CHAPTER I. WHICH TELLS ABOUT SEVENOAKS, AND HOW MISS BUTTERWORTH PASSED ONE OF HER EVENINGS.
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Everybody has seen Sevenoaks, or a hundred towns so much
like it, in most particulars, that a description of any one of
them would present it to the imagination—a town strung upon
a stream, like beads upon a thread, or charms upon a chain.
Sevenoaks was richer in chain than charms, for its abundant
water-power was only partially used. It plunged, and roared,
and played, and sparkled, because it had not half enough to
do. It leaped down three or four cataracts in passing through
the village; and, as it started from living springs far northward
among the woods and mountains, it never failed in its
supplies.
Few of the people of Sevenoaks—thoughtless workers,
mainly—either knew or cared whence it came, or whither it
went. They knew it as “The Branch;” but Sevenoaks was
so far from the trunk, down to which it sent its sap, and from
which it received no direct return, that no significance was
attached to its name. But it roared all day, and roared all
night, summer and winter alike, and the sound became a part
of the atmosphere. Resonance was one of the qualities of
the oxygen which the people breathed, so that if, at any
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midnight moment, the roar had been suddenly hushed, they would
have waked with a start and a sense of suffocation, and leaped
from their beds.
Among the charms that dangled from this liquid chain—
depending from the vest of a landscape which ended in a
ruffle of woods toward the north, overtopped by the head of
a mountain—was a huge factory that had been added to from
time to time, as necessity demanded, until it had become an
imposing and not uncomely pile. Below this were two or
three dilapidated saw-mills, a grist-mill in daily use, and a
fulling-mill—a remnant of the old times when homespun went
its pilgrimage to town—to be fulled, colored, and dressed—
from all the sparsely settled country around.
On a little plateau by the side of The Branch was a row of
stores and dram-shops and butchers' establishments. Each
had a sort of square, false front, pierced by two staring
windows and a door, that reminded one of a lion couchant—
very large in the face and very thin in the flank. Then there
were crowded in, near the mill, little rows of one-story houses,
occupied entirely by operatives, and owned by the owner of
the mill. All the inhabitants, not directly connected with
the mill, were as far away from it as they could go. Their
houses were set back upon either acclivity which rose from the
gorge that the stream had worn, dotting the hill-sides in every
direction. There was a clumsy town-hall, there were three
or four churches, there was a high school and a low tavern.
It was, on the whole, a village of importance, but the great
mill was somehow its soul and center. A fair farming and
grazing country stretched back from it eastward and westward,
and Sevenoaks was its only home market.
It is not proposed, in this history, to tell where Sevenoaks
was, and is to-day. It may have been, or may be, in Maine,
or New Hampshire, or Vermont, or New York. It was in
the northern part of one of these States, and not far from the
border of a wilderness, almost as deep and silent as any that
can be found beyond the western limit of settlement and
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civilization. The red man had left it forever, but the bear,
the deer and the moose remained. The streams and lakes
were full of trout; otter and sable still attracted the trapper,
and here and there a lumberman lingered alone in his cabin,
enamored of the solitude and the wild pursuits to which a
hardly gentler industry had introduced him. Such lumber as
could be drifted down the streams had long been cut and
driven out, and the woods were left to the hunter and his
prey, and to the incursions of sportsmen and seekers for
health, to whom the rude residents became guides, cooks, and
servants of all work, for the sake of occasional society, and
that ever-serviceable consideration—money.
There were two establishments in Sevenoaks which stood so
far away from the stream that they could hardly be described
as attached to it. Northward, on the top of the bleakest hill
in the region, stood the Sevenoaks poor-house. In dimensions
and population, it was utterly out of proportion to the
size of the town, for the people of Sevenoaks seemed to degenerate
into paupers with wonderful facility. There was one
man in the town who was known to be getting rich, while all
the rest grew poor. Even the keepers of the dram-shops,
though they seemed to do a thriving business, did not thrive.
A great deal of work was done, but people were paid very
little for it. If a man tried to leave the town for the purpose
of improving his condition, there was always some mortgage
on his property, or some impossibility of selling what he had
for money, or his absolute dependence on each day's labor
for each day's bread, that stood in the way. One by one—
sick, disabled, discouraged, dead-beaten—they drifted into
the poor-house, which, as the years went on, grew into a
shabby, double pile of buildings, between which ran a county
road.
This establishment was a county as well as a town institution,
and, theoretically, one group of its buildings was devoted
to the reception of county paupers, while the other
was assigned to the poor of Sevenoaks. Practically, the
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keeper of both mingled his boarders indiscriminately, to suit
his personal convenience.
The hill, as it climbed somewhat abruptly from the western
bank of the stream—it did this in the grand leisure of the
old geologic centuries—apparently got out of breath and sat
down when its task was half done. Where it sat, it left a
beautiful plateau of five or six acres, and from this it rose, and
went on climbing, until it reached the summit of its effort,
and descended the other side. On the brow of this plateau
stood seven huge oaks which the chopper's axe, for some reason
or another, had spared; and the locality, in all the early
years of settlement, was known by the name of “The Seven
Oaks.” They formed a notable landmark, and, at last, the
old designation having been worn by usage, the town was incorporated
with the name of Sevenoaks, in a single word.
On this plateau, the owner of the mill, Mr. Robert Belcher—
himself an exceptional product of the village—had built
his residence—a large, white, pretentious dwelling, surrounded
and embellished by all the appointments of wealth.
The house was a huge cube, ornamented at its corners and
cornices with all possible flowers of a rude architecture, reminding
one of an elephant, that, in a fit of incontinent
playfulness, had indulged in antics characteristic of its clumsy
bulk and brawn. Outside were ample stables, a green-house,
a Chinese pagoda that was called “the summer-house,” an
exquisite garden and trees, among which latter were carefully
cherished the seven ancient oaks that had given the town its
name.
Robert Belcher was not a gentleman. He supposed himself
to be one, but he was mistaken. Gentlemen of wealth
usually built a fine house; so Mr. Belcher built one. Gentlemen
kept horses, a groom and a coachman; Mr. Belcher did
the same. Gentlemen of wealth built green-houses for themselves
and kept a gardener; Mr. Belcher could do no less.
He had no gentlemanly tastes, to be sure, but he could buy
or hire these for money; so he bought and hired them; and
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when Robert Belcher walked through his stables and jested
with his men, or sauntered into his green-house and about his
grounds, he rubbed his heavy hands together, and fancied
that the costly things by which he had surrounded himself
were the insignia of a gentleman.
From his windows he could look down upon the village,
all of which he either owned or controlled. He owned the
great mill; he owned the water-privilege; he owned many of
the dwellings, and held mortgages on many others; he owned
the churches, for all purposes practical to himself; he owned
the ministers—if not, then this was another mistake that he
had made. So long as it was true that they could not live
without him, he was content with his title. He patronized
the church, and the church was too weak to decline his ostentatious
courtesy. He humiliated every man who came into
his presence, seeking a subscription for a religious or charitable
purpose, but his subscription was always sought, and as
regularly obtained. Humbly to seek his assistance for any
high purpose was a concession to his power, and to grant the
assistance sought was to establish an obligation. He was
willing to pay for personal influence and personal glory, and
he often paid right royally.
Of course, Mr. Belcher's residence had a library; all gentlemen
have libraries. Mr. Belcher's did not contain many
books, but it contained a great deal of room for them. Here
he spent his evenings, kept his papers in a huge safe built into
the wall, smoked, looked down on the twinkling village and
his huge mill, counted his gains and constructed his schemes.
Of Mrs. Belcher and the little Belchers, he saw but little.
He fed and dressed them well, as he did his horses. All gentlemen
feed and dress their dependents well. He was proud
of his family as he saw them riding in their carriage. They
looked gay and comfortable, and were, as he thought, objects
of envy among the humbler folk of the town, all of which
reflected pleasantly upon himself.
On a late April evening, of a late spring in 18—, he was
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sitting in his library, buried in a huge easy chair, thinking,
smoking, scheming. The shutters were closed, the lamps
were lighted, and a hickory fire was blazing upon the hearth.
Around the rich man were spread the luxuries which his
wealth had bought—the velvet carpet, the elegant chairs, the
heavy library table, covered with costly appointments, pictures
in broad gold frames, and one article of furniture that
he had not been accustomed to see in a gentleman's library—
an article that sprang out of his own personal wants. This
was an elegant pier-glass, into whose depths he was accustomed
to gaze in self-admiration. He was flashily dressed in
a heavy coat, buff waistcoat, and drab trousers. A gold
chain of fabulous weight hung around his neck and held his
Jurgensen repeater.
He rose and walked his room, and rubbed his hands, as
was his habit; then paused before his mirror, admired his
robust figure and large face, brushed his hair back from his
big brow, and walked on again. Finally, he paused before
his glass, and indulged in another habit peculiar to himself.
“Robert Belcher,” said he, addressing the image in the
mirror, “you are a brick! Yes, sir, you are a brick! You,
Robert Belcher, sir, are an almighty smart man. You've
outwitted the whole of 'em. Look at me, sir! Dare you
tell me, sir, that I am not master of the situation? Ah! you
hesitate; it is well! They all come to me, every man of 'em
It is `Mr. Belcher, will you be so good?' and `Mr. Belcher,
I hope you are very well,' and `Mr. Belcher, I want you to
do better by me.' Ha! ha! ha! ha! My name is Norval.
It isn't? Say that again and I'll throttle you! Yes, sir, I'll
shake your rascally head off your shoulders! Down, down
in the dust, and beg my pardon! It is well; go! Get
you gone, sir, and remember not to beard the lion in his
den!”
Exactly what this performance meant, it would be difficult
to say. Mr. Belcher, in his visits to the city, had frequented
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theaters and admired the villains of the plays he had seen represented.
He had noticed figures upon the boards that
reminded him of his own. His addresses to his mirror
afforded him an opportunity to exercise his gifts of speech
and action, and, at the same time, to give form to his self-gratulations.
They amused him; they ministered to his preposterous
vanity. He had no companions in the town, and
the habit gave him a sense of society, and helped to pass
away his evenings. At the close of his effort he sat down
and lighted another cigar. Growing drowsy, he laid it down
on a little stand at his side, and settled back in his chair for
a nap. He had hardly shut his eyes when there came a rap
upon his door.
“Come in!”
“Please, sir,” said a scared-looking maid, opening the
door just wide enough to make room for her face.
“Well?” in a voice so sharp and harsh that the girl cringed.
“Please, sir, Miss Butterworth is at the door, and would
like to see you.”
Now, Miss Butterworth was the one person in all Sevenoaks
who was not afraid of Robert Belcher. She had been
at the public school with him when they were children; she
had known every circumstance of his history; she was not dependent
on him in any way, and she carried in her head an
honest and fearless tongue. She was an itinerant tailoress,
and having worked, first and last, in nearly every family in
the town, she knew the circumstances of them all, and knew
too well the connection of Robert Belcher with their troubles
and reverses. In Mr. Belcher's present condition of self-complacency
and somnolency, she was not a welcome visitor.
Belligerent as he had been toward his own image in the
mirror, he shrank from meeting Keziah Butterworth, for he
knew instinctively that she had come with some burden of
complaint.
“Come in,” said Mr. Belcher to his servant, “and shut
the door behind you.”
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The girl came in, shut the door, and waited, leaning against it.
“Go,” said her master in a low tone, “and tell Mrs. Belcher
that I am busy, and that she must choke her off. I can't
see her to-night. I can't see her.”
The girl retired, and soon afterward Mrs. Belcher came,
and reported that she could do nothing with Miss Butterworth—
that Miss Butterworth was determined to see him
before she left the house.
“Bring her in; I'll make short work with her.”
As soon as Mrs. Belcher retired, her husband hurried to
the mirror, brushed his hair back fiercely, and then sat down
to a pile of papers that he always kept conveniently upon his
library table.
“Come in,” said Mr. Belcher, in his blandest tone, when
Miss Butterworth was conducted to his room.
“Ah! Keziah?” said Mr. Belcher, looking up with a smile,
as if an unexpected old friend had come to him.
“My name is Butterworth, and it's got a handle to it,'
said that bumptious lady, quickly.
“Well, but, Keziah, you know we used to —”
“My name is Butterworth, I tell you, and it's got a
handle to it.”
“Well, Miss Butterworth—happy to see you—hope you
are well—take a chair.”
“Humph,” exclaimed Miss Butterworth, dropping down
upon the edge of a large chair, whose back felt no pressure
from her own during the interview. The expression of Mr.
Belcher's happiness in seeing her, and his kind suggestion
concerning her health, had overspread Miss Butterworth's
countenance with a derisive smile, and though she was evidently
moved to tell him that he lied, she had reasons for
restraining her tongue.
They formed a curious study, as they sat there together,
during the first embarrassing moments. The man had spent
his life in schemes for absorbing the products of the labor of
others. He was cunning, brutal, vain, showy, and essentially
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vulgar, from his head to his feet, in every fiber of body and
soul. The woman had earned with her own busy hands every
dollar of money she had ever possessed. She would not have
wronged a dog for her own personal advantage. Her black
eyes, lean and spirited face, her prematurely whitening locks,
as they were exposed by the backward fall of her old-fashioned,
quilted hood, presented a physiognomy at once piquant
and prepossessing.
Robert Belcher knew that the woman before him was fearless
and incorruptible. He knew that she despised him—that
bullying and brow-beating would have no influence with her,
that his ready badinage would not avail, and that coaxing
and soft words would be equally useless. In her presence,
he was shorn of all his weapons; and he never felt so defenseless
and ill at ease in his life.
As Miss Butterworth did not seem inclined to begin conversation,
Mr. Belcher hem'd and haw'd with affected nonchalance,
and said:
“Ah!—to—what am I indebted for this visit, Miss—ah—
Butterworth?”
“I'm thinking!” she replied sharply, looking into the
fire, and pressing her lips together.
There was nothing to be said to this, so Mr. Belcher looked
doggedly at her, and waited.
“I'm thinking of a man, and-he-was-a-man-every-inch-ofhim,
if there ever was one, and a gentleman too, if-I-knowwhat-a-gentleman-is,
who came to this town ten years ago,
from-nobody-knows-where; with a wife that was an angel,
if-there-is-any-such-thing-as-an-angel.”
Here Miss Butterworth paused. She had laid her foundation,
and proceeded at her leisure.
“He knew more than any man in Sevenoaks, but he didn't
know how to take care of himself,” she went on. “He was
the most ingenious creature God ever made, I do think, and
his name was Paul Benedict.”
Mr. Belcher grew pale and fidgeted in his chair.
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“And his name was Paul Benedict. He invented something,
and then he took it to Robert Belcher, and he put it
into his mill, and paid him-just-as-little-for-it-as-he-could.
And then he invented something more, and-that-went-into-the-mill;
and then something more, and the patent was used
by Mr. Belcher for a song, and the man grew poorer and
poorer, while-Mr.-Belcher-grew-richer-and-richer-all-the-time.
And then he invented a gun, and then his little wife died,
and what with the expenses of doctors and funerals and such
things, and the money it took to get his patent, which-I-begged-him-for-conscience'-sake-to-keep-out-of-Robert-Belch
er's-hands, he almost starved with his little boy, and had to go
to Robert Belcher for money.”
“And got it,” said Mr. Belcher.
“How much, now? A hundred little dollars for what was
worth a hundred thousand, unless-everybody-lies. The whole
went in a day, and then he went crazy.”
“Well, you know I sent him to the asylum,” responded
Mr. Belcher.
“I know you did—yes, I know you did; and you tried to
get him well enough to sign a paper, which the doctor never
would let him sign, and which wouldn't have been worth a
straw if he had signed it. The-idea-of-getting-a-crazy-man-to-sign-a-paper!”
“Well, but I wanted some security for the money I had
advanced,” said Mr. Belcher.
“No; you wanted legal possession of a property which
would have made him rich; that's what it was, and you didn't
get it, and you never will get it. He can't be cured, and
he's been sent back, and is up at Tom Buffum's now, and I've
seen him to-day.”
Miss Butterworth expected that this intelligence would stun
Mr. Belcher, but it did not.
The gratification of the man with the news was unmistakable.
Paul Benedict had no relatives or friends that he knew
of. All his dealings with him had been without witnesses.
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The only person living besides Robert Belcher, who knew
exactly what had passed between his victim and himself, was
hopelessly insane. The difference, to him, between obtaining
possession of a valuable invention of a sane or an insane man,
was the difference between paying money and paying none.
In what way, and with what profit, Mr. Belcher was availing
himself of Paul Benedict's last invention, no one in Sevenoaks
knew; but all the town knew that he was getting rich,
apparently much faster than he ever was before, and that, in
a distant town, there was a manufactory of what was known
as “The Belcher Rifle.”
Mr. Belcher concluded that he was still “master of the
situation.” Benedict's testimony could not be taken in a
court of justice. The town itself was in his hands, so that it
would institute no suit on Benedict's behalf, now that he had
come upon it for support; for the Tom Buffum to whom Miss
Butterworth had alluded was the keeper of the poor-house,
and was one of his own creatures.
Miss Butterworth had sufficient sagacity to comprehend the
reasons for Mr. Belcher's change of look and manner, and
saw that her evening's mission would prove fruitless; but her
true woman's heart would not permit her to relinquish her
project.
“Is poor Benedict comfortable?” he inquired, in his old,
off-hand way.
“Comfortable—yes, in the way that pigs are.”
“Pigs are very comfortable, I believe, as a general thing,”
said Mr. Belcher.
“Bob Belcher,” said Miss Butterworth, the tears springing
to her eyes in spite of herself, and forgetting all the proprieties
she had determined to observe, “you are a brute. You
know you are a brute. He is in a little cell, no larger than—
than—a pig-pen. There isn't a bit of furniture in it. He
sleeps on the straw, and in the straw, and under the straw,
and his victuals are poked at him as if he were a beast. He
is a poor, patient, emaciated wretch, and he sits on the floor
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all day, and weaves the most beautiful things out of the straw
he sits on, and Tom Buffum's girls have got them in the
house for ornaments. And he talks about his rifle, and explains
it, and explains it, and explains it, when anybody will
listen to him, and his clothes are all in rags, and that little
boy of his that they have in the house, and treat no better than
if he were a dog, knows he is there, and goes and looks at
him, and calls to him, and cries about him whenever he dares.
And you sit here, in your great house, with your carpets and
chairs, that half smother you, and your looking-glasses and
your fine clothes, and don't start to your feet when I tell you
this. I tell you if God doesn't damn everybody who is responsible
for this wickedness, then there is no such thing as
a God.”
Miss Butterworth was angry, and had grown more and more
angry with every word. She had brooded over the matter all
the afternoon, and her pent-up indignation had overflowed
beyond control. She felt that she had spoken truth which
Robert Belcher ought to hear and to heed, yet she knew that
she had lost her hold upon him. Mr. Belcher listened with
the greatest coolness, while a half smile overspread his
face.
“Don't you think I'm a pretty good-natured man to sit
here,” said he, “and hear myself abused in this way, without
getting angry?”
“No, I think you are a bad-natured man. I think you are
the hardest-hearted and worst man I ever saw. What in
God's name has Paul Benedict done, that he should be treated
in this way? There are a dozen there just like him, or worse. Is
it a crime to lose one's reason? I wish you could spend one
night in Paul Benedict's room.”
“Thank you. I prefer my present quarters.”
“Yes, you look around on your present quarters, as you
call 'em, and think you'll always have 'em. You won't.
Mark my words; you won't. Some time you'll overreach
yourself, and cheat yourself out of 'em. See if you don't.”
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“It takes a smart man to cheat himself, Miss Butterworth,”
responded Mr. Belcher, rubbing his hands.
“There is just where you're mistaken. It takes a fool.”
Mr. Belcher laughed outright. Then, in a patronizing way,
he said: “Miss Butterworth, I have given you considerable
time, and perhaps you'll be kind enough to state your business.
I'm a practical man, and I really don't see anything
that particularly concerns me in all this talk. Of course, I'm
sorry for Benedict and the rest of 'em, but Sevenoaks isn't a
very rich town, and it cannot afford to board its paupers at
the hotel, or to give them many luxuries.”
Miss Butterworth was calm again. She knew that she had
done her cause no good, but was determined to finish her
errand.
“Mr. Belcher, I'm a woman.”
“I know it, Keziah.”
“And my name is Butterworth.”
“I know it.”
“You do? Well, then, here is what I came to say to you.
The town-meeting comes to-morrow, and the town's poor are
to be sold at auction, and to pass into Tom Buffum's hands
again, unless you prevent it. I can't make a speech, and I
can't vote. I never wanted to until now. You can do both,
and if you don't reform this business, and set Tom Buffum at
doing something else, and treat God's poor more like human
beings, I shall get out of Sevenoaks before it sinks; for sink
it will if there is any hole big enough to hold it.”
“Well, I'll think of it,” said Mr. Belcher, deliberately.
“Tell me you'll do it.”
“I'm not used to doing things in a hurry. Mr. Buffum is
a friend of mine, and I've always regarded him as a very good
man for the place. Of course, if there's anything wrong it
ought to be righted, but I think you've exaggerated.”
“No, you don't mean to do anything. I see it. Good-night,”
and she had swept out of the door before he could
say another word, or rise from his chair.
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She went down the hill into the village. The earth was
stiffening with the frost that lingered late in that latitude, and
there were patches of ice, across which she picked her way.
There was a great moon overhead, but just then all beautiful
things, and all things that tended to lift her thoughts upward,
seemed a mockery. She reached the quiet home of Rev. Solomon
Snow.
“Who knows but he can be spurred up to do something?”
she said to herself.
There was only one way to ascertain—so she knocked at
the door, and was received so kindly by Mr. Snow and Mrs.
Snow and the three Misses Snow, that she sat down and unburdened
herself—first, of course, as regarded Mr. Robert
Belcher, and second, as concerned the Benedicts, father and
son.
The position of Mr. Belcher was one which inspired the
minister with caution, but the atmosphere was freer in his house
than in that of the proprietor. The vocal engine whose wheels
had slipped upon the track with many a whirr, as she started
her train in the great house on the hill, found a down grade,
and went off easily. Mr. Snow sat in his arm-chair, his elbows
resting on either support, the thumb and every finger of each
hand touching its twin at the point, and forming a kind of
gateway in front of his heart, which seemed to shut out or let
in conviction at his will. Mrs. Snow and the girls, whose
admiration of Miss Butterworth for having dared to invade
Mr. Belcher's library was unbounded, dropped their work, and
listened with eager attention. Mr. Snow opened the gate
occasionally to let in a statement, but for the most part kept
it closed. The judicial attitude, the imperturbable spectacles,
the long, pale face and white cravat did not prevent Miss
Butterworth from “freeing her mind;” and when she finished
the task, a good deal had been made of the case of the insane
paupers of Sevenoaks, and there was very little left of Mr.
Robert Belcher and Mr. Thomas Buffum.
At the close of her account of what she had seen at the
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poor-house, and what had passed between her and the great
proprietor, Mr. Snow cast his eyes up to the ceiling, pursed
his lips, and somewhere in the profundities of his nature, or
in some celestial laboratory, unseen by any eyes but his own,
prepared his judgments.
“Cases of this kind,” said he, at last, to his excited visitor,
whose eyes glowed like coals as she looked into his impassive
face, “are to be treated with great prudence. We are
obliged to take things as they air. Personally (with a rising
inflection and a benevolent smile), I should rejoice to see the
insane poor clothed and in their right mind.”
“Let us clothe 'em, then, anyway,” interjected Miss Butterworth,
impatiently. “And, as for being in their right
mind, that's more than can be said of those that have the care
of 'em.”
“Personally—Miss Butterworth, excuse me—I should rejoice
to see them clothed and in their right mind, but the age
of miracles is past. We have to deal with the facts of to-day—
with things as they air. It is possible, nay, for aught I
know, it may be highly probable, that in other towns pauperism
may fare better than it does with us. It is to be remembered
that Sevenoaks is itself poor, and its poverty becomes
one of the factors of the problem which you have propounded
to us. The town of Buxton, our neighbor over here, pays taxes,
let us say, of seven mills on the dollar; we pay seven mills on
the dollar. Buxton is rich; we are poor. Buxton has few
paupers; we have many. Consequently, Buxton may maintain
its paupers in what may almost be regarded as a state of
affluence. It may go as far as feather-beds and winter fires
for the aged; nay, it may advance to some economical form
of teeth-brushes, and still demand no more sacrifice from its
people than is constantly demanded of us to maintain our
poor in a humbler way. Then there are certain prudential
considerations—certain, I might almost say, moral considerations—
which are to be taken into account. It will never do,
in a town like ours, to make pauperism attractive—to make
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our pauper establishments comfortable asylums for idleness.
It must, in some way, be made to seem a hardship to go to
the poor-house.”
“Well, Sevenoaks has taken care of that with a vengeance,”
burst out Miss Butterworth.
“Excuse me, Miss Butterworth; let me repeat, that it must
be made to seem a hardship to go to the poor-house. Let us
say that we have accomplished this very desirable result. So
far, so good. Give our system whatever credit may belong
to it, and still let us frankly acknowledge that we have suffering
left that ought to be alleviated. How much? In what
way? Here we come into contact with another class of facts.
Paupers have less of sickness and death among them than any
other class in the community. There are paupers in our establishment
that have been there for twenty-five years—a fact
which, if it proves anything, proves that a large proportion
of the wants of our present civilization are not only artificial
in their origin, but harmful in their gratifications. Our poor
are compelled to go back nearer to nature—to old mother nature—
and they certainly get a degree of compensation for it.
It increases the expenses of the town, to be sure.”
“Suppose we inquire of them,” struck in Miss Butterworth
again, “and find out whether they would not rather be treated
better and die earlier.”
“Paupers are hardly in a position to be consulted in that
way,” responded Mr. Snow, “and the alternative is one
which, considering their moral condition, they would have no
right to entertain.”
Miss Butterworth had sat through this rather desultory disquisition
with what patience she could command, breaking in
upon it impulsively at various points, and seen that it was
drifting nowhere—at least, that it was not drifting toward the
object of her wishes. Then she took up the burden of talk,
and carried it on in her very direct way.
“All you say is well enough, I suppose,” she began, “but
I don't stop to reason about it, and I don't wish to. Here is
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a lot of human beings that are treated like brutes—sold every
year to the lowest bidder, to be kept. They go hungry, and
naked, and cold. They are in the hands of a man who has
no more blood in his heart than there is in a turnip, and we
pretend to be Christians, and go to church, and coddle ourselves
with comforts, and pay no more attention to them than
we should if their souls had gone where their money went. I
tell you it's a sin and a shame, and I know it. I feel it. And
there's a gentleman among 'em, and his little boy, and they
must be taken out of that place, or treated better in it. I've
made up my mind to that, and if the men of Sevenoaks don't
straighten matters on that horrible old hill, then they're just
no men at all.”
Mr. Snow smiled a calm, self-respectful smile, that said, as
plainly as words could say: “Oh! I know women: they are
amiably impulsive, but impracticable.”
“Have you ever been there?” inquired Miss Butterworth,
sharply.
“Yes, I've been there.”
“And conscience forbid!” broke in Mrs. Snow, “that he
should go again, and bring home what he brought home that
time. It took me the longest time to get them out of the
house!”
“Mrs. Snow! my dear! you forget that we have a stranger
present.”
“Well, I don't forget those strangers, anyway!”
The three Misses Snow tittered, and looked at one another,
but were immediately solemnized by a glance from their
father.
Mrs. Snow, having found her tongue—a characteristically
lively and emphatic one—went on to say:—
“I think Miss Butterworth is right. It's a burning shame,
and you ought to go to the meeting to-morrow, and put it
down.”
“Easily said, my dear,” responded Mr. Snow, “but you
forget that Mr. Belcher is Buffum's friend, and that it is
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impossible to carry any measure against him in Sevenoaks. I
grant that it ought not to be so. I wish it were otherwise;
but we must take things as they air.”
“To take things as they air,” was a cardinal aphorism in
Mr. Snow's budget of wisdom. It was a good starting-point
for any range of reasoning, and exceedingly useful to a man
of limited intellect and little moral courage. The real truth
of the case had dawned upon Miss Butterworth, and it had
rankled in the breast of Mrs. Snow from the beginning of his
pointless talk. He was afraid of offending Robert Belcher,
for not only did his church need repairing, but his salary was
in arrears, and the wolf that had chased so many up the long
hill to what was popularly known as Tom Buffum's Boarding
House he had heard many a night, while his family was sleeping,
howling with menace in the distance.
Mrs. Snow rebelled, in every part of her nature, against
the power which had cowed her reverend companion. There
is nothing that so goads a spirited woman to madness as the
realization that any man controls her husband. He may be
subservient to her—a cuckold even—but to be mated with a
man whose soul is neither his own nor wholly hers, is to her
the torment of torments.
“I wish Robert Belcher was hanged,” said Mrs. Snow,
spitefully.
“Amen! and my name is Butterworth, responded that
lady, making sure that there should be no mistake as to the
responsibility for the utterance.
“Why, mother!” exclaimed the three Misses Snow, in
wonder.
“And drawn and quartered!” added Mrs. Snow, emphatically.
“Amen, again!” responded Miss Butterworth.
“Mrs. Snow! my dear! You forget that you are a Christian
pastor's wife, and that there is a stranger present.”
“No, that is just what I don't forget,” said Mrs. Snow.
“I see a Christian pastor afraid of a man of the world, who
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cares no more about Christianity than he does about a pair of
old shoes, and who patronizes it for the sake of shutting its
mouth against him. It makes me angry, and makes me wish
I were a man; and you ought to go to that meeting to-morrow,
as a Christian pastor, and put down this shame and
wickedness. You have influence, if you will use it. All
the people want is a leader, and some one to tell them the
truth.”
“Yes, father, I'm sure you have a great deal of influence,”
said the elder Miss Snow.
“A great deal of influence,” responded the next in years.
“Yes, indeed,” echoed the youngest.
Mr. Snow established the bridge again, by bringing his
fingers together,—whether to keep out the flattery that thus
came like a subtle balm to his heart, or to keep in the
self-complacency which had been engendered, was not apparent.
He smiled, looking benevolently out upon the group, and
said: “Oh, you women are so hasty, so hasty, so hasty!
I had not said that I would not interfere. Indeed, I had
pretty much made up my mind to do so. But I wanted you
in advance to see things as they air. It may be that something
can be done, and it certainly will be a great satisfaction
to me if I can be the humble instrument for the
accomplishment of a reform.”
“And you will go to the meeting? and you will speak?”
said Miss Butterworth, eagerly.
“Yes!” and Mr. Snow looked straight into Miss Butterworth's
tearful eyes, and smiled.
“The Lord add His blessing, and to His name be all the
praise! Good-night!” said Miss Butterworth, rising and
making for the door.
“Dear,” said Mrs. Snow, springing and catching her by
the arm, “don't you think you ought to put on something
more? It's very chilly to-night.”
“Not a rag. I'm hot. I believe I should roast if I had
on a feather more.”
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“Wouldn't you like Mr. Snow to go home with you? He
can go just as well as not,” insisted Mrs. Snow.
“Certainly, just as well as not,” repeated the elder Miss
Snow, followed by the second with: “as well as not,” and
by the third with: “and be glad to do it.”
“No—no—no—no”—to each. “I can get along better
without him, and I don't mean to give him a chance to take
back what he has said.”
Miss Butterworth ran down the steps, the whole family
standing in the open door, with Mr. Snow, in his glasses, behind
his good-natured, cackling flock, thoroughly glad that
his protective services were deemed of so small value by the
brave little tailoress.
Then Miss Butterworth could see the moon and the stars.
Then she could see how beautiful the night was. Then she
became conscious of the everlasting roar of the cataracts, and
of the wreaths of mist that they sent up into the crisp evening
air. To the fear of anything in Sevenoaks, in the day or
in the night, she was a stranger; so, with a light heart, talking
and humming to herself, she went by the silent mill, the
noisy dram-shops, and, with her benevolent spirit full of hope
and purpose, reached the house where, in a humble hired
room she had garnered all her treasures, including the bed
and the linen which she had prepared years before for an event
that never took place.
“The Lord add His blessing, and to His name be all the
praise,” she said, as she extinguished the candle, laughing in
spite of herself, to think how she had blurted out the prayer
and the ascription in the face of Solomon Snow.
“Well, he's a broken reed—a broken reed—but I hope
Mrs. Snow will tie something to him—or starch him—or—
something—to make him stand straight for once,” and then
she went to sleep, and dreamed of fighting with Robert Belcher
all night.
-- 021 -- p590-042
CHAPTER II. MR. BELCHER CARRIES HIS POINT AT THE TOWN-MEETING, AND THE POOR ARE KNOCKED DOWN TO THOMAS BUFFUM.
[figure description] Page 021.[end figure description]
The abrupt departure of Miss Butterworth left Mr. Belcher
piqued and surprised. Although he regarded himself as still
“master of the situation”—to use his own pet phrase,—the
visit of that spirited woman had in various ways humiliated
him. To sit in his own library, with an intruding woman
who not only was not afraid of him but despised him, to sit
before her patiently and be called “Bob Belcher,” and a
brute, and not to have the privilege of kicking her out of
doors, was the severest possible trial of his equanimity. She
left him so suddenly that he had not had the opportunity to
insult her, for he had fully intended to do this before she retired.
He had determined, also, as a matter of course, that
in regard to the public poor of Sevenoaks he would give all
his influence toward maintaining the existing state of things.
The idea of being influenced by a woman, particularly by a
woman over whom he had no influence, to change his policy
with regard to anything, public or private, was one against
which all the brute within him rebelled.
In this state of mind, angry with himself for having tolerated
one who had so boldly and ruthlessly wounded his self-love,
he had but one resort. He could not confess his
humiliation to his wife; and there was no one in the world
with whom he could hold conversation on the subject, except
his old confidant who came into the mirror when wanted, and
conveniently retired when the interview closed.
Rising from his chair, and approaching his mirror, as if he
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[figure description] Page 022.[end figure description]
had been whipped, he stood a full minute regarding his disgraced
and speechless image. “Are you Robert Belcher,
Esquire, of Sevenoaks?” he inquired, at length. “Are you
the person who has been insulted by a woman? Look at me,
sir! Turn not away! Have you any constitutional objections
to telling me how you feel? Are you, sir, the proprietor
of this house? Are you the owner of yonder mill? Are
you the distinguished person who carries Sevenoaks in his
pocket? How are the mighty fallen! And you, sir, who
have been insulted by a tailoress, can stand here, and look
me in the face, and still pretend to be a man! You are a
scoundrel, sir—a low, mean-spirited scoundrel, sir. You are
nicely dressed, but you are a puppy. Dare to tell me you are
not, and I will grind you under my foot, as I would grind a
worm. Don't give me a word—not a word! I am not in a
mood to bear it!”
Having vented his indignation and disgust, with the fiercest
facial expression and the most menacing gesticulations, he
became calm, and proceeded:
“Benedict at the poor-house, hopelessly insane! Tell me
now, and, mark you, no lies here! Who developed his inventions?
Whose money was risked? What did it cost Benedict?
Nothing. What did it cost Robert Belcher? More
thousands than Benedict ever dreamed of. Have you done
your duty, Robert Belcher? Ay, ay, sir! I believe you.
Did you turn his head? No, sir. I believe you; it is well!
I have spent money for him—first and last, a great deal of
money for him; and any man or woman who disputes me is a
liar—a base, malignant liar! Who is still master of the situation?
Whose name is Norval? Whose are these Grampian
Hills? Who intends to go to the town-meeting to-morrow,
and have things fixed about as he wants them? Who will
make Keziah Butterworth weep and howl with anguish? Let
Robert Belcher alone! Alone! Far in azure depths of
space (here Mr. Belcher extended both arms heavenward, and
regarded his image admiringly), far—far away! Well, you're
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[figure description] Page 023.[end figure description]
a pretty good-looking man, after all, and I'll let you off this
time; but don't let me catch you playing baby to another
woman! I think you'll be able to take care of yourself
[nodding slowly.] By-by! Good-night!”
Mr. Belcher retired from the glass with two or three profound
bows, his face beaming with restored self-complacency,
and, taking his chair, he resumed his cigar. At this moment,
there arose in his memory a single sentence he had read in
the warrant for the meeting of the morrow: “To see if the
town will take any steps for the improvement of the condition
of the poor, now supported at the public charge.”
When he read this article of the warrant, posted in the
public places of the village, it had not impressed him particularly.
Now, he saw Miss Butterworth's hand in it. Evidently,
Mr. Belcher was not the only man who had been
honored by a call from that philanthropic woman. As he
thought the matter over, he regretted that, for the sake of
giving form and force to his spite against her, he should be
obliged to relinquish the popularity he might have won by
favoring a reformative measure. He saw something in it,
also, that might be made to add to Tom Buffum's profits;
but even this consideration weighed nothing against his desire
for personal revenge, to be exhibited in the form of triumphant
personal power.
He rose from his chair, walked his room, swinging his
hands backward and forward, casting furtive glances into his
mirror, and then rang his bell. He had arrived at a conclusion.
He had fixed upon his scheme, and was ready for work.
“Tell Phipps to come here,” he said to the maid who responded
to the summons.
Phipps was his coachman, body-servant, table-waiter, pet,
butt for his jests, tool, man of all occasions. He considered
himself a part of Mr. Belcher's personal property. To be the
object of his clumsy badinage, when visitors were present and
his master was particularly amiable, was equivalent to an honorable
public notice. He took Mr. Belcher's cast-off clothes,
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[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]
and had them reduced in their dimensions for his own wearing,
and was thus always able to be nearly as well dressed and
foppish as the man for whom they were originally made. He
was as insolent to others as he was obsequious to his master—
a flunky by nature and long education.
Phipps appeared.
“Well, Phipps, what are you here for?” inquired Mr.
Belcher.
“I was told you wanted me, sir,” looking doubtfully with
his cunning eyes into Mr. Belcher's face, as if questioning
his mood.
“How is your health? You look feeble. Overwhelmed
by your tremendous duties? Been sitting up late along back?
Eh? You rascal! Who's the happy woman?”
Phipps laughed, and twiddled his fingers.
“You're a precious fellow, and I've got to get rid of you.
You are altogether too many for me. Where did you get
that coat? It seems to me I've seen something like that
before. Just tell me how you do it, man. I can't dress the
way you do. Yes, Phipps, you're too many for me!”
Phipps smiled, aware that he was expected to make no
reply.
“Phipps, do you expect to get up to-morrow morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, you do! Very well! See that you do.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Phipps—”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bring the grays and the light wagon to the door to-morrow
morning at seven o'clock.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Phipps, gather all the old clothes about the house
that you can't use yourself, and tie 'em up in a bundle, and
put 'em into the back of the wagon. Mum is the word, and
if Mrs. Belcher asks you any questions, tell her I think of
turning Sister of Charity.”
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[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]
Phipps snickered.
“And Phipps, make a basket of cold meat and goodies,
and put in with the clothes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Phipps, remember:—seven o'clock, sharp, and no
soldiering.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Phipps, here is a cigar that cost twenty-five cents.
Do it up in a paper, and lay it away. Keep it to remember
me by.”
This joke was too good to be passed over lightly, and so
Phipps giggled, took the cigar, put it caressingly to his nose,
and then slipped it into his pocket.
“Now make yourself scarce,” said his master, and the man
retired, entirely conscious that the person he served had some
rascally scheme on foot, and heartily sympathetic with him in
the project of its execution.
Promptly at seven the next morning, the rakish pair of
trotters stood before the door, with a basket and a large
bundle in the back of the rakish little wagon. Almost at the
same moment, the proprietor came out, buttoning his overcoat.
Phipps leaped out, then followed his master into the
wagon, who, taking the reins, drove off at a rattling pace up
the long hill toward Tom Buffum's boarding-house. The
road lay entirely outside of the village, so that the unusual
drive was not observed.
Arriving at the poor-house, Mr. Belcher gave the reins to
his servant, and, with a sharp rap upon the door with the butt
of his whip, summoned to the latch the red-faced and stuffy
keeper. What passed between them, Phipps did not hear,
although he tried very hard to do so. At the close of a half
hour's buzzing conversation, Tom Buffum took the bundle
from the wagon, and pitched it into his doorway. Then,
with the basket on his arm, he and Mr. Belcher made their
way across the street to the dormitories and cells occupied by
the paupers of both sexes and all ages and conditions. Even
-- 026 --
[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]
the hard-hearted proprietor saw that which wounded his
blunted sensibilities; but he looked on with a bland face, and
witnessed the greedy consumption of the stale dainties of his
own table.
It was by accident that he was led out by a side passage,
and there he caught glimpses of the cells to which Miss Butterworth
had alluded, and inhaled an atmosphere which
sickened him to paleness, and brought to his lips the exclamation:
“For God's sake let's get out of this.”
“Ay! ay!” came tremblingly from behind the bars of a
cell, “let's get out of this.”
Mr. Belcher pushed toward the light, but not so quickly
that a pair of eyes, glaring from the straw, failed to recognize
him.
“Robert Belcher! Oh, for God's sake! Robert Belcher!”
It was a call of wild distress—a whine, a howl, an objurgation,
all combined. It was repeated as long as he could hear
it. It sounded in his ears as he descended the hill. It came
again and again to him as he was seated at his comfortable
breakfast. It rang in the chambers of his consciousness for
hours, and only a firm and despotic will expelled it at last.
He knew the voice, and he never wished to hear it again.
What he had seen that morning, and what he had done,
where he had been, and why he had gone, were secrets to
which his wife and children were not admitted. The relations
between himself and his wife were not new in the world.
He wished to retain her respect, so he never revealed to her
his iniquities. She wished as far as possible to respect him,
so she never made uncomfortable inquiries. He was bountiful
to her. He had been bountiful to many others. She
clothed and informed all his acts of beneficence with the
motives which became them. If she was ever shocked by his
vulgarity, he never knew it by any word of hers, in disapproval.
If she had suspicions, she did not betray them.
Her children were trained to respect their father, and among
them she found the satisfactions of her life. He had long
-- 027 --
[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]
ceased to be her companion. As an associate, friend, lover,
she had given him up, and, burying in her heart all her griefs
and all her loneliness, had determined to make the best of
her life, and to bring her children to believe that their father
was a man of honor, of whom they had no reason to be
ashamed. If she was proud, hers was an amiable pride, and
to Mr. Belcher's credit let it be said that he respected her as
much as he wished her to honor him.
For an hour after breakfast, Mr. Belcher was occupied in
his library, with his agent, in the transaction of his daily
business. Then, just as the church bell rang its preliminary
summons for the assembling of the town-meeting, Phipps
came to the door again with the rakish grays and the rakish
wagon, and Mr. Belcher drove down the steep hill into the
village, exchanging pleasant words with the farmers whom he
encountered on the way, and stopping at various shops,
to speak with those upon whom he depended for voting
through whatever public schemes he found it desirable to
favor.
The old town-hall was thronged for half-an-hour before the
time designated in the warrant. Finally, the bell ceased to
ring, at the exact moment when Mr. Belcher drove to the
door and ascended the steps. There was a buzz all over the
house when he entered, and he was surrounded at once.
“Have it just as you want it,” shaking his head ostentatiously
and motioning them away, “don't mind anything
about me. I'm a passenger,” he said aloud, and with a
laugh, as the meeting was called to order and the warrant
read, and a nomination for moderator demanded.
“Peter Vernol,” shouted a dozen voices in unison.
Peter Vernol had represented the district in the Legislature,
and was supposed to be familiar with parliamentary
usage. He was one of Mr. Belcher's men, of course—as
truly owned and controlled by him as Phipps himself.
Peter Vernol became moderator by acclamation. He was
a young man, and, ascending the platform very red in the
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[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]
face, and looking out upon the assembled voters of Sevenoaks,
he asked with a trembling voice:
“What is the further pleasure of the meeting?”
“I move you,” said Mr. Belcher, rising, and throwing open
his overcoat, “that the Rev. Solomon Snow, whom I am exceedingly
glad to see present, open our deliberations with
prayer.”
The moderator, forgetting apparently that the motion had
not been put, thereupon invited the reverend gentleman to
the platform, from which, when his service had been completed,
he with dignity retired—but with the painful consciousness
that in some way Mr. Belcher had become aware of
the philanthropic task he had undertaken. He knew he was
beaten, at the very threshold of his enterprise—that his conversations
of the morning among his neighbors had been
reported, and that Paul Benedict and his fellow-sufferers
would be none the better for him.
The business connected with the various articles of the warrant
was transacted without notable discussion or difference.
Mr. Belcher's ticket for town officers, which he took pains to
show to those around him, was unanimously adopted. When
it came to the question of schools, Mr. Belcher indulged in a
few flights of oratory. He thought it impossible for a town
like Sevenoaks to spend too much money for schools. He
felt himself indebted to the public school for all that he was,
and all that he had won. The glory of America, in his view—
its pre-eminence above all the exhausted and decayed civilizations
of the Old World—was to be found in popular education.
It was the distinguishing feature of our new and abounding
national life. Drop it, falter, recede, and the darkness that
now hangs over England, and the thick darkness that envelops
the degenerating hordes of the Continent, would settle down
upon fair America, and blot her out forever from the list of
the earth's teeming nations. He would pay good wages to
teachers. He would improve school-houses, and he would
do it as a matter of economy. It was, in his view, the only
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[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]
safeguard against the encroachments of a destructive pauperism.
“We are soon,” said Mr. Belcher, “to consider whether
we will take any steps for the improvement of the condition
of the poor, now supported at the public charge. Here is our
first step. Let us endow our children with such a degree of
intelligence that pauperism shall be impossible. In this thing
I go hand in hand with the clergy. On many points I do not
agree with them, but on this matter of popular education, I
will do them the honor to say that they have uniformly been
in advance of the rest of us. I join hands with them here
to-day, and, as any advance in our rate of taxation for schools
will bear more heavily upon me than upon any other citizen—
I do not say it boastingly, gentlemen—I pledge myself to
support and stand by it.”
Mr. Belcher's speech, delivered with majestic swellings of
his broad chest, the ostentatious removal of his overcoat, and
brilliant passages of oratorical action, but most imperfectly
summarized in this report, was received with cheers. Mr.
Snow himself feebly joined in the approval, although he knew
it was intended to disarm him. His strength, his resolution,
his courage, ebbed away with sickening rapidity; and he was
not reassured by a glance toward the door, where he saw,
sitting quite alone, Miss Butterworth herself, who had come
in for the purpose partly of strengthening him, and partly of
informing herself concerning the progress of a reform which
had taken such strong hold upon her sympathies.
At length the article in the warrant which most interested
that good lady was taken up, and Mr. Snow rose to speak
upon it. He spoke of the reports he had heard concerning
the bad treatment that the paupers, and especially those who
were hopelessly insane, had received in the almshouse, enlarged
upon the duties of humanity and Christianity, and
expressed the conviction that the enlightened people of Sevenoaks
should spend more money for the comfort of the
unfortunate whom Heaven had thrown upon their charge,
and particularly that they should institute a more
-- 030 --
[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]
searching and competent inspection of their pauper establishment.
As he took his seat, all eyes were turned upon Mr. Belcher,
and that gentleman rose for a second exhibition of his characteristic
eloquence.
“I do not forget,” said Mr. Belcher, “that we have present
here to-day an old and well-tried public servant. I see
before me Mr. Thomas Buffum, who, for years, has had in
charge the poor, not only of this town, but of this county. I
do not forget that his task has been one of great delicacy,
with the problem constantly before him how to maintain in
comfort our most unfortunate class of population, and at the
same time to reduce to its minimum the burden of our taxpayers.
That he has solved this problem and served the public
well, I most firmly believe. He has been for many years my
trusted personal friend, and I cannot sit here and hear his
administration questioned, and his integrity and humanity
doubted, without entering my protest. [Cheers, during which
Mr. Buffum grew very red in the face.] He has had a task
to perform before which the bravest of us would shrink. We,
who sit in our peaceful homes, know little of the hardships to
which this faithful public servant has been subjected. Pauperism
is ungrateful. Pauperism is naturally filthy. Pauperism
is noisy. It consists of humanity in its most repulsive forms,
and if we have among us a man who can—who can—stand it,
let us stand by him.” [Tremendous cheers.]
Mr. Belcher paused until the wave of applause had subsided,
and then went on:
“An open-hand, free competition: this has been my policy,
in a business of whose prosperity you are the best judges. I
say an open-hand and free competition in everything. How
shall we dispose of our poor? Shall they be disposed of by
private arrangement—sold out to favorites, of whose responsibility
we know nothing? [Cries of no, no, no!] If anybody
who is responsible—and now he is attacked, mark you,
I propose to stand behind and be responsible for Mr. Buffum
-- 031 --
[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]
myself—can do the work cheaper and better than Mr. Buffum,
let him enter at once upon the task. But let the competition
be free, nothing covered up. Let us have clean hands in this
business, if nowhere else. If we cannot have impartial dealing,
where the interests of humanity are concerned, we are
unworthy of the trust we have assumed. I give the Rev. Mr.
Snow credit for motives that are unimpeachable—unimpeachable,
sir. I do not think him capable of intentional wrong,
and I wish to ask him, here and now, whether, within a
recent period, he has visited the pauper establishment of
Sevenoaks.”
Mr. Snow rose and acknowledged that it was a long time
since he had entered Mr. Buffum's establishment.
“I thought so. He has listened to the voice of rumor.
Very well. I have to say that I have been there recently, and
have walked through the establishment. I should do injustice
to myself, and fail to hint to the reverend gentleman, and all
those who sympathize with him, what I regard as one of their
neglected duties, if I should omit to mention that I did not
go empty-handed. [Loud cheers.] It is easy for those who
neglect their own duties to suspect that others do the same.
I know our paupers are not supported in luxury. We cannot
afford to support them in luxury; but I wash my hands of all
responsibility for inhumanity and inattention to their reasonable
wants. The reverend gentleman himself knows, I think,
whether any man ever came to me for assistance on behalf of
any humane or religious object, and went away without aid.
I cannot consent to be placed in a position that reflects upon
my benevolence, and, least of all, by the reverend gentleman
who has reflected upon that administration of public charity
which has had, and still retains, my approval. I therefore
move that the usual sum be appropriated for the support of
the poor, and that at the close of this meeting the care of the
poor for the ensuing year be disposed of at public auction to
the lowest bidder.”
Mr. Snow was silent, for he knew that he was impotent.
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Then there jumped up a little man with tumbled hair,
weazened face, and the general look of a broken-down gentleman,
who was recognized by the moderator as “Dr. Radcliffe.”
“Mr. Moderator,” said he, in a screaming voice, “as I
am the medical attendant and inspector of our pauper establishment,
it becomes proper for me, in seconding the motion
of Mr. Belcher, as I heartily do, to say a few words, and submit
my report for the past year.”
Dr. Radcliffe was armed with a large document, and the
assembled voters of Sevenoaks were getting tired.
“I move,” said Mr. Belcher, “that, as the hour is late,
the reading of the report be dispensed with.” The motion
was seconded, and carried nem. con.
The Doctor was wounded in a sensitive spot, and was determined
not to be put down.
“I may at least say,” he went on, “that I have made some
discoveries during the past year that ought to be in the possession
of the scientific world. It takes less food to support
a pauper than it does any other man, and I believe the reason
is that he hasn't any mind. If I take two potatoes, one goes
to the elaboration of mental processes, the other to the support
of the physical economy. The pauper has only a physical
economy, and he needs but one potato. Anemia is the
normal condition of the pauper. He breathes comfortably
an atmosphere which would give a healthy man asphyxia.
Hearty food produces inflammatory diseases and a general
condition of hypertrophy. The character of the diseases at
the poor-house, during the past year, has been typhoid. I
have suggested to Mr. Buffum better ventilation, a change
from farinaceous to nitrogenous food as conducive to a better
condition of the mucous surfaces and a more perfect oxydation
of the vital fluids. Mr. Buffum —”
“Oh, git out!” shouted a voice at the rear.
“Question! question!” called a dozen voices.
The moderator caught a wink and a nod from Mr. Belcher,
-- 033 --
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and put the question, amid the protests of Dr. Radcliffe; and
it was triumphantly carried.
And now, as the town-meeting drops out of this story, let
us leave it, and leave Mr. Thomas Buffum at its close to underbid
all contestants for the privilege of feeding the paupers of
Sevenoaks for another year.
-- 034 -- p590-055
CHAPTER III. IN WHICH JIM FENTON IS INTRODUCED TO THE READER AND INTRODUCES HIMSELF TO MISS BUTTERWORTH.
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Miss Butterworth, while painfully witnessing the defeat
of her hopes from the last seat in the hall, was conscious of
the presence at her side of a very singular-looking personage,
who evidently did not belong in Sevenoaks. He was a woodsman,
who had been attracted to the hall by his desire to witness
the proceedings. His clothes, originally of strong material,
were patched; he held in his hand a fur cap without a
visor; and a rifle leaned on the bench at his side. She had
been attracted to him by his thoroughly good-natured face,
his noble, mascular figure, and certain exclamations that
escaped from his lips during the speeches. Finally, he turned
to her, and with a smile so broad and full that it brought an
answer to her own face, he said: “This 'ere breathin' is worse
nor an old swamp. I'm goin', and good-bye to ye!”
Why this remark, personally addressed to her, did not
offend her, coming as it did from a stranger, she did not
know; but it certainly did not seem impudent. There was
something so simple and strong and manly about him, as he
had sat there by her side, contrasted with the baser and better
dressed men before her, that she took his address as an
honorable courtesy.
When the woodsman went out upon the steps of the town-hall,
to get a breath, he found there such an assembly of boys
as usually gathers in villages on the smallest public occasion.
Squarely before the door stood Mr. Belcher's grays, and in
Mr. Belcher's wagon sat Mr. Belcher's man, Phipps. Phipps
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was making the most of his position. He was proud of his
horses, proud of his clothes, proud of the whip he was carelessly
snapping, proud of belonging to Mr. Belcher. The
boys were laughing at his funny remarks, envying him his
proud eminence, and discussing the merits of the horses and
the various points of the attractive establishment.
As the stranger appeared, he looked down upon the boys
with a broad smile, which attracted them at once, and quite
diverted them from their flattering attentions to Phipps—a
fact quickly perceived by the latter, and as quickly revenged
in a way peculiar to himself and the man from whom he had
learned it.
“This is the hippopotamus, gentlemen,” said Phipps,
“fresh from his native woods. He sleeps underneath the
banyan-tree, and lives on the nuts of the hick-o-ree, and pursues
his prey with his tail extended upward and one eye open,
and has been known when excited by hunger to eat small
boys, spitting out their boots with great violence. Keep out
of his way, gentlemen! Keep out of his way, and observe his
wickedness at a distance.”
Phipps's saucy speech was received with a great roar by the
boys, who were surprised to notice that the animal himself
was not only not disturbed, but very much amused by being
shown up as a curiosity.
“Well, you're a new sort of a monkey, any way,” said
the woodsman, after the laugh had subsided. “I never
hearn one talk afore.”
“You never will agian,” retorted Phipps, “if you give
me any more of your lip.”
The woodsman walked quickly toward Phipps, as if he
were about to pull him from his seat.
Phipps saw the motion, started the horses, and was out of
his way in an instant.
The boys shouted in derision, but Phipps did not come
back, and the stranger was the hero. They gathered around
him, asking questions, all of which he good-naturedly
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answered. He seemed to be pleased with their society, as if he
were only a big boy himself, and wanted to make the most
of the limited time which his visit to the town afforded
him.
While he was thus standing as the center of an inquisitive
and admiring group, Miss Butterworth came out of the town-hall.
Her eyes were full of tears, and her eloquent face expressed
vexation and distress. The stranger saw the look and
the tears, and, leaving the boys, he approached her without
the slightest awkwardness, and said:
“Has anybody teched ye, mum?”
“Oh, no, sir,” Miss Butterworth answered.
“Has anybody spoke ha'sh to ye?”
“Oh, no, sir;” and Miss Butterworth pressed on, conscious
that in that kind inquiry there breathed as genuine
respect and sympathy as ever had reached her ears in the
voice of a man.
“Because,” said the man, still walking along at her side,
“I'm spilin' to do somethin' for somebody, and I wouldn't
mind thrashin' anybody you'd p'int out.”
“No, you can do nothing for me. Nobody can do anything
in this town for anybody until Robert Belcher is dead,”
said Miss Butterworth.
“Well, I shouldn't like to kill 'im,” responded the man,
“unless it was an accident in the woods—a great ways off—
for a turkey or a hedgehog—and the gun half-cocked.”
The little tailoress smiled through her tears, though she felt
very uneasy at being observed in company and conversation
with the rough-looking stranger. He evidently divined the
thoughts which possessed her, and said, as if only the mention
of his name would make him an acquaintance:
“I'm Jim Fenton. I trap for a livin' up in Number Nine,
and have jest brung in my skins.”
“My name is Butterworth,” she responded mechanically.
“I know'd it,” he replied. “I axed the boys.”
“Good-bye,” he said. “Here's the store, and I must
-- 037 --
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shoulder my sack and be off. I don't see women much, but
I'm fond of 'em, and they're pretty apt to like me.”
“Good-bye,” said the woman. “I think you're the best
man I've seen to-day;” and then, as if she had said more
than became a modest woman, she added, “and that isn't
saying very much.”
They parted, and Jim Fenton stood perfectly still in the
street and looked at her, until she disappeared around a
corner. “That's what I call a genuine creetur',” he muttered
to himself at last, “a genuine creetur'.”
Then Jim Fenton went into the store, where he had sold
his skins and bought his supplies, and, after exchanging a few
jokes with those who had observed his interview with Miss
Butterworth, he shouldered his sack as he called it, and started
for Number Nine. The sack was a contrivance of his own,
with two pouches which depended, one before and one
behind, from his broad shoulders. Taking his rifle in his
hand, he bade the group that had gathered around him a
hearty good-bye, and started on his way.
The afternoon was not a pleasant one. The air was raw,
and, as the sun went toward its setting, the wind came on to
blow from the north-west. This was just as he would have it.
It gave him breath, and stimulated the vitality that was necessary
to him in the performance of his long task. A tramp
of forty miles was not play, even to him, and this long distance
was to be accomplished before he could reach the boat
that would bear him and his burden into the woods.
He crossed the Branch at its principal bridge, and took the
same path up the hill that Robert Belcher had traveled in the
morning. About half-way up the hill, as he was going on
with the stride of a giant, he saw a little boy at the side of
the road, who had evidently been weeping. He was thinly
and very shabbily clad, and was shivering with cold. The great,
healthy heart within Jim Fenton was touched in an instant.
“Well, bub,” said he, tenderly, “how fare ye? How fare
ye? Eh?”
-- 038 -- p590-059
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“I'm pretty well, I thank you, sir,” replied the lad.
“I guess not. You're as blue as a whetstone. You haven't
got as much on you as a picked goose.”
“I can't help it, sir,” and the boy burst into tears.
“Well, well, I didn't mean to trouble you, boy. Here,
take this money, and buy somethin' to make you happy.
Don't tell your dad you've got it. It's yourn.”
The boy made a gesture of rejection, and said: “I don't
wish to take it, sir.”
“Now, that's good! Don't wish to take it! Why, what's
your name? You're a new sort o' boy.”
“My name is Harry Benedict.”
“Harry Benedict? And what's your pa's name?”
“His name is Paul Benedict.”
“Where is he now?”
“He is in the poor-house.”
“And you, too?”
“Yes, sir,” and the lad found expression for his distress in
another flow of tears.
“Well, well, well, well! If that ain't the strangest thing I
ever hearn on! Paul Benedict, of Sevenoaks, in Tom Buffum's
Boardin'-house!”
“Yes, sir, and he's very crazy, too.”
Jim Fenton set his rifle against a rock at the roadside, slowly
lifted off his pack and placed it near the rifle, and then sat
down on a stone and called the boy to him, folding him in
his great warm arms to his warm breast.
“Harry, my boy,” said Jim, “your pa and me was old
friends. We have hunted together, fished together, eat together,
and slept together many's the day and night. He was the best
shot that ever come into the woods. I've seed him hit a deer
at fifty rod many's the time, and he used to bring up the nicest
tackle for fishin', every bit of it made with his own hands.
He was the curisist creetur' I ever seed in my life, and the best;
and I'd do more fur 'im nor fur any livin' live man. Oh, I
tell ye, we used to have high old times. It was wuth livin' a
-- --
“Harry, my boy, said Jim, your pa an' me was old friends.”
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-- --
[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]
-- 039 --
[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]
year in the woods jest to have 'im with me for a fortnight. I
never charged 'im a red cent fur nothin', and I've got some
of his old tackle now that he give me. Him an' me was like
brothers, and he used to talk about religion, and tell me I
ought to shift over, but I never could see 'zactly what I ought
to shift over from, or shift over to; but I let 'im talk, 'cause
he liked to. He used to go out behind the trees nights, and
I hearn him sayin' somethin'—somethin' very low, as I am
talkin' to ye now. Well, he was prayin'; that's the fact
about it, I s'pose; and ye know I felt jest as safe when that
man was round! I don't believe I could a' been drownded
when he was in the woods any more'n if I'd a' been a mink.
An' Paul Benedict is in the poor-house! I vow I don't
'zactly see why the Lord let that man go up the spout; but
perhaps it'll all come out right. Where's your ma, boy?”
Harry gave a great, shuddering gasp, and, answering him
that she was dead, gave himself up to another fit of crying.
“Oh, now don't! now don't!” said Jim tenderly, pressing
the distressed lad still closer to his heart. “Don't ye do
it; it don't do no good. It jest takes the spunk all out o'
ye. Ma's have to die like other folks, or go to the poor-house.
You wouldn't like to have yer ma in the poor-house.
She's all right. God Almighty's bound to take
care o' her. Now, ye jest stop that sort o' thing. She's
better off with him nor she would be with Tom Buffum—any
amount better off. Doesn't Tom Buffum treat your pa well?”
“Oh, no, sir; he doesn't give him enough to eat, and he
doesn't let him have things in his room, because he says he'll
hurt himself, or break them all to pieces, and he doesn't give
him good clothes, nor anything to cover himself up with when
it's cold.”
“Well, boy,” said Jim, his great frame shaking with indignation,
“do ye want to know what I think of Tom Buffum?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It won't do fur me to tell ye, 'cause I'm rough, but if
there's anything awful bad—oh, bad as anything can be, in
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[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]
Skeezacks—I should say that Tom Buffum was an old
Skeezacks.”
Jim Fenton was feeling his way.
“I should say he was an infernal old Skeezacks. That
isn't very bad, is it?”
“I don't know sir,” replied the boy.
“Well, a d—d rascal; how's that?”
“My father never used such words,” replied the boy.
“That's right, and I take it back. I oughtn't to have said
it, but unless a feller has got some sort o' religion he has a
mighty hard time namin' people in this world. What's that?”
Jim started with the sound in his ear of what seemed to be
a cry of distress.
“That's one of the crazy people. They do it all the time.”
Then Jim thought of the speeches he had heard in the
town-meeting, and recalled the distress of Miss Butterworth,
and the significance of all the scenes he had so recently
witnessed.
“Look 'ere, boy; can ye keep right 'ere,” tapping him
on his breast, “whatsomever I tell ye? Can you keep yer
tongue still?—hope you'll die if ye don't?”
There was something in these questions through which the
intuitions of the lad saw help, both for his father and himself.
Hope strung his little muscles in an instant, his attitude
became alert, and he replied:
“I'll never say anything if they kill me.”
“Well, I'll tell ye what I'm goin' to do. I'm goin' to
stay to the poor-house to-night, if they'll keep me, an' I
guess they will; and I'm goin' to see yer pa too, and somehow
you and he must be got out of this place.”
The boy threw his arms around Jim's neck, and kissed him
passionately, again and again, without the power, apparently,
to give any other expression to his emotions.
“Oh, God! don't, boy! That's a sort o' thing I can't
stand. I ain't used to it.”
Jim paused, as if to realize how sweet it was to hold the
-- 041 --
[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]
trusting child in his arms, and to be thus caressed, and then
said: “Ye must be mighty keerful, and do just as I bid ye.
If I stay to the poor-house to-night, I shall want to see ye in
the mornin', and I shall want to see ye alone. Now ye
know there's a big stump by the side of the road, half-way up
to the old school-house.”
Harry gave his assent.
“Well. I want ye to be thar, ahead o' me, and then I'll
tell ye jest what I'm a goin' to do, and jest what I want to
have ye do.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now mind, ye mustn't know me when I'm about the
house, and mustn't tell anybody you've seed me, and I mustn't
know you. Now ye leave all the rest to Jim Fenton, yer
pa's old friend. Don't ye begin to feel a little better now?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can kiss me again, if ye want to. I didn't mean
to choke ye off. That was all in fun, ye know.”
Harry kissed him, and then Jim said: “Now make tracks
for yer old boardin'-house. I'll be along bimeby.”
The boy started upon a brisk run, and Jim still sat upon the
stone watching him until he disappeared somewhere among
the angles of the tumble-down buildings that constituted the
establishment.
“Well, Jim Fenton,” he said to himself, “ye've been
spilin' fur somethin' to do fur somebody. I guess ye've got
it, and not a very small job neither.”
Then he shouldered his pack, took up his rifle, looked up
at the cloudy and blustering sky, and pushed up the hill, still
talking to himself, and saying: “A little boy of about his
haighth and bigness ain't a bad thing to take.”
-- 042 -- p590-065
CHAPTER IV. IN WHICH JIM FENTON APPLIES FOR LODGINGS AT TOM BUFFUM'S BOARDING-HOUSE, AND FINDS HIS OLD FRIEND.
[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]
As Jim walked up to the door of the building occupied
by Tom Buffum's family, he met the head of the family
coming out; and as, hitherto, that personage has escaped
description, it will be well for the reader to make his acquaintance.
The first suggestion conveyed by his rotund
figure was, that however scantily he furnished his boarders,
he never stinted himself in the matter of food. He had
the sluggish, clumsy look of a heavy eater. His face was
large, his almost colorless eyes were small, and, if one
might judge by the general expression of his features, his
favorite viand was pork. Indeed, if the swine into which the
devils once entered had left any descendants, it would be
legitimate to suppose that the breed still thrived in the most
respectable sty connected with his establishment. He was
always hoarse, and spoke either in a whisper or a wheeze.
For this, or for some other reason not apparent, he was a
silent man, rarely speaking except when addressed by a question,
and never making conversation with anybody. From
the time he first started independently in the world, he had
been in some public office. Men with dirty work to do had
found him wonderfully serviceable, and, by ways which it
would be hard to define to the ordinary mind, he had so
managed that every town and county office, in which there
was any money, had been by turns in his hands.
“Well, Mr. Buffum, how fare ye?” said Jim, walking
-- 043 --
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heartily up to him, and shaking his hand, his face glowing
with good-nature.
Mr. Buffum's attempt to respond to this address ended in a
wheeze and a cough.
“Have ye got room for another boarder to-night? Faith,
I never expected to come to the poor-house, but here I am.
I'll take entertainment for man or beast. Which is the best,
and which do you charge the most for? Somebody's got to
keep me to-night, and ye're the man to bid low.”
Buffum made no reply, but stooped down, took a sliver from
a log, and began to pick his teeth. Jim watched him with
quiet amusement. The more Mr. Buffum thought, the more
furious he grew with his toothpick.
“Pretty tough old beef, wasn't it?” said Jim, with a hearty
laugh.
“You go in and see the women,” said Mr. Buffum, in a
wheezy whisper.
This, to Jim, was equivalent to an honorable reception.
He had no doubt of his ability to make his way with “the
women” who, he was fully aware, had been watching him all
the time from the window.
To the women of Tom Buffum's household, a visitor was a
godsend. Socially, they had lived all their lives in a state of
starvation. They knew all about Jim Fenton, and had exchanged
many a saucy word with him, as he had passed their
house on his journeys to and from Sevenoaks.
“If you can take up with what we've got,” said Mrs. Buffum
suggestively.
“In course,” responded Jim, “an' I can take up with
what ye haven't got.”
“Our accommodations is very crowded,” said Mrs. Buffum.
“So is mine to home,” responded Jim. “I allers sleep
hangin' on a gambrel, between two slabs.”
While Mr. Tom Buffum's “women” were laughing, Jim
lifted off his pack, placed his rifle in the corner of the room,
and sat down in front of the fire, running on with his
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easygoing tongue through preposterous stories, and sundry flattering
allusions to the beauty and attractiveness of the women
to whose hospitalities he had committed himself.
After supper, to which he did full justice, the family
drew around the evening fire, and while Mr. Buffum went, or
seemed to go, to sleep, in his chair, his guest did his best to
entertain the minor members of the group.
“This hollerin' ye have here reminds me,” said Jim, “of
Number Nine. Ther's some pretty tall hollerin' thar nights.
Do ye see how my ha'r sticks up? I can't keep it down.
It riz one night jest about where you see it now, and it's
mostly been thar ever sence. Combin' don't do no good.
Taller don't do no good. Nothin' don't do no good. I
s'pose if Mr. Buffum, a-snorin' jest as hard as he does now,
should set on it for a fortnight, it would spring right up like
a staddle, with a b'ar ketched at the eend of it, jest as quick as
he let up on me.” At this there was a slight rumble in Mr.
Buffum's throat.
“Why, what made it rise so?” inquired the most interested
and eldest Miss Buffum.
“Now, ain't your purty eyes wide open?” said Jim.
“You're jest fooling; you know you are,” responded Miss
Buffum, blushing.
“Do ye see the ha'r on the back of my hand?” said Jim,
patting one of those ample instruments with the other. “That
stands up jest as it does on my head. I'm a regular hedgehog.
It all happened then.”
“Now, Jim Fenton, you shall go along and tell your story,
and not keep us on tenter-hooks all night,” said Miss Buffum
sharply.
“I don't want to scare the dear little heart out o' ye,” said
Jim, with a killing look of his eyes, “but if ye will hear it,
I s'pose I must tell ye. Ye see I'm alone purty much all the
time up thar. I don't have no such times as I'm havin' here
to-night, with purty gals 'round me. Well, one night I hearn
a loon, or thought I hearn one. It sounded 'way off on the
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lake, and bimeby it come nigher, and then I thought it was a
painter, but it didn't sound 'zactly like a painter. My dog
Turk he don't mind such things, but he knowed it wa'r'n't a
loon and wa'r'n't a painter. So he got up and went to the
door, and then the yell come agin, and he set up the most
un'arthly howl I ever hearn. I flung one o' my boots at 'im,
but he didn't mind any thing more about it than if it had
been a feather. Well, ye see, I couldn't sleep, and the skeeters
was purty busy, and I thought I'd git up. So I went to my
cabin door and flung it open. The moon was shinin', and
the woods was still, but Turk, he rushed out, and growled
and barked like mad. Bimeby he got tired, and come back
lookin' kind o' skeered, and says I: `Ye're a purty dog,
ain't ye?' Jest then I hearn the thing nigher, and I begun
to hear the brush crack. I knowed I'd got to meet some new
sort of a creetur, and I jest stepped back and took my rifle.
When I stood in the door agin, I seen somethin' comin'. It
was a walkin' on two legs like a man, and it was a man, or
somethin' that looked like one. He come toward the cabin,
and stopped about three rod off. He had long white hair
that looked jest like silk under the moon, and his robes was
white, and he had somethin' in his hand that shined like silver.
I jest drew up my rifle, and says I: `Whosomever you
be, stop, or I'll plug ye.' What do ye s'pose he did? He
jest took that shinin' thing and swung it round and round his
head, and I begun to feel the ha'r start, and up it come all
over me. Then he put suthin' to his mouth, and then I
knowed it was a trumpet, and he jest blowed till all the woods
rung, and rung, and rung again, and I hearn it comin' back
from the mountain, louder nor it was itself. And then says I
to myself: `There's another one, and Jim Fenton's a goner;'
but I didn't let on that I was skeered, and says I to him:
`That's a good deal of a toot; who be ye callin' to dinner?'
And says he: `It's the last day! Come to jedgment! I'm
the Angel Gabr'el!' `Well,' says I, `if ye're the Angel
Gabr'el, cold lead won't hurt ye, so mind yer eyes!' At
-- 046 --
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that I drew a bead on 'im, and if ye'll b'lieve it, I knocked
a tin horn out of his hands and picked it up the next mornin',
and he went off into the woods like a streak o' lightnin'.
But my ha'r hain't never come down.”
Jim stroked the refractory locks toward his forehead with
his huge hand, and they rose behind it like a wheat-field behind
a summer wind. As he finished the manipulation, Mr.
Buffum gave symptoms of life. Like a volcano under premonitory
signs of an eruption, a wheezy chuckle seemed to
begin somewhere in the region of his boots, and rise, growing
more and more audible, until it burst into a full demonstration,
that was half laugh and half cough.
“Why, what are you laughing at, father?” exclaimed Miss
Buffum.
The truth was that Mr. Buffum had not slept at all. The
simulation of sleep had been indulged in simply to escape the
necessity of talking.
“It was old Tilden,” said Mr. Buffum, and then went off
into another fit of coughing and laughing that nearly strangled
him.
“I wonder if it was!” seemed to come simultaneously from
the lips of the mother and her daughters.
“Did you ever see him again?” inquired Mr. Buffum.
“I seen 'im oncet, in the spring, I s'pose,” said Jim,
“what there was left of 'im. There wasn't much left but an
old shirt and some bones, an' I guess he wa'n't no great
shakes of an angel. I buried 'im where I found 'im, and said
nothin' to nobody.”
“That's right,” wheezed Mr. Buffum. “It's just as
well.”
“The truth is,” said Mrs. Buffum, “that folks made a
great fuss about his gettin' away from here and never bein'
found. I thought 'twas a good riddance myself, but people
seem to think that these crazy critturs are just as much consequence
as any body, when they don't know a thing. He was
always arter our dinner horn, and blowin', and thinkin' he
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was the Angel Gabriel. Well, it's a comfort to know he's
buried, and isn't no more expense.”
“I sh'd like to see some of these crazy people,” said Jim.
“They must be a jolly set. My ha'r can't stand any straighter
nor it does now, and when you feed the animals in the mornin',
I'd kind o' like to go round with ye.”
The women insisted that he ought not to do it. Only those
who understood them, and were used to them, ought to see
them.
“You see, we can't give 'em much furnitur',” said Mrs.
Buffum. “They break it, and they tear their beds to pieces,
and all we can do is to jest keep them alive. As for keepin'
their bodies and souls together, I don't s'pose they've got
any souls. They are nothin' but animils, as you say, and I
don't see why any body should treat an animil like a human
bein.' They hav'n't no sense of what you do for 'em.”
“Oh, ye needn't be afraid o' my blowin'. I never blowed
about old Tilden, as you call 'im, an' I never expect to,”
said Jim.
“That's right,” wheezed Mr. Buffum. “It's just as well.”
“Well, I s'pose the Doctor 'll be up in the mornin',” said
Mrs. Buffum, “and we shall clean up a little, and put in new
straw, and p'r'aps you can go round with him?”
Mr. Buffum nodded his assent, and after an evening spent
in story-telling and chaffing, Jim went to bed upon the shake-down
in an upper room to which he was conducted.
Long before he was on his feet in the morning, the paupers
of the establishment had been fed, and things had been put
in order for the medical inspector. Soon after breakfast, the
Doctor's crazy little gig was seen ascending the hill, and Mr.
Buffum and Jim were at the door when he drove up. Buffum
took the Doctor aside, and told him of Jim's desire to make
the rounds with him. Nothing could have delighted the little
man more than a proposition of this kind, because it gave
him an opportunity to talk. Jim had measured his man when
he heard him speak the previous day, and as they crossed the
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road together, he said: “Doctor, they didn't treat ye very
well down there yesterday. I said to myself; `Jim Fenton,
what would ye done if ye had knowed as much as that
doctor, an' had worked as hard as he had, and then be'n jest
as good as stomped on by a set o' fellows that didn't know
a hole in the ground when they seen it?' and, says I, answerin'
myself, `ye'd 'a' made the fur fly, and spilt blood.”'
“Ah,” responded the Doctor, “Violence resteth in the
bosom of fools.”
“Well, it wouldn't 'a' rested in my bosom long. I'd 'a'
made a young 'arthquake there in two minutes.”
The Doctor smiled, and said with a sigh:
“The vulgar mind does not comprehend science.”
“Now, jest tell me what science is,” said Jim. “I hearn
a great deal about science, but I live up in the woods, and I
can't read very much, and ye see I ain't edicated, and I
made up my mind if I ever found a man as knowed what
science was, I'd ask him.”
“Science, sir, is the sum of organized and systematized
knowledge,” replied the Doctor.
“Now, that seems reasomble,” said Jim, “but what is it
like? What do they do with it? Can a feller get a livin'
by it?”
“Not in Sevenoaks,” replied the Doctor, with a bitter
smile.
“Then, what's the use of it?”
“Pardon me, Mr. Fenton,” replied the Doctor. “You'll
excuse me, when I tell you that you have not arrived at that
mental altitude—that intellectual plane—”
“No,” said Jim, “I live on a sort of a medder.”
The case being hopeless, the Doctor went on and opened
the door into what he was pleased to call “the insane ward.”
As Jim put his head into the door, he uttered a “phew!”
and then said:
“This is worser nor the town meetin'.”
The moment Jim's eyes beheld the misery that groaned out
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its days and nights within the stingy cells, his great heart
melted with pity. For the first moments, his disposition to
jest passed away, and all his soul rose up in indignation. If
profane words came to his lips, they came from genuine commiseration,
and a sense of the outrage that had been committed
upon those who had been stamped with the image of
the Almighty.
“This is a case of Shakspearean madness,” said Dr. Radcliffe,
pausing before the barred and grated cell that held a
half-nude woman. It was a little box of a place, with a rude
bedstead in one corner, filthy beyond the power of water to
cleanse. The occupant sat on a little bench in another
corner, with her eyes rolled up to Jim's in a tragic expression,
which would make the fortune of an actress. He felt of his
hair, impulsively.
“How are ye now? How do ye feel?” inquired Jim,
tenderly.
She gave him no answer, but glared at him as if she would
search the very depths of his heart.
“If ye'll look t'other way, ye'll obleege me,” said Jim.
But the woman gazed on, speechless, as if all the soul that
had left her brain had taken up its residence in her large,
black eyes.
“Is she tryin' to look me out o' countenance, Doctor?”
inquired Jim, “'cause, if she is, I'll stand here and let 'er try
it on; but if she ain't I'll take the next one.”
“Oh, she doesn't know what she's about, but it's a very
curious form of insanity, and has almost a romantic interest
attached to it from the fact that it did not escape the notice
of the great bard.”
“I notice, myself,” said Jim, “that she's grated and
barred.”
The Doctor looked at his visitor inquisitively, but the
woodman's face was as innocent as that of a child. Then
they passed on to the next cell, and there they found another
woman sitting quietly in the corner, among the straw.
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“How fare ye, this mornin'?” inquired Jim, with a voice
full of kindness.
“I'm just on the verge of eternity,” replied the woman.
“Don't ye be so sure o' that, now,” responded Jim.
“Ye're good for ten year yit.”
“No,” said the woman, “I shall die in a minute.”
“Does she mean that?” inquired Jim, turning to the Doctor.
“Yes, and she has been just on the verge of eternity for
fifteen years,” replied the Doctor, coolly. “That's rather
an interesting case, too. I've given it a good deal of study.
It's hopeless, of course, but it's a marked case, and full of
suggestion to a scientific man.”
“Isn't it a pity,” responded Jim, “that she isn't a scientific
man herself? It might amuse her, you know.”
The Doctor laughed, and led him on to the next cell, and
here he found the most wretched creature he had ever seen.
He greeted her as he had greeted the others, and she looked up
to him with surprise, raised herself from the straw, and said:
“You speak like a Christian.”
The tears came into Jim's eyes, for he saw in that little
sentence, the cruelty of the treatment she had received.
“Well, I ain't no Christian, as I knows on,” he responded,
“an' I don't think they're very plenty in these parts; but
I'm right sorry for ye. You look as if you might be a good
sort of a woman.”
“I should have been if it hadn't been for the pigeons,”
said the woman. “They flew over a whole day, in flocks,
and flocks, and cursed the world. All the people have got
the plague, and they don't know it. My children all died of
it, and went to hell. Every body is going to hell, and nothing
can save them. Old Buffum'll go first. Robert Belcher'll go
next. Dr. Radcliffe will go next.”
“Look here, old woman, ye jest leave me out of that calkerlation,”
said Jim.
“Will you have the kindness to kill me, sir?” said the
woman.
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“I really can't, this mornin',” he replied, “for I've got a
good ways to tramp to-day; but if I ever want to kill anybody
I'll come round, p'r'aps, and 'commodate ye.”
“Thank you,” she responded heartily.
The Doctor turned to Jim, and said:
“Do you see that hole in the wall, beyond her head?
Well, that hole was made by Mr. Buffum. She had begged
him to kill her so often that he thought he would put her to
the test, and he agreed he would do so. So he set her up by
that wall, and took a heavy stick from the wood-pile, raised it
as high as the room would permit, and then brought it down
with great violence, burying the end of the bludgeon in the
plastering. I suppose he came within three inches of her
head, and she never winked. It was a very interesting experiment,
as it illustrated the genuineness of her desire for death.
Otherwise the case is much like many others.”
“Very interestin',” responded Jim, “very! Didn't you
never think of makin' her so easy and comfortable that she
wouldn't want any body to kill her? I sh'd think that would
be an interestin' experiment.”
Now the Doctor had one resort, which, among the people
of Sevenoaks, was infallible, whenever he wished to check
argumentation on any subject relating to his profession. Any
man who undertook to argue a medical question with him, or
make a suggestion relating to medical treatment, he was in
the habit of flooring at once, by wisely and almost pityingly
shaking his head, and saying: “It's very evident to me, sir,
that you've not received a medical education.” So, when Jim
suggested, in his peculiar way, that the woman ought to be
treated better, the Doctor saw the point, and made his usual
response.
“Mr. Fenton,” said he, “excuse me, sir, but it's very evident
that you've not had a medical education.”
“There's where you're weak,” Jim responded. “I'm a
reg'lar M. D., three C's, double X., two I's. That's the year
I was born, and that's my perfession. I studied with an Injun,
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and I know more 'arbs, and roots, and drawin' leaves than any
doctor in a hundred mile; and if I can be of any use to ye,
Doctor, there's my hand.”
And Jim seized the Doctor's hand, and gave it a pressure
which raised the little man off the floor.
The Doctor looked at him with eyes equally charged with
amusement and amazement. He never had been met in that
way before, and was not inclined to leave the field without in
some way convincing Jim of his own superiority.
“Mr. Fenton,” said he, “did you ever see a medulla oblongata?”
“Well, I seen a good many garters,” replied the woodsman,
“in the stores, an' I guess they was mostly oblong.”
“Did you ever see a solar plexus?” inquired the Doctor,
severely.
“Dozens of 'em. I allers pick a few in the fall, but I don't
make much use of 'em.”
“Perhaps you've seen a pineal gland,” suggested the disgusted
Doctor.
“I make 'em,” responded Jim. “I whittle 'em out evenin's,
ye know.”
“If you were in one of these cells,” said the Doctor, “I
should think you were as mad as a March hare.”
At this moment the Doctor's attention was called to a few
harmless patients who thronged toward him as soon as they
learned that he was in the building, begging for medicine;
for if there is anything that a pauper takes supreme delight in
it is drugs. Passing along with them to a little lobby, where
he could inspect them more conveniently, he left Jim behind,
as that personage did not prove to be so interesting and impressible
as he had hoped. Jim watched him as he moved
away, with a quiet chuckle, and then turned to pursue his investigations.
The next cell he encountered held the man he
was looking for. Sitting in the straw, talking to himself or
some imaginary companion, he saw his old friend. It took
him a full minute to realize that the gentle sportsman, the
-- 053 --
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true Christian, the delicate man, the delightful companion,
was there before him, a wreck—cast out from among his fellows,
confined in a noisome cell, and hopelessly given over to
his vagrant fancies and the tender mercies of Thomas Buffum.
When the memory of what Paul Benedict had been to him, at
one period of his life, came to Jim, with the full realization
of his present misery and degradation, the strong man wept
like a child. He drew an old silk handkerchief from his
pocket, blew his nose as if it had been a trumpet, and then
slipped up to the cell and said, softly: “Paul Benedict, give
us your benediction.”
“Jim!” said the man, looking up quickly.
“Good God! he knows me,” said Jim, whimpering. “Yes,
Mr. Benedict, I'm the same rough old fellow. How fare ye?”
“I'm miserable,” replied the man.
“Well, ye don't look as ef ye felt fust-rate. How did ye
git in here?”
“Oh, I was damned when I died. It's all right, I know;
but it's terrible.”
“Why, ye don't think ye're in hell, do ye?” inquired
Jim.
“Don't you see?” inquired the wretch, looking around him.
“Oh, yes; I see! I guess you're right,” said Jim, falling
in with his fancy.
“But where did you come from, Jim? I never heard that
you were dead.”
“Yes; I'm jest as dead as you be.”
“Well, what did you come here for?”
“Oh, I thought I'd call round,” replied Jim carelessly.
“Did you come from Abraham's bosom?” inquired Mr.
Benedict eagerly.
“Straight.”
“I can't think why you should come to see me, into such
a place as this!” said Benedict, wonderingly.
“Oh, I got kind o' oneasy. Don't have much to do over
there, ye know.”
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“How did you get across the gulf?”
“I jest shoved over in a birch, an' ye must be perlite
enough to return the call,” replied Jim, in the most matter-of-course
manner possible.
Benedict looked down upon his torn and wretched clothing,
and then turned his pitiful eyes up to Jim, who saw the
thoughts that were passing in the poor man's mind.
“Never mind your clo'es,” he said. “I dress jest the same
there as I did in Number Nine, and nobody says a word. The
fact is, they don't mind very much about clo'es there, any
way. I'll come over and git ye, ye know, an' interjuce ye,
and ye shall have jest as good a time as Jim Fenton can give ye.”
“Shall I take my rifle along?” inquired Benedict.
“Yes, an' plenty of amanition. There ain't no game to
speak on—only a few pa'tride; but we can shoot at a mark
all day, ef we want to.”
Benedict tottered to his feet and came to the grated door,
with his eyes all alight with hope and expectation. “Jim,
you always were a good fellow,” said he,” dropping his
voice to a whisper, “I'll show you my improvements. Belcher
mustn't get hold of them. He's after them. I hear him
round nights, but he shan't have them. I've got a new tumbler,
and—”
“Well, never mind now,” replied Jim. “It'll be jest as
well when ye come over to spend the day with me. Now ye
look a here! Don't you say nothin' about this to nobody.
They'll all want to go, and we can't have 'em. You an' I
want to git red of the crowd, ye know. We allers did. So
when I come arter ye, jest keep mum, and we'll have a high
old time.”
All the intellect that Benedict could exercise was summoned
to comprehend this injunction. He nodded his head; he laid
it up in his memory. Hope had touched him, and he had
won at least a degree of momentary strength and steadiness
from her gracious finger.
“Now jest lay down an' rest, an' keep your thoughts to
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yerself till I come agin. Don't tell nobody I've be'n here,
and don't ask leave of nobody. I'll settle with the old boss
if he makes any sort of a row; and ye know when Jim Fenton
says he'll stand between ye and all harm he means it, an'
nothin' else.”
“Yes, Jim.”
“An' when I come here—most likely in the night—I'll
bring a robe to put on ye, and we'll go out still.”
“Yes, Jim.”
“Sure you understand?”
“Yes, Jim.”
“Well, good-bye. Give us your hand. Here's hopin'.”
Benedict held himself up by the stats of the door, while
Jim went along to rejoin the Doctor. Outside of this door
was still a solid one, which had been thrown wide open in
the morning for the purpose of admitting the air. In this door
Jim discovered a key, which he quietly placed in his pocket,
and which he judged, by its size, was fitted to the lock of the
inner as well as the outer door. He had already discovered
that the door by which he entered the building was bolted
upon the outside, the keeper doubtless supposing that no one
would wish to enter so foul a place, and trusting thus to keep
the inmates in durance.
“Well, Doctor,” said Jim, “this sort o' thing is too many
for me. I gi'en it up. It's very interestin', I s'pose, but my
head begins to spin, an' it seems to me it's gettin' out of order.
Do ye see my har, Doctor?” said he, exposing the heavy
shock that crowned his head.
“Yes, I see it,” replied the Doctor tartly. He thought he
had shaken off his unpleasant visitor, and his return disturbed
him.
“Well, Doctor, that has all riz sence I come in here.”
“Are you sure?” inquired the Doctor, mollified in the
presence of a fact that might prove to be of scientific interest.
“I'd jest combed it when you come this mornin'. D'ye
ever see anythin' like that? How am I goin' to git it down?”
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“Very singular,” said the Doctor.
“Yes, an' look here! D'ye see the har on the back o' my
hand? That stands up jest the same. Why, Doctor, I feel
like a hedgehog! What am I goin' to do?”
“Why, this is really very interesting!” said the Doctor,
taking out his note-book. “What is your name?”
“Jim Fenton.”
“Age?”
“Thirty or forty—somewhere along there.”
“H'm!” exclaimed the Doctor, writing out the whole reply.
“Occupation?”
“M. D., three C's, double X., two I's.”
“H'm! What do you do?”
“Trap, mostly.”
“Religious?”
“When I'm skeered.”
“Nativity?”
“Which?”
“What is your parentage? Where were you born?”
“Well, my father was an Englishman, my mother was a
Scotchman, I was born in Ireland, raised in Canady, and
have lived for ten year in Number Nine.”
“How does your head feel now?”
“It feels as if every har was a pin. Do you s'pose it'll
strike in?”
The Doctor looked him over as if he were a bullock, and
went on with his statistics: “Weight, about two hundred
pounds; height, six feet two; temperament, sanguine-billious.”
“Some time when you are in Sevenoaks,” said the Doctor,
slipping his pencil into its sheath in his note-book, and putting
his book in his pocket, “come and see me.”
“And stay all night?” inquired Jim, innocently.
“I'd like to see the case again,” said Dr. Radcliffe, nodding.
“I shall not detain you long. The matter has a certain
scientific interest.”
“Well, good-bye, Doctor,” said Jim, holding down his
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hair. “I'm off for Number Nine. I'm much obleged for
lettin' me go round with ye; an' I never want to go
agin.”
Jim went out into the pleasant morning air. The sun had
dispelled the light frost of the night, the sky was blue overhead,
and the blue-birds, whose first spring notes were as
sweet and fresh as the blossoms of the arbutus, were caroling
among the maples. Far away to the north he could see the
mountain at whose foot his cabin stood, red in the sunshine,
save where in the deeper gorges the snow still lingered.
Sevenoaks lay at the foot of the hill, on the other hand, and
he could see the people passing to and fro along its streets,
and, perched upon the hill-side among its trees and gardens,
the paradise that wealth had built for Robert Belcher. The
first emotion that thrilled him as he emerged from the shadows
of misery and mental alienation was that of gratitude. He
filled his lungs with the vitalizing air, but expired his long
breath with a sigh.
“What bothers me,” said Jim to himself, “is, that the
Lord lets one set of people that is happy, make it so thunderin'
rough for another set of people that is onhappy. An' there's
another thing that bothers me,” he said, continuing his audible
cogitations. “How do they 'xpect a feller is goin' to git
well, when they put 'im where a well feller'd git sick? I vow
I think that poor old creetur that wanted me to kill her is
straighter in her brains than any body I seen on the lot. I
couldn't live there a week, an' if I was a hopeless case, an'
know'd it, I'd hang myself on a nail.”
Jim saw his host across the road, and went over to him.
Mr. Buffum had had a hard time with his pipes that morning,
and was hoarse and very red in the face.
“Jolly lot you've got over there,” said Jim. “If I had
sech a family as them, I'd take 'em 'round for a show, and
hire Belcher's man to do the talkin'. `Walk up, gentlemen,
walk up, and see how a Christian can treat a feller bein'.
Here's a feller that's got sense enough left to think he's in
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hell. Observe his wickedness, gentlemen, and don't be afraid
to use your handkerchers.”'
As Jim talked, he found he was getting angry, and that the
refractory hair that covered his poll began to feel hot. It
would not do to betray his feelings, so he ended his sally with
a huge laugh that had about as much music and heartiness in
it as the caw of a crow. Buffum joined him with his wheezy
chuckle, but having sense enough to see that Jim had really
been pained, he explained that he kept his paupers as well as
he could afford to.
“Oh, I know it,” said Jim. “If there's anything wrong
about it, it don't begin with you, Buffum, nor it don't end
with you; but it seems a little rough to a feller like me to see
people shut up, an' in the dark, when there's good breathin'
an' any amount o' sunshine to be had, free gratis for nothin'.”
“Well, they don't know the difference,” said Buffum.
“Arter a while, I guess they don't,” Jim responded;
“an', now, what's the damage? for I've got to go 'long.”
“I sha'n't charge you anything,” whispered Mr. Buffum.
“You hav'n't said anything about old Tilden, and it's just
as well.”
Jim winked, nodded, and indicated that he not only understood
Mr. Buffum, but would act upon his hint. Then
he went into the house, bade good-bye to Mr. Buffum's
“women,” kissed his hand gallantly to the elder Miss Buffum,
who declared, in revenge, that she would not help him on
with his pack, although she had intended to do so, and,
after having gathered his burdens, trudged off northward.
From the time he entered the establishment on the previous
evening, he had not caught a glimpse of Harry Benedict.
“He's cute,” said Jim, “an' jest the little chap for
this business.” As he came near the stump over the brow
of the hill, behind which the poor-house buildings disappeared,
he saw first the brim of an old hat, then one eye,
then an eager, laughing face, and then the whole trim little
figure. The lad was transformed. Jim thought when he saw
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him first that he was a pretty boy, but there was something
about him now that thrilled the woodsman with admiration.
Jim came up to him with: “Mornin,' Harry!” and the
mountain that shone so gloriously in the light before him,
was not more sunny than Jim's face. He sat down behind the
stump without removing his pack, and once more had the
little fellow in his arms.
“Harry,” said Jim, “I've had ye in my arms all night—
a little live thing—an' I've be'n a longin' to git at ye agin.
If ye want to, very much, you can put yer arms round my
neck, an' hug me like a little bar. Thar, that's right, that's
right. I shall feel it till I see ye agin. Ye've been thinkin'
'bout what I telled ye last night?”
“Oh yes!” responded the boy, eagerly, “all the time.”
“Well, now, do you know the days—Sunday, Monday,
Tuesday, and the rest of 'em?”
“Yes, sir, all of them.”
“Now, remember, to-day is Wednesday. It will be seven
days to next Wednesday, then Thursday will be eight, Friday,
nine, Saturday, ten. You always know when Saturday comes,
don't ye?”
“Yes, because it's our school holiday,” replied Harry.
“Well, then, in ten days—that is, a week from next Saturday—
I shall come agin. Saturday night, don't ye go to
bed. Leastways, ef ye do, ye must git out of the house
afore ten o'clock, and come straight to this old stump. Can
ye git away, an' nobody seen ye?”
“Yes, I hope so,” replied the boy. “They don't mind
anything about us. I could stay out all night, and they
wouldn't know where I was.”
“Well, that's all right, now. Remember—be jest here
with all the clo'es ye've got, at ten o'clock, Saturday night—
ten days off—cut 'em in a stick every day—the next Saturday
after the next one, an' don't git mixed.”
The boy assured him that he should make no mistake.
“When I come, I sh'll bring a hoss and wagin. It'll be a
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stiddy hoss, and I sh'll come here to this stump, an' stop till
I seen ye. Then ye'll hold the hoss till I go an' git yer
pa, and then we'll wopse 'im up in some blankits, an' make
a clean streak for the woods. It'll be late Sunday mornin'
afore any body knows he's gone, and there won't be no people
on the road where we are goin', and ef we're druv into
cover, I know where the cover is. Jim Fenton's got friends
on the road, and they'll be mum as beetles. Did ye ever
seen a beetle, Harry?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, they work right along and don't say nothin' to
nobody, but they keep workin'; an' you an' me has got to be
jest like beetles. Remember! an' now git back to Tom Buffum's
the best way ye can.”
The boy reassured Jim, gave him a kiss, jumped over the
fence, and crept along through the bushes toward the house.
Jim watched him, wrapped in admiration.
“He's got the ra-al hunter in 'im, jest like his father, but
there's more in 'im nor there ever was in his father. I sh'd
kinder liked to 'a' knowed his ma,” said Jim, as he took up
his rifle and started in earnest for his home.
As he plodded along his way, he thought over all the experiences
of the morning.
“Any man,” said he to himself, “who can string things
together in the way Benedict did this mornin' can be cured.
Startin' in hell, he was all right, an' everything reasomble.
The startin' is the principal p'int, an' if I can git 'im to start
from Number Nine, I'll fetch 'im round. He never was so
much to home as he was in the woods, an' when I git 'im
thar, and git 'im fishin' and huntin', and sleepin' on hemlock,
an' eatin' venison and corn-dodgers, it'll come to 'im that
he's been there afore, and he'll look round to find Abram, an'
he won't see 'im, and his craze 'll kind o' leak out of 'im afore
he knows it.”
Jim's theory was his own, but it would be difficult for Dr.
Radcliffe, and all his fellow-devotees of science, to controvert
-- 061 --
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it. It contented him, at least; and full of plans and hopes,
stimulated by the thought that he had a job on hand that
would not only occupy his thoughts, but give exercise to the
benevolent impulses of his heart, he pressed on, the miles disappearing
behind him and shortening before, as if the ground
had been charmed.
He stopped at noon at a settler's lonely house, occupied by
Mike Conlin, a friendly Irishman. Jim took the man aside
and related his plans. Mike entered at once upon the project
with interest and sympathy, and Jim knew that he could trust
him wholly. It was arranged that Jim should return to Mike
the evening before the proposed descent upon Tom Buffum's
establishment, and sleep. The following evening Mike's horse
would be placed at Jim's disposal, and he and the Benedicts
were to drive through during the night to the point on the
river where he would leave his boat. Mike was to find his
horse there and take him home.
Having accomplished his business, Jim went on, and before
the twilight had deepened into night, he found himself briskly
paddling up the stream, and at ten o'clock he had drawn his
little boat up the beach, and embraced Turk, his faithful dog,
whom he had left, not only to take care of his cabin, but to
provide for himself. He had already eaten his supper, and
five minutes after he entered his cabin he and his dog were
snoring side by side in a sleep too profound to be disturbed,
even by the trumpet of old Tilden.
-- 062 -- p590-085
CHAPTER V. IN WHICH JIM ENLARGES HIS ACCOMMODATIONS AND ADOPTS A VIOLENT METHOD OF SECURING BOARDERS.
[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]
When Jim Fenton waked from his long and refreshing
sleep, after his weary tramp and his row upon the river, the
sun was shining brightly, the blue-birds were singing, the partridges
were drumming, and a red squirrel, which even Turk
would not disturb, was looking for provisions in his cabin, or
eyeing him saucily from one of the beams over his head. He
lay for a moment, stretching his huge limbs and rubbing his
eyes, thinking over what he had undertaken, and exclaiming
at last: “Well, Jim, ye've got a big contrack,” he jumped
up, and, striking a fire, cooked his breakfast.
His first work was to make an addition to his accommodations
for lodgers, and he set about it in thorough earnest.
Before noon he had stripped bark enough from the trees in
his vicinity to cover a building as large as his own. The
question with him was whether he should put up an addition
to his cabin, or hide a new building somewhere behind the
trees in his vicinity. In case of pursuit, his lodgers would
need a cover, and this he knew he could not give them in his
cabin; for all who were in the habit of visiting the woods
were familiar with that structure, and would certainly notice
any addition to it, and be curious about it. Twenty rods
away there was a thicket of hemlock, and by removing two
or three trees in its center, he could successfully hide from
any but the most inquisitive observation the cabin he proposed
to erect. His conclusion was quickly arrived at, and before
he slept that night the trees were down, the frame was up, and
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the bark was gathered. The next day sufficed to make the
cabin habitable; but he lingered about the work for several
days, putting up various appointments of convenience, building
a broad bed of hemlock boughs, so deep and fragrant and
inviting, that he wondered he had never undertaken to do as
much for himself as he had thus gladly done for others, and
making sure that there was no crevice at which the storms of
spring and summer could force an entrance.
When he could do no more, he looked it over with approval
and said: “Thar! If I'd a done that for Miss Butterworth,
I couldn't 'a' done better nor that.” Then he went
back to his cabin muttering: “I wonder what she'd 'a' said
if she'd hearn that little speech o' mine!”
What remained for Jim to do was to make provision to feed
his boarders. His trusty rifle stood in the corner of his
cabin, and Jim had but to take it in his hand to excite the
expectations of his dog, and to receive from him, in language
as plain as an eager whine and a wagging tail could express,
an offer of assistance. Before night there hung in front of
his cabin a buck, dragged with difficulty through the woods
from the place where he had shot him. A good part of the
following day was spent in cutting from the carcass every
ounce of flesh, and packing it into pails, to be stowed in a
spring whose water, summer and winter alike, was almost at
the freezing point.
“He'll need a good deal o' lookin' arter, and I shan't hunt
much the fust few days,” said Jim to himself; “an' as for
flour, there's a sack on't, an' as for pertaters, we shan't want
many on 'em till they come agin, an' as for salt pork, there's
a whole bar'l buried, an' as for the rest, let me alone!”
Jim had put off the removal for ten days, partly to get time
for all his preparations, and partly that the rapidly advancing
spring might give him warmer weather for the removal of a
delicate patient. He found, however, at the conclusion of
his labors, that he had two or three spare days on his hands.
His mind was too busy and too much excited by his enterprise
-- 064 --
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to permit him to engage in any regular employment, and he
roamed around the woods, or sat whittling in the sun, or
smoked, or thought of Miss Butterworth. It was strange how,
when the business upon his hands was suspended, he went
back again and again, to his brief interview with that little
woman. He thought of her eyes full of tears, of her sympathy
with the poor, of her smart and saucy speech when he parted
with her, and he said again and again to himself, what he said
on that occasion: “she's a genuine creetur!” and the last
time he said it, on the day before his projected expedition, he
added: “an' who knows!”
Then a bright idea seized him, and taking out a huge jackknife,
he went through the hemlocks to his new cabin, and
there carved into the slabs of bark that constituted its door,
the words “Number Ten.” This was the crowning grace of
that interesting structure. He looked at it close, and then
from a distance, and then he went back chuckling to his cabin,
to pass his night in dreams of fast driving before the fury of
all Sevenoaks, with Phipps and his gray trotters in advance.
Early on Friday morning preceding his proposed descent
upon the poor-house, he gave his orders to Turk.
“I'm goin' away, Turk,” said he. “I'm goin away
agin. Ye was a good dog when I went away afore, and ye
berhaved a good deal more like a Christian nor a Turk.
Look out for this 'ere cabin, and look out for yerself. I'm a
goin' to bring back a sick man, an' a little feller to play with
ye. Now, ole feller, won't that be jolly? Ye must'n't make
no noise when I come—understand?”
Turk wagged his tail in assent, and Jim departed, believing
that his dog had understood every word as completely as if he
were a man. “Good-bye—here's hopin',” said Jim, waving
his hand to Turk as he pushed his boat from the bank, and
disappeared down the river. The dog watched him until he
passed from sight, and then went back to the cabin to mope
away the period of his master's absence.
Jim sat in the stern of his little boat, guiding and propelling
-- 065 --
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it with his paddle. Flocks of ducks rose before him, and
swashed down with a fluttering ricochet into the water again,
beyond the shot of his rifle. A fish-hawk, perched above his
last year's nest, sat on a dead limb and watched him as he
glided by. A blue heron rose among the reeds, looked at
him quietly, and then hid behind a tree. A muskrat swam
shoreward from his track, with only his nose above water.
A deer, feeding among the lily-pads, looked up, snorted, and
then wheeled and plunged into the woods. All these things
he saw, but they made no more impression upon his memory
than is left upon the canvas by the projected images of a magiclantern.
His mind was occupied by his scheme, which had
never seemed so serious a matter as when he had started upon
its fulfilment. All the possibilities of immediate detection
and efficient pursuit presented themselves to him. He had no
respect for Thomas Buffum, yet there was the thought that he
was taking away from him one of the sources of his income.
He would not like to have Buffum suppose that he could be
guilty of a mean act, or capable of making an ungrateful
return for hospitality. Still he did not doubt his own motives,
or his ability to do good to Paul Benedict and his
boy.
It was nearly ten miles from Jim's cabin, down the winding
river, to the point where he was to hide his boat, and take to
the road which would lead him to the house of Mike Conlin,
half way to Sevenoaks. Remembering before he started that
the blind cart-road over which he must bring his patient was
obstructed at various points by fallen trees, he brought along
his axe, and found himself obliged to spend the whole day on
his walk, and in clearing the road for the passage of a wagon.
It was six o'clock before he reached Mike's house, the outermost
post of the “settlement,” which embraced in its definition
the presence of women and children.
“Be gorry,” said Mike, who had long been looking for him,
“I was afeared ye'd gi'en it up. The old horse is ready this
two hours. I've took more nor three quarts o' dander out iv
-- 066 --
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'is hide, and gi'en 'im four quarts o' water and a pail iv oats,
an' he'll go.”
Mike nodded his head as if he were profoundly sure of it.
Jim had used horses in his life, in the old days of lumbering
and logging, and was quite at home with them. He had had
many a drive with Mike, and knew the animal he would be
required to handle—a large, hardy, raw-boned creature, that
had endured much in Mike's hands, and was quite equal to
the present emergency.
As soon as Jim had eaten his supper, and Mike's wife had
put up for him food enough to last him and such accessions
to his party as he expected to secure during the night, and
supplied him abundantly with wrappings, he went to the stable,
mounted the low, strong wagon before which Mike had
placed the horse, and with a hearty “good luck to ye!” from
the Irishman ringing in his ears, started on the road to Sevenoaks.
This portion of the way was easy. The road was worn
somewhat, and moderately well kept; and there was nothing
to interfere with the steady jog which measured the distance
at the rate of six miles an hour. For three steady hours he
went on, the horse no more worried than if he had been
standing in the stable. At nine o'clock the lights in the farmers'
cottages by the wayside were extinguished, and the
families they held were in bed. Then the road began to grow
dim, and the sky to become dark. The fickle spring weather
gave promise of rain. Jim shuddered at the thought of the
exposure to which, in a shower, his delicate friend would be
subjected, but thought that if he could but get him to the
wagon, and cover him well before its onset, he could shield
him from harm.
The town clock was striking ten as he drove up to the stump
where he was to meet Benedict's boy. He stopped and whistled.
A whistle came back in reply, and a dark little object
crept out from behind the stump, and came up to the
wagon.
“Harry, how's your pa?” said Jim.
-- 067 --
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“He's been very bad to-day,” said Harry. “He says he's
going to Abraham's bosom on a visit, and he's been walking
around in his room, and wondering why you don't come for
him.”
“Who did he say that to?” inquired Jim.
“To me,” replied the boy. “And he told me not to speak
to Mr. Buffum about it.”
Jim breathed a sigh of relief, and saying “All right!” he
leaped from the wagon. Then taking out a heavy blanket, he
said:
“Now, Harry, you jest stand by the old feller's head till
I git back to ye. He's out o' the road, an' ye needn't stir if
any body comes along.”
Harry went up to the old horse, patted his nose and his
breast, and told him he was good. The creature seemed to
understand it, and gave him no trouble. Jim then stalked off
noiselessly into the darkness, and the boy waited with a
trembling and expectant heart.
Jim reached the poor-house, and stood still in the middle
of the road between the two establishments. The lights in
both had been extinguished, and stillness reigned in that portion
occupied by Thomas Buffum and his family. The darkness
was so great that Jim could almost feel it. No lights
were visible except in the village at the foot of the hill, and
these were distant and feeble. Through an open window—
left open that the asthmatic keeper of the establishment
might be supplied with breath—he heard a stertorous snore.
On the other side matters were not so silent. There were
groans, and yells, and gabble from the reeking and sleepless
patients, who had been penned up for the long and terrible
night. Concluding that every thing was as safe for his operations
as it would become at any time, he slowly felt his way to
the door of the ward which held Paul Benedict, and found it
fastened on the outside, as he had anticipated. Lifting the
bar from the iron arms that held it, and pushing back the
bolt, he silently opened the door. Whether the darkness
-- 068 --
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within was greater than that without, or whether the preternaturally
quickened ears of the patients detected the manipulations of
the fastenings, he did not know, but he was conscious at once
that the tumult within was hushed. It was apparent that they
had been visited in the night before, and that the accustomed
intruder had come on no gentle errand. There was not a
sound as Jim felt his way along from stall to stall, sickened
almost to retching by the insufferable stench that reached his
nostrils and poisoned every inspiration.
On the morning of his previous visit he had taken all the
bearings with reference to an expedition in the darkness, and
so, feeling his way along the hall, he had little difficulty in
finding the cell in which he had left his old friend.
Jim tried the door, but found it locked. His great fear
was that the lock would be changed, but it had not been
meddled with, and had either been furnished with a new key,
or had been locked with a skeleton. He slipped the stolen
key in, and the bolt slid back. Opening the outer door, he
tried the inner, but the key did not fit the lock. Here was a
difficulty not entirely unexpected, but seeming to be insurmountable.
He quietly went back to the door of entrance,
and as quietly closed it, that no sound of violence might
reach and wake the inmates of the house across the road.
Then he returned, and whispered in a low voice to the inmate:
“Paul Benedict, give us your benediction.”
“Jim,” responded the man in a whisper, so light that it
could reach no ear but his own.
“Don't make no noise, not even if I sh'd make consid'able,”
said Jim.
Then, grasping the bars with both hands, he gave the door
a sudden pull, into which he put all the might of his huge
frame. A thousand pounds would not have measured it, and
the door yielded, not at the bolt, but at the hinges. Screws
deeply imbedded were pulled out bodily. A second lighter
wrench completed the task, and the door was noiselessly set
aside, though Jim was trembling in every muscle.
-- 069 --
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Benedict stood at the door.
“Here's the robe that Abram sent ye,” said Jim, throwing
over the poor man's shoulders an ample blanket; and putting
one of his large arms around him, he led him shuffling out
of the hall, and shut and bolted the door.
He had no sooner done this, than the bedlam inside broke
loose. There were yells, and howls, and curses, but Jim did
not stop for these. Dizzied with his effort, enveloped in thick
darkness, and the wind which preceded the approaching
shower blowing a fierce gale, he was obliged to stop a moment
to make sure that he was walking in the right direction. He
saw the lights of the village, and, finding the road, managed
to keep on it until he reached the horse, that had become
uneasy under the premonitory tumult of the storm. Lifting
Benedict into the wagon as if he had been a child, he wrapped
him warmly, and put the boy in behind him, to kneel and see
that his father did not fall out. Then he turned the horse
around, and started toward Number Nine. The horse knew
the road, and was furnished with keener vision than the man
who drove him. Jim was aware of this, and letting the reins
lie loose upon his back, the animal struck into a long, swinging
trot, in prospect of home and another “pail iv oats.”
They had not gone a mile when the gathering tempest came
down upon them. It rained in torrents, the lightning illuminated
the whole region again and again, and the thunder
cracked, and boomed, and rolled off among the woods and
hills, as if the day of doom had come.
The war of the elements harmonized strangely with the
weird fancies of the weak man who sat at Jim's side. He
rode in perfect silence for miles. At last the wind went
down, and the rain settled to a steady fall.
“They were pretty angry about my going,” said he, feebly.
“Yes,” said Jim, “they behaved purty car'less, but I'm
too many for 'em.”
“Does Father Abraham know I'm coming?” inquired
Benedict. “Does he expect me to-night?”
-- 070 --
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“Yes,” responded Jim, “an' he'd 'a' sent afore, but he's
jest wore out with company. He's a mighty good-natered
man, an' I tell 'im they take the advantage of 'im. But I've
posted 'im 'bout ye, and ye're all right.”
“Is it very far to the gulf?” inquired Benedict.
“Yes, it's a good deal of a drive, but when ye git there,
ye can jest lay right down in the boat, an' go to sleep. I'll
wake ye up, ye know, when we run in.”
The miles slid behind into the darkness, and, at last, the
rain subsiding somewhat, Jim stopped, partly to rest his
smoking horse, and partly to feed his half-famished companions.
Benedict ate mechanically the food that Jim fished
out of the basket with a careful hand, and the boy ate as only
boys can eat. Jim himself was hungry, and nearly finished
what they left.
At two o'clock in the morning, they descried Mike Conlin's
light, and in ten minutes the reeking horse and the
drenched inmates of the wagon drove up to the door. Mike
was waiting to receive them.
“Mike, this is my particular friend, Benedict. Take 'im
in, an' dry 'im. An' this is 'is boy. Toast 'im both sides—
brown.”
A large, pleasant fire was blazing on Mike's humble hearth,
and with sundry cheerful remarks he placed his guests before
it, relieving them of their soaked wrappings. Then he went
to the stable, and fed and groomed his horse, and returned
eagerly, to chat with Jim, who sat steaming before the fire,
as if he had just been lifted from a hot bath.
“What place is this, Jim?” said Mr. Benedict.
“This is the half-way house,” responded that personage,
without looking up.
“Why, this is purgatory, isn't it?” inquired Benedict.
“Yes, Mike is a Catholic, an' all his folks; an' he's got to
stay here a good while, an' he's jest settled down an' gone to
housekeepin'.”
“Is it far to the gulf, now?”
-- 071 --
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“Twenty mile, and the road is rougher nor a—”
“Ah, it's no twinty mile,” responded Mike, “an' the
road is jist lovely—jist lovely; an' afore ye start I'm goin' to
give ye a drap that 'll make ye think so.”
They sat a whole hour before the fire, and then Mike mixed
the draught he had promised to the poor patient. It was not
a heavy one, but, for the time, it lifted the man so far out of
his weakness that he could sleep, and the moment his brain
felt the stimulus, he dropped into a slumber so profound that
when the time of departure came he could not be awakened.
As there was no time to be lost, a bed was procured from a
spare chamber, with pillows; the wagon was brought to the
door, and the man was carried out as unconscious as if he
were in his last slumber, and tenderly put to bed in the wagon.
Jim declined the dram that Mike urged upon him, for he had
need of all his wits, and slowly walked the horse away on the
road to his boat. If Benedict had been wide awake and well,
he could not have traveled the road safely faster than a walk;
and the sleep, and the bed which it rendered necessary, became
the happiest accidents of the journey.
For two long hours the horse plodded along the stony and uneven
road, and then the light began to redden in the east, and
Jim could see the road sufficiently to increase his speed with
safety. It was not until long after the sun had risen that Benedict
awoke, and found himself too weak to rise. Jim gave
him more food, answered his anxious inquiries in his own
way, and managed to keep him upon his bed, from which he
constantly tried to rise in response to his wandering impulses.
It was nearly noon when they found themselves at the river;
and the preparations for embarkation were quickly made. The
horse was tied and fed, the wagon unfastened, and the whole
establishment was left for Mike to reclaim, according to the
arrangement that Jim had made with him.
The woodsman saw that his patient would not be able to
sit, and so felt himself compelled to take along the bed. Arranging
this with the pillows in the bow of his boat, and
-- 072 -- p590-095
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placing Benedict upon it, with his boy at his feet, he shoved
off, and started up the stream.
After running along against the current for a mile, Benedict
having quietly rested meantime, looked up and said
weakly:
“Jim, is this the gulf?”
“Yes,” responded Jim, cheerfully. “This is the gulf, and
a purty place 'tis too. I've seed a sight o' worser places nor
this.”
“It's very beautiful,” responded Benedict. “We must be
getting pretty near.”
“It's not very fur now,” said Jim.
The poor, wandering mind was trying to realize the heavenly
scenes that it believed were about to burst upon its vision.
The quiet, sunlit water, the trees still bare but bourgeoning,
the songs of birds, the blue sky across which fleecy
clouds were peacefully floating, the breezes that kissed his
fevered cheek, the fragrance of the bordering evergreens,
and the electric air that entered his lungs so long accustomed
to the poisonous fetor of his cell, were well calculated to foster
his delusion, and to fill his soul with a peace to which it
had long been a stranger. An exquisite languor stole upon
him, and under the pressure of his long fatigue, his eyelids
fell, and he dropped into a quiet slumber.
When the boy saw that his father was asleep, he crept back
to Jim and said:
“Mr. Fenton, I don't think it's right for you to tell papa
such lies.”
“Call me Jim. The Doctor called me `Mr. Fenton,' and
it 'most killed me.”
“Well, Jim.”
“Now, that sounds like it. You jest look a here, my boy.
Your pa ain't livin' in this world now, an' what's true to him
is a lie to us, an' what's true to us is a lie to him. I jest go
into his world and say what's true whar he lives. Isn't that
right?”
-- --
“We must be getting pretty near.”
[figure description] Illustration page. Image of two men and a boy in a canoe. One man, in a fur cap, sits at the rear paddling. The boy and the man are up front. The man is lying down covered by a blanket and the boy is sitting next to him.[end figure description]
-- --
[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]
-- 073 --
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This vein of casuistry was new to the boy, and he was staggered.
“When your pa gits well agin, an' here's hopin,' Jim
Fenton an' he will be together in their brains, ye know, and
then they won't be talkin' like a couple of jay-birds, and I
won't lie to him no more nor I would to you.”
The lad's troubled mind was satisfied, and he crept back to
his father's feet, where he lay until he discovered Turk, whining
and wagging his tail in front of the little hillock that was
crowned by Jim's cabin.
The long, hard, weird journey was at an end. The boat
came up broadside to the shore, and Jim leaped out, and
showered as many caresses upon his dog as he received from
the faithful brute.
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CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH SEVENOAKS EXPERIENCES A GREAT COMMOTION, AND COMES TO THE CONCLUSION THAT BENEDICT HAS MET WITH FOUL PLAY.
[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]
Thomas Buffum and his family slept late on Sunday morning,
and the operating forces of the establishment lingered in
their beds. When, at last, the latter rose and opened the
doors of the dormitories, the escape of Benedict was detected.
Mr. Buffium was summoned at once, and hastened across the
street in his shirt-sleeves, which, by the way, was about as far
toward full dress as he ever went when the weather did not
compel him to wear a coat. Buffum examined the inner door
and saw that it had been forced by a tremendous exercise of
muscular power. He remembered the loss of the key, and
knew that some one had assisted in the operation.
“Where's that boy?” wheezed the keeper.
An attendant rushed to the room where the boy usually
slept, and came back with the report that the bed had not
been occupied. Then there was a search outside for tracks,
but the rain had obliterated them all. The keeper was in
despair. He did not believe that Benedict could have survived
the storm of the night, and he did not doubt that the
boy had undertaken to hide his father somewhere.
“Go out, all of you, all round, and find 'em,” hoarsely
whispered Mr. Buffum, “and bring 'em back, and say nothing
about it.”
The men, including several of the more reliable paupers,
divided themselves into little squads, and departed without
breakfast, in order to get back before the farmers should drive
-- 075 --
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by on their way to church. The orchards, the woods, the
thickets—all possible covers—were searched, and searched, of
course, in vain. One by one the parties returned to report
that they could not find the slightest sign of the fugitives.
Mr. Buffum, who had not a question that the little boy had
planned and executed the escape, assisted by the paroxysmal
strength of his insane father, felt that he was seriously compromised.
The flight and undoubted death of old Tilden
were too fresh in the public mind to permit this new reflection
upon his faithfulness and efficiency as a public guardian
to pass without a popular tumult. He had but just assumed
the charge of the establishment for another year, and he
knew that Robert Belcher would be seriously offended, for
more reasons than the public knew, or than that person would
be willing to confess. He had never in his life been in more
serious trouble. He hardly tasted his breakfast, and was too
crusty and cross to be safely addressed by any member of his
family. Personally he was not in a condition to range the
fields, and when he had received the reports of the parties
who had made the search, he felt that he had a job to undertake
too serious for his single handling.
In the meantime, Mr. Belcher had risen at his leisure, in
blissful unconsciousness of the calamities that had befallen his
protegè. He owned a pew in every church in Sevenoaks, and
boasted that he had no preferences. Once every Sunday he
went to one of these churches; and there was a fine flutter
throughout the building whenever he and his family appeared.
He felt that the building had received a special honor from
his visit; but if he was not guided by his preferences, he certainly
was by his animosities. If for three or four Sabbaths
in succession he honored a single church by his presence, it
was usually to pay off a grudge against some minister or
member of another flock. He delighted to excite the suspicion
that he had at last become attached to one clergyman,
and that the other churches were in danger of being forsaken
by him. It would be painful to paint the popular weakness
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[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]
and the ministerial jealousy—painful to describe the lack of
Christian dignity—with which these demonstrations of
worldly caprice and arrogance, were watched by pastor and
flock.
After the town meeting and the demonstration of the Rev.
Solomon Snow, it was not expected that Mr. Belcher would
visit the church of the latter for some months. During the
first Sabbath after this event, there was gloom in that clergyman's
congregation; for Mr. Belcher, in his routine, should
have illuminated their public services by his presence, but he
did not appear.
“This comes,” bitterly complained one of the deacons,
“of a minister's meddling with public affairs.”
But during the week following, Mr. Belcher had had a
satisfactory interview with Mr. Snow, and on the morning of
the flight of Benedict he drove in the carriage with his family
up to the door of that gentleman's church, and gratified the
congregation and its reverend head by walking up the broad
aisle, and, with his richly dressed flock, taking his old seat.
As he looked around upon the humbler parishioners, he
seemed to say, by his patronizing smile: “Mr. Snow and the
great proprietor are at peace. Make yourselves easy, and
enjoy your sunshine while it lasts.”
Mr. Buffum never went to church. He had a theory that
it was necessary for him to remain in charge of his establishment,
and that he was doing a good thing by sending his servants
and dependents. When, therefore, he entered Mr.
Snow's church on the Sunday morning which found Mr. Belcher
comfortably seated there, and stumped up the broad aisle in
his shirt-sleeves, the amazement of the minister and the congregation
may be imagined. If he had been one of his own
insane paupers en deshabille he could not have excited more
astonishment or more consternation.
Mr. Snow stopped in the middle of a stanza of the first
hymn, as if the words had dried upon his tongue. Every
thing seemed to stop. Of this, however, Mr. Buffum was
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ignorant. He had no sense of the proprieties of the house,
and was intent only on reaching Mr. Belcher's pew.
Bending to his patron's ear, he whispered a few words,
received a few words in return, and then retired. The proprietor's
face was red with rage and mortification, but he
tried to appear unconcerned, and the services went on to their
conclusion. Boys who sat near the windows stretched their
necks to see whether smoke was issuing from the poor-house;
and it is to be feared that the ministrations of the morning
were not particularly edifying to the congregation at large.
Even Mr. Snow lost his place in his sermon more frequently
than usual. When the meeting was dismissed, a hundred
heads came together in chattering surmise, and when they
walked into the streets, the report of Benedict's escape with
his little boy met them. They understood, too, why Buffum
had come to Mr. Belcher with his trouble. He was Mr. Belcher's
man, and Mr. Belcher had publicly assumed responsibility
for him.
No more meetings were held in any of the churches of
Sevenoaks that day. The ministers came to perform the services
of the afternoon, and, finding their pews empty, went
home. A reward of one hundred dollars, offered by Mr. Belcher
to any one who would find Benedict and his boy, “and
return them in safety to the home provided for them by the
town,” was a sufficient apology, without the motives of curiosity
and humanity and the excitement of a search in the
fields and woods, for a universal relinquishment of Sunday
habits, and the pouring out of the whole population on an
expedition of discovery.
Sevenoaks and its whole vicinity presented a strange aspect
that afternoon. There had slept in the hearts of the people
a pleasant and sympathetic memory of Mr. Benedict. They
had seen him struggling, dreaming, hopeful, yet always disappointed,
dropping lower and lower into poverty, and, at last,
under accumulated trials, deprived of his reason. They knew
but little of his relations to Mr. Belcher, but they had a
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strong suspicion that he had been badly treared by the proprietor,
and that it had been in the power of the latter to save
him from wreck. So, when it became known that he had
escaped with his boy from the poor-house, and that both had
been exposed to the storm of the previous night, they all—
men and boys—covered the fields, and filled the woods for
miles around, in a search so minute that hardly a rod of cover
was left unexplored.
It was a strange excitement which stirred the women at
home, as well as the men afield. Nothing was thought of
but the fugitives and the pursuit.
Robert Belcher, in the character of principal citizen, was
riding back and forth behind his gray trotters, and stimulating
the search in every quarter. Poor Miss Butterworth sat at
her window, making indiscriminate inquiries of every passenger,
or going about from house to house, working off her nervous
anxiety in meaningless activities.
As the various squads became tired by their long and unsuccessful
search, they went to the poor-house to report, and,
before sunset, the hill was covered by hundreds of weary and
excited men. Some were sure they had discovered traces of
the fugitives. Others expressed the conviction that they had
thrown themselves into a well. One man, who did not love
Mr. Belcher, and had heard the stories of his ill-treatment of
Benedict, breathed the suspicion that both he and his boy had
been foully dealt with by one who had an interest in getting
them out of the way.
It was a marvel to see how quickly this suspicion took wing.
It seemed to be the most rational theory of the event. It
went from mouth to mouth and ear to ear, as the wind
breathes among the leaves of a forest; but there were reasons
in every man's mind, or instincts in his nature, that withheld
the word “murder” from the ear of Mr. Belcher. As soon
as the suspicion became general, the aspect of every incident
of the flight changed. Then they saw, apparently for the
first time, that a man weakened by disease and long
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confinement, and never muscular at his best, could not have forced
the inner door of Benedict's cell. Then they connected Mr.
Belcher's behavior during the day with the affair, and, though
they said nothing at the time, they thought of his ostentatious
anxiety, his evident perturbation when Mr. Buffum announced
to him the escape, his offer of the reward for Benedict's discovery,
and his excited personal appearance among them. He
acted like a guilty man—a man who was trying to blind them,
and divert suspicion from himself.
To the great horror of Mr. Buffum, his establishment was
thoroughly inspected and ransacked, and, as one after another
left the hill for his home, he went with indignation and
shame in his heart, and curses on his lips. Even if Benedict
and his innocent boy had been murdered, murder was not the
only foul deed that had been committed on the hill. The
poor-house itself was an embodied crime against humanity
and against Christianity, for which the town of Sevenoaks at
large was responsible, though it had been covered from their
sight by Mr. Belcher and the keeper. It would have taken
but a spark to kindle a conflagration. Such was the excitement
that only a leader was needed to bring the tumult of a
violent mob around the heads of the proprietor and his protege.
Mr. Belcher was not a fool, and he detected, as he sat in
his wagon talking with Buffum in a low tone, the change that
had come over the excited groups around him. They looked
at him as they talked, with a serious scrutiny to which he was
unused. They no more addressed him with suggestions and
inquiries. They shunned his neighborhood, and silently went
off down the hill. He knew, as well as if they had been
spoken, that there were not only suspicions against him, but indignation
over the state of things that had been discovered in
the establishment, for whose keeper he had voluntarily become
responsible. Notwithstanding all his efforts to assist them in
their search, he knew that in their hearts they charged him with
Benedict's disappearance. At last he bade Buffum good-night,
and went down the hill to his home.
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He had no badinage for Phipps during that drive, and no
pleasant reveries in his library during that evening, for all the
possibilities of the future passed through his mind in dark review.
If Benedict had been murdered, who could have any
interest in his death but himself? If he had died from exposure,
his secrets would be safe, but the charge of his death
would be brought to his door, as Miss Butterworth had already
brought the responsibility for his insanity there. If he had
got away alive, and should recover, or if his boy should get
into hands that would ultimately claim for him his rights, then
his prosperity would be interfered with. He did not wish to acknowledge
to himself that he desired the poor man's death,
but he was aware that in his death he found the most hopeful
vision of the night. Angry with the public feeling that accused
him of a crime of which he was not guilty, and guilty
of a crime of which definitely the public knew little or nothing,
there was no man in Sevenoaks so unhappy as he. He
loved power and popularity. He had been happy in the
thought that he controlled the town, and for the moment, at
least, he knew the town had slipped disloyally out of his
hands.
An impromptu meeting of citizens was held that evening,
at which Mr. Belcher did not assist. The clergymen were all
present, and there seemed to be a general understanding that
they had been ruled long enough in the interest and by the
will of a single man. A subscription was raised for a large
amount, and the sum offered to any one who would discover
the fugitives.
The next morning Mr. Belcher found the village quiet and
very reticent, and having learned that a subscription had been
raised without calling upon him, he laughingly expressed his
determination to win the reward for himself.
Then he turned his grays up the hill, had a long consultation
with Mr. Buffum, who informed him of the fate of old
Tilden, and started at a rapid pace toward Number Nine.
-- 081 -- p590-106
CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH JIM AND MIKE CONLIN PASS THROUGH A GREAT TRIAL AND COME OUT VICTORIOUS.
[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]
“There, Turk, there they be!” said Jim to his dog, pointing
to his passengers, as he stood caressing him, with one foot
on the land and the other holding the boat to the shore.
“There's the little chap that I've brung to play with ye, an'
there's the sick man that we've got to take care on. Now
don't ye make no row.”
Turk looked up into his master's face, then surveyed the
new comers with a wag of his tail that had all the force of a
welcome, and, when Harry leaped on shore, he smelt him
over, licked his hand, and accepted him as a satisfactory companion.
Jim towed his boat around a point into a little cove where
there was a beach, and then drew it by a long, strong pull entirely
out of the water. Lifting Benedict and carrying him
to his own cabin, he left him in charge of Harry and the dog,
while he went to make his bed in “Number Ten.” His arrangements
completed, he transferred his patient to the quarters
prepared for him, where, upheld and pillowed by the
sweetest couch that weary body ever rested upon, he sank into
slumber.
Harry and the dog became inseparable companions at once;
and as it was necessary for Jim to watch with Benedict during
the night, he had no difficulty in inducing the new friends to
occupy his cabin together. The dog understood his responsibility
and the lad accepted his protector; and when both had
been bountifully fed they went to sleep side by side.
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It was, however, a troubled night at Number Ten. The
patient's imagination had been excited, his frame had undergone
a great fatigue, and the fresh air, no less than the rain
that had found its way to his person through all his wrappings,
on the previous night, had produced a powerful impression
upon his nervous system. It was not strange that the morning
found Jim unrefreshed, and his patient in a high, delirious fever.
“Now's the time,” said Jim to himself, “when a feller
wants some sort o' religion or a woman; an' I hain't got nothin'
but a big dog an' a little boy, an' no doctor nearer 'n
forty mile.”
Poor Jim! He did not know that the shock to which he
had subjected the enfeebled lunatic was precisely what was
neede I to rouse every effort of nature to effect a cure. He
could not measure the influence of the subtle earth-currents
that breathed over him. He did not know that there was better
medicine in the pure air, in the balsamic bed, in the broad
stillness, in the nourishing food and the careful nursing, than
in all the drugs of the world. He did not know that, in order
to reach the convalescence for which he so ardently longed,
his patient must go down to the very basis of his life, and begin
and build up anew; that in changing from an old and
worn-out existence to a fresh and healthy one, there must
come a point between the two conditions where there would
seem to be no life, and where death would appear to be the
only natural determination. He was burdened with his responsibility;
and only the consciousness that his motives were
pure and his patient no more hopeless in his hands than in
those from which he had rescued him, strengthened his equanimity
and sustained his courage.
As the sun rose, Benedict fell into an uneasy slumber, and,
while Jim watched his heavy breathing, the door was noiselessly
opened, and Harry and the dog looked in. The hungry
look of the lad summoned Jim to new duties, and leaving
Harry to watch his father, he went off to prepare a breakfast
for his family.
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All that day and all the following night Jim's time was so
occupied in feeding the well and administering to the sick,
that his own sleeplessness began to tell upon him. He who
had been accustomed to the sleep of a healthy and active man
began to look haggard, and to long for the assistance of a
trusty hand. It was with a great, irrepressible shout of gratification
that, at the close of the second day, he detected the
form of Mike Conlin walking up the path by the side of the
river, with a snug pack of provisions upon his back.
Jim pushed his boat from the shore, and ferried Mike over
to his cabin. The Irishman had reached the landing ten
miles below to learn that the birch canoe in which he had
expected to ascend the river had either been stolen or washed
away. He was, therefore, obliged to take the old “tote-road”
worn in former years by the lumbermen, at the side
of the river, and to reach Jim's camp on foot. He was very
tired, but the warmth of his welcome brought a merry twinkle
to his eyes and the ready blarney to his tongue.
“Och! divil a bit wud ye be glad to see Mike Conlin if
ye knowed he'd come to arrist ye. Jim, ye're me prisoner.
Ye've been stalin a pauper—a pair iv 'em, faith—an' ye
must answer fur it wid yer life to owld Belcher. Come
along wid me. None o' yer nonsinse, or I'll put a windy
in ye.”
Jim eyed him with a smile, but he knew that no ordinary
errand had brought Mike to him so quickly.
“Old Belcher sent ye, did he?” said Jim.
“Be gorry he did, an' I've come to git a reward. Now,
if ye'll be dacint, ye shall have part of it.”
Although Jim saw that Mike was apparently in sport, he
knew that the offer of a cash reward for his own betrayal was
indeed a sore temptation to him.
“Did ye tell 'im anything, Mike?” inquired Jim, solemnly.
“Divil a bit.”
“An' ye knowed I'd lick ye if ye did. Ye knowed that,
didn't ye?”
-- 084 --
[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]
“I knowed ye'd thry it faithful, an' if ye didn't do it
there'd be niver a man to blame but Mike Conlin.”
Jim said no more, but went to work and got a bountiful
supper for Mike. When he had finished, he took him over
to Number Ten, where Harry and Turk were watching.
Quietly opening the door of the cabin, he entered. Benedict
lay on his bed, his rapt eyes looking up to the roof. His
clean-cut, deathly face, his long, tangled locks, and the comfortable
appointments about him, were all scanned by Mike,
and, without saying a word, both turned and retired.
“Mike,” said Jim, as they retraced their way, “that man
an' me was like brothers. I found 'im in the devil's own
hole, an' any man as comes atween me an' him must look
out fur 'imself forever arter. Jim Fenton's a good-natered
man when he ain't riled, but he'd sooner fight nor eat when
he is. Will ye help me, or won't ye?”
Mike made no reply, but opened his pack and brought out
a tumbler of jelly. “There, ye bloody blaggard, wouldn't
ye be afther lickin' that now?” said he; and then, as he proceeded
to unload the pack, his tongue ran on in comment.
(A paper of crackers.) “Mash 'em all to smithereens now.
Give it to' em, Jim.” (A roasted chicken.) “Pitch intil
the rooster, Jim. Crack every bone in 'is body.” (A bottle
of brandy.) “Knock the head aff his shoolders and suck 'is
blood.” (A package of tea.) “Down with the tay! It's
insulted ye, Jim.” (A piece of maple sugar.) “Och! the
owld, brown rascal! ye'll be afther doin Jim Fenton a bad
turn, will ye? Ye'll be brakin 'is teeth fur 'im.” Then followed
a plate, cup and saucer, and these were supplemented
by an old shirt and various knick-knacks that only a woman
would remember in trying to provide for an invalid far away
from the conveniences and comforts of home.
Jim watched Mike with tearful eyes, which grew more and
more loaded and luminous as the disgorgement of the contents
of the pack progressed.
“Mike, will ye forgive me?” said Jim, stretching out his
-- 085 --
[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]
hand. “I was afeared the money'd be too many for ye; but
barrin' yer big foot an' the ugly nose that's on ye, ye're an
angel.”
“Niver ye mind me fut,” responded Mike. “Me inimies
don't like it, an' they can give a good raison fur it; an' as
fur me nose, it'll look worser nor it does now when Jim Fenton
gets a crack at it.”
“Mike,” said Jim, “ye hurt me. Here's my hand, an'
honors are easy.”
Mike took the hand without more ado, and then sat back
and told Jim all about it.
“Ye see, afther ye wint away that night I jist lay down an'
got a bit iv a shnooze, an' in the mornin' I shtarted for me
owld horse. It was a big thramp to where ye lift him, and
comin' back purty slow, I picked up a few shticks and put
intil the wagin for me owld woman—pine knots an' the like
o' that. I didn't git home much afore darruk, and me owld
horse wasn't more nor in the shtable an' I 'atin' me supper,
quiet like, afore Belcher druv up to me house wid his purty
man on the seat wid 'im. An' says he: `Mike Conlin!
Mike Conlin! Come to the dour wid ye!' So I wint to the
dour, an' he says, says he: `Hev ye seen a crazy old feller
wid a b'y?' An' says I: `There's no crazy owld feller wid
a b'y been by me house in the daytime. If they wint by at
all at all, it was when me family was aslape.' Then he got
out of his wagin and come in, and he looked 'round in all
the corners careless like, and thin he said he wanted to go to
the barrun. So we wint to the barrun, and he looked all
about purty careful, and he says, says he: `What ye been
doin' wid the owld horse on a Sunday, Mike?' And says I
to him, says I: `Jist a pickin' up a few shticks for the owld
woman.' An' when he come out he see the shticks in the
wagin, and he says, says he: `Mike, if ye'll find these fellers
in the woods I'll give ye five hundred dollars.' And says I:
`Squire Belcher,' says I (for I knowed he had a wake shpot
in 'im), `ye are richer nor a king, and Mike Conlin's no
-- 086 --
[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]
betther nor a pauper himself. Give me a hundred dollars,'
says I, `an' I'll thry it. And be gorry I've got it right there'
(slapping his pocket.) `Take along somethin' for 'em to ate,'
says he, `and faith I've done that same and found me min; an'
now I'll stay wid ye fur a week an' 'arn me hundred dollars.”
The week that Mike promised Jim was like a lifetime. To
have some one with him to share his vigils and his responsibility
lifted a great burden from his shoulders. But the sick
man grew weaker and weaker every day. He was assiduously
nursed and literally fed with dainties; but the two men went
about their duties with solemn faces, and talked almost in a
whisper. Occasionally one of them went out for delicate
game, and by alternate watches they managed to get sufficient
sleep to recruit their exhausted energies.
One morning, after Mike had been there four or five days,
both stood by Benedict's bed, and felt that a crisis was upon
him. A great uneasiness had possessed him for some hours,
and then he had sunk away into a stupor or a sleep, they
could not determine which.
The two men watched him for a while, and then went out
and sat down on a log in front of the cabin, and held a consultation.
“Mike,” said Jim, “somethin' must be did. We've did
our best an' nothin' comes on't; an' Benedict is nearer
Abram's bosom nor I ever meant he should come in my time.
I ain't no doctor; you ain't no doctor. We've nussed 'im the
best we knowed, but I guess he's a goner. It's too thunderin'
bad, for I'd set my heart on puttin' 'im through.”
“Well,” said Mike, “I've got me hundred dollars, and
you'll git yer pay in the nixt wurruld.”
“I don't want no pay,” responded Jim. “An' what do
ye know about the next world, anyway?”
“The praste says there is one,” said Mike.
“The priest be hanged! What does he know about it?”
“That's his business,” said Mike. “It's not for the like
o' me to answer for the praste.”
-- 087 --
[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]
“Well, I wish he was here, in Number Nine, an' we'd see
what we could git out of 'im. I've got to the eend o' my
rope.”
The truth was that Jim was becoming religious. When his
own strong right hand failed in any enterprise, he always
came to a point where the possibilities of a superior wisdom
and power dawned upon him. He had never offered a prayer
in his life, but the wish for some medium or instrument of intercession
was strong within him. At last an idea struck him,
and he turned to Mike and told him to go down to his old
cabin, and stay there while he sent the boy back to him.
When Harry came up, with an anxious face, Jim took him
between his knees.
“Little feller,” said he, “I need comfortin'. It's a comfort
to have ye here in my arms, an' I don't never want to
have you go 'way from me. Your pa is awful sick, and perhaps
he ain't never goin' to be no better. The rain and the ride,
I'm afeared, was too many fur him; but I've did the best I
could, and I meant well to both on ye, an' now I can't do no
more, and there ain't no doctor here, an' there ain't no minister.
Ye've allers been a pretty good boy, hain't ye? And
don't ye s'pose ye can go out here a little ways behind a tree
and pray? I'll hold on to the dog; an' it seems to me, if I
was the Lord, I sh'd pay 'tention to what a little feller like
you was sayin'. There ain't nobody here but you to do it
now, ye know. I can nuss your pa and fix his vittles, and set
up with 'im nights, but I can't pray. I wasn't brung up to it.
Now, if ye'll do this, I won't ax ye to do nothin' else.”
The boy was serious. He looked off with his great black
eyes into the woods. He had said his prayers many times
when he did not know that he wanted anything. Here was
a great emergency, the most terrible that he had ever encountered.
He, a child, was the only one who could pray for the
life of his father; and the thought of the responsibility, though
it was only dimly entertained, or imperfectly grasped, overwhelmed
him. His eyes, that had been strained so long, filled
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with tears, and, bursting into a fit of uncontrollable weeping,
he threw his arms around Jim's neck, where he sobbed away
his sudden and almost hysterical passion. Then he gently
disengaged himself and went away.
Jim took off his cap, and holding fast his uneasy and inquiring
dog, bowed his head as if he were in a church. Soon,
among the songs of birds that were turning the morning into
music, and the flash of waves that ran shoreward before the
breeze, and the whisper of the wind among the evergreens,
there came to his ear the voice of a child, pleading for his
father's life. The tears dropped from his eyes and rolled
down upon his beard. There was an element of romantic
superstition in the man, of which his request was the offspring,
and to which the sound of the child's voice appealed with
irresistible power.
When the lad reappeared and approached him, Jim said to
himself: “Now, if that won't do it, ther' won't nothin'.”
Reaching out his arms to Harry, as he came up, he embraced
him, and said:
“My boy, ye've did the right thing. It's better nor all
the nussin', an' ye must do that every mornin'—every
mornin'; an' don't ye take no for an answer. Now jest go
in with me an' see your pa.”
Jim would not have been greatly surprised to see the rude
little room thronged with angels, but he was astonished, almost
to fainting, to see Benedict open his eyes, look about
him, then turn his questioning gaze upon him, and recognize
him by a faint smile, so like the look of other days—so full
of intelligence and peace, that the woodsman dropped upon
his knees and hid his face in the blankets. He did not say a
word, but leaving the boy passionately kissing his father, he
ran to his own cabin.
Seizing Mike by the shoulders, he shook him as if he intended
to kill him.
“Mike,” said he, “by the great horned spoons, the little
fellow has fetched 'im! Git yer pa'tridge-broth and yer
-- 089 --
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brandy quicker'n' lightnin'. Don't talk to me no more 'bout yer
priest; I've got a trick worth two o' that.”
Both men made haste back to Number Ten, where they
found their patient quite able to take the nourishment and
stimulant they brought, but still unable to speak. He soon
sank into a refreshing slumber, and gave signs of mending
throughout the day. The men who had watched him with
such careful anxiety were full of hope, and gave vent to their
lightened spirit in the chaffing which, in their careless hours,
had become habitual with them. The boy and the dog rejoiced
too in sympathy; and if there had been ten days of storm
and gloom, ended by a brilliant outshining sun, the aspect of
the camp could not have been more suddenly or happily
changed.
Two days and nights passed away, and then Mike declared
that he must go home. The patient had spoken, and knew
where he was. He only remembered the past as a dream.
First, it was dark and long, and full of horror, but at length
all had become bright; and Jim was made supremely happy to
learn that he had had a vision of the glory toward which he
had pretended to conduct him. Of the fatherly breast he had
slept upon, of the golden streets through which he had walked,
of the river of the water of life, of the shining ones with
whom he had strolled in companionship, of the marvelous
city which hath foundations, and the ineffable beauty of its
Maker and Builder, he could not speak in full, until years had
passed away; but out of this lovely dream he had emerged
into natural life.
“He's jest been down to the bottom, and started new.”
That was the sum and substance of Jim's philosophy, and it
would be hard for science to supplant it.
“Well!” said Jim to Mike, “ye've be'n a godsend. Ye've
did more good in a week nor ye'll do agin if ye live a thousand
year. Ye've arned yer hundred dollars, and ye haven't
found no pauper, and ye can tell 'em so. Paul Benedict ain't
no pauper, an' he ain't no crazy man either.”
-- 090 --
[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]
“Be gorry ye're right!” said Mike, who was greatly relieved
at finding his report shaped for him in such a way that
he would not be obliged to tell a falsehood.
“An' thank yer old woman for me,” said Jim, “an' tell
her she's the queen of the huckleberry bushes, an' a jewel to
the side o' the road she lives on.”
“Divil a bit will I do it,” responded Mike. “She'll be so
grand I can't live wid her.”
“An' tell her when ye've had yer quarrel,” said Jim,
“that there'll allers be a place for her in Number Ten.”
They chaffed one another until Mike passed out of sight
among the trees; and Jim, notwithstanding his new society,
felt lonelier, as he turned back to his cabin, than he had ever
felt when there was no human being within twenty miles of
him.
The sun of early May had begun to shine brightly, the
willows were growing green by the side of the river, the resinous
buds were swelling daily, and making ready to burst into
foliage, the birds returned one after another from their winter
journeyings, and the thrushes filled the mornings and the
evenings alike with their carolings. Spring had come to the
woods again, with words of promise and wings of fulfillment,
and Jim's heart was full of tender gladness. He had gratified
his benevolent impulses, and he found upon his hands that
which would tax their abounding energies. Life had never
seemed to him so full of significance as it did then. He could
see what he had been saving money for, and he felt that out
of the service he was rendering to the poor and the distressed
was growing a love for them that gave a new and almost
divine flavor to his existence.
Benedict mended slowly, but he mended daily, and gave
promise of the permanent recovery of a healthy body and a
sound mind. It was a happy day for Jim when, with Harry
and the dog bounding before him, and Benedict leaning on
his arm, he walked over to his old cabin, and all ate together
at his own rude table. Jim never encouraged his friend's
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questions. He endeavored, by every practical way, to restrain
his mind from wandering into the past, and encouraged him
to associate his future with his present society and surroundings.
The stronger the patient grew, the more willing he became
to shut out the past, which, as memory sometimes—nay,
too often—recalled it, was an unbroken history of trial, disappointment,
grief, despair, and dreams of great darkness.
There was one man whom he could never think of without
a shudder, and with that man his possible outside life was
inseparably associated. Mr. Belcher had always been able,
by his command of money and his coarse and despotic will,
to compel him into any course or transaction that he desired.
His nature was offensive to Benedict to an extreme degree, and
when in his presence, particularly when he entered it driven
by necessity, he felt shorn of his own manhood. He felt him
to be without conscience, without principle, without humanity,
and was sure that it needed only to be known that the insane
pauper had become a sound and healthy man to make him the
subject of a series of persecutions or persuasions that would
wrest from him the rights and values on which the great proprietor
was foully battening. These rights and values he never
intended to surrender, and until he was strong and independent
enough to secure them to himself, he did not care to
expose his gentler will to the machinations of the great
scoundrel who had thrived upon his unrewarded genius.
So, by degrees, he came to look upon the woods as his
home. He was there at peace. His wife had faded out of
the world, his life had been a fatal struggle with the grossest
selfishness, he had come out of the shadows into a new life,
and in that life's simple conditions, cared for by Jim's strong
arms, and upheld by his manly and cheerful companionship,
he intended to build safely the structure of his health, and to
erect on the foundation of a useful experience a better life.
In June, Jim did his planting, confined almost entirely to
vegetables, as there was no mill near enough to grind his
wheat and corn should he succeed in growing them. By the
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time the young plants were ready for dressing, Benedict could
assist Jim for an hour every day; and when the autumn came,
the invalid of Number Ten had become a heavier man than
he ever was before. Through the disguise of rags, the sunbrowned
features, the heavy beard, and the generous and
almost stalwart figure, his old and most intimate friends would
have failed to recognize the delicate and attenuated man they
had once known. Jim regarded him with great pride, and
almost with awe. He delighted to hear him talk, for he was
full of information and overflowing with suggestion.
“Mr. Benedict,” said Jim one day, after they had indulged
in one of their long talks, “do ye s'pose ye can make a
house?”
“Anything.”
“A raal house, all ship-shape for a woman to live in?”
“Anything.”
“With a little stoop, an' a bureau, an' some chairs, an' a
frame, like, fur posies to run up on?”
“Yes, Jim, and a thousand things you never thought of.”
Jim did not pursue the conversation further, but went down
very deep into a brown study.
During September, he was in the habit of receiving the
visits of sportsmen, one of whom, a New York lawyer, who
bore the name of Balfour, had come into the woods every
year for several successive years. He became aware that his
supplies were running low, and that not only was it necessary
to lay in a winter's stock of flour and pork, but that his helpless
protégés should be supplied with clothing for the coming
cold weather. Benedict had become quite able to take care
of himself and his boy; so one day Jim, having furnished
himself with a supply of money from his long accumulated
hoard, went off down the river for a week's absence.
He had a long consultation with Mike Conlin, who agreed
to draw his lumber to the river whenever he should see fit to
begin his enterprise. He had taken along a list of tools, furnished
him by Benedict; and Mike carried him to Sevenoaks
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with the purpose of taking back whatever, in the way of stores,
they should purchase. Jim was full of reminiscences of his
night's drive, and pointed out to Mike all the localities of his
great enterprise. Things had undergone a transformation
about the poor-house, and Jim stopped and inquired tenderly
for Tom Buffum, and learned that soon after the escape of
Benedict the man had gone off in an apoplectic fit.
“He was a pertickler friend o' mine,” said Jim, smiling in the
face of the new occupant, “an' I'm glad he went off so quick
he didn't know where he was goin'. Left some rocks, didn't he?”
The man having replied to Jim's tender solicitude, that he
believed the family were sufficiently well provided for, the
precious pair of sympathizers went off down the hill.
Jim and Mike had a busy day in Sevenoaks, and at about
eight o'clock in the evening, Miss Keziah Butterworth was
surprised in her room by the announcement that there was a
strange man down stairs who desired to see her. As she entered
the parlor of the little house, she saw a tall man standing
upright in the middle of the room, with his fur cap in his
hand, and a huge roll of cloth under his arm.
“Miss Butterworth, how fare ye?” said Jim.
“I remember you,” said Miss Butterworth, peering up into
his face to read his features in the dim light. “You are Jim
Fenton, whom I met last spring at the town meeting.”
“I knowed you'd remember me. Women allers does. Be'n
purty chirk this summer?”
“Very well, I thank you, sir,” and Miss Butterworth
dropped a courtesy, and then, sitting down, she pointed him
to a chair.
Jim laid his cap on the floor, placed his roll of cloth upright
between his knees, and, pulling out his bandana handkerchief,
wiped his perspiring face.
“I've brung a little job fur ye,” said Jim.
“Oh, I can't do it,” said Miss Butterworth at once. “I'm
crowded to death with work. It's a hurrying time of year.”
“Yes, I knowed that, but this is a pertickler job.”
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“Oh, they are all particular jobs,” responded Miss Butterworth,
shaking her head.
“But this is a job fur pertickler folks.”
“Folks are all alike to me,” said Miss Butterworth, sharply.
“These clo'es,” said Jim, “are fur a good man an' a little
boy. They has nothin' but rags on 'em, an' won't have till
ye make these clo'es. The man is a pertickler friend o' mine,
an' the boy is a cute little chap, an' he can pray better nor
any minister in Sevenoaks. If you knowed what I know, Miss
Butterworth, I don't know but you'd do somethin' that you'd
be ashamed of, an' I don't know but you'd do something that
I sh'd be ashamed of. Strange things has happened, an' if
ye want to know what they be, you must make these
clo'es.”
Jim had aimed straight at one of the most powerful motives
in human nature, and the woman began to relent, and to talk
more as if it were possible for her to undertake the job.
“It may be,” said the tailores, thinking, and scratching
the top of her head with a hair-pin, “that I can work it in;
but I haven't the measure.”
“Well, now, let's see,” said Jim, pondering. “Whar is
they about such a man? Don't ye remember a man that used
to be here by the name of—of—Benedict, wasn't it?—a feller
about up to my ear—only fleshier nor he was? An' the little
feller—well, he's bigger nor Benedict's boy—bigger, leastways,
nor he was then.”
Miss Butterworth rose to her feet, went up to Jim, and
looked him sharply in the eyes.
“Can you tell me anything about Benedict and his boy?”
“All that any feller knows I know,” said Jim, “an' I've
never telled nobody in Sevenoaks.”
“Jim Fenton, you needn't be afraid of me.”
“Oh, I ain't. I like ye better nor any woman I seen.”
“But you needn't be afraid to tell me,” said Miss Butterworth,
blushing.
“An' will ye make the clo'es?”
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“Yes, I'll make the clothes, if I make them for nothing,
and sit up nights to do it.”
“Give us your hand,” said Jim, and he had a woman's
hand in his own almost before he knew it, and his face grew
crimson to the roots of his bushy hair.
Miss Butterworth drew her chair up to his, and in a low
tone he told her the whole long story as only he knew it, and
only he could tell it.
“I think you are the noblest man I ever saw,” said Miss
Butterworth, trembling with excitement.
“Well, turn about's fa'r play, they say, an' I think you're
the most genuine creetur' I ever seen,” responded Jim. “All
we want up in the woods now is a woman, an' I'd sooner have
ye thar nor any other.”
“Poh! what a spoon you are!” said Miss Butterworth,
tossing her head.
“Then there's timber enough in me fur the puttiest kind
of a buckle.”
“But you're a blockhead—a great, good blockhead. That's
just what you are,” said Miss Butterworth, laughing in spite
of herself.
“Well, ye can whittle any sort of a head out of a block,”
said Jim imperturbably.
“Let's have done with joking,” said the tailoress solemnly.
“I hain't been jokin',” said Jim. “I'm in 'arnest. I
been thinkin' o' ye ever sence the town-meetin'. I been
kinder livin' on yer looks. I've dreamt about ye nights; an'
when I've be'n helpin' Benedict, I took some o' my pay,
thinkin' I was pleasin' ye. I couldn't help hopin'; an' now,
when I come to ye so, an' tell ye jest how the land lays, ye
git rampageous, or tell me I'm jokin'. 'Twon't be no joke
if Jim Fenton goes away from this house feelin' that the only
woman he ever seen as he thought was wuth a row o' pins
feels herself better nor he is.”
Miss Butterworth cast down her eyes, and trotted her knees
nervously. She felt that Jim was really in earnest—that he
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thoroughly respected her, and that behind his rough exterior
there was as true a man as she had ever seen; but the life to
which he would introduce her, the gossip to which she would
be subjected by any intimate connection with him, and the uprooting
of the active social life into which the routine of her
daily labor led her, would be a great hardship. Then there
was another consideration which weighed heavily with her.
In her room were the memorials of an early affection and the
disappointment of a life.
“Mr. Fenton,” she said, looking up—
“Jest call me Jim.”
“Well, Jim—” and Miss Butterworth smiled through tearful
eyes—“I must tell you that I was once engaged to be
married.”
“Sho! You don't say!”
“Yes, and I had everything ready.”
“Now, you don't tell me!”
“Yes, and the only man I ever loved died—died a week
before the day we had set.”
“It must have purty near finished ye off.”
“Yes, I should have been glad to die myself.”
“Well, now, Miss Butterworth, if ye s'pose that Jim Fenton
wouldn't bring that man to life if he could, and go to
your weddin' singin' hallelujer, you must think he's meaner
nor a rat. But ye know he's dead, an' ye never can see him
no more. He's a goner, an' ye're all alone, an' here's a man
as'll take care on ye fur him; an' it does seem to me that
if he was a reasomble man he'd feel obleeged for what I'm
doin'.”
Miss Butterworth could not help smiling at Jim's earnestness
and ingenuity, but his proposition was so sudden and
strange, and she had so long ago given up any thought of marrying,
that it was impossible for her to give him an answer then,
unless she should give him the answer which he deprecated.
“Jim,” she said at last, “I believe you are a good man.
I believe you are honorable, and that you mean well toward
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me; but we have been brought up very differently, and the
life into which you wish to bring me would be very strange to
me. I doubt whether I could be happy in it.”
Jim saw that it would not help him to press his suit further
at that time, and recognized the reasonableness of her hesitation.
He knew he was rough and unused to every sort of
refinement, but he also knew that he was truthful, and honorable,
and faithful; and with trust in his own motives and
trust in Miss Butterworth's good sense and discretion, he
withheld any further exhibition of his wish to settle the affair
on the spot.
“Well, Miss Butterworth,” he said, rising, “ye know yer
own business, but there'll be a house, an' a stoop, an' a bureau,
an' a little ladder for flowers, an' Mike Conlin will draw
the lumber, an' Benedict 'll put it together, an' Jim Fenton
'll be the busiest and happiest man in a hundred mile.”
As Jim rose, Miss Butterworth also stood up, and looked
up into his face. Jim regarded her with tender admiration.
“Do ye know I take to little things wonderful, if they're
only alive?” said he. “There's Benedict's little boy! I feel
'im fur hours arter I've had 'im in my arms, jest because he's
alive an' little. An' I don't know—I—I vow, I guess I better
go away. Can you git the clo'es made in two days, so I
can take 'em home with me? Can't ye put 'em out round?
I'll pay ye, ye know.”
Miss Butterworth thought she could, and on that promise
Jim remained in Sevenoaks.
How he got out of the house he did not remember, but he
went away very much exalted. What he did during those two
days it did not matter to him, so long as he could walk over
to Miss Butterworth's each night, and watch her light from
his cover in the trees.
Before the tailoress closed her eyes in sleep that night her
brisk and ready shears had cut the cloth for the two suits at a
venture, and in the morning the work was parceled among her
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benevolent friends, as a work of charity whose objects were
not to be mentioned.
When Jim called for the clothes, they were done, and there
was no money to be paid for the labor. The statement of the
fact embarrassed Jim more than anything that had occurred
in his interviews with the tailoress.
“I sh'll pay ye some time, even if so be that nothin' happens,”
said he; “an' if so be that somethin' does happen,
it'll be squar' any way. I don't want no man that I do fur
to be beholden to workin' women for their clo'es.”
Jim took the big bundle under his left arm, and, extending
his right hand, he took Miss Butterworth's, and said: “Good-bye,
little woman; I sh'll see ye agin, an' here's hopin'. Don't
hurt yerself, and think as well of me as ye can. I hate to go
away an' leave every thing loose like, but I s'pose I must.
Yes, I don't like to go away so”—and Jim shook his head
tenderly—“an' arter I go ye mustn't kick a stone on the road
or scare a bird in the trees, for fear it'll be the heart that Jim
Fenton leaves behind him.”
Jim departed, and Miss Butterworth went up to her room,
her eyes moist with the effect of the unconscious poetry of
his closing utterance.
It was still early in the evening when Jim reached the hotel,
and he had hardly mounted the steps when the stage drove
up, and Mr. Balfour, encumbered with a gun, all sorts of
fishing-tackle and a lad of twelve years, leaped out. He was
on his annual vacation; and with all the hilarity and heartiness
of a boy let loose from school greeted Jim, whose irresistibly
broad smile was full of welcome.
It was quickly arranged that Jim and Mike should go on
that night with their load of stores; that Mr. Balfour and his
boy should follow in the morning with a team to be hired for
the occasion, and that Jim, reaching home first, should return
and meet his guests with his boat at the landing.
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CHAPTER VIII. IN WHICH MR. BELCHER VISITS NEW YORK, AND BECOMEC THE PROPRIETOR OF “PALGRAVE'S FOLLY. ”
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The shadow of a mystery hung over Sevenoaks for many
months. Handbills advertising the fugitives were posted in
all directions throughout the country, but nothing came of
them but rumors. The newspapers, far and near, told the
story, but it resulted in nothing save such an airing of the
Sevenoaks poor-house, and the county establishment connected
with the same, that Tom Buffum, who had lived for
several years on the border-land of apoplexy, passed suddenly
over, and went so far that he never returned to meet the official
inquiry into his administration. The Augean stables
were cleansed by the Hercules of public opinion; and with
the satisfied conscience and restored self-complacency procured
by this act, the people at last settled down upon the
conviction that Benedict and his boy had shared the fate of
old Tilden—that they had lost themselves in the distant
forest, and met their death alike beyond help and discovery.
Mr. Belcher found himself without influence in the adjustment
of the new administration. Sevenoaks turned the cold
shoulder to him. Nobody went to him with the reports that
connected him with the flight and fate of the crazed inventor,
yet he knew, through instincts which men of his nature often
possess in a remarkable degree, that he was deeply blamed for
the causes of Benedict's misfortunes. It has already been
hinted that at first he was suspected of knowing guiltily more
about the disappearance of the fugitives than he would be
willing to tell, but there were only a few minds in which the
suspicion was long permitted to linger. When the first
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excitement passed away and men began to think, it was impossible
for them to imagine motives sufficiently powerful to induce
the rich proprietor to pursue a lunatic pauper to his
death.
Mr. Belcher never had encouraged the neighborly approaches
which, in an emergency like this, might have given
him comfort and companionship. Recognizing no equals in
Sevenoaks—measuring his own social position by the depth
of his purse and the reach of his power—he had been in
the habit of dispensing his society as largess to the humble
villagers. To recognize a man upon the street, and speak to
him in a familiar way, was to him like the opening of his
purse and throwing the surprise of a dollar into a beggar's
hat. His courtesies were charities; his politeness was a
boon; he tossed his jokes into a crowd of dirty employes as
he would toss a handful of silver coin. Up to this time
he had been sufficient unto himself. By money, by petty
revenges, by personal assumption, he had managed to retain
his throne for a long decade; and when he found his power
partly ignored and partly defied, and learned that his personal
courtesies were not accepted at their old value, he not only
began to feel lonesome, but he grew angry. He held hot
discussions with his image in the mirror night after night, in
his lonely library, where a certain measure which had once
seemed a distant possibility took shape more and more as a
purpose. In some way he would revenge himself upon the
people of the town. Even at a personal sacrifice, he would
pay them off for their slight upon him; and he knew there
was no way in which he could so effectually do this as by
leaving them. He had dreamed many times, as he rapidly
accumulated his wealth, of arriving at a point where he could
treat his splendid home as a summer resort, and take up his
residence in the great city among those of his own kind. He
had an uneasy desire for the splendors of city life, yet his interests
had always held him to Sevenoaks, and he had contented
himself there simply because he had his own way, and
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was accounted “the principal citizen.” His village splendors
were without competition. His will was law. His self-complacency,
fed and flourishing in his country home, had
taken the place of society; but this had ceased to be all-sufficient,
even before the change occurred in the atmosphere
around him.
It was six months after the reader's first introduction to
him that, showily dressed as he always was, he took his place
before his mirror for a conversation with the striking-looking
person whom he saw reflected there.
“Robert Belcher, Esquire,” said he, “are you played out?
Who says played out? Did you address that question to me,
sir? Am I the subject of that insulting remark? Do you
dare to beard the lion in his den? Withdraw the dagger that
you have aimed at my breast, or I will not hold myself responsible
for the consequences. Played out, with a million
dollars in your pocket? Played out, with wealth pouring in
in mighty waves? Whose name is Norval still? Whose are
these Grampian Hills? In yonder silent heavens the stars
still shine, printing on boundless space the words of golden
promise. Will you leave Sevenoaks? Will you go to yonder
metropolis, and there reap, in honor and pleasure, the rewards
of your enterprise? Will you leave Sevenoaks howling
in pain? Will you leave these scurvy ministers to whine for
their salaries and whine to empty air? Ye fresh fields and
pastures new, I yield, I go, I reside! I spurn the dust of
Sevenoaks from my feet. I hail the glories of the distant
mart. I make my bow to you, sir. You ask my pardon? It
is well! Go!”
The next morning, after a long examination of his affairs,
in conference with his confidential agent, and the announcement
to Mrs. Belcher that he was about to start for New York
on business, Phipps took him and his trunk on a drive of
twenty miles, to the northern terminus of a railroad line
which, with his connections, would bear him to the city of his
hopes.
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It is astonishing how much room a richly dressed snob can
occupy in a railway car without receiving a request to occupy
less, or endangering the welfare of his arrogant eyes. Mr.
Belcher occupied always two seats, and usually four. It was
pitiful to see feeble women look at his abounding supply, then
look at him, and then pass on. It was pitiful to see humbly
dressed men do the same. It was pitiful to see gentlemen put
themselves to inconvenience rather than dispute with him his
right to all the space he could cover with his luggage and his
feet. Mr. Belcher watched all these exhibitions with supreme
satisfaction. They were a tribute to his commanding personal
appearance. Even the conductors recognized the manner of
man with whom they had to deal, and shunned him. He not
only got the worth of his money in his ride, but the worth of
the money of several other people.
Arriving at New York, he went directly to the Astor, then
the leading hotel of the city. The clerk not only knew the
kind of man who stood before him recording his name, but he
knew him; and while he assigned to his betters, men and
women, rooms at the top of the house, Mr. Belcher secured,
without difficulty, a parlor and bedroom on the second floor.
The arrogant snob was not only at a premium on the railway
train, but at the hotel. When he swaggered into the dining-room,
the head waiter took his measure instinctively, and
placed him as a figure-head at the top of the hall, where he
easily won to himself the most careful and obsequious service,
the choicest viands, and a large degree of quiet observation
from the curious guests. In the office, waiters ran for him,
hackmen took off their hats to him, his cards were delivered
with great promptitude, and even the courtly principal deigned
to inquire whether he found everything to his mind. In
short, Mr. Belcher seemed to find that his name was as distinctly
“Norval” in New York as in Sevenoaks, and that his
“Grampian Hills” were movable eminences that stood
around and smiled upon him wherever he went.
Retiring to his room to enjoy in quiet his morning cigar
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and to look over the papers, his eye was attracted, among the
“personals,” to an item which read as follows:
“Col. Robert Belcher, the rich and well-known manufacturer
of Sevenoaks, and the maker of the celebrated Belcher
rifle, has arrived in town, and occupies a suite of apartments
at the Astor.”
His title, he was aware, had been manufactured, in order
to give the highest significance to the item, by the enterprising
reporter, but it pleased him. The reporter, associating his
name with fire-arms, had chosen a military title, in accordance
with the custom which makes “commodores” of enterprising
landsmen who build and manage lines of marine transportation
and travel, and “bosses” of men who control election
gangs, employed to dig the dirty channels to political
success.
He read it again and again, and smoked, and walked to his
glass, and coddled himself with complacent fancies. He felt
that all doors opened themselves widely to the man who had
money, and the skill to carry it in his own magnificent way.
In the midst of pleasant thoughts, there came a rap at the
door, and he received from the waiter's little salver the card
of his factor, “Mr. Benjamin Talbot.” Mr. Talbot had read
the “personal” which had so attracted and delighted himself,
and had made haste to pay his respects to the principal
from whose productions he was coining a fortune.
Mr. Talbot was the man of all others whom Mr. Belcher
desired to see; so, with a glance at the card, he told the waiter
promptly to show the gentleman up.
No man in the world understood Mr. Belcher better than
the quick-witted and obsequious factor. He had been in the
habit, during the ten years in which he had handled Mr.
Belcher's goods, of devoting his whole time to the proprietor
while that person was on his stated visits to the city. He
took him to his club to dine; he introduced him to congenial
spirits; he went to the theater with him; he went with him
to grosser resorts, which do not need to be named in these
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pages; he drove with him to the races; he took him to lunch
at suburban hotels, frequented by fast men who drove fast
horses; he ministered to every coarse taste and vulgar desire
possessed by the man whose nature and graceless caprices he
so carefully studied. He did all this at his own expense, and
at the same time he kept his principal out of the clutches of
gamblers and sharpers. It was for his interest to be of actual
use to the man whose desires he aimed to gratify, and so to
guard and shadow him that no deep harm would come to him.
It was for his interest to keep Mr. Belcher to himself, while
he gave him the gratifications that a coarse man living in the
country so naturally seeks among the opportunities and excitements
of the city.
There was one thing, however, that Mr. Talbot had never
done. He had never taken Mr. Belcher to his home. Mrs.
Talbot did not wish to see him, and Mr. Talbot did not wish
to have her see him. He knew that Mr. Belcher, after his
business was completed, wanted something besides a quiet
dinner with women and children. His leanings were not
toward virtue, but toward safe and half-reputable vice; and
exactly what he wanted consistent with his safety as a business
man, Mr. Talbot wished to give him. To nurse his good-will,
to make himself useful, and, as far as possible, essential
to the proprietor, and to keep him sound and make him last,
was Mr. Talbot's study and his most determined ambition.
Mr. Belcher was seated in a huge arm chair, with his back
to the door and his feet in another chair, when the second rap
came, and Mr. Talbot, with a radiant smile, entered.
“Well, Toll, my boy,” said the proprietor, keeping his
seat without turning, and extending his left hand. “How
are you? Glad to see you. Come round to pay your respects
to the Colonel, eh? How's business, and how's your
folks?”
Mr. Talbot was accustomed to this style of greeting from
his principal, and, responding heartily to it and the inquiries
accompanying it, he took a seat. With hat and cane in hand
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he sat on his little chair, showing his handsome teeth, twirling
his light mustache, and looking at the proprietor with his
keen gray eyes, his whole atitude and physiognomy expressing
the words as plainly as if he had spoken them: “I'm
your man; now, what are you up to?”
“Toll,” said Mr. Belcher deliberately, “I'm going to surprise
you.”
“You usually do,” responded the factor, laughing.
“I vow, I guess that's true! You fellows, without any
blood, are apt to get waked up when the old boys come in
from the country. Toll, lock the door.”
Mr. Talbot locked the door and resumed his seat.
“Sevenoaks be hanged!” said Mr. Belcher.
“Certainly.”
“It's a one-horse town.”
“Certainly. Still, I have been under the impression that
you owned the horse.”
“Yes, I know, but the horse is played out.”
“Hasn't he been a pretty good horse, and earned you all
he cost you?”
“Well, I'm tired with living where there is so much infernal
babble, and meddling with other people's business. If I
sneeze, the people think there's been an earthquake; and
when I whistle, they call it a hurricane.”
“But you're the king of the roost,” said Talbot.
“Yes; but a man gets tired being king of the roost, and
longs for some rooster to fight.'
Mr. Talbot saw the point toward which Mr. Belcher was
drifting, and prepared himself for it. He had measured his
chances for losing his business, and when, at last, his principal
came out with the frank statement, that he had made up
his mind to come to New York to live, he was all ready with
his overjoyed “No!” and with his smooth little hand to bestow
upon Mr. Belcher's heavy fist the expression of his gladness
and his congratulations.
“Good thing, isn't it, Toll?”
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“Excellent!”
“And you'll stand by me, Toll?”
“Of course I will; but we can't do just the old things, you
know. We must be highly respectable citizens, and keep
ourselves straight.”
“Don't you undertake to teach your grandmother how to
suck eggs,” responded the proprietor with a huge laugh, in
which the factor joined. Then he added, thoughtfully: “I
haven't said a word to the woman about it, and she may make
a fuss, but she knows me pretty well; and there'll be the biggest
kind of a row in the town; but the fact is, Toll, I'm at
the end of my rope there. I'm making money hand over
hand, and I've nothing to show for it. I've spent about
everything I can up there, and nobody sees it. I might just
as well be buried; and if a fellow can't show what he gets,
what's the use of having it? I haven't but one life to live,
and I'm going to spread, and I'm going to do it right here in
New York; and if I don't make some of your nabobs open
their eyes, my name isn't Robert Belcher.”
Mr. Belcher had exposed motives in this little speech that
he had not even alluded to in his addresses to his image in the
mirror. Talbot saw that something had gone wrong in the
town, that he was playing off a bit of revenge, and, above all,
that the vulgar desire for display was more prominent among
Mr. Belcher's motives for removal than that person suspected.
“I have a few affairs to attend to,” said Mr. Talbot, rising,
“but after twelve o'clock I will be at your service while you
remain in the city. We shall have no difficulty in finding a
house to suit you, I am sure, and you can get everything done
in the matter of furniture at the shortest notice. I will hunt
houses with you for a week, if you wish.”
“Well, by-by, Toll,” said Mr. Belcher, giving him his left
hand again. “I'll be 'round at twelve.”
Mr. Talbot went out, but instead of going to his office,
went straight home, and surprised Mrs. Talbot by his sudden
reappearance.
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“What on earth!”—said she, looking up from a bit of
embroidery on which she was dawdling away her morning.
“Kate, who do you suppose is coming to New York to live?”
“The Great Mogul.”
“Yes, the Great Mogul—otherwise, Colonel Robert Belcher.”
“Heaven help us!” exclaimed the lady.
“Well, and what's to be done?”
“Oh, my! my! my! my!” exclaimed Mrs. Talbot, her
possessive pronoun stumbling and fainting away without
reaching its object. “Must we have that bear in the house?
Does it pay?”
“Yes, Kate, it pays,” said Mr. Talbot.
“Well, I suppose that settles it.”
The factor and his wife were very quick to comprehend the
truth that a principal out of town, and away from his wife
and family, was a very different person to deal with from one
in the town and in the occupation of a grand establishment,
with his dependents. They saw that they must make themselves
essential to him in the establishment of his social position,
and that they must introduce him and his wife to their
friends. Moreover, they had heard good reports of Mrs. Belcher,
and had the impression that she would be either an inoffensive
or a valuable acquisition to their circle of friends.
There was nothing to do, therefore, but to make a dinner-party
in Mr. Belcher's honor. The guests were carefully
selected, and Mrs. Talbot laid aside her embroidery and wrote
her invitations, while Mr. Talbot made his next errand at the
office of the leading real estate broker, with whom he concluded
a private arrangement to share in the commission of
any sale that might be made to the customer whom he proposed
to bring to him in the course of the day. Half an-hour
before twelve, he was in his own office, and in the thirty
minutes that lay between his arrival and the visit of the proprietor,
he had arranged his affairs for any absence that would
be necessary.
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When Mr. Belcher came in, looking from side to side, with
the air of a man who owned all he saw, even the clerks, who
respectfully bowed to him as he passed, he found Mr. Talbot
waiting; also, a bunch of the costliest cigars.
“I remembered your weakness, you see,” said Talbot.
“Toll, you're a jewel,” said Mr. Belcher, drawing out one
of the fragrant rolls and lighting it.
“Now, before we go a step,” said Talbot, “you must agree
to come to my house to-morrow night to dinner, and meet
some of my friends. When you come to New York, you'll
want to know somebody.”
“Toll, I tell you you're a jewel.”
“And you'll come?”
“Well, you know I'm not rigged exactly for that sort of
thing, and, faith, I'm not up to it, but I suppose all a man
has to do is to put on a stiff upper lip, and take it as it comes.”
“I'll risk you anywhere.”
“All right! I'll be there.”
“Six o'clock, sharp;—and now let's go and find a broker.
I know the best one in the city, and I'll show you the inside
of more fine houses before night than you have ever seen.”
Talbot took the proprietor's arm and led him to a carriage
in waiting. Then he took him to Pine street, and introduced
him, in the most deferential manner, to the broker who held
half of New York at his disposal, and knew the city as he
knew his alphabet.
The broker took the pair of house-hunters to a private room,
and unfolded a map of the city before them. On this he
traced, with a well-kept finger-nail, a series of lines,—like
those fanciful isothermal definitions that embrace the regions
of perennial summer on the range of the Northern Pacific
Railroad,—within which social respectability made its home.
Within certain avenues and certain streets, he explained that
it was a respectable thing to live. Outside of these arbitrary
boundaries, nobody who made any pretense to respectability
should buy a house. The remainder of the city was for the
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vulgar—craftsmen, petty shopkeepers, salaried men, and the
shabby-genteel. He insisted that a wealthy man, making an
entrance upon New York life, should be careful to locate himself
somewhere upon the charmed territory which he defined.
He felt in duty bound to say this to Mr. Belcher, as he was a
stranger; and Mr. Belcher was, of course, grateful for the information.
Then he armed Mr. Talbot, as Mr. Belcher's city friend
and helper, with a bundle of permits, with which they set off
upon their quest.
They visited a dozen houses in the course of the afternoon,
carefully chosen in their succession by Mr. Talbot, who was
as sure of Mr. Belcher's tastes as he was of his own. One
street was too quiet, one was too dark; one house was too
small, and one was too tame; one house had no stable, another
had too small a stable. At last, they came out upon
Fifth avenue, and drove up to a double front, with a stable almost
as ample and as richly appointed as the house itself. It
had been built, and occupied for a year or two, by an exploded
millionaire, and was an elephant upon the hands of
his creditors. Robert Belcher was happy at once. The marvelous
mirrors, the plate glass, the gilded cornices, the grand
staircase, the glittering chandeliers, the evidences of lavish
expenditure in every fixture, and in all the finish, excited him
like wine.
“Now you talk!” said he to the smiling factor; and as he
went to the window, and saw the life of the street, rolling by
in costly carriages, or sweeping the sidewalks with shining
silks and mellow velvets, he felt that he was at home. Here
he could see and be seen. Here his splendors could be advertised.
Here he could find an expression for his wealth, by
the side of which his establishment at Sevenoaks seemed too
mean to be thought of without humiliation and disgust. Here
was a house that gratified his sensuous nature through and
through, and appealed irresistibly to his egregious vanity.
He did not know that the grand and gaudy establishment bore
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the name of “Palgrave's Folly,” and, probably, it would
have made no difference with him if he had. It suited him,
and would, in his hands, become Belcher's Glory.
The sum demanded for the place, though very large, did
not cover its original cost, and in this fact Mr. Belcher took
great comfort. To enjoy fifty thousand dollars, which somebody
else had made, was a charming consideration with him,
and one that did much to reconcile him to an expenditure far
beyond his original purpose.
When he had finished his examination of the house, he returned
to his hotel, as business hours were past, and he could
make no further headway that day in his negotiations. The
more he thought of the house, the more uneasy he became.
Somebody might have seen him looking at it, and so reached
the broker first, and snatched it from his grasp. He did not
know that it had been in the market for two years, waiting
for just such a man as himself.
Talbot was fully aware of the state of Mr. Belcher's mind,
and knew that if he did not reach him early the next morning,
the proprietor would arrive at the broker's before him. Accordingly,
when Mr. Belcher finished his breakfast that morning,
he found his factor waiting for him, with the information
that the broker would not be in his office for an hour and ahalf,
and that there was time to look further, if further search
were desirable. He hoped that Mr. Belcher would not be in
a hurry, or take any step that he would ultimately regret.
Mr. Belcher assured him that he knew what he wanted when
he saw it, and had no fears about the matter, except that
somebody might anticipate him.
“You have determined, then, to buy the house at the
price?” said Talbot.
“Yes; I shall just shut my eyes and swallow the whole
thing.”
“Would you like to get it cheaper?”
“Of course!”
“Then, perhaps you had better leave the talking to me,”
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said Talbot. “These fellows all have a price that they ask,
and a smaller one that they will take.”
“That's one of the tricks, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Then go ahead.”
They had a long talk about business, and then Talbot went
out, and, after an extended interview with the broker, sent a
messenger for Mr. Belcher. When that gentleman came in,
he found that Talbot had bought the house for ten thousand
dollars less than the price originally demanded. Mr. Belcher
deposited a handsome sum as a guaranty of his good faith, and
ordered the papers to be made out at once.
After their return to the hotel, Mr. Talbot sat down to a
table, and went through a long calculation.
“It will cost you, Mr. Belcher,” said the factor, deliberately,
“at least twenty-five thousand dollars to furnish that
house satisfactorily.”
Mr. Belcher gave a long whistle.
“At least twenty-five thousand dollars, and I doubt whether
you get off for less than thirty thousand.”
“Well, I'm in for it, and I'm going through,” said Mr.
Belcher.
“Very well,” responded Talbot, “now let's go to the
best furnisher we can find. I happen to know the man who is at
the top of the style, and I suppose the best thing—as you and
I don't know much about the matter—is to let him have his
own way, and hold him responsible for the results.”
“All right,” said Belcher; “show me the man.”
They found the arbiter of style in his counting-room. Mr.
Talbot approached him first, and held a long private conversation
with him. Mr. Belcher, in his self-complacency,
waited, fancying that Talbot was representing his own importance
and the desirableness of so rare a customer, and endeavoring
to secure reasonable prices on a large bill. In reality,
he was arranging to get a commission out of the job for
himself.
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If it be objected to Mr. Talbot's mode of giving assistance
to his country friends, that it savored of mercenariness,
amounting to villainy, it is to be said, on his behalf, that he
was simply practicing the morals that Mr. Belcher had taught
him. Mr. Belcher had not failed to debauch or debase the
moral standard of every man over whom he had any direct
influence. If Talbot had practiced his little game upon
any other man, Mr. Belcher would have patted his shoulder
and told him he was a “jewel.” So much of Mr. Belcher's
wealth had been won by sharp and more than doubtful practices,
that that wealth itself stood before the world as a premium
on rascality, and thus became, far and wide, a demoralizing
influence upon the feverishly ambitious and the young.
Besides, Mr. Talbot quieted what little conscience he had in
the matter by the consideration that his commissions were
drawn, not from Mr. Belcher, but from the profits which
others would make out of him, and the further consideration
that it was no more than right for him to get the money back
that he had spent, and was spending, for his principal's
benefit.
Mr. Belcher was introduced, and the arbiter of style conversed
learnedly of Tuscan, Pompeiian, Elizabethan, Louis
Quatorze, buhl, marqueterie, &c., &c., till the head of the
proprietor, to whom all these words were strangers, and all
his talk Greek, was thrown into a hopeless muddle.
Mr. Belcher listened to him as long as he could do so with
patience, and then brought him to a conclusion by a slap upon
his knee.
“Come, now!” said he, “you understand your business,
and I understand mine. If you were to take up guns and
gutta-percha, I could probably talk your head off, but I don't
know anything about these things. What I want is something
right. Do the whole thing up brown. Do you understand
that?”
The arbiter of style smiled pityingly, and admitted that he
comprehended his customer.
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It was at last arranged that the latter should make a study
of the house, and furnish it according to his best ability, within
a specified sum of expenditure and a specified period
of time; and then the proprietor took his leave.
Mr. Belcher had accomplished a large amount of business
within two days, but he had worked according to his habit.
The dinner party remained, and this was the most difficult
business that he had ever undertaken, yet he had a strong desire
to see how it was done. He learned quickly what he
undertook, and he had already “discounted,” to use his own
word, a certain amount of mortification connected with the
affair.
-- 114 -- p590-139
CHAPTER IX. MRS. TALBOT GIVES HER LITTLE DINNER PARTY, AND MR. BELCHER MAKES AN EXCEEDINGLY PLEASANT ACQUAINTANCE.
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Mrs. Talbot had a very dear friend. She had been her
dear friend ever since the two had roomed together at boarding-school.
Sometimes she had questioned whether in reality
Mrs. Helen Dillingham was her dear friend, or whether the
particular friendship was all on the other side; but Mrs. Dillingham
had somehow so manipulated the relation as always to
appear to be the favored party. When, therefore, the dinner
was determined upon, Mrs. Dillingham's card of invitation
was the first one addressed. She was a widow and alone. She
complemented Mr. Belcher, who was also alone.
Exactly the position Mrs. Dillingham occupied in society,
it would be hard to define. Everybody invited her,
and yet everybody, without any definite reason, considered
her a little “off color.” She was beautiful, she was accomplished,
she talked wonderfully well, she was au fait in
art, literature, society. She was superficially religious, and
she formed the theater of the struggle of a black angel and a
white one, neither of whom ever won a complete victory, or
held whatever advantage he gained for any considerable
length of time. Nothing could be finer than Mrs. Dillingham
in her fine moods; nothing coarser when the black angel
was enjoying one of his victories, and the white angel had sat
down to breathe. It was the impression given in these latter
moments that fixed upon her the suspicion that she was not
quite what she ought to be. The flowers bloomed where she
walked, but there was dust on them. The cup she handed to
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-- --
Mr. Belcher is presented to Mrs. Dillingham.
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-- 115 -- p590-142
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her friends was pure to the eye, but it had a muddy taste.
She was a whole woman in sympathy, power, beauty, and
sensibility, and yet one felt that somewhere within she harbored
a devil—a refined devil in its play, a gross one when it
had the woman at unresisting advantage.
Next came the Schoonmakers, an elderly gentleman and his
wife, who dined out a great deal, and lived on the ancient respectability
of their family. They talked much about “the
old New Yorkers,” and of the inroads and devastations of
the parvenu. They were thoroughly posted on old family
estates and mansions, the intermarriages of the Dutch aristocracy,
and the subject of heraldry. Mr. Schoonmaker made
a hobby of old Bibles, and Mrs. Schoonmaker of old lace.
The two hobbies combined gave a mingled air of erudition
and gentility to the pair that was quite impressive, while their
unquestionably good descent was a source of social capital to
all of humbler origin who were fortunate enough to draw them
to their tables.
Next came the Tunbridges. Mr. Tunbridge was the president
of a bank, and Mrs. Tunbridge was the president of Mr.
Tunbridge—a large, billowy woman, who “brought him his
money,” according to the speech of the town. Mr. Tunbridge
had managed his trust with great skill, and was glad at
any time, and at any social sacrifice, to be brought into contact
with men who carried large deposit accounts.
Next in order were Mr. and Mrs. Cavendish. Mr. Cavendish
was a lawyer—a hook-nosed, hawk-eyed man, who knew
a little more about everything than anybody else did, and
was celebrated in the city for successfully managing the most
intractable cases, and securing the most princely fees. If a
rich criminal were brought into straits before the law, he always
sent for Mr. Cavendish. If the unprincipled managers
of a great corporation wished to ascertain just how closely before
the wind they could sail without being swamped, they
consulted Mr. Cavendish. He was everywhere accounted a
great lawyer by those who estimated acuteness to be above
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astuteness, strategy better than an open and fair fight, and
success more to be desired than justice.
It would weary the reader to go through with a description
of Mrs. Talbot's dinner party in advance. They were such
people as Mr. and Mrs. Talbot naturally drew around them.
The minister was invited, partly as a matter of course, and
partly to occupy Mr. Schoonmaker on the subject of Bibles.
The doctor was invited because Mrs. Talbot was fond of him,
and because he always took “such an interest in the family.”
When Mr. Belcher arrived at Talbot's beautiful but quiet
house, the guests had all assembled, and, clothing their faces
with that veneer of smile which hungry people who are about
to dine at another man's expense feel compelled to wear in the
presence of their host, they were chatting over the news of
the day.
It is probable that the great city was never the scene of a
personal introduction that gave more quiet amusement to an
assemblage of guests than that of the presentation of Mr.
Belcher. That gentleman's first impression as he entered the
room was that Talbot had invited a company of clergymen
to meet him. His look of surprise as he took a survey of the
assembly was that of a knave who found himself for the first
time in good company; but as he looked from the gentlemen
to the ladies, in their gay costumes and display of costly
jewelry, he concluded that they could not be the wives of clergymen.
The quiet self-possession of the group, and the consciousness
that he was not en régle in the matter of dress, oppressed
him; but he was bold, and he knew that they knew
that he was worth a million of dollars.
The “stiff upper lip” was placed at its stiffest in the midst
of his florid expanse of face, as, standing still, in the center
of the room, he greeted one after another to whom he was
presented, in a way peculiarly his own.
He had never been in the habit of lifting his hat, in courtesy
to man or woman. Even the touching its brim with his
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fingers had degenerated into a motion that began with a flourish
toward it, and ended with a suave extension of his palm toward
the object of his obeisance. On this occasion he quite
forgot that he had left his hat in the hall, and so, assuming
that it still crowned his head, he went through with eight or
ten hand flourishes that changed the dignified and self-contained
assembly into a merry company of men and women,
who would not have been willing to tell Mr. Belcher what
they were laughing at.
The last person to whom he was introduced was Mrs. Dillingham,
the lady who stood nearest to him—so near that the
hand flourish seemed absurd even to him, and half died in the
impulse to make it. Mrs. Dillingham, in her black and her
magnificent diamonds, went down almost upon the floor in
the demonstration of her admiring and reverential courtesy,
and pronounced the name of Mr. Belcher with a musical distinctness
of enunciation that arrested and charmed the ears
of all who heard it. It seemed as if every letter were swimming
in a vehicle compounded of respect, veneration, and
affection. The consonants flowed shining and smooth like
gold-fish through a globe of crystal illuminated by the sun.
The tone in which she spoke the name seemed to rob it of all
vulgar associations, and to inaugurate it as the key-note of a
fine social symphony.
Mr. Belcher was charmed, and placed by it at his case. It
wrought upon him and upon the company the effect which she
designed. She was determined he should not only show at
his best, but that he should be conscious of the favor she had
won for him.
Before dinner was announced, Mr. Talbot made a little
speech to his guests, ostensibly to give them the good news
that Mr. Belcher had purchased the mansion, built and formerly
occupied by Mr. Palgrave, but really to explain that he
had caught him in town on business, and taken him at the
disadvantage of distance from his evening dress, though, of
course, he did not say it in such and so many words. The
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speech was unnecessary. Mrs. Dillingham had told the whole
story in her own unapproachable way.
When dinner was announced Mr. Belcher was requested to
lead Mrs. Talbot to her seat, and was himself placed between
his hostess and Mrs. Dillingham. Mrs. Talbot was a stately,
beautiful woman, and bore off her elegant toilet like a queen.
In her walk into the dining-room, her shapely arm rested
upon the proprietor's, and her brilliant eyes looked into his
with an expression that flattered to its utmost all the fool there
was in him. There was a little rivalry between the “dear
friends;” but the unrestricted widow was more than a match
for the circumspect and guarded wife, and Mr. Belcher was
delighted to find himself seated side by side with the former.
He had not talked five minutes with Mrs. Dillingham before
he knew her. The exquisite varnish that covered her
person and her manners not only revealed, but made beautiful,
the gnarled and stained wood beneath. Underneath the
polish he saw the element that allied her with himself. There
was no subject upon which she could not lead or accompany
him with brilliant talk, yet he felt that there was a coarse
under-current of sympathy by which he could lead her, or she
could lead him—where?
The courtly manners of the table, the orderly courses that
came and went as if the domestic administration were some
automatic machine, and the exquisite appointments of the
board, all exercised a powerful moral influence upon him;
and though they did not wholly suppress him, they toned him
down, so that he really talked well. He had a fund of small
wit and drollery that was sufficient, at least, for a single dinner;
and, as it was quaint and fresh, the guests were not only
amused, but pleased. In the first place, much could be forgiven
to the man who owned Palgrave's Folly. No small
consideration was due to one who, in a quiet country town,
had accumulated a million dollars. A person who had the
power to reward attention with grand dinners and splendid
receptions was certainly not a person to be treated lightly.
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Mr. Tunbridge undertook to talk finance with him, but
retired under the laugh raised by Mr. Belcher's statement that
he had been so busy making money that he had had no time
to consider questions of finance. Mr. Schoonmaker and the
minister were deep in Bibles, and on referring some question
to Mr. Belcher concerning “The Breeches Bible,” received
in reply the statement that he had never arrived any nearer a
Breeches Bible than a pocket handkerchief with the Lord's
Prayer on it. Mr. Cavendish simply sat and criticised the
rest. He had never seen anybody yet who knew anything
about finance. The Chamber of Commerce was a set of old
women, the Secretary of the Treasury was an ass, and the
Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means was a person
he should be unwilling to take as an office-boy. As for him,
he never could see the fun of old Bibles. If he wanted a
Bible he would get a new one.
Each man had his shot, until the conversation fell from the
general to the particular, and at last Mr. Belcher found himself
engaged in the most delightful conversation of his life
with the facile woman at his side. He could make no approach
to her from any quarter without being promptly met.
She was quite as much at home, and quite as graceful, in bandying
badinage as in expatiating upon the loveliness of country
life and the ritual of her church.
Mr. Talbot did not urge wine upon his principal, for he
saw that he was excited and off his guard; and when, at
length, the banquet came to its conclusion, the proprietor
declined to remain with the gentlemen and the supplementary
wine and cigars, but took coffee in the drawing-room with
the ladies. Mrs. Dillingham's eye was on Mrs. Talbot, and
when she saw her start toward them from her seat, she took
Mr. Belcher's arm for a tour among the artistic treasures of
the house.
“My dear Kate,” said Mrs. Dillingham, “give me the
privilege of showing Mr. Belcher some of your beautiful
things.”
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“Oh, certainly,” responded Mrs. Talbot, her face flushing,
“and don't forget yourself, my child, among the rest.”
Mrs. Dillingham pressed Mr. Belcher's arm, an action which
said: “Oh, the jealous creature!”
They went from painting to painting, and sculpture to
sculpture, and then, over a cabinet of bric-à-brac, she quietly
led the conversation to Mr. Belcher's prospective occupation
of the Palgrave mansion. She had nothing in the world to
do. She should be so happy to assist poor Mrs. Belcher in
the adjustment of her housekeeping. It would be a real pleasure
to her to arrange the furniture, and do anything to help
that quiet country lady in inaugurating the splendors of city
life. She knew all the caterers, all the confectioners, all the
modistes, all the city ways, and all the people worth knowing.
She was willing to become, for Mrs. Belcher's sake,
city-directory, commissionaire, adviser, director, everything.
She would take it as a great kindness if she could be permitted
to make herself useful.
All this was honey to the proprietor. How Mrs. Dillingham
would shine in his splendid mansion! How she would
illuminate his landau! How she would save his quiet wife,
not to say himself, from the gaucheries of which both would
be guilty until the ways of the polite world could be learned!
How delightful it would be to have a sympathetic friend
whose intelligent and considerate advice would be always
ready!
When the gentlemen returned to the drawing-room, and
disturbed the confidential tête-à-tête of these new friends, Mrs.
Dillingham declared it was time to go, and Mr. Belcher insisted
on seeing her home in his own carriage.
The dinner party broke up with universal hand-shakings.
Mr. Belcher was congratulated on his magnificent purchase
and prospects. They would all be happy to make Mrs. Belcher's
acquaintance, and she really must lose no time in letting
them know when she would be ready to receive visitors.
Mr. Belcher saw Mrs. Dillingham home. He held her
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pretty hands at parting, as if he were an affectionate older
brother who was about to sail on a voyage around the world.
At last he hurriedly relinquished her to the man-servant who
had answered her summons, then ran down the steps and
drove to his hotel.
Mounting to his rooms, he lit every burner in his parlor,
and then surveyed himself in the mirror.
“Where did she find it, old boy? Eh? Where did she
find it? Was it the figure? Was it the face? Hang the
swallow tails! Must you, sir, come to such a humiliation?
How are the mighty fallen! The lion of Sevenoaks in the
skin of an ass! But it must be. Ah! Mrs. Belcher—Mrs.
Belcher—Mrs. Belcher! You are good, but you are lumpy.
You were pretty once, but you are no Mrs. Dillingham. By
the gods! Wouldn't she swim around my house like a queen!
Far in azure depths of space, I behold a star! Its light
shines for me. It doesn't? It must not? Who says that?
Did you address that remark to me, sir? By the way, how
do you think you got along? Did you make a fool of yourself,
or did you make a fool of somebody? Honors are easy.
Let Robert Belcher alone! Is Toll making money a little
too fast? What do you think? Perhaps you will settle that
question by and by. You will keep him while you can use
him. Then Toll, my boy, you can drift. In the meantime,
splendor! and in the meantime let Sevenoaks howl, and learn
to let Robert Belcher alone.”
From these dizzy heights of elation Mr. Belcher descended
to his bed and his heavy dreams, and the next morning found
him whirling away at the rate of thirty miles an hour, but not
northward. Whither was he going?
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CHAPTER X. WHICH TELLS HOW A LAWYER SPENT HIS VACATION IN CAMP, AND TOOK HOME A SPECIMEN OF GAME THAT HE HAD NEVER BEFORE FOUND IN THE WOODS.
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It was a bright moonlight night when Mike Conlin and
Jim started off from Sevenoaks for home, leaving Mr. Balfour
and his boy to follow. The old horse had a heavy load, and
it was not until an hour past midnight that Mike's house was
reached. There Jim made the new clothes, comprising a
complete outfit for his boarders at Number Ten, into a convenient
package, and swinging it over his shoulders, started
for his distant cabin on foot. Mike, after resting himself and
his horse, was to follow in the morning with the tools and
stores, so as to arrive at the river at as early an hour as Mr.
Balfour could complete the journey from Sevenoaks, with his
lighter load and swifter horses.
Jim Fenton, who had lain still for several days, and was
full of his schemes for Mr. Balfour and his proteges in camp,
and warm with his memories of Miss Butterworth, simply gloried
in his moonlight tramp. The accumulated vitality of his
days of idleness was quite enough to make all the fatigues before
him light and pleasant. At nine o'clock the next morning
he stood by the side of his boat again. The great stillness
of the woods, responding in vivid color to the first kisses
of the frost, half intoxicated him. No world-wide wanderer,
returning after many years to the home of his childhood,
could have felt more exulting gladness than he, as he shoved
his boat from the bank and pushed up the shining stream in
the face of the sun.
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Benedict and Harry had not been idle during his absence.
A deer had been shot and dressed; trout had been caught
and saved alive; a cave had been dug for the preservation of
vegetables; and when Jim shouted, far down the stream, to
announce his approach, there were three happy persons on
shore, waiting to welcome him—Turk being the third, and apparently
oblivious of the fact that he was not as much a human
being as any of the party. Turk added the “tiger” to
Harry's three cheers, and Jim was as glad as a boy when his
boat touched the shore, and he received the affectionate
greetings of the party.
A choice meal was nearly in readiness for him, but not a
mouthful would he taste until he had unfolded his treasures,
and displayed to the astonished eyes of Mr. Benedict and the
lad the comfortable clothing he had brought for them.
“Take 'em to Number Ten and put 'em on,” said Jim.
“I'm a goin' to eat with big folks to-day, if clo'es can make
'em. Them's yer stockin's and them's yer boots, and them's
yer indigoes and them's yer clo'es.”
Jim's idea of the word “indigoes” was, that it drew its
meaning partly from the color of the articles designated, and
partly from their office. They were blue undergoes—in other
words, blue flannel shirts.
Jim sat down and waited. He saw that, while Harry was
hilarious over his good fortune, Mr. Benedict was very silent
and humble. It was twenty minutes before Harry reappeared;
and when he came bounding toward Jim, even Turk did not
know him. Jim embraced him, and could not help feeling
that he had acquired a certain amount of property in the
lad.
When Mr. Benedict came forth from the little cabin, and found
Jim chaffing and petting his boy, he was much embarrassed.
He could not speak, but walked directly past the pair, and
went out upon the bank of the river, with his eyes averted.
Jim comprehended it all. Leaving Harry, he went up to
his guest, and placed his hand upon his shoulder. “Will ye
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furgive me, Mr. Benedict? I didn't go fur to make it hard
fur ye.”
“Jim,” said Mr. Benedict, struggling to retain his composure,
“I can never repay your overwhelming kindness, and
the fact oppresses me.”
“Well,” said Jim, “I s'pose I don't make 'lowance enough
fur the difference in folks. Ye think ye oughter pay fur this
sort o' thing, an' I don't want no pay. I git comfort enough
outen it, any way.”
Benedict turned, took and warmly pressed Jim's hand, and
then they went back to their dinner. After they had eaten,
and Jim had sat down to his pipe, he told his guests that they
were to have visitors that night—a man from the city and his
little boy—and that they would spend a fortnight with them.
The news alarmed Mr. Benedict, for his nerves were still
weak, and it was a long time before he could be reconciled to
the thought of intrusion upon his solitude; but Jim reassured
him by his enthusiastic accounts of Mr. Balfour, and Harry
was overjoyed with the thought of having a companion in the
strange lad.
“I thought I'd come home an' git ye ready,” said Jim;
“fur I knowed ye'd feel bad to meet a gentleman in yer old
poor-house fixin's. Burn 'em or bury 'em as soon as I'm
gone. I don't never want to see them things agin.”
Jim went off again down the river, and Mr. Benedict and
Harry busied themselves in cleaning the camp, and preparing
Number Ten for the reception of Mr. Balfour and his boy,
having previously determined to take up their abode with Jim
for the winter. The latter had a hard afternoon. He was
tired with his night's tramp, and languid with loss of sleep.
When he arrived at the landing he found Mr. Balfour waiting.
He had passed Mike Conlin on the way, and even while they
were talking the Irishman came in sight. After half-an hour
of busy labor, the goods and passengers were bestowed, Mike
was paid for the transportation, and the closing journeys of
the day were begun.
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When Jim had made half of the weary row up the river, he
ran into a little cove to rest and wipe the perspiration from
his forehead. Then he informed Mr. Balfour that he was not
alone in the camp, and, in his own inimitable way, having
first enjoined the strictest secrecy, he told the story of Mr.
Benedict and his boy.
“Benedict will hunt and fish with ye better nor I can,”
said he, “an' he's a better man nor I be any way; but I'm
at yer sarvice, and ye shall have the best time in the woods
that I can give ye.”
Then he enlarged upon the accomplishments of Benedict's
boy.
“He favors yer boy a little,” said Jim, eyeing the lad
closely. “Dress 'em alike, and they wouldn't be a bad pair
o' brothers.”
Jim did not recognize the germs of change that existed in
his accidental remark, but he noticed that a shade of pain
passed over the lawyer's face.
“Where is the other little feller that ye used to brag over,
Mr. Balfour?” inquired Jim.
“He's gone, Jim; I lost him. He died a year ago.”
Jim had no words with which to meet intelligence of this
character, so he did not try to utter any; but, after a minute
of silence, he said: “That's what floors me. Them dies
that's got everything, and them lives that's got nothin'—
lives through thick and thin. It seems sort o' strange to me
that the Lord runs everything so kind o' car'less like, when
there ain't nobody to bring it to his mind.”
Mr. Balfour made no response, and Jim resumed his oars.
But for the moon, it would have been quite dark when Number
Nine was reached, but, once there, the fatigues of the journey
were forgotten. It was Thede Balfour's first visit to the
woods, and he was wild with excitement. Mr. Benedict and
Harry gave the strangers a cordial greeting. The night was
frosty and crisp, and Jim drew his boat out of the water, and
permitted his stores to remain in it through the night. A
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hearty supper prepared them all for sleep, and Jim led his
city friends to Number Ten, to enjoy their camp by themselves.
A camp-fire, recently lighted, awaited them, and,
with its flames illuminating the weird scenes around them,
they went to sleep.
The next day was Sunday. To the devoutly disposed, there
is no silence that seems so deeply hallowed as that which pervades
the forest on that holy day. No steamer plows the
river; no screaming, rushing train profanes the stillness; the
beasts that prowl, and the birds that fly, seem gentler than on
other days; and the wilderness, with its pillars and arches,
and aisles, becomes a sanctuary. Prayers that no ears can
hear but those of the Eternal; psalms that win no responses
except from the echoes; worship that rises from hearts unencumbered
by care, and undistracted by pageantry and dress—
all these are possible in the woods; and the great Being to
whom the temples of the world are reared cannot have failed
to find, in ten thousand instances, the purest offerings in
lonely camps and cabins.
They had a delightful and bountiful breakfast, and, at its
close, they divided themselves naturally into a double group.
The two boys and Turk went off by themselves to watch the
living things around them, while the men remained together
by the camp-fire.
Mr. Balfour drew out a little pocket-Testament, and was
soon absorbed in reading. Jim watched him, as a hungry
dog watches a man at his meal, and at last, having grown
more and more uneasy, he said:
“Give us some o' that, Mr. Balfour.”
Mr. Balfour looked up and smiled, and then read to him
the parable of the talents.
“I don't know nothin' 'bout it,' said Jim, at the conclusion,
“but it seems to me the man was a little rough on the
feller with one talent. 'Twas a mighty small capital to start
with, an' he didn't give 'im any chance to try it over; but
what bothers me the most is about the man's trav'lin' into a
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fur country. They hadn't no chance to talk with 'im about
it, and git his notions. It stan's to reason that the feller with
one talent would think his master was stingy, and be riled
over it.”
“You must remember, Jim, that all he needed was to ask
for wisdom in order to receive it,” said Mr. Benedict.
“No; the man that traveled into a fur country stan's for
the Almighty, and he'd got out o' the way. He'd jest gi'n
these fellers his capital, and quit, and left 'em to go it alone.
They couldn't go arter 'im, and he couldn't 'a' hearn a word
they said. He did what he thought was all right, and didn't
want to be bothered. I never think about prayin' till I git
into a tight place. It stan's to reason that the Lord don't
want people comin' to him to do things that they can do
theirselves. I shouldn't pray for breath; I sh'd jest h'ist the
winder. If I wanted a bucket o' water, I sh'd go for it. If
a man's got common sense, and a pair o' hands, he hain't no
business to be botherin' other folks till he gits into what he
can't git out of. When he's squeezed, then in course he'll
squeal. It seems to me that it makes a sort of a spooney of a
man to be always askin' for what he can git if he tries. If
the feller that only had one talent had brushed round, he
could 'a' made a spec on it, an' had somethin' to show fur it,
but he jest hid it. I don't stan' up for 'im. I think he was
meaner nor pusly not to make the best on't, but he didn't
need to pray for sense, for the man didn't want 'im to use no
more nor his nateral stock, an' he knowed if he used that
he'd be all right.”
“But we are told to pray, Jim,” said Mr. Balfour, “and
assured that it is pleasant to the Lord to receive our petitions.
We are even told to pray for our daily bread.”
“Well, it can't mean jest that, fur the feller that don't
work for't don't git it, an' he hadn't oughter git it. If he
don't lift his hands, but jest sets with his mouth open, he gits
mostly flies. The old birds, with a nest full o' howlin' young
ones, might go on, I s'pose, pickin' up grasshoppers till the
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cows come home, an' feedin' 'em, but they don't. They jest
poke 'em out o' the nest, an' larn 'em to fly an' pick up their
own livin'; an' that's what makes birds on 'em. They pray
mighty hard fur their daily bread, I tell ye, and the way the
old birds answer is jest to poke 'em out, and let 'em slide. I
don't see many prayin' folks, an' I don't see many folks any
way; but I have a consait that a feller can pray so much an'
do so little, that he won't be nobody. He'll jest grow weaker
an' weaker all the time.”
“I don't see,” said Mr. Balfour, laughing, and turning to
Mr. Benedict, “but we've had the exposition of our Scripture.”
The former had always delighted to hear Jim talk, and
never lost an opportunity to set him going; but he did not
know that Jim's exposition of the parable had a personal
motive. Mr. Benedict knew that it had, and was very serious
over it. His nature was weak in many respects. His
will was weak; he had no combativeness; he had a wish to
lean. He had been baffled and buffeted in the world. He
had gone down into the darkness, praying all the way; and
now that he had come out of it, and had so little society; now
that his young life was all behind him, and so few earthly
hopes beckoned him on, he turned with a heart morbidly religious
to what seemed to him the only source of comfort open
to him. Jim had watched him with pain. He had seen him,
from day to day, spending his hours alone, and felt that prayer
formed almost the staple of his life. He had seen him willing
to work, but knew that his heart was not in it. He was
not willing to go back into the world, and assert his place
among men. The poverty, disease, and disgrace of his former
life dwelt in his memory, and he shrank from the conflicts
and competitions which would be necessary to enable him to
work out better results for himself.
Jim thoroughly believed that Benedict was religiously diseased,
and that he never could become a man again until he
had ceased to live so exclusively in the spiritual world. He
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contrived all possible ways to keep him employed. He put
responsibility upon him. He stimulated him with considerations
of the welfare of Harry. He disturbed him in his retirement.
He contrived fatigues that would induce sound
sleep. To use his own language, he had tried to cure him of
“loppin',” but with very unsatisfactory results.
Benedict comprehended Jim's lesson, and it made an impression
upon him; but to break himself of his habit of thought
and life was as difficult as the breaking of morbid habits always
is. He knew that he was a weak man, and saw that he had
never fully developed that which was manliest within him.
He saw plainly, too, that his prayers would not develop it,
and that nothing but a faithful, bold, manly use of his powers
could accomplish the result. He knew that he had a better
brain, and a brain better furnished, than that of Robert Belcher,
yet he had known to his sorrow, and well-nigh to his
destruction, that Robert Belcher could wind him around his
finger. Prayer had never saved him from this, and nothing
could save him but a development of his own manhood. Was
he too old for hope? Could he break away from the delights
of his weakness, and grow into something stronger and better?
Could he so change the attitude of his soul that it should
cease to be exigent and receptive, and become a positive, self-poised,
and active force? He sighed when these questions
came to him, but he felt that Jim had helped him in many
practical ways, and could help him still further.
A stranger, looking upon the group, would have found it a
curious and interesting study. Mr. Balfour was a tall, lithe
man, with not a redundant ounce of flesh on him. He was
as straight as an arrow, bore on his shoulders a fine head that
gave evidence in its contour of equal benevolence and force,
and was a practical, fearless, straightforward, true man. He
enjoyed humor, and though he had a happy way of evoking it
from others, possessed or exhibited very little himself. Jim
was better than a theater to him. He spent so much of his
time in the conflicts of his profession, that in his vacations he
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simply opened heart and mind to entertainment. A shrewd,
frank, unsophisticated nature was a constant feast to him, and
though he was a keen sportsman, the woods would have had
few attractions without Jim.
Mr. Benedict regarded him with profound respect, as a
man who possessed the precise qualities which had been denied
to himself—self-assertion, combativeness, strong will,
and “push.” Even through Benedict's ample beard, a good
reader of the human face would have detected the weak chin,
while admiring the splendid brow, silken curls, and handsome
eyes above it. He was a thoroughly gentle man, and, curiously
enough, attracted the interest of Mr. Balfour in consequence
of his gentleness. The instinct of defense and
protection to everything weak and dependent was strong
within the lawyer; and Benedict affected him like a woman.
It was easy for the two to become friends, and as Mr. Balfour
grew familiar with the real excellences of his new acquaintance,
with his intelligence in certain directions, and his
wonderful mechanical ingenuity, he conceived just as high a
degree of respect for him as he could entertain for one who
was entirely unfurnished with those weapons with which the
battles of life are fought.
It was a great delight to Jim to see his two friends get along
so well together, particularly as he had pressing employment
on his hands, in preparing for the winter. So, after the first
day, Benedict became Mr. Balfour's guide during the fortnight
which he passed in the woods.
The bright light of Monday morning was the signal for the
beginning of their sport, and Thede, who had never thrown
a fly, was awake at the first day-light; and before Jim had the
breakfast of venison and cakes ready, he had strung his tackle
and leaned his rod against the cabin in readiness for his enterprise.
They had a day of satisfactory fishing, and brought
home half-a-hundred spotted beauties that would have delighted
the eyes of any angler in the world; and when their
golden flesh stood open and broiling before the fire, or hissed
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and sputtered in the frying-pan, watched by the hungry and
admiring eyes of the fishermen, they were attractive enough
to be the food of the gods. And when, at last, the group
gathered around the rude board, with appetites that seemed
measureless, and devoured the dainties prepared for them, the
pleasures of the day were crowned.
But all this was comparatively tame sport to Mr. Balfour.
He had come for larger game, and waited only for the nightfall
to deepen into darkness to start upon his hunt for deer.
The moon had passed her full, and would not rise until after
the ordinary bed-time. The boys were anxious to be witnesses
of the sport, and it was finally concluded, that for once, at
least, they should be indulged in their desire.
The voice of a hound was never heard in the woods, and
even the “still hunting” practiced by the Indian was never
resorted to until after the streams were frozen.
Jim had been busy during the day in picking up pine knots,
and digging out old stumps whose roots were charged with
pitch. These he had collected and split up into small pieces,
so that everything should be in readiness for the “float.” As
soon as the supper was finished, he brought a little iron
“Jack,” mounted upon a standard, and proceeded to fix this
upright in the bow of the boat. Behind this he placed a
square of sheet iron, so that a deer, dazzled by the light of the
blazing pine, would see nothing behind it, while the occupants
of the boat could see everything ahead without being
blinded by the light, of which they could see nothing. Then
he fixed a knob of tallow upon the forward sight of Mr. Balfour's
gun, so that, projecting in front of the sheet iron
screen, it would be plainly visible and render necessary only
the raising of the breech to the point of half-hiding the tallow,
in order to procure as perfect a range as if it were broad day-light.
All these preparations were familiar to Mr. Balfour, and,
loading his heavy shot-gun with a powerful charge, he waited
impatiently for the darkness.
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At nine o'clock, Jim said it was time to start, and, lighting
his torch, he took his seat in the stern of the boat, and bade
Mr. Balfour take his place in the bow, where a board, placed
across the boat, made him a comfortable seat. The boys,
warmly wrapped, took their places together in the middle of
the boat, and, clasping one another's hands and shivering with
excitement, bade good-night to Mr. Benedict, who pushed
them from the shore.
The night was still, and Jim's powerful paddle urged the
little craft up the stream with a push so steady, strong, and
noiseless, that its passengers might well have imagined that
the unseen river-spirits had it in tow. The torch cast its long
glare into the darkness on either bank, and made shadows so
weird and changeful that the boys imagined they saw every
form of wild beast and flight of strange bird with which pictures
had made them familiar. Owls hooted in the distance.
A wild-cat screamed like a frightened child. A partridge,
waked from its perch by a flash of the torch, whirred off into
the woods.
At length, after paddling up the stream for a mile, they
heard the genuine crash of a startled animal. Jim stopped
and listened. Then came the spiteful stroke of a deer's forefeet
upon the leaves, and a whistle so sharp, strong and vital,
that it thrilled every ear that heard it. It was a question, a
protest, a defiance all in one; but not a sign of the animal
could be seen. He was back in the cover, wary and watching,
and was not to be tempted nearer by the light.
Jim knew the buck, and knew that any delay on his account
would be useless.
“I knowed 'im when I hearn 'im whistle, an' he knowed
me. He's been shot at from this boat more nor twenty times.
`Not any pine-knots on my plate,' says he. `I seen 'em
afore, an' you can pass.' I used to git kind o' mad at 'im,
an' promise to foller 'im, but he's so 'cute, I sort o' like 'im.
He 'muses me.”
While Jim waited and talked in a low tone, the buck was
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evidently examining the light and the craft, at his leisure and
at a distance. Then he gave another lusty whistle that was
half snort, and bounded off into the woods by leaps that
struck every foot upon the ground at the same instant, and
soon passed beyond hearing.
“Well, the old feller's gone,” said Jim, “an' now I know
a patch o' lily-pads up the river where I guess we can find a
beast that hasn't had a public edication.”
The tension upon the nerves of the boys was relieved, and
they whispered between themselves about what they had seen,
or thought they had seen.
All became still, as Jim turned his boat up the stream again.
After proceeding for ten or fifteen minutes in perfect silence,
Jim whispered:
“Skin yer eyes, now, Mr. Balfour; we're comin' to a lick.”
Jim steered his boat around a little bend, and in a moment
it was running in shallow water, among grass and rushes.
The bottom of the stream was plainly visible, and Mr. Balfour
saw that they had left the river, and were pushing up the debouchure
of a sluggish little affluent. They brushed along
among the grass for twenty or thirty rods, when, at the same
instant, every eye detected a figure in the distance. Two
blazing, quiet, curious eyes were watching them. Jim had
an instinct which assured him that the deer was fascinated by
the light, and so he pushed toward him silently, then stopped,
and held his boat perfectly still. This was the signal for Mr.
Balfour, and in an instant the woods were startled by a discharge
that deafened the silence.
There was a violent splash in the water, a scramble up the
bank, a bound or two toward the woods, a pitiful bleat, and
then all was still.
“We've got 'im,” said Jim. “He's took jest one buckshot
through his heart. Ye didn't touch his head nor his
legs. He jest run till the blood leaked out and he gi'n it up.
Now, boys, you set here, and sing hallelujer till we bring 'im
in.”
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The nose of the little craft was run against the bank, and
Mr. Balfour, seizing the torch, sprang on shore, and Jim followed
him into the woods. They soon found track of the
game by the blood that dabbled the bushes, and stumbled
upon the beautiful creature stone dead—fallen prone, with his
legs doubled under him. Jim swung him across his shoulders,
and, tottering behind Mr. Balfour, bore him back to the
boat. Placing him in the bottom, the two men resumed their
seats, and Jim, after carefully working himself out of the inlet
into the river, settled down to a long, swift stroke that bore
them back to the camp just as the moon began to show
herself above the trees.
It was a night long to be remembered by the boys, a fitting
inauguration of the lawyer's vacation, and an introduction to
woodcraft from which, in after years, the neophytes won rare
stores of refreshment and health.
Mr. Benedict received them with hearty congratulations,
and the perfect sleep of the night only sharpened their desire
for further depredations upon the game that lived around
them, in the water and on the land.
As the days passed on, they caught trout until they were
tired of the sport; they floated for deer at night; they took
weary tramps in all directions, and at evening, around the
camp-fires, rehearsed their experiences.
During all this period, Mr. Balfour was watching Harry
Benedict. The contrast between the lad and his own son was
as marked as that between the lad's father and himself, but
the positions were reversed. Harry led, contrived, executed.
He was positive, facile, amiable, and the boys were as happy
together as their parents were. Jim had noticed the remarkable
interest that Mr. Balfour took in the boy, and had begun
to suspect that he entertained intentions which would deprive
the camp of one of its chief sources of pleasure.
One day when the lawyer and his guide were quietly eating
their lunch in the forest, Mr. Balfour went to work, in his
quiet, lawyer-like way, to ascertain the details of Benedict's
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history; and he heard them all. When he heard who had benefited
by his guide's inventions, and learned just how matters
stood with regard to the Belcher rifle, he became, for the first
time since he had been in the woods, thoroughly excited. He
had a law-case before him as full of the elements of romance
as any that he had ever been engaged in. A defrauded inventor,
living in the forest in poverty, having escaped from
the insane ward of an alms-house, and the real owner of
patent rights that were a mine of wealth to the man who
believed that death had blotted out all the evidences of his
villainy—this was quite enough to excite his professional interest,
even had he been unacquainted with the man defrauded.
But the position of this uncomplaining, dependent
man, who could not fight his own battles, made an irresistible
appeal to his sense of justice and his manhood.
The moment, however, that the lawyer proposed to assist in
righting the wrong, Mr. Benedict became dangerously excited.
He could tell his story, but the thought of going out
into the world again, and, particularly of engaging in a conflict
with Robert Belcher, was one that he could not entertain.
He was happier in the woods than he had been for
many years. The life was gradually strengthening him. He
hoped the time would come when he could get something for
his boy, but, for the present, he could engage in no struggle
for reclaiming and maintaining his rights. He believed that
an attempt to do it would again drive him to distraction, and
that, somehow, Mr. Belcher would get the advantage of him.
His fear of the great proprietor had become morbidly acute,
and Mr. Balfour could make no headway against it. It was
prudent to let the matter drop for a while.
Then Mr. Balfour opened his heart in regard to the boy.
He told Benedict of the loss with which he had already acquainted
Jim, of the loneliness of his remaining son, of the
help that Harry could afford him, the need in which the lad
stood of careful education, and the accomplishments he could
win among better opportunities and higher society. He
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would take the boy, and treat him, up to the time of his majority,
as his own. If Mr. Benedict could ever return the
money expended for him, he could have the privilege of doing
so, but it would never be regarded as a debt. Once every year
the lawyer would bring the lad to the woods, so that he should
not forget his father, and if the time should ever come when
it seemed practicable to do so, a suit would be instituted that
would give him the rights so cruelly withheld from his natural
protector.
The proposition was one which taxed to its utmost Mr.
Benedict's power of self-control. He loved his boy better
than he loved himself. He hoped that, in some way, life
would be pleasanter and more successful to the lad than it had
been to him. He did not wish him to grow up illiterate and
in the woods; but how he was to live without him he could
not tell. The plucking out of an eye would have given him
less pain than the parting with his boy, though he felt from
the first that the lad would go.
Nothing could be determined without consulting Jim, and
as the conversation had destroyed the desire for further sport,
they packed their fishing-tackle and returned to camp.
“The boy was'n't got up for my 'commodation,” said Jim,
when the proposition was placed before him. “I seen the
thing comin' for a week, an' I've brung my mind to't. We
hain't got no right to keep 'im up here, if he can do better.
Turk ain't bad company fur them as likes dogs, but he ain't
improvin'. I took the boy away from Tom Buffum 'cause I
could do better by 'im nor he could, and when a man comes
along that can do better by 'im nor I can, he's welcome to
wade in. I hain't no right to spile a little feller's life 'cause
I like his company. I don't think much of a feller that would
cheat a man out of a jews-harp 'cause he liked to fool with it.
Arter all, this sendin' the boy off is jest turnin' 'im out to
pastur' to grow, an' takin' 'im in in the fall. He may git his
head up so high t'we can't git the halter on 'im again, but
he'll be worth more to somebody that can, nor if we kep 'im
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in the stable. I sh'll hate to say good-bye t'the little feller,
but I sh'll vote to have 'im go, unanimous.”
Mr. Benedict was not a man who had will enough to withstand
the rational and personal considerations that were
brought to bear upon him, and then the two boys were
brought into the consultation. Thede was overjoyed with the
prospect of having for a home companion the boy to whom he
had become so greatly attached, and poor Harry was torn by a
conflict of inclinations. To leave Jim and his father behind
was a great sorrow; and he was half angry with himself
to think that he could find any pleasure in the prospect
of a removal. But the love of change, natural to a boy, and
the desire to see the wonders of the great city, with accounts
of which Thede had excited his imagination, overcame his
inclination to remain in the camp. The year of separation
would be very short, he thought, so that, after all, it was only
a temporary matter. The moment the project of going away
took possession of him, his regrets died, and the exit from
the woods seemed to him like a journey into dreamland, from
which he should return in the morning.
How to get the lad through Sevenoaks, where he would be
sure to be recognised, and so reveal the hiding-place of his
father, became at once a puzzling question. Mr. Balfour had
arranged with the man who brought him into the woods to
return in a fortnight and take him out, and as he was a man
who had known the Benedicts it would not be safe to trust to
his silence.
It was finally arranged that Jim should start off at once with
Harry, and engage Mike Conlin to go through Sevenoaks with
him in the night, and deliver him at the railroad at about the
hour when the regular stage would arrive with Mr. Balfour.
The people of Sevenoaks were not travelers, and it would be
a rare chance that should bring one of them through to that
point. The preparations were therefore made at once, and
the next evening poor Benedict was called upon to part with
his boy. It was a bitter struggle, but it was accomplished,
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and, excited by the strange life that was opening before him,
the boy entered the boat with Jim, and waved his adius to
the group that had gathered upon the bank to see them off.
Poor Turk, who had apparently understood all that had
passed in the conversations of the previous day, and become
fully aware of the bereavement that he was about to suffer,
stood upon the shore and howled and whined as they receded
into the distance. Then he went up to Thede, and licked his
hand, as if he would say; “Don't leave me as the other boy
has done; if you do, I shall be inconsolable.”
Jim effected his purpose, and returned before light the next
morning, and on the following day he took Mr. Balfour and
Thede down the river, and delivered them to the man whom
he found waiting for them. The programme was carried out
in all its details, and two days afterward the two boys were
sitting side by side in the railway-car that was hurrying them
toward the great city.
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CHAPTER XI. WHICH RECORDS MR. BELCHER'S CONNECTION WITH A GREAT SPECULATION AND BRINGS TO A CLOSE HIS RESIDENCE IN SEVENOAKS.
[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]
Whither was he going? He had a little fortune in his
pockets—more money than prudent men are in the habit of
carrying with them—and a scheme in his mind. After the
purchase of Palgrave's Folly, and the inauguration of a scale
of family expenditure far surpassing all his previous experience,
Mr. Belcher began to feel poor, and to realize the necessity
of extending his enterprise. To do him justice, he
felt that he had surpassed the proprieties of domestic life in
taking so important a step as that of changing his residence
without consulting Mrs. Belcher. He did not wish to meet
her at once; so it was easy for him, when he left New York,
to take a wide diversion on his way home.
For several months the reports of the great oil discoveries
of Pennsylvania had been floating through the press. Stories
of enormous fortunes acquired in a single week, and even in
a single day, were rife; and they had excited his greed with
a strange power. He had witnessed, too, the effect of these
stories upon the minds of the humble people of Sevenoaks.
They were uneasy in their poverty, and were in the habit of
reading with avidity all the accounts that emanated from the
new center of speculation. The monsters of the sea had long
been chased into the ice, and the whalers had returned with
scantier fares year after year; but here was light for the
world. The solid ground itself was echoing with the cry:
“Here she blows!” and “There she blows!” and the long
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harpoons went down to its vitals, and were fairly lifted out
by the pressure of the treasure that impatiently waited for deliverance.
Mr. Belcher had long desired to have a hand in this new
business. To see a great speculation pass by without yielding
him any return was very painful to him. During his brief stay
in New York he had been approached by speculators from the
new field of promise; and had been able by his quick wit
and ready business instinct to ascertain just the way in
which money was made and was to be made. He dismissed
them all, for he had the means in his hands of starting nearer
the sources of profit than themselves, and to be not only one
of the “bottom ring,” but to be the bottom man. No
moderate profit and no legitimate income would satisfy him.
He would gather the investments of the multitude into his
own capacious pockets, or he would have nothing to do with
the matter. He would sweep the board, fairly or foully, or
he would not play.
As he traveled along westward, he found that the company
was made up of men whose tickets took them to his own
destination. Most of them were quiet, with ears open to the
few talkers who had already been there, and were returning.
Mr. Belcher listened to them, laughed at them, scoffed at their
schemes, and laid up carefully all that they said. Before he
arrived at Corry he had acquired a tolerable knowledge of
the oil-fields, and determined upon his scheme of operations.
As he drew nearer the great center of excitement, he came
more into contact with the masses who had gathered there,
crazed with the spirit of speculation. Men were around him
whose clothes were shining with bitumen. The air was loaded
with the smell of petroleum. Derricks were thrown up on
every side; drills were at work piercing the earth; villages
were starting among stumps still fresh at the top, as if their
trees were cut but yesterday; rough men in high boots were
ranging the country; the depots were glutted with portable
steam-engines and all sorts of mining machinery, and there
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was but one subject of conversation. Some new well had
begun to flow with hundreds of barrels of petroleum per
diem. Some new man had made a fortune. Farmers, who
had barely been able to get a living from their sterile
acres, had become millionaires. The whole region was alive
with fortune-hunters, from every quarter of the country.
Millions of dollars were in the pockets of men who were
ready to purchase. Seedy, crazy, visionary fellows were
working as middle-men, to talk up schemes, and win their
bread, with as much more as they could lay their hands on.
The very air was charged with the contagion of speculation,
and men seemed ready to believe anything and do anything.
It appeared, indeed, as if a man had only to buy, to double
his money in a day; and half the insane multitude believed
it.
Mr. Belcher kept himself quiet, and defended himself from
the influences around him by adopting and holding his scoffing
mood. He believed nothing. He was there simply to
see what asses men could make of themselves; but he kept
his ears open. The wretched hotel at which he at last found
accommodations was thronged with fortune-seekers, among
whom he moved self-possessed and quite at home. On the
second day his mood began to tell on those around him.
There were men there who knew about him and his great
wealth—men who had been impressed with his sagacity. He
studied them carefully, gave no one his confidence, and quietly
laid his plans. On the evening of the third day he returned
to the hotel, and announced that he had had the good fortune
to purchase a piece of property that he proposed to operate
and improve on his own account.
Then he was approached with propositions for forming a
company. He had paid fifty thousand dollars for a farm—
paid the money—and before morning he had sold half of it
for what he gave for the whole, and formed a company with
the nominal capital of half a million of dollars, a moiety of
the stock being his own at no cost to him whatever. The
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arrangements were all made for the issue of stock and the
commencement of operations, and when, three days afterward,
he started from Titusville on his way home, he had in his
satchel blank certificates of stock, all signed by the officers of
the Continental Petroleum Company, to be limited in its issue
to the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He
never expected to see the land again. He did not expect that
the enterprise would be of the slightest value to those who
should invest in it. He expected to do just what others were
doing—to sell his stock and pocket the proceeds, while investors
pocketed their losses. It was all an acute business operation
with him; and he intended to take advantage of the
excitement of the time to “clean out” Sevenoaks and all the
region round about his country home, while his confreres
operated in their own localities. He chuckled over his plans
as if he contemplated some great, good deed that would be
of incalculable benefit to his neighbors. He suffered no
qualm of conscience, no revolt of personal honor, no spasm
of sympathy or pity.
As soon as he set out upon his journey homeward he began
to think of his New York purchase. He had taken a bold
step, and he wished that he had said something to Mrs.
Belcher about his plans, but he had been so much in the habit
of managing everything in his business without consulting her,
that it did not occur to him before he started from home that
any matter of his was not exclusively his own. He would
just as soon have thought of taking Phipps into his confidence,
or of deferring to his wishes in any project, as of extending
those courtesies to his wife. There was another consideration
which weighed somewhat heavily upon his mind.
He was not entirely sure that he would not be ashamed of
Mrs. Belcher in the grand home which he had provided for
himself. He respected her, and had loved her in his poor,
sensual fashion, some changeful years in the past; he had
regarded her as a good mother, and, at least, as an inoffensive
wife; but she was not Mrs. Dillingham. She would not be
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at home in the society of which he had caught a glimpse, or
among the splendors to which he would be obliged to introduce
her. Even Talbot, the man who was getting rich upon
the products of his enterprise, had a more impressive wife
than he. And thus, with much reflection, this strange, easynatured
brute without a conscience, wrought up his soul into
self-pity. In some way he had been defrauded. It never
could have been intended that a man capable of winning so
many of his heart's desires as he had proved himself to be,
should be tied to a woman incapable of illuminating and
honoring his position. If he only had a wife of whose person
he could be proud! If he only had a wife whose queenly
presence and manners would give significance to the splendors
of the Palgrave mansion!
There was no way left for him, however, but to make the
best of his circumstances, and put a brave face upon the matter.
Accordingly, the next morning after his arrival, he told,
with such display of enthusiasm as he could assume, the story
of his purchase. The children were all attention, and made
no hesitation to express their delight with the change that lay
before them. Mrs. Belcher grew pale, choked over her breakfast,
and was obliged to leave the table. At the close of the
meal, Mr. Belcher followed her to her room, and found her
with dry eyes and an angry face.
“Robert, you have determined to kill me,” she said, almost
fiercely.
“Oh, no, Sarah; not quite so bad as that.”
“How could you take a step which you knew would give
me a life-long pain? Have I not suffered enough? Is it not
enough that I have ceased practically to have a husband?—
that I have given up all society, and been driven in upon my
children? Am I to have no will, no consideration, no part
or lot in my own life?”
“Put it through, Sarah; you have the floor, and I'm ready
to take it all now.”
“And it is all for show,” she went on, “and is disgusting.
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There is not a soul in the city that your wealth can bring to
me that will give me society. I shall be a thousand times
lonelier there than I have been here; and you compel me to
go where I must receive people whom I shall despise, and
who, for that reason, will dislike me. You propose to
force me into a life that is worse than emptiness. I am
more nearly content here than I can ever be anywhere
else, and I shall never leave here without a cruel sense of sacrifice.”
“Good for you, Sarah!” said Mr. Belcher. “You're
more of a trump than I thought you were; and if it will do
you any good to know that I think I've been a little rough
with you, I don't mind telling you so. But the thing is done,
and it can't be undone. You can have your own sort of life
there as you do here, and I can have mine. I suppose I could
go there and run the house alone; but it isn't exactly the
thing for Mrs. Belcher's husband to do. People might talk,
you know, and they wouldn't blame me.”
“No; they would blame me, and I must go, whether I
wish to go or not.”
Mrs. Belcher had talked until she could weep, and brushing
her eyes she walked to the window. Mr. Belcher sat still-casting
furtive glances at her, and drumming with his fingers
on his knees. When she could sufficiently command herself,
she returned, and said:
“Robert, I have tried to be a good wife to you. I helped
you in your first struggles, and then you were a comfort to
me. But your wealth has changed you, and you know that
for ten years I have had no husband. I have humored your
caprices; I have been careful not to cross your will. I have
taken your generous provision, and made myself and my
children what you desired; but I am no more to you than a
part of your establishment. I do not feel that my position is
an honorable one. I wish to God that I had one hope that it
would ever become so.”
“Well, by-by, Sarah. You'll feel better about it.”
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Then Mr. Belcher stooped and kissed her forehead, and
left her.
That little attention—that one shadow of recognition of
the old relations, that faint show of feeling—went straight to
her starving heart. And then, assuming blame for what
seemed, at the moment of reaction, her unreasonable selfishness,
she determined to say no more, and to take uncomplainingly
whatever life her husband might provide for her.
As for Mr. Belcher, he went off to his library and his cigar
with a wound in his heart. The interview with his wife,
while it had excited in him a certain amount of pity for her,
had deepened his pity for himself. She had ceased to be
what she had once been to him; yet his experience in the
city had proved that there were still women in the world who
could excite in him the old passion, and move him to the old
gallantries. It was clearly a case of incipient “incompatibility.”
It was “the mistake of a lifetime” just discovered,
though she had borne his children and held his respect for
fifteen years. He still felt the warmth of Mrs. Dillingham's
hands within his own, the impression of her confiding clasp
upon his arm, and the magnetic influence of her splendid
presence. Reason as he would, he felt defrauded of his
rights; and he wondered whether any combination of circumstances
would ever permit him to achieve them. As this
amounted to wondering whether Mrs. Belcher would die, he
strove to banish the question from his mind; but it returned
and returned again so pertinaciously that he was glad to order
his horses and ride to his factory.
Before night it became noised through the village that the
great proprietor had been to the oil regions. The fact was
talked over among the people in the shops, in the street, in
social groups that gathered at evening; and there was great
curiosity to know what he had learned, and what opinions he
had formed. Mr. Belcher knew how to play his cards, and
having set the people talking, he filled out and sent to each
of the wives of the five pastors of the village, as a gift, a
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certificate of five shares of the stock of the Continental Petroleum
Company. Of course, they were greatly delighted,
and, of course, twenty-four hours had not passed by when
every man, woman and child in Sevenoaks was acquainted
with the transaction. People began to revise their judgments
of the man whom they had so severely condemned. After
all, it was the way in which he had done things in former
days, and though they had come to a vivid apprehension of
the fact that he had done them for a purpose, which invariably
terminated in himself, they could not see what there was
to be gained by so munificent a gift. Was he not endeavoring,
by self-sacrifice, to win back a portion of the consideration
he had formerly enjoyed? Was it not a confession of
wrong-doing, or wrong judgment? There were men who
shook their heads, and “didn't know about it;” but the preponderance
of feeling was on the side of the proprietor, who
sat in his library and imagined just what was in progress
around him,—nay, calculated upon it, as a chemist calculates
the results of certain combinations in his laboratory. He
knew the people a great deal better than they knew him, or
even themselves.
Miss Butterworth called at the house of the Rev. Solomon
Snow, who, immediately upon her entrance, took his seat in
his arm-chair, and adjusted his bridge. The little woman was
so combative and incisive that this always seemed a necessary
precaution on the part of that gentleman.
“I want to see it!” said Miss Butterworth, without the
slightest indication of the object of her curiosity.
Mrs. Snow rose without hesitation, and, going to a trunk
in her bedroom, brought out her precious certificate of stock,
and placed it in the hands of the tailoress.
It certainly was a certificate of stock, to the amount of five
shares, in the Continental Petroleum Company, and Mr. Belcher's
name was not among the signatures of the officers.
“Well, that beats me!” exclaimed Miss Butterworth.
“What do you suppose the old snake wants now?”
-- --
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-- --
“Don't be fooled.”
[figure description] Illustration page. Image of six seated figures, five on one side and a lone woman on the other. She is wearing a cloak and has her arm extended pointing at the people across from her. The group of five people look like a family; there is an older man and woman, a young woman and two smaller children.[end figure description]
-- 147 -- p590-176
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“That's just what I say—just what I say,” responded Mrs.
Snow. “Goodness knows, if it's worth anything, we need
it; but what does he want?”
“You'll find out some time. Take my word for it, he has
a large axe to grind.”
“I think,” said Mr. Snow judicially, “that it is quite
possible that we have been unjust to Mr. Belcher. He is certainly
a man of generous instincts, but with great eccentricities.
Before condemning him in toto (here Mr. Snow opened
his bridge to let out the charity that was rising within him,
and closed it at once for fear Miss Butterworth would get in a
protest), let us be sure that there is a possible selfish motive
for this most unexpected munificence. When we ascertain
the true state of the case, then we can take things as they air.
Until we have arrived at the necessary knowledge, it becomes
us to withhold all severe judgments. A generous deed has its
reflex influence; and it may be that some good may come to
Mr. Belcher from this, and help to mold his character to
nobler issues. I sincerely hope it may, and that we shall
realize dividends that will add permanently to our somewhat
restricted sources of income.”
Miss Butterworth sat during the speech, and trotted her
knee. She had no faith in the paper, and she frankly said so.
“Don't be fooled,” she said to Mrs. Snow. “By and by
you will find out that it is all a trick. Don't expect anything.
I tell you I know Robert Belcher, and I know he's a knave,
if there ever was one. I can feel him—I can feel him now—
chuckling over this business, for business it is.”
“What would you do if you were in my place?” inquired
Mrs. Snow. “Would you send it back to him?”
“Yes, or I'd take it with a pair of tongs and throw it out
of the window. I tell you there's a nasty trick done up in
that paper; and if you're going to keep it, don't say anything
about it.”
The family laughed, and even Mr. Snow unbent himself so
far as to smile and wipe his spectacles. Then the little
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tailoress went away, wondering when the mischief would reveal
itself, but sure that it would appear in good time. In
good time—that is, in Mr. Belcher's good time—it did appear.
To comprehend the excitement that followed, it must be
remembered that the people of Sevenoaks had the most implicit
confidence in Mr. Belcher's business sagacity. He had
been upon the ground, and knew personally all about the great
discoveries. Having investigated for himself, he had invested
his funds in this Company. If the people could only embark
in his boat, they felt that they should be safe. He would defend
their interests while defending his own. So the field was
all ready for his reaping. Not Sevenoaks alone, but the whole
country was open to any scheme which connected them with
the profits of these great discoveries, and when the excitement
at Sevenoaks passed away at last, and men regained their
senses, in the loss of their money, they had the company of
a multitude of ruined sympathizers throughout the length and
breadth of the land. Not only the simple and the impressible
yielded to the wave of speculation that swept the country, but
the shrewdest business men formed its crest, and were thrown
high and dry beyond all others, in the common wreck, when
it reached the shore.
On the evening of the fourth day after his return, Mr. Belcher
was waited upon at his house by a self-constituted committee
of citizens, who merely called to inquire into the
wonders of the region he had explored. Mr. Belcher was
quite at his ease, and entered at once upon a narrative of his
visit. He had supposed that the excitement was without any
good foundation, but the oil was really there; and he did not
see why the business was not as legitimate and sound as any
in the world. The whole world needed the oil, and this was
the one locality which produced it. There was undoubtedly
more or less of wild speculation connected with it, and, considering
the value of the discoveries, it was not to be wondered
at. On the whole, it was the biggest thing that had
turned up during his lifetime.
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Constantly leading them away from the topic of investment,
he regaled their ears with the stories of the enormous
fortunes that had been made, until there was not a man before
him who was not ready to invest half the fortune he possessed
in the speculation. Finally, one of the more frank and impatient
of the group informed Mr. Belcher that they had
come prepared to invest, if they found his report favorable.
“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Belcher, “I really cannot take the
responsibility of advising you. I can act for myself, but
when it comes to advising my neighbors, it is another matter
entirely. You really must excuse me from this. I have gone
into the business rather heavily, but I have done it without
advice, and you must do the same. It isn't right for any man
to lead another into experiments of this sort, and it is hardly
the fair thing to ask him to do it. I've looked for myself,
but the fact that I am satisfied is no good reason for your
being so.”
“Very well, tell us how to do it,” said the spokesman.
“We cannot leave our business to do what you have done,
and we shall be obliged to run some risk, if we go into it at
all.”
“Now, look here,” said the wily proprietor, “you are putting
me in a hard place. Suppose the matter turns out badly:
are you going to come to me, and charge me with leading you
into it?”
“Not at all,” was responded, almost in unison.
“If you want to go into the Continental, I presume there
is still some stock to be had. If you wish me to act as your
agent, I will serve you with a great deal of pleasure, but,
mark you, I take no responsibility. I will receive your money,
and you shall have your certificates as soon as the mail will
bring them; and, if I can get no stock of the Company, you
shall have some of my own.”
They protested that they did not wish to put him to
inconvenience, but quietly placed their money in his hands.
Every sum was carefully counted and recorded, and Mr.
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Belcher assured them that they should have their certificates
within five days.
As they retired, he confidentially told them that they had
better keep the matter from any but their particular friends.
If there was any man among those friends who would like “a
chance in,” he might come to him, and he would do what he
could for him.
Each of these men went off down the hill, full of dreams
of sudden wealth, and, as each of them had three or four
particular friends to whom Mr. Belcher's closing message was
given, that gentleman was thronged with visitors the next
day, each one of whom he saw alone. All of these, too, had
particular friends, and within ten days Mr. Belcher had
pocketed in his library the munificent sum of one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars. After a reasonable period, each
investor received a certificate of his stock through the mail.
It was astonishing to learn that there was so much money
in the village. It came in sums of one hundred up to five
hundred dollars, from the most unexpected sources—little
hoards that covered the savings of many years. It came from
widows and orphans; it came from clergymen; it came from
small tradesmen and farmers; it came from the best business
men in the place and region.
The proprietor was in daily communication with his confederates
and tools, and the investors were one day electrified
by the information that the Continental had declared a
monthly dividend of two per cent. This was what was needed
to unload Mr. Belcher of nearly all the stock he held, and,
within one month of his arrival from the oil-fields, he had
realized a sum sufficient to pay for his new purchase in the
city, and the costly furniture with which he proposed to illuminate
it.
Sevenoaks was happy. The sun of prosperity had dawned
upon the people, and the favored few who supposed that they
were the only ones to whom the good fortune had come, were
surprised to find themselves a great multitude. The dividend
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was the talk of the town. Those who had invested a portion
of their small means invested more, and those whose good
angel had spared them from the sacrifice yielded to the glittering
temptation, and joined their lot with their rejoicing
neighbors. Mr. Belcher walked or drove among them, and
rubbed his hands over their good fortune. He knew very well
that if he were going to reside longer among the people, his
position would be a hard one; but he calculated that when
the explosion should come, he should be beyond its reach.
It was a good time for him to declare the fact that he was
about to leave them; and this he did. An earthquake would
not have filled them with greater surprise and consternation.
The industries of the town were in his hands. The principal
property of the village was his. He was identified with the
new enterprise upon which they had built such high hope,
and they had come to believe that he was a kindlier man than
they had formerly supposed him to be.
Already, however, there were suspicions in many minds that
there were bubbles on their oil, ready to burst, and reveal the
shallowness of the material beneath them; but these very
suspicions urged them to treat Mr. Belcher well, and to keep
him interested for them. They protested against his leaving
them. They assured him of their friendship. They told him
that he had grown up among them, and that they could not
but feel that he belonged to them. They were proud of the
position and prosperity he had won for himself. They fawned
upon him, and when, at last, he told them that it was too
late—that he had purchased and furnished a home for himself
in the city—they called a public meeting, and, after a dozen
regretful and complimentary speeches, from clergy and laity,
resolved:
“1st. That we have learned with profound regret that our
distinguished fellow-citizen, Robert Belcher, Esq., is about
to remove his residence from among us, and to become a citizen
of the commercial emporium of our country.
“2d. That we recognize in him a gentleman of great
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business enterprise, of generous instincts, of remarkable public
spirit, and a personal illustration of the beneficent influence
of freedom and of free democratic institutions.
“3d. That the citizens of Sevenoaks will ever hold in
kindly remembrance a gentleman who has been identified
with the growth and importance of their beloved village, and
that they shall follow him to his new home with heartiest
good wishes and prayers for his welfare.
“4th. That whenever in the future his heart and his steps
shall turn toward his old home, and the friends of his youth,
he shall be greeted with voices of welcome, and hearts and
homes of hospitality.
“5th. That these resolutions shall be published in the
county papers, and that a copy shall be presented to the gentleman
named therein, by a committee to be appointed by
the chairman.”
As was quite natural, and quite noteworthy, under the circumstances,
the committee appointed was composed of those
most deeply interested in the affairs of the Continental Petrolcum
Company.
Mr. Belcher received the committee very graciously, and
made them a neat little speech, which he had carefully prepared
for the occasion. In concluding, he alluded to the
great speculation in which they, with so many of their fellow-citizens,
had embarked.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “there is no one who holds so
large an interest in the Continental as myself. I have parted
with many of my shares to gratify the desire of the people
of Sevenoaks to possess them, but I still hold more than any
of you. If the enterprise prospers, I shall prosper with you.
If it goes down, as I sincerely hope it may not—more for
your sakes, believe me, than my own—I shall suffer with you.
Let us hope for the best. I have already authority for announcing
to you that another monthly dividend of two per cent.
will be paid you before I am called upon to leave you. That
certainly looks like prosperity. Gentlemen, I bid you farewell.”
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When they had departed, having first heartily shaken the
proprietor's hand, that gentleman locked his door, and gazed
for a long time into his mirror.
“Robert Belcher,” said he, “are you a rascal? Who says
rascal? Are you any worse than the crowd? How badly
would any of these precious fellow-citizens of yours feel if
they knew their income was drawn from other men's pockets?
Eh? Wouldn't they prefer to have somebody suffer rather
than lose their investments? Verily, verily, I say unto you,
they would. Don't talk to me about being a rascal! You're
just a little sharper than the rest of them—that's all. They
wanted to get money without earning it, and wanted me to
help them to do it. I wanted to get money without earning
it, and I wanted them to help me to do it. It happens that
they will be disappointed and that I am satisfied. Don't say
rascal to me, sir. If I ever hear that word again I'll throttle
you. Is that question settled? It is? Very well. Let
there be peace between us. * * * List! I hear the roar
of the mighty city! Who lives in yonder palace? Whose
wealth surrounds him thus with luxuries untold? Who walks
out of yonder door and gets into that carriage, waiting with
impatient steeds? Is that gentleman's name Belcher? Take
a good look at him as he rolls away, bowing right and left to
the gazing multitude. He is gone. The abyss of heaven
swallows up his form, and yet I linger. Why lingerest thou?
Farewell! and again I say, farewell!”
Mr. Belcher had very carefully covered all his tracks. He
had insisted on having his name omitted from the list of
officers of the Continental Petroleum Company. He had
carefully forwarded the names of all who had invested in its
stock for record, so that, if the books should ever be brought
to light, there should be no apparent irregularity in his dealings.
His own name was there with the rest, and a small
amount of money had been set aside for operating expenses,
so that something would appear to have been done.
The day approached for his departure, and his agent, with
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his family, was installed in his house for its protection; and
one fine morning, having first posted on two or three public
places the announcement of a second monthly dividend to be
paid through his agent to the stockholders in the Continental,
he, with his family, rode down the hill in his coach, followed
by an enormous baggage-wagon loaded with trunks, and
passed through the village. Half of Sevenoaks was out to
witness the departure. Cheers rent the air from every group;
and if a conqueror had returned from the most sacred patriotic
service he could not have received a heartier ovation
than that bestowed upon the graceless fugitive. He bowed
from side to side in his own lordly way, and flourished and
extended his pudgy palm in courtly courtesy.
Mrs. Belcher sat back in her seat, shrinking from all these
demonstrations, for she knew that her husband was unworthy
of them. The carriages disappeared in the distance, and
then—sad, suspicious, uncommunicative—the men went off to
draw their last dividend and go about their work. They
fought desperately against their own distrust. In the proportion
that they doubted the proprietor they were ready to defend
him; but there was not a man of them who had not been
fairly warned that he was running his own risk, and who had
not sought for the privilege of throwing away his money.
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CHAPTER XII. IN WHICH JIM ENLARGES HIS PLANS FOR A HOUSE, AND COMPLETES HIS PLANS FOR A HOUSE-KEEPER.
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When, at last, Jim and Mr. Benedict were left alone by
the departure of Mr. Balfour and the two lads, they sat as
if they had been stranded by a sudden squall after a long and
pleasant voyage. Mr. Benedict was plunged into profound
dejection, and Jim saw that he must be at once and persistently
diverted.
“I telled Mr. Balfour,” said he, “afore he went away,
about the house. I telled him about the stoop, an' the chairs,
an' the ladder for posies to run up on, an' I said somethin'
about cubberds and settles, an' other thingembobs that have
come into my mind; an' says he: `Jim, be ye goin' to
splice?' An' says I: `If so be I can find a little stick as'll
answer, it wouldn't be strange if I did.' `Well,' says he,
`now's yer time, if ye're ever goin' to, for the hay-day of
your life is a passin' away.' An' says I: `No, ye don't.
My hay-day has jest come, and my grass is dry an' it'll keep.
It's good for fodder, an' it wouldn't make a bad bed.”'
“What did he say to that?” inquired Mr. Benedict.
“Says he: `I shouldn't wonder if ye was right. Have
ye found the woman?' `Yes,' says I. `I have found a
genuine creetur.' An' says he: `What is her name?' An'
says I: `That's tellin'. It's a name as oughter be changed,
an' it won't be my fault if it ain't.' An' then says he: `Can
I be of any 'sistance to ye?' An' says I: `No. Courtin' is
like dyin'; ye can't trust it to another feller. Ye've jest got
to go it alone.' An' then he laughed, an' says he: `Jim, I
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wish ye good luck, an' I hope ye'll live to have a little feller
o' yer own.' An' says I: `Old Jerusalem! If I ever have a
little feller o' my own,' says I, `this world will have to spread
to hold me.”'
Then Jim put his head down between his knees, and thought.
When it emerged from its hiding his eyes were moist, and he
said:
“Ye must 'scuse me, Mr. Benedict, for ye know what the
feelin's of a pa is. It never come to me in this way afore.”
Benedict could not help smiling at this new exhibition of
sympathy; for Jim, in the comprehension of his feelings in
the possible event of possessing offspring, had arrived at a
more vivid sense of his companion's bereavement.
“Now, I tell ye what it is,” said Jim. “You an' me has
got to be brushin' round. We can't set here an' think about
them that's gone; an' now I want to tell ye 'bout another
thing that Mr. Balfour said. Says he: `Jim, if ye're goin'
to build a house, build a big one, an' keep a hotel. I'll fill it
all summer for ye,' says he. `I know lots o' folks,' says he,
`that would be glad to stay with ye, an' pay all ye axed 'em.
Build a big house,' says he, `an' take yer time for't, an' when
ye git ready for company, let a feller know.' I tell ye, it
made my eyes stick out to think on't. `Jim Fenton's hotel!'
says I. `I don't b'lieve I can swing it.' `If ye want any
more money'n ye've got,' says he, `call on me.”'
The idea of a hotel, with all its intrusions upon his privacy
and all its diversions, was not pleasant to Mr. Benedict; but
he saw at once that no woman worthy of Jim could be expected
to be happy in the woods entirely deprived of society. It
would establish a quicker and more regular line of communication
with Sevenoaks, and thus make a change from its life
to that of the woods a smaller hardship. But the building
of a large house was a great enterprise for two men to undertake.
The first business was to draw a plan. In this work Mr.
Benedict was entirely at home. He could not only make
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plans of the two floors, but an elevation of the front; and
when, after two days of work, with frequent questions and
examinations by Jim, his drawings were concluded, they held
a long discussion over them. It was all very wonderful to
Jim, and all very satisfactory—at least, he said so; and yet he
did not seem to be entirely content.
“Tell me, Jim, just what the trouble is,” said his architect,
“for I see there's something wanting.”
“I don't see,” said Jim, “jest where ye're goin' to
put 'im.”
“Who do you mean? Mr. Balfour?”
“No; I don't mean no man.”
“Harry? Thede?”
“No; I mean, s'posin'. Can't we put on an ell when we
want it?”
“Certainly.”
“An' now, can't ye make yer picter look kind o' cozy like,
with a little feller playin' on the ground down there afore the
stoop?”
Mr. Benedict not only could do this, but he did it; and
then Jim took it, and looked at it for a long time.
“Well, little feller, ye can play thar till ye're tired, right on
that paper, an' then ye must come into the house, an' let yer
ma wash yer face;” and then Jim, realizing the comical side
of all this charming dream, laughed till the woods rang
again, and Benedict laughed with him. It was a kind of
clearing up of the cloud of sentiment that enveloped them
both, and they were ready to work. They settled, after a
long discussion, upon the site of the new house, which was
back from the river, near Number Ten. There were just three
things to be done during the remainder of the autumn and
the approaching winter. A cellar was to be excavated, the
timber for the frame of the new house was to be cut and
hewed, and the lumber was to be purchased and drawn to the
river. Before the ground should freeze, they determined to
complete the cellar, which was to be made small—to be,
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indeed, little more than a cave beneath the house, that would accommodate
such stores as it would be necessary to shield from
the frost. A fortnight of steady work, by both the men, not
only completed the excavation, but built the wall.
Then came the selection of timber for the frame. It was
all found near the spot, and for many days the sound of two
axes was heard through the great stillness of the Indian summer;
for at this time nature, as well as Jim, was in a dream.
Nuts were falling from the hickory-trees, and squirrels were
leaping along the ground, picking up the stores on which they
were to subsist during the long winter that lay before them.
The robins had gone away southward, and the voice of the
thrushes was still. A soft haze steeped the wilderness in its
tender hue—a hue that carried with it the fragrance of burning
leaves. At some distant forest shrine, the priestly winds
were swinging their censers, and the whole temple was pervaded
with the breath of worship. Blue-jays were screaming
among leathern-leaved oaks, and the bluer kingfishers made
their long diagonal flights from side to side of the river, chattering
like magpies. There was one infallible sign that winter
was close upon the woods. The wild geese, flying over Number
Nine, had called to Jim with news from the Arctic, and
he had looked up at the huge harrow scraping the sky, and
said: “I seen ye, an' I know what ye mean.”
The timber was cut of appropriate length and rolled upon
low scaffoldings, where it could be conveniently hewed during
the winter; then two days were spent in hunting and in
setting traps for sable and otter, and then the two men were
ready to arrange for the lumber.
This involved the necessity of a calculation of the materials
required, and definite specifications of the same. Not only
this, but it required that Mr. Benedict should himself accompany
Jim on the journey to the mill, three miles beyond
Mike Conlin's house. He naturally shrank from this
exposure of himself; but so long as he was not in danger of
coming in contact with Mr. Belcher, or with any one whom
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he had previously known, he was persuaded that the trip
would not be unpleasant to him. In truth, as he grew
stronger personally, and felt that his boy was out of harm's
way, he began to feel a certain indefinite longing to see
something of the world again, and to look into new faces.
As for Jim, he had no idea of returning to Number Nine
again until he had seen Sevenoaks, and that one most interesting
person there with whom he had associated his future,
although he did not mention his plan to Mr. Benedict.
The ice was already gathering in the stream, and the
winter was descending so rapidly that they despaired of
taking their boat down to the old landing, and permitting it
to await their return, as they would be almost certain to find
it frozen in, and be obliged to leave it there until spring.
They were compelled, therefore, to make the complete journey
on foot, following to the lower landing the “tote-road”
that Mike Conlin had taken when he came to them on his
journey of discovery.
They started early one morning about the middle of
November, and, as the weather was cold, Turk bore them
company. Though Mr. Benedict had become quite hardy,
the tramp of thirty miles over the frozen ground, that had
already received a slight covering of snow, was a cruel one,
and taxed to their utmost his powers of endurance.
Jim carried the pack of provisions, and left his companion
without a load; so by steady, quiet, and almost speechless
walking, they made the entire distance to Mike Conlin's
house before the daylight had entirely faded from the pale,
cold sky. Mike was taken by surprise. He could hardly be
made to believe that the hearty-looking, comfortably-dressed
man whom he found in Mr. Benedict was the same whom
he had left many months before in the rags of a pauper and
the emaciation of a feeble convalescent. The latter expressed
to Mike the obligations he felt for the service which
Jim informed him had been rendered by the good-natured
Irishman, and Mike blushed while protesting that it was
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nothing at all, at all,” and thinking of the hundred dollars
that he earned so easily.
“Did ye know, Jim,” said Mike, to change the subject,
“that owld Belcher has gone to New York to live?”
“No.”
“Yis, the whole kit an' boodle of 'em is gone, an' the
purty man wid 'em.”
“Hallelujer!” roared Jim.
“Yis, and be gorry he's got me hundred dollars,” said
Mike.
“What did ye gi'en it to 'im for, Mike? I didn't take
ye for a fool.”
“Well, ye see, I wint in for ile, like the rist of 'em. Och!
ye shud 'ave seen the owld feller talk! `Mike,' says he,
`ye can't afford to lose this,' says he. `I should miss me
slape, Mike,' says he, `if it shouldn't all come back to ye.'
`An' if it don't,' says I, `there'll be two uv us lyin' awake,
an' ye'll have plinty of company; an' what they lose in
dhraimin' they'll take out in cussin',' says I. `Mike,' says he,
`ye hadn't better do it, an' if ye do, I don't take no resk;'
an' says I, `they're all goin' in, an' I'm goin' wid 'em.'
`Very well,' says he, lookin' kind o' sorry, and then, be
gorry, he scooped the whole pile, an' barrin' the ile uv his
purty spache, divil a bit have I seen more nor four dollars.”
“Divil a bit will ye see agin,” said Jim, shaking his head.
“Mike, ye're a fool.”
“That's jist what I tell mesilf,” responded Mike; “but
there's betther music nor hearin' it repaited; an' I've got
betther company in it, barrin' Mr. Benedict's presence, nor
I've got here in me own house.”
Jim, finding Mike a little sore over his loss, refrained from
further allusion to it; and Mr. Benedict declared himself
ready for bed. Jim had impatiently waited for this announcement,
for he was anxious to have a long talk with
Mike about the new house, the plans for which he had
brought with him.
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“Clear off yer table,” said Jim, “an' peel yer eyes, Mike,
for I'm goin' to show ye somethin' that'll s'prise ye.”
When his order was obeyed, he unrolled the precious
plans.
“Now, ye must remember, Mike, that this isn't the house;
these is plans, as Mr. Benedict has drawed. That's the
kitchen, and that's the settin'-room, and that's the cubberd,
and that's the bedroom for us, ye know, and on that other
paper is the chambers.”
Mike looked at it all earnestly, and with a degree of awe,
and then shook his head.
“Jim,” said he, “I don't want to bodder ye, but ye've
jist been fooled. Don't ye see that divil a place 'ave ye got
for the pig?”
“Pig!” exclaimed Jim, with contempt. “D'ye s'pose I
build a house for a pig? I ain't no pig, an' she ain't no
pig.”
“The proof of the puddin' is in the atin', Jim; an' ye
don't know the furrst thing about house-kapin'. Ye can no
more kape house widout a pig, nor ye can row yer boat widout
a paddle. I'm an owld house-kaper, Jim, an' I know; an' a
man that don't tend to his pig furrst, is no betther nor a b'y.
Ye might put 'im in Number Tin, but he'd go through it
quicker nor water through a baskit. Don't talk to me about
house-kapin' widout a pig, Ye might give 'im that little
shtoop to lie on, an' let 'im run under the house to slape.
That wouldn't be bad now, Jim?”
The last suggestion was given in a tender, judicial tone, for
Mike saw that Jim was disappointed, if not disgusted. Jim
was looking at his beautiful stoop, and thinking of the
pleasant dreams he had associated with it. The idea of
Mike's connecting the life of a pig with that stoop was more
than he could bear.
“Why, Mike,” said he, in an injured tone, “that stoop's
the place where she's agoin' to set.”
“Oh! I didn't know, Jim, ye was agoin' to kape hins.
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Now, ef you're agoin' to kape hins, ye kin do as ye plase,
Jim, in coorse; but ye musn't forgit the pig, Jim. Be gorry,
he ates everything that nobody ilse kin ate, and then ye kin
ate him.”
Mike had had his expression of opinion, and shown to his
own satisfaction that his judgments were worth something.
Having done this, he became amiable, sympathetic, and even
admiring. Jim was obliged to tell him the same things a
great many times, and to end at last without the satisfaction
of knowing that the Irishman comprehended the precious
plans. He would have been glad to make a confidant of
Mike, but the Irishman's obtuseness and inability to comprehend
his tenderer sentiments, repulsed him, and drove him
back upon himself.
Then came up the practical question concerning Mike's
ability to draw the lumber for the new house. Mike thought
he could hire a horse for his keeping, and a sled for a small
sum, that would enable him to double his facilities for
doing the job; and then a price for the work was agreed
upon.
The next morning, Jim and Mr. Benedict pursued their
journey to the lumber-mill, and there spent the day in selecting
their materials, and filling out their specifications.
The first person Mr. Benedict saw on entering the mill was
a young man from Sevenoaks, whom he had known many
years before. He colored as if he had been detected in a
crime, but the man gave him no sign that the recognition was
mutual. His old acquaintance had no memory of him, apparently;
and then he realized the change that must have passed
upon him during his long invalidism and his wonderful
recovery.
They remained with the proprietor of the mill during the
night.
“I jest call 'im Number Ten,” said Jim, in response to the
inquiries that were made of him concerning his companion.
“He never telled me his name, an' I never axed 'im. I'm
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`Number Nine,' an' he's `Number Ten,' and that's all thar
is about it.”
Jim's oddities were known, and inquiries were pushed no
further, though Jim gratuitously informed his host that the
man had come into the woods to get well, and was willing to
work to fill up his time.
On the following morning, Jim proposed to Mr. Benedict
to go on to Sevenoaks for the purchase of more tools, and the
nails and hardware that would be necessary in finishing the
house. The experience of the latter during the previous day
showed him that he need not fear detection, and, now that
Mr. Belcher was out of the way, Jim found him possessed by
a strong desire to make the proposed visit. The road was not
difficult, and before sunset the two men found themselves
housed in the humble lodgings that had for many years been
familiar to Jim. Mr. Benedict went into the streets, and
among the shops, the next morning, with great reluctance;
but this soon wore off as he met man after man whom he
knew, who failed to recognize him. In truth, so many things
had happened, that the memory of the man who, long ago,
had been given up as dead had passed out of mind. The
people would have been no more surprised to see a sleeper of
the village cemetery among them than they would to have
realized that they were talking with the insane pauper who
had fled, as they supposed, to find his death in the forest.
They had a great deal to do during the day, and when
night came, Jim could no longer be restrained from the visit
that gave significance, not only to his journey, but to all his
plans. Not a woman had been seen on the street during the
day whom Jim had not scanned with an anxious and greedy
look, in the hope of seeing the one figure that was the desire
of his eyes—but he had not seen it. Was she ill? Had she
left Sevenoaks? He would not inquire, but he would know
before he slept.
“There's a little business as must be did afore I go,” said
Jim, to Mr. Benedict in the evening, “an' I sh'd like to have
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ye go with me, if ye feel up to't.” Mr. Benedict felt up to
it, and the two went out together. They walked along the
silent street, and saw the great mill, ablaze with light. The
mist from the falls showed white in the frosty air, and, without
saying a word, they crossed the bridge, and climbed a hill
dotted with little dwellings.
Jim's heart was in his mouth, for his fears that ill had happened
to the little tailoress had made him nervous; and when,
at length, he caught sight of the light in her window, he
grasped Mr. Benedict by the arm almost fiercely, and exclaimed:
“It's all right. The little woman's in, an' waitin'. Can
you see my har?”
Having been assured that it was in a presentable condition,
Jim walked boldly up to the door and knocked. Having
been admitted by the same girl who had received him before,
there was no need to announce his name. Both men went
into the little parlor of the house, and the girl in great glee
ran upstairs to inform Miss Butterworth that there were two
men and a dog in waiting, who wished to see her. Miss Butterworth
came down from busy work, like one in a hurry, and
was met by Jim with extended hand, and the gladdest smile
that ever illuminated a human face.
“How fare ye, little woman?” said he. “I'm glad to see
ye—gladder nor I can tell ye.”
There was something in the greeting so hearty, so warm
and tender and full of faith, that Miss Butterworth was touched.
Up to that moment he had made no impression upon her
heart, and, quite to her surprise, she found that she was glad
to see him. She had had a world of trouble since she had
met Jim, and the great, wholesome nature, fresh from the
woods, and untouched by the trials of those with whom she
was in daily association, was like a breeze in the feverish
summer, fresh from the mountains. She was, indeed, glad to
see him, and surprised by the warmth of the sentiment that
sprang within her heart in response to his greeting.
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Miss Butterworth looked inquiringly, and with some embarrassment
at the stranger.
“That's one o' yer old friends, little woman,” said Jim.
“Don't give 'im the cold shoulder. 'Tain't every day as a
feller comes to ye from the other side o' Jordan.”
Miss Butterworth naturally suspected the stranger's identity,
and was carefully studying his face to assure herself that Mr.
Benedict was really in her presence. When some look of his
eyes, or motion of his body, brought her the conclusive evidence
of his identity, she grasped both his hands, and said:
“Dear, dear, Mr. Benedict! how much you have suffered!
I thank God for you, and for the good friend He has raised
up to help you. It's like seeing one raised from the dead.”
Then she sat down at his side, and, apparently forgetting
Jim, talked long and tenderly of the past. She remembered
Mrs. Benedict so well! And she had so many times carried
flowers and placed them upon her grave! She told him about
the troubles in the town, and the numbers of poor people who
had risked their little all and lost it in the great speculation;
of those who were still hoping against hope that they should
see their hard-earned money again; of the execrations that
were already beginning to be heaped upon Mr. Belcher; of
the hard winter that lay before the village, and the weariness
of sympathy which had begun to tell upon her energies. Life,
which had been once so full of the pleasure of action and industry,
was settling, more and more, into dull routine, and
she could see nothing but trouble ahead, for herself and for
all those in whom she was interested.
Mr. Benedict, for the first time since Jim had rescued him
from the alms-house, became wholly himself. The sympathy
of a woman unlocked his heart, and he talked in his old way.
He alluded to his early trials with entire freedom, to his long
illness and mental alienation, to his hopes for his boy, and
especially to his indebtedness to Jim. On this latter point
he poured out his whole heart, and Jim himself was deeply
affected by the revelation of his gratitude. He tried in vain
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to protest, for Mr. Benedict, having found his tongue, would
not pause until he had laid his soul bare before his benefactor.
The effect that the presence of the sympathetic woman produced
upon his protégé put a new thought into Jim's mind.
He could not resist the conviction that the two were suited to
one another, and that the “little woman,” as he tenderly
called her, would be happier with the inventor than she would
be with him. It was not a pleasant thought, but even then
he cast aside his selfishness with a great struggle, and determined
that he would not stand in the way of an event which
would crush his fondest hopes. Jim did not know women as
well as he thought he did. He did not see that the two met
more like two women than like representatives of opposite
sexes. He did not see that the sympathy between the pair was
the sympathy of two natures which would be the happiest in
dependence, and that Miss Butterworth could no more have
chosen Mr. Benedict for a husband than she could have chosen
her own sister.
Mr. Benedict had never been informed by Jim of the name
of the woman whom he hoped to make his wife, but he saw at
once, and with sincere pleasure, that he was in her presence;
and when he had finished what he had to say to her, and
again heartily expressed his pleasure in renewing her acquaintance,
he rose to go.
“Jim, I will not cut your call short, but I must get back
to my room and prepare for to-morrow's journey. Let me
leave you here, and find my way back to my lodgings alone.”
“All right,” said Jim, “but we ain't goin' home to-morrer.”
Benedict bade Miss Butterworth “good-night,” but, as he
was passing out of the room, Jim remembered that there was
something that he wished to say to him, and so passed out
with him, telling Miss Butterworth that he should soon return.
When the door closed behind them, and they stood alone
in the darkness, Jim said, with his hand on his companion's
shoulder, and an awful lie in his throat:
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“I brung ye here hopin' ye'd take a notion to this little
woman. She'd do more for ye nor anybody else. She can
make yer clo'es, and be good company for ye, an'—”
“And provide for me. No, that won't do, Jim.”
“Well, you'd better think on't.”
“No, Jim, I shall never marry again.”
“Now's yer time. Nobody knows what'll happen afore
mornin'.”
“I understand you, Jim,” said Mr. Benedict, “and I know
what all this costs you. You are worthy of her, and I hope
you'll get her.”
Mr. Benedict tore himself away, but Jim said, “hold on a
bit.”
Benedict turned, and then Jim inquired:
“Have ye got a piece of Indian rubber?”
“Yes.”
“Then jest rub out the picter of the little feller in front of
the stoop, an' put in Turk. If so be as somethin' happens to-night,
I sh'd want to show her the plans in the mornin'; an'
if she should ax me whose little feller it was, it would be sort
o' cumbersome to tell her, an' I sh'd have to lie my way out
on't.”
Mr. Benedict promised to attend to the matter before he
slept, and then Jim went back into the house.
Of the long conversation that took place that night between
the woodsman and the little tailoress we shall present no
record. That he pleaded his case well and earnestly, and
without a great deal of bashfulness, will be readily believed
by those who have made his acquaintance. That the woman,
in her lonely circumstances, and with her hungry heart, could
lightly refuse the offer of his hand and life was an impossibility.
From the hour of his last previous visit she had unconsciously
gone toward him in her affections, and when she
met him she learned, quite to her own surprise, that her heart
had found its home. He had no culture, but his nature was
manly. He had little education, but his heart was true, and
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his arm was strong. Compared with Mr. Belcher, with all
his wealth, he was nobility personified. Compared with the
sordid men around her, with whom he would be an object of
supercilious contempt, he seemed like a demigod. His eccentricities,
his generosities, his originalities of thought and
fancy, were a feast to her. There was more of him than she
could find in any of her acquaintances—more that was fresh,
piquant, stimulating, and vitally appetizing. Having once
come into contact with him, the influence of his presence had
remained, and it was with a genuine throb of pleasure that
she found herself with him again.
When he left her that night, he left her in tears. Bending
over her, with his strong hands holding her cheeks tenderly,
as she looked up into his eyes, he kissed her forehead.
“Little woman,” said he, “I love ye. I never knowed
what love was afore, an' if this is the kind o' thing they have
in heaven, I want to go there when you do. Speak a good
word for me when ye git a chance.”
Jim walked on air all the way back to his lodgings—walked
by his lodgings—stood still, and looked up at the stars—went
out to the waterfall, and watched the writhing, tumbling,
roaring river—wrapped in transcendent happiness. Transformed
and transfused by love, the world around him seemed
quite divine. He had stumbled upon the secret of his existence.
He had found the supreme charm of life. He felt
that a new principle had sprung to action within him, which
had in it the power to work miracles of transformation. He
could never be in the future exactly what he had been in the
past. He had taken a step forward and upward—a step irretraceable.
Jim had never prayed, but there was something about this
experience that lifted his heart upward. He looked up to the
stars, and said to himself: “He's somewhere up thar, I
s'pose. I can't seen 'im, an' I must look purty small to Him
if He can seen me; but I hope He knows as I'm obleeged
to 'im, more nor I can tell 'im. When He made a good
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woman, He did the biggest thing out, an' when He started a
man to lovin' on her, He set up the best business that was
ever did. I hope He likes the 'rangement, and won't put
nothin' in the way on't. Amen! I'm goin' to bed.”
Jim put his last determination into immediate execution.
He found Mr. Benedict in his first nap, from which he felt
obliged to rouse him, with the information that it was “all
right,” and that the quicker the house was finished the better
it would be for all concerned.
The next morning, Turk having been substituted for the
child in the foreground of the front elevation of the hotel,
the two men went up to Miss Butterworth's, and exhibited
and talked over the plans. They received many valuable
hints from the prospective mistress of the prospective mansion.
The stoop was to be made broader for the accommodation
of visitors; more room for wardrobes was suggested,
with little conveniences for housekeeping, which complicated
the plans not a little. Mr. Benedict carefully noted them all,
to be wrought out at his leisure.
Jim's love had wrought a miracle in the night. He had
said nothing about it to his architect, but it had lifted him
above the bare utilities of a house, so that he could see the
use of beauty. “Thar's one thing,” said he, “as thar
hain't none on us thought on; but it come to me last night.
There's a place where the two ruffs come together that wants
somethin', an' it seems to me it's a cupalo—somethin' to
stan' up over the whole thing, and say to them as comes,
`Hallelujer!' We've done a good deal for house-keepin',
now let's do somethin' for glory. It's jest like a ribbon on a
bonnet, or a blow on a potato-vine. It sets it off, an' makes
a kind o' Fourth o' July for it. What do ye say, little
woman?”
The “little woman” accepted the suggestion, and admitted
that it would at least make the building look more like a
hotel.
All the details settled, the two men went away, and poor
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Benedict had a rough time in getting back to camp. Jim
could hardly restrain himself from going through in a single
day, so anxious was he to get at his traps and resume work
upon the house. There was no fatigue too great for him
now. The whole world was bright and full of promise; and
he could not have been happier or more excited if he had
been sure that at the year's end a palace and a princess were
to be the reward of his enterprise.
-- 171 -- p590-200
Holland, J. G. (Josiah Gilbert), 1819-1881 [1875], Sevenoaks: a story of to-day. (Scribner, Armstrong & Co., New York) [word count] [eaf590T].
