Events do bunch themselves strangely, sometimes.
They bunched in Smyrna as follows:
1. The new monument arrived for Batson Reeves's graveyard lot in
which was interred the first Mrs. Reeves; monument a belated arrival.
2. The announcement was made that Batson Reeves had at last caught
a new wife in the person of Widow Delora Crymble, wedding set for
Tuesday week.
3. Dependence Crymble, deceased husband of Delora, reappeared on
earth. This latter event to be further elaborated.
Cap'n Aaron Sproul, first selectman of Smyrna, on his way from his
home to the town office, found several men leaning on the graveyard
fence, gazing over into the hallowed precincts of the dead with
entire lack of that solemnity that is supposed to be attached to
graveyards. It was on the morning following the last stroke of work
on the Reeves monument.
The Reeves monument, a wholly unique affair, consisted of a
life-sized granite figure of Mr. Reeves standing on a granite
pedestal in the conventional attitude of a man having his photograph
taken. His head was set back stiffly, the right foot was well advanced,
and he held a round-topped hat in the hook of his elbow.
On the pedestal was carved:
ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF
LOANTHA REEVES,
WIFE OF BATSON REEVES, ACCORDING TO HER
LAST REQUEST.
It may be said in passing that Mrs. Reeves, having entertained a very
exalted opinion of Mr. Reeves during life, left a portion of her own
estate in the hands of trustees in order that this sentinel figure
should stand guard above her in the sunshine and the rain. The idea
was poetic. But Cap'n Sproul, joining the hilarious group at the
graveyard fence, noted that some gruesome village humorist had
seriously interfered with the poetic idea. Painted on a planed board
set up against the monument was this:
I'm Watching Here Both Night and Day,
So Number One Can't Get Away.
"That's kind o' pat, Cap'n, considerin' he's goin' to get married
to Number Two next week," suggested one of the loungers.
Cap'n Sproul scowled into the grin that the other turned on him.
"I ain't got any regard for a human dogfish like Bat Reeves," he
grunted, his heart full of righteous bitterness against a proclaimed
enemy, "but as first selectman of this town I don't stand for makin'
a comic joke-book out of this cemetery." He climbed over the fence,
secured the offending board and split it across his broad toe. Then
with the pieces under his arm he trudged on toward the town office,
having it in his mind to use the board for kindling in the barrel
stove.
One strip he whittled savagely into shavings and the other he broke
into fagots, and when the fire was snapping merrily in the rusty stove
he resumed a labor upon which he had been intent for several days.
Predecessors in office had called it "writing the town report." Cap'n
Sproul called it "loggin' the year's run."
A pen never did hang easy in the old shipmaster's stiff fingers. The
mental travail of this unwonted literary effort wrung his brain. An
epic poet struggling with his masterpiece could not have been more
rapt. And his nerves were correspondingly touchy. Constable Zeburee
Nute, emerging at a brisk trot from the town office, had a warning
word of counsel for all those intending to venture upon the first
selectman's privacy. He delivered it at Broadway's store.
"Talk about your r'yal Peeruvian tigers with eighteen rings on their
tails! He's settin' there with his hair standin' straight up and ink
on his nose and clear to his elbows, and he didn't let me even get
started in conversation. He up and throwed three ledger-books and
five sticks of wood at me, and--so I come away," added Mr. Nute,
resignedly. "I don't advise nobody to go in there."
However, the warning delivered at Broadway's store did not reach a
certain tall, thin man; for the tall, thin man stalked straight
through the village and up to the door inscribed "Selectman's
Office." In his hand he carried a little valise about as large as
a loaf of yeast bread. The shrewish December wind snapped trousers
about legs like broom-handles. Black pads were hugged to his ears
by a steel strip that curved behind his head, and he wore a hard hat
that seemed merely to perch insecurely on his caput instead of fit.
Constable Nute, getting a glimpse of him through the store-window,
remarked that with five minutes and a razor-strop he could put a
shaving edge on the stranger's visage, but added promptly when he
saw him disappear into the town office that some one could probably
get a job within the next five minutes honing the nicks out of that
edge.
Cap'n Sproul was just then absorbed in a task that he hated even worse
than literary composition. He was adding figures. They were the items
for road bills, and there were at least two yards of them on sheets
of paper pasted together, for nearly every voter in town was
represented. The Cap'n was half-way up one of the columns, and was
exercising all his mental grip to hold on to the slowly increasing
total on which he was laboriously piling units.
"I am always glad to meet a man who loves figgers," remarked the
stranger, solemnly. He set his valise on the table and leaned over
the Cap'n's shoulder. "I have wonderful faculty for figgers. Give
me a number and I'll tell you the cube of it instantly, in the snap
of a finger."
Cap'n Sproul merely ground his teeth and shoved his nose closer to
the paper. He did not dare to look up. His whole soul was centred
in effort to "walk the crack" of that column.
"I could do it when I was fifteen--and that was fifty years ago,"
went on the thin man.
The enunciation of those figures nearly put the Cap'n out of
commission, but with a gulp and after a mental stagger he marched
on.
"Now give me figgers--tens or hundreds," pleaded the stranger. "I'll
give you the cube in one second--the snap of a finger. Since I see
you hesitate, we'll take sixteen--a very simple factor. Cube it!"
He clacked a bony finger into an osseous palm and cried: "Four
thousand and ninety-six!"
That did it!
"Ninety-six," repeated the Cap'n, dizzily; realizing that he had
bounced off the track, he rose, kicked his chair out from under him
and shoved a livid and infuriated visage into the thin man's face.
"Whang-jacket your gor-righteously imperdence!" he bellowed, "what
do you mean by stickin' that fish-hawk beak of your'n into my business
and make me lose count? Get to Tophet out of here!"
The stranger calmly removed his ear-pads and gazed on the furious
selectman with cold, gray and critical eyes.
"Your suggestion as to destination is not well considered," he said.
"There is no hell. There is no heaven. I practically settled that
point the first time I died. The--"
Cap'n Sproul, without especial attention to this astonishing
announcement, was provoked beyond control by this stranger's
contemptuous stare. He grabbed up an ash-stick that served him for
a stove-poker.
"Get out of here," he repeated, "or I'll peg you down through this
floor like a spike!"
But the thin man simply gazed at him mournfully and sat down.
"Havin' been killed three times--three times--dead by violent
means," he said, "I have no fear of death. Strike me--I shall not
resist."
Even a bashi-bazouk must have quailed before that amazing
declaration and that patient resignation to fate. Cap'n Sproul
looked him up and down for many minutes and then tucked the smutty
ash-stick under the stove.
"Well, what insane horsepittle did you get out of by crawlin' through
the keyhole?" he demanded.
"Oh, I am not insane," remonstrated the thin man. "It is always easy
for fools in this world to blat that insult when a man announces
something that they don't understand. A man that knows enough to be
selectman of Smyrna hadn't ought to be a fool. I hope you are not.
But you mustn't blat like a fool."
Cap'n Sproul could not seem to frame words just then.
"The first time I died," pursued his remarkable guest, "I was frozen
to death." He pulled up his trousers and showed a shank as shrunken
as a peg-leg. "All the meat came off. The second time I died, a hoss
kicked me on the head. The third time, a tree fell on me. And there
is no hell--there is no heaven. If there had been I'd have gone to
one place or the other."
"If I was runnin' either place you wouldn't," said the Cap'n, sourly.
The thin man crossed his legs and was beginning to speak, but the
first selectman broke in savagely: "Now look here, mister, this ain't
either a morgue, a receivin'-tomb, nor an undertaker's parlor. If
you want to get buried and ain't got the price I'll lend it to you.
If you want to start over again in life I'll pay for havin' your
birth-notice put into the newspaper. But you want to say what you
do want and get out of here. I've got some town business to 'tend
to, and I ain't got any time to spend settin' up with corpses."
Again the man tried to speak. Again the Cap'n interrupted. "I ain't
disputin' a thing you say," he cried. "I'm admittin' everything,
'cause I haven't got time to argue. You may have been dead nine times
like a cat. I don't care. All is, you go along. You'll find
accommodations at the tavern, the graveyard, or the town farm,
whichever hits you best. I'm busy."
But when he pulled his paper of figures under his nose again, the
thin man tapped his fleshless digit on the table.
"You're the first selectman, aren't you?" he demanded.
"That's what I be," returned the Cap'n, smartly.
"Well, then, you got to pay attention to town business when it is
put before you. I've come here on town business. I used to live in
this town."
"Was you buried here or was your remains taken away?" inquired the
Cap'n, genially, hoping that satire might drive out this unwelcome
disturber.
"Oh, I died all three times after I left this town," said the thin
man, in matter-of-fact tones. "What I'm comin' at is this: my father
gave the land to this town to build the school-house on out in the
Crymble district. Deed said if the building was ever abandoned for
school purposes for five years running, land and buildin' came back
to estate. I came past that school-house to-day and I see it hasn't
been used."
"We don't have school deestricks any more," explained the Cap'n. "We
transport scholars to the village here. That's been done for six
years and over."
"Then I claim the school-house and land," declared the thin man.
"You do, hey?"
"I do. I've got tired of travellin' round over this world, and I'm
goin' to settle down. And that school-house is the only real estate
I've got to settle down in. I'll keep bach' hall there."
"Who in thunderation are you, anyway?" demanded Cap'n Sproul,
propping himself on the table and leaning forward belligerently.
"My name is Dependence Crymble," replied the other, quietly. "My
father was Hope-for-grace Crymble. Odd names, eh? But the Crymbles
were never like other folks."
Cap'n Sproul sat down hard in his chair and goggled at the thin man.
"Say, look-here-you," he gasped at last. "There never could be more'n
one name like Dependence Crymble in this world. I ain't a native here
and I don't know you from Adam. But is your wife the Widow Delora
Crymble--I mean, was she--oh, tunk-rabbit it, I reckon I'm gettin'
as crazy as you are!"
"I'm not insane," persisted the other. "I'm Dependence Crymble, and
I married Delora Goff. I've been away from here twenty years, but
I guess the old residents will recognize me, all right."
"But," declared the Cap'n, floundering for a mental footing, "it's
always been said to me that Dependence Crymble died off--away
somewhere."
"I've already told you I died," said the thin man, still mild but
firm. "That's right, just as you've heard it."
"There's a stone in the graveyard to you," went on the Cap'n, clawing
his stubby fingers into his bristle of hair, "and they've always
called her 'Widder Crymble' and"--he stood up again and leaned
forward over the table in the attitude of Jove about to launch a
thunderbolt and gasped--"she's goin' to get married to Bat Reeves,
Tuesday of next week--and he's the most infernal scalawag in this
town, and he's took her after he's tried about every other old maid
and widder that's got property."
The thin man did not even wince or look astonished. His querulous
mouth only dropped lower at the corners.
"I don't care who marries her. She's a widder and can marry any one
she's got a mind to. I didn't come back here to mix in. She's welcome
to the property I left her. There was a will. It's hers. I've been
administered on according to law. All I want is that school-house
back from the town. That's mine by law."
Cap'n Sproul sat down once more.
"Well," he said at last, with some indignation, "if you was dead and
wanted to stay dead and leave a widder and property and let her get
married again, and all that--what in the name of the yaller-bellied
skate-fish have ye come ghostin' round here for to tip everything
upside down and galley-west after it's been administered on and
settled? And it gets town business all mixed up!"
The thin man smiled a wistful smile.
"The poet says: 'Where'er we roam, the sky beneath, the heart sighs
for its native heath.' That's the sentiment side of it. But there's
a practical side. There's the school-house. It was worth passing this
way to find out whether the town had abandoned it--and I reckoned
it had, and I reckoned right. I have presentiments that come true.
I reckoned that probably the relict would put a stone in the graveyard
for me. I have a presentiment that I shall die twice more, staying
dead the fifth time I pass away. That will be here in this town, and
the gravestone won't be wasted."
While the first selectman was still trying to digest this, the thin
man opened his valise. He took out a nickel plate that bore his name.
"This is my casket-plate," he explained, forcing the grisly object
into the resisting hands of the Cap'n. "Friends ordered it for me
the first time I died. I've carried it with me ever since."
"It must be a nice way of passin' a rainy Sunday," said the Cap'n,
sarcastically, pushing the plate back across the table; "set and look
at that and hum a pennyr'yal hymn! It's sartinly a rollickin' life
you're leadin', Mister Crymble."
Mr. Crymble did not retort. On the contrary he asked, mildly, gazing
on the scattered sheets of paper containing the selectman's efforts
at town-report composition, "Do you write poetry, sir?"
"Not by a--by a--" gasped the Cap'n, seeking ineffectually for some
phrase to express his ineffable disgust.
"I was in hopes you did," continued Mr. Crymble, "for I would like
a little help in finishing my epitaph. I compose slowly. I have worked
several years on this epitaph, but I haven't finished it to suit me.
What I have got done reads":
He unfolded a dirty strip of paper and recited:
"There is no sting in death;
Below this stone there lies
A man who lost his mortal breath
Three times--"
Mr. Crymble looked up from the paper.
"I have thought of 'And death defies.' But that might sound like
boasting."
"End it up, 'And still he lies,'" growled Cap'n Sproul. But the thin
man meekly evaded the sarcasm.
"That would be a repetition of the rhyme," he objected. "I see you
were right when you said you did not write poetry."
"P'r'aps I ain't no poet," cried the Cap'n, bridling. "But I'm the
first selectman of this town, and I've got considerable to do with
runnin' it and keepin' things straightened out. You may be dead, but
you ain't buried yet. I've got two errunts for you. You go hunt up
Bat Reeves and tell him that the weddin' next Tuesday is all off,
and for good reasons--and that you're one of the reasons, and that
there are nine others just as good but which you haven't got time
to repeat. Then you go home to your wife and settle down, throw away
that coffin-plate, tear up that epitaph, and stop this dyin' habit.
It's a bad one to get into."
"I won't do any such thing," returned the prodigal, stubbornly. "I
lived fifteen years with a woman that wouldn't let me smoke, busted
my cider jug in the cellar, jawed me from sun-up till bedtime, hid
my best clothes away from me like I was ten years old, wouldn't let
me pipe water from the spring, and stuck a jeroosly water-pail under
my nose every time I showed in sight of the house. I haven't died
three times, all by violent means, not to stay dead so far's she's
concerned. Now you tell me where to get the key to that school-house
and I'll move in."
For the first time in their conversation Mr. Crymble dropped his meek
manner. His little eyes blazed. His drooping mouth snarled and his
yellow teeth showed defiantly. Cap'n Sproul always welcomed defiance.
It was the thin man's passive resignation at the beginning of their
acquaintance that caused the Cap'n to poke the ash-stick back under
the stove. Now he buttoned his pea-jacket, pulled his hat down firmly,
and spat first into one fist and then the other.
"You can walk, Crymble, if you're a mind to and will go quiet," he
announced, measuring the other's gaunt frame with contemptuous eye.
"I'd rather for your sake that the citizens would see you walkin'
up there like a man. But if you won't walk, then I'll pick you up
and stick you behind my ear like a lead-pencil and take you there."
"Where?"
"To your house. Where else should a husband be goin' that's been
gallivantin' off for twenty years?"
And detecting further recalcitrancy in the face of his visitor, he
pounced on him, scrabbled up a handful of cloth in the back of his
coat, and propelled him out of doors and up the street. After a few
protesting squawks Mr. Crymble went along.
An interested group of men, who had bolted out of Broadway's store,
surveyed them as they passed at a brisk pace.
"By the sacred codfish!" bawled Broadway, "if that ain't Dep Crymble!
How be ye, Dep?"
Mr. Crymble lacked either breath or amiability. He did not reply to
the friendly greeting. Cap'n Sproul did that for him enigmatically.
"He's back from paradise on his third furlough," he cried.
"And bound to hell," mourned Mr. Crymble, stumbling along before the
thrust of the fist at his back.