Chapter VII: Reginald and Phineas Jones

After bidding his aunt good-bye, Reginald went home for a few moments, and then to his office, where he met for the first time Mr. Gorham, the owner of the Leighton mortgage, and learned that the place was really where his father used to live and that the Homestead was named for the Hallams. This increased his desire to own it, and, as there was still time to catch the next train for Boston, he started for the depot and was soon on his way to Worcester, where he arrived about four in the afternoon. Wishing to make some inquiries as to the best means of reaching Leicester, he went to a hotel, where he found no one in the office besides the clerk except a tall, spare man, with long, light hair tinged with gray, and shrewdness and curiosity written all over his good-humored face. He wore a linen duster, with no collar, and only an apology for a handkerchief twisted around his neck. Tipping back in one chair, with his feet in another, he was taking frequent and most unsuccessful aims at a cuspidor about six feet from him.

“Good-afternoon,” he said, removing his feet from the chair for a moment, but soon putting them back, as he asked if Reginald had just come from the train, and whether from the East or the West. Then he told him it was an all-fired hot day, that it looked like thunder in the west, and he shouldn’t wonder if they got a heavy shower before night.

To all this Reginald assented, and then went to the desk to register, while the stranger, on pretense of looking at something in the street, also arose and sauntered to the door, managing to glance at the register and see the name just written there.

Resuming his seat and inviting Rex to take a chair near him, he began: “I b’lieve you’re from New York. I thought so the minute you came in. I have traveled from Dan to Beersheba, and been through the war,—was a corp’ral there,—and I generally spot you fellows when I first put my eye on you. I am Phineas Jones,—Phin for short. I hain’t any real profession, but am jack at all trades and good at none. Everybody knows me in these parts, and I know everybody.”

Rex, who began to be greatly amused with this queer specimen, bowed an acknowledgment of the honor of knowing Mr. Jones, who said, “Be you acquainted in Worcester?”

“Not at all. Was never here before,” was Rex’s reply, and Phineas continued: “Slow old place, some think, but I like it. Full of nice folks of all sorts, with clubs, and lodges, and societies, and no end of squabbles about temperance and city officers and all that. As for music,—my land, I’d smile to see any place hold a candle to us. Had all the crack singers here, even to the diver.”

Rex, who had listened rather indifferently to Phineas’s laudations of Worcester, now asked if he knew much of the adjoining towns,—Leicester, for instance.

“Wa-all, I’d smile,” Phineas replied, with a fierce assault upon the cuspidor. “Yes, I would smile if I didn’t know Leicester. Why, I was born there, and it’s always been my native town, except two or three years in Sturbridge, when I was a shaver, and the time I was to the war and travelin’ round. Pleasant town, but dull,—with no steam cars nigher than Rochdale or Worcester. Got stages and an electric car to Spencer;—run every half hour. Think of goin’ there?”

Rex said he did, and asked the best way of getting there.

“Wa-all, there’s four ways,—the stage, but that’s gone; hire a team and drive out,—that’s expensive; take the steam cars for Rochdale, or Jamesville, and then drive out,—that’s expensive, too; or take the electric, which is cheaper, and pleasanter, and quicker. Know anybody in Leicester?”

Rex said he didn’t, and asked if Phineas knew a place called Hallam Homestead.

“Wa-all, I’d smile if I didn’t,” Phineas replied. “Why, I’ve worked in hayin’-time six or seven summers for Square Leighton. He was ’lected justice of the peace twelve or fifteen years ago, and I call him Square yet, as a title seems to suit him, he’s so different-lookin’ from most farmers,—kind of high-toned, you know. Ort to have been an aristocrat. As to the Hallams, who used to own the place, I’ve heard of ’em ever since I was knee-high; I was acquainted with Carter; first-rate feller. By the way, your name is Hallam. Any kin?”

Rex explained his relationship to the Hallams, while the smile habitual to Phineas’s face, and which, with the expressions he used so often, had given him the _sobriquet_ of Smiling Phin, broadened into a loud laugh of genuine delight and surprise, and, springing up, he grasped Rex’s hand, exclaiming: “This beats the Dutch! I’m glad to see you, I be. I thought you was all dead when Carter died. There’s a pile of you in the old Greenville graveyard. Why, you ’n’ I must be connected.”

Rex looked at him wonderingly, while he went on: “You see, Carter Hallam’s wife was Lucy Ann Brown, and her great-grandmother and my great-grandfather were half-brother and sister. Now, what relation be I to Lucy Ann, or to you?”

Rex confessed his inability to trace so remote a relationship on so hot a day, and Phineas rejoined:

“’Tain’t very near, that’s a fact, but we’re related, though I never thought Lucy Ann hankered much for my society. I used to call her cousin, which made her mad. She was a handsome girl when she clerked it here in Worcester and roped Carter in. A high stepper,—turned up her nose when I ast her for her company. That’s when she was bindin’ shoes, before she knew Carter. I don’t s’pose I could touch her now with a ten-foot pole, though I b’lieve I’ll call the fust time I’m in New York, if you’ll give me your number. Blood is blood. How is the old lady?”

Here was a chance for Rex to inquire into his aunt’s antecedents, of which he knew little, as she was very reticent with regard to her early life. He knew that she was an orphan and had no near relatives, and that she had once lived in Worcester, and that was all. The clerkship and the shoe-binding were news to him; he did not even know before that she was Lucy Ann, as she had long ago dropped the _Ann_ as too plebeian; but, with the delicacy of a true gentleman, he would not ask a question of this man, who, he was sure, would tell all he knew and a great deal more, if urged.

“I wonder what Aunt Lucy would say to being visited and cousined by this Yankee, who calls her an old lady?” he thought, as he said that she was very well and had just sailed for Europe, adding that she was still handsome and very young-looking.

“You don’t say!” Phineas exclaimed, and began at once to calculate her age, basing his data on a spelling-school in Sturbridge when she was twelve years old and had spelled him down, a circus in Fiskdale which she had attended with him when she was fifteen, and the time when he had asked for her company in Worcester. Naturally, he made her several years older than she really was.

But she was not there to protest, and Rex did not care. He was more interested in his projected purchase than in his aunt’s age, and he asked if the Hallam farm were good or bad.

“Wa-all, ’taint neither,” Phineas replied. “You see, it’s pretty much run down for want of means and management. The Square ain’t no kind of a farmer, and never was, and he didn’t ort to be one, but his wife persuaded him. My land, how a woman can twist a man round her fingers, especially if she’s kittenish and pretty and soft-spoken, as the Square’s wife was. She was from Georgy, and nothin’ would do but she must live on a farm and have it fixed up as nigh like her father’s plantation as she could. She took down the big chimbleys and built some outside,—queer-lookin’ till the woodbine run up and covered ’em clear to the top, and now they’re pretty. She made a bath-room out of the but’try, and a but’try out of the meal-room. She couldn’t have niggers, nor, of course, nigger cabins, but she got him to build a lot of other out-houses, which cost a sight,—stables, and a dog-kennel.”

“Dog-kennels!” Rex interrupted, feeling more desirous than ever for a place with kennels already in it. “How large are they?”

“There ain’t but one,” Phineas said, “and that ain’t there now. It was turned into a pig-pen long ago, for the Square can’t abide dogs; but there’s a hen-house, and smoke-house, and ice-house, and house over the well, and flower-garden with box borders, and yard terraced down to the orchard, with brick walls and steps, and a dammed brook——”

“A what?” Reginald asked, in astonishment.

“Wa-all, I should smile if you thought I meant disrespect for the Bible; I didn’t. I’m a church member,—a Free Methodist and class-leader, and great on exhortin’ and experiencin’, they say. I don’t swear. You spelt the word wrong, with an _n_ instead of two _m_’s, that’s what’s the matter. That’s the word your aunt Lucy Ann spelt me down on at the spellin’-school. We two stood up longest and were tryin’ for the medal. I was more used to the word with an _n_ in it than I am now, and got beat. What I mean about the brook is that it runs acrost the road into the orchard, and Mis’ Leighton had it dammed up with boards and stones to make a waterfall, with a rustic bridge below it, and a butternut tree and a seat under it, where you can set and view nature. But bless your soul, such things don’t pay, and if Mis’ Leighton had lived she’d of ruined the Square teetotally, but she died, poor thing, and the Square’s hair turned white in six months.”

“What family has Mr. Leighton?” Rex asked, and Phineas replied:

“Two girls, that’s all; one handsome as blazes, like her mother, and the other—wa’all, she is nice-lookin’, with a motherly, venerable kind of face that everybody trusts. She stays to hum, Dorcas does, while——” Here he was interrupted by Rex, who, more interested just then in the farm than in the girls, asked if it was for sale.

“For sale?” Phineas replied. “I’d smile to see the Square sell his farm, though he owes a pile on it; borrows of Peter to pay Paul, you know, and so keeps a-goin’; but I don’t believe he’d sell for love nor money.”

“Not if he could get cash down and, say, a thousand more than it is worth?” Rex suggested.

Staggered by the thousand dollars, which seemed like a fortune to one who had never had more than a few hundred at a time in his life, Phineas gasped:

“One thousand extry! Wa-all, I swan, a thousand extry would tempt some men to sell their souls; but I don’t know about it fetchin’ the Square. Think of buyin’ it?”

Rex said he did.

“For yourself?”

“Yes, for myself.”

“_You_ goin’ to turn farmer?” and Phineas looked him over from head to foot. “Wa-all, if that ain’t curi’s. I’d smile to see you, or one of your New York dudes, a-farmin’ it, with your high collars, your long coats and wide trouses and yaller shoes and canes and eye-glasses, and hands that never done a stroke of hard work in your lives. Yes, I would.”

Rex had never felt so small in his life as when Phineas was drawing a picture he recognized as tolerably correct of most of his class, and he half wished his collar was a trifle lower and his coat a little shorter, but he laughed good-humoredly and said, “I am afraid we do seem a useless lot to you, and I suppose we might wear older-fashioned clothes, but I can’t help the glasses. I couldn’t see across the street without them.”

“I want to know,” Phineas said. “Wa-all, they ain’t bad on you, they’re so clear and hain’t no rims to speak of. They make you look like a literary feller, or more like a minister. Be you a professor?”

Rex flushed a little at the close questioning, expecting to be asked next how much he was worth and where his money was invested, but he answered honestly, “I wish I could say yes, but I can’t.”

“What a pity! Come to one of our meetin’s, and we’ll convert you in no time. What persuasion be you?”

Reginald said he was an Episcopalian, and Phineas’s face fell. He hadn’t much faith in Episcopalians, thinking their service was mere form, with nothing in it which he could enjoy, except that he did not have to sit still long enough to get sleepy, and there were so many places where he could come in strong with an Amen, as he always did. This opinion, however, he did not express to Reginald. He merely said, “Wa-all, there’s good folks in every church. I do b’lieve the Square is pious, and he’s a ’Piscopal. Took it from his Georgy wife, who had a good many other fads. You have a good face, like all the Hallams, and I b’lieve they died in the faith. Says so, anyway, on their tombstones; but monuments lie as well as obituaries. But I ain’t a-goin’ to discuss religious tenants, though I’m fust-rate at it, they say. I want to know what _you_ want of a farm?”

Rex told him that he had long wished for a place in the country, where he could spend a part of each year with a few congenial friends, hunting and fishing and boating, and from what he had heard of the Homestead, he thought it would just suit him, there were so many hills and woods and ponds around it.

“Are there pleasant drives?” he asked, and Phineas replied:

“Tip-top, the city folks think. Woods full of roads leading nowhere except to some old house a hundred years old or more, and the older they be the better the city folks like ’em. Why, they actu’lly go into the garrets and buy up old spinning-wheels and desks and chairs; and, my land, they’re crazy over tall clocks.”

Rex did not care much for the furniture of the old garrets unless it should happen to belong to the Hallams, and he asked next if there were foxes in the woods, and if he could get up a hunt with dogs and horses.

Phineas did not smile, but laughed long and loud, and deluged the cuspidor, before he replied:

“Wa-all, if I won’t give up! A fox-hunt, with hounds and horses, tearin’ through the folks’s fields and gardens! Why, you’d be mobbed. You’d be tarred and feathered. You’d be rid on a rail.”

“But,” Rex exclaimed, “I should keep on my own premises. A man has a right to do what he pleases with his own,” a remark which so affected Phineas that he doubled up with laughter, as he said:

“That’s so; but, bless your soul, the Homestead farm ain’t big enough for a hunt. It takes acres and acres for that, and if you had ’em the foxes wouldn’t stop to ask if it’s your premises or somebody else’s. They ain’t likely to take to the open if they can help it, but with the dogs to their heels and widder Brady’s garden right before ’em they’d make a run for it. Her farm jines the Homestead, and ’twould be good as a circus to see the hounds tearin’ up her sage and her gooseberries and her violets. She’d be out with brooms and mops and pokers; and, besides that, the Leicester women would be up in arms and say ’twas cruel for a lot of men to hunt a poor fox to death just for fun. They are great on Bergh, Leicester women are, and they might arrest you.”

Reginald saw his fox-hunts fading into air, and was about to ask what there was in the woods which he could hunt without fear of the widow Brady or the Bergh ladies of the town, when Phineas sprang up, exclaiming:

“Hullo! there’s the Square now. I saw him in town this mornin’ about some plasterin’ I ort to have done six weeks ago.”

And he darted from the door, while Rex, looking from the window, saw an old horse drawing an old buggy in which sat an old man, evidently intent upon avoiding a street-car rapidly approaching him, while Phineas was making frantic efforts to stop him. But a car from an opposite direction and a carriage blocked his way, and by the time these had passed the old man and buggy were too far up the street for him to be heard or to overtake them.

“I’m awful sorry,” he said, as he returned to the hotel. “He was alone, and you could of rid with him as well as not and saved your fare.”

Rex thanked him for his kind intentions, but said he did not mind the fare in the least and preferred the electric car. Then, as he wished to look about the city a little, he bade good-bye to Phineas, who accompanied him to the door, and said: “Mabby you’d better mention my name to the Square as a surety that you’re all right. He hain’t traveled as much as I have, nor seen as many swells like you, and he might take you for a confidence man.”

Rex promised to make use of his new friend if he found it necessary, and walked away, while Phineas looked after him admiringly, thinking, “That’s a fine chap; not a bit stuck up. Glad I’ve met him, for now I shall visit Lucy Ann when she comes home. He’s a little off, though, on his farm and his fox-hunts.”

Meanwhile, Reginald walked through several streets, and at last found himself in the vicinity of the electric car, which he took for Leicester. It was a pleasant ride, and he enjoyed it immensely, especially after they were out in the country and began to climb the long hill. At his request he was put down at the cross-road and the gabled house pointed out to him. Very eagerly he looked about him as he went slowly up the avenue or lane bordered with cherry-trees on one side, and on the other commanding an unobstructed view of the country for miles around, with its valleys and thickly wooded hills.

“This is charming,” he said, as he turned his attention next to the house and its surroundings.

How quiet and pleasant it looked, with its gables and picturesque chimneys under the shadow of the big apple-tree in the rear and the big elm in the front! He could see the out-buildings of which Phineas had told him,—the well-house, the hen-house, the smoke-house, the ice-house and stable,—and could hear the faint sound of the brook in the orchard falling over the dam into the basin below.

“I wish I had lived here when a boy, as my father and uncle did,” he thought, just as a few big drops of rain fell upon the grass, and he noticed for the first time how black it was overhead, and how threatening were the clouds rolling up so fast from the west.

It had been thundering at intervals ever since he left Worcester, and in the sultry air there was that stillness which portends the coming of a severe storm. But he had paid no attention to it, and now he did not hasten his steps until there came a deafening crash of thunder, followed instantaneously by a drenching downpour of rain, which seemed to come in sheets rather than in drops, and he knew that in a few minutes he would be wet through, as his coat was rather thin and he had no umbrella. He was still some little distance from the house, but by running swiftly he was soon under the shelter of the piazza, and knocking at the door, with a hope that it might be opened by the girl who Phineas had said “was handsome as blazes.”