Читать книгу Old Ebenezer - Opie Percival Read - Страница 10

The following afternoon when Lyman went to the office, having spent the earlier hours in the court house, to assure the Judge that he had no motions to make, and no case to be passed over to the next term—he found Caruthers with his feet on the table.

"Getting hot," said Caruthers.

"Is it? I thought we had been playing freeze-out," Lyman replied, throwing his hat upon the table and sitting down.

"Then you didn't do anything with his Royal Flush?"

"Brother McElwin? No. He fenced with his astonishment until he could find words, and then he granted me the privilege to retire."

"Wouldn't take a mortgage on the library?"

"No; he said it wasn't worth a hundred."

"But you assured him that it was."

"No; I had to acknowledge that it wasn't."

"You are a fool."

"Yes, perhaps; but I'm not a thief."

"No! But it's more respectable to be a thief than a pauper."

"It is not very comforting to be both—to know that you are one and to feel that you are the other."

"Lyman, that sort of doctrine may suit a long-tailed coat, a white necktie and a countenance pinched by piety, but it doesn't suit me."

"It suits me," Lyman replied. "I was brought up on it. I think mother baked it in with the beans."

"Watercolor nonsense!" said Caruthers. "My people were as honest as anybody, but they didn't teach me to look for the worst of it."

"But didn't they teach you that without a certain moral force there can be no real and lasting achievement?"

Caruthers turned and nodded his head toward the bank. "Is there any moral force over there? Did you notice any saintly precepts on his wall? I don't think you did. But wasn't there many a sign that said, 'get money'?"

"Caruthers, you join with the rest of this town in the belief that McElwin is a great man. I don't. He is a community success, a neighborhood's strong man, but in the hands of the giants who live in the real world he is a weakling."

"He is strong enough, though, not to tremble at the sound of a footstep at the door, and that's exactly what we sit here doing day after day. The joy of the hoped-for client is driven away by the fear of the collector." He was silent for a moment, and then he said: "I don't feel that there's any advantage in being hooked up with a saint."

"I don't know," Lyman replied. "I never tried it."

"I have," said Caruthers, looking at him.

Lyman laughed and rubbed his hands together. "You are the only one that has ever insinuated such a compliment, if you mean that I am a saint. But I hold that there's quite a stretch between a saint and a man who has a desire simply to be honest. Saint—" He laughed again. "Why, the people where I was brought up called me a rake."

"They were angels. But why don't you say where you were 'raised.' Why do you say 'brought up?' You were not brought up; you were raised."

"Yes, that's true, I guess. But we raised vegetables where I was brought up."

"Cabbages?"

"Yes, some cabbages. Round about here, though, they appear to make pumpkins more of a specialty. But come a little nearer with your meaning concerning the saint. I take it that you are tired of the partnership. Am I right?"

"Well," Caruthers spoke up, "we haven't done anything and we have no prospects."

"You are right," said Lyman. "But I am poorer and you are about as well off as you were."

"Do you mean to insinuate—"

"Oh, I don't insinuate, though it's a habit among the people where I was brought up."

"If you don't insinuate, what then? what do you mean?"

"That you've got about all the money I had."

"The devil, you say!"

"I didn't mention the devil. I didn't think it was necessary to speak in the third person of one who is already present."

Caruthers started and took his feet off the table. Lyman regarded him with a cool smile.

"Lyman, I thought that we might have parted friends."

"We can at least part as acquaintances," Lyman replied. "Until a few moments ago I was willing to stand a good deal from you; that part of your principles that I do not like I was willing to ascribe to a difference of opinion, but just now you called me a fool because I had refused to declare those books to be worth a hundred dollars. Up to that time we might have parted in reasonably good humor, but since then I haven't thought very well of you. And you'll have to take it back before you leave."

"You say I'll have to take it back."

"Yes, that's what I said."

"I never had to take anything back."

"No? Then you are about to encounter a new phase of life. Singular, isn't it, that we never know when we are about to stumble upon something new."

"You don't mean——"

"I don't know that I do. But I mean that you'll take that back or carry away a thrashing that will make you stagger. Did you ever see a man wabbling off after a thrashing that he was hardly able to carry? Sad sight sometimes. The last man that I whipped weighed about forty pounds more than I do. He presumed on his weight. But he soon found out that his flesh was very much in his way. He was a saw mill man and a bully; and it so tickled Uncle Buckley that nothing would do but I must come to his house and live as one of the family. Out at Fox Grove a man who won't be imposed upon stands high."

"Lyman, I don't want any trouble, and——"

"Oh, it won't be any trouble."

"And I acknowledge that I was hasty. I take it back, and here's my hand on it."

"I'm obliged to you for taking it back, Caruthers, but I don't want to take your hand. I don't understand it, but a spiritual something seems to have arisen between us."

"All right," said Caruthers, "but I hope we don't part as enemies."

"Oh, no, not as enemies. You speak of parting as if you were the one who has to vacate."

"Yes, I have rented an office over on the other side of the square, on the ground floor."

"It is very kind of you to leave me here," said Lyman. "You might have ordered me out. I am glad you didn't."

"Such a proceeding could never have entered my head," Caruthers replied. "In fact, I thought that if the separation must come you would rather stay here. You appear to have a fondness for that clanking old press out there."

"Yes, I can make it grind out my rent. When are you going to vacate the premises?" Lyman asked, his grave countenance lighted with a smile.

"Now, or rather in a very few minutes."

"Is there anything holding you?"

"Come Lyman, old man, don't jog me that way. And I wish you wouldn't look at me with that sort of a smile. Everybody says you have the kindest face in the world——"

"Without a bristle to hide its sweetness," Lyman broke in.

"Yes," Caruthers assented, "the innocence of a boy grown to manhood without knowing it."

"And you have remained to tell me this?"

"Oh, I'll go now," said Caruthers, getting up.

"I wish you would. Up to a very short time ago I thought you one of the most whimsically entertaining men I ever met, but as I said just now, a spiritual disparagement has arisen between us, a thick fog, and I wish you would clear the atmosphere."

"Well," said Caruthers, "I am off. I don't know what to take with me," he added, looking about. "I suppose I owe you more or less, and I'll leave things just as they are until I am prepared to face a statement."

"All right. Good day."

"But you won't shake hands?"

"Yes, through the fog," said Lyman, holding out his hand. Caruthers grasped it, dropped it, as if he too felt that it came through a fog, and hastened out. Just outside he met Warren coming in. "What's he looking so serious about?" the editor asked.

"Sit down," said Lyman. "Don't take the chair he had—the other one, that's it. Well, we have split the law trust and he goes across the square to open a new office."

"Is that so? Well, I reckon there's a good deal of the wolf about him. Yes, sir, he has seen me bleeding under the heel of the Express Company, without so much as giving me the——"

"Moist eye of sympathy," Lyman suggested.

"That's all right, and it fits. Say, you are more of a writer than a lawyer. And that's exactly in line with what I came in to tell you. I got a half column ad. this morning from a patent medicine concern in the North, and they want an additional write-up. It all comes through your sketches."

"Do you think so?"

"I know it. A drummer told me this morning that he had heard some fellows talking about my paper in a St. Louis hotel, the best hotel in the town, mind you—and I can see from the exchanges that the Sentinel is making tracks away out yonder in the big road. And it's all owing to that quaint Yankee brain of yours, Lyman. Yes, it is. Why, the best lawyers in this town have written for my paper. The Circuit Judge reviewed the life of Sir Edmond Saunders, whoever he was, and Capt. Fitch, the prosecuting attorney, wrote two columns on Napoleon, to say nothing of the hundreds of things sent in by the bar in general, and it all amounted to nothing, but you come along in the simplest sort of a way and make a hit."

"I'm glad you think so."

"Oh, it's not a question of think; I know it. And now I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll let this law end of the building take care of itself and we'll give our active energies to the paper. You do the editing and I'll do the business. You put stuff into the columns and I'll wrestle with the express agent. And I'll divide with you."

"Warren," said Lyman, getting up and putting his hands on the newspaper man's shoulders, "there's no fog between you and me."

Warren looked up with a smile. He was a young fellow with a bright face, and the soft curly hair of a child. "Fog? No, sunshine. There couldn't be any fog where you are, Lyman. I'm not much of a scholar. I've had to squirm so much that I haven't had time to study, but I know a man when I see him, and I don't see how any woman could give you much attention without falling in love with you, hanged if I do."

Lyman blushed and shook him playfully. "I am delighted to pool distresses with you," he said, "but don't try to flatter me. Women laugh at me," he added, sitting down.

"No, they laugh with you. But that's all right. Now, let's talk over our prospects."