Chapter III: Part 3

I was inclined to doubt this, and would probably have said something to that effect had not a shadow crossing the window brought me to my feet in consternation. But before I could do more than rise, Colonel Bohun had flung open the door and stamped in. He stopped short at sight of me, misguided by his near-sighted eyes, and singled me out with a threatening wave of his heavy stick.

"Well, sir!" he snarled. "I've come for my answer. Have you sense enough in your addled pate to understand that, man? I've come for my answer!"

"And may have it, whatever it may be, for all of me," I told him.

His face flushed a deeper red. "Oh, it's only you, is it, Littlejohn? I took you for that fool Graham, in this damned dark hole. Where is he?"

I looked to Graham and he followed the direction of my gaze to the work-bench, where Sam stood with his back to it, his worn hands folded quietly before him. He seemed a little whiter than usual, I thought; and perhaps it was only my fancy that made him appear to tremble ever so slightly. For he was quite calm and self-possessed--so much so that I realised for the first time there was another man in Radville besides myself who did not fear old Colonel Bohun.

"I'm here, colonel," he said quietly. "What is it you wish?"

The colonel swung on him, shaking with passion. But he held his tongue until he had mastered himself somewhat: a feat of self-restraint on his part over which I marvel to this day.

"You know well, Graham," he said presently. "You got my letter--the letter I wrote you a week ago?"

"Yes," said Sam, with a start of comprehension. "Yes, I got it."

"Then why the devil, man, don't you answer it?"

Sam's apologetic smile sweetened his face.

"Why," he said haltingly--"I'm sure I meant no offence, but--you see, I'm a very busy man--I forgot it."

"The hell you forgot it. D'ye expect me to believe that, man?"

"I'm afraid you'll have to."

Bohun was speechless for a moment, stricken dumb by a second seizure of fury. But again he calmed himself.

"Very well. I'll swallow that insolence for the present--"

"It wasn't meant as such, I assure--"

"Don't interrupt me! D'you hear? ... I've come for my answer. Yes, I've come down to that, Graham. If you can't accord me the common courtesy of a written reply--I've come to hear it from your mouth."

Sam nodded thoughtfully. "Mebbe," he said, "you forgot you have failed to accord me the common courtesy of any sort of a communication whatever for twenty years, Colonel Bohun. Even when my wife, your daughter, died, you ignored my message asking you to her funeral...."

"Be silent!" screamed the colonel. "Do you think I'm here to bandy words with you, fool? I demand my answer."

"And as for that," continued Sam as evenly as if he had not been interrupted, "your proposition was so preposterous that it could have come only from you, and deserved no answer. But since you want it formally, sir, it's no."

For a moment I feared Bohun would have a stroke. The back of the chair I had just vacated and his stick alone supported him through that dumb, terrible transport. He shook so violently that I looked momentarily to see the chair break beneath him. There was insanity in his eyes. When finally he was able to articulate it was in broken gasps.

"I don't believe it," he stammered. "It's a lie. I don't believe it. It's madness--the girl wouldn't be so mad. ..."

"What is it, father?"

I don't know which of us three was the more startled by that simple question in Betty Graham's voice; Sam, at all events, showed the least surprise; the old colonel wheeled toward the back of the store, his jaw dropping and his eyes protruding as though he were confronted with a ghost. As, in a way, he was: even I had been struck by that strange, heartrending similarity to her mother's tone; and even I trembled a little to hear that voice, as it seemed, from beyond the grave.

Betty stood at the foot of the staircase; alarmed by the noise of the colonel's raging, she had stolen down, unheard by any of us. And in that moment I realised as never before that the girl had more of her mother in her than lay in that marvellous reproduction of Margaret Graham's voice. As she waited there one detected in her pose something of her mother's quiet dignity, in her eyes more than a little of Margaret's tragedy. Of Margaret's beauty I saw scant trace, I own; but in those days my eyes were blinded by the signs of overwork and insufficient nourishment that marred her young features, by the hopeless dowdiness of her garments.

Abruptly she moved swiftly to her father's side and slipped her hand into his. "What is it, father?" she repeated, eyeing Colonel Bohun coldly.

I thought Sam's eyes filled. His lips trembled and he had to struggle to master his voice. He smiled through it all, tenderly at his girl, but there was in that smile the weakness of the child grown old, the dependence of the man whose womanfolk must ever mother him.

"Why, Betty," he said, tremulous--"why, Betty, your grandfather here has been kind enough to offer to take you and educate you and make a lady of you, and--and we were just talking it over, dear, just talking it over."

"Do you mean that?" she flung at Bohun.

He straightened up and held himself well in hand. "Is it the first you have heard of it?"

"Yes." She looked inquiringly at her father.

"Why didn't you tell her?" Bohun persisted harshly. "Were you afraid?"

"No." Sam shook his head slowly. "I wasn't afraid. But it was unnecessary.... You see, Betty, Colonel Bohun is willing to do all this for you on several conditions. You must leave me and never see me again; you mustn't even recognise me should we meet upon the street; you must change your name to Bohun and never permit yourself to be known as Betty Graham. Then you must--"

"Never mind, daddy dear," said the girl. "That is enough. I know now--I understand why you never told me. It's impossible. Colonel Bohun knew that when he made the offer, of course; he made it simply to harass you, daddy. It's his revenge...."

She looked Bohun up and down with a glance of contempt that would have withered another man, poor, wan, haggard little maid of all work that she was.

"And that's your answer, miss?" he snapped, livid with wrath.

"I would not," she told him slowly, "accept a favour from you, sir, if I were starving...."

Bohun drew himself up. "Then starve," he told her; and walked out of the shop.

I gaped after his retreating figure. It seemed impossible, incredible, that he should have taken such an answer without yielding to a fit of insensate passion. And I was still marvelling when I heard Graham saying in a broken voice: "Betty! Betty, my little girl!"

Then I, too, went away, with a mist before my eyes to dim the golden grace of June.

VI

INTRODUCTION TO MISS CARPENTER

On my way back from the Flats I discovered Duncan sitting on the wall of the bridge, moodily donating pebbles to the water. His attitude suggested preoccupation with unhappy reflections, a humour from which the sound of my footsteps roused him. He looked up and caught my eye with an uncertain nod, as though he half recognised me--presumably having casually noticed me at the Bigelow House the previous evening.

"Good-morning," said I cheerfully, with a slight break in my stride intended craftily to convey the impression that I was not altogether averse to a pause for gossip.

He said "Good-morning," sombrely.

"A pleasant day," I observed spontaneously, stopping.

"Yes," he agreed. "By the way, have you a match about you?"

I searched my pockets, found a box and handed it over.

"I've been perishing for a ..." He slid his fingers into a waistcoat pocket, as one who should seek a cigarette-case; but the hand came forth empty. He bit his remark off abruptly, with a blank look in his eyes which was promptly succeeded by an expression of deepest chagrin. He got up and with a little bow returned the box.

"I forgot," he said, apologetic.

"I'm afraid I can't help you out," said I.

"Oh, that's all right. I'd just forgotten that I don't smoke."

I pretended not to notice his disconcertion.

"You're to be congratulated; it's a shameful waste of time and money."

"A filthy habit," said he warmly.

"Indeed, yes," I chanted, finding my pipe and tobacco pouch.

He caught my twinkle as I filled and lighted, and looked away, the shadow of a smile lurking beneath his small, closely clipped moustache.

"I beg your pardon," he said a moment later, regarding me with more interest, "but--do you live here?"

"Certainly. Why?"

"I was sure of it," he replied soberly. "But don't you feel a bit lonesome, sometimes?"

"Not in the least. Radville's one of the most interesting places on this side of the footstool." He sighed. "Indeed," I insisted, "you won't feel any more lonely after you've lived here a while, than I do now, Mr. Duncan."

He opened his eyes at my acquaintance with his name, but jerked his head at me comprehendingly.

"To be sure," he said. "You would know. But I'm only beginning to realise what it feels like to be a marked man."

"I hear you intend to make Radville your permanent residence, Mr. Duncan?"

"It's part of the system," he said obscurely. "It may prove a life sentence."

"Don't you think you'll like it here?"

"Oh, I'm strong for Radville," he declared earnestly. "It's all to the merry ... I beg your pardon."

I stared curiously to see him colour like a school-girl. "What for?"

"My mistake, sir; I forgot myself again. I don't use slang."

"Oh!" I commented, wondering. He was beginning to puzzle me.

In the pause the air began to rock with the heavy clanging of the clock in the Methodist Church steeple.

"That's noon," I said. "We'll have to cut along: dinner's ready."

Duncan immediately replanted himself firmly upon the parapet. "I know it," he said with some indignation.

Again bewildered, I hesitated, but eventually advanced: "Our ways run together, Mr. Duncan, as far as the Bigelow House. My name is Littlejohn--Homer Littlejohn."

He rose again to take my hand and assured me he was glad to make my acquaintance. "But," he added morosely, "I'll be damned if I go back to that hotel before dinner's over.... Great Scott! I forgot again. I don't swear!"

"Have you any other unnatural accomplishments?" I inquired, chuckling.

"I'm so full of 'em I can hardly stick," he assented gloomily. "I don't drink or smoke or swear or play pool or cards, and on Sundays I go to church."

I laughed outright. "You've come to the right place for such exemplary virtues to be fully appreciated, Mr. Duncan."

"That's all right," he said with a return of his indignation, "but it wasn't in the bargain that I should starve to death. Do you realise, Mr. Littlejohn," he continued, warming, "that you behold in me a young man in the prime of health actually on the point of wasting visibly away to a shadow of my former hardy self? It's a fact: I am. For the past two days I've had nothing to eat except railway sandwiches and coffee and the kind of fodder they pitchfork you at the Bigelow House. And I came here with a mind coloured with rosy anticipations of real old-fashioned country cooking. It's an outrage!"

"Look here," said I: "why not come home with me for dinner? I'll be glad to have you, and Miss Carpenter won't mind your coming, I'm sure."

He got up with alacrity. "Those are the first human words I've heard in Radville, sir! I accept with joy and gratitude. Come--lead me to it!"

Now, Miss Carpenter doesn't like her meals delayed; so I would have been inclined to hasten this Mr. Duncan; but he saved me the trouble.

"Miss Carpenter?" he asked without warning, as we hurried up Main Street.

"My landlady, Mr. Duncan."

"She takes boarders? An old maid?" he persisted eagerly.

"An elderly spinster; boarders are her distraction as well as a source of income."

"Do you think she'd take me in, Mr. Littlejohn?"

"I'm sure of it. There's a vacant room ..."

"Does she talk?"

"Moderately."

"Not a regular walking newspaper--no?"

"Not exactly--"

"Then I'm afraid it's no use," he sighed.

I glanced up at his face, but it was inscrutable.

"You--you want a landlady who talks?" I gasped, incredulous.

"It's one of the rules," he said, again obscurely.

I could make nothing of him. And had I any right to introduce to Hetty Carpenter a guest who came without credentials and talked more or less like a lunatic at large?

"Mr. Duncan--" I began, uncomfortable.

"Don't say it," he anticipated me. "I know you think I'm crazy--but I'm not. You would think so, naturally, because you're the only man here who's ever lived away from Radville long enough--not counting those who went to the World's Fair--."

"How did you know?"

"Bigelow told me last night; said you'd be glad to meet somebody from New York. I hope he's right. I'm glad, personally.... You see--May I request that you regard this as confidential?"

"Yes--yes!"

"I've come to Radville to make my fortune."

The confession smote me witless: I could only gape. He nodded confirmation, with a most serious mien. At length I found strength to articulate. "From New York--?"

"Yes. It's a new scheme. You see, Mr. Littlejohn, matters have come to such a state that a city-bred boy practically doesn't stand any show on earth of making good in the cities; your country-bred boys crowd him to the wall, nine times out of ten. They invade us in hordes, fresh from the open, strong, vigorous, clear-headed, ambitious.... What chance have we got? ... I've been figuring it out, you see, and I've come to the conclusion that it's my only salvation to get back to the country and improve some of the opportunities--the golden opportunities--that your boys have neglected, overlooked, in their mad desire to invade the commercial centres of the country."

He seemed very much in earnest; I was watching him as closely as I might without making my scrutiny offensive; and there seemed to be the ring of conviction in his voice, while the expression of his eyes indicated concentrated thought. And how was I to know, then, that the concentration was due to the necessity of invention?

"You follow me, Mr. Littlejohn?"

"I was here first," I corrected. "Still, there's more in what you say than perhaps you realise."

"If I'd made this discovery originally I'd agree with you, sir. But, quite to the contrary, it was pointed out to me by one of the shrewdest business minds in the United States--a man who'd been a country boy to begin with. And I've come to the conclusion that he's right."

"So you're here."

"Here I am."

"And what do you propose doing?"

"I'm reading law, Mr. Littlejohn; that I shall continue. In the meantime, I shall keep my eyes open. At any day, at any amount, the opportunity may present itself, the opportunity I'm looking for."

"Probably you're right," I assented, impressed, as we turned a corner.

A young woman in a very attractive linen gown was strolling toward us, quite prettily engaged with a book which she read as she walked, her fair young head bowed beneath a sunshade which tinted her face becomingly. She gave me a shy smile and a low-voiced greeting as we passed. Only my knowledge of the young woman prevented me from being blinded by her engaging appearance.

"That," said I, when we were out of earshot, "shows you what a furore a good-looking young man can create in a town like this. Josie Lockwood has put on her best bib-and-tucker to go walking in this afternoon, on the off-chance of meeting you, Mr. Duncan."

"Flattery note," he commented. "Who's Josie Lockwood?"

"Daughter of Blinky Lockwood, the richest man in Radville."

"Ah!" he said cryptically.

We had come to Miss Carpenter's. I opened the gate for him, but he stood aside, refusing to precede me. And courtesy in the young folk of to-day warms my old heart.

He had as much for Hetty Carpenter. Within an hour he had insinuated himself into her good graces with a deftness, an ease, that astounded. Within three hours he was established, bag and baggage, in her very best room.

And thirty minutes after she had helped Duncan unpack, Hetty had to run downtown to buy a spool of thread.

VII

A WINDOW IN RADVILLE

A jealous secret, which has never heretofore been divulged, is responsible for the prosperity of the Radville _Citizen_--at least, in very great measure. As the discoverer of this recipe for circulation, I have kept it carefully locked in my guilty bosom for many a year, and if I now betray it I do so without scruple, for the _Gazette_ is now established firmly in a groove of popularity from which you'd find it hard to oust the paper. So here's letting the cat out of the bag:

The policy of the _Citizen_ has long been to devote its columns mainly to the exploitation of what is known in newspaper terminology as "the local story." Of the news of the great outside world we're parsimonious, recognising the fact that the coronation of King Edward VII. is a matter of much less import to our community than the holocaust which was responsible for the destruction of Sir Higginbottom's new hen-house. Similarly a West Indian tornado involving losses running up into hundreds of thousands of dollars sinks into relative insignificance as compared with the local weather forecast and its probable effect on crops not worth ten thousand; while the enforced abdication of the Sultan of Turkey gets a "stick" (a space in a newspaper column about as long as your forefinger, if you have a small hand) as contrasted with the column and a half assigned to the death of old Colonel Bohun.

Now, naturally, a paper in a small country town can't afford a large and hustling staff of enthusiastic reporters; and very probably the _Citizen_ would overlook many items and stories of burning local interest were it not for the fact that the population has been cunningly made to serve in a reportorial capacity without either pay or its own knowledge. We literally get our local news by wireless; and from dawn to dark there's a constant supply of it on tap.

It's this way: our editorial rooms are in the second storey of a building overlooking Court House Square. The lower floor is occupied by the Post Office, and in front of the Post Office are a hitching-post and two long, weather-scarred benches, while just across the road--I mean street--on the boundary of the square proper--is a near-bronze drinking-fountain and watering-trough erected from the proceeds of several fairs given by the local branch of the W. C. T. U. Naturally, indeed inevitably, all Radville gravitates to the Post Office, bringing the news with it, and stops to discuss it on the steps or the benches or by the fountain; and the acoustics are admirable. With a window open and scratch-pad handy, the keen-eared scribe at his desk in our offices can hardly fail to pick up every scrap of town information between sunrise and dusk.... Of course, in winter the supply's not so good. Winter before last we all suffered with colds acquired through keeping the windows open; and last winter our circulation fell off surprisingly through keeping them closed. This winter we contemplate cutting a trap-door through the floor for the ostensible purpose of ventilation.

And thus it was that I managed to hear much of Mr. Duncan while I myself was engaged in formulating an estimate of the young man. He engaged the popular imagination no less than mine own, although I was more intimately associated with him--as a fellow-resident at Hetty Carpenter's. My professional duties making their habitual demands upon my time, I saw, it may be, less of him than many of our people. Certainly I learned less of his ways from first-hand knowledge. But from my desk (it's the nearest to the window right above the Post Office door) I was enabled to keep a pretty close line upon his habits and movements, during the first fortnight of his stay in Radville.

At home I saw him with unvarying regularity at meal-times and less frequently after supper. Between whiles he seemed to observe a fairly regular routine: in the morning, after breakfast, he walked abroad for his health's sake; in the afternoon and evening he sequestered himself in his room for the pursuit of his legal studies. About the genuineness of these latter I was long without a question: having been privileged to inspect his room I found it redolent of an atmosphere of highly commendable application. His writing table was a model of neatness, and his store of legal treatises impressed one vastly. That no one, not even Hetty Carpenter, ever saw the room without remarking the open volume of "The Law of Torts," with its numerous pages painstakingly spaced by slips of paper by way of bookmarks, is an attested fact. That it was always the same volume is less widely known.

Less directly (that is to say, via my window) I learned of him compendiously from sources which would have been anonymous but for my long acquaintance with the voices of the townspeople.... I write these pages at my desk at home and, if truth's to be told, somewhat surreptitiously; but with these voices ringing in my memory's ear I seem still to be sitting at my erstwhile desk by the window, looking out over Court House Square, chewing the rubber heel of my pencil the while I listen. It's summer weather and there's a smell in the air of dust and heat; the square simmers and shimmers in unclouded sunshine, its many green plots of grass a trifle grey and haggard with dust, the flagstaff with its two flanking cannon by the bandstand in the middle wavering slightly in the haze of heat; there are two rigs, a farm-wagon and a buckboard, hitched to the post below, and some boys are squirting water on one another by holding their hands over the lips of the fountain across the way. Immediately opposite, on the far side of the square, the Court House rises proudly in all the majesty of its columned front and clapboarded sides; farther along there's the Methodist Church, very severe, with its rows of sheds to one side for the teams of the more rural members. Behind them all bulk our hills, dim and purple against the overwhelming blue of the sky. It's very quiet: there are few sounds, and those few most familiar: the raucous war-cry of a rooster somewhere on the outskirts of town; an intermittent thudding of hoofs in the inch-deep dust of the roadway; Miles Stetson wringing faint but genuine shrieks of agony from his cornet, in a room behind the Opery House on the next street; periodically a shuffle of feet on the sidewalk below; less frequently the whine of the swinging doors at Schwartz's place; above it all, perhaps, the shrill but not unpleasant accents of Angie Tuthill as she pauses on the threshold downstairs and injects surprising information into the nothing-reluctant ears of Mame Garrison.

" ... He's got six suits of clothes, three for summer and three for winter, and two others to wear to parties--one regular full-dress suit and another without any tails on the coat that he told Miss Carpenter was a dinner-coat, but Roland Barnette says he must've meant a Tuxedo, because nobody wears that kind of clothes except at night; so how could it be a dinner-coat?... And Miss Carpenter told Ma he's got twelve striped shirts and eight white ones and dozens of silk socks and two dozen neckties and handkerchiefs till you can't count and...."

Mame punctuates this monologue with a regular and excusable "My land!" and the young voices fade away into the mid-summer afternoon quiet. I am free to resume my interrupted flight of fancy, but I refrain. The atmosphere is soporiferous, hardly conducive to editorial inspiration, and I find the commingled flavours of red-cedar, glue and rubber quite nourishing.

Presently Dr. Mortimer, the minister, comes down the street in company with his deacon, Blinky Lockwood. They are discussing someone in subdued tones, but I catch references to a worthy young man and the vacancy in the choir.

Josie Lockwood rustles into hearing with Bessie Gabriel in tow. Josie is rattling volubly, but with a hint of the confidential in her tone. She insists that: "Of course, I never let on, but every time we meet I can just feel him looking and...."

Bessie interposes: "Why, Tracey Tanner's just crazy for fear he'll take on with Angie."

I can see Josie's head toss at this. "I bet he don't know what Angie Tuthill looks like. That's too absurd..."

"Absurd" is Josie's newest word. It's a very good word, too, but sometimes I fear she will wear it threadbare. It closes her remarks as the two girls dart into the Post Office, and there is peace for a time; then they emerge giggling, and I hear Josie declare: "I'd get Roland Barnette to do it, but he's so jealous. He makes me tired."

Bessie's response is inaudible.

"Well," Josie continues, "I'm simply not going to send them out until I meet him. Father said I could give it a week from Saturday, but I won't unless--"

Bessie interrupts, again inaudibly.

"Of course I could do that, but ... if I just said 'Miss Carpenter and guests' that nosey old Homer Littlejohn'd think I meant him too, and if I only said 'guest' it'd look too pointed. Don't you think so?"

To my relief they pass from hearing, and I feel for my pipe for comfort. Anyway, I never did like Josie Lockwood.... Smoking, I meditate on the astonishing power of personality. Here is Mr. Nathaniel Duncan no more than a fortnight in our midst (the phrase is used callously, as something sacred to country journalism) and, behold! not yet has the town ceased to discuss him. The control he has over the local mind and imagination is certainly wonderful: the more so since he has apparently made no effort to attract attention; rather, I should say, to the contrary. Quiet and unassuming he goes his way, minding his own business as carefully as we would mind it for him, with all the good will in the world, if only we could find out what it is. But we can't leave him alone....

Tracey Tanner interrupts my musings.

"Hello!" he twangs, like a tuneless banjo.

"'Lo, Tracey." This lofty and blase greeting can come from none other than Roland Barnette.

"Where you goin'?"

"Over to the railway station."

"What for?"

"To give you something to talk about. I'm going to send a telegram to a friend of mine in Noo York."

"Aw, you ain't the only one can send telegrams. Sam Graham sent one just now."

"_He_ did!"

"Uh-huh. I was sort of hangin' round, when he came in, and I seen him send it myself."

"Sam Graham telegraphing! Do you know; who to, Tracey?" Roland's superiority is wearing thin under contact with his curiosity. This surprising bit of news makes him distinctly more affable and inclined to lower himself to the social level of the son of the livery-stable keeper.

As for myself, I am inclined to lean out of the window and call Tracey up, lest he get out of hearing before I hear the rest of it. Fortunately I am not thus obliged to compromise my dignity. The two are at pause.

"Gimme a cigarette 'nd I'll tell you," bargains Tracey shrewdly. "Lew Parker told me after Sam'd gone."

The deal is put through promptly.

"He was telegraphin' to--Got a match?"

For once I am in sympathy with Roland, whose tone betrays his desire to wring Tracey's exasperating neck.

"Aw, he was only telegraphing to Gresham an' Jones for some sody water syrups."

"Where'd he get the money?" There's fine scorn in Roland's comment.

"I dunno, but he handed Lew a five-dollar bill to pay for the message."

"Well, if Sam Graham's got any money he'd better hold on to it, instead of buying sody-water syrups. I guess Blinky Lockwood'll get after him when he finds it out. He owes Blinky a note at the bank and it's coming due in a day or two and Blinky ain't going to renew, neither."

"Sam seemed cheerful 'nough. Anyhow, it ain't my funeral."

I have now something to think about, indeed, and am more than half inclined to stroll up to Graham's and find out what has happened, on my own account, when the voices of Hi Nutt and Watty the tailor drift up to me. The cronies are coming down for their regular afternoon session on the Post Office benches--a function which takes place daily, just as soon as the sun gets round behind the building, so that the seats are shaded. And I pause, true to the ethics of journalism; it's my duty not to leave just yet.

Surprisingly enough these two likewise are discussing Sam Graham. At least I can deduce nothing else from Hiram's first words, though their subject is for the moment nameless.

"Yes, sir; he's the poorest man in this town."

"Yes," Watty quavers; "yes, I guess he be."

"An' he's got no more business sense _into_ him than God give a goose."

"No, I guess he ain't."

"Why, look at the way things has run down at his store since Margaret died. She kept things a-runnin' while she was alive." "Yes, she was a fine woman, Margaret Bohun was."

"An' they ain't no doubt about it, Sam had money into the bank when she died. But ever sinst then it's been all go out and no come in with him. He keeps fussin' and fussin' with them inventions of his, but no one ever heard tell of his gettin' anything out of 'em."

"And what'd he do with all the money he had when Margaret died?"

"Spent it, what he didn't lend and give away and lose endorsin' notes for his friends and then havin' to pay 'em. An' speakin' of notes, I heard Roland Barnette say, t'other day, that old Sam had a note comin' due to the bank, an' Blinky wasn't goin' to renew it any more."

"'Course Sam can't pay it."

"Certainly he can't. I was in his store day before yestiddy an' they wasn't nobody come in for nothin' while I was there. He don't do no business to speak of."

"How long was you there, Hi?"

"From nine o'clock to noon."

"What doin'?"

"Nuthin'; jes' settin' round."

"I seen him to-day goin' into the bank. Guess he must've gone to see Lockwood 'bout thet note."

"Well, I don't envy him his call on Blinky Lockwood none."

"Mebbe he went in to deposit his coupons," Watty chuckled.

Hiram snorted and there was silence while he filled and lit his pipe.

"I hearn tell this mornin'," he resumed, "that Josie Lockwood's goin' to give a party next week."

"Yes, I hearn it too. Angie Tuthill was talkin' 'bout it to Mame Garrison up to Leonard and Call's. She said they was goin' to have the biggest time this town ever see. Goin' to decyrate the grounds with lanterns an' have ice cream sent from Phillydelphy, and cakes, too. Can't make out what's come into Blinky to let that gal of his waste money like that."

"I figger," says Hiram after a sapient pause, "she must be gettin' it up for thet New York dood."

"Duncan?"

"Uh-huh."

"I didn't know he was 'quainted with the Lockwoods."

"I didn't know he was 'quainted with nobody."

"Nobody 'ceptin' Homer Littlejohn an' Hetty Carpenter, an' they don't seem to know much about him. I call him darn cur'us. Hetty says he allus a-settin' in his room, a-studyin' an' a-studyin' an' a-studyin'."

"He goes walkin' mornin's, Hetty told me."

"Wal, he don't come downtown much. Nobody hardly ever sees him 'cept to church."

Hiram ponders this profoundly, finally delivering himself of an opinion which he has never forsaken. "I claim he's a s'picious character."

"Don't look to me as though he knew 'nough to be much of anythin'."

"Wal, now, if he's a real student an' they ain't no outs 'bout him, what in tarnation's he doin' here? Thet's jest what I'd like to have somebody tell me, Watty."

"Hetty sez he sez he wants a quiet place to study."

Hiram snorts with scorn. "Oh, fid-del! You don't catch no Noo York young feller a-settlin' down in Radville unless he's crazy or somethin' worse."

"'Tain't no use tellin' Hetty Carpenter thet." "No; if anybody sez a word agin him she shets 'em right up."

"'Tain't only Hetty, but all the wimmin's on his side."

"Thet's proof enough to me he ain't right." "Wimmin," says Watty, as the result of a period of philosophical consideration, "is all crazy about clothes. When a feller's got good clothes you can't make them see no harm into him, no matter what he is. I pressed some of Duncan's last Satiddy. I never see clothes--such goods and linin's. They was made for him, too--made by a tailor on Fifth Avenue, Noo York. I fergit the name now."

"Wal, Roland Barnette sez they ain't stylish. He sez they're too much like an undertaker's gitup."

"Wal, Roland oughter know. He's the fanciest dressed-up feller in the county."

"Yes, I guess he be."

The subject apparently languishes, but I know that it still occupies their sage meditations; and presently this is demonstrated by Hiram, who expectorates liberally by way of preface.

"When this cuss Duncan fust come here," he says with a self-contained chuckle, "ev'rybody but me figgered he had stacks of money. Guess they be singin' a different tune, now, sinst he's been goin' round askin' for work."

This is news to me, and I sit up, sharing Watty's astonishment.

"Be he a-doin' thet, Hiram?"

"That's what he's been a-doin'."

"Funny I missed hearin' about it."

"He only started this mornin'. He went to Sothern and Lee's and Leonard and Call's and Godfrey's--'nd then I guess he must 'ev quit discouraged. They wouldn't none of them give him nothin'. Leastways, thet's what they said after he'd gone out. He didn't give anybody a reel chance to say anythin'. I was in Leonard and Call's and he came in an' asked for a job, but the minute Len looked at him he turned right round and slunk out without a-waitin' for Len to say a word." Hiram smoked in huge enjoyment of the retrospect. "He's the curiousest critter we ever had in this town."

"Yes," agrees Watty, "I guess he be."

At this juncture comes an interruption; Tracey Tanner returns, hot-foot. Either he has been running, or his breathlessness is due to excitement. Before the two upon the bench he pauses in agitated glee, a bearer of tremendous tidings.

"Hello," he pants.

"Now, you Tracey Tanner," Hiram cuts in sharply, "you run 'long an' don't be a-botherin' round. Seems like a body never can git a chance to rest, with you children allus a-buttin' in--"

"Aw, shet up," says Tracey dispassionately. "I only wanted to tell you the news."

Watty quavers: "What news, Tracey?"

"Well," says the boy, "I'll tell you, Watty, but I wouldn't 've told him after what he said."

"But what's the news, Tracey?" There is suspense in the iteration.

"Well, seein's it's you, Watty--"

"You Tracey Tanner, you run 'long and stop your jokin'!" interrupts Hiram with authority.

"'Tain't no joke; it's news, I'm tellin' you. Sa-ay, what d'ye think, Watty?"

"Yes, Tracey, yes? What is it, boy?"

"Thet--Noo--York--dood," drawls Tracey, "is a-workin' for Sam Graham!"

A dramatic pause ensues. I rise and find my coat.

"Tracey Tanner," shrills Hiram, "be you a-tellin' the truth?"

"Kiss my hand and cross my heart and vow Honest Injun, I seen him up there just now in the store, Watty, tendin' the sody fountain."

"Wal," says Hiram, rising, "I don't believe a word of it, but if it's true we better be goin' round to see, Watty, 'cause it ain't a-goin' to last long. He won't stay after he finds out Sam ain't got no money to pay his wages with."

VIII

THE MAN OF BUSINESS IN EMBRYO

There's no questioning the fact that two weeks of Radville had driven Duncan to desperation; on the morning of the fifteenth day he wakened in his room at Miss Carpenter's and lay for a time abed staring vacantly at the gaudily papered ceiling, not through laziness remaining on his back, but through sheer inertia. The prospect of rising to ramble through another purposeless, empty day appalled his imagination; it had been all very well when the humour of his project intrigued him, when the village was a novelty and its inhabitants "types" to be studied, watched, analysed and classified with secret amusement; but now he felt that he had already exhausted its possibilities; he was a foreigner in thought and instinct, had as little in common with Radvillians as any newly imported Englishman would have had. In plain language, he was bored to the point of extinction.

"Why," he reflected aloud, "it doesn't seem reasonable, but I'm actually looking forward to the delirious dissipation of church next Sunday!

"Me?...

"If Kellogg could only see me now!"

He laughed mirthlessly.

"I must have done something to deserve this in my misspent life...

"Wonder if nothing ever happens here?.... I'd give a whole lot, if I had it, for a good rousing fire on Main Street--the Bigelow House, for choice....

"And it's got me to the point of drooling to myself, like those fellows you read about who get lost in the desert....

"Come! Get out of this! And, my boy, remember to 'count that day lost whose low descending sun sees nothing accomplished, nothing done.'...

"Probably misquoted, at that."

Sullenly he rose and dressed.

He was late at the breakfast and silent and reserved throughout that meal. Poor Miss Carpenter thought him dissatisfied and hung round his chair, purring with a solicitude that almost maddened him. As soon as possible he made his escape from the house.

The walk he indulged in that morning took him in a wide circle: south on the road to the Gap, then eastwards, crossing the railroad and the river, north through a smiling agricultural region, east to the Flats, and so across the stone bridge to the Old Town once more. He was trudging up Street toward Centre shortly after eleven--hot, a little tired, and utterly disgusted. The exercise, instead of exhilarating, had depressed him; the quickened flow of blood through his veins, the vigour of the clean air he inhaled, demanded of him action of some sort; and he had nothing whatever to do with himself all afternoon save drowse over "The Law of Torts."

Recognition of Leonard and Call's familiar shop-front fired him with a spirit of adventure and enterprise. He stopped short, thoughtfully rubbing his small moustache the wrong way, his vision glued to the embarrassingly candid window displays.

"It'd be an awful thing for me to do....

"Think of yourself, man, jumping counters in and out amongst all hose--those _Things!_ like a lunatic monkey performing on a Monday morning's clothes line!..."

He thought deeply, and sighed. "It ain't moral....

"But it's one of the rules, it must be did. Henry said a ribbon clerk was a social equal....

"Come, now! No more shennanigan! Brace up! Be a man!...

"A man? That's the whole trouble: I am a man; I've got no business in a place like that."

He turned and moved away slowly. But the idea had him by the heels. He struggled against a growing resolution to return. Then enlightenment came to him suddenly. He paused again, grappling with this amazing revelation of self.

"Great Scott! Harry was right, damn him! He said this place would reconstruct me from the inside out and vice versa, and by jinks! it has. I actually _want_ to work!...

"Can you beat that--_me_!"

He swung back to Leonard and Call's, mentally reviewing his instructions.

"Let's see. I was to wait at least a month, to let the shopkeepers get accustomed to the sight of me.... _Hmm_.... Harry certainly has a cute way of expressing his thought.... But it can't be helped; I can't wait. If I do, I'll throw up the job....

"I'm to walk in and say, politely: '_I'm looking for employment. If at any time you should have an opening here that you can offer me, I shall endeavour to give satisfaction. Good-day_.'...

"But be careful not to press it. Just say it and get right out...."

With the air of a man who knows his own mind he pulled open the wire screen-door and strode in.

Two minutes later he emerged, breathing hard, but with the glitter of determination in his eye.

"I wouldn't 've believed I could get away with it. Here goes for the next promising opening."

He headed for Sothern and Lee's drug-store.

"Wonder what that fellow would have said if I'd had the nerve to wait and listen...."

In the drug-store he experienced less difficulty in making his speech and exit; he flattered himself that he accomplished both gracefully, even impressively. And indeed you may believe he left a gaping audience behind him. So likewise at Godfrey's notions and stationery shop.

As he emerged from the latter the resonant clamour of the Methodist Church clock drove him home for dinner, hungry and glowing with self-approbation. At all events, no one had refused him: he had not been set upon and incontinently kicked out. He felt that he was getting on.

"Now this afternoon," he mused, "I'll wind up the job. By night everyone in town will know I want work."

But if he had thought a moment he would have realised that he might have spared himself the trouble; the consummation he so earnestly desired was already being brought about by resident and recognised, if unofficial, agents for the dissemination of news.

It was two o'clock or thereabouts, I gather, when, shaping his course toward Radville's commercial centre, Duncan hesitated on the corner of Beech Street, cocking an incredulous eye up at the weather-worn sign which has for years adorned the side of Tuthill's grocery: a hand indicating fixedly:

THIS WAY TO GRAHAM'S DRUG STORE

"Two druggists in Radville!" he mused. "Is it possible?... Then it's Harry's mistake if the scheme fails; he said this was a one-horse country town, but I'm blest if it isn't a thriving metropolis! Two!... Here, I'm going to have a look."

He turned up Beech and presently discovered the object of his quest, a two-storey building of "frame," guiltless of the ardent caress of a paint-brush since time out of mind. On the ground floor the windows were made up of many small square panes, several of which had been rudely mended. Through them the interior glimmered darkly. In the foreground stood a broken bottle, shaped like a mortuary urn and half full of pink liquid. Beside it reposed a broken packing-box in which bleary camphor-balls nestled between torn sheets of faded blue paper. Of these a silent companion in misery stood on the far side of the window: a towering pagoda-like cage of wire in which (trapped, doubtless, by means of some mysterious bait known only to alchemists) three worn but brutal-looking sponges were apparently slumbering in exhaustion. Back of these a dusty plaster cast of a male figure lightly draped seemed to represent the survival of the fittest over some strange and deadly patent medicine. The recessed door bore an inscription in gold letters, tarnished and half obliterated:

AM GRAHAM RUGS & CHEM C LS

R SCRIPTION CAREF LY C POUNDED

"Looks like the very place for one of my acknowledged abilities," said Duncan. He turned the knob and entered, advancing to the middle of the dingy room. There, standing beside a cold and rusty stove whose pipe wandered giddily to a hole in the farthest wall (reminding him of some uncouth cat with its tail over its back), he surveyed with the single requisite comprehensive glance the tiers of shelves tenanted by a beggarly array of dingy bottles; the soda fountain with its company of glasses and syrup jars; the flanking counters with their broken show-cases housing a heterogenous conglomeration of unsalable wares; the aged and tattered posters heralding the virtues of potent affronts to the human interior--to say naught of its intelligence; the drab walls and debris-littered flooring.

A slight grating noise behind him brought Duncan round with a start. At a work-bench near the window sat a white-haired man garbed baggily in an old crash coat and trousers. His head was bowed over something clamped in a vise, at which he was tinkering busily with a file. He did not look up, but, as his caller moved, inquired amiably: "Well?"

"Good-morning," stammered Duncan; "er--I should say afternoon."

"So you should," Sam admitted, still fussing with his work. "Anything you want?"

Duncan swallowed hard and mastered his confusion. "Would it be possible for me to speak to the proprietor a moment?"

"I should jedge it would. Go right along." Sam filed vigorously.

"Might I ask--are you Mr. Graham?"

"Yes, sir; that's me."

The filing continued stridently. Duncan moved closer. There was scant encouragement to be gathered from Graham's indifferent attitude; yet his voice had been pleasant, kindly.

"I--I'm looking for employment," said Duncan hastily. "If--"

"Employment!"

Graham dropped his tools with a clatter and faced round. For a moment his eyes twinkled and a wintry smile lightened his fine old features. "Well, I declare!" he said, rising. "You must be the stranger the whole town's been talkin' about."

"If at any time," Duncan pursued hastily, "you should have an opening here that you can offer me, I shall endeavour to give satisfaction. Good-day, sir." And he made for the door.

"Eh, just a minute," said Graham. "Are you in a hurry?"

Duncan paused, smiling nervously. "Oh, no--only I mustn't press it, you know--just say it and get right--I mean I don't want to take up your valuable time, sir."

Graham chuckled. "Guess the folks haven't been talking much to you about me," he suggested. "You seem to have a higher opinion of the value of my time than anybody else in Radville."

"Yes, but--that is to say--"

"But if you're really looking for a job, I'd like to give you one first rate."

Duncan started toward him in breathless haste. "You--you'd like to!--You don't mean it!"

"Yes," Graham nodded, smiling with enjoyment of his little joke. It was harmless; he didn't for a moment believe that Duncan really needed employment; and on the other hand it tickled him immensely to think that anyone should apply to him for work.

"Well," said Duncan, staring, "you're the first man I ever met that felt that way about it."

Sam's amusement dwindled. "The trouble is," he confessed--"the trouble is, my boy, my business is so small I don't need any help. There isn't much of anything to do here."

"That's just the sort of a place I'd like," said Duncan impulsively. Then he laughed a little, uneasily. "I mean, I'm willing to take any position, no matter how insignificant. I mean it, honestly."

"This might suit you, then--"

"I wish you'd let me try it, sir."

"But you don't understand." Graham was serious enough now; there wasn't any joke in what he had to say. "To tell you the truth, I can't afford it. When your pay was due, I'm afraid I shouldn't have any money to give you."

Duncan dismissed this paltry consideration with a princely gesture. "I don't mind that part," he insisted. "Mr. Graham, if you'll teach me the drug business I'll work for you for nothing."

He said it earnestly, for he meant it just a bit more seriously than he himself realised at the moment; and I'm glad to think it was because Sam's serene and gentle, guileless nature had appealed to the young man. He had that in him, that instinct for decency and the right, that made him like this simple, sweet and almost childish old man at sight--like him and want to help him, though he was hardly conscious of this and believed his motive rather more than less selfish, that he was grasping at this opportunity for relief from the deadly ennui that oppressed him as madly as a famished man at a crust. Indeed, the boy was eager to deceive himself in this respect, with youth's wholesome horror of sentiment.

"Between you and me," he hurried on, "it's this way: I've been here for two weeks with nothing to do but look at a book, and it's got me crazy enough to want to work!"

But still I like to think it was for a better reason, that his conduct then bore out my theory that there are streaks of human kindliness and right-thinking in all of us--buried deep though they may be by many an acquired stratum of callousness and egoism: the sediment of life caking upon the soul....

But as for Sam, as soon as he recovered he shook his head in thoughtful deprecation. "Well, I swan!" he said. "I guess you must find it pretty slow down here. But"--brightening--"if you feel that way about it, I'd better take you over to Sothern and Lee's. They'd be glad to get you at the price."

"And in a week they'd think they were over-paying me," Duncan argued. "No--I've been there. Why not try me on here?"

"Well, I'm just a little bit afraid you wouldn't learn much, my boy. I don't do business enough to give you a good idea of it. Sothern and Lee get all the trade nowadays."

"But look here, sir: don't you think if I came in here perhaps we could build up the business?"

"No, I'm afraid not," Graham deprecated, pursing his lips and rubbing the white stubble of his beard with a toil-worn thumb.

Duncan eyed him in bitter humour. "No, of course not. You're right--but somebody must have tipped you off."

Graham paid little heed, whose mind was bent upon his own parlous circumstances. "I haven't got capital enough to stock up the store," he explained; "that's the real trouble. Folks have got into the habit of going to the other store because I'm out of so many things."

"Well, to be sure," said Duncan, a little dashed; "you can't expect to do business unless you've got things to sell...."

"I don't expect it, my boy," Sam assented dolefully. "'Twouldn't be in reason.... You see," he added, hope lightening his gloom, "I'm working on an invention of mine, and if that should work out I'd get some money and be able to get a fresh stock. Then I'd be glad to have you."

Duncan brushed this impatiently aside. "How much business are you doing here now?"

"Some days"--Graham reckoned it on his fingers--"I take in a dollar or two, and some days... nothing.... There's my sody fountain," he said with a jerk of a thumb toward it: "got that fixed up a little while ago, and it's bringing in a little. Not much. You see, I need more syrups. I've only got vanilly now."

"Soda water!" Duncan jumped at the idea. "Hold on! All the girls round here drink soda, don't they?"

"Oh, yes," said Graham abstractedly.

The thought infused new life into the younger man's waning purpose. "Mr. Graham, I wish you'd let me come in here for a while. I don't care about wages."

Graham lifted his shoulders resignedly. "Well, my boy, it don't seem right, but if you really want to work here for nothing, I'll be glad to have you; and if things look up with me, I'll be glad to pay you."

Abruptly he found his hand grasped and pumped gratefully.

"That's mighty good of you, Mr. Graham. When can I start?"

"Why... whenever you like."

In a twinkling Duncan's hat and gloves were off. "I'd like to, now," he said. "Where can we get more syrups?"

"Unfortunately... I'll have to buy them."

"How much?" Duncan's hand was in his pocket in an instant.

"Oh, no, you mustn't do that." Sam backed away in alarm. "I couldn't allow it, my boy. It's good of you, but..."

"Either," Nat told himself, "I'm asleep or someone's refusing to take money from me." He grinned cheerfully. "Oh, that's all right," he contended aloud. "I'll draw it down as soon as we begin to sell soda." He selected a bill from his slender store. "Will five dollars be enough?"

"Oh, yes, but it wouldn't be right for me to--"

But by this time Duncan was pressing the bill into his hand. "Nonsense!" he insisted. "How can we build up trade without syrup?"

"But--but--"

"And how can I learn the business without trade?" He closed Graham's unwilling fingers over the money and skipped away.