A “SAMPLE CITIZEN” OF PALERMO
There once was a Quaker, Orasmus Nute,
With a physog. as stiff as a cowhide boot,
And he skippered a ship from Georgetown, Maine,
In the ’way back days of the pirates’ reign.
And the story I tell it has to do
With Orasmus Nute and a black flag crew--
The tale of the upright course he went
In the face of a certain predicament.
--Ballad of “Orasmus Nute.”
There was at least one secret in his life that “Fig-ger-Four” Avery
kept. He never told what inspired Imogene to make her dash for liberty.
Squire Phin didn’t exactly understand the tableau he had beheld, and
charitably refrained from mentioning to his brother how music, as
rendered by Uncle Wharff, failed to soothe the savage breast. As for
Hiram, he did not seem to be interested enough to ask any questions.
Whenever he mentioned the elephant’s escapade to Peak, he referred to
the affair with a sort of grim blithesomeness.
Weeks afterward, when the first damp, swirling snow of winter was
clotting itself on the windows of the little sitting-room, he sat for a
long time, figuring in a grimy account book with a stubby lead pencil.
Every once in a while he chuckled.
“J. B. Sawtelle,” he murmured, “items: four begonies and three geraniums
mashed in front yard, one washin’ scattered hoorah-ste’-boy--say, Sime,
Imogene with a night gown on one tush and a pair of J. B.’s flannel
drawers flyin’ distress from the other, and sheddin’ assorted articles
such as found on a well-regulated clothes-line, as she hurrooped down
through the beech growth, must have been worth double the price of a
high-dive feature.”
His shoulders, hunched in the rocking-chair, shook with suppressed
mirth.
Peak, his slippered feet resting on the rail of the Franklin stove,
surveyed the shoulders and the back of Hiram’s head with scowling
disapproval.
“Some might think you relished chances to throw away money,” he growled,
with a freedom of criticism accorded the favourite. Simon now appeared
to be settled as a fixture in the showman’s household. The old horse
Joachim had died with the first frosts, and the battered van lurched
under one of the poplars, exposed to the beating of the elements.
“What bills do you think Imogene incurred on that trip--now, jest for a
guess?” demanded Hiram, in high good humour. “I’ve been figgerin’ it for
fun.”
“It reely must be a good deal like a joke book,” observed Peak, with
fine satire.
“I can set and pee-ruse them figgers,” said Hiram, slapping the little
book on his knee and chuckling afresh, “and think how Imogene must have
looked passin’ through them way stations, as you might say, and then
think how them farmers and old maids and women-folks run and squawked
and hollered, and I get fuller of tickles inside than a settin’ hen is
full of clucks. The trouble with you is, Sime, you ain’t got no humour.”
“Well, I’ve had mostly troubles in my time, and I ain’t got no forty
thousand dollars in the bank, either,” said Peak, sourly.
“Say, you’ve been twittin’ me about that forty thousand a good
deal lately,” snorted Hiram, glaring around over the back of the
rocking-chair. “You ain’t begretchin’ me my own, be ye?”
“Ev’ry man’s welcome to all he’s got, for all o’ me. I ain’t ever had
nothin’. I don’t ever expect to have anything. But I tell ye, a
man don’t gain in the long run by slingin’ his money around too
permiscuous.”
Hiram whirled in his chair and put his little book into his pocket.
“For more’n a fortnit now, Sime, you’ve been slurrin’ more or less.
You’ve got some kind of a duflicker’s egg that you’re settin’ on. Now
come off’n the nest and if you’ve got any cacklin’ to do, out with it so
that I can join in!”
Simon was too certain of his position as a favourite to be backed down.
“I guess if speech of the people is correct,” he replied sturdily, “it’s
well enough known why you’re ticklin’ out when you think of Imogene’s
trip up-country.”
“F’r instance, now,” suggested Hiram, his face very hard.
Peak bent and poked the fire, sniffing disdainfully.
“F’r instance, I said,” repeated the showman.
“Say, look-a-here, Hime,” snapped Peak, whirling in his chair in his
turn, “do you think for a minute that I don’t know why you’ve been
makin’ all these trips up-country lately--and you a-sayin’ that you’ve
got to go up and transact a little more bus’ness about them damages of
Imogene’s? Now it’s about time to take some of the cuss of the thing
off’n that elephant.”
“F’r instance, I said!” yelled Hiram, standing up and clacking his
fingers imperiously under Peak’s nose. “Out with it!”
“Don’t you suppose I know that you’re courtin’ that tow-headed widder
that’s got a farm and twenty thousand dollars in the bank? Do you think
that you can fool me that’s summered and wintered with you? You’re
courtin’ her, that’s what you’re doin’, and you’re layin’ it all off
onto that elephant. Now don’t give me no more flim-flam. ’Tain’t
professional. It’s pickin’ me up for a sucker.”
The narrow eyes of the giant sparkled with suspicion and with the
jealousy of the companion who is being supplanted and realises it.
For a little while Hiram stood and glared at him and then sat down in
his chair again. Either a sense of guilt, craft or desire to placate a
friend caused him to moderate his demeanour.
“See here, Sime,” he began, lighting a cigar to keep himself in
countenance, “you have figgered the thing all wrong. You know I ain’t
a marryin’ man. You and me neither of us is. I want you to live with me
and you’re goin’ to.”
“I should think that the both of us has suffered enough from women as
it is,” grumbled the giant. “Both of us knows the other’s troubles
with ’em. And now for you to go and ram yourself right into the
bramble-bush again, and me here to advise you, makes me mad and
disgusted. I’m thinkin’ of you first of all, Hime. I ain’t selfish. But
I can see jest how it’s goin’ to be: you’re goin’ to git hitched and
then the first thing she’ll do will be to put the spittoon in the
woodshed and kick me out-doors. I thought you knowed more than to do
it--I honest thought so.”
Peak bowed his head in grief.
“In my whole life long I never was judged right yet by any human bein’,”
wailed Hiram. “And now here you go off the handle jest like the rest.
_You_ know what Nymp’ Bodfish done to me. _You_ know what I propose to
do to Nymp’ Bodfish. That’s all there is to it. He wants her and the
twenty thousand, and he’d ’a’ had her a year ago if he wasn’t hangin’
off about bein’ a farmer. He wants her to sell and put the money into a
schooner, and he’s jest as much reckonin’ on that as on flood tide when
the moon’s right. His heart is set on it. I’m goin’ to make him the
sickest man ’tween here and the North Pole.”
“There was a man once that give an elephant a chaw of terbacker,”
related Simon, “and when the doctors was tryin’ to fit some of the least
mussed-up pieces together at the hospital, he opened his eyes and said:
‘It was a good one on the elephant, wasn’t it?’ and then give one hiccup
and died.”
“If you was only jest--well, say, ‘Figger-Four,’ and made such talk to
me,” snarled Hiram, “I’d drive you right down through the floor there,
like I’d drive a tent peg. But I’m willin’ to argue with _you_, Sime,
and if that don’t show that I’m a friend of yours, then I don’t know
what does.” He wiped his flushed face. “You understand, I can’t bust
this thing in a minit.”
“Didn’t you yourself ketch him right in a caper that would queer him
with any decent woman--lug-gin’ off another man’s wife ’cause he was
hired to?”
“Don’t you know that would be givin’ away the trouble of the young
Mayos--and them livin’ together now like turtledoves?” roared Hiram.
“Look at my brother Phin--one of God’s own gentlemen, if there ever
was one. Him a-breakin’ his heart and misjudged and old Willard’s girl
passin’ him by be-. cause he smashed King Bradish before her face
and eyes--and Bradish with the last word to her! Don’t you suppose my
brother could square himself with her by just one word of what he knows?
But will he do it after he has passed ’Rissy Mayo his word that so
long as she behaves herself he won’t give her away to any livin’ soul?
You can say he’s a fool if you want to, but I tell ye, Sime, when a man
has got as far along in life as Phin has without breakin’ his solemn
word, you can’t blame him if he’d rather gnaw himself inside than have
those whom he gives away scorch him outside.”
He had furiously puffed his cigar down to the end. Now he lighted
another.
“I never approved of him carin’ a snap for the Willard girl, Sime. I
don’t like her. I don’t like the breed. But this lovin’ of folks ain’t
to be regulated jest the way you’d like to have it. If my brother can
keep his mouth shut about King Bradish’s rottenness when, as you might
say, it’s a wife at stake for him, then I guess I can keep still when
it’s only a grudge that I’m workin’.”
“Then it ain’t no wife in your case?” pursued Peak, suspiciously.
“I tell ye, all I can do now is to hint,” insisted Hiram, evading the
main question. “I’ve jest got her on the anxious seat. It’s the way I
struck up her interest first of all. I couldn’t have got near her with
a ten-foot pole if I hadn’t got her curiosity started by hints. Then,
of course, she wanted to know what I meant and I’ve been puttin’ her off
ever since. You never saw a woman so worked up as she is, Sime--never.
She can’t hardly stand it till I come again. Then she lets into me to
tell her all about Cap Bodfish. She don’t want to leave go of him till
she knows definite. I reckon she wants to have him around so as to peel
him when she does find out that there really is something in what I
hint.” The showman chuckled again. “And it’s kind of what you might call
a lingerin’ death for him--one of the slow kind like bein’ gnawed by
ants. Ev’ry time he goes up to see her she don’t know whuther to love
him or club him off’n the premises--and she blows hot and she blows cold
all in one minit, and if he ain’t the wust puzzled man that ever tried
to box compass in the sea of matrimony, then I’ll eat the celluloid peel
in a side-show lemonade.”
“Don’t he suspect what it all means?” inquired Peak, beginning to
appreciate the situation with the malice of a man who has been fooled
and enjoys seeing others in the same boat.
“Keeps a-grabbin’ ev’ry which way like a man that hears a moskeeter
buzzin’ round him in the night,” giggled Hiram. “I’ve set right in the
other room sev’ral times and he didn’t know I was there, and I’ve heard
him coax and beg and guess and promise and almost blubber, and me behind
the door in t’other room swellin’ up and swellin’ up and then lettin’ it
out through my nose easy, and then swellin’ up again. I don’t believe I
shall be able to stand very much of that. I’m li’ble to bust some time.”
“I should think it would be well wuth list’nin’ to,” agreed Peak. Then
he said artlessly: “I like fun myself. Why can’t I go along with you
after this? Then there won’t be no such thing as her gettin’ her cobweb
around you.”
“You talk as though I was runnin’ matinées up-country,” said Hiram, the
red on his bristly cheeks. He detected Peak’s selfish apprehension, and
the giant’s gaze shifted under his scowl. “I never had any trouble
in runnin’ my own bus’ness yet and I don’t expect to have to call in
understudies right away.”
In considerable dudgeon he marched along to a narrow secretary in the
corner and began to mumble figures in an undertone as he went over
his accounts. Peak sat gazing into the fire, twirling his huge thumbs
thoughtfully.
The sound of some one stamping off snow on the porch broke upon the
silence of the two. The visitor came in without knocking and, fumbling
his way along the dark entry, opened the sitting-room door.
It was old Sumner Badger, the wet snow splotching his faded overcoat.
“’Pears to be one o’ these ’ere sticky storms,” he observed amiably,
pulling a chair up before the stove.
“Yes, seems to hang to _you_ like dollar bills do,” retorted Hiram,
snapping around from the secretary and squinting over his glasses. Then
he went on with his figuring, talking half aloud. Badger surveyed the
back of his head for some time and then said:
“It’s about that money you want to borrow of me, Capt’in.” Badger always
bestowed this title in moments when he wanted to placate.
“Then you’ve collected from Willard, have you?” inquired Hiram, gruffly,
over his shoulder. “Huh, you’ve been long enough about it. Ever since
last fall.”
“Well, I’ve seen the Jedge,” faltered Badger; “jest come from his office
to here. He says the town can’t raise no money to take up town notes not
till town meetin’ in March. He says it will be made all right to me if
I’ll wait. Now he give me to understand that I’d git seven per cent, all
hunky if I didn’t hurry things and--no, s’r, honest to Lucifer if I said
a word about your wantin’ the money,” he expostulated as Hiram swung
angrily to face him.
“I told you I’d kill you if you did,” roared Hiram. “And I didn’t,
Capt’in! No, s’r, when it’s money concerned I can keep my mouth shet.
Ain’t I kept it shet all these years about the Jedge havin’ it?”
“Let’s see!” remarked Hiram, with a sly look in his eye, as though he
wished to test this Palermo voter. “How much money does Palermo owe,
anyway?”
“I don’t have the least idee,” blandly returned Badger, crossing his
knees. “We all trust the Jedge to ’tend to that. _He_ knows.”
“So you are goin’ to let your money stay with the Judge, hey?”
“Well--blorh hum! Well, as I was sayin’, Jedge Willard seems to
be perfickly square about makin’ it right and--and--well, Capt’in,
nat’rally it’s--it’s bus’ness--well, to make it an object to shift you
might---there’s the taxes, too----”
“You old harker,” cried Hiram, irefully, “what you want me to say is
that I’ll pay you eight per cent.! ‘You’ve been whifflin’ back and forth
for two months between Judge Willard and me. I thought you got all ready
to die a while ago. What are you waitin’ for--to place your money out at
eight per cent, first?”
“I ain’t goin’ to die,” blurted Badger. “A man’s got the right to change
his mind, ain’t he? And they’ve found out about that Mis’ Achorn. She
used a wax hand to make folks believe ’twas some one dead that was
touchin’ ’em and---”
“Shet up!” barked Hiram. “Do you think I’ve been in the circus line
thirty years to need to have fakes explained to me? It’s bus’ness I want
to talk with you, Sum. Don’t you read your town report, you fool? Don’t
you know that Judge Willard says there over his name that this town owes
only a little over two thousand dollars? And yet you know, yourself,
that he has borrowed seven thousand from you on a town note! Don’t you
stop to think about those things? And now I’ll tell you something
to make your hair curl! I have found out that there are twenty-five
thousand dollars’ worth of town notes held around here by just such old
blind moles as you are that he has told to keep still. Lord knows how
many more there are. I don’t imagine that some would let it out if you
took a knife to ’em.”
He wiped the perspiration from his face and gazed at Badger as though he
expected the information to wilt him. The avenger of the wrongs of the
Looks was not entirely ready with the thunderbolt that he was
forging for the town treasurer of Palermo, but the serenity of the
dollar-blinded Badger exasperated him. For a test he wanted to see how
one citizen of Palermo would receive the disclosure.
“I tell you your treasurer is fooling the whole of ye!” he shouted. “He
has stolen from your town.” The creditor blinked at him. “Now will you
sit by and let him fool you with his talk of makin’ it right? Now will
you try to screw eight per cent, out of me who’s tryin’ to bring him to
the ring bolt? Now will you hand that note over to me or pitch in and
collect it yourself?”
To Hiram’s intense astonishment Badger slowly leaned forward, set his
elbows on his knees, began to tap his finger-tips together, winked one
eye, and smiled shrewdly and composedly.
“Don’t you worry none about Coll Willard,” he said. “He’s a financier.”
He rolled the word over his tongue. “His folks was financiers before
him. Nobody can’t fool him. He’s sly. So’m I. He’s ready to help the
sly folks. You’ve got money, but you ain’t no financier. You’re jest a
circus man. And we ain’t your monkeys, here in P’lermo. If you want your
nuts pulled out of the fire, pull ’em out yourself.”
Hiram got up and stamped around the room in an ecstasy of rage.
“I’m a good mind to let you all go to Tophet by the short cut, your
tails tied together with kerosened rags,” he gasped. “Here I am, givin’
up time and money to save this town from being lugged into bankruptcy,
and what do I get? I get laughed at! Damn it!” he stormed, “there’s your
last town report! Look for yourself! He’s lied there under oath.”
With the words he threw a pamphlet into Badger’s lap. The old man
promptly tossed the report upon the table.
“You’d better stop tryin’ to work out your old grudge on Jedge Willard,”
he advised, with a bland sapience that made the showman grit his teeth.
“If he finds out that you’re a-slanderin’ him he’s li’ble to have the
law on ye.”
“If I should stand up in town meetin’ and call on you to rise and
say whether or not you hold a town note for seven thousand dollars, I
suppose you’ll lie, won’t you?”
“I shall allus stand behind the man who has allus helped to put some
extry dollars in my pocket,” said the old man, stiffly.
Hiram seized him by the arm, hustled him to the door and thrust him out
into the entry.
“If you wasn’t rank poison I’d chop you up and feed you to Imogene,” he
shouted as he slammed the door. “If you come into my house again I’ll
take chances and do it.”
The door opened promptly and the unterrified Badger poked in his head.
“I don’t s’pose you’re goin’ back on your brother Phin as a legal
adviser, be ye?” he inquired. “Well, he advised me to hang onto my town
note for a while and keep still till I heard from him. It wa’n’t two
hours ago that he told me the same thing. Now I----”
But when Hiram clutched a chair with a threatening motion Badger fled.
“Sime,” said the showman, “I’m blasted glad I had them carts painted
up. It’s me and you for the road again next season, both of us with our
knives out for blood and our little tin dippers held ready to catch
it. I’m sick of tryin’ to do favours for anyone. I never saw such an
ungrateful town as this one is.”
He looked sullenly out into the driving snow.
“The band seems to be doin’ well,” said Peak. “They’re havin’ three
rehearsals a week and are pretty nigh blowin’ their lungs out. You can’t
ask nothin’ better from the band than what you’re gittin’.”
Hiram turned from the window and gave his friend and confidant a long
and searching stare.
“Peak,” said he, “sometimes when you talk to me I think you’re in with
the rest a-tryin’ to do me.”
Simon surveyed him with eyes mutely expostulating.
“Other times I think you are a dummed fool. You can take your pick. Now
I am goin’ out to associate with some one that ain’t tryin’ to pick my
pocket the whole dog-blessed time nor spreadin’ on hair-oil talk when it
ain’t called for.”
He trudged out to the barn where Imogene was spending the winter
in dignified ease, occupying a corner of the building that had been
sheathed and boarded for her comfort. Here “Figger-Four” Avery tended a
little air-tight stove, relegated to the post of menial.
Hiram sat in silent communion with Imogene until the dusk came down.
Once in a while he fed to her a lump of candy. Each time she curved down
her trunk he poked a thick finger against it roguishly.
“I’ll bet ye know who sent ’em to ye--now, don’t ye?” he would
chuckle, when Imogene gazed down on him with amiable blinkings.