HIGGLEBY'S BARN
That Cornelius Gleazen had returned to Topham a reformed and honest
man, the less skeptical people in the village now freely asserted.
To be sure, some said that no good could come from any man who wore
a diamond on his finger, to say nothing of another in his stock, and
the minister held aloof for reasons known only to himself. But there
was something hearty and wholesome in Gleazen's gruff voice and
blunt, kindly wit that quite turned aside the shafts of criticism,
particularly when he had made it plain that he would associate only
with people of unquestioned respectability; and his devout air, as
he sat in the very front pew in church and sang the hymns in a fine,
reverberating bass, almost--although never quite--won over even the
minister. All were agreed that you could pardon much in a man who
had lived long in foreign parts; and if any other argument were
needed, Gleazen's own free-handed generosity for every good cause
provided it.
There were even murmurs that a man with Seth Upham's money might
well learn a lesson from the stranger within our gates, which came
to my uncle's ears, by way of those good people you can find in
every town who feel it incumbent on them to repeat in confidence
that which they have gained in confidence, and caused him no little
uneasiness.
Of the probity of Cornelius Gleazen the village came gradually to
have few doubts; and those of us who believed in the man were
inclined to belittle the blacksmith, who persisted in thinking ill
of him, and even the minister. Unquestionably Gleazen had seen the
error of his youthful ways and had profited by the view, which, by
all accounts, must have been extensive.
It was a fine thing to see him sitting on the tavern porch or in my
uncle's store and discoursing on the news of the day. By a gesture,
he would dispose of the riots in England and leave us marveling at
his keenness. The riots held a prominent place in the papers, and we
argued that a man who could so readily place them where they
belonged must have a head of no mean order. Of affairs in South
America, where General Paez had become Civil and Military Dictator
of Venezuela, he had more to say; for General Paez, it seemed, was a
friend of his. I have wondered since about his boasted friendship
with the distinguished general, but at the time he convinced us that
Venezuela was a fortunate state and that her affairs were much more
important to men of the world than a bill to provide for the support
of aged survivors of the Army of the Revolution, which a persistent
one-legged old chap from the Four Corners tried a number of times to
introduce into the conversation.
There came a day when both the doctor and the minister joined the
circle around Cornelius Gleazen. Never was there prouder man! He
fairly expanded in the warmth of their interest. His gestures were
more impressive than ever before; his voice was more assertive. Yet
behind it all I perceived a curious twinkle in his eyes, and I got a
perverse impression that even then the man was laughing up his
sleeve. This did not in itself set my mind on new thoughts; but to
add to my curiosity, when the doctor and the minister were leaving,
I saw that they were talking in undertones and smiling significantly.
Late one night toward the end of that week, I was returning from
Boston, whither I had gone to buy ten pipes of Schiedam gin and six
of Old East India Madeira, which a correspondent of my uncle's had
lately imported. An acquaintance from the next town had given me a
lift along the post road as far as a certain short cut, which led
through a pine woods and across an open pasture where once there had
been a farmhouse and where, although the house had burned to the
ground eight or ten years since, a barn still stood, which was known
throughout the countryside as "Higgleby's."
The sky was overcast, but the moonlight nevertheless sifted through
the thin clouds; and with a word of thanks to the lad who had
brought me thus far, I vaulted the bars and struck off toward the
pines.
My eyes were already accustomed to the darkness, and the relief from
trying to see my way under the thickly interwoven branches of the
grove made the open pasture, when I came to it, seem nearly as light
as day, although, of course, to anyone coming out into it from a
lighted room, it would have seemed quite otherwise. Of the old barn,
which loomed up on the hill, a black, gaunt, lonesome object a mile
or so away, I thought very little, as I walked along, until it
seemed to me that I saw a glimmer of fire through a breach where a
board had been torn off.
Now the barn was remote from the woods and from the village; but the
weather had been dry, the dead grass in the old pasture was as
inflammable as tinder, and what wind there was, was blowing toward
the pines. Since it was plain that I ought to investigate that flash
of fire, I left the path and began to climb the hill.
Stopping suddenly, I listened with all my ears. I thought I had
heard voices; it behooved me to be cautious. Prudently, now, I
advanced, and as silently as possible. Now I _knew_ that I heard
voices. The knowledge that there were men in the old barn relieved
me of any sense of duty in the matter of a possible fire, but at the
same time it kindled my imagination. Who were they, and why had they
come, and what were they doing? Instead of walking boldly up to the
barn door, I began to climb the wall that served as the foundation.
The wall was six or eight feet high, but built of large stones,
which afforded me easy hold for foot and hand, and from the top I
was confident that I could peek in at a window just above. Very
cautiously I climbed from rock to rock, until I was on my knees on
the topmost tier. Now, twisting about and keeping flat to the barn
with both arms extended so as not to overbalance and fall, I raised
myself little by little, only to find, to my keen disappointment,
that the window was still ten inches above my eyes.
That I should give up then, never occurred to me. I placed both
hands on the sill and silently lifted myself until my chin was well
above it.
In the middle of the old barn, by the light of four candles, a
number of men were playing cards. I could hear much of what they
said, but it concerned only the fortunes of the game, and as they
spoke in undertones I could not recognize their voices.
For all that I got from their conversation they might as well have
said naught, except that the sound of their talking and the clink of
money as it changed hands served to cover whatever small noises I
may have made, and thus enabled me to look in upon them
undiscovered. Nor could I see who they were, for the candle light
was dim and flickered, and those who were back to me, as they
pressed forward in their eagerness to follow the play, concealed the
faces of those opposite them. Moreover, my position was extremely
uncomfortable, perhaps even dangerous. So I lowered myself until my
toes rested on the wall of rock, and kneeling very cautiously, began
to descend.
Exploring with my foot until I found a likely stone, I put my weight
on it, and felt it turn. Failing to clutch the top of the wall, I
went down with a heavy thud.
For a moment I lay on the ground with my wind knocked out of me,
completely helpless. Then sharp voices broke the silence, and the
sound of someone opening the barn door instilled enough wholesome
fear into me to enable me to get up on all fours after a fashion,
and creep cautiously away.
From the darkness outside, my eyes being already accustomed to the
absence of light, I could see a number of men standing together in
front of the barn door. They must have blown out the candles, for
the door and the windows and the chinks between the boards were
dark. Cursing myself for a silly fool, I made off as silently as
possible.
I had not recognized one of the players, I had got a bad tumble and
sore joints for my trouble, and my pride was hurt. In short, I felt
that I had fallen out of the small end of the horn, and I was in no
cheerful mood as I limped along. But by the time I came into the
village half an hour later, I had recovered my temper and my wind;
and so, although I earnestly desired to go home and to bed, to rest
my lame bones, I decided to go first to the store and report to
Uncle Seth the results of my mission.
Through the lighted windows of the store, as I approached, I could
see Arnold Lamont and Sim Muzzy playing chess in the back room. They
were a strange pair, and as ill matched as any two you ever saw.
Lamont was a Frenchman, who had appeared, seemingly from nowhere,
ten or a dozen years before, and in quaintly precise English had
asked for work--only because it was so exceedingly precise, would
you have suspected that it was a foreigner's English. He carried
himself with a strange dignity, and his manner, which seemed to
confer a favor rather than to seek one, had impressed Uncle Seth
almost against his will.
"Why, yes," he had said sharply, "there's work enough to keep
another man. But what, pray, has brought you here?"
"It is the fortune of war," Lamont had replied. And that was all
that my uncle ever got out of him.
Without more ado he had joined Sim Muzzy, a well-meaning, simple
fellow who had already worked for Uncle Seth for some eight years,
and there he had stayed ever since.
Arnold and Sim shared the room above the store and served both as
watchmen and as clerks; but it was Sim who cooked their meals, who
made their beds, who swept and dusted and polished. Although the two
worked for equally small pay and, all in all, were as satisfactory
men as any storekeeper could hope to have, Arnold had carried even
into the work of the store that same odd, foreign dignity; and it
apparently never occurred, even to petulant, talkative Sim, that
Arnold, so reserved, so quietly assured, should have lent his hand
to mere domestic duties.
Learning early in their acquaintance, each that the other played
chess, they had got a board and a set of men, and, in spite of a
disparity in skill that for some people must have made it very
irksome, had kept the game up ever since. Arnold Lamont played chess
with the same precision with which he spoke English; and if Sim
Muzzy managed to catch him napping, and so to win one game in
twenty, it was a feat to be talked about for a month to come.
Through the windows, as I said, I saw them playing chess in the back
shop; then, coming round the corner of the store, I saw someone just
entering. It was no other than Cornelius Gleazen, in beaver, stock,
coat, and diamonds, with the perpetual cigar bit tight between his
teeth.
A little to my surprise, I noticed that there were beads of
perspiration on his forehead. I had been walking fast myself, and
yet I had not thought of it as a warm evening: the overcast sky and
the wind from the sea, with their promise of rain to break the
drouth, combined to make the night the coolest we had had for some
weeks. It surprised me also to see that Gleazen was breathing
hard--but was he? I could not be sure.
Then, through the open door, I again saw Arnold Lamont in the back
room. In his hand he was holding a knight just over the square on
which it was to rest; but with his eyes he was following Cornelius
Gleazen across the store and round behind my uncle's desk, where now
there was a second chair in place of the cracker-box.
When Gleazen had sat down beside my uncle, he tapping the desk with
a long pencil, which he had drawn from his pocket, Uncle Seth
bustling about among his papers, with quick useless sallies here and
there, and into the pigeonholes, as if he were confused by the mass
of business that confronted him,--it was a manner he sometimes
affected when visitors were present,--Arnold Lamont put down the
knight and absently, as if his mind were far away, said in his calm,
precise voice, "Check!"
"No, no! You mustn't do that! You can't do that! That's wrong! See!
You were on that square there--see?--and you moved so! You can't
put your knight there," Sim Muzzy cried.
That Lamont had transgressed by mistake the rules of the game hit
Sim like a thunderclap and even further befuddled his poor wits.
"Ah," said Lamont, "I see. I beg you, pardon my error. So! Check."
He again moved the knight, apparently without thought; and Sim Muzzy
fell to biting his lip and puzzling this way and that and working
his fingers, which he always did when he was getting the worst of
the game.
Arnold Lamont seemed not to care a straw about the game. Through the
door he was watching Cornelius Gleazen. And Cornelius Gleazen was
wiping his forehead with his handkerchief.
I wondered if it was my lively imagination that made me think that
he was breathing quickly. How long would it have taken him, I
wondered, to cut across the pasture from Higgleby's barn to the
north road? Coming thus by the Four Corners, could he have reached
the store ahead of me? Or could he, by way of the shun-pike, have
passed me on the road?