Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  Down the road a buggy came creaking toward him, gray with dust, the top canted permanently to one side, old and frayed, like the fat, shaggy, gray mare that drew it; her unchecked, despondent head lowering before her, while her incongruous tail waved incessantly, like the banner of a storming party. The editor did not hear the flop of the mare’s feet nor the sound of the wheels, so deep was his reverie, till the vehicle was nearly opposite him. The red-faced and perspiring driver drew rein, and the journalist looked up and waved a long white hand to him in greeting.

  “Howdy’ do, Mr. Harkless?” called the man in the buggy. “Soakin’ in the weather?” He spoke in shouts, though neither was hard of hearing.

  “Yes; just soaking,” answered Harkless; “it’s such a gypsy day. How is Mr. Bowlder?”

  “I’m givin’ good satisfaction, thankye, and all at home. She’s in town; goin’ in after her now.”

  “Give Mrs. Bowlder my regards,” said the journalist, comprehending the symbolism. “How is Hartley?”

  The farmer’s honest face shaded over, a second. “He’s be’n steady ever sence the night you brought him out home; six weeks straight. I’m kind of bothered about to-morrow — It’s show-day and he wants to come in town with us, and seems if I hadn’t any call to say no. I reckon he’ll have to take his chances — and us, too.” He raised the reins and clucked to the gray mare; “Well, she’ll be mad I ain’t there long ago. Ride in with me?”

  “No, I thank you. I’ll walk in for the sake of my appetite.”

  “Wouldn’t encourage it too much — livin’ at the Palace Hotel,’” observed Bowlder. “Sorry ye won’t ride.” He gathered the loose ends of the reins in his hands, leaned far over the dashboard and struck the mare a hearty thwack; the tattered banner of tail jerked indignantly, but she consented to move down the road. Bowlder thrust his big head through the sun-curtain behind him and continued the conversation: “See the White-Caps ain’t got ye yet.”

  “No, not yet.” Harkless laughed.

  “Reckon the boys ‘druther ye stayed in town after dark,” the other called back; then, as the mare stumbled into a trot, “Well, come out and see us — if ye kin spare time from the jedge’s.” The latter clause seemed to be an afterthought intended with humor, for Bowlder accompanied it with the loud laughter of sylvan timidity, risking a joke. Harkless nodded without the least apprehension of his meaning, and waved farewell as Bowlder finally turned his attention to the mare. When the flop, flop of her hoofs had died out, the journalist realized that the day was silent no longer; it was verging into evening.

  He dropped from the fence and turned his face toward town and supper. He felt the light and life about him; heard the clatter of the blackbirds above him; heard the homing bees hum by, and saw the vista of white road and level landscape, framed on two sides by the branches of the grove, a vista of infinitely stretching fields of green, lined here and there with woodlands and flat to the horizon line, the village lying in their lap. No roll of meadow, no rise of pasture land, relieved their serenity nor shouldered up from them to be called a hill. A second great flock of blackbirds was settling down over the Plattville maples. As they hung in the fair dome of the sky below the few white clouds, it occurred to Harkless that some supping god had inadvertently peppered his custard, and now inverted and emptied his gigantic blue dish upon the earth, the innumerable little black dots seeming to poise for a moment, then floating slowly down from the heights.

  A farm-bell rang in the distance, a tinkling coming small and mellow from far away, and at the lonesomeness of that sound he heaved a long, mournful sigh. The next instant he broke into laughter, for another bell rang over the fields, the court-house bell in the Square. The first four strokes were given with mechanical regularity, the pride of the custodian who operated the bell being to produce the effect of a clock-work bell such as he had once heard in the court-house at Rouen; but the fifth and sixth strokes were halting achievements, as, after four o’clock, he often lost count on the strain of the effort for precise imitation. There was a pause after the sixth, then a dubious and reluctant stroke — seven — a longer pause, followed by a final ring with desperate decision — eight! Harkless looked at his watch; it was twenty minutes of six.

  As he crossed the court-house yard to the Palace Hotel, he stopped to exchange a word with the bell-ringer, who, seated on the steps, was mopping his brow with an air of hard-earned satisfaction.

  “Good-evening, Schofields’,” he said. “You came in strong on the last stroke, to-night.”

  “What we need here,” responded the bell-ringer, “is more public-spirited men. I ain’t kickin’ on you, Mr. Harkless, no sir; but we want more men like they got in Rouen; we want men that’ll git Main Street paved with block or asphalt; men that’ll put in factories, men that’ll act and not set round like that ole fool Martin and laugh and polly-woggle and make fun of public sperrit, day in and out. I reckon I do my best for the city.”

  “Oh, nobody minds Tom Martin,” answered Harkless. “It’s only half the time he means anything by what he says.”

  “That’s jest what I hate about him,” returned the bell-ringer in a tone of high complaint; “you can’t never tell which half it is. Look at him now!” Over in front of the hotel Martin was standing, talking to the row of coatless loungers who sat with their chairs tilted back against the props of the wooden awning that projected over the sidewalk. Their faces were turned toward the court-house, and even those lost in meditative whittling had looked up to laugh. Martin, his hands in the pockets of his alpaca coat, his rusty silk hat tilted forward till the wide brim rested almost on the bridge of his nose, was addressing them in his one-keyed voice, the melancholy whine of which, though not the words, penetrated to the court-house steps.

  The bell-ringer, whose name was Henry Schofield, but who was known as Schofield’s Henry (popularly abbreviated to Schofields’) was moved to indignation. “Look at him,” he cried. “Look at him! Everlastingly goin’ on about my bell! Let him talk, jest let him talk.” The supper gong boomed inside the hotel and Harkless bade the bell-ringer good-night. As he moved away the latter called after him: “He don’t disturb nobody. Let him talk. Who pays any ‘tention to him I’d like to know?” There was a burst of laughter from the whittlers. Schofields’ sat in patient silence for a full minute, as one who knew that no official is too lofty to escape the anathemas of envy. Then he sprang to his feet and shook his fist at Martin, who was disappearing within the door of the hotel. “Go to Halifax!” he shouted.

  The dining-room of the Palace Hotel was a large, airy apartment, rustling with artistically perforated and slashed pink paper that hung everywhere, at this season of the year, to lend festal effect as well as to palliate the scourge of flies. There were six or seven large tables, all vacant except that at which Columbus Landis, the landlord, sat with his guests, while his wife and children ate in the kitchen by their own preference. Transient trade was light in Plattville; nobody ever came there, except occasional commercial travellers who got out of town the instant it was possible, and who said awful things if, by the exigencies of the railway time-table, they were left over night.

  Behind the host’s chair stood a red-haired girl in a blue cotton gown; and in her hand she languidly waved a long instrument made of clustered strips of green and white and yellow tissue paper fastened to a wooden wand; with this she amiably amused the flies except at such times as the conversation proved too interesting, when she was apt to rest it on the shoulder of one of the guests. This happened each time the editor of the “Herald” joined in the talk. As the men seated themselves they all nodded to her and said, “G’d evening, Cynthy.” Harkless always called her Charmion; no one knew why. When he came in she moved around the table to a chair directly opposite him, and held that station throughout the meal, with her eyes fixed on his face. Mr. Martin noted this manoeuvre — it occurred regularly twice a day — with a stealthy smile at the girl, and her light skin flushed while her lip curled shrewish
ly at the old gentleman. “Oh, all right, Cynthy,” he whispered to her, and chuckled aloud at her angry toss of the head.

  “Schofields’ seemed to be kind of put out with me this evening,” he remarked, addressing himself to the company. “He’s the most ungratefullest cuss I ever come up with. I was only oratin’ on how proud the city ought to be of him. He fairly keeps Plattville’s sportin’ spirit on the gog; ‘die out, wasn’t for him. There’s be’n more money laid on him whether he’ll strike over and above the hour, or under and below, or whether he’ll strike fifteen minutes before time, or twenty after, than — well, sir, we’d all forgit the language if it wasn’t for Schofields’ bell to keep us talkin’; that’s my claim. Dull days, think of the talk he furnishes all over town. Think what he’s done to promote conversation. Now, for instance, Anna Belle Bardlock’s got a beau, they say” — here old Tom tilted back in his chair and turned an innocent eye upon a youth across the table, young William Todd, who was blushing over his griddle-cakes— “and I hear he’s a good deal scared of Anna Belle and not just what you might call brash with her. They say every Sunday night he’ll go up to Bardlocks’ and call on Anna Belle from half-past six till nine, and when he’s got into his chair he sets and looks at the floor and the crayon portraits till about seven; then he opens his tremblin’ lips and says, ‘Reckon Schofields’ must be on his way to the court-house by this time.’ And about an hour later, when Schofields’ hits four or five, he’ll speak up again, ‘Say, I reckon he means eight.’ ‘Long towards nine o’clock, they say he skews around in his chair and says, ‘Wonder if he’ll strike before time or after,’ and Anna Belle answers out loud, ‘I hope after,’ for politeness; but in her soul she says, ‘I pray before’; and then Schofields’ hits her up for eighteen or twenty, and Anna Belle’s company reaches for his hat. Three Sundays ago he turned around before he went out and said, ‘Do you like apple-butter?’ but never waited to find out. It’s the same programme every Sunday evening, and Jim Bardlock says Anna Belle’s so worn out you wouldn’t hardly know her for the blithe creature she was last year — the excitement’s be’n too much for her!”

  Poor William Todd bent his fiery face over the table and suffered the general snicker in helpless silence. Then there was quiet for a space, broken only by the click of knives against the heavy china and the indolent rustle of Cynthia’s fly-brush.

  “Town so still,” observed the landlord, finally, with a complacent glance at the dessert course of prunes to which his guests were helping themselves from a central reservoir, “Town so still, hardly seems like show-day’s come round again. Yet there’s be’n some shore signs lately: when my shavers come honeyin’ up with, ‘Say, pa, ain’t they no urrands I can go for ye, pa? I like to run ’em for you, pa,’— ‘relse, ‘Oh, pa, ain’t they no water I can haul, or nothin’, pa?’— ‘relse, as little Rosina T. says, this morning, ‘Pa, I always pray fer you pa,’ and pa this and pa that-you can rely either Christmas or show-day’s mighty close.”

  William Todd, taking occasion to prove himself recovered from confusion, remarked casually that there was another token of the near approach of the circus, as ole Wilkerson was drunk again.

  “There’s a man!” exclaimed Mr. Martin with enthusiasm. “There’s the feller for my money! He does his duty as a citizen more discriminatin’ly on public occasions than any man I ever see. There’s Wilkerson’s celebration when there’s a funeral; look at the difference between it and on Fourth of July. Why, sir, it’s as melancholy as a hearse-plume, and sympathy ain’t the word for it when he looks at the remains, no sir; preacher nor undertaker, either, ain’t half as blue and respectful. Then take his circus spree. He come into the store this afternoon, head up, marchin’ like a grenadier and shootin’ his hand out before his face and drawin’ it back again, and hollering out, ‘Ta, ta, ta-ra-ta, ta, ta-ta-ra’ — why, the dumbest man ever lived could see in a minute show’s ‘comin’ to-morrow and Wilkerson’s playin’ the trombone. Then he’d snort and goggle like an elephant. Got the biggest sense of appropriateness of any man in the county, Wilkerson has. Folks don’t half appreciate him.”

  As each boarder finished his meal he raided the glass of wooden toothpicks and went away with no standing on the order of his going; but Martin waited for Harkless, who, not having attended to business so concisely as the others, was the last to leave the table, and they stood for a moment under the awning outside, lighting their cigars.

  “Call on the judge, to-night?” asked Martin.

  “No,” said Harkless. “Why?”

  “Didn’t you see the lady with Minnie and the judge at the lecture?”

  “I caught a glimpse of her. That’s what Bowlder meant, then.”

  “I don’t know what Bowlder meant, but I guess you better go out there, young man. She might not stay here long.”

  CHAPTER IV. THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER

  THE BRISCOE BUCKBOARD rattled along the elastic country-road, the roans setting a sharp pace as they turned eastward on the pike toward home and supper.

  “They’ll make the eight miles in three-quarters of an hour,” said the judge, proudly. He pointed ahead with his whip. “Just beyond that bend we pass through Six-Cross-Roads.”

  Miss Sherwood leaned forward eagerly. “Can we see ‘Mr. Wimby’s’ house from here?”

  “No, it’s on the other side, nearer town; we pass it later. It’s the only respectable-looking house in this township.” They reached the turn of the road, and the judge touched up his colts to a sharper gait. “No need of dallying,” he observed quietly. “It always makes me a little sick just to see the place. I’d hate to have a break-down here.”

  They came in sight of a squalid settlement, built raggedly about a blacksmith’s shop and a saloon. Half-a-dozen shanties clustered near the forge, a few roofs scattered through the shiftlessly cultivated fields, four or five barns propped by fence-rails, some sheds with gaping apertures through which the light glanced from side to side, a squad of thin, “razor-back” hogs — now and then worried by gaunt hounds — and some abused-looking hens, groping about disconsolately in the mire, a broken-topped buggy with a twisted wheel settling into the mud of the middle of the road (there was always abundant mud, here, in the dryest summer), a lowering face sneering from a broken window — Six-Cross-Roads was forbidding and forlorn enough by day. The thought of what might issue from it by night was unpleasant, and the legends of the Cross-Roads, together with an unshapen threat, easily fancied in the atmosphere of the place, made Miss Sherwood shiver as though a cold draught had crossed her.

  “It is so sinister!” she exclaimed. “And so unspeakably mean! This is where they live, the people who hate him, is it? The ‘White-Caps’?”

  “They are just a lot of rowdies,” replied Briscoe. “You have your rough corners in big cities, and I expect there are mighty few parts of any country that don’t have their tough neighborhoods, only Six-Cross-Roads happens to be worse than most. They choose to call themselves ‘White-Caps,’ but I guess it’s just a name they like to give themselves. Usually White-Caps are a vigilance committee going after rascalities the law doesn’t reach, or won’t reach, but these fellows are not that kind. They got together to wipe out their grudges — and sometimes they didn’t need any grudge and let loose their deviltries just for pure orneriness; setting haystacks afire and such like; or, where a farmer had offended them, they would put on their silly toggery and take him out at midnight and whip him and plunder his house and chase the horses and cattle into his corn, maybe. They say the women went with them on their raids.”

  “And he was the first to try to stop them?”

  “Well, you see our folks are pretty long-suffering,” Briscoe replied, apologetically. “We’d sort of got used to the meanness of the Cross-Roads. It took a stranger to stir things up — and he did. He sent eight of ’em to the penitentiary, some for twenty years.”

  As they passed the saloon a man stepped into the doorway and looked at them. He was coatless
and clad in garments worn to the color of dust; his bare head was curiously malformed, higher on one side than on the other, and though the buckboard passed rapidly, and at a distance, this singular lopsidedness was plainly visible to the occupants, lending an ugly significance to his meagre, yellow face. He was tall, lean, hard, powerfully built. He eyed the strangers with affected languor, and then, when they had gone by, broke into sudden, loud laughter.

  “That was Bob Skillett, the worst of the lot,” said the judge. “Harkless sent his son and one brother to prison, and it nearly broke his heart that he couldn’t swear to Bob.”

  When they were beyond the village and in the open road again. Miss Sherwood took a deep breath. “I think I breathe more freely,” she said. “That was a hideous laugh he sent after us. I had heard of places like this before — and I don’t think I care to see many of them. As I understand it, Six-Cross-Roads is entirely vicious, isn’t it; and bears the same relation to the country that the slums do to a city?’”

  “That’s about it. They make their own whiskey. I presume; and they have their own fights amongst themselves, but they settle ’em themselves, too, and keep their own counsel and hush it up. Lige Willetts, Minnie’s friend — I guess she’s told you about Lige? — well, Lige Willetts will go anywhere when he’s following a covey, though mostly the boys leave this part of the country alone when they’re hunting; but Lige got into a thicket back of the forge one morning, and he came on a crowd of buzzards quarrelling over a heap on the ground, and he got out in a hurry. He said he was sure it was a dog; but he ran almost all the way to Plattville.”