I need not dwell upon my return to Waydean that evening. It is still
painful to recall my sensations as I stepped from the train, on finding
that Joe Wrigley had so completely disregarded my instructions to tell
no one of the discovery that the usually quiet country road between the
station and Waydean swarmed with pedestrians returning from an
inspection of William Wedder's handiwork. Had I been permitted, as I had
hoped, to publicly expose the fraud, I could have risen to the occasion
and perhaps found a certain solace in doing so; but to find that in my
absence the prying eyes of my neighbors had found the ingenious
mechanism by which William had manufactured a flowing well of refined
petroleum, and had attributed it to me, was crushing. I could bear up
under the facetious remarks of the people who complimented me on my
success in taking such an excellent rise out of Peter, but when Andy
Taylor rushed out of his house and clapped me on the back, I could only
look at him in sorrowful reproach, at which his merriment increased.
"Mr. Carton," he gasped, "it beats the way you done up that Griggs all
hollow. I knew you'd get back on Peter, but I didn't know it'd be
so--gosh--darn--rich. Oh Lordy, to see him when the loose dirt shifted
and showed the blue end of the coal-oil barrel!"
"The coal-oil barrel?"
"Yes,--you'd ought to have laid a few boards of top of the heap, and it
wouldn't have shifted with people trampin'. You must have let ten
gallons run down that iron pipe--and how did you ever get it drove so
far? I suppose that joke cost you as much as five dollars, but I'd say
it was cheap at ten."
In vain I assured Andy that I was innocent; he only laughed the harder,
reiterating his belief that I beat the Dutch and that I was a natural
born play-actor; that the Griggs episode, charming as it had been, was
discounted by my latest histrionic venture.
By the dim light of my lantern, Marion, Paul and I viewed the wreck of
the Waydean Oil Well when I reached home. Our coal-oil barrel, exhumed
from the loose earth that had covered it, had been rolled away from the
edge of the hole, leaving the iron pipe exposed. The ground was packed
hard with the trampling of many feet.
"I didn't think there could be such a crowd of people in the country,
except at a funeral or an auction sale," said Marion indignantly. "I was
just enraged to sit in the house and see them pass through the yard as
if it were a common. I'll never forgive William Wedder--I wish I had
never baked him a pie."
"I hope he'll have to live on hygienic wheat biscuits when he gets
home," I responded. "I hope his wife has learned to cook them in two
hundred ways, and whether they're mashed, stewed, fried, pied, creamed,
puddinged or jellied, he'll have disappointment three times a day of
finding that they are still the same old wheat biscuits. That'll be
punishment enough for him, but it won't make Peter believe I didn't do
this, and by this time he must have got Roper's letter cancelling the
agreement."
"I suppose we'll have to give up the place in the end," said Marion,
with a sigh.
"Don't let Paul hear," I said in a low tone, "or he'll make the dickens
of a row."
At that moment Paul was leaning over the edge dangling a long string
into the well; fishing, I supposed, in my ignorance. For days he had
been going about with a dreamy look on his face that betokened a secret
play of absorbing interest. I drew a breath of relief when I saw that he
didn't look up at Marion's unguarded remark. All would have been well
had I not been so misguided as to make a suggestion that aroused
Marion's sense of duty and her persistent belief that I tried to shirk
mine.
"Paul," said she, and even in that one word I detected the compassionate
severity suitable to the extraction of a tooth--"do you know that we'll
have to leave----"
"Marion," I implored, "wait till we get him into the house--he'll rouse
the neighborhood."
I should have known better than to protest. Once started in the track of
duty nothing short of a disastrous collision would stop her. She did
pause, but merely to make a remark to me that led to a sharp
altercation. We forgot our rule never to give way to our angry passions
before Paul; indeed, he was so unusually silent that we didn't remember
his presence until we were suddenly struck dumb by a shrill exclamation
of impatient wrath that arose from the other side of the well.
"Dar-r-n it!" he ejaculated, with petrifying distinctness.
If he had turned into a quick-firing gun and dropped a shell at our feet
the effect could not have been more paralyzing. Our boy had been
carefully screened, not only from evil, but from vulgarity; he had never
gone to Sunday school, nor been left to the care of a nursemaid. His
companions were his toys and domestic pets; other children he had seen
only from a distance, and he regarded them as curious, but not
interesting, little animals. His face reflected the purity of his mind.
I hesitate to say so, for obvious reasons, but his face at the age of
seven was simply angelic; I mean, of course, normally, not when his
mouth was wide open in the act of expressing bodily or mental anguish.
And this is not merely his mother's opinion and mine; it is Aunt Sophy's
also. Indeed, Aunt Sophy, who is never tired of drawing attention to his
remarkable resemblance to a photograph of me as a boy, has gone much
farther, and has given utterance to thoughts that we only think.
Therefore, we turned to each other in dumb amazement; then I raised the
lantern to make sure that it really was Paul who had spoken. He was
getting up from his crouching position and the light showed that his
little mouth was tightly set and that his wide-open eyes sparkled like
stars. Even as we stared at him his lips parted again, and again he
said: "Dar-r-r-n it!"
I am thankful that the well was partially covered and that I was able to
keep Marion from sliding into it. "_Paul!_" she cried in horror, "oh,
Paul!"
I hastened to follow her lead. "Paul," I said, with fierce sternness,
"what do you mean, sir?"
"I mean," he replied accusingly, "that it's all spoiled. They've taken
fright at your squabbling and put out their lamps."
Again we stared at each other in questioning silence. What had taken
fright we knew not, but we did know that we had squabbled.
"Where did you hear that dreadful word?" demanded Marion.
"Darn?" queried Paul, with innocent pride. "I heard William Wedder say
something when the coal-oil barrel rolled on his foot, and when I asked
him 'I beg your pardon?' he couldn't remember what he had said, then
when I kept on asking him to try to remember he said it must have been
an exclamation called _darn_. I think it's ever so much nicer than
_bother_ or _good gracious_."
"It's a vulgar word, and only vulgar people use it," I commented
reprovingly.
"Why, father, William said that when Joe Wrigley's horse stood up on
his hind legs you said----"
"Paul," I interrupted hurriedly, "you said something took fright,
and----"
"Hush!" said he, in a mysterious whisper, coming close to me. "It was
the fairies. William said if we made an oil well and didn't say anything
about it, they'd be sure to come to fill their lamps, and they have. I
saw three of them climbing up my rope ladder when you frightened them
off."
"Then you knew that William made this?" I exclaimed.
"Of course. I helped him to bury the barrel so that the fairies wouldn't
know it wasn't a real natural well. He said if we kept it a secret it
would be a pleasant surprise to you when I showed you the fairies. Hush!
They're climbing up the rope ladder again. Peep down through that crack
and you'll see them--very--ve--ry--quietly. There now--stand back. I'm
going to help them up over the edge."
The next morning Peter Waydean came over to see me, his face wreathed in
smiles, his manner most cordial. "Mr. Carton," he said genially, "I
ain't on the hunt for oil wells this morning, but I was on my way to
thank you for the trouble you took in rigging up that one when I met
your little boy coming over to see me."
"Paul!" I exclaimed--"to see you?"
Peter nodded. "Great head on that little chap," he said. "'I don't want
you to be angry at father about the oil well,' he says to me, 'for
William and I made it together, and father didn't know anything about
it,' says he, standing up straight and stiff. Then he told me the whole
business, and although it turned out a good thing for me, I'm glad to
know it was that scoundrel Wedder that tried to play it off, and not
you. Paul was so tickled at me pretending to believe he really seen
fairies that when he wanted me to say that I'd sell the farm to you just
the same, I hadn't the heart to tell him it was sold."
"Sold?"
"Yes,--you see, I thought you had played that trick on me and I was so
mad yesterday that when along comes another agent twice as keen to buy
as them other two I jumped at the chance of selling. 'Name your price,'
says he, 'to sell on the spot.' 'Six thousand,' says I, at a bluff.
'Done,' says he; and in five minutes the agreement was signed."
"Well," I said, with a sigh, "I suppose we'll have to move."
"Oh, I don't know," said Peter encouragingly. "Perhaps the party don't
want to live here; though, considering the price," he added, with a
shrewd smile, "he didn't buy just for speculation. They say he's got a
fine place in the city and heaps of money, and he's just got married
again to a widow. I might as well have asked another thousand, I
believe."
"What is his name?" I asked, with sudden interest.
"Fairman. He owns--what--Mr. Carton, what's the----"
I relaxed my tense grip of his arm. "His first name?" I demanded
eagerly.
"Joseph, I think. What's the matter?"
I am afraid my explanation was not very clear to Peter. I could not tell
him the cause of my excitement, nor mention the fact that I had saved
Mr. Fairman's life several times in one day, for that would have savored
of boastfulness; so I hinted that when we were boys together Mr. Fairman
had saved my life and had ever since regarded me with the highest
esteem. Thus I preserved the main fact of our connection, only
disguising it enough to let Marion see incidentally afterwards how
careful I was to avoid the appearance of vainglory.
Now when I rushed into the house to tell Marion that Mr. Fairman had
bought Waydean, I did so with the innocent exuberance of expectant
delight with which children, not too sophisticated, view brown paper
parcels that are delivered at their homes during the Christmas season.
Marion's first thought, I could swear, was similar to mine; I could not
mistake the vivid flash of happy gratitude that illumined her face, nor
the sudden exclamation that was checked at the parting of her lips, yet
her tone, when she did speak, expressed the utmost mystification.
"Why,--how strange!" said she.
For an instant I did not comprehend her mental attitude, but I am
remarkably adaptable, not by nature, but by training, and by a swift
turn I avoided plunging headlong into an awkward situation. It would
show a want of delicacy, a sordid mind, a vulgar expectancy, were I not
to ignore the thought that we had both almost uttered. Even though I saw
an equine nose, a flowing tail and four legs protruding through the
brown paper, I must not guess it was a rocking horse; above all, I must
not hope it was to be mine.
"Yes," I remarked, with innocent bewilderment, "it is very strange. I
wonder why he bought it."
Truly I have learned a thing or two. My wife regarded me with admiration
that she scarcely tried to hide. I had saved Mr. Fairman's life without
adding a cubit to my stature in her estimation, but by this trifling
observance of the proprieties, this delicate expression of native
refinement, I stood exalted upon a pedestal.
"I wonder," repeated Marion, after me, in deep conjecture, "why
he--bought--it?"
Our eyes met. In hers I could see a faraway amused sparkle; in my own I
permitted a faint twinkle, then we both looked in another direction.
"Perhaps," I ventured cautiously, "Aunt Sophy will write and tell us."
"Perhaps she will," said Marion.
The reward of unconscious virtue arrived by the next mail, in the guise
of a long letter from Mrs. Fairman.
"......I can scarcely realize that it is only three days since we said
good-by," she wrote, "it seems so long ago. Of course we have been
travelling most of the time and this is really the first chance I have
had to write and tell you about the trip, and how constantly I think of
your kindness to me, and what good reason I have to be grateful for the
advice that had so much to do with my present happiness. Indeed, I
confessed to Joseph how I was influenced by Henry's opinion, and he was
quite affected. He keeps saying to me: 'A fine young man--a noble young
man!' He describes to me over and over again how admirably Henry acted
in the presence of danger the morning of our wedding; he says he hasn't
a doubt but that for Henry's coolness and resource we wouldn't be
married now. The thought makes me shudder! I suppose that is why I feel
so nervous about him when he is out of sight; I am so afraid of another
accident.
"But really, Marion, he hasn't been away from me for more than half an
hour at a time, he is so devoted. Of course, with such large interests
he has business to look after, but he does it altogether by telegrams.
It amazes me to see the number he sends off, and I'm getting quite used
to the shoals that arrive, but at first the sight of them made me feel
quite ill. He never looks to see if there are more than ten words, and
yesterday's hotel bill had an item of $7.62 for telegrams!
"Somehow I have been thinking a great deal of your poor Uncle Philip
lately. I think it must be the resemblance I see in Henry to him that
has brought him so vividly before me--and I have come to the conclusion
that I was too hard on him about the farming. Of course he spent a
great deal of money on it, but the spending gave him pleasure, and if he
had taken to horse-racing or gambling, or something worse, as so many
men do, I would have had real cause to complain. I am older now, and I
see that married men when they get to a certain age are inclined to fret
and chafe, and perhaps bolt, if they are tethered with too short a rope.
I see, too, that I didn't do Philip any good by trying to keep him from
farming. Now, dear Marion, I have something to write that will not
offend you, I hope. I tried to say it last week, but I couldn't quite
get my courage up, for you have a little bit of a temper, dear, and I
knew that if I saw your eyes flash I would get flustered and make a
bungle of it. You know I always supposed it was Henry's own
determination that kept him from buying any implements but a spade, a
rake and a hoe, but from something Paul said I have surmised that it was
because you made him promise not to. Perhaps, at the time, that was a
wise precaution, but you are differently situated now, and you should
modify your views. Of course Henry will do exactly as you say, and
never let you see what it costs him, and although I admire his common
sense about saving money, I admire him much more for his unselfish,
uncomplaining devotion to your ideas. I believe if he thought it would
give you any pleasure he would go and cut off his little finger on the
chopping block in the woodshed. But I would advise you strongly, Marion
(since you need have no fear for the future), to let him spend all the
money he wishes on the farm, and to keep all sorts of fancy stock. Let
him go ahead for a year at least and take all the pleasure he can out of
it, and you'll find it will pay in the end. There's just one thing I
would shut down on, if I were you (though I don't think it's likely he'd
want to do it, but you never can tell how far they may go if they once
get started), that is, underdraining. I don't know anything about
overdrains, but I do know that underdrains are simply ruinous, and if
you keep Henry from underdraining I don't believe he can waste much
money. Now, dear Marion, write soon and let your poor old aunt know
that you are not offended by this suggestion."
Marion stopped reading, covered her face with her hands and laughed
hysterically, exclaiming, "Oh, how funny! You poor,--poor, down-trodden
creature!"
I was dumb with astonishment at first,--there was much food for
reflection in the letter,--but what surprised me most was the absence of
any allusion to Mr. Fairman's buying the farm. "Is that all?" I asked,
with breathless incredulity.