat.
"Come on, old fellow," Frank said, putting a heavy hand on Drugg's
shoulder. "Let's be going. It's too wet to stand here."
The storekeeper made no objection. Indeed, as they walked along,
Hopewell between Frank and Janice, who carried the umbrella, Drugg
seemed to be moving in a daze. His head hung on his breast; he said no
word; and his feet stumbled as though they were leaden and he had no
feeling in them.
"Mr. Bowman!" exclaimed Janice, at last, and under her breath, "he is
ill!"
"I am beginning to believe so myself," the civil engineer returned.
"I've seen enough drunken fellows before this to know that Hopewell
doesn't show many of the usual symptoms."
Janice halted suddenly. "There's a light in Mr. Massey's back room,"
she said.
"Eh? Back of the drugstore? Yes, I see it," Bowman said, puzzled.
"Why not take Mr. Drugg there and see if Massey can give him something?
I hate to take him home to 'Rill in this condition."
"Something to straighten him up--eh?" cried the engineer. "Good idea.
If he's there and will let us in," he added, referring to the druggist,
for the front store was entirely dark, it being now long past the usual
closing hour of all stores in Polktown.
Janice and Frank led Hopewell Drugg to the side door of the shop, he
making no objection to the change in route. It was doubtful if he even
knew where they were taking him. He seemed in a state of partial
syncope.
Frank had to knock the second time before there was any answer. They
heard voices--Massey's and another. Then the druggist came to the
entrance, unbolted it and stuck his head out--his gray hair all ruffled
up in a tuft which made him, with his big beak and red-rimmed eyes,
look like a startled cockatoo.
"Who's this, now? Jack Besmith again? What did I tell you?" he
snapped. Then he seemed to see that he was wrong, and the next moment
exclaimed: "Wal! I am jiggered!" for, educated man though he was, Mr.
Massey had lived in the hamlet of his birth all of his life and spoke
the dialect of the community. "Wal! I am jiggered!" he repeated.
"What ye got there?"
"I guess you see whom we have, Mr. Massey," said Frank Bowman pushing
in and leading the storekeeper.
"Oh, Mr. Massey! It's Hopewell Drugg," Janice said pleadingly. "Can't
you help him?"
"Janice Day! I declare to sun-up!" ejaculated the druggist. "What you
beauing about that half-baked critter for? And he's drunk?"
"He is _not_!" cried the girl, with indignation. "At least, he is like
no other drunken person I have seen. He is ill. They gave him
something to drink down at the Inn--at that dance where he was playing
his violin--and it has made him ill. Don't you _see_?" and she stamped
her foot impatiently.
"Hoity-toity, young lady!" chuckled Massey.
They were all inside now and the druggist locked the door again.
Behind the stove, in the corner, sat Mr. Cross Moore, and he did not
say a word.
"You can see yourself, Mr. Massey," urged Frank Bowman, helping Drugg
into a chair, "that this is no ordinary drunk."
"No," Massey said reflectively, and now looked with some pity at the
helpless man. "Alcohol never did exhilarate Hopewell. It just dopes
him. It does some folks. And it doesn't take much to do it."
"Then Hopewell Drugg has been in the habit of drinking?" asked Bowman,
in surprise. "You have seen him this way before?"
"No, he hasn't. Never mind what these chattering old women in town say
about him now. I never saw him this way but once before. That was
when he had been given some brandy. 'Member that time, Cross, when we
all went fishin' down to Pine Cove? Gosh! Must have been all of
twenty years ago."
All that Mr. Cross Moore emitted was a grunt, but he nodded.
"Hopewell cut himself--'bad--on a rusty bailer. He fell on it and
liked ter bled to death. You know, Cross, we gave him brandy and he
was dead to the world for hours."
"Yes," said Mr. Moore. "What did he want to drink now for?"
"I do not believe he knowingly took anything intoxicating," Janice said
earnestly. "They have been playing tricks down there at the tavern on
him."
"Tricks?" repeated Mr. Moore curiously.
"Yes, sir," said Janice. "Men mean enough to sell liquor are mean
enough to do anything. And not only those who actually sell the stuff
are to blame in a case like this, but those who encourage the sale of
it."
Mr. Cross Moore uncrossed his long legs and crossed them slowly the
other way. He always had a humorous twinkle in his shrewd gray eye.
He had it now.
"Meaning me?" he drawled, eyeing the indignant young girl just as he
would look at an angry kitten.
"Yes, Mr. Moore," said Janice, with dignity. "A word from you, and Lem
Parraday would stop selling liquor. He would have to. And without
your encouragement he would never have entered into the nefarious
traffic. Polktown is being injured daily by that bar at the Inn, and
you more than any other one person are guilty of this crime against the
community!"
Mr. Cross Moore did not change his attitude. Janice was panting and
half crying now. The selectman said, slowly:
"I might say that you are an impudent girl."
"I guess I am," Janice admitted tearfully. "But I mean every word I
have said, and I won't take it back."
"You and I have been good friends, Janice Day," continued Mr. Moore in
his drawling way. "I never like to quarrel with my friends."
"You can be no friend of mine, Mr. Moore, till the sale of liquor stops
in this town, and you are converted," declared Janice, wiping her eyes,
but speaking quite as bravely as before.
"Then it is war between us?" he asked, yet not lightly.
"Yes, sir," sobbed Janice. "I always have liked you, Mr. Cross Moore.
But now I can't bear even to look at you! I don't approve of you at
all--not one little bit!"