“A man there was who died of late
Whom angels did impatient wait,
With outstretched arms and smiles of love
To take him to the Realms Above.
“While angels hovered in the skies
Disputing who should bear the prize,
In slipped the Devil like a weasel
And Down Below he kicked old Keazle! ”
--An Epitaph by “Rhymester” Tuttle.
The Squire had pulled his arm-chair into the centre of the broadest
patch of sunshine that carpeted the dusty floor of his office. The
light flooded his book’s pages until he almost closed his eyes, but he
welcomed sunshine this morning. It fitted into his mood. When Brickett
started his coffee-grinder there was a certain rhythm about it that
set the Squire to whistling. “Hard-Times” Wharff was playing on his tin
flute down in the yard of the little brown house behind the currier’s
shop, the music serving as his daily relaxation from his meditations on
astronomy. Usually the monotonous “toodle-oodle” irritated the Squire.
This day he tapped time with his finger on the open page.
He wanted to say something aloud and he glanced up at the “Creosote
Supreme Bench.” No, that wasn’t the right kind of an audience! He looked
down at the floor. Eli’s steadfast, worshipful gaze caught his. The dog
rapped his tail genially.
“Eli,” said the Squire, smiling at him, “when you load your gun to bring
down a particular human heart, there isn’t any telling how many others
the scatter-fire will hit.”
Then for a little while he sat and dreamed over that walk home along the
Cove road, past the pines that whispered and along the shore where the
waves seemed to follow them with a sort of a dance step. And neither of
them had said a word about love during all the long walk!
In fact, Squire Phin hadn’t said much of anything. It was so good to
hear her voice. Since he had talked to her that August day across the
iron fence he had been afraid she would think that he was whining and
sentimental. To be sure, he reflected, his feelings had been cruelly
stirred that day, and that was some excuse; and then, too, he had waited
ten years to say even the little that he did say. He was rather proud
that he hadn’t raked up the old topic during the walk. This was the
pride of New England reserve that distrusts over-much lip service. It
had been hard to hold in sometimes along the way, when she praised his
courage in handling the affair in the Dunham district and showed her
appreciation of other things that he didn’t know she had heard about.
“I suppose some men would have taken advantage and pestered her again
with love-talk,” he had pondered as he walked away from the iron gate of
the Willard place, “but I reckon I’ll never get fussed up enough again
to bother her that way. It’s a tough thing for a woman to feel that she
can’t walk with a man without his everlastingly dinging away his own
troubles into her ears--and--and there may be a time when she will walk
with me again if she realises that I know enough to keep my mouth shut.”
All of which might indicate to those versed in such matters that Squire
Phin Look understood litigation better than love-making, which has its
own court days, its calendar for service, its notice and its set time
for appeal. He, however, felt that he had played the part of chivalry.
So the morning had seemed fair and he had slapped Hiram on the back at
breakfast time and had hummed a tune as he walked to his office,
and everything had seemed to be music, even the mournful cooing of
“Hard-Times’s” tin flute.
And when old Sumner Badger came dragging up the stairs and into the
office, and dolorously announced that he was going to die inside of two
days and wanted to make his will, the Squire leaned back in his chair
and laughed, to the indignant disgust of old Sumner.
“If there’s anything funny about my havin’ a call to the Speret Land I’d
be much obleeged if you’d ’loosidate it, Squire Phin Look.” There
was a scowl on the old man’s yellow face, and his shock of white hair
bristled.
“Die!” echoed the Squire; “why, Sum, who talks of dying with the sun
warm overhead, and the waves sparkling out yonder in the Cove, and even
Asa Brickett’s coffee-grinder down there playing dance music with every
twist of the handle? Never say die, Sum.”
“I donno what’s happened to chirk you up so’t you giggle at your
neighbour’s solum warnin’s as have come to ’em, nor I don’t care
a ding, Squire Look, but it ain’t right to mix in your own joys with
others’ sorrers.”
A close observer might have seen in the lawyer’s countenance a flicker
of contrition, as though he had suddenly remembered that every man in
Palermo didn’t have such cause for joy as he.
“Sun a-shinin’, you say!” went on Badger, grimly. “Yes, and a sun-dog
each side of it like wings on a bat, and a-showin’ that we’re goin’ to
have a line gale that will blow the knot-holes out of apple trees. Waves
sparklin’, hey? Porgy scum from that stinkin’ Cod Lead fact’ry that
they’ve stuck under our noses out our way. Music in a coffee-grinder!
And Brickett chargin’ three cents more a pound for Rio than he ever
done. There’s some as can laugh at a fun’ral, but they ain’t got no good
wit.”
“I never laughed yet at anybody’s troubles, Uncle Sum,” said the Squire,
gently; “but you and I, with life still in us, don’t know the day and
the hour of our passing out. You’re not going to die.”
“You think you know more about me than my guardeen angel, do you, hah?
When my guardeen angel comes a-rappin’ the death knock on my headboard
night after night I know what it means.”
The Squire remembered that Badger was a Spiritualist of fervent faith.
He made no comment.
“Three times at our circle Mis’ Achorn has seen a shroud around me and
angel hands beckoning over my head. You ain’t denyin’ that Mis’ Achorp
is the best medium in this country, be ye?”
“Mrs. Achorn is, probably, a good and well-meaning woman, Sum, I have
no doubt; but if I were you I wouldn’t let any one scare me into
conniptions. It doesn’t pay.”
“I know what I’m talkin’ about,” persisted Badger. “I want to make my
will.”
“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t,” the Squire replied, and he pulled
a long sheet of paper from the drawer.
“I allus like to know prices before I buy. What will sech a dockyment
cost me?”
Sumner Badger was known widely as the “closest figgerer” in Palermo. He
often boasted that he had never been extravagant in his life except once
when he bought five cents’ worth of peppermint-drops for a girl. He was
young then, he said.
“She set and et the whole mess right down, one after the other,” he
frequently related, “and that fixed me with _her_. I wouldn’t have no
sech extravagance as that in a wife and so she lost her chance. I went
and got me a woman that knowed how to make things spend for what they
was wuth.” And on their little farm, denying themselves everything
except the barest necessities, the couple had amassed their little
competence.
The Squire eyed the old man’s sun-faded clothes and his knotted hands
and his seamed, gaunt face, yellow with bile, and he pitied this
slave who had half-starved himself, in the midst of his herds and his
harvests.
“Poor old gaffer, you’ve sold your cream all along and drunk the skim
milk,” he reflected--“a life ordeal worse than Tantalus went through,
for Tantalus couldn’t reach what he was hungry for, and all you have had
to do was to stick out your hand and dip into bounty.”
He looked long at Badger, his shrewd eyes twinkling with the humour that
replaced his momentary pity. Then he answered the old man’s question.
“I’m willing to be reasonable, Sum. Now, what would you say was a fair
price for drawing a will?”
“Lawyers’ money comes dretful easy,” growled Badger. “’Tain’t like
diggin’ it out of a farm.” He pondered, screwing up his eyes and
calculating. “I should say if you’d draw up one that couldn’t be busted
I’d be willin’ to pay a shillin’.” He made a move to draw his wallet,
but the lawyer put up his hand.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you, Sum. If you’ll carry home to-day
a good big piece of steak and eat it with your wife--lots of butter on
it--I’ll draw your will for nothing.”
Badger surveyed him dubiously and with sullen suspicion.
“We don’t go much on meat vittles to our house--not with beef prices
stuck ’way up where they be.”
“That’s my price. And it’s got to be sirloin, not round.”
The lawyer saw by the expression on Badger’s face that he had
anticipated the old man’s prompt thought as to quality.
“Steak’s steak, ain’t it?” he muttered. “I never heard of payin’ a
lawyer’s bill in no sech fashion, but”--he sighed--“I’ll do it.”
“And aren’t you going to thank me into the bargain?” demanded the
Squire. “I usually get five dollars, at least, for a document of this
sort.”
“I reckon it’s lib’ral as law goes, Squire.” He suddenly warmed a bit.
“You’ve been reasonable with me. Now I’ll do something for you. You’ve
allus kind of cocked your nose up at s’p’tu’lism. I know it. You needn’t
tell me! Now it’s goin’ to be worth something for you to reelly know
whether there’s anything on the Other Side. So after I arrive there and
git a little bit wonted to the place I’ll come back and appear to you
and tell you all about it.”
“Oh, no, Sum,” expostulated the lawyer, his face serious. “I couldn’t
think of asking you to take all that trouble for a hard old nut like
me.”
“But a word from you to the people--you bein’ prominent--sayin’ that
you’d seen me--materialised, mebbe; known by knocks, anyway--and I’d
said ’twas so-and-so, would carry a good deal of weight and prove that
I ain’t been no dum fool to b’lieve in s’p’tu’lism. I say, I’m comin’
back and appear to you and you needn’t think it’s anything strange.”
The Squire leaned forward and shook his finger at Badger.
“Let me advise you on one point, Sum. This advice isn’t going to cost
a cent. Now, if you ever get so much as one foot into heaven--even get
your fingers through the crack in the door, you stay right there. Don’t
you ever take any chances on coming away to visit. They might get to
asking leading questions about you the next time you came back to the
door.”
“You don’t mean that for a slur, do you?” The old man’s face hardened.
“Let’s get to the business of drawing the will before we go to talking
personal, Sum. I don’t have the same ideas as you on some ways of
living.”
He wrote the usual heading at the top of the page, dipped his pen and,
suddenly looking Badger in the eye, asked bluntly:
“I suppose it all goes to the wife so long as she lives, and after her
to your niece, seeing that you have no children. To ’Liza Haskell,
poor Ben’s girl, I mean?”
The old man shook his head with determination.
“What! you aren’t going to leave it to your only niece--your dead
sister’s child--a little girl that----?”
“This is my will and it’s my own property that I’m willin’,” interrupted
the farmer. “You can make it short and right to the point. It’s all
goin’ to be turned into cash when I die, and Mirandy will git the
interest as long as she lives, to be paid to her by the trustees that
I shall name. Then the whole is goin’ to pay for a monnyment over my
grave.”
Squire Phin leaned back and stared at the old man.
“Yess’r, a monnyment with my statoot on top and poetry about s’p’tu’lism
carved around the bottom. I’ll show ’em that has scoffed and sneered
that there is more to it than they thought.”
“But how do you prove anything by putting, say, ten thousand dollars
into such infernal foolishness as that?” stormed the Squire.
“It will show that one man believed in it thirteen thousand dollars’
wuth--and that’s all he had and what he’d worked for all his life,”
persisted the farmer, stubbornly. He stood up and cracked his fist on
the table.
“Now, you can’t change my mind on that one jot or tittle, Squire Phin
Look. You put it into any kind of lawyer lingo that will stick, and mind
your own business.”
The Squire completed the writing without further comment, but his face
was stern and he drove his pen into the inkstand with violent thrusts.
Badger during the writing informed him that he wanted him to be one of
the trustees. The lawyer paused and frowned at the old man as though he
were intending to refuse, then inserted the name.
“And I want you to take these notes,” went on Badger, “and figger the
interest up on ’em and put ’em in your safe and keep ’em.”
He passed across the table a dog’s-eared bank-book with a few papers
between the leaves. The Squire examined them without particular
interest. There were half a dozen for small amounts. But at sight of
the last he sat up straighter, studied the document with increasing
attention, turned it over and over, and then stared at Badger, arching
his eyebrows.
“Where did you get hold of this town note?” he demanded.
“I lent good money for it. I got it right from the man whose name is
signed at the bottom--and he’s been town treasurer of Palermo for thirty
years. I reckon you know him!”
“Seven thousand dollars!” muttered the Squire. “Why, this town
hasn’t----”
“There ain’t nothin’ out of the way, is there, about me havin’ a town
note?” Badger went on. He paused a moment, then added, “So long as
you’re my lawyer and one of the trustees and I’m goin’ to die and shan’t
be lendin’ the money any longer, I tell you that’s a good way to let
your money out--on a town note.”
For the first time since he had come into the office his face twisted
into something like a smile. He leaned forward and whispered:
“Says the Judge to me, ‘You keep right still about how you’ve lent this
money to the town and you won’t git taxed. So long’s it’s between you
and me it won’t git onto the assessors’ books.’”
The Squire had the note spread before him and was studying it, his hands
clutched into his thick hair, his elbows on the table.
“Yess’r, the Judge says, ‘You’re a friend of mine, Sum, and so long’s
you keep still you’ll git your six per cent, and not be taxed on it!’
But there ain’t no need of keepin’ still any longer. I shan’t need extra
int’rest. You can collect as soon as I’m dead.”
“Sum,” said the Squire, slowly lifting his eyes to the old man’s
face--eyes in which there was a sort of shocked bewilderment, “I don’t
want you to say anything about this note. It isn’t to be talked of.”
“But I’ve told Figger-Four Avery about it,” cried Badger, looking
scared.
“Figger-Four Avery!” Squire Phin shouted the name. “Why, you might
as well have put it into the _Seaside Oracle_. What do you want to go
blurting your affairs for?”
“He was inquirin’ on bus’ness for your brother Hime,” faltered Badger.
“He said Hime was borryin’ and lendin’ and was willing to pay seven per
cent. Figger-Four is clerkin’ for Hime and gittin’ facts and figgers for
him, and you know it jest as well as I do.”
“No, I don’t know----” but the lawyer checked his exclamation, setting
his lips hard. He put the bank-book and the notes away in the safe.
“It’s best for you to keep your mouth shut about this,” he said curtly
to the old man who followed his movements with frightened stare. “I
won’t answer for what may happen to you otherwise.”
He threw up the window and looked out. Uncle Buck and Marriner Amazeen
sat on the store platform, their chairs tilted back. They were the
lawyer’s regular stand-bys as witnesses of legal papers, and came
upstairs at his call.
“Your will, hey?” observed Buck as he pulled his spectacles down from
his forehead and looked over the paper preparatory to signing it. “I
allus thought you cal’lated on takin’ it all with ye, Sum.”
When his eyes fell on the writing designating the purpose to which the
estate was to be applied, he snorted, “Well, it’s about as I reckoned,
after all. That’s the next thing to luggin’ it away to Kingdom Come.” He
read the clause aloud to Amazeen.
“Statoot to be life-size?” that individual blandly inquired.
“It will be as big’s there’s money for,” replied Badger, stiffly. “It
will be sculped out from my photograft and I reckon the sculper can make
me nine feet high. There’s risin’ thirteen thousand to do it with.” He
gazed at his auditors with triumph.
“Le’s see!” pursued Amazeen, reflectively, “that would make your ear
about as big over as a chiny nappy. Before you’ve been standin’ there
two days them cussed sparrers will set up housekeepin’ in both ears. And
a robin will have a nest under your arm, and there’ll be a crow settin’
on your head ha’f the time. You want to add a codicil there providin’
for about four scarecrow windmills set around over you. You’re goin’ to
be almighty uncomfortable if you don’t. A statoot with twine string and
feathers sticking out of the ears ain’t going to attract no particular
admirin’ interest.”
“If the citerzens of this town stand round and see a thirteen thousand
dollar monnyment get all cluttered and gurried up, then they ain’t got
no more public sperit than quahaugs,” cried Badger.
Amazeen took Uncle Buck’s place at the table and proceeded to affix his
signature. While he wrote he said:
“Mebbe you think you’ve done enough for this town so that the citerzens
will stand out there in the grave-yard, turn and turn about, and
keep the flies off’n that statoot with a feather duster! But I’m more
inclined to think that the youngsters will do it with rocks.”
Badger replied to the sally with violent language, and the debate was
becoming acrimonious when the Squire brusquely advised them to continue
their dispute out of doors. His tone was harsher than usual, and his
face was troubled. The old men went out, Amazeen shouting further
directions to Badger, who hurried ahead, advising lightning rods and
fire extinguishers and other appurtenances. Uncle Buck greeted each
suggestion with a cackle of laughter. Squire Phin heard them pursuing
their furious victim across the square, but he listened with abstracted
frown, though at another time the grim jests might have amused him.
He took the town note out of the safe and examined it again. Then he
pulled down a bundle of small pamphlets bearing the cover inscription,
“Town Reports of Palermo.” He studied them with care and at last leaned
back in his chair and gazed long at the ceiling.
“If I,” he said, softly, “were town treasurer of Palermo and had
borrowed seven thousand dollars simply on my own name as treasurer,
after the town had voted that two of the selectmen should sign with the
treasurer on town loans, and had continued to pay six per cent, for that
money after the town had voted to refund all floating indebtedness
at four per cent., and, finally, still owed that seven thousand after
making oath in my last report that the town owed less than two thousand
dollars, why, I--I couldn’t explain it to myself, much less to the
voters of this town.”
Brickett began to grind coffee again.
“Don’t the people of this place buy anything except coffee?” growled the
Squire, jumping up and striding around the office. The noise racked his
nerves now.
“It can’t be,” he muttered. “It’s some mistake or--or----” The
recollection of certain gossip he had heard a year before at the county
court regarding alleged dealings in stock by “a prominent Palermo man”
and his losses occurred to him, and he remembered that he had stoutly
averred that no one in his town ever dealt in stocks. He knew that
people outside were usually the first to hear of such things, but this
was a story that he didn’t believe. This note was there on his table--a
document that demanded explanation--a document that could be explained
by a desperate man’s financial stress and in no other way. Men did not
take such chances for amusement.
Aquarius Wharff’s little flute piped away insistently.
“What a devilish nuisance that old fool is!” the lawyer growled, and he
went along and slammed down the window.
Who properly should demand that explanation? Himself as town agent.
Brickett was now unheading a barrel, and the clamour made the Squire
pound his table with a boyish and futile rage. Every noise jarred on him
and the sun didn’t shine in at the windows any longer.
There was no doubt about his duty. The note must be shown to the
selectmen. He picked it up, put it into his pocketbook, hesitated at the
door, then hastily went back to the safe, tucked it into the most remote
pigeon-hole, slammed the safe door and whirled the lock knob vigorously.
“No, sir,” he muttered as he went down the stairs, “this isn’t a thing
to prick with a crowbar. It needs a fine needle. There’s a woman to be
considered first, and, by the gods! there’s no steer-team of selectmen
going to walk over her to get to her father--no matter how the land
lies.”
He stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked back at his office door
with a singular air of apprehension, as though he had left there some
ugly and hideous object.
“No, it can’t be.” He stamped his foot upon the turf. “It isn’t the
Willard stripe to do a thing like that. He’s a hog, but not a thief. I
guess I’ll go and sit under the old poplars and think about it a bit.”
As he walked along the street he remembered what Badger had said about
his brother Hiram’s activity in the matter of that town note.