AND TROUBLE AND A FEW OTHER THINGS
“Go ask your mother for fifteen cents
To see the elephant jump the fence,
He jumps so high that he’ll hit the sky,
And he won’t come down till the Fourth of July.”
A GRIMY, wrinkled and slouchy elephant, pudging ahead and straining at
his rusty harness, followed by eight horses plodding two and two, was
drawing a train of vehicles whose outlines were almost hidden by the
dust cloud rolling up from under the scuffing hoofs. Through puffs of
dust, glass surfaces sparkled dully, and there was an occasional glint
of gilt. The leading waggon could be more plainly seen.
“It’s a reg’lar circus cart,” said Brickett, wonderingly.
They all perceived that the shape of the waggon’s body was the
simulacrum of a large caravel whose bow and stern rose high in the air.
There was a gilded, life-size female figure at the bow and a companion
figure at the stern. The only man in sight was perched on a high seat
let into the fore part of the waggon, the converging lines of the bow
meeting just above his head.
“But there ain’t been no circus advertised ’round here,” cried Uncle
Lysimachus Buck, as he stared.
The strange train of vehicles swung wide at the head of the cove to
cross the creek bridge.
“There’s six of ’em,” commented Amazeen, as the waggons presented
their broadsides, “and it’s a circus, dummed if ’tain’t.”
One waggon was fastened behind another. Three vans with huge mirrors
in the sides were following the big boat-waggon in the lead; the fifth
vehicle had a circular body scalloped like a sea shell, and a painted
figure held a canopy over it; sixth and last trundled a little red cart
of the kind made familiar by circus chariot races.
The driver of this strange outfit guided his dripping horses and the
huge piloter across the bridge. He cracked a big whip over them, and
they came up the short rise toward Brickett’s store, gallantly surging
to the work, the faded bridle pompons nodding above the horses’ heads,
the dust swirling behind. The elephant shuffled briskly, ragged ears
flapping and trunk swaying.
The breeze on top of the hill volleyed the dust back on the procession,
and when the driver pulled up in the little square with a mighty bellow
of “Whoa!” he and his outfit were almost invisible. As the white cloud
settled away and revealed the waggons the little group on Brickett’s
platform stared open-mouthed at every feature. The gilding was dingy,
the paint blistered and cracked, the mirrors streaked and grimy, but the
elephant and the chariots and the circus glamour were all there.
The man who sat on the high seat wore a dusty tall hat, cocked back so
far as to almost rest on his neck. A linen duster was buttoned
closely under his gray whiskers--prolongations of his bristling
moustache--descending in two trailing streams and framing a smoothly
shaved chin. This elderly stranger set his elbows on his knees, the
reins hanging loosely, leaned forward and leisurely surveyed the group
on the platform. One eye was set and immovable--a glass eye. The other
roved and twinkled and shuttled and blinked in lively style.
“Let’s see,” he began, a keen glint in his movable eye, “isn’t there a
cheap lawyer in this place named Phineas Look?”
The movable eye fell upon Squire Phin. It glittered for an instant more
brightly. The muscles of the hard face seemed to twitch a little. But he
said no more, and with a curious intentness awaited a reply.
The Squire had started at the sound of the stranger’s voice. Then he
shoved his hands deep into his trousers pockets and stared hard at the
man, his brows knotting slowly, as though he were endeavouring to recall
something.
“I don’t know who you be, nor where you come from, nor I don’t care,”
snapped Amazeen; “but I want to say to you, mister, that you’d better
call the leadin’ man in P’lermo by a different name, ’specially when
he’s standin’ here in hearin’!” He shook an indignant cane at the man
and swung and pointed it at Phineas.
At this instant a raucous voice squalled a long, loud “Yah-h-h!” A cage
was hung to one of the figures of the big waggon, whose seats showed a
former use as a band chariot. A ragged, gray parrot was in the cage. He
clutched a bar in his warty claws, rapped his bill violently and yelled:
“Crack ’em down, gents! It’s the old army game!”
The Squire took a quick step forward, halted and stared again.
“Twenty can play as well as one!” the parrot squawked. The stranger
began to clamber down from the seat and stood revealed as a tall man
when he stood upright. The knots smoothed out of the Squire’s brow.
The two men walked slowly toward one another, each with hand
outstretched, and they met half way. Hand clutched hand in a grip
that made the cords ridge the skin. They gazed for a long time with
moistening eyes.
“Hime!” choked out the Squire.
“You poor little cuss, Phin,” the other gulped, as he reached his arm
over the Squire’s shoulder and patted his back.
There was rough affection in the gesture, but there was constraint in
the stranger’s mien. He displayed the nervous bravado of one who is
ashamed and feels that the shame is a weakness.
“I ain’t come home expectin’ that you’re goin’ to treat me anyways like
a brother, Phin,” he muttered brokenly. “I ain’t ever been any good to
the family. I----”
“Don’t say that, brother Hiram! Don’t!” pleaded the Squire.
“But it’s the God’s truth, Phin. I don’t even know whether
father’s--whether he’s----” He stood back and raised entreating eyes
to his brother’s face. “You needn’t say it, Phin, boy,” he went on
mournfully. “All I can do is thank God that father had one boy that he
didn’t have to be ashamed of. I don’t ask you to overlook it--any of it,
Phin. I don’t expect you to do it. I ain’t come back for it.”
The old men had been slowly straggling down from the platform, still
busied with their survey of this amazing new arrival.
The Squire glanced around at them and spoke guardedly. His tone was
gently reproachful.
“Not a word from you or of you for twenty-five years! Hime, I never
understood that. Father didn’t understand it!”
“Understand it!” shouted his brother, careless of the throng.
“Understand it! Of course you can’t. No man with decency in his soul and
honesty in his heart could understand it. I tell ye, Phin, I ain’t worth
your while to talk to, I had a little hopes of myself, Phin, a few weeks
ago. It came over me all of a sudden. I’ve come back to square one end
of it.” He glared at the men who were crowding around them. “But our
family end, Phin, can never be squared. I’ve travelled five hundred
miles in the sun and dust to pay my honest debts. That much I can do.
Then for the road again.” He tossed a pathetic gesture at the elephant
and the vans. “I did think of sellin’ ’em along with the rest I sold,”
he added wistfully. “I had thought perhaps--I didn’t know, but--well,
Phin, it’s better to go on, that’s all.” Here and there from gardens,
from little shops and from the houses near by, men were issuing; the
cobbler with his canvas apron tucked up, the blacksmith spatting his
smutty hands together, and the men who had forgotten to lay down their
hoes. All were shouting questions to each other and pointing at the
procession that had come to town.
The Squire eyed the approach of these spectators with some uneasiness,
but the glance he turned on his brother was full of kindly emotion. He
went along and patted Hiram on his broad back.
“There’ll be plenty of time for us to talk it all over, Hime,” he
murmured. “I know I shall understand. Let’s go home. I’m still in the
old house.” Then with the New England ability to repress emotion he
stood back and ran his eye over his brother.
“Well, you certainly aren’t ‘Bean-Pole Look’ any longer,” he cried in
his usual cheery tones, loud enough for all to hear.
“And you’ve stocked up yourself, Phin,” returned his brother, with a
rather watery smile. “The Looks usually get pussy after forty.”
Uncle Buck was the first of the crowd to stick out his hand.
“I’d know you anywhere for Hime Look, in spite of your plug hat and your
weepin’ wilier whiskers,” he cried brusquely. “You ain’t been what
you’d exactly call neighbourly last twenty or twenty-five years,” he
suggested, with a meaning cock of his eyebrow.
“I didn’t ask permission of the Palermo Tobacker Chawin’ League to go
away, and I ain’t asking its permission to come back!” retorted Hiram,
bridling.
“Still got your meat-axe temper along, I notice,” said Buck, drily.
“See here,” shouted the new arrival, “we won’t start into any of those
old rows, good people.”
He assumed the tone of the showman “barking” at the door of a tent, as
though the habit of long years obsessed him. Apparently he could not
talk to several persons in any other tone. The throng crowding about him
suggested all his usual environment. “Best to have our general wind-up
at the start-off,” he declared, running his eye over them; “we’ll drive
every tent peg right now. Here I am home again from the wide, wide
world, and it’s no one’s business except mine why I’ve come. I own this
gear,” a flourish of his hand toward the waggons and the reeking horses,
“and why I’ve brought ’em here is my own business, too. Ask me no
questions and I’ll tell you no lies. You needn’t blink and scowl at
me--any of you. I ain’t proud of the way I left this town, but I want to
have an understanding here and now. It’s this: The man who proposes to
remind me of my going away or my staying away will get what I gave Klebe
Willard, and I hope it wasn’t too long ago for you to remember it, one
and all.” He clenched his fist and shook it at them. “Yes, I’m just the
same old Hime Look, rough and bluff and gruff and tough! No one likes
me, and probably no one ever will, and I don’t care! But I can pay my
bills.” He rapped this at them, adding an oath like a whipcrack.
A murmur that was almost a growl ran among his listeners, who now
numbered a score. “Yes, I did slide out and leave my debts, and I held
this town up good and hard, hey? Well, I ain’t crawling back on my hands
and knees to you, good people; I’ve come with the goods.” He ripped
open his duster and, twisting his tall form and screwing his mouth as he
tussled at the job, he pulled a big wallet from under his coat tails--a
wallet so fat, so puffy, so rotund that it seemed fairly to groan at its
strap and puff with plethora.
The Squire gently seized his brother by the arm, endeavouring to say
something to him in an undertone. But that over-wrought person wrenched
away and shouted, as he waved his wallet above his head: “No, Phin,
it aint no use to hush-baby me. I’ve got to say it to ’em. I’ve
been thinking of it too long. It’s boilin’ in me. I always was too
mouthy--I’m too mouthy now, and I know it, but I can’t help it. I’m
just Hime Look, and I have to talk or bust. They’ve had their chance to
lambaste me for twenty-five years behind my back. Now I’m going to talk
to their faces.”
Excitedly he tore open the wallet. Packets of bills stuffed every
compartment--packets tied with bands and squeezed flat.
With his wallet clutched in one hand and as many of the packets as
he could grip with the other, he went around the little circle of
bystanders, flapping the ends of the bills under their dodging noses.
“Smell of it!” he roared. “Don’t it smell good? Look at it! Don’t it
look good? If you could eat it, ’twould taste good, you old droolers!
Did you ever see so much money before in Palermo? No, you never did.
Now, all you that have a claim against me of any kind, meet me at my
brother’s office any time after to-day, with your interest figured
compound at six per cent. No; reckon it better’n that--and even then
I’ll give you a bonus on top. You’ll never be able to sneer again behind
Hime Look’s back, you of Palermo. Bring your claims, good people!”
“It’s the old army game, gents!” screamed the gray parrot.
Again the Squire tried anxiously to lead his brother away out of the
circle. Perspiration dripped from under the showman’s tall hat. His
sound eye blazed.
The other goggled fiercely. It was the anger of a man who was raging
as much at himself and at the memory of mistakes and faults as at his
auditors, the anger of a man who knew in his own heart that he was not
as worthy as these yokels whom he had left behind him in the old home.
He wanted to storm down the criticism and the blame that he feared--to
scare them into silence. Under it all was shame--the shame of a
domineering man who is ashamed to feel shame.
“Hime,” pleaded his brother, “let’s not talk this over in public any
longer. The people of Palermo are all good friends of ours. They haven’t
been talking about you.”
“No, they haven’t talked about you--that’s right,” shrilled Uncle Buck,
who had advanced closely. “No, they’ve thought you was dead--and dead
men of your calibre ain’t worth much talkin’ about.”
Hiram whirled away from his brother’s restraint and glowered at the
doughty old man.
“I ain’t one mite afraid of you, Hime,” barked Lysimachus, thumping down
his cane. “This is the same stick I’ve put across you when I ketched you
stealin’ my apples, and if you tackle me I’ll slash you again, though
you was grown taller’n Haman.”
He came close to the furious man.
“You might’s well shet up your wallet,” he said; “P’lermo ain’t
sufferin’ for your money, much of it as you seem to have.”
“That money won’t be put up till my debts are paid,” shouted Hiram.
The old man’s fishy eye bored him with a significance he could not
understand. It was evident that Lysimachus had a trump card.
“You can’t pay, dum ye!” shrieked Uncle Buck, now furious in his turn,
with the hysterical rage of the senile.
“Why can’t I?” This also was bawled.
“Because your old father mortgaged his farm after you run away, and then
after he died your brother Phin worked and paid off every cent that was
owed.”
“Twenty can play as well as one!” said the gray parrot.
Hiram, both hands still full of money, rubbed his forearm across his
eyes, into which sweat was streaming. His movement knocked off his hat,
and it rolled unheeded in the dust. Pitiful bewilderment wrinkled his
face.
“And if you’ve never heard of all that, then you can’t have been any
decenter about writin’ home and lettin’ your own know about you than you
have been about other things I could name.”
Hiram stood, his arms hanging at his side, his lower jaw drooping, his
eye shuttling from face to face evasively.
“Kind o’ makes you drop your tail, Hime--that, eh?” jeered Amazeen from
his place in the crowd.
As Hiram still drooped there, Uncle Buck ran his cane into the fallen
hat, lifted it with a deft toss, ran his elbow around its nap, and set
it on Hiram’s head, standing on tip-toe to do it.
The man never moved or blinked.
“There’s your plug hat, Hime,” he said. “It fell off, and pride goeth
before a fall.”
At the anti-climax the crowd haw-hawed with the jovial unrestraint of
rural jokers.
The Squire’s face was very grave. He came along, gently took the
wallet and the money from his brother’s hands, tucked the packets away,
restrapped the wallet and stuffed it back into the hip pocket. Hiram
still remained motionless, except for the blinking eye that now looked
straight at the ground.
Phineas turned to his townsmen:
“Folks,” he said, “I don’t think my brother Hime meant all he said. He
was excited and wrought up by coming home, and it was a hard place to
put any man in, to meet the old townsmen again as he has had to do. But
you see he has come back bringing the money to pay, and I know you are
going to give him the credit of his good intentions. We will talk it
over some time later, friends. Now I want you to come along home with
me, Hime.”
He pushed his brother along toward the big waggon.
“And you done what old Lys says you done?” asked the elder brother
suddenly. There was a queer indrawing of the breath after the query. The
Squire did not reply.
“God, I ain’t fit for phosphate!” blurted the showman despairingly.
“Shame and pride and my dirty disposition--and not writin’--nor nothin,’
thinkin’ you had soured on me--and lettin’ you and dad--oh, Phin, you
poor little cuss!”
Down over the hard face that had cynically fronted the world for twenty
years from the barker’s rostrum, into the trailing whiskers filtered the
tears. This middle-aged, solid, lawyer brother had not as yet assumed
his proper perspective in the mind of his elder brother, who had left
him a stripling. Hiram did not try to hide his grief from those who
stared at him.
“Ain’t I a specimen!” he whimpered.
“I think you are beginnin’ to improve _some_,” said Uncle Buck, bluntly.
“Your wife won’t want to see me,” moaned Hiram. “I ain’t fit to meet
her.”
The crowd laughed anew, for this seemed the best joke of all. The lawyer
smiled, but it was a wistful smile.
“I’m the pickedest old bach in town, so set that I even do my own
cooking, Hime,” he said. “It is all about the same as it used to be
at the old place. There’s plenty of room in the barn for all this,” he
nodded toward the waggons, “and plenty to eat for us all--I guess,” he
added, with a facetious look at the elephant, and that started the laugh
again.
Hiram turned to the crowd as though to address them, but he clutched
at his throat, shook his head pathetically, and stumbled toward the big
waggon.
“You ain’t the worst feller in the world, Hime,” called a voice
encouragingly. ’Twas Marriner Amazeen’s. “But you can’t sass us here
in P’lermo any more’n you useter could.”
There was a general mumble, in a more hospitable tone, for the
prodigal’s evident contrition had touched them. He threw up his hand and
again shook his head despondently.
“It’s a blamed queer outfit to haul into any man’s door-yard, Phin,” he
said at last, with wistful apology, as he noticed his brother looking at
the elephant with no very eager enthusiasm; “but I’ll fix it right with
you.”
He did not remount his seat, but secured a hook from under the big
waggon, walked to the elephant and stuck the hook into a slit in the
beast’s ragged ear. With a creak and a groan the parade started, the
weary horses dragging at the heels of the scuffing pachyderm. Chattering
boys spatted along barefoot in the dusty road before, beside, behind;
the villagers attended along the sidewalk, and women stood at front
gates holding up the little ones to see.
The Squire plodded at his brother’s side, his hands behind his back, and
Eli waddled near with cautious eye bent on the huge animal.
And thus, after twenty-five years of wandering, returned Palermo’s queer
genius, hot-headed Hiram Look, a showman from the time he took pins for
admission from his schoolfellows at the door of a tent made of shorts’
sacks, and that was when he wore dresses and had his flaxen hair combed
in a “Boston.”
A little way beyond Brickett’s store the elms grew close and tall,
stretching their graceful arms across the street. Back from these elms
on a gentle slope of lawn stood the Judge Collamore Willard house, the
mansion of the village, a square structure of brick, dyed by many years
of weather to a sombre red.
The inmates of this dignified house evidently had been affected by
the general excitement caused by the halt of the caravan in front of
Brickett’s store.
A tall, gaunt old man, whose frock coat flapped about his skinny legs,
hurried down the gravelled path to the street, and as the head of the
parade approached he opened the iron gate and came out to the side of
the highway.
“What’s all this?” he piped in falsetto, addressing one of the villagers
who were marching along the sidewalk.
“Hime Look’s come back and brought his circus,” said the passer. The old
man started, and his thin lips closed viciously.
As the showman’s eyes fell upon the old man his face also grew set and
hard.
“Ain’t old Coll Willard gone to be a moneychanger in hell yet?” he
snarled.
The Squire was looking toward the house and did not answer. A woman
stood on the front porch, gazing under her palm. Even from the road the
grace of her figure showed itself. The soft, light material that drooped
away from her upraised arm left its rounded contour and whiteness
outlined against the dark hair.
“Hiram Look!” echoed the old man, and he came straight into the middle
of the road and stood there, trying to hold himself erect, propping his
hand on his back at the waist. He made no move to step aside, and the
showman was forced to halt his animals.
“And so it’s Hiram Look come home again?” he rasped, his thin nostrils
fluttering. “And how is it he comes parading, instead of sneaking over
the back fences as he ought?” He was talking over the showman’s head to
the villagers.
The spirit of assertion seemed to have dropped from Hiram. He shook so
violently that he set his hand against the elephant to steady himself.
“Judge!” The Squire advanced close to the old man and spoke low. “My
brother is considerably unstrung by things that have just happened.
Don’t say anything to him now, please don’t! If something must be said
later about the old times there’ll be plenty of chance to say it. Wait!”
His tone was mild and entreating, but Willard still disdained to glance
at him.
“If some one hasn’t told Hiram Look what Palermo thinks of him, it’s
time for it to be done, townsmen!” shrieked Willard, his face white, his
lips drawn back over some obtrusive false teeth.
The Squire turned toward the distant figure on the porch, appeal and
apology in his eyes, though he realised that she could not witness his
emotions.
“Better for you to have stayed with the husks and the swine, Hiram Look.
You thought you left him for dead, my boy Kleber. Don’t you tell me! You
wanted to kill him. My poor boy! To leave me in my old age without my
son! And the scar of it on his face to-day! There’s a law for you yet,
Hiram Look--a law to make you suffer for that scar. A pretty pair--yes,
a pretty pair! Old Seth Look’s pair of steers! And Hiram would have
robbed my boy of a wife, and Phin Look thought he could steal my
daughter. Now, I’ll tell you both----”
“No, you won’t tell us--not here in the face and eyes of every one
in Palermo!” roared Hiram. “I’m ready for your tongue and your law at
fittin’ time and place, Coll Willard, but this ain’t the time. I told
your son twenty-five years ago that there was such a thing as talking
too damn much--and he still talked. Don’t you do it to-day.”
“Do you want to put your mark on the father’s face?” the old man
shrieked, hobbling close and poking forward his weasened visage. “Strike
me! Kill me! It’s your style, Hiram Look. And it’s your brother’s style
to lallygag after a girl that wouldn’t use him for a doormat. The two of
you are----”
The showman could restrain himself no longer. He had stood with feet
apart as though to root himself in the ground. His hands were hooked
behind him.
He hadn’t lost the whole of that Palermo instinct of deference toward
the village plutocrat and autocrat who had dominated them all for so
many years, even as other Willards had ruled before him. But the choler
that drove him forward was the rage of a man who had never learned
self-control. His brother leaped to prevent him, but he seized the old
man, whipped him off the ground, rushed across the sidewalk and tossed
him over the iron fence upon his own lawn, where he lay squawking feebly
like a frightened fowl.
The Squire followed, gasping appealing protest, and he stood there
clutching the rusty points of the fence when the woman came hastening
from the porch.
“I don’t think the Judge is’ hurt a bit, Sylvena,” he faltered. “But he
provoked Hime’s awful temper, and I couldn’t stop it.”
Judge Willard had scrambled to his feet, snarling at her when she came
to aid him. His rage was now the hysteria of the aged, but after gasping
wordlessly he turned and went toward the house. Hiram, his head bowed
as though he were ashamed of his burst of rage, had started his caravan,
and the crowd followed. Squire Phin remained.
The woman across the fence was mature, yet she had that appearance of
freshness that spinsterhood under forty years preserves in the little
details. Her face had been flushed by her haste, and the colour crept up
to the dark hair, that had just a touch of frost at the temples.
“And it is your brother come home, Phineas?” she asked, gazing after the
picturesque spectacle.
“It is Hiram.” His tone was wistful.
“He seems to be fully as--as muscular as ever,” she said, with a little
flash of her eyes.
As he seemed searching his mind for suitable apology, she said hastily:
“And I also know what father is, Phineas. I can understand. It is
nothing that you have done. But it all seems to be beginning over again,
and I hoped it was ended.”
“I guess it’s like the fire in old Ward’s peat bog,” he replied, a
wrinkle of humour about his eyes. “It has been burning for twenty years
underground and breaks out every little while. I can sympathise with
Ward’s peat bog,” he added. “Every now and then, when I think it’s cold
and dead and stamped out--my own particular smoulder, you know--there’s
a breath of remembrance, when I see you, and I’m all afire again inside.
Hard case, isn’t it?”
He didn’t allow his tone to be too serious.
“It isn’t well to speak of such things, Phineas. And not in that way!
Somehow, it hasn’t come right for you and me. We mustn’t blame each
other. It hasn’t seemed to be our fault.” She cast a glance at the
waggons toiling up the street. He gazed at the old man, who had paused
half way across the lawn and was querulously shouting “Daughter!”
The Squire leaned a bit further over the fence.
“I guess it has been ten years, Sylvena,” he said, “since I’ve let you
see my fire break through the crust. I didn’t intend to let it show
again, for I know your heart is tender. I don’t blame you for feeling
that a daughter owes much to a widowed father. I’d be the last to break
up a family. I haven’t any right to blame you. Don’t worry about me,
ever. But I can’t seem to forget, and while I keep on loving you I am
having an awfully good time all by myself doing so.”
With frank impulsiveness the woman came close to the fence and patted
his big hand that clutched the iron paling. But this frankness in her
action, her demeanour, and in the free and honest gaze she gave him, did
not console him.
“Still you’re ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ Sylvena,” he said, half whimsically,
half bitterly.
The old man had returned part way down the broad lawn, and was yelping
“Daughter!” in his thin voice with increasing impatience.
She smiled at the Squire as though the jest of his last words were one
well understood between them.
“No, only an old maid, Phineas,” she replied, softly. “Sometimes I think
that old maids are like poets--born, not made.”
“But you’ve let ’em make _you_ one,” he retorted. “It isn’t often I
speak of it, Sylvena. You know that. It has been enough for me to
walk the same streets with you and have a smile and a word of
friendliness---it’s enough most of the time. But my heart has been
stirred to-day, and all the old feelings are on top. You have let that
stingy old man----” he shook his fist at the Judge, who returned this
salute with great spirit, “rob you of the best that a woman ought to
have--and that’s a home and a good husband. Oh, I am not speaking of
myself!” he cried, his colour coming and a sort of boyish embarrassment
overwhelming him. “I don’t know how to say such things very well, but
I didn’t mean myself. I never could wake ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ But if the
prince himself had come along your father would have driven him away so
that he could continue to monopolise your loyalty and devotion. The
only reason he wants you to marry King Bradish is because he knows that
Bradish will sit outside like a pup and wait until he opens the door.”
The Squire was thoroughly angry. The spectacle of the old man hobbling
down the lawn and calling at them as though they were offending children
exasperated him.
“Forgive me, Sylvena,” he choked, breaking in upon her pained and
somewhat indignant protest. “But, being a Look, I am pretty much human.
You can’t stop me from loving you. God knows I can’t stop myself. I’d
like to be able to put out my hand and say to you ‘Sister!’ and look at
you as you look at me, but I can’t do it!”
“From the time I was fifteen years old, Phineas,” she said wistfully, “I
was mother to my mother!” A picture of the frail paralytic in her wheel
chair rose before him. “I took her place in our home when she died--yes,
before she died. It is a sacred promise that a girl makes to a mother,
Phineas, when that mother, helpless as an infant, trusts her, believes
her and goes smiling down into the grave, securely depending on that
promise.”
The Judge was close upon them.
“I didn’t hardly expect you to marry me, Sylvena,” said the Squire,
gazing gloomily at the old man.
“I’ve never dared to think much about marrying any one,” she said, her
eyes straying to the caravan in its halo of dust. “Somehow, it hasn’t
seemed to come right.”
“Some day there’ll be a man come along and you’ll know what it means to
be willing to give up every other thing in this world and not be able to
think about letting any one else step between you, and as it will have
to be a mighty good man to make you feel that way, I’ll step up then and
give you the best word I have, Sylvena, and perhaps I can begin to feel
like a brother toward you. I’m generous enough to pray God that you may
feel that way sometime.”
“No wonder you’re trying to beg off your brother, Phineas Look,”
shrilled the Judge, interposing himself between them. He had caught a
word of the Squire’s speech as he came up. “But you can’t do it! The
law is going to take him. I’ll see that it does.” He whirled on his
daughter. “Why do you stand here talking with this man when you know
what he and his tribe are and how they have always treated us?”
She had taken his arm and was trying to lead him away, aware of the
futility of argument or even reply.
“You can’t come around this family, Phin Look,” stormed the Judge, “by
wheedling a girl who hasn’t had self-respect enough to spit on----”
“Judge Willard!” The voice of the Squire was so tense, so pregnant, that
the old man stopped and looked at him. The lawyer was clutching a paling
in each hand. He had projected his face over the fence. He was grayish
white, and his eyes glowed under their knotted brows. “Don’t you discuss
the honest and faithful friendship there is between your daughter and
myself. Do you understand me?” The old man looked at him, “plipping” his
lips as though searching for a reply.
“You have hogged the best out of her life. You have stood between her
and some man’s honest affection. I want you to know that I hate every
ounce of your stingy old skin and bones. I----” but he checked himself
and turned to the daughter with an appealing smile breaking through the
white rigidity of his countenance. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” he murmured, with a wag
of his head for each exclamation. “What a savage old whelp it is that’s
barking over your fence, Sylvena. Forgive me again.”
He turned hastily and went up the street, following the caravan. Old
Eli, who had been patiently waiting on the sidewalk’s edge, fell in at
his master’s heels.
And before him was Hiram guiding the grotesque elephant between the
great silver poplars before Squire Phin’s lonely home.