Bartlett was silent for a long time, but there was evidently something
on his mind, for he communed with himself, his mutterings growing louder
and louder, until they broke the stillness; then he struck the horses,
pulled them in, and began his soliloquy over again. At last he said
abruptly to the professor:
“What’s this Revolution he talked about?”
“It was the War of Independence, beginning in 1776.”
“Never heard of it. Did the Yanks fight us?”
“The colonies fought with England.”
“What colonies?”
“The country now called the United States.”
“They fit with England, eh? Which licked?”
“The colonies won their independence.”
“That means they licked us. I don’t believe a word of it. ‘Pears to me
I’d ‘a’ heard of it; fur I’ve lived in these parts a long time.”
“It was a little before your day.”
“So was 1812; but my father fit in it, an’ I never heard him tell of
this Revolution. He’d ‘a’ known, I sh’d think. There’s a nigger in the
fence somewheres.”
“Well, England was rather busy at the time with the French.”
“Ah, that was it, was it? I’ll bet England never knew the Revolution was
a-goin’ on till it was over. Old Napoleon couldn’t thrash ‘em, and it
don’t stand to reason that the Yanks could. I thought there was some
skullduggery. Why, it took the Yanks four years to lick themselves. I
got a book at home all about Napoleon. He was a tough cuss.”
The professor did not feel called upon to defend the character of
Napoleon, and so silence once more descended upon them. Bartlett seemed
a good deal disturbed by the news he had just heard of the Revolution,
and he growled to himself, while the horses suffered more than usual
from the whip and the hauling back that invariably followed the stroke.
Yates was some distance ahead, and swinging along at a great rate, when
the horses, apparently of their own accord, turned in at an open gateway
and proceeded, in their usual leisurely fashion, toward a large barn,
past a comfortable frame house with a wide veranda in front.
“This is my place,” said Bartlett shortly.
“I wish you had told me a few minutes ago,” replied the professor,
springing off, “so that I might have called to my friend.”
“I’m not frettin’ about him,” said Bartlett, throwing the reins to a
young man who came out of the house.
Renmark ran to the road and shouted loudly to the distant Yates.
Yates apparently did not hear him, but something about the next house
attracted the pedestrian’s attention, and after standing for a moment
and gazing toward the west he looked around and saw the professor
beckoning to him. When the two men met, Yates said:
“So we have arrived, have we? I say, Stilly, she lives in the next
house. I saw the buggy in the yard.”
“She? Who?”
“Why, that good-looking girl we passed on the road. I’m going to buy our
supplies at that house, Stilly, if you have no objections. By the way,
how is my old friend 1812?”
“He doesn’t seem to harbor any harsh feelings. In fact, he was more
troubled about the Revolution than about the blow you gave him.”
“News to him, eh? Well, I’m glad I knocked something into his head.”
“You certainly did it most unscientifically.”
“How do you mean--unscientifically?”
“In the delivery of the blow. I never saw a more awkwardly delivered
undercut.”
Yates looked at his friend in astonishment. How should this calm,
learned man know anything about undercuts or science in blows?
“Well, you must admit I got there just the same.”
“Yes, by brute force. A sledge hammer would have done as well. But you
had such an opportunity to do it neatly and deftly, without any display
of surplus energy, that I regretted to see such an opening thrown away.”
“Heavens and earth, Stilly, this is the professor in a new light!
What do you teach in Toronto University, anyhow? The noble art of
self-defense?”
“Not exactly; but if you intend to go through Canada in this belligerent
manner, I think it would be worth your while to take a few hints from
me.”
“With striking examples, I suppose. By Jove! I will, Stilly.”
As the two came to the house they found Bartlett sitting in a wooden
rocking chair on the veranda, looking grimly down the road.
“What an old tyrant that man must be in his home!” said Yates. There was
no time for the professor to reply before they came within earshot.
“The old woman’s setting out supper,” said the farmer gruffly, that
piece of information being apparently as near as he could get toward
inviting them to share his hospitality. Yates didn’t know whether it was
meant for an invitation or not, but he answered shortly:
“Thanks, we won’t stay.”
“Speak fur yourself, please,” snarled Bartlett.
“Of course I go with my friend,” said Renmark; “but we are obliged for
the invitation.”
“Please yourselves.”
“What’s that?” cried a cheery voice from the inside of the house, as a
stout, rosy, and very good-natured-looking woman appeared at the front
door. “Won’t stay? _Who_ won’t stay? I’d like to see anybody leave my
house hungry when there’s a meal on the table! And, young men, if you
can get a better meal anywhere on the Ridge than what I’ll give you,
why, you’re welcome to go there next time, but this meal you’ll have
here, inside of ten minutes. Hiram, that’s your fault. You always invite
a person to dinner as if you wanted to wrastle with him!”
Hiram gave a guilty start, and looked with something of mute appeal at
the two men, but said nothing.
“Never mind him,” continued Mrs. Bartlett. “You’re at my house; and,
whatever my neighbors may say ag’in me, I never heard anybody complain
of the lack of good victuals while I was able to do the cooking. Come
right in and wash yourselves, for the road between here and the fort
is dusty enough, even if Hiram never was taken up for fast driving.
Besides, a wash is refreshing after a hot day.”
There was no denying the cordiality of this invitation, and Yates, whose
natural gallantry was at once aroused, responded with the readiness of a
courtier. Mrs. Bartlett led the way into the house; but as Yates passed
the farmer the latter cleared his throat with an effort, and, throwing
his thumb over his shoulder in the direction his wife had taken, said in
a husky whisper:
“No call to--to mention the Revolution, you know.”
“Certainly not,” answered Yates, with a wink that took in the situation.
“Shall we sample the jug before or after supper?”
“After, if it’s all the same to you;” adding, “out in the barn.”
Yates nodded, and followed his friend into the house.
The young men were shown into a bedroom of more than ordinary size, on
the upper floor. Everything about the house was of the most dainty and
scrupulous cleanliness, and an air of cheerful comfort pervaded the
place. Mrs. Bartlett was evidently a housekeeper to be proud of. Two
large pitchers of cool, soft water awaited them, and the wash, as had
been predicted, was most refreshing.
“I say,” cried Yates, “it’s rather cheeky to accept a man’s hospitality
after knocking him down.”
“It would be for most people, but I think you underestimate your cheek,
as you call it.”
“Bravo, Stilly! You’re blossoming out. That’s repartee, that is. With
the accent on the rap, too. Never you mind; I think old 1812 and I will
get on all right after this. It doesn’t seem to bother him any, so I
don’t see why it should worry me. Nice motherly old lady, isn’t she?”
“Who? 1812?”
“No; Mrs. 1812. I’m sorry I complimented you on your repartee. You’ll
get conceited. Remember that what in the newspaper man is clever, in a
grave professor is rank flippancy. Let’s go down.”
The table was covered with a cloth as white and spotless as good linen
can well be. The bread was genuine homemade, a term so often misused
in the cities. It was brown as to crust, and flaky and light as to
interior. The butter, cool from the rock cellar, was of a refreshing
yellow hue. The sight of the well-loaded table was most welcome to
the eyes of hungry travelers. There was, as Yates afterward remarked,
“abundance, and plenty of it.”
“Come, father!” cried Mrs. Bartlett, as the young men appeared; they
heard the rocking chair creak on the veranda in prompt answer to the
summons.
“This is my son, gentlemen,” said Mrs. Bartlett, indicating the young
man who stood in a noncommittal attitude near a corner of the room.
The professor recognized him as the person who had taken charge of the
horses when his father came home. There was evidently something of
his father’s demeanor about the young man, who awkwardly and silently
responded to the recognition of the strangers.
“And this is my daughter,” continued the good woman. “Now, what might
your names be?”
“My name is Yates, and this is my friend Professor Renmark of T’ronto,”
pronouncing the name of the fair city in two syllables, as is, alas! too
often done. The professor bowed, and Yates cordially extended his hand
to the young woman. “How do you do, Miss Bartlett?” he said, “I am happy
to meet you.”
The girl smiled very prettily, and said she hoped they had a pleasant
trip out from Fort Erie.
“Oh, we had,” said Yates, looking for a moment at his host, whose eyes
were fixed on the tablecloth, and who appeared to be quite content to
let his wife run the show. “The road’s a little rocky in places, but
it’s very pleasant.”
“Now, you sit down here, and you here,” said Mrs. Bartlett; “and I do
hope you have brought good appetites with you.”
The strangers took their places, and Yates had a chance to look at the
younger member of the family, which opportunity he did not let slip.
It was hard to believe that she was the daughter of so crusty a man
as Hiram Bartlett. Her cheeks were rosy, with dimples in them that
constantly came and went in her incessant efforts to keep from laughing.
Her hair, which hung about her plump shoulders, was a lovely golden
brown. Although her dress was of the cheapest material, it was neatly
cut and fitted; and her dainty white apron added that touch of wholesome
cleanliness which was so noticeable everywhere in the house. A bit of
blue ribbon at her white throat, and a pretty spring flower just
below it, completed a charming picture, which a more critical and less
susceptible man than Yates might have contemplated with pleasure.
Miss Bartlett sat smilingly at one end of the table, and her father
grimly at the other. The mother sat at the side, apparently looking
on that position as one of vantage for commanding the whole field, and
keeping her husband and her daughter both under her eye. The teapot and
cups were set before the young woman. She did not pour out the tea at
once, but seemed to be waiting instructions from her mother. That
good lady was gazing with some sternness at her husband, he vainly
endeavoring to look at the ceiling or anywhere but at her. He drew his
open hand nervously down his face, which was of unusual gravity even for
him. Finally he cast an appealing glance at his wife, who sat with her
hands folded on her lap, but her eyes were unrelenting. After a
moment’s hopeless irresolution Bartlett bent his head over his plate and
murmured:
“For what we are about to receive, oh, make us truly thankful. Amen.”
Mrs. Bartlett echoed the last word, having also bowed her head when she
saw surrender in the troubled eyes of her husband.
Now, it happened that Yates, who had seen nothing of this silent
struggle of the eyes, being exceedingly hungry, was making every
preparation for the energetic beginning of the meal. He had spent most
of his life in hotels and New York boarding houses, so that if he ever
knew the adage, “Grace before meat,” he had forgotten it. In the midst
of his preparations came the devout words, and they came upon him as a
stupefying surprise. Although naturally a resourceful man, he was not
quick enough this time to cover his confusion. Miss Bartlett’s golden
head was bowed, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Yates’ look of
amazed bewilderment and his sudden halt of surprise. When all heads were
raised, the young girl’s still remained where it was, while her plump
shoulders quivered. Then she covered her face with her apron, and the
silvery ripple of a laugh came like a smothered musical chime trickling
through her fingers.
“Why, _Kitty_!” cried her mother in astonishment, “whatever is the
matter with you?”
The girl could no longer restrain her mirth. “You’ll have to pour out
the tea, mother!” She exclaimed, as she fled from the room.
“For the land’s sake!” cried the astonished mother, rising to take her
frivolous daughter’s place, “what ails the child? I don’t see what there
is to laugh at.”
Hiram scowled down the table, and was evidently also of the opinion that
there was no occasion for mirth. The professor was equally in the dark.
“I am afraid, Mrs. Bartlett,” said Yates, “that I am the innocent cause
of Miss Kitty’s mirth. You see, madam--it’s a pathetic thing to say, but
really I have had no home life. Although I attend church regularly, of
course,” he added with jaunty mendacity, “I must confess that I haven’t
heard grace at meals for years and years, and--well, I wasn’t just
prepared for it. I have no doubt I made an exhibition of myself, which
your daughter was quick to see.”
“It wasn’t very polite,” said Mrs. Bartlett with some asperity.
“I know that,” pleaded Yates with contrition, “but I assure you it was
unintentional on my part.”
“Bless the man!” cried his hostess. “I don’t mean you. I mean Kitty. But
that girl never _could_ keep her face straight. She always favored me
more than her father.”
This statement was not difficult to believe, for Hiram at that moment
looked as if he had never smiled in his life. He sat silent throughout
the meal, but Mrs. Bartlett talked quite enough for two.
“Well, for my part,” she said, “I don’t know what farming’s coming to!
Henry Howard and Margaret drove past here this afternoon as proud as
Punch in their new covered buggy. Things is very different from what
they was when I was a girl. Then a farmer’s daughter had to work. Now
Margaret’s took her diploma at the ladies’ college, and Arthur he’s
begun at the university, and Henry’s sporting round in a new buggy. They
have a piano there, with the organ moved out into the back room.”
“The whole Howard lot’s a stuck-up set,” muttered the farmer.
But Mrs. Bartlett wouldn’t have that. Any detraction that was necessary
she felt competent to supply, without help from the nominal head of the
house.
“No, I don’t go so far as to say that. Neither would you, Hiram, if you
hadn’t lost your lawsuit about the line fence; and served you right,
too, for it wouldn’t have been begun if I had been at home at the time.
Not but what Margaret’s a good housekeeper, for she wouldn’t be her
mother’s daughter if she wasn’t that; but it does seem to me a queer way
to raise farmers’ children, and I only hope they can keep it up. There
were no pianos nor French and German in _my_ young days.”
“You ought to hear her play! My lands!” cried young Bartlett, who spoke
for the first time. His admiration for her accomplishment evidently went
beyond his powers of expression.
Bartlett himself did not relish the turn the conversation had taken,
and he looked somewhat uneasily at the two strangers. The professor’s
countenance was open and frank, and he was listening with respectful
interest to Mrs. Bartlett’s talk. Yates bent over his plate with flushed
face, and confined himself strictly to the business in hand.
“I am glad,” said the professor innocently to Yates, “that you made the
young lady’s acquaintance. I must ask you for an introduction.”
For once in his life Yates had nothing to say, but he looked at his
friend with an expression that was not kindly. The latter, in answer to
Mrs. Bartlett’s inquiries, told how they had passed Miss Howard on the
road, and how Yates, with his usual kindness of heart, had offered the
young woman the hospitalities of the hay rack. Two persons at the table
were much relieved when the talk turned to the tent. It was young Hiram
who brought about this boon. He was interested in the tent, and he
wanted to know. Two things seemed to bother the boy: First, he was
anxious to learn what diabolical cause had been at work to induce two
apparently sane men to give up the comforts of home and live in this
exposed manner, if they were not compelled to do so. Second, he desired
to find out why people who had the privilege of living in large cities
came of their own accord into the uninteresting country, anyhow. Even
when explanations were offered, the problem seemed still beyond him.
After the meal they all adjourned to the veranda, where the air was cool
and the view extensive. Mrs. Bartlett would not hear of the young men
pitching the tent that night. “Goodness knows, you will have enough of
it, with the rain and the mosquitoes. We have plenty of room here, and
you will have one comfortable night on the Ridge, at any rate. Then in
the morning you can find a place in the woods to suit you, and my boy
will take an ax and cut stakes for you, and help to put up your precious
tent. Only remember that when it rains you are to come to the house,
or you will catch your deaths with cold and rheumatism. It will be very
nice till the novelty wears off; then you are quite welcome to the front
rooms upstairs, and Hiram can take the tent back to Erie the first time
he goes to town.”
Mrs. Bartlett had a way of taking things for granted. It never seemed
to occur to her that any of her rulings might be questioned. Hiram sat
gazing silently at the road, as if all this was no affair of his.
Yates had refused a chair, and sat on the edge of the veranda, with
his back against one of the pillars, in such a position that he might,
without turning his head, look through the open doorway into the room.
where Miss Bartlett was busily but silently clearing away the tea
things. The young man caught fleeting glimpses of her as she moved
airily about her work. He drew a cigar from his case, cut off the end
with his knife, and lit a match on the sole of his boot, doing this with
an easy automatic familiarity that required no attention on his part;
all of which aroused the respectful envy of young Hiram, who sat on a
wooden chair, leaning forward, eagerly watching the man from New York.
“Have a cigar?” said Yates, offering the case to young Hiram.
“No, no; thank you,” gasped the boy, aghast at the reckless audacity of
the proposal.
“What’s that?” cried Mrs. Bartlett. Although she was talking volubly
to the professor, her maternal vigilance never even nodded, much less
slept. “A cigar? Not likely! I’ll say this for my husband and my boy:
that, whatever else they may have done, they have never smoked nor
touched a drop of liquor since I’ve known them, and, please God, they
never will.”
“Oh, I guess it wouldn’t hurt them,” said Yates, with a lack of tact
that was not habitual. He fell several degrees in the estimation of his
hostess.
“Hurt ‘em?” cried Mrs. Bartlett indignantly. “I guess it won’t get
a chance to.” She turned to the professor, who was a good
listener--respectful and deferential, with little to say for himself.
She rocked gently to and fro as she talked.
Her husband sat unbendingly silent, in a sphinxlike attitude that gave
no outward indication of his mental uneasiness. He was thinking gloomily
that it would be just his luck to meet Mrs. Bartlett unexpectedly in the
streets of Fort Erie on one of those rare occasions when he was
enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season. He had the most pessimistic
forebodings of what the future might have in store for him. Sometimes,
when neighbors or customers “treated” him in the village, and he felt he
had taken all the whisky that cloves would conceal, he took a five-cent
cigar instead of a drink. He did not particularly like the smoking of
it, but there was a certain devil-may-care recklessness in going down
the street with a lighted cigar in his teeth, which had all the more
fascination for him because of its manifest danger. He felt at these
times that he was going the pace, and that it is well our women do not
know of all the wickedness there is in this world. He did not fear that
any neighbor might tell his wife, for there were depths to which no
person could convince Mrs. Bartlett he would descend. But he thought
with horror of some combination of circumstances that might bring his
wife to town unknown to him on a day when he indulged. He pictured, with
a shudder, meeting her unexpectedly on the uncertain plank sidewalk of
Fort Erie, he smoking a cigar. When this nightmare presented itself to
him, he resolved never to touch a cigar again; but he well knew that the
best resolutions fade away if a man is excited with two or three glasses
of liquor.
When Mrs. Bartlett resumed conversation with the professor, Yates looked
up at young Hiram and winked. The boy flushed with pleasure under the
comprehensiveness of that wink. It included him in the attractive halo
of crime that enveloped the fascinating personality of the man from New
York. It seemed to say:
“That’s all right, but we are men of the world. _We_ know.”
Young Hiram’s devotion to the Goddess Nicotine had never reached the
altitude of a cigar. He had surreptitiously smoked a pipe in a secluded
corner behind the barn in days when his father was away. He feared
both his father and his mother, and so was in an even more embarrassing
situation than old Hiram himself. He had worked gradually up to tobacco
by smoking cigarettes of cane made from abandoned hoop-skirts. Crinoline
was fashionable, even in the country, in those days, and ribs of
cane were used before the metallic distenders of dresses came in. One
hoop-skirt, whose usefulness as an article of adornment was gone, would
furnish delight and smoking material for a company of boys for a month.
The cane smoke made the tongue rather raw, but the wickedness was
undeniable. Yates’ wink seemed to recognize young Hiram as a comrade
worthy to offer incense at the shrine, and the boy was a firm friend of
Yates from the moment the eyelid of the latter drooped.
The tea things having been cleared away, Yates got no more glimpses of
the girl through the open door. He rose from his lowly seat and strolled
toward the gate, with his hands in his pockets. He remembered that he
had forgotten something, and cudgeled his brains to make out what it
was. He gazed down the road at the house of the Howards, which naturally
brought to his recollection his meeting with the young girl on the road.
There was a pang of discomfiture in this thought when he remembered
the accomplishments attributed to her by Mrs. Bartlett. He recalled his
condescending tone to her, and recollected his anxiety about the jar.
The jar! That was what he had forgotten. He flashed a glance at old
Hiram, and noted that the farmer was looking at him with something like
reproach in his eyes. Yates moved his head almost imperceptibly toward
the barn, and the farmer’s eyes dropped to the floor of the veranda. The
young man nonchalantly strolled past the end of the house.
“I guess I’ll go to look after the horses,” said the farmer, rising.
“The horses are all right, father. I saw to them,” put in his son, but
the old man frowned him down, and slouched around the corner of the
house. Mrs. Bartlett was too busy talking to the professor to notice. So
good a listener did not fall to her lot every day.
“Here’s looking at you,” said Yates, strolling into the barn, taking
a telescopic metal cup from his pocket, and clinking it into receptive
shape by a jerk of the hand. He offered the now elongated cup to Hiram,
who declined any such modern improvement.
“Help yourself in that thing. The jug’s good enough for me.”
“Three fingers” of the liquid gurgled out into the patented vessel, and
the farmer took the jar, after a furtive look over his shoulder.
“Well, here’s luck.” The newspaper man tossed off the potion with the
facility of long experience, shutting up the dish with his thumb and
finger, as if it were a metallic opera hat.
The farmer drank silently from the jar itself. Then he smote in the cork
with his open palm.
“Better bury it in the wheat bin,” he said morosely. “The boy might find
it if you put it among the oats--feedin’ the horses, ye know.”
“Mighty good place,” assented Yates, as the golden grain flowed in a
wave over the submerged jar. “I say, old man, you know the spot; you’ve
been here before.”
Bartlett’s lowering countenance indicated resentment at the imputation,
but he neither affirmed nor denied. Yates strolled out of the barn,
while the farmer went through a small doorway that led to the stable. A
moment later he heard Hiram calling loudly to his son to bring the pails
and water the horses.
“Evidently preparing an _alibi_,” said Yates, smiling to himself, as he
sauntered toward the gate.