Probably Constable Zeburee Nute could not have picked out a moment
more inauspicious for tackling First Selectman Aaron Sproul on
business not immediately connected with the matter then in hand.
First Selectman Sproul was standing beside a granite post, pounding
his fist on it with little regard to barked knuckles and uttering
some perfectly awful profanity.
A man stood on the other side of the post, swearing with just as much
gusto; the burden of his remarks being that he wasn't afraid of any
by-joosly old split codfish that ever came ashore--insulting
reference to Cap'n Sproul's seafaring life.
Behind Cap'n Sproul were men with pickaxes, shovels, and
hoes--listening.
Behind the decrier of mariners were men with other shovels, hoes,
and pickaxes--listening.
The granite post marked the town line between Smyrna and Vienna.
The post was four miles or so from Smyrna village, and Constable Nute
had driven out to interview the first selectman, bringing as a
passenger a slim, pale young man, who was smoking cigarettes, one
after the other.
They arrived right at the climax of trouble that had been brooding
sullenly for a week. In annual town-meeting Smyrna and Vienna had
voted to change over the inter-urban highway so that it would skirt
Rattledown Hill instead of climbing straight over it, as the fathers
had laid it out in the old days for the sake of directness; forgetting
that a pail bail upright is just as long as a pail bail lying
horizontal.
First Selectman Sproul had ordered his men to take a certain
direction with the new road in order to avoid some obstructions that
would entail extra expense on the town of Smyrna.
Selectman Trufant, of Vienna, was equally as solicitous about saving
expense on behalf of his own town, and refused to swing his road to
meet Smyrna's highway. Result: the two pieces of highway came to the
town line and there stopped doggedly. There were at least a dozen
rods between the two ends. To judge from the language that the two
town officers were now exchanging across the granite post, it seemed
likely that the roads would stay separated.
"Our s'leckman can outtalk him three to one," confided one of the
Smyrna supporters to Constable Nute. "I never heard deep-water
cussin' before, with all the trimmin's. Old Trufant ain't got
northin' but side-hill conversation, and I reckon he's about run
down."
Constable Nute should have awaited more fitting opportunity, but
Constable Nute was a rather direct and one-ideaed person. As manager
of the town hall he had business to transact with the first selectman,
and he proceeded to transact it.
"Mister S'leckman," he shouted, "I want to introduce you to
Perfessor--Perfessor--I ain't got your name yit so I can speak it,"
he said, turning to his passenger.
"Professor Derolli," prompted the passenger, flicking his cigarette
ash.
Cap'n Sproul merely shot one red glance over his shoulder, and then
proceeded with his arraignment of Vienna in general--mentally,
morally, socially, politically, and commercially.
"The perfessor," bawled Constable Nute, unable to get his team very
near the selectman on account of the upheaved condition of the road,
"has jest arranged with me to hire the town hall for a week, and he
wants to arrange with the selectmen to borrow the use of the graveyard
for a day or so."
The constable's vociferousness put the Cap'n out of voice, and he
whirled to find that his auditors had lost all interest in the road
dispute, and naturally, too.
"To borrow the use of the graveyard, said privilege bein' throwed
in, considerin' that he hires the town hall for a week," repeated
the constable.
Cap'n Sproul hated cigarettes; and he hated slim, pale young men who
dressed foppishly, classing all such under the general term "dude."
The combination of the two, attending the interruption of his
absorbing business of the moment, put a wire edge on his temper.
"Graveyard! Yes!" he roared. "I'll appoint his funeral for two
o'clock this afternoon, and I'll guarantee to have the corpse ready."
"In transactin' business it ain't no time for jokin'," protested the
direct Mr. Nute.
"There's no joke to it," returned the Cap'n, viciously, seizing a
pickaxe.
"It ain't much of a way for a first selectman of a town to act in
public," persisted Constable Nute, "when town business is put before
him."
That remark and a supercilious glance from the professor through his
cigarette smoke brought the Cap'n on the trot to the side of the
wagon.
"I'm 'tendin' to town business--don't you forget that! And I'm
'tendin' to it so close that I ain't got time to waste on any cheap
peep-show critters. Don't want 'em in town. Clear out!"
"I'll make you sorry for insulting a gentleman," the professor
threatened.
"Clear out!" insisted the Cap'n. "You ain't got any right drivin'
onto this road. It ain't been opened to travel--"
"And it looks as though it never would be," remarked Constable Nute,
sarcastically; but, daunted by the glare in the Cap'n's eyes, he
began to turn his horse. "I want you to understand, S'leckman Sproul,
that there are two other s'leckmen in this town, and you can't run
everything, even if you've started in to do it."
It was pointed reference to the differences that existed in the board
of selectmen, on account of Cap'n Sproul's determination to command.
Two very indignant men rode away, leaving a perfectly furious one
standing in the road shaking his fists after them. And he was the
more angry because he felt that he had been hastier with the constable
than even his overwrought state of mind warranted. Then, as he
reflected on the graveyard matter, his curiosity began to get the
better of his wrath, and to the surprise of his Vienna antagonist
he abandoned the field without another word and started for Smyrna
village with his men and dump-carts.
But dump-carts move slowly, and when the Cap'n arrived at the town
house Constable Zeburee Nute was nailing up a hand-bill that
announced that Professor Derolli, the celebrated hypnotist, would
occupy the town hall for a week, and that he would perform the
remarkable feat of burying a subject in the local graveyard for
forty-eight hours, and that he would "raise this subject from the
dead," alive and well. The ink was just dry on a permit to use the
graveyard, signed by Selectmen Batson Reeves and Philias Blodgett.
The grim experiment was to wind up the professor's engagement. In
the mean time he was to give a nightly entertainment at the hall,
consisting of hypnotism and psychic readings, the latter by "that
astounding occult seer and prophetess, Madame Dawn."
Cap'n Sproul went home growling strong language, but confessing to
himself that he was a little ashamed to enter into any further contest
with the cigarette-smoking showman and the two men who were the
Cap'n's hated associates on the board of selectmen.
That evening neighbor Hiram Look called with Mrs. Look on their way
to the village to attend the show, but Cap'n Sproul doggedly resisted
their appeals that he take his wife and go along, too. He opposed
no objection, however, when Louada Murilla decided that she would
accept neighbor Look's offer of escort.
But when she came back and looked at him, and sighed, and sighed,
and looked at him till bedtime, shaking her head sadly when he
demanded the reason for her pensiveness, he wished he had made her
stay at home. He decided that Zeburee Nute had probably been busy
with his tongue as to that boyish display of temper on the Rattledown
Hill road.
Hiram Look came over early the next morning and found the Cap'n
thinning beets in his garden. The expression on the visitor's face
did not harmonize with the brightness of the sunshine.
"I don't blame you for not goin'," he growled. "But if you had an
idea of what they was goin' to do to get even, I should 'a' most
thought you'd 'a' tipped me off. It would have been the part of a
friend, anyway."
The Cap'n blinked up at him in mute query.
"It ain't ever safe to sass people that's got the ear of the public,
like reporters and show people," proceeded Hiram, rebukingly. "I've
been in the show business, and I know. They can do you, and do you
plenty, and you don't stand the show of an isuckle in a hot spider."
"What are ye tryin' to get through you, anyway?" demanded the first
selectman.
"Hain't your wife said northin' about it?"
"She's set and looked at me like I was a cake that she'd forgot in
the oven," confided the Cap'n, sullenly; "but that's all I know about
it."
"Well, that's about what I've had to stand in my fam'ly, too. I tell
ye, ye hadn't ought to have sassed that mesmerist feller. Oh, I heard
all about it," he cried, flapping hand of protest as the Cap'n tried
to speak. "I don't know why you done it. What I say is, you ought
to have consulted me. I know show people better'n you do. Then you
ain't heard northin' of what she said?"
"If you've got anything to tell me, why in the name of the three-toed
Cicero don't you tell it?" blurted the Cap'n, indignantly.
He got up and brushed the dirt off his knees. "If there's anything
that stirs my temper, it's this mumble-grumble, whiffle-and-hint
business. Out and open, that's my style." He was reflecting testily
on the peculiar reticence of his wife.
"I agree with you," replied Hiram, calmly. But his mind was on another
phase of the question. "If she had been out and open it wouldn't have
been so bad. It's this hintin' that does the most mischief. Give folks
a hint, and a nasty imagination will do the rest. That's the way she's
workin' it."
"She? Who?"
"Your mesmerist fellow's runnin' mate--that woman that calls herself
Madame Dawn, and reads the past and tells the future."
"There ain't nobody can do no such thing," snapped Cap'n Sproul.
"They're both frauds, and I didn't want 'em in town, and I was right
about it."
"Bein' as how I was in the show business thirty years, you needn't
feel called on to post me on fakes," said Hiram, tartly. "But the
bigger the fake is the better it catches the crowd. If she'd simply
been an old scandal-monger at a quiltin'-bee and started a story
about us, we could run down the story and run old scandal-grabber
up a tree. But when a woman goes into a trance and a sperit comes
teeterin' out from the dark behind the stage and drops a white robe
over her, and she begins to occult, or whatever they call it, and
speaks of them in high places, and them with fat moneybags, and that
ain't been long in our midst, and has come from no one jest knows
where, and that she sees black shadders followin' 'em, along with
wimmen weepin' and wringin' of their hands--well, when a woman sets
on the town-hall stage and goes on in that strain for a half-hour,
it ain't the kind of a show that I want to be at--not with my wife
and yourn on the same settee with me."
He scowled on the Cap'n's increasing perturbation.
"A man is a darned fool to fight a polecat, Cap'n Sproul, and you
ought to have known better than to let drive at him as you did."
"She didn't call names, did she?" asked the Cap'n.
"Call names! Of course she didn't call names. Didn't have to. There's
the difference between scandal and occultin'. We can't get no bind
on her for what she said. Now here are you and me, back here to settle
down after roamin' the wide world over; jest got our feet placed,
as you might say, and new married to good wimmen--and because we're
a little forehanded and independent, and seem to be enjoyin' life,
every one is all ready to believe the worst about us on general
principles. Mossbacks are always ready to believe that a man that's
travelled any has been raising seventeen kinds of tophet all his life.
All she had to do was go into a trance, talk a little Injun, and then
hint enough to set their imaginations to workin' about us. Up to now,
judgin' by the way she's been lookin' at me, my wife believes I've
got seven wives strewed around the country somewhere, either alive
or buried in cellars. As to your wife, you bein' a seafarin' character,
she's prob'ly got it figgered that a round-up of your fam'ly circle,
admittin' all that's got a claim on you, would range all the way from
a Hindu to a Hottentot, and would look like a congress of nations.
In about two days more--imagination still workin', and a few old she
devils in this place startin' stories to help it along--our wives
will be hoppin' up every ten minutes to look down the road and see
if any of the victims have hove in sight. And what can we do?"
Hiram lunged a vigorous kick straight before him.
"Find me that hole I just made in the air and I'll tell you, Cap'n,"
he added, with bitter irony.
"It's--it's worse than what I figgered on," remarked the Cap'n,
despondently, after a thoughtful pause. "If a woman like Louada
Murilla will let herself get fooled and stirred up in that kind of
a way by a fly-by-night critter, there ain't much hope of the rest
of the neighborhood."
"It's a kind of lyin' that there ain't no fightin'," Hiram asserted.
"And there are certain ones in this place that will keep it in the
air. Now I didn't sass that mesmerist. But I got it about as tough
as you did. I'll bet a thousand to one that Bat Reeves is gettin'
back at me for cuttin' him out with the widder. It's reasonable,"
he declared, warming to the topic and checking items off on his stubby
fingers. "Here's your mesmerist rushin' hot to Reeves complainin'
about you and gettin' a permit from Reeves, along with a few pointers
about you for occult use. Reeves hates you bad enough, but he hates
me worse. And he sees to it that I get occulted, too. He ain't lettin'
a chance like that slip past as soon as that perfessor lets him see
what occultin' will do to a man. Why, condemn his hide and haslet,
I believe he swapped that permit for a dose of so much occultin'--and
I've got the dose."
"I should hate at my age to have to start in and go to sea again,"
mourned the Cap'n, after long meditation; "but I reckon I'll either
have to do that or go up in a balloon and stay there. There's too
many tricks for me on land. They ring in all they can think of
themselves, and then they go to work and get a ghost to help. I can't
whale the daylights out of the ghost, and I don't suppose it would
be proper for a first selectman to cuff the ears of the woman that
said females was followin' me, wailin' and gnashin' their teeth, but
I can lick that yaller-fingered, cigarette-suckin' dude, and pay the
fine for so doin'--and reckon I've got my money's worth."
"You need a guardeen," snorted Hiram. "She will put on her robe and
accuse you of havin' the ghost of a murdered man a-chasin' you."
The Cap'n grew white under his tan at this remark, made by Hiram in
all guilelessness, and the memory of a certain Portuguese sailor,
slipped overboard after a brief but busy mutiny, went shuddering
through his thoughts.
"Ain't got anything like that on your conscience, have you?" demanded
the old showman, bluntly.
"She didn't say anything only about women, did she?" evaded the
Cap'n.
"Didn't notice anything last night. She may be savin' something else
for this evenin'," was Hiram's consoling answer. His air and the
baleful glance he bent on his neighbor indicated that he still held
that irascible gentleman responsible for their joint misfortune. And,
to show further displeasure, he whirled and stumped away across the
fields toward his home.
Cap'n Aaron Sproul attended the show at the town hall that evening.
He went alone, after his wife had plaintively sighed her refusal to
accompany him. He hadn't intended to go. But he was drawn by a certain
fatal fascination. He had a sailor's superstitious half-belief in
the supernatural. He had caught word during the day of some
astonishing revelations made by the seeress as to other persons in
town, either by lucky guess or through secret pre-information, as
his common sense told him. And yet his sneaking superstition
whispered that there was "something in it, after all." If that
mesmerist's spirit of retaliation should carry him to the extent of
hinting about that Portuguese sailor, Cap'n Sproul resolved to be
in that hall, ready to stand up and beard his defamers.
Evidently Professor Derolli spotted his enemy; for Madame Dawn, in
order that vengeance should be certain of its mark, repeated the
vague yet perfectly obvious hints of the preceding evening; and Cap'n
Sproul was thankful for the mystic gloom of the hall that hid his
fury and his shame. He stole out of the place while the lights were
still low. He feared for his self-restraint if he were to remain,
and he realized what a poor figure he would make standing up there
and replying to the malicious farrago of the woman under the veil.