THAT CALLED SQUIRE PHIN TO THE COVE ROAD
Uncle Elnathan Shaw one day
Started down cellar, usual way,
Plannin’ in usual way to draw
Cider enough for ’foresaid Shaw;
But he happened to slip on the upper stair,
Whirled round and grabbed at the empty air,
And clear to the foot of them stairs, ker-smack,
He bumped on the bulge of his humped old back;
And his wife yelled down, as mad’s a bug:
“Ding-rat your pelt, did you break my jug?’
Micajah Dunham was pulling “six-weeks” beans in his lower lot the next
afternoon when he saw two men coming across the field toward him. With
hand at his forehead he soon recognised them--Squire Look’s sturdy
figure, and behind him the equally well-known waddling bulk of
“Sawed-off” Purday, Palermo’s local deputy sheriff.
“Hen’, just hand ’Caje that paper,” directed the Squire after the
greetings. “Then, if you’ve a mind to, go back to the team and wait
while I have a word here.”
The farmer’s face paled as he took the paper, first dragging his
earth-soiled hands across his trousers’ legs. He realised it must be a
legal document, and it frightened him.
“It isn’t often that the lawyer himself comes along with his paper,”
commented Squire Phin, “but I felt that this might need a little
elucidation--and something else, perhaps.” The farmer blinked, holding
the writing aslant. The sheet crackled and fluttered in his trembling
hands.
“I ain’t got my specs, Squire,” he said with agitation. “But I don’t owe
no money nor nothin’ to be sued for. What is it?”
“Esther has sued you for a bill of divorce,” the lawyer explained
bluntly. “Charge, cruel and abusive treatment. From what she tells me
you are knowing to the whys and wherefores.”
Dunham stumbled to a tussock and sat down. “Di-vose! Di-vose!” he
stammered. “Esther sue me? I don’t believe it. It is some kind of a
lawyer trick. Lawyers is alwa’s stirrin’ trouble, but I didn’t reckon
you was one of that kind, Squire Look.”
“Look here, ’Caje,” the lawyer’s voice was bluff and businesslike;
“it’s better for me to handle this matter than to have it left to that
young whippet over to the Corner, who’d have your heart out if he could
pile up costs that way. Now, what do you mean by volunteering in the
cause of education?” he inquired, jerking his thumb at the school house,
whose roof was visible above the rise of ground.
Micajah lowered his eyes under the keen look, visibly discomposed.
“Still she’s a-dingin’ away at that, hey?” he growled. “If you was a
school agent in a deestrick, Squire, and there was a poor, lonesome
little wusser’n-orphan critter of a schoolmarm teachin’ the school,
wouldn’t you sort of show her a few attentions so’s to keep her in the
deestrick, seein’ that the children all love her? I’ve tried to explain
to Esther, Squire, that it’s all in the way of school gov’ummunt, as you
might say, but you know what a woman is!”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand quite as well as I’d like to,” admitted
the lawyer sadly, “but as for you, I reckon you don’t know ’em at all,
’Caje. And you don’t know even your own self, you old numbhead. You’re
sitting meeching there on that tussock, and you don’t know your heart
well enough to understand whether you ought to be ashamed of your
attentions to the schoolma’am or to be proud of them, as showing that
you still have human feelings left. And the result of it all is that
you’ve blundered ’round till you’ve made your wife jealous, instead of
putting tenderness and generosity and mother-feeling into her heart. You
blind old mole, you simply don’t know---don’t know! Here! You come along
after me with that paper in your hand!”
He led the way across the field, up the apple-tree bordered lane
and into the house. There was no one in the kitchen or in the
little sitting-room, where Esther Dunham always sat at her sewing o’
afternoons, the sun filtering on her through the leaves of the window
plant? No one in the house! They searched and called, and only the
clock’s tick-tack answered in the silences.
Everything was tidied. The table had been reset after the noon meal, and
its well scoured ware glinted cheerfully. Micajah grabbed the lawyer’s
arm.
“She’s took her napkin ring!” he gasped. “She’s gone, Squire!”
The husband hurried into the west bedroom and fumbled in the closet.
“And her clothes is gone, Squire!” he called dismally. “Oh, my Gawd, if
this ain’t trouble come double then I don’t know what ’tis.” He sat
down on the edge of the bed and seemed about to weep.
“Get up there, you old fool!” Look roared. “I’ve about concluded that
the two of you need guardians or--or keepers.” He stood before Micajah
with his arms akimbo. “Eleven thousand at interest and twenty-five
hundred on first mortgages!” he sneered. “And while you’ve been pawing
that out of the muck, you and your wife, you have never stood up
straight, taken full, free breath of air and God’s sunshine and looked
into each other’s eyes like true man and wife. And she doesn’t know you
and you don’t know her, and you don’t know your own selves. Oh, ’Caje
Dunham, I’m ashamed of you!”
The man stared at him stupidly.
“You don’t know yet what I mean, do you?” the lawyer went on. “You’re
waiting for me, an old bach, to explain to you your mistakes and point
out your duty.”
A youngster came slapping his bare feet along the shed walk.
“Squire Look,” he called, “Mis’ Dunham is over to my marm’s, and she
just see you come in here, and sent word if you got any business with
her you can call over there.” He added, triumphantly, “She’s brung her
clothes to our house, too, and she’s goin’ to be our boarder.” He had
edged into the bedroom, and his round eyes, big with the half-knowledge
and guesses of childhood, goggled at the woe-stricken husband.
The lawyer meditatively stroked his nose a moment and then turning
without a word walked out of the house. The boy pattered on ahead.
Dunham picked up the writ and followed dejectedly.
“Be you goin’ to stay to the big meetin’ to-night, Squire Look?”
inquired the boy, bursting with his fresh knowledge. “Mis’ Dunham and my
marm and my pa and Mister Bolster are goin’ to have all the people meet
at the school house and discharge teacher.” He turned his urchin’s stare
of inquisitive significance on Dunham, stubbing along behind in the
highway. “Mis’ Dunham come into school this afternoon and told teacher,
and teacher didn’t go home after school, but I peeked in the winder, and
she’s there cryin’ and----”
“Bub,” said the Squire severely, “you’re anxious to grow up to be a nice
big man, aren’t you?”
“Yep.”
“Well, there’s nothing that stunts growth like using your tongue too
much. That’s why so many women are shorter and slimmer than men. Now
always remember that all your life, and some day when you’ve grown up
good and tall you just tell your little boys that a nice old lawyer gave
you that advice about your tongue and never charged you a cent for it.”
The boy stared up and down the big man, slowly slooped up the moisture
of his open mouth, and closed his lips apprehensively.
Mrs. Dunham was on the front porch of the neighbour’s house, defiantly
awaiting their approach.
“Has that paper been served?” she demanded, when they were still some
distance down the path.
The abandoned husband held up the fateful document, and was about to
break into appealing speech, but she stamped her foot and checked him.
“Not a word--not a word from you!” she screamed fiercely. “It’s all over
and done and the passel tied and the string cut between us. I’m here to
stay till I git my bill and allowance by the court. I shall watch that
house till I git my own out of it. Then you can go to pot and see the
kittle bile, for all I care. Ain’t you ashamed to face me with the
stigmy of that law paper on you?” She pointed at him as at something
proscribed. Her hosts were at the window, listening with manifest
enjoyment. The situation maddened Dunham.
“Talk to her, Squire! For pity sakes, talk to her,” he entreated, tears
running down his sallow cheeks. “When she has twitted me before this
I ain’t talked right to her, and I realise it all now. I’m awful
sorry--I’m turrible, awful, desp’rit’ sorry I ever talked uppish to you,
Esther,” he wailed. “I ain’t fell in love with any one else. I vow I
ain’t. It’s diff’rent than that. I ain’t skercely realised how it was--
but I reckon I know now. I’ve been thinkin’. I was jest--I was jest----”
“Oh, you was jest Mr. Pompous-on-Parade, all so fine and gay,” she
sneered, “and now you think that one drop of goose grease is goin’ to
cure all the smart and hurt. But I tell you now, as I’ve already told
Squire Look, once my mind is made up it is set as the eternal hills.
Now, can you get that through your wool?” she stormed, her eyes blazing.
“I know your disposition is inclined that way, Esther,” he faltered,
lifting his eyes to her piteously.
“And you say there ain’t no way--no chance----”
“No, sir!” she spat.
He pondered awhile, his slow, farmer comprehension of the situation
dropping back into the material rut, in which his life had flowed like
muddy water. “Which of the milk pans is to be skimmed to-night, Esther?”
“I marked them for you,” she replied stiffly. “And the cooked stuff is
on the swing shelf in the suller-way. Doughnuts and cookies in the stun’
jar ’side of the flour barrel in the but’ry.”
The lawyer had been scowling at the peering heads in the window.
“Esther,” he broke in, “I want you and ’Caje both to come over to
your house and sit down. I’ll venture to say that we can get at a more
sensible arrangement than all this amounts to.”
“You’re up to your old tricks again, Squire!” she cried sarcastically.
“There are some folks that you can wind ’round your little finger,
and some you can’t, and I’m”--she patted her flat breast--“one with too
stiff a backbone to be wound.” She whirled on her heel and went into the
house, slamming the door spitefully.
The Squire gazed at the farmer with a flicker of sympathy in his eyes.
“Go home and do your chores, ’Caje,” he commanded gruffly, “and be at
the school house this evening.”
At that moment the master of the house issued from a side door with
his milk pails on his arm, and started for the barn, wearing a fine
assumption of innocent obliviousness.
“Oh, I. say, Uncle Paul,” called the lawyer, “what is the hour set for
the lynching this evening?”
“Lynchin’!” repeated the astonished man.
“Well, perhaps I don’t pick exactly the right word---inquisition might
hit it nearer. At the school house, I mean!”
“If that’s lawyers’ lingo for our deestrick meetin’,” replied the
indignant farmer, “it’s set for ha’f-past seven.”
“You can drive back to the village,” directed the Squire as he passed
Purday. The deputy had been comfortably lolling on the waggon seat, his
legs hooked over the dashboard. “I’ll come along when I get ready. I
ain’t afraid to foot it.”
The mellowness of the waning afternoon was chilled a bit by the first
breeze of autumn that crept over the ledges of Nubble Hill.
Squire Phin turned up his collar, clasped his hands behind his back, and
started down the road toward the school house. The old dog Eli, who had
been routed from under the waggon seat by the deputy, scuffed along the
gutter through the dry grasses.
“If there’s anything lonesomer, Eli, than outdoors at this time of
year,” mused the lawyer, “it’s the empty chamber in some of the human
hearts that we know about.”
All the eyes of the little neighbourhood were watching the Squire when
he turned in at the yard of the school house and disappeared in the
entry-way.
But it was chore time and supper time, and the Dunham district people
went about their tasks, mumbling surmise as to what the Squire intended
to do. Mrs. Micajah Dunham remained at Uncle Paul Appleby’s gate, her
gimlet gaze still on the school house. There was nothing to see, but
she didn’t have anything else to do. For the first time since she could
remember she wasn’t busy with supper-getting at that hour of the day,
and she was conscious of something lacking, something discomforting.
Her hands twitched when she heard the rattle of dishes within doors.
She looked across at the old home. There was no trail of smoke from the
chimney.
“Cold vittles is good enough for him,” she reflected bitterly. “I wisht
he’d choke on what I’ve left cooked up.”
Her hard gaze did not soften when she saw her husband come out of the
cellar door, shoulders humped, dragging his feet spiritlessly, the milk
pails dangling from his lifeless arms. A gray cat was at his heels.
“I don’t want Betsy to starve along with him,” grumbled Esther, and she
called stridently, “Kit-te-e-e! Kit-te-e-e! Come, kit-te-e-e!”
With a feline’s deference to one who has always filled the saucer for
her the cat turned and scampered over to the Appleby house, tail up.
“He ain’t even fit to associate with the cat!” snapped Mrs. Dunham, and
she picked up the purring creature and switched into the house. But that
uncomfortable hankering for occupation, that queer little feeling of
being a fifth wheel, obsessed her.
“I’m goin’ to slip on one of your aprons, Mis’ Appleby,” she announced,
“and help you to get supper on.”
“Now you jest set right down and fold your hands, Mis’ Dunham,”
remonstrated the hostess. “I don’t expect boarders to do one namable
thing. No,” she said hastily, stripping the apron from Esther before she
could tie it, “I’ve sort of got my own ways ’round the house jest
the same’s you have around yours, and there ain’t a thing you can do
to help. You go right into the settin’-room and look over the album, or
anything you’re a mind to.”
Esther wandered into the other room. She reflected that she had always
said the same things to “company” that tried to mess in. But the smug
faces of the Applebys, enshrined between the plush covers of the album,
palled on her. Nothing to do! She peered through the interlacing leaves
of Mrs. Appleby’s geranium and a sob shook her. She was homesick, and
she knew it. Her hostess, stirring briskly about her kitchen, made her
long for her own domain of kitchen floor, even as a disgraced skipper
hungers for his own quarter-deck. A boarder! A thing without authority,
without aim or purpose! The clang of the oven door reminded her that
Mrs. Appleby didn’t make cream of tartar biscuit exactly after her own
receipt. How she would like to be back in front of her own oven door
pulling out a tinful of those odorous, hot, crisply browned biscuit!
But the reflection that Micajah would eat them made her snap her jaws
together and wink the tears back from her eyes.
Yet she went out to the gate once more and watched to see if there was
now any trail of smoke from the kitchen chimney. Then she stared at the
school house, and her features hardened.
“Oh, I don’t understand it!” she murmured. “It ain’t been like ’Caje
at all to do it! I can’t understand it!”
She could control herself no longer. Despite the fact that she had
stubbornly forced the issue herself, nagged on by the neighbours who
had counselled her to stand up for her rights, she felt abandoned by the
world. Her face puckered with the unsightly grimace of those who do not
often weep, and the hot tears bubbled freely.
“You don’t appear to be enjoying very high spirits, Mrs. Dunham.” She
raised her head from the fence post with a jerk, for the drawling voice
startled her. King Bradish’s rubber-tired carriage had made no sound on
the dusty road. He had swung in upon the grass and sat looking at her,
his elbows on his knees.
“It ain’t any one’s business how I feel,” she retorted indignantly,
ashamed at having been detected.
“I heard down to the village that you and the old man had agreed to
disagree,” he pursued, with that calm impertinence that Palermo called
“the Bradish cheek.”
“I don’t thank anybody to go peddlin’ my bus’ness ’round.”
“Well, you’d have to put Sawed-off Purday under bonds to keep his mouth
shut if you don’t want legal business strung from Clew to Erie in this
town. But what I can’t understand is, why you didn’t get a lawyer that
would really put your case through. Phin Look never will. And he don’t
intend to, because he told Purday as much.”
There was malice in the glint of his eye.
She clutched at the palings and projected her face at him over them.
“You needn’t make up any such faces at me,” he said coolly. “It’s none
of my business, especially, but I hate to see a man that poses as a
lawyer go around fooling his clients.”
“Look here, King Bradish,” she cried, “I don’t know what Hen’ Purday is
saying and I don’t care. But I do know that Squire Phin Look was here
this very afternoon, and the libel was served on Mr. Dunham, and the
Squire is down there in the school house this very minute talkin’----”
In spite of herself her voice wavered, for she had been wondering with
angry astonishment why her lawyer should go into so long a conference
with the other side.
Bradish slowly stretched up his arms and yawned. “Yes?” he drawled.
“Down there with the school-marm, hey? Probably he’s telling her how
the paper that was served on your husband to-day was only a dog-license
blank, and they’re having a laugh, and he’s explaining how he will fix
the thing up and fool you.”
She slammed open the gate and started down the road.
“Jump in!” he invited. “You seem to be in a hurry, and I don’t blame you
a bit.”
A few moments later he snapped his hitch-weight into his horse’s bridle
and followed the angry woman into the dusty entry-way of the little
school house.
Esther tore at the knob of the inner door and threw it open.
Squire Phin sat in the little teacher’s chair. The little teacher was
huddled on the floor at his feet, her head on his knee. He was stroking
a shoulder that was quivering with sobs.
At the woman’s first explosion the lawyer arose and put his arm around
the teacher and led her toward the door.
“I will talk with you when you are in your right mind, Esther,” he said.
“But this poor child has suffered enough from your tongue. Isn’t there
one streak of womanhood left in you?” He put out his arm and gently
pushed her from their path, leading the schoolma’am toward the door.
“A pretty spectacle of a man you are, Bradish,” he gritted. “You’re
trampling on a poor girl to strike a coward’s blow at me.”
His face was gray with passion and his brows knotted above flaming eyes.
He shouldered against the other and crowded him back into the entry-way
and to one side. Bradish had his whip.
“If it wasn’t for the presence of the ladies here, Look,” he cried, “I’d
lace you till you howled.”
“Bradish,” replied the Squire, “you’re hiding behind women now, like
the cur that you are, and you have been hiding behind a woman for a
good many years. Some day--but I’m a fool to stoop to your level. Come,
child.”
He strode away across the yard, the little teacher in the hook of his
arm.
“I guess you might as well take back your husband, Mrs. Dunham,” he
heard Bradish cry after him. “Your lawyer seems to have cut him out.”