Читать книгу In the Midst of Alarms - Robert Barr - Страница 8

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Bartlett was silent for a long time, but there was evidently something on his mind, for he communed with himself, his mutterings growing louder and louder, until they broke the stillness; then he struck the horses, pulled them in, and began his soliloquy over again. At last he said abruptly to the professor:

“What’s this Revolution he talked about?”

“It was the War of Independence, beginning in 1776.”

“Never heard of it. Did the Yanks fight us?”

“The colonies fought with England.”

“What colonies?”

“The country now called the United States.”

“They fit with England, eh? Which licked?”

“The colonies won their independence.”

“That means they licked us. I don’t believe a word of it. ‘Pears to me I’d ’a’ heard of it; fur I’ve lived in these parts a long time.”

“It was a little before your day.”

“So was 1812; but my father fit in it, an’ I never heard him tell of this Revolution. He’d ’a’ known, I sh’d think. There’s a nigger in the fence somewheres.”

“Well, England was rather busy at the time with the French.”

“Ah, that was it, was it? I’ll bet England never knew the Revolution was a-goin’ on till it was over. Old Napoleon couldn’t thrash ’em, and it don’t stand to reason that the Yanks could. I thought there was some skullduggery. Why, it took the Yanks four years to lick themselves. I got a book at home all about Napoleon. He was a tough cuss.”

The professor did not feel called upon to defend the character of Napoleon, and so silence once more descended upon them. Bartlett seemed a good deal disturbed by the news he had just heard of the Revolution, and he growled to himself, while the horses suffered more than usual from the whip and the hauling back that invariably followed the stroke. Yates was some distance ahead, and swinging along at a great rate, when the horses, apparently of their own accord, turned in at an open gateway and proceeded, in their usual leisurely fashion, toward a large barn, past a comfortable frame house with a wide veranda in front.

“This is my place,” said Bartlett shortly.

“I wish you had told me a few minutes ago,” replied the professor, springing off, “so that I might have called to my friend.”

“I’m not frettin’ about him,” said Bartlett, throwing the reins to a young man who came out of the house.

Renmark ran to the road and shouted loudly to the distant Yates. Yates apparently did not hear him, but something about the next house attracted the pedestrian’s attention, and after standing for a moment and gazing toward the west he looked around and saw the professor beckoning to him. When the two men met, Yates said:

“So we have arrived, have we? I say, Stilly, she lives in the next house. I saw the buggy in the yard.”

“She? Who?”

“Why, that good-looking girl we passed on the road. I’m going to buy our supplies at that house, Stilly, if you have no objections. By the way, how is my old friend 1812?”

“He doesn’t seem to harbor any harsh feelings. In fact, he was more troubled about the Revolution than about the blow you gave him.”

“News to him, eh? Well, I’m glad I knocked something into his head.”

“You certainly did it most unscientifically.”

“How do you mean—unscientifically?”

“In the delivery of the blow. I never saw a more awkwardly delivered undercut.”

Yates looked at his friend in astonishment. How should this calm, learned man know anything about undercuts or science in blows?

“Well, you must admit I got there just the same.”

“Yes, by brute force. A sledge hammer would have done as well. But you had such an opportunity to do it neatly and deftly, without any display of surplus energy, that I regretted to see such an opening thrown away.”

“Heavens and earth, Stilly, this is the professor in a new light! What do you teach in Toronto University, anyhow? The noble art of self-defense?”

“Not exactly; but if you intend to go through Canada in this belligerent manner, I think it would be worth your while to take a few hints from me.”

“With striking examples, I suppose. By Jove! I will, Stilly.”

As the two came to the house they found Bartlett sitting in a wooden rocking chair on the veranda, looking grimly down the road.

“What an old tyrant that man must be in his home!” said Yates. There was no time for the professor to reply before they came within earshot.

“The old woman’s setting out supper,” said the farmer gruffly, that piece of information being apparently as near as he could get toward inviting them to share his hospitality. Yates didn’t know whether it was meant for an invitation or not, but he answered shortly:

“Thanks, we won’t stay.”

“Speak fur yourself, please,” snarled Bartlett.

“Of course I go with my friend,” said Renmark; “but we are obliged for the invitation.”

“Please yourselves.”

“What’s that?” cried a cheery voice from the inside of the house, as a stout, rosy, and very good-natured-looking woman appeared at the front door. “Won’t stay? Who won’t stay? I’d like to see anybody leave my house hungry when there’s a meal on the table! And, young men, if you can get a better meal anywhere on the Ridge than what I’ll give you, why, you’re welcome to go there next time, but this meal you’ll have here, inside of ten minutes. Hiram, that’s your fault. You always invite a person to dinner as if you wanted to wrastle with him!”

Hiram gave a guilty start, and looked with something of mute appeal at the two men, but said nothing.

“Never mind him,” continued Mrs. Bartlett. “You’re at my house; and, whatever my neighbors may say ag’in me, I never heard anybody complain of the lack of good victuals while I was able to do the cooking. Come right in and wash yourselves, for the road between here and the fort is dusty enough, even if Hiram never was taken up for fast driving. Besides, a wash is refreshing after a hot day.”

There was no denying the cordiality of this invitation, and Yates, whose natural gallantry was at once aroused, responded with the readiness of a courtier. Mrs. Bartlett led the way into the house; but as Yates passed the farmer the latter cleared his throat with an effort, and, throwing his thumb over his shoulder in the direction his wife had taken, said in a husky whisper:

“No call to—to mention the Revolution, you know.”

“Certainly not,” answered Yates, with a wink that took in the situation. “Shall we sample the jug before or after supper?”

“After, if it’s all the same to you;” adding, “out in the barn.”

Yates nodded, and followed his friend into the house.

The young men were shown into a bedroom of more than ordinary size, on the upper floor. Everything about the house was of the most dainty and scrupulous cleanliness, and an air of cheerful comfort pervaded the place. Mrs. Bartlett was evidently a housekeeper to be proud of. Two large pitchers of cool, soft water awaited them, and the wash, as had been predicted, was most refreshing.

“I say,” cried Yates, “it’s rather cheeky to accept a man’s hospitality after knocking him down.”

“It would be for most people, but I think you underestimate your cheek, as you call it.”

“Bravo, Stilly! You’re blossoming out. That’s repartee, that is. With the accent on the rap, too. Never you mind; I think old 1812 and I will get on all right after this. It doesn’t seem to bother him any, so I don’t see why it should worry me. Nice motherly old lady, isn’t she?”

“Who? 1812?”

“No; Mrs. 1812. I’m sorry I complimented you on your repartee. You’ll get conceited. Remember that what in the newspaper man is clever, in a grave professor is rank flippancy. Let’s go down.”

The table was covered with a cloth as white and spotless as good linen can well be. The bread was genuine homemade, a term so often misused in the cities. It was brown as to crust, and flaky and light as to interior. The butter, cool from the rock cellar, was of a refreshing yellow hue. The sight of the well-loaded table was most welcome to the eyes of hungry travelers. There was, as Yates afterward remarked, “abundance, and plenty of it.”

“Come, father!” cried Mrs. Bartlett, as the young men appeared; they heard the rocking chair creak on the veranda in prompt answer to the summons.

“This is my son, gentlemen,” said Mrs. Bartlett, indicating the young man who stood in a noncommittal attitude near a corner of the room. The professor recognized him as the person who had taken charge of the horses when his father came home. There was evidently something of his father’s demeanor about the young man, who awkwardly and silently responded to the recognition of the strangers.

“And this is my daughter,” continued the good woman. “Now, what might your names be?”

“My name is Yates, and this is my friend Professor Renmark of T’ronto,” pronouncing the name of the fair city in two syllables, as is, alas! too often done. The professor bowed, and Yates cordially extended his hand to the young woman. “How do you do, Miss Bartlett?” he said, “I am happy to meet you.”

The girl smiled very prettily, and said she hoped they had a pleasant trip out from Fort Erie.

“Oh, we had,” said Yates, looking for a moment at his host, whose eyes were fixed on the tablecloth, and who appeared to be quite content to let his wife run the show. “The road’s a little rocky in places, but it’s very pleasant.”

“Now, you sit down here, and you here,” said Mrs. Bartlett; “and I do hope you have brought good appetites with you.”

The strangers took their places, and Yates had a chance to look at the younger member of the family, which opportunity he did not let slip. It was hard to believe that she was the daughter of so crusty a man as Hiram Bartlett. Her cheeks were rosy, with dimples in them that constantly came and went in her incessant efforts to keep from laughing. Her hair, which hung about her plump shoulders, was a lovely golden brown. Although her dress was of the cheapest material, it was neatly cut and fitted; and her dainty white apron added that touch of wholesome cleanliness which was so noticeable everywhere in the house. A bit of blue ribbon at her white throat, and a pretty spring flower just below it, completed a charming picture, which a more critical and less susceptible man than Yates might have contemplated with pleasure.

Miss Bartlett sat smilingly at one end of the table, and her father grimly at the other. The mother sat at the side, apparently looking on that position as one of vantage for commanding the whole field, and keeping her husband and her daughter both under her eye. The teapot and cups were set before the young woman. She did not pour out the tea at once, but seemed to be waiting instructions from her mother. That good lady was gazing with some sternness at her husband, he vainly endeavoring to look at the ceiling or anywhere but at her. He drew his open hand nervously down his face, which was of unusual gravity even for him. Finally he cast an appealing glance at his wife, who sat with her hands folded on her lap, but her eyes were unrelenting. After a moment’s hopeless irresolution Bartlett bent his head over his plate and murmured:

“For what we are about to receive, oh, make us truly thankful. Amen.”

Mrs. Bartlett echoed the last word, having also bowed her head when she saw surrender in the troubled eyes of her husband.

Now, it happened that Yates, who had seen nothing of this silent struggle of the eyes, being exceedingly hungry, was making every preparation for the energetic beginning of the meal. He had spent most of his life in hotels and New York boarding houses, so that if he ever knew the adage, “Grace before meat,” he had forgotten it. In the midst of his preparations came the devout words, and they came upon him as a stupefying surprise. Although naturally a resourceful man, he was not quick enough this time to cover his confusion. Miss Bartlett’s golden head was bowed, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Yates’ look of amazed bewilderment and his sudden halt of surprise. When all heads were raised, the young girl’s still remained where it was, while her plump shoulders quivered. Then she covered her face with her apron, and the silvery ripple of a laugh came like a smothered musical chime trickling through her fingers.

“Why, Kitty!” cried her mother in astonishment, “whatever is the matter with you?”

The girl could no longer restrain her mirth. “You’ll have to pour out the tea, mother!” She exclaimed, as she fled from the room.

“For the land’s sake!” cried the astonished mother, rising to take her frivolous daughter’s place, “what ails the child? I don’t see what there is to laugh at.”

Hiram scowled down the table, and was evidently also of the opinion that there was no occasion for mirth. The professor was equally in the dark.

“I am afraid, Mrs. Bartlett,” said Yates, “that I am the innocent cause of Miss Kitty’s mirth. You see, madam—it’s a pathetic thing to say, but really I have had no home life. Although I attend church regularly, of course,” he added with jaunty mendacity, “I must confess that I haven’t heard grace at meals for years and years, and—well, I wasn’t just prepared for it. I have no doubt I made an exhibition of myself, which your daughter was quick to see.”

“It wasn’t very polite,” said Mrs. Bartlett with some asperity.

“I know that,” pleaded Yates with contrition, “but I assure you it was unintentional on my part.”

“Bless the man!” cried his hostess. “I don’t mean you. I mean Kitty. But that girl never could keep her face straight. She always favored me more than her father.”

This statement was not difficult to believe, for Hiram at that moment looked as if he had never smiled in his life. He sat silent throughout the meal, but Mrs. Bartlett talked quite enough for two.

“Well, for my part,” she said, “I don’t know what farming’s coming to! Henry Howard and Margaret drove past here this afternoon as proud as Punch in their new covered buggy. Things is very different from what they was when I was a girl. Then a farmer’s daughter had to work. Now Margaret’s took her diploma at the ladies’ college, and Arthur he’s begun at the university, and Henry’s sporting round in a new buggy. They have a piano there, with the organ moved out into the back room.”

“The whole Howard lot’s a stuck-up set,” muttered the farmer.

But Mrs. Bartlett wouldn’t have that. Any detraction that was necessary she felt competent to supply, without help from the nominal head of the house.

“No, I don’t go so far as to say that. Neither would you, Hiram, if you hadn’t lost your lawsuit about the line fence; and served you right, too, for it wouldn’t have been begun if I had been at home at the time. Not but what Margaret’s a good housekeeper, for she wouldn’t be her mother’s daughter if she wasn’t that; but it does seem to me a queer way to raise farmers’ children, and I only hope they can keep it up. There were no pianos nor French and German in my young days.”

“You ought to hear her play! My lands!” cried young Bartlett, who spoke for the first time. His admiration for her accomplishment evidently went beyond his powers of expression.

Bartlett himself did not relish the turn the conversation had taken, and he looked somewhat uneasily at the two strangers. The professor’s countenance was open and frank, and he was listening with respectful interest to Mrs. Bartlett’s talk. Yates bent over his plate with flushed face, and confined himself strictly to the business in hand.

“I am glad,” said the professor innocently to Yates, “that you made the young lady’s acquaintance. I must ask you for an introduction.”

For once in his life Yates had nothing to say, but he looked at his friend with an expression that was not kindly. The latter, in answer to Mrs. Bartlett’s inquiries, told how they had passed Miss Howard on the road, and how Yates, with his usual kindness of heart, had offered the young woman the hospitalities of the hay rack. Two persons at the table were much relieved when the talk turned to the tent. It was young Hiram who brought about this boon. He was interested in the tent, and he wanted to know. Two things seemed to bother the boy: First, he was anxious to learn what diabolical cause had been at work to induce two apparently sane men to give up the comforts of home and live in this exposed manner, if they were not compelled to do so. Second, he desired to find out why people who had the privilege of living in large cities came of their own accord into the uninteresting country, anyhow. Even when explanations were offered, the problem seemed still beyond him.

After the meal they all adjourned to the veranda, where the air was cool and the view extensive. Mrs. Bartlett would not hear of the young men pitching the tent that night. “Goodness knows, you will have enough of it, with the rain and the mosquitoes. We have plenty of room here, and you will have one comfortable night on the Ridge, at any rate. Then in the morning you can find a place in the woods to suit you, and my boy will take an ax and cut stakes for you, and help to put up your precious tent. Only remember that when it rains you are to come to the house, or you will catch your deaths with cold and rheumatism. It will be very nice till the novelty wears off; then you are quite welcome to the front rooms upstairs, and Hiram can take the tent back to Erie the first time he goes to town.”

Mrs. Bartlett had a way of taking things for granted. It never seemed to occur to her that any of her rulings might be questioned. Hiram sat gazing silently at the road, as if all this was no affair of his.

Yates had refused a chair, and sat on the edge of the veranda, with his back against one of the pillars, in such a position that he might, without turning his head, look through the open doorway into the room. where Miss Bartlett was busily but silently clearing away the tea things. The young man caught fleeting glimpses of her as she moved airily about her work. He drew a cigar from his case, cut off the end with his knife, and lit a match on the sole of his boot, doing this with an easy automatic familiarity that required no attention on his part; all of which aroused the respectful envy of young Hiram, who sat on a wooden chair, leaning forward, eagerly watching the man from New York.

“Have a cigar?” said Yates, offering the case to young Hiram.

“No, no; thank you,” gasped the boy, aghast at the reckless audacity of the proposal.

“What’s that?” cried Mrs. Bartlett. Although she was talking volubly to the professor, her maternal vigilance never even nodded, much less slept. “A cigar? Not likely! I’ll say this for my husband and my boy: that, whatever else they may have done, they have never smoked nor touched a drop of liquor since I’ve known them, and, please God, they never will.”

“Oh, I guess it wouldn’t hurt them,” said Yates, with a lack of tact that was not habitual. He fell several degrees in the estimation of his hostess.

“Hurt ’em?” cried Mrs. Bartlett indignantly. “I guess it won’t get a chance to.” She turned to the professor, who was a good listener—respectful and deferential, with little to say for himself. She rocked gently to and fro as she talked.

Her husband sat unbendingly silent, in a sphinxlike attitude that gave no outward indication of his mental uneasiness. He was thinking gloomily that it would be just his luck to meet Mrs. Bartlett unexpectedly in the streets of Fort Erie on one of those rare occasions when he was enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season. He had the most pessimistic forebodings of what the future might have in store for him. Sometimes, when neighbors or customers “treated” him in the village, and he felt he had taken all the whisky that cloves would conceal, he took a five-cent cigar instead of a drink. He did not particularly like the smoking of it, but there was a certain devil-may-care recklessness in going down the street with a lighted cigar in his teeth, which had all the more fascination for him because of its manifest danger. He felt at these times that he was going the pace, and that it is well our women do not know of all the wickedness there is in this world. He did not fear that any neighbor might tell his wife, for there were depths to which no person could convince Mrs. Bartlett he would descend. But he thought with horror of some combination of circumstances that might bring his wife to town unknown to him on a day when he indulged. He pictured, with a shudder, meeting her unexpectedly on the uncertain plank sidewalk of Fort Erie, he smoking a cigar. When this nightmare presented itself to him, he resolved never to touch a cigar again; but he well knew that the best resolutions fade away if a man is excited with two or three glasses of liquor.

When Mrs. Bartlett resumed conversation with the professor, Yates looked up at young Hiram and winked. The boy flushed with pleasure under the comprehensiveness of that wink. It included him in the attractive halo of crime that enveloped the fascinating personality of the man from New York. It seemed to say:

“That’s all right, but we are men of the world. We know.”

Young Hiram’s devotion to the Goddess Nicotine had never reached the altitude of a cigar. He had surreptitiously smoked a pipe in a secluded corner behind the barn in days when his father was away. He feared both his father and his mother, and so was in an even more embarrassing situation than old Hiram himself. He had worked gradually up to tobacco by smoking cigarettes of cane made from abandoned hoop-skirts. Crinoline was fashionable, even in the country, in those days, and ribs of cane were used before the metallic distenders of dresses came in. One hoop-skirt, whose usefulness as an article of adornment was gone, would furnish delight and smoking material for a company of boys for a month. The cane smoke made the tongue rather raw, but the wickedness was undeniable. Yates’ wink seemed to recognize young Hiram as a comrade worthy to offer incense at the shrine, and the boy was a firm friend of Yates from the moment the eyelid of the latter drooped.

The tea things having been cleared away, Yates got no more glimpses of the girl through the open door. He rose from his lowly seat and strolled toward the gate, with his hands in his pockets. He remembered that he had forgotten something, and cudgeled his brains to make out what it was. He gazed down the road at the house of the Howards, which naturally brought to his recollection his meeting with the young girl on the road. There was a pang of discomfiture in this thought when he remembered the accomplishments attributed to her by Mrs. Bartlett. He recalled his condescending tone to her, and recollected his anxiety about the jar. The jar! That was what he had forgotten. He flashed a glance at old Hiram, and noted that the farmer was looking at him with something like reproach in his eyes. Yates moved his head almost imperceptibly toward the barn, and the farmer’s eyes dropped to the floor of the veranda. The young man nonchalantly strolled past the end of the house.

“I guess I’ll go to look after the horses,” said the farmer, rising.

“The horses are all right, father. I saw to them,” put in his son, but the old man frowned him down, and slouched around the corner of the house. Mrs. Bartlett was too busy talking to the professor to notice. So good a listener did not fall to her lot every day.

“Here’s looking at you,” said Yates, strolling into the barn, taking a telescopic metal cup from his pocket, and clinking it into receptive shape by a jerk of the hand. He offered the now elongated cup to Hiram, who declined any such modern improvement.

“Help yourself in that thing. The jug’s good enough for me.”

“Three fingers” of the liquid gurgled out into the patented vessel, and the farmer took the jar, after a furtive look over his shoulder.

“Well, here’s luck.” The newspaper man tossed off the potion with the facility of long experience, shutting up the dish with his thumb and finger, as if it were a metallic opera hat.

The farmer drank silently from the jar itself. Then he smote in the cork with his open palm.

“Better bury it in the wheat bin,” he said morosely. “The boy might find it if you put it among the oats—feedin’ the horses, ye know.”

“Mighty good place,” assented Yates, as the golden grain flowed in a wave over the submerged jar. “I say, old man, you know the spot; you’ve been here before.”

Bartlett’s lowering countenance indicated resentment at the imputation, but he neither affirmed nor denied. Yates strolled out of the barn, while the farmer went through a small doorway that led to the stable. A moment later he heard Hiram calling loudly to his son to bring the pails and water the horses.

“Evidently preparing an alibi,” said Yates, smiling to himself, as he sauntered toward the gate.