IN MANNER DECIDEDLY SUMMARY
Then twice and thrice the youth’s parched lips
Strive hard to frame the longed-for word;
And twice and thrice he tries again,
Yet not a single sound is heard.
There’s just an upward flash of eyes
Like starlight in a forest pool;
She may have said, “Take heart, dear one!”
She may have said, “Go on, thou fool!”
--The “Quaker Wooing.”
Some of the older voters in Palermo relate that once a constable obeyed
the injunction to post a caucus call “in a public place” by sticking the
paper on the wall under the roller towel in Asa Brickett’s store. It
is further related that no one heard of that caucus until it was over,
except the few chosen ones let into the secret.
But the warrant for the annual town meeting in Palermo that March, done
in the best roundhand of the second selectman, one copy tacked onto
the townhouse door, another copy pasted up in the post-office, another
nailed to the round centre post in Brickett’s store, received the
careful attention of every voter.
Each sheet was banded by several broad smooches that distinguished the
articles in the warrant to which especial public interest attached. Each
voter, as he read these, carefully ran his finger along the lines across
the paper, so as not to miss a word, for it was understood that the
new faction in town politics, captained by Hiram Look, had obtained the
insertion of those articles.
One was, “To see if the town will vote a sum of money for the support of
the ‘Look Cornet Brass Band,’ or act anything thereto.”
Popular interest in this measure was shown by a fair amount of
discoloration on the paper.
A deeper tint attached to Article 15: “To see if the town will vote to
pay its floating indebtedness, statement of complete amount of same to
be furnished the voters from his books by the town treasurer prior to
the call for the ballot.”
Article 16 was banded darkest of any. It was: “To see if the town
will vote to oblige its treasurer to secure bonds acceptable to the
selectmen.”
The people discussed these articles freely, but only as evidence that
Hiram Look was still busy at the working out of the old grudge against
the Willard family. No hint that irregularities existed in Judge
Willard’s accounts had been breathed.
First of all, he had borrowed shrewdly from such men as Sumner Badger,
who clung to their little money secrets desperately, secure in their
faith in a Willard.
Squire Phin Look was silent with the silence of a man who walks beneath
an avalanche poised for its plunge, and realises all the danger.
The tempestuous Hiram, with teeth set close and growling under his
breath since his return from New York, was silent from motives ingrained
in his showman’s temperament. The fall of Palermo’s tower of financial
strength was a sensation that he was planning with as full an eye to the
dramatic as he would have planned a slide for life from the peak of the
round-top.
“Blast him,” he muttered to Simon over and over in the moments when he
“had to talk to some one or bust,” as he expressed it, “he has always
put the twisters on our fam’ly before the face and eyes of the people.
It’s there I’ll take him, then! I wouldn’t even joggle him now. I want
him just as high on the pedestal as he can be. Not a whisper, or I’ll
murder you. I want him high, I tell ye! And with these two hands I’ll
push him off whilst they are all lookin’ at him. And he’ll fall a
thousand miles a minute and he’ll light in a cloud of splinters that
will make the sky dark. And then I’ll jump on him and crow three times
and a tiger, whilst the band plays ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy.’”
During these harangues Peak wriggled his toes in his carpet slippers and
blinked appreciatively, but without venturing a word.
“God!” blurted Hiram, spanking his hands upon his knees, “I’m givin’ him
a taste of the ling’rin’ agony he gave my poor old father till he run
him under ground. I’ve let him know just enough, Sime, to realise
that I’ve got the hooks fast into him. Now let him squirm! There ain’t
nothin’ that ties human natur’ into knots like bein’ sentenced and
knowin’ the day set for the hangin’. Old Coll Willard knows it’s for
town-meetin’ day, and that I’ve got the rope soaped for him. Let him
squirm! He’s a-writin’ two letters a day to that drunk in New York and
firin’ along three telegrams daily, sweatin’ blood all the time. Let him
squirm! I wonder now if he can’t see in his dreams poor old Seth Look
beggin’ for a little leeway on the notes the old pirate had bought up
against our fam’ly. He’s been down on his knees to Phin already.”
Hiram rubbed his rough palms with satisfaction.
“Ain’t your brother li’ble to daub in, seein’ that him and you ain’t
gittin’ along the best ever was jest now?” inquired Peak.
“My brother is a fool in some directions, as I’m free to say both to him
and to inquirin’ friends,” reported Hiram. “But he’s a fool only about
so fur and then he stops. Don’t you set up nights worryin’ about that,
Sime. Phin has got a blister or two from the Willard fam’ly lately and
the swellin’ ain’t gone down yet.”
After freeing his mind on such occasions as this, Hiram lighted another
of his long cigars, hunched down in his chair, and perused figures in a
dog’s-eared notebook with intense satisfaction.
On the afternoon of the day before town meeting something that Squire
Phin had been vaguely dreading happened to him.
He was walking slowly home, avoiding the sidewalk pools that the chill
of late afternoon had crusted. His head was bowed, either in thought or
to watch his steps, and he did not see Sylvena Willard standing at the
gate until she spoke to him.
“Phineas, I would not have troubled you, but the matter is of the utmost
importance. I do not feel like discussing it by the roadside. Won’t you
step to the house?”
He glanced at her with a sort of timidity in his demeanour. Her face,
half shielded by the shawl caught lightly around her head, was very
grave. It seemed to him that her temple locks had more gray in them than
when he saw her last.
He hesitated only for a moment, then opened the iron gate and
accompanied her up the broad path to the porch. Neither spoke on the
way.
In the big, gloomy parlour, in the corners of which old-fashioned
chairs of dark wood seemed to lurk like uncouth animals in the afternoon
shadows, he sat gazing at her, still without speaking.
Her hands picked restlessly at the fringes of the shawl that she had
dropped across her lap.
Beyond the closed double doors that shut off the adjoining room there
sounded music faintly. It was the tinkly melody of an automatic
music box, but the Squire, having no very keen ear for tunes, did not
recognise what this one was playing, only vaguely realising that it was
something he had heard before, probably at a vestry meeting. It seemed
to have a hymn flavour.
“I don’t know enough about business to talk this matter over with you as
it should be discussed, Phin-eas,” she said at last. “I only know that
some dreadful trouble is killing my poor father. And I also know that
your brother is at the bottom of it. I have found out that he wants to
have father dismissed from office to-morrow. Father is old and childish,
Phineas. In the last few months he has grown much more so. He is
breaking down. I can see it, for I have a loving daughter’s eyes. I wish
he did not care for the office. It is only a little one, I know. But the
Willards have been treasurers of the town for many years, and he seems
to have set his heart on holding it. It is a small favour for an old man
to ask, Phineas, and you know that there is no honour that father thinks
as much of as he does an honour from his own people.”
She looked at him wistfully. Yet he missed the old-time frank and candid
friendship in her eyes.
Now it came to him suddenly that the tune on the music box in the other
room was, “Where is My Wandering Boy To-night?”
“It is King’s mother,” she said, noting his look at the closed door.
“She is very lonely nowadays and spends her afternoons with me. She
seems to enjoy listening to the little music box that the Sunday-school
gave to me. I hope it doesn’t disturb you. We have grown used to it here
in the house. As to the office that father----”
“I am only one of the voters in this town,” he said brusquely. The
kindly sympathy had suddenly gone out of his face. A curious feeling
of hostility entered his heart. The sudden angry thought came to him in
these surroundings, and with that element on the other side of the door,
“I’m only Seth Look’s boy, to be pitied, then used, then pitied some
more and tossed aside.”
“There is no one who exerts as much influence as you,” she persisted.
“But I don’t appeal to you to secure for my father an office to which he
is entitled by all fair play.” Her tone was proud now. “I only ask you
to restrain that wretched brother of yours, who apparently has come
back to this town simply and solely to make trouble. He is meddling in
affairs that do not concern him; he is stirring up strife and factions
in our town, and for the credit of Palermo and your family it is your
duty to put him where he belongs.”
The subdued clicking of a spring ratchet had sounded in the other room,
and now the music box started in again on “Where is My Wandering Boy
To-night?”
“Where he belongs, eh?” he said in a voice that he tried to make calm.
“And where would that be?”
“Well, somewhere so far away that we’d never again hear the bellow of
that elephant and the discord of that brass band,” she replied smartly,
for the suppressed sneer in his tone touched her.
“So it’s my wild beast brother who is responsible for all the troubles
of your father, and you want me to cage him and ship him out of town?”
He scowled at the door that shut off the music box and its persistent
operator.
“Night after night my poor old father sits there in his office alone,
white and sick and weak and----”
“I’ve seen a poor old father sit up nights, too,” he broke in, “and he
was sitting up fighting off mortgages and executions and bills of sale
let loose on him by _your_ father before he tucked himself away on his
bed of down. Don’t let us get to comparing fathers, Sylvena! It will not
be profitable.”
His tone was harsh and his eyes flashed.
“But it’s _my_ father,” she cried, “and I’ll fight for him. It’s well to
know who all our enemies are. I was shocked and disappointed, Phineas,
when you----”
“Not one word about that affair--not a word from you!” he commanded.
“You can tell me nothing that I don’t know and understand.”
She paused stammeringly, frightened by his heat. After a moment she rose
and pushed back her chair.
“If I am to class you with your brother,” she began, but he checked her
again by a furious exclamation. He stood up and threw upon his chair the
soft hat that he had been crumpling between his broad palms. The music
box kept on its monotonous tune.
“That’s enough about my brother--enough!” he cried. “You are bound to
have it that he is the man who has made your father sleepless and old,
and childish and haggard. You are facing Hime Look--the Look family, as
though it were your only enemy, when the wolf is behind you, Sylvena,
behind you!”
His voice was so intense that she cast a look over her shoulder
instinctively.
He came close to her, took her by both arms and held her so.
“You listen to me,” he said, with tone of the master. “I don’t know very
well how to make love. I never have known. I even was fool enough and
quixotic enough to think I’d let another man have you if that would make
you happy. But I know now that I wouldn’t. I know that you are mine.
I’m going to be so much of a braggart now--so conceited that you won’t
recognise me! I’m going to say to you that you have never loved any one
else but me, and you never will love any one else. But life has been
too easy for you, Sylvena, and your heart has never been stirred and
awakened like the hearts of some of us poor devils. You have followed
your one duty as you saw it. Others have filched from me, who deserved
it most, this bit of love, that bit of loyalty. Now I, Phineas Look,
stand forth here and demand my own. Understand me! I demand it. You are
mine, Sylvie Willard, because I love you better than myself. You are
mine because you love me. You are mine because you need my arm about you
in the bitterest hour of your life. That hour is now upon you. I’m going
to strike the blow, Sylvie, because it will make you mine.”
His voice trembled in sympathy for her. But he went on:
“It is not my brother who is keeping your father awake. It is King
Bradish, the rascal, the sneak, the drunken villain who has plunged him
into ruin. It has been weeks--yes, months--since you or your father, or
even his own mother, have received a word from him.”
He checked the expostulation that was on her lips. Her eyes were wide
and fixed on his. Her face worked pitifully.
“His mother has lied for him. You have lied for him, Sylvie, because
your father asked it of you. I know all about it. There are times when
a woman’s lie for a man is holy, but not in this case. I say to you that
King Bradish is a profligate drunkard, a thief--a worse than thief,
for he has dragged your father into dishonesty as well as ruin. There!
There’s the bitter blow. Bear it, Sylvie, bear it, for it will make a
truer, nobler woman of you.”
Her knees trembled so that he put his arm about her. The music box
started in once more on the same tune.
With a growl under his breath he placed the half fainting woman on her
chair, strode into the hall and entered the other room by a side door.
He seized the music box from the lap of the astonished and frightened
operator, slammed up a window and threw it as far as he could. Its
plaintive query ceased in a crash.
He found Sylvena on her knees beside the chair, clutching the rungs and
staring into vacancy. He knelt beside her and took her white face into
his strong hands.
“Little girl,” he said, “forgive all of my brutal ways. Forgive what I
just did. But perhaps it was that infernal tune that made me so cruel
with you and so blunt. I love you! I love you! I can’t say that with all
the pretty words that some men use, for I haven’t had practice, Sylvie.
Please put that much to my credit. But I love you. I cannot _say_ any
more---but I can _do!_”
His voice was firm and full of rugged encouragement.
“I have told you the bitter truth about your father. Honesty is best
between folks who are going to be married.” He spoke this with a tone of
conviction that brought her astonished gaze up to meet his. “You had to
know it. I have told you. You are a brave woman, and you can bear it.
You can bear it because from this moment I put my body, my strength, my
brains, my love, my eternal devotion between you and all those who
would be your enemies. Your battles are now my battles. My ways must
henceforth be your ways. I have told your father that I would help. Go
and talk with him, poor girl. The truth is bitter, but it’s time now to
be honest. Don’t say anything to me now. I have said enough for both.
And I am going away to do my best for you and yours, knowing that a good
and true woman will be ready some day to tell me that she loves me best
of all the world.”
He still held her face between his hands, and bent and kissed her on her
forehead and then on her lips. She attempted to say something, but he
gently kissed her once more to check her speech, then rose, took his hat
from the chair and went out of the house.
The old dog was waiting for him on the porch, and gave him an amiable
glance from appreciative eyes.
“It isn’t the sort of wooing that’s laid down in the books, Eli,”
muttered the Squire; “but I reckon that when you’ve made up your mind
that a thing really belongs to you the best thing to do is to go right
ahead and replevin.”