THE HAPGOODS AND NATE.
The spring was backward that year, and on its first evening of real softness and beauty the houses of Littleton seemed turned wrong-side-out, like a stocking-bag, upon the streets. Every door-step had its occupants, every fence rail its leaning groups (though fences were scarce in Littleton), and the left-overs gathered in and around the saloon, familiarly known as Lon's. Among the loungers on its broad, unroofed platform, sat two men, tilted back in wooden armchairs, talking in that slow, desultory fashion common among those who use hands more than tongues in their battle with life.
"Yes," drawled one, as he cut off a generous slice from the cake of fine-cut in his hands, "yes, I'm not saying but the town'll look better when it's done, but what's it being done for? That's what I want to know. 'Twon't make the plant any more valuable, will it?"
"It orter," was the response as the other knocked the ashes from his black pipe, blew through its stem, and proceeded to fill it from a dirty little bag drawn from his ragged coat pocket. "Good houses is better'n shanties, ain't they?"
"Of course they're better, but that's just it. We can't none of us pay any more rent than we're payin' now; so what'll he do about it?"
"Who?"
"The new man that owns it—young Early, ain't it?"
"Oh, the son; yes. It's just half way possible he thinks we ought to have something better'n pig-styes to live in!"
"Well, he isn't any Early then! I've see the old man, and I know. Straight's a glass rod, and not caring shucks for anything but his money. He'd grind a feller down to biled-tater parings, if he could."
It was Lucy's father just speaking, and his name of William Hapgood had been shortened to Bill among the villagers, who seemed to have little use for family cognomens where family pride was not a failing. He was a small man with a rasping voice and sharp nose, while the bristling growth about his chin was red and his hair brown. All this denoted temper, but not the deep and lasting kind; rather the flash-in-the-pan sort, common enough among shrewish women, and only common in men of this type. Just now his tone was bitter.
"Well, it's a change for the better anyhow, Bill," said the other, who was large, dark, stolid, and kindly. "They've shortened our hours, and allowed the shillin' a week extry. That's something."
"Oh, everything's something. I hain't seen no call to go down on my marrer-bones yet, though. You allays did slop over at nothing, Nate."
"Oh, but what's the use o' bein' so everlastingly cranky and onreasonable?"
"I ain't onreasonable. I say it's you're that, when you're so pleased with the least thing. See here! Did you ever see a big boss that would go halvers with his men in flush times, and of his own notion pay 'em extry? No, you never did. But when the fires are mostly out, oh! then we must live on half wages and be thunderin' thankful to git that. I say there ain't one o' them that cares a copper cent for one of us, 'cept just for what he can git outen us. I'm blessed if I believe they even think of us as men at all—just lump us off with the machinery, like. One man, one blowpipe, one marver—and the man least 'count of all."
The other chuckled softly, then waved his hand towards a group of shapely cottages off at the right.
"When you get into one o' them new houses, with a piazzer acrost the front, and plenty of windows, and a grass plot, and see Lucy washin' dishes at the little white sink with the hot and cold water runnin' free out of silver fassets, and know you don't have to tote your drinkin'-water a block, and ketch what rain-water you can in a bar'l, you won't feel so gritty, Bill!"
The other smiled somewhat sheepishly, pleased in spite of himself at the picture, but rallied to the challenge with—
"But what's it all for? That's what gets me. I can't and won't pay no more rent, and that's settled."
"Don't be allays looking fur traps, Bill."
"And don't you be walkin' into 'em open-eyed, Nate. No sir, you mark me! We ain't got to heaven yet, and in this world o' woe folks don't go and spend a big lot o' money just to make it easier fur the folks that's under 'em—'tisn't nater."
"It mayn't be your nater, nor mine, but it may be some folkses. Well, argy as you may, the place don't look the same, now does it? D'ye mind the houses they've finished off? Well they're leveling off the yards around 'em, and seedin' 'em to grass. Fact! I see it myself. And 'nother thing. They're filling up that old flat-iron place, where we used to cart rubbish to, and hauling trees to set out as they get it leveled down. If 'twa'n't perfectly ridiculous I'd say 'twas to be a park—just imagine a park!"
Both laughed gruffly, while a loiterer or two, just passing in or out the swing doors, who had stopped to listen, joined in.
"The thing 't really is so," observed one of these with his hand on the door, "is that they're a-goin' to have a church. It's so, Bill! Ground was broke for it to-day, and I've seen the plan, and who do you think's goin' to boss the job?"
"Who? Oh, some big architec' from town, of course," sneered Hapgood.
"Now, that's where you're off the track. It's Gus Peters."
"What? Gus Peters!"
Both men looked up, startled into real interest.
"How did it happen?" asked Nate.
"Don't know. It seems he's been studyin' the business, evenings and all. He's allays mooning over plans and drawings; and so they've give the job to him."
"Well, I never!" cried Hapgood. "That awk'ard—why, he can't finish off a glass rod without break-in' it, or burning himself!"
"No, he's no blower!" laughed the other. "Nary kind, I reckon. But they do say he's great on drawing plans. I'm glad there's something he can do, and I guess it was a lucky day for him when he burnt his arms so bad. We thought he'd have to go on the county, sure, with his hands so helpless, but he seems to 've got along first-rate."
"Did he have an accident policy?"
"Don't know. Never heard of none. They say some relation or other's been keepin' him in cash. Have a drink, Bill?"
"Well, don't care if I do. It's gettin' thirsty weather these warm days."
Nate Tierney, the dark man, looked after him and chuckled again.
"It most generally is thirsty weather for Bill," he ruminated alone as the men crowded within. "Guess I'll go along and take a look at Lucy and the babies. Kinder seems to me if I had a lot o' nice little gals like that I wouldn't git thirsty quite so often—but I don't know. The stuff's powerful comfortin' when you git tired of rememberin'—I've noticed that."
He strolled slowly down the lane-like street between the rows of houses, like peas in a pod for sameness, and stopped, with a smile on his honest face, as a little girl burst suddenly from the door of one and, closely pursued by another, just a step higher, ran shrieking with laughing fright right into his outstretched arms.
"There! I've caught you now," he cried, then called to the pursuer. "What you up to, Rufie, chasing Tilly so? Do you want to scare her into an idjit?"
Tilly, nestling in happy defiance within the shelter of his strong arm, tried to tell her woes, while Rufie dancing hotly about outside, declared in even shriller tones that Tilly deserved a slap and should get it, adding invitations to the younger girl to come out and see if she wouldn't, which were of doubtful persuasiveness. At this moment Lucy appeared in the doorway, the little baby in her arms and a larger one clinging to her skirts, to look anxiously and angrily after her younger sisters.
"I've got 'em safe, Lucy," called Nate, restraining his laughing captive and grasping at the other girl, "I'll bring in the pris'ners—don't you worry! Now, girls, be good, can't ye? What did Tilly do, Rufie, that makes you so fierce after her?"
"Stole my ribbon, the little——"
"Eh, eh! Stole is a big word for young lips," interrupted the man, while the accused protested,
"I didn't neither! I was just lookin' at it to see if 'twould match my new dress a lady guv me."
"Oh, looking!" was Rufie's sneering rejoinder. "Where is it now? Didn't I see you tuck it in your pocket, you thief o' the——"
"Sh—h! That's not nice talk for a pretty gal like you, Rufie. Don't call names like a hoodlum. Where's the ribbon, Tilly?"
"There, you old stingy!" bringing it forth with a flirt, to slap it across her sister's face, at which the later snatched it eagerly with a few choice epithets, which flowed as easily from her young lips as if she had been ages old in sin.
Nate looked from one to the other, and the amused smile died out of his face.
"I don't like you when you're that way, girls," he said in a hopeless tone. "See how you worry sister!" for Lucy was calling fretfully,
"I do wish you two could be still one second! Tommy was asleep, and baby almost, when you began screeching like a fire engine and racing and slamming through the house—where's pa, Nate?"
"Pa? Oh, he—he's around uptown some'ers."
"I s'pose 'some'ers' means up to Lon's, as usual," snapped the girl bitterly. "He might better live there and be done with it."
She was a slight creature, too pale and worn for even the natural prettiness of youth, but her large, lovely eyes suggested that in a more fortunate environment she might have been described as beautiful, by that stretch of imagination which chroniclers of the great are allowed. Many a so-called beauty of high caste has shown less natural endowment than did poor Lucy, but dragging care had wiped out the life and sparkle until, no one thought of her as attractive, even—only pathetic.
The man let go of the squabbling children to lift the fretting baby from her weary arms, and followed her into the unkempt room, which made almost the sole scene in her onerous life.
"You ain't got your dishes done yet, either; have you, child?" he asked in sympathizing tones. "Well, well, I'll keep the youngsters while you red things up. Here, girls, you come now and help sister, while I 'tend baby, and we'll have things comfortable in a jiffy. Let's all try and be good together."
The admonition proved effectual. Soon the girls were quietly at work, and the little baby's startled eyes closed beneath the influence of the gentle lullaby crooned by this rough-looking man, from whom some dainty women might have shrunk in fear, had they met him on the public street. When the little one was safely deposited in his wooden cradle, the other baby, scarce two years older, being consigned to an uncomfortable nest between restless Rufie and Tilly, in a bed scarcely wide enough for them, the tired oldest sister dropped down on the door-step near kind old Nate, who sat tilted back against the house wall, the legs of his wooden chair boring deep holes in the sandy soil.
"You're pretty tired, ain't ye?" he asked with strong sympathy. "It do sorter seem as if you had more'n your share sometimes, Lucy—it do, certain sure!"
"I'd just give up if 'twa'n't for you and Marry," she returned wearily, crouching in a forlorn heap, with elbows on knees and chin in palms. "It's hard enough for women that's got their own young ones, and can mind 'em and make 'em mind. I can't do nothing with ours, and when I go to pa he just gets cross and lights out. And then he comes home—well, you know how. He hit me with a stick, last night."
Nate's strong teeth came together with a click.
"He did? The old——" His sentence ended in a mutter.
"Oh, you can curse him"—she laughed drearily—"but what good does it do? It don't take the ache out o' that welt on my arm and back any. The skin's broke and it smarts."
She began to cry in a slow, patient way.
"It's queer I don't get used to it," she said presently, for Nate had not tried to answer, but was puffing like a locomotive over wet rails at his stub of a pipe. "I ought to by this time, but I don't. I s'pose it's because when pa's good he's real good, and so kind it makes it hurt all the more when he's off. Oh dear!" She gave a long sigh, pitifully unyouthful in its depth of misery. "I was 'most glad when ma got through with it all, and could rest and look so sort of peaceful in her coffin. But I dunno. She kept more offen me than I knew of, I guess, and it's growin' worse all the time."
Nate started up, letting his chair fall back with such force as to threaten total extinction to its legs.
"It's a sin and shame, and I know it!" he said in his deepest voice. "But you keep up your courage, Lucy. When things 'gets to the bottom they're bound to go up again, for they never stand still."
He stood up and knocked his pipe clean against the wooden chair seat with vigorous thumps that seemed to relieve him, and started towards the street.
"Where you going?" asked Lucy remonstrantly. "I didn't mean to nag at you, Nate."
"Don't I know it? And what if you did? Guess I'm big enough to stand it. You just talk to me all you feel like; but see here, little girl, I wouldn't be talkin' to nobody else—I wouldn't."
"Not to Marry?"
"Oh well, that French woman don't so much matter, 'cause most folks wouldn't understand even if she tried to tattle, and I guess she don't. But not to Mis' Hemphill—she's a most su'prisin' gossip, ye know—nor to the Murfrees, nor Flahertys, nor nobody. These is fam'ly affairs, Lucy, and they ain't for public ears. I'm going down to Lon's now, and your pa'll get home soon—very soon. I'll see to that," grimly. "Now, good night, and don't you shed another tear, will ye?"
He patted her shoulder kindly as he stepped past her, and Lucy looked up with grateful eyes.
"If he's off, Nate, will you come with him?" she whispered fearfully.
"Bet yer life!" was the emphatic answer as he lumbered away on great clumping shoes, true knight as any that used to ride away on a horse just as clumsily arrayed in armor, and perhaps that romantic rider was no better equipped in mind or heart than this glass-blower of the nineteenth century.