One morning, in the early part of the following week, as Henley sat
working at his desk in the store, and Pomp and Cahews were busy
attending three or four elderly women in front, he became conscious that
some one was speaking in loud, angry tones near the door. And, rising,
that he might look over a stack of soap-boxes which obstructed his view,
he saw that a dispute of some sort was taking place between Cahews and
Hank Bradley over some cigars that the latter had failed to pay for on a
former occasion. Bradley was evidently under the influence of liquor,
and he began to swear loudly and threateningly. The women dropped the
purchases they were making and shrank back farther into the store.
With a flush of anger over the insult to his house and customers, Henley
strode hotly forward and thrust himself between the disputants.
"We'll talk about the account some other time," he said, glaring into
Bradley's face. "But right now you get out of this house. You sha'n't
stand here spouting vile oaths before these ladies."
"What have _you_ got to do with it?" Bradley flared up in his turn, and
he whipped his hand back toward his pistol-pocket, only to discover that
he was not armed, as he evidently thought he was. However, he kept his
hand behind him in a threatening attitude.
"I'll show you what I've got to do with it if you open your dirty jaws
like that again!" Henley said, fearlessly. "You dare to draw a gun on me
and I'll make you swallow your own teeth. Now, you get out of here!"
And, taking him by the arm in a grip of steel, Henley drew him hurriedly
to the door and shoved him down the steps.
"This ain't the end of it," Bradley threw back furiously. "You bet it
ain't."
"It'll be the end o' _you_ if you fool with me!" Henley retorted, and he
turned back into the store and resumed his seat at his desk. He had not
been there long when one of the women finished her purchases and, with
some parcels under her arm, came back and stood timidly by his desk. It
was Mrs. Cartwright, the old widow whose son Johnny was so devoted to
Carrie Wade. She was short in stature, had iron-gray hair, was slight
and stooped, and wore a plain gingham dress and a sunbonnet of the same
material.
"It was powerful good of you, Alfred, to do what you did jest now," she
said, timidly, as he looked up. "It was like the old-time way men had
when I was a girl of takin' up for women. I always heard you was good
and kind, and now I know it. A man kin do a lot o' things that women
will appreciate, but I'll risk my all that every woman in that bunch
down thar will go home wishin' that her husband or brother had done what
you did an' in the same sperit. Women love, above all things, to be
protected by manly men."
"Well," said Henley, his flush of anger giving way to one of genuine
embarrassment, "he was upsetting business, Mrs. Cartwright. I hated
to--to git mad that way, but he was running my trade away, and that's a
thing I won't let no man do right under my eyes. Set down an' rest, Mrs.
Cartwright; you don't look overly stout."
The woman took the chair near his desk, and he heard her sigh as she
massed her parcels in her lap with her thin, quivering hands.
"I reckon I don't look well," she said, seeing that his kindly eyes were
still on her. "They say worry will kill a body quicker 'n anything else,
and, Alfred, I'm worried mighty nigh to death. I don't know which way to
turn or what to do. It is all about my youngest child, Johnny. He's took
a quar notion to marry Carrie Wade."
"I see, I see," Henley said, sympathetically; "and that's bad. Why, he's
hardly out o' the spelling-book class, and hain't a sign of fuzz on his
lip. The last time he was in here I know the crowd was teasing him
because his voice was in the gosling stage. It had sech a funny way of
wobbling about from bass to treble."
"But he thinks he's full grown," the woman sighed, "and won't listen to
reason. He keeps declarin' he's older than the way it's recorded in the
Bible. This last trouble begun at the Sunday-school Christmas-tree, when
Carrie put on an embroidered handkerchief for him. That turned his head,
and he hain't hardly let her out of his sight sence. He growed from
child to man betwixt two suns."
"They'll do that sometimes," Henley said. "It is surely an odd sort of
attachment. She is plenty old to have nursed him. I wouldn't be afraid
to say that she was cutting her eyes at men when he was cutting his
teeth. Thinking of that ud make some fellers ashamed to act that way,
but as apt as not Johnny don't let himself study about it. Somehow I can
excuse it better in the boy than in her, because she's old enough to
know better."
The old woman nodded and sighed again. "Alfred, sometimes I think I've
had more put on me than my share in this world. I've had three sons
besides this un, and every last one of 'em give me trouble along at
Johnny's age."
"And about women older 'n they was, too, I've heard," Henley said.
"Yes, it looks like it runs in the blood--not in mine, thank the Lord!
for I wish nary woman had ever been made; yes, all of my boys no sooner
got out o' frocks than they made a dead-run for the first old maid in
sight, and marry they would in spite of all possessed."
"And not one got hitched up exactly right," said Henley.
"Not one, Alfred. The two oldest stuck to their hot-headed agreement
long enough to feel sort o' tied down, and they went clean off an' left
their wives high and dry. Jim is still living with his'n, but I cry my
eyes out every time I see the pore fellow. Looks like he hain't got a
thing to live for. When a man leaves his own fireside and comes and sets
around his mammy's house like Jim does, he hain't got no paradise under
his own roof. Ef he'd 'a' had children it mought 'a' been different. I
did think I could show Johnny the mistakes of his brothers and make him
act different. I've talked it to him sence he was old enough to know
right from wrong, but you see how little weight it had."
"Why don't you go to headquarters and call a halt?" Henley's indignation
was rising.
"You mean to Carrie? Well, I did, but somehow she manages to git around
the question. She jest looks kind o' 'shamed and keeps wanting to talk
about other things. I ought to be sorry for her, desperate as she is for
attention, but I hain't. She's a tattle-tale and scandalmonger. She
never got over losin' that young preacher that Dixie Hart cut her out
of, and she spends all her time hammerin' at that pore girl, who is good
and decent and noble, if thar ever was sech a thing. Just here lately,
because you seed fit to take Dixie with you over to Carlton--"
"Oh, I know--I know." Henley's face grew darker, and he clinched his
hand. "I can't think of her bell-clapper tongue without gettin' mad, and
I don't like to be that way with a woman. What does Johnny say?"
"Oh, he talks as big as a railroad president; he talks jest the same
foolishness as his brothers did; _he's_ doin' the marryin'--nobody else
has a'thing to do with it. That's what hurts. If I could jest git the
pore, simple boy out of her clutches for a month I believe I could open
his eyes, but I am afraid at the slightest move they will run off and
git married. Sometimes I try to be resigned and argue to myself that
maybe him and her could git along together, but when I see my pore
baby-boy with that powdered and painted thing out in public I mighty
nigh die with mortification."
"We must simply bust it up, Mrs. Cartwright," Henley said, firmly.
"That's all there is about it. We must checkmate 'em. Let me study over
it. I'll help if I can."
"I wish you would," the woman said, anxiously. "There he is now in the
front-door. I'll slip out the side way; he mought suspicion I was
talkin' about him."
A moment after her departure Johnny Cartwright came back to the desk.
"Jim said Ma was here," he said, glancing around the room.
"She was, Johnny, boy," Henley said, patronizingly, "but she went home.
Ah, ha! I saw you with Carrie Wade the other day--at least it had her
look."
"Yes, it was her." A flush of pride rose and spread itself over the
boyish face. "I was taking her home from Mrs. Spriggs's quilting."
"I'd bet a hat I know what you wanted to see her about," Henley said,
his hand over his facile mouth. "Some of these old bachelors, or
widowers with a gang of children to take care of, sent you with some
invite or other. When I was a little chap like you I used to pick up a
lot o' odd dimes in taking notes to the gals. About ten years from now
you'll be spending _your_ money that way. You must hear a lot o' funny
things if you see much o' Carrie. I'd give a pretty to be near her when
she got word from some man or other. She's waited a long time, Johnny. I
reckon a proposal at this late day would tickle her to death."
"I don't tote notes for nobody." The boy was white about the lips, and
looking as if he hardly knew whether to be angry or not.
"Well, I reckon you wouldn't to Carrie," Henley said. "I hardly reckon
anybody has her in mind, now. You know she's been a drug on the market a
long time. I wonder if she ever told you about that tin-peddler? It was
away back, I reckon, when you was playing with your rattler. Carrie and
the peddler had up an awful case--they was going to get married, and
open up a tin-shop at Carlton, but a man come along and said the peddler
already had a wife or two to his credit, and the skunk changed his
route. Lawsy me! how Carrie did take on! We heard her yelling like a
knife was sticking in her clean to the sorgum-mill."
"It's a lie! I don't believe a word of it," the boy cried, his face
aflame with fury. "She told me she never had a sweetheart in her
life--that she hated men."
"She's had good cause," answered Henley. "A woman that don't get a speck
of attention will hate anything. I reckon she's passed the line, and
nobody will marry her."
"She's going to marry _me_," the boy blurted out, leaning over and
striking the desk with his fist, as if to emphasize his words, "and when
she's my wife I'll call and make you settle for what you've said.
Remember that, sir." And he turned and strode angrily from the store.
"I hated to say it," Henley mused, "but I was doing it for the lasting
good of all concerned. It won't do--it simply won't do. That meddlesome
old maid simply shall not ruin that boy's life and break his old mammy's
heart. I wonder--" He sat staring at the floor for several minutes, and
then a smile disturbed the stern lines of his face. "It might work--by
gum, I'll try it, anyway!"
Glancing down to the front, he saw that Cahews was disengaged and seated
on the end of a counter swinging his long legs to and fro. Henley went
to him.
"Say, Jim, Johnny Cartwright and Carrie Wade is driving his mammy mighty
nigh distracted with their doings. I don't know when I've ever been so
sorry for an old person. I wonder if me and you couldn't put our heads
together and--and sort o' bust it up."
"Well, I don't know, Alf--you are a better schemer than I am. I'm
willin' to help, but I can't git up nothing. If the boy was mine I'd
give 'im a good spankin' in public, and maybe that ud shame Carrie into
behavin' herself."
"If I could get you to help I think I could work a change in the thing,
anyway," Henley said, persuasively.
"Me, Alf?"
"Yes, it's just this way, Jim, with a woman of that brand and vintage,"
Henley pursued. "You see, she's gone without the right sort of attention
so long that she's kind o' lost respect for herself. Jim, you are the
leading young man in Chester, not yet married, and considered a fine
catch. I don't know how it will strike you, but you could really do a
good turn all round if you'd just pay Carrie a little attention. Take
her in your new top buggy to camp-meeting next Sunday."
"Me? Oh, Lord!"
"I don't mean for you to _marry_ her," Henley went on, smoothly. "But if
I'm any judge of women, I think when a man of your stripe drives out in
public with her she'll simply look up again, and, by gum, I believe
she'll look clean over that boy's head. I'm asking you to take part in a
good deed, Jim."
"I see--I understand pine-blank what you mean, but, Alf, I'm not the man
for the job. You'll understand my fix if you'll just study a minute.
You know how it is between me and Julia Hardcastle. I'll never marry no
other woman as long as the sun shines. She hain't never said the word,
nor she hain't plumb pitched me out, either, but she makes me walk a
chalk-line. Why, if she was to see me out with Carrie Wade I'd never
hear the end of it."
"Julia's going to the camp-meeting, ain't she?" Henley asked, cutting a
significant glance at his clerk.
"Yes, she's going with Sam Willis, that Atlanta shoe-drummer. She don't
care for him, mind you, Alf, but she likes to have fellows of that sort
hanging on. She don't seem half as particular about who she goes with as
the company I keep. She's got me where the wool is short, Alf. I
wouldn't rub her the wrong way for the world. I hope to get her some
day, but I'll have to wait till she gits tired of dashing around."
Henley was looking straight into his clerk's face, a smile twinkling in
his kindly eyes. "You are not working that girl right, Jim," he said,
decidedly. "She'd have been yours long ago if you'd had more
independence. If you keep up that sort of a lick she'll waltz off with
some bold and daring chap one of these days and give you the merry
ha-ha. The truth is, she wants you, but she wants you to be more of a
man. You've tried your sort of way long enough, now switch off and try
mine just for one single day, anyway, and see if I ain't right. Solomon
himself--and he was the greatest masher in the Bible--even he couldn't
win a woman by letting her have her own way. A woman thinks a man is a
sissy that gives in to her every whim. You just take Carrie Wade to
meeting like any other free-born American citizen has a right to do, and
Julia Hardcastle will set up and take notice, and she'll think a sight
more of you--that is, if you don't knuckle under and beg her pardon the
minute she mentions it to you."
Cahews's jaw was really a massive member, and it looked as solid as
stone when he finally answered, which he did when he had stood down on
the floor and walked to and fro for a moment in deep and turbulent
thought.
"She nor no other woman could make me knuckle if I didn't want to," he
said, pausing and resting a steady hand on the shoulder of his employer.
"I've been giving in all along, but I'm tired, dang tired. Here she's
going with that town-dude Sunday and expects me to drive out there by
myself and enjoy the sight from afar. Derned if I don't believe, as you
say, that I've been giving that girl too much rein and floundering about
too much in the dust at her feet. Alf, I'll write a note to Carrie this
minute, and I'll give the old girl a good time if I know how."
"Well, you go back to the desk and write the note," said Henley. "Mark
my words, I'll bet, if you hold a stiff lip all through, you'll
accomplish in a day what you haven't in all these years."