“Old Widder Bugg was a-weanin’ her ca’f,
Used ha’f for herself and the ca’f had ha’f,
But he bellered all day and he blatted all night,
And he hollered for his rations so tough and tight,
That the widder she fed him one last, square meal,
And the next he knowed he was peddled for veal.
Oh, nice little ca’ves that is bein’ weaned,
Shouldn’t keep blattin’ when the cow’s been dreened.”
--Effort by “Rhymester” Tuttle.
Of the four strap-bottomed “company chairs” in Squire Look’s office,
“three had spavins and the other the blind staggers,” as old Uncle
Lysimachus Buck expressed it. But by dint of balancing on the sound legs
or bracing against the wall at the right angle, or by extreme care in
easing one’s self into a safe position, the loafers who dropped in to
smoke managed to worry along. When the wood box cover was shut down
that made a seat for two. As for clients, when the chairs were occupied
clients were glad to roost on a corner of the big table and rap their
heels with great ease of manner and comfort of person.
The Squire’s visitors sat down and as promptly lighted their pipes.
“As I was tellin’ ye, Squire, the other day,” began Marriner Amazeen,
after pausing to quack briskly at his pipe stem to kindle the waning
lire, “I don’t see what in sanup ye was thinkin’ of to torch Watson
Mayo up to marry that hity-tity-flighty little fool for. The minister
wouldn’t marry ’em and you done it, and so of course the Mayos lay
the blame to you.” He made great show of resentment. Buck apparently had
much trouble in refraining from grinning.
The ’Squire, who had been feeding the stove, dusted his hands smartly
and pudged slowly back to his armchair without replying. He picked up
his pipe, surveyed a match, end to end, preparatory to scratching it, a
quizzical pucker about his mouth.
“You remember the time Benson Wallace had all his new grading washed
away by the cloudburst, ’Mad’?”
Amazeen nodded grimly. He did not relish Squire Look’s illustrations.
“Well, Bens’ came bootin’ down to the office here and wanted me to sue
Deacon Bassett, who had been praying for rain to fill his mill-pond.
Laid the whole damage of the cloudburst to the deacon’s power of
supplication. I don’t have anything to do with these love cloudbursts
around here.”
“But you encouraged the cussed fools--torch ’em on,” persisted
Amazeen.
“No, it’s a chap named Hymen that carries the torch, ’Mad’. In Wat’s
case I wasn’t even actuated by a mercenary motive, for he owned up that
he didn’t have the fee, and he hasn’t paid me yet, and he probably never
will.”
“And them’s the kind of double-hitches you’re throwing the harness
over!” sneered Amazeen.
“She’s handsomer than the chromo picture on a calendar--you’ve got to
say that about the snippet,” commented Lysimachus Buck, desiring to
provoke the Squire to retort.
“You’d ought to ’a’ plunked advice right to him not to do it, Squire,”
sputtered Amazeen. “It has raised the devil with him--and he wasn’t none
too bright before. Who knows anything about an industrial school girl
like her? She don’t know nothin’ about herself. I tell you, it’s been a
hard pill for the Mayos to swaller. Their only boy clearin’ out like
he done, leavin’ a good, comf’table home and now only a swipe in Jote
Bradley’s livery stable!”
The lawyer leaned back in his chair, and, hooking his leg over the arm,
softly scratched the back of the appreciative old dog with dangling boot
toe.
“Eli, here, has often remarked to me,” he said, squinting up at the
cracked ceiling, the quizzical pucker still at his mouth corners, “that
I let love as a special pleading overrule exceptions right along.
“I do really suppose I have done a master sight of malicious mischief
in the world by marrying these young critters that are fighting the
old folks and don’t dare to flee to the parsons, and haven’t a single,
reasonable, sensible, _business_ excuse for getting married, except that
they’ve fallen in love themselves instead of waiting and letting the
farms or the fishing schooners be introduced to each other by the old
folks and fall in love. There’s nothing prettier in this world, ’Mad,’
than a hundred and twenty acre farm sighing with its corn tassels and a
neighbouring farm rippling back an answer with its oat heads, and
both of ’em getting so much in love with one another that it is only
necessary for the young folks to get together and ratify the match and
count the wedding presents.”
Old Amazeen snorted disgustedly. “There ain’t no more practicality to
you, Squire, than there is to a June bug tryin’ to butt the moon. I tell
ye, proputty has got to be considered first!”
The Squire still gazed meditatively at the ceiling through the tobacco
smoke.
“’Mad’,” he said, in that half-jesting tone that many Palermo
literalists characterised as ‘too free and easy for a lawyer,’
“you’ve loafed here a good deal and I’ve heard you comment on most
of the Palermo vital statistics--births and deaths and marriages.
Now here’s the difference between you and Eli, here. You say, ‘Huh!
’nother brat got along down to So-and-so’s, and only last week she was
rapping out Hungryman’s ratty-too on the bottom of the flour-barrel
with her rolling-pin, trying to dust down enough for another batch of
biscuit!’ But Eli comes in, wags his tail and says to me: ‘Just came
past So-and-so’s and their dog Gyp said to me that he’d slyed in a few
minutes before and kissed the new baby on the cheek with the tip of his
tongue. Said the new baby tickled right out into the funniest little
snicker!’ Gyp said: ‘Old man, we’re all a little short just now,
’count of extra expenses and excitement and all that, you know, or I’d
ask you to have dinner with me in honor of the occasion, but we’re going
to pitch in again in dead earnest, and I’m going to run the dog churn
over to the custom dairy, and, say! for one snicker a day from that baby
I’ll trot my legs off.’”
“’Mad’, as you say it: ‘A couple more fools married before they had a
shot in their locker.’ And Eli says: ‘I happened to drop in behind that
young Davis couple in the narrow path, and though I wasn’t trying to
listen to secrets, I did hear him say: “Little wife, you aren’t sorry
you married a poor man, are you?”’”
“All that people want money for,” said she, “is to buy just such
happiness as we possess now. And their money doesn’t buy it, after
all. And we don’t have to say ‘mine’ and ‘your’ about our love. It’s
all--_ours_--and that’s a blessed word.” And then she stood on tiptoe
and pulled his head down--and if I hadn’t run up over the bank then I’d
have deserved to have a tin can tied to my tail.’
“’Mad’, you say: ‘Well, old Brown has got done! I hear he wasn’t wuth
much property--hain’t leavin’ much behind.’ And Eli comes in with head
and tail down: ‘It’s the husband of that good, old Missus Brown that’s
dead--the lady that has set out so many plates of grub for me. The plate
wasn’t on the back porch this morning, but I sat there a little while
and I heard some one inside talking low and he said: “There was never
a man in this town who left so many friends when he died. And he left a
memory that’s worth leaving--never a mean act nor a sneaking trick nor a
gouge in a trade! Property? Oh, I don’t know. You never thought of that
when you thought of him. I only know that he used wisely the good things
he found on earth in his reach as he went along, without seeing how much
he could keep away from his neighbours.”’”
Old man Amazeen rapped out his pipe ashes and looked at the Squire
sullenly.
“Because I’ve tug-a-lugged all my life and got a little money out at
interest, I s’pose you’re gittin’ in a dig at me, too,” he growled.
“No, we were talking about young Mayo marrying Damaris Scott,” returned
Phineas, cheerily, “and you were saying, or intimating, that when
two such poor love-sick young critters come to me and want to own the
privilege of walking down life, hand in hand and heart to heart, I ought
first to inventory their property and their prospects.”
The waver in his voice, the depth of his significance was lost on the
old man.
“He gave up a good home, and where did they live the first month after
they were married?” Amazeen struck his hand on his patched knee. “Where
did they live, I say? In one of Bradley’s box stalls that Wat Mayo
tacked burlap ’round to keep out the draughts. And they ain’t much
better off now down in that Sykes’ rent, living on bannock bread and
fighting wharf rats. _There’s_ one of your--“, old Ama-zeen wrinkled
his nose and brought the word out of his nostrils with a sardonic
twist--“_love_ matches, Phin Look, and there’s worse than that on the
docket.”
Amazeen stumped across the room to the front window. “Huh! That’s queer!
He’s coming across the street now,” he said, with a chuckle and a wink
directed at Uncle Lysimachus.
Squire Phin understood why the two old men turned their backs on him,
hunching their shoulders and shaking with suppressed mirth as the
uncertain footsteps of Mayo blundered up the outside stairs.
He was a tall and scrawny young man with black hair parted in the middle
and spatted down on his head, presenting twin surfaces as shiny as the
wings of a beetle. A thin moustache drooped over a weak mouth, and
his eyes had that bland, vacant arch above them that irritates one’s
common-sense. Stupid, smug, self-satisfied, and spoiled--the only child
of the hard-working village carpenter, he had always worn better clothes
than any other boy in Palermo, had never been allowed to work, and had
posed as a village beau. He was just the one to attract a girl fresh
from the half-penal restraint of the State industrial school and “bound
out” as a drudge to a Palermo family.
From the time when Phineas Look began first impatiently to notice the
youth loafing along the street, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip,
the sight made him angry--not with the boy, but with the parents that
were ruining him. Once he had bluntly pitched into Ezra Mayo, and from
the indignant retorts of that fond parent discovered that he vaguely
prized Watson’s stupid idleness as something aristocratic.
The fact that they now referred to this marriage as they would to an
especially sudden and fatal attack of the bubonic plague, and refused to
admit that they still had a son, appealed to the offended lawyer by its
humour rather than otherwise.
“You’ve been trying to swim in a puddle of molasses, you poor devil,” he
muttered as young Mayo came shuffling across the room. The faded glories
of his worn clothing were eloquent of what had happened in his fortunes.
His coat was ripped in the arm seam, the cuffs were frayed, but he wore
his big puff tie of baby blue, and the pungent effluvia of the stable
was toned down by cheap perfume that surrounded him like impalpable fog.
“That smell’s thick enough to cut,” murmured old Amazeen to Uncle Buck,
fingers squeezing his nostrils. The woe-begone visage of the client
stirred spasms of silent mirth in the old men.
“Well, Wat, how’s the bride?” inquired Squire Phin, with heartiness.
“And there wasn’t any hurry about your paying me that two dollars, if
that’s what you’re come in for.”
“I ain’t come to pay you no two dollars,” returned the youth, gloomily.
“First place, I ain’t got it; second place, it ain’t as I expected it
was goin’ to be.”
A subdued “tchock” sounded in the nose of Amazeen.
“Let’s see. You’re speaking now of your marriage and not of your job,
as I understand it,” suggested the Squire, relighting his pipe;
“though--ump-foo--ump-foo--I should say you’d better save such talk for
the job.”
“Well, I’m sort of speakin’ of the two together,” stammered the young
man.
“I reckon you’d better begin to dissociate your wife from the livery
stable, Watson,” drily advised the Squire, “even though you did start
housekeeping there. Now, you’ll remember that you came to me bringing
the prettiest girl I ever saw, and you told me that it wouldn’t be worth
while for you to try to live if you didn’t have her. You don’t mean to
come here now, do you, and tell me that you don’t love her?”
“’Tain’t that,” he blurted; “oh, ’tain’t that, Squire. It’s because
I love her so much and--and--well, somehow it’s all going wrong and I’m
afraid she don’t love me. It has kind of taken the gimp out o’ me.
I didn’t think dad and ma would stand out so long--and _she_ didn’t,
either, and I ain’t got no trade so I can hold down some good job, and
she ain’t satisfied with me. No, she ain’t, Squire. If dad and ma would
only take me home--if you would see ’em and fix it and----”
“Look here, Watson.” Look threw himself forward and drove his fists on
the table with an emphasis that started the dust. “That’s why I married
you off, you fool, to get you out of leading-strings, to make a man of
you, instead of a puppy, loafing around our streets and chasing home to
your mother’s doughnut jar three times a day. Even old Eli, here, knows
how to carry home a bone for _himself_, but you hadn’t even done that
for _yourself_ up to the time you were married. And I gave you something
you wanted, something to work for, something that every man needs to
make a true man of himself, except when he’s a tough old bach like me.
Now what are you whining about?”
Phineas Look’s reading of his own “heart-docket” the day before had not
inclined him over-much to amiability toward this particular variety of
ingrate. His tone was peremptory and he scowled.
“I can’t earn no kind of a livin’,” Mayo stammered.
“And you probably never will so long as you stay a chambermaid in a
livery stable. Great God, is that the limit of your ambition or your
enterprise? A man with a wife he loves, with two strong hands and a will
to get-there-Eli, to come sniveling like this! Hunt your work! Buckle
to it! That’s what will make something better of you, boy, than Mayo’s
housedog.”
The taunt was wasted, for the youth persisted in his stubborn lament.
“She says now she wouldn’t have married me if she didn’t think we’d be
taken care of better.”
“What kind of cussed notions did you put in her head?” the lawyer
stormed. “If you lied to her, Watson, it’s up to you to square yourself
now by making good. Do so well by her that she’ll love you and respect
you for yourself. Don’t make me sorry that I cut your dog-leash before
your parents plumb ruined you.”
Young Mayo cast a furtive look at the two old men, and leaning over the
table murmured, his lips trembling:
“I tell you, Squire, she scares me. She says it has come to her in a
vision that she has a mother--a lady mother, somewhere, all in silks
and satins, and she’s seen her in a vision with her diamond thing on her
head. And most ev’ry night she wakes and sits up in bed and reaches up
her arms and says her lady mother just asked her to come, Squire Phin,
and she’s a-goin’. Yes, s’r, she’s a-goin’ some time and I’m scared and
I ain’t got no ambition and I can’t buy her no good clothes, and I sold
my watch and scarfpin to give her money. My Gawd, Squire, she’s a-goin’
and I can’t live without her, nohow.”
Perspiration streamed down his quivering face and his lips “guffled”
tremulously. All the smugness and self-satisfaction were gone now, and
for the first time the lawyer saw the Mayo boy in all his wretched,
discouraging inefficiency. With a pang of self-reproach he reflected
that some natures cannot stand stiff doses--and his remedy for making
over a man had certainly been a heroic one. As he pondered, he fell into
his characteristic attitude, hands clutched into the long locks of his
gray hair, his elbows on the table. He gazed into the pathos of that
quivering face and studied it as he would the page of an open book. The
little office was very still.
“Blorh-hum!” coughed Amazeen, and he proceeded, addressing no one in
particular: “When I was a boy, goin’ to school, there was a family named
Bragg that lived clust to us, and they had a boy named Ximenus--that was
it, Ximenus Bragg. Them Braggs they was poorer--poorer’n Pooduc, but the
old man had to have his three dogs, and fin’ly Ximenus was took with a
craze for music and nothin’ would do but what he’d got to have a snare
drum. And he teased and he coaxed. Old Bragg hadn’t the gumption to
plunk his foot right down and say ‘No,’ but he’d whine and argue
with the boy and say that with winter a-comin’ on he’d ought to have
long-legged boots instead of a drum. Finally Old Bragg told Ximenus that
if he would go without the boots and not whine, he could have the drum,
and the drum he did get, by gorry. I s’pose that for a couple of days
there never was a more tickleder boy. He ratty-tooed and ratty-tummed
and long-rolled and biffed and banged and et his meals off’n the head
of the thing and kept at it till his ma was so near drove crazy that she
chased him out doors with the rollingpin and threatened to bust in the
head of that drum if he ever put stick to it ag’in in the house.
“There it was, late fall and the snow beginning to fly, and I’ll never
forget the sight Ximenus made standin’ out there on the cold door stone
on one foot and holding the other foot to the calf of his leg to warm
it, and then shifting feet to get the other warm, and drumming away all
the time, trying to keep his courage up and make himself believe that
he loved music and the drum and was glad he had it instead of them new
long-legged boots.”
“Beats all about some critters, don’t it?” commented Uncle Buck, after
listening to this tale with much interest.
“It does that,” returned Amazeen.
The Squire had not taken his eyes from the Mayo boy’s face.
“Bub,” he said softly, “they meant well--your folks--but--damn ’em for
fools.
“Are you and the little one hungry?” he asked in a half whisper after a
time, careful that the old men did not overhear.
“We ain’t suff’rin’ none, Squire, but we don’t have meat vittles
nor nothin’ the same’s I had at----” but as the hard lines crinkled
ominously around the lawyer’s gray eyes he stopped confusedly.
Shielding himself from the scrutiny of Buck and Amazeen behind the youth
who still leaned over the table, Squire Phin straightened his leg and
cautiously ran his hand into his trousers pocket. After a period of
fumbling he slid his hand along the table, slipped a bill into the palm
by which the young man was propping himself, squeezed the fingers down
over it, and said with a tenderness almost parental:
“Go buy a good, meat dinner to-day, son, and have plenty of meat hash
for supper, and perhaps the little one will sleep so soundly that the
lady mother can’t disturb her. Take good heart. As Eli, here, says: ‘The
harder you have to dig after a woodchuck, the better your appetite is
when you get him.’ We’ll see what can be done. Now straighten up. Throw
back your shoulders. Cock your knee every time you step, just like your
best livery horse--the best ‘letter,’ you know--the one all the folks
ask for. Hold up your chin and show ’em it’s natural and not a
check-rein habit. Remember all the time that you’re young, life’s ahead
of you, and the prettiest girl in Palermo is your wife. That’s the way
to face the world. Tail over the dasher. Now out and at it!”
And seizing the youth by the arm, he marched him to the door, thwacking
his broad palm between his shoulders at every step.
When Squire Phin turned and came back to his table he knotted his
eyebrows and glared at the two old men.
“Now wipe those Chessy cat grins off your faces,” he snapped. “I see
through your hectoring scheme. But you watch me. I’ll sooner or later
put that marriage along with the others I’ve pigeon-holed under the
label ‘Successes.’”
Amazeen turned to Buck. “The Squire wants to have all his marriage
certificates hold up like his title deeds, Lys--legal, binding, and good
for all time. But you mustn’t get touchy with us, Phin. It isn’t very
often that you marry a fool tumble-bug to a butterfly. Howsomever,
you’ve done it this trip, and it ain’t goin’ to be a success--and it
ain’t your fault. There’s something worse than what’s showed yet goin’
to drop in that quarter or I’m no prophet. You’d better not be mixed too
close in it.”
“Go along with your tattling gossip,” cried the lawyer. “If you and
Uncle Lys haven’t anything better to do, go out and take a sun bath. I
want to study.”
“You know more law already than you need. You know it better than you
do some kinds of human nature, and I’m going to post you a little on
the last-named,” pursued Amazeen, cheerfully disregarding the rebuff.
“There’s more’n lady mothers and visions that’s makin’ Rissy Mayo
discontented.”
“Huh-huh!” grunted Look, without apparent interest, taking down a volume
of reports and spatting the dust from it.
“And I ain’t givin’ you any guess-so,” shouted Amazeen, nettled by the
lawyer’s contemptuous snort. He stood up and cracked his cane on the
floor. “I ain’t ghostin’ ’round, ’specially, nor tryin’ to pry into
my neighbours’ business, but when I’m knowin’ to a thing that’s poked
right under my nose, why, I know it. Wat Mayo has to set up ev’ry
ev’nin’, don’t he, to wait for let teams to come in? Well, he wa’n’t
out strollin’ in the Cod Lead Nubble pines all spring and summer, he and
Rissy, she a-swingin’ her hat by the ribbons, all so fine and gay--and
that was nigh ev’ry fair night. He was settin’ in the stable office
shinin’ up hames’ brass-work and nickel trimmin’s, wa’n’t he? He ain’t
meetin’ her on the South Cove road with a buff-lined Goddard, and
wearin’ a white hat with a black band, and takin’ her aboard. No, he
ain’t got any such hat, and there’s only one buff-lined Goddard in these
parts and----”
“You say you’re knowing to all that?” demanded the Squire. His gaze was
direct and glowering and his fingers gripped the volume so tightly that
they were white and bloodless.
“Not only I’m knowin’ to it, but so’s the South Cove seiners that have
their dry racks out that way.” Amazeen was defiant. The lawyer glared
at him so threateningly that he became thoroughly indignant. “And if you
want the straight facts,” he barked, “and have got to have names right
out in meetin’ to prove it ain’t just gossip, then it’s King Bradish
who is sparkin’ round the lady mother’s lovely daughter that you’ve
plastered off onto a poor boy that’s broke his people’s hearts by
gettin’ married to her. I’ve been wond’rin’ how the high-toned Sylveny
Willard would like to find that out.”
Squire Phin laid the book on the table and put his hands behind him to
hide their trembling.
“You listen a moment, Amazeen,” he said, spitting the words at the
old man; “there are limits to what a person can tell and tattle in a
community, when that telling and tattling implicates others’ good names.
You know me and you know how much you can depend on what I tell you.
If I hear another word on this matter as having been passed around the
village by you or Buck, here, I’ll give my services to King Bradish, sue
you for slander, attach every dollar’s worth you own, and, by the gods,
I’ll win my case. Now if you want your tongue to empty your pocket, go
ahead and talk.”
The old men stared at him a while and then, mumbling angrily, but
plainly intimidated, went clumping down the stairs. The Squire stood in
the middle of the office, his hands spatting each other behind him. At
last the consciousness that some one was bawling his name outside broke
upon his profound meditation.
“Squire Phin! Squire! Won’t you see here a second?” shouted Amazeen.
Look went along to the front window and threw it up. Only the old men
were in sight in the street, standing shoulder to shoulder, their faces
upturned, their beards snapping in the breeze. At this safe strategic
distance they had one more shot to fire, and their countenances showed
it. Amazeen held his hand beside his mouth and huskily whispered:
“Squire, you know--that party--the party we was talkin’ about just now?”
Sullen nod. “You needn’t sue me on his account. I won’t say nothin’.
But--Squire!” Another curt nod.
“I know that said party has owed you a settlement for quite a while, if
what folks say is true. Now, why don’t you put your bill in with
Wat’s and collect both with a”--the old man shouted the last
word--“hoss-whip?” For Squire Phin had banged down the window.