CHAPTER IX
"Far be it from me to—to—"
"Cavil or carp?"
"Exactly. Thank you. Beautiful line! Quite Kipling. Far from me to cavil or carp, Tum-tee-tum-tee-didy, Or shift the shuttle from web or warp. And all for my dark-eyed lydy! Far be it from me, as above. Nevertheless—"
"Why, then, the exertion?"
"Duty. Friendship. Francis Charles Boland, you're lazy."
"Ferdie," said Francis Charles, "you are right. I am."
"Too lazy to defend yourself against the charge of being lazy?"
"Not at all. The calm repose; that sort of thing—what?"
Mr. Boland's face assumed the patient expression of one misjudged.
"Laziness!" repeated Ferdie sternly. "'Tis a vice that I abhor. Slip me a smoke."
Francis Charles fumbled in the cypress humidor at Ferdie's elbow; he leaned over the table and gently closed Ferdie's finger and thumb upon a cigarette.
"Match," sighed Ferdie.
Boland struck a match; he held the flame to the cigarette's end. Ferdie puffed. Then he eyed his friend with judicial severity.
"Abominably lazy! Every opportunity—family, education—brains, perhaps.
Why don't you go to work?"
"My few and simple wants—" Boland waved his hand airily. "Besides, who am I that I should crowd to the wall some worthy and industrious person?—practically taking the bread from the chappie's mouth, you might say. No, no!" said Mr. Boland with emotion; "I may have my faults, but—"
"Why don't you go in for politics?"
"Ferdinand, little as you may deem it, there are limits."
"You have no ambition whatever?"
"By that sin fell the angels—and look at them now!"
"Why not take a whirl at law?"
Boland sat up stiffly. "Mr. Sedgwick," he observed with exceeding bitterness, "you go too far. Take back your ring! Henceforth we meet as str-r-r-rangers!"
"Ever think of writing? You do enough reading, Heaven knows."
Mr. Boland relapsed to a sagging sprawl; he adjusted his finger tips to touch with delicate nicety.
"Modesty," he said with mincing primness, "is the brightest jewel in my crown. Litter and literature are not identical, really, though the superficial observer might be misled to think so. And yet, in a higher sense, perhaps, it may almost be said, with careful limitations, that, considering certain delicate nuances of filtered thought, as it were, and making meticulous allowance for the personal equation—"
"Grisly ass! Well, then, what's the matter with the army?"
"My prudence is such," responded Mr. Boland dreamily—"in fact, my prudence is so very such, indeed—one may almost say so extremely such—not to mention the pertinent and trenchant question so well formulated by the little Peterkin—"
"Why don't you marry?"
"Ha!" said Francis Charles.
"Whachamean—'Ha'?"
"I mean what the poet meant when he spoke so feelingly of the
"———eager boys Who might have tasted girl's love and been stung."
"Didn't say it. Who?"
"Did, too! William Vaughn Moody. So I say 'Ha!' in the deepest and fullest meaning of the word; and I will so defend it with my life."
"If you were good and married once, you might not be such a fool," said
Sedgwick hopefully.
"Take any form but this"—Mr. Boland inflated his chest and held himself oratorically erect—"and my firm nerves shall never tremble! I have tracked the tufted pocolunas to his lair; I have slain the eight-legged galliwampus; I have bearded the wallipaloova in his noisome den, and gazed into the glaring eyeballs of the fierce Numidian liar; and I'll try everything once—except this. But I have known too many too-charming girls too well. To love them," said Francis Charles sadly, "was a business education."
He lit a cigar, clasped his hands behind his head, tilted his chair precariously, and turned a blissful gaze to the little rift of sky beyond the crowding maples.
Mr. Boland was neither tall nor short; neither broad nor slender; neither old nor young. He wore a thick mop of brown hair, tinged with chestnut in the sun. His forehead was broad and high and white and shapely. His eyes were deep-set and wide apart, very innocent, very large, and very brown, fringed with long lashes that any girl might envy. There the fine chiseling ceased. Ensued a nose bold and broad, freckled and inclined to puggishness; a wide and generous mouth, quirky as to the corners of it; high cheek bones; and a square, freckled jaw—all these ill-assorted features poised on a strong and muscular neck.
Sedgwick, himself small and dark and wiry, regarded Mr. Boland with a scorning and deprecatory—but with private approval.
"You're getting on, you know. You're thirty—past. I warn you."
"Ha!" said Francis Charles again.
Sedgwick raised his voice appealingly.
"Hi, Thompson! Here a minute! Shouldn't Francis Charles marry?"
"Ab-so-lute-ly!" boomed a voice within.
The two young men, it should be said, sat on the broad porch of Mitchell
House. The booming voice came from the library.
"Mustn't Francis Charles go to work?"
In the library a chair overturned with a crash. A startled silence; then the sound of swift feet. Thompson came through the open French window; a short man, with a long shrewd face and a frosted poll. Feigned anxiety sat on his brow; he planted his feet firmly and wide apart, and twinkled down at his young guests.
"Pardon me, Mr. Sedgwick—I fear I did not catch your words correctly.
You were saying—?"
Francis Charles brought his chair to level and spoke with great feeling:
"As our host, to whom our bright young lives have been entrusted for a time—standing to us, as you do, almost as a locoed parent—I put it to you—"
"Shut up!" roared Ferdie. "Thompson, you see this—this object? You hear it? Mustn't it go to work?"
"Ab-so-lutissimusly!"
"I protest against this outrage," said Francis Charles. "Thompson, you're beastly sober. I appeal to your better self. I am a philosopher. Sitting under your hospitable rooftree, I render you a greater service by my calm and dispassionate insight than I could possibly do by any ill-judged activity. Undisturbed and undistracted by greed, envy, ambition, or desire, I see things in their true proportion. A dreamy spectator of the world's turmoil, I do not enter into the hectic hurly-burly of life; I merely withhold my approval from cant, shams, prejudice, formulae, hypocrisy, and lies. Such is the priceless service of the philosopher."
"Philosopher, my foot!" jeered Ferdie. "You're a brow! A solemn and sanctimonious brow is bad enough, but a sprightly and godless brow is positive-itutely the limit!"
"That's absurd, you know," objected Francis Charles. "No man is really irreligious. Whether we make broad the phylactery or merely our minds, we are all alike at heart. The first waking thought is invariably, What of the day? It is a prayer—unconscious, unspoken, and sincere. We are all sun worshipers; and when we meet we invoke the sky—a good day to you; a good night to you. It is a highly significant fact that all conversation begins with the weather. The weather is the most important fact in any one day, and, therefore, the most important fact in the sum of our days. We recognize this truth in our greetings; we propitiate the dim and nameless gods of storm and sky; we reverence their might, their paths above our knowing. Nor is this all. A fine day; a bad day—with the careless phrases we assent to such tremendous and inevitable implications: the helplessness of humanity, the brotherhood of man, equality, democracy. For what king or kaiser, against the implacable wind—"
Ferdie rose and pawed at his ears with both hands.
"For the love of the merciful angels! Can the drivel and cut the drool!"
"Those are very good words, Sedgwick," said Mr. Thompson approvingly. "The word I had on my tongue was—balderdash. But your thought was happier. Balderdash is a vague and shapeless term. It conjures up no definite vision. But drivel and drool—very excellent words."
Mr. Thompson took a cigar and seated himself, expectant and happy.
"Boland, what did you come here for, anyhow?" demanded Ferdie explosively. "Do you play tennis? Do you squire the girls? Do you take a hand at bridge? Do you fish? Row? Swim? Motor? Golf? Booze? Not you! Might as well have stayed in New York. Two weeks now you have perched oh a porch—perched and sat, and nothing more. Dawdle and dream and foozle over your musty old books. Yah! Highbrow!"
"Little do you wot; but I do more—ah, far more!—than perching on this porch."
"What do you do? Mope and mowl? If so, mowl for us. I never saw anybody mowl. Or does one hear people when they mowl?"
"Naturally it wouldn't occur to you—but I think. About things.
Mesopotamia. The spring-time of the world. Ur of the Chaldees.
Melchisedec. Arabia Felix. The Simple Life; and Why Men Leave Home."
"No go, Boland, old socks!" said Thompson. "Our young friend is right, you know. You are not practical. You are booky. You are a dreamer. Get into the game. Get busy! Get into business. Get a wad. Get! Found an estate. Be somebody!"
"As for me, I go for a stroll. You give little Frankie a pain in his feelings! For a crooked tuppence I'd get somebody to wire me to come to New York at once.—Uttering these intrepid words the brave youth rose gracefully and, without a glance at his detractors, sauntered nonchalantly to the gate.—Unless, of course, you meant it for my good?" He bent his brows inquiringly.
"We meant it—" said Ferdie, and paused.
"—for your good," said Thompson.
"Oh, well, if you meant it for my good!" said Boland graciously. "All the same, if I ever decide to 'be somebody,' I'm going to be Francis Charles Boland, and not a dismal imitation of a copy of some celebrated poseur—I'll tell you those! Speaking as a man of liberal—or lax—morality, you surprise me. You are godly and cleanly men; yet, when you saw in me a gem of purest ray serene, did you appeal to my better nature? Nary! In a wild and topsy-turvy world, did you implore me to devote my splendid and unwasted energies in the service of Good, with a capital G? Nix! You appealed to ambition, egotism, and greed…. Fie! A fie upon each of you!"
"Don't do that! Have mercy! We appeal to your better nature. We repent."
"All the same, I am going for my stroll, rejoined the youth, striving to repress his righteous indignation out of consideration for his humiliated companions, who now—alas, too late!—saw their conduct in its true light. For, he continued, with a flashing look from his intelligent eyes, I desire no pedestal; I am not avaricious. Be mine the short and simple flannels of the poor."
* * * * *
An hour later Francis Charles paused in his strolling, cap in hand, and turned back with Mary Selden.
"How fortunate!" he said.
"Isn't it?" said Miss Selden. "Odd, too, considering that I take this road home every evening after school is out. And when we reflect that you chanced this way last Thursday at half-past four—and again on Friday—it amounts to a coincidence."
"Direction of the subconscious mind," explained Francis Charles, unabashed. "Profound meditation—thirst for knowledge. What more natural than that my heedless foot should stray, instinctively as it were, toward the—the—"
"—old oaken schoolhouse that stood in a swamp. It is a shame, of the burning variety, that a State as wealthy as New York doesn't and won't provide country schools with playgrounds big enough for anything but tiddledy-winks!" declared Miss Selden. Her fine firm lip curled. Then she turned her clear gray eyes upon Mr. Boland. "Excuse me for interrupting you, please."
"Don't mention it! People always have to interrupt me when they want to say anything. And now may I put a question or two? About—geography—history—that sort of thing?"
The eyes further considered Mr. Boland.
"You are not very complimentary to Mr. Thompson's house party, I think," said Mary in a cool, little, matter-of-fact voice.
Altogether a cool-headed and practical young lady, this midget schoolma'am, with her uncompromising directness of speech and her clear eyes—a merry, mirthful, frank, dainty, altogether delightful small person.
Francis Charles stole an appreciative glance at the trim and jaunty figure beside him and answered evasively:
"It was like this, you know: Was reading Mark Twain's 'Life on the
Mississippi.' On the first page he observes of that river that it draws
its water supply from twenty-eight States, all the way from Delaware to
Idaho. I don't just see it. Delaware, you know—that's pretty steep!"
"If it were not for his reputation I should suspect Mr. Clemens of levity," said Mary. "Could it have been a slip?"
"No slip. It's repeated. At the end of the second chapter he says this—I think I have it nearly word for word: 'At the meeting of the waters from Delaware and from Itasca, and from the mountain ranges close upon the Pacific—' Now what did he mean by making this very extraordinary statement twice? Is there a catch about it? Canals, or something?"
"I think, perhaps," said Mary, "he meant to poke fun at our habit of reading without attention and of accepting statement as proof."
"That's it, likely. But maybe there's a joker about canals. Wasn't there a Baltimore and Ohio Canal? But again, if so, how did water from Delaware get to Baltimore? Anyhow, that's how it all began—studying about canals. For, how about this dry canal along here? It runs forty miles that I know of—I've seen that much of it, driving Thompson's car. It must have cost a nice bunch of money. Who built it? When did who build it? What did it cost? Where did it begin? Where did it start to? Was it ever finished? Was it ever used? What was the name of it? Nobody seems to know."
"I can't answer one of those questions, Mr. Boland."
"And you a schoolmistress! Come now! I'll give you one more chance. What are the principal exports of Abingdon?"
"That's easy. Let me see: potatoes, milk, eggs, butter, cheese. And hay, lumber, lath and bark—chickens and—and apples, apple cider—rye, buckwheat, buckwheat flour, maple sirup; pork and veal and beef; and—and that's all, I guess."
"Wrong! I'll mark you fifty per cent. You've omitted the most important item. Abingdon—and every country town, I suppose—ships off her young people—to New York; to the factories; a few to the West. That is why Abingdon is the saddest place I've ever seen. Every farmhouse holds a tragedy. The young folk—
"They are all gone away;
The house is shut and still.
There is nothing more to say."
Mary Selden stopped; she looked up at her companion thoughtfully.
Seashell colors ebbed from her face and left it almost pale.
"Thank you for reminding me," she said. "There is another bit of information I think you should have. You'll probably think me bold, forward, and the rest of it; I can't help that; you need the knowledge."
Francis Charles groaned.
"For my good, of course. Funny how anything that's good for us is always disagreeable. Well, let's have it!"
"It may not be of the slightest consequence to you," began Mary, slightly confused. "And perhaps you know all about it—any old gossip could tell you. It's a wonder if they haven't; you've been here two weeks."
Boland made a wry face.
"I see! Exports?"
Mary nodded, and her brave eyes drooped a little.
"Abingdon's finest export—in my opinion, at least—went to Arizona.
And—and he's in trouble, Mr. Boland; else I might not have told you
this. But it seemed so horrid of me—when he's in such dreadful trouble.
So, now you know."
"Arizona?" said Boland. "Why, there's where—Excuse me; I didn't mean to pry."
"Yes, Stanley Mitchell. Only that you stick in your shell, like a turtle, you'd have heard before now that we were engaged. Are engaged. And you mustn't say a word. No one knows about the trouble—not even his uncle. I've trusted you, Mr. Boland."
"See here, Miss Selden—I'm really not a bad sort. If I can be of any use—here am I. And I lived in the Southwest four years, too—West Texas and New Mexico. Best time I ever had! So I wouldn't be absolutely helpless out there. And I'm my own man—foot-loose. So, if you can use me—for this thing seems to be serious—"
"Serious!" said Mary. "Serious! I can't tell you now. I shouldn't have told you even this much. Go now, Mr. Boland. And if we—if I see where I can use you—that was your word—I'll use you. But you are to keep away from me unless I send for you. Suppose Stan heard now what some gossip or other might very well write to him—that 'Mary Selden walked home every night with a fascinating Francis Charles Boland'?"
"Tell him about me, yourself—touching lightly on my fascinations," advised Boland. "And tell him why you tell him. Plain speaking is always the best way."
"It is," said Mary. "I'll do that very thing this night. I think I like you, Mr. Boland. Thank you—and good-bye!"
"Good-bye!" said Boland, touching her hand.
He looked after her as she went.
"Plucky little devil!" he said. "Level and straight and square. Some girl!"