FOR SQUIRE PHIN’S “LOOK TEMPER”
“Let cats and dogs delight to fight,
For ’tis their cross-patch natur’ to;
To wallop humans is not right,
But--wal, there’s things ye have to do!”
--From “Meditations of Deacon Burgess.”
The next morning the Squire was busy at the cook-stove at daybreak.
He had joyfully turned old Aunt Rhoda over to Hiram’s _ménage_, and he
relished the idea that he could resume his own way of living. As he tied
on his canvas apron he reflected contritely that perhaps he was feeling
a bit too good about being alone again. It wasn’t wholly brotherly.
Then in his mind he laid it all to Aunt Rhoda’s cooking.
She had frizzled the bacon into black chips and fried the steak until
it would do for a boot-tap, and when the Squire had expostulated, had
defiantly told him that he’d better stick to his law books and not try
to tell her, after sixty years at the cook-stove, how to get up “a mess
of vittles.” She had obliged him to eat huge hot dinners at noon that
made him as sleepy as a stuffed anaconda for hours as he sat in his
arm-chair in the office, trying to read his books. She had expected him
to make out a supper on plum preserves and hot cream of tartar biscuits,
and he had already felt the first gnawings of dyspepsia.
“Now for my steak!” he said aloud. It was a generous slice, thick as a
cushion and bordered with the cream-hued fat that Aunt Rhoda obstinately
threw away when she pared his steak into thinner slices in order to fry
them into parchment-like strips.
It sizzled on the grid cheerily, the coffee--with its heaping “measure
for the pot” and two for himself--gave forth an odour that promised
better than the old housekeeper’s slaty-hued brew, and he was just
cracking his eggs for his omelet when there was a rap at the door.
The Squire called an invitation over his shoulder, and the visitor
came in. It was the Mayo youth. His hair, that was usually slicked so
smoothly, was tousled and it hung in strings about his face. He had
evidently run all the way up the street, for he was out of breath and
panted with open mouth like a dog as he thrust toward the Squire a bit
of paper that he pinched by one corner.
“Lay it down on the table,” directed the lawyer, shortly. “Can’t you see
that both my hands are full?”
The young man stumbled toward him and shoved the paper into his hands,
evidently unconscious that the Squire had spoken. It fell into the bowl
and the lawyer picked it out gingerly, muttering his ire.
Mayo then grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, trying to utter
intelligible speech, but he could only blubber and hiccup.
“You infernal calf,” stormed the lawyer; “sit down in that chair and get
your breath and let me alone!” He pushed the youth across the room and
plumped him down with a thud that snapped his open jaws together.
“She’s gug-gug-gone, Squire Look!” Mayo managed to squeak.
The lawyer shook the paper to free it of the egg, looking ruefully
toward his bowl as he did so. Then he read the note, his brows knotting.
“_Deer Wart: my laddy mother has come for me & i have had to go with
hur. i have gorn into a brighter wurld. soe yon needent hunt for me
corse i shant ever be found, with love Rissy.”_
“She’s dead,” squalled the husband, staggering to his feet. “She’s
jumped into the water somewhere. You know ev’rything, Squire.7 You’re
the only friend I’ve truly got to find her for me.” He seized the lawyer
by the arm and tried to drag him away.
“Sit down, I tell you!” commanded the Squire, and again he thrust the
young man down into the chair. He read the letter again.
“Have you shown this to anyone else?” he demanded.
“No, not to a soul. I’ve run right to you, Squire. I know you can find
her, but she’s dead. Oh, where has she gone?”
“She may have gone straight up or she may have gone straight down,”
growled the lawyer. “What are you sitting there gaping and goggling
like that for? When did she go? When did you miss her? Did she take her
clothes?”
“I woke up this morning and found her gone,” wailed the youth. “She went
in the night. She’s dead. She’s gone with her lady mother jest as she
said she’d do.”
“If you ever say lady mother to me again I’ll cuff your ears,”
stormed the Squire. “Or if you mention this to anyone until I give you
permission I’ll boot you clear to Brickett’s store and back again. Do
you think you understand that?”
“Yes,” whimpered the youth.
“Not to a soul! Finding your wife depends on it.”
“Can’t I go drag in the Potter brook?”
“You stay here in this house. You are going to eat some of this
breakfast first of all.”
“I never can eat nothin’ more till she’s found,” wailed Mayo, with a
canine whine in his nose.
But when the meal was on the table the Squire hustled him to a chair
beside it and roared at him until he ate.
“It will never do for me to say one word of sympathy to the poor devil,”
he pondered as he eyed the pitiful creature munching his food.
“If I loosen one bit he’ll be climbing all over me like a hungry dog.
The only way to handle him is to cuff him when he stands up on his hind
legs.”
While the Squire ate he pondered.
“She went with Cap Nymphus Bodfish on the packet, that’s how she went.”
He glanced at the clock.
“Eight,” he mused. “Half the time since he has put in his auxiliary
power Bodfish doesn’t sail until nine. If he got away early this morning
it signifies something, that’s all! It isn’t the first time King Bradish
has hired him for dirty work.”
He started up and took his hat from the hook. “Wat,” he said, “you stay
here and wash up my dishes and make yourself useful until I come back.
Don’t you stir out of this house and don’t you say a word to anyone
about your wife being gone. If you disobey me I’ll quit you.”
He hurried out of the house and down the street.
It was necessary to go almost to the packet’s berth to determine whether
she was there, for the elms loomed high along the shore road. No masts
showed above the storehouse when he came in sight of it, but to assure
himself the Squire walked out on the wharf and peered around the corner
of the building. The packet’s berth was empty and there was no sign of
her on the narrow sea line at the mouth of the cove.
“Hard-Times” Wharff stood by one of the hawser piles, looking to sea.
“I wisht I was a garsoline ingine instead of a weather-vane, Squire
Look,” confessed the old man, regretfully. “The wind it bloweth where
it listeth, sayeth the Scriptur’s, but”--he sucked his tongue to imitate
the explosions of an engine, “tchock! tchock! tchock! Garsoline don’t
have to wait and list. It can go any time, day or night. I wisht I
knowed better how it works, but Nymp’ Bodfish wouldn’t let me aboard
this mornin’ to see how it does it.”
“Did he get away early, Uncle Aquarius?”
“I was down here at four to see whuther the sunrise was goin’ to be
pink or yaller, ’cause you know a yaller sunrise follerin’ on sun-dogs
means----”
“Let the weather stand for a moment,” broke in the Squire, a bit
impatiently. “What time was it when Bodfish sailed?”
“Break o’ day, no wind but garsoline, oil on the heave, and ‘Hard-Times’
went aboard with him wrapped in a shawl. And he wouldn’t let me come on
to see the tchock, tchock, tchocker.”
The Squire’s suspicions required no further confirmation. He hastened
away up the wharf.
“The sneak!” he hissed through set teeth. “The pup!” But he did not
refer to Captain Nymphus Bodfish of the “Effort.”
The man that was in his mind was just tying his horse at the post in
front of Brickett’s store, and as the Squire approached, hurrying up
the road, he shook the dust from his gloves and started leisurely along
ahead of him, blandly oblivious of the other, to all appearances.
“Good-morning, Bradish,” said the lawyer, curtly, as he came up behind
him. He slackened his pace for a moment. Then he set his lips as though
to hold back something that he had intended to say, and hastened past.
“Business seems to be rushing with you this morning,” observed Bradish,
with his tantalising drawl. The Squire walked on.
“I say, Look!” The man’s tone was insolent. The lawyer’s evident anxiety
to avoid him spurred his bravado. “You’ve put your nose into my affairs
this time so far that you can’t pull it out by dodging me.” The Squire
held up and the man came close to him. “What do you mean, Bradish?”
“I mean that the other evening you made me the laughing-stock of the
gossips of this town by stepping in between me and the lady I was
escorting. You have compromised her, and now her father----”
“Look here, my fellow,” roared the lawyer, “my family isn’t a very
patient one, and you have got to about your limit with me. I never
intended to pass another word with you, for it’s getting to be dangerous
for both of us. But when you talk of my companionship, compromising any
lady, I’m going to put you before your own eyes as just what you are in
a community. You’re a low-lived, dirty hound that this very morning has
stolen another man’s wife and sent her away by Bodfish’s underground
railroad, as you’ve done once before if the truth were known.” Bradish’s
face was purple with rage, but he looked the Squire straight in the eye.
“So you’ve become a lunatic along with your other qualifications! Now
tell me what you mean or I’ll post you for a blackmailer.”
“I mean,” blurted the lawyer, “that it is your money that has hired
Bodfish to carry Rissy Mayo out of town to-day, and it’s your money that
she has in her pocket to pay railroad fare from Square Harbour to the
place where you’re sending her.”
Bradish snapped his fingers under his accuser’s nose.
“That for your slander!” he cried. He started along the walk, but
whirled and came close to Look. “There’s one thing I want to say to
you,” he growled, “and it’s this--you seem bound and determined to
plaster me with slander and it’s beneath my dignity to defend myself.
And now you are working up a plot against me. You have heard that I was
going to leave to-night for New York on business for Judge Willard and
myself, and----”
“I have heard nothing of the sort,” retorted the Squire, his eyes
gleaming dangerously.
“I say you have, and you must know I am going to his house now to
discuss it. But no matter about that. I say you have engineered a plot
against me, Look. You have fired that girl out of town and now you’ll
turn around to-morrow and take advantage of a business trip that I must
make and assert that I have run away with her. But I want to tell
you now”--in his passion he drove his palm down on the lawyer’s
shoulder--“if you dare to insinuate such a thing I’ll put you into State
prison for criminal libel. I shall at once explain your dirty trick to
Judge Willard and his daughter. And”--he drew back and looked at the
Squire with malice in his eyes--“I shall furthermore tell Judge Willard
what interest you have in this Mayo woman whom you have married off to
a fool in order to hide your own guilt, you cheap apology for a man and
lawyer.”
The Squire stood immovable and stared at the man, his lips moving
wordlessly. But language refused to come.
For a few crowded seconds he almost admired the impudence of Bradish’s
bluff, yet its masterly audacity fairly paralysed him.
In the storm of his feelings words seemed useless. The thought of his
own impotence of defence, with this assailant in possession of Judge
Willard’s ear and confidence, the memory of his own sorrows of waiting,
the woes of the Mayo youth, whirled in his brain like torches. His fist
tightened into a hard lump, his arm throbbed and itched, and the next
moment, with a grunt, the Squire struck forward.
For the first and last time in his life Squire Phineas Look knocked a
man down, and for one wild moment the primal Adam in him gloried in the
act. He stood above Bradish with his arm poised and his fist smarting.
Then he looked up and beheld Sylvena Willard gazing at the miserable
scene from the piazza of the big house.
And he held down his head and walked away up the street, the hot flush
of shame on his face, a sob in his throat, and the gray blur of tears
replacing the red blur that had flamed there a moment before. He glanced
back once and saw Bradish going to her with his handkerchief pressed to
his face.
Hiram and his new friend were taking the air on the porch when he came
into the yard of the Look place. He tried to avoid them, but his brother
called to him.
“We saw you do it, Phin,” he said. “’Twas good work, but what had he
done to you?”
“Oh, Hiram,” mourned the Squire, “don’t make light of a terrible deed.
Oh, the Look temper--the Look temper! Thank God there are none of the
blood to follow us.”
He stumbled into the house with the feeble step of an old man.