FOR GOOD AND SUFFICIENT REASONS
Foster the tinker traversed Maine
From Elkinstown to Kittery Point,
With a rattling pack and a rattling brain,
And a general air of “out of joint.”
A gaunt, old chap with a shambling gait,
A battered hat and rusty clothes,
With grimy digits in sorry state,
And a smooch on the end of his big red nose.
That was the way that Foster went—
Mixture of shrewdness and folly blent,
Mending the pots and pans as ordered,
But leaving the leak in his nob unsoldered.
—From “Ballads of the Wayfarers.”
Hiram was on the porch in his favourite attitude, his chair tipped against the wall, his tall hat on the back of his head, his thumb hooked into the armhole of his vest. He rolled his cigar across his tongue and looked at his brother with a sidewise, suspicious glance as the Squire sat down on the edge of the platform. The lawyer remembered suddenly that he had seen that look on Hiram’s face frequently of late. It was the wary expression of a man who feared that he might be called on to defend himself.
“I thought I’d run up to the house and sit down for a spell, Hime. The loafers down there get on my nerves once in a while.”
The Squire noted the instant relief on Hiram’s face. The cigar rolled back to the other corner of his mouth and perked itself with new assurance.
“I don’t blame you, Phin. That’s why I keep away from Brickett’s. I can jaw ’em off the premises, here, when they get to bothering me.”
The old woman whom Hiram had insisted on adding to the household as maid of all work snapped her dishcloth at the ell window and began chatting with “Figger-Four” Avery, who was varnishing one of the vans. Avery sat down on the cart tongue and gave her his full attention.
“Avery is a fair sample of ’em,” continued Hiram, jerking his head to indicate his servitor. “There ought to be only three days in the week for fellers like him and the rest round here—a rainy day, Sunday and pay-day.”
“It wears on a man like Avery to get up before breakfast and work between meals,” observed the Squire, drily.
At this little jest of his brother’s, Hiram recovered all his composure. It was evident that the Squire wasn’t bringing that dreaded “bone to pick,” he reflected.
“I’m goin’ to have old Skip-bug, there, give the whole outfit a goin’-over, new gilding, new paint, varnish, and a clean scour. Prob’ly I’ll be takin’ to the road again next season, Phin,” he said, with a sigh. “I’ve been studyin’ it over for quite a spell. I’m get-tin’ to realise every day that you’ve drifted your way and I’ve drifted mine, and the things I talk about don’t hit you and the things you talk about——”
“I’m a pretty dry, prosy chap to be a companion to one who has seen the world as you’ve seen it,” the Squire finished the sentence.
“No, it ain’t that, Phin,” blustered Hiram. “The idea is you’ve got education and I ain’t, and I never shall have. There’s only brass and bellow to me, slam-bang like a circus band. So I guess I’ll have Hop-and-fetch-it give the gear a slickin’ and I’ll be movin’ on.” He set his hat down over his eyes and smoked hard.
The Squire did not reply for a time. He had unclasped his jack-knife and was meditatively jabbing it into the decayed wood of the porch platform.
“The Looks are no great hands to make a lot of soft talk to each other or anybody else, Hime,” he said at last. “But I want to say to you that I really hoped you were home to settle here. Half of the house is yours to do with as you like. Neither of us will bother the other one—I hope!”
Hiram gave him another of his suspicious side-glances.
“I’ve heard that you have been making quite a number of investments in town and were looking for more, and so I supposed you had decided to camp here. I wish you would, Hime.”
“Well, I don’t like to have money ’round idle, that’s all,” growled his brother. He waited a moment and then, studying the Squire from the corner of his eye, he said:
“I suppose the old fools ’round here are makin’ all kinds of talk about my lettin’ out a little money. I ain’t said anything to you about it ’cause I reckoned you had business enough of your own to think about.”
“And I find enough in my own affairs to keep me busy, Hime. But”—he turned his gaze full upon his brother—“I’ve found time to wonder why you’ve been trying to borrow money from old Sum Badger.” Hiram growled an oath, brought his chair down on its four legs with a clatter, and half rose, with a malignant eye boring the back of Avery, who was unsuspiciously swabbing his brush on the side of the van.
“Oh, it isn’t Figger-Four’s mouth this time, Hime. I’ve been drawing up Sum’s will and he told me about it and left his notes with me.”
Now that the Squire’s gaze showed that he understood the situation, Hiram’s apprehensiveness gave place to bravado.
“And what do you think of that town note that shows that your high and mighty treasurer is a—is—well, whatever the law name is, I say ‘thief’?”
“I am perfectly well able to attend to the business of my clients, and I am not prepared to discuss their private affairs just yet,” returned the Squire, tartly. “It comes pretty near bein’ a town affair, and as I’ve never gained residence anywhere else and am a voter here and have got investments here, it comes pretty near bein’ my affair, too.”
“There are good and sufficient reasons why I don’t want this old family feud carried on any longer, Hiram.” The lawyer stood up, clacked his knife’s blade shut and shoved it into his pocket.
“And I know what the reasons are and I say you’re a devilish fool to have ’em,” cried his brother.
“I have lived in this town all my life, Hiram”—the Squire preserved his temper, though the other was already bristling with wrath. “I intend to live here much longer. I am ready to resent injury just as quickly as you are. But this keeping alive an old fight, when there have been provocations on both sides, is folly and will lower us both in the estimation of the public. I say, you are not going to tramp over innocent persons to get at the object of your grudge.”
Hiram stood up and kicked his chair off the porch.
“Allow me to remind you—not to twit, but to speak the plain truth—that you seem to have waked up pretty late to the fact that you had any vengeance to attend to in this town.”
“And that’s just it,” shouted Hiram. “I stayed away and let the wickin’ be put to you and father. You’ve been ground into the dirt and mallywhacked and spit on, just on account of me. The Look fam’ly has been muck under foot for some folks. And even now, after all that’s past and gone, that old wolf would have my ha’slet out of me if he could get it. There’s a debt due to the Looks, compound int’rest piled on compound int’rest, and by the jumped-up Judas Is-carrot, I’m goin’ to collect it, Phin. You may as well stand out of the way.”
He strode about the little yard before the porch.
“And besides all that, he’s stealin’ from this town, and you know it,” cried Hiram, stopping in his march for a moment.
“There’s other redress for that besides persecution,” replied the Squire. “It isn’t our business as Seth Look’s boys.”
“It is our bus’ness. And it’s more yours than it is mine. You’re the agent of this town. You’re the man the people trust to see that Palermo gets what’s her just dues. You know she is bein’ robbed. Now, Phin, you either go to work and find out why old Coll Willard is borrowin’ money secretly on town’s notes, and you put it before the people in the right and proper way as you know how to do, or, by mighty, I’ll do it my way and then you’ll see how you stand before the people—you that’s hidin’ a note that you know is crooked.”
Hiram stopped before his brother and breathed hard in his passion. And now the Squire’s repression began to give way. The obstinacy of this stormy petrel of the Look family was maddening.
But, fortunately for both, the unhappy quarrel was interrupted. For some moments there had been approaching behind the alders at the turn of the highway a queer medley of sound—squeaking of whiffle-tree, yawling of dry axle and over all a peculiar moaning. Now a vehicle like a van came in sight. The brothers stood and watched it as it approached them. Avery came hobbling with brush in hand and gaped his surprise.
“Well, P’lermo’s took this time, sartin sure,” he gasped.
’Twas almost a little house on wheels. An elbow of stove funnel stuck out of one side. An old chaise-top was fastened by strings and wire over a seat in front. Dust and mud covered everything with striated coatings, a mask eloquent of wanderings over many soils.
A bony horse, knee-sprung and wheezy, dragged the van at the gait of a caterpillar.
Under the chaise-top was a hunched-up elderly man, gaunt but huge of frame, his knees almost at his chin. Long, grizzled hair fluffed over his shoulders, and little puffs of white whiskers stood out from his tanned cheeks. A fuzzy beaver hat barely covered the bald spot on his head. The reins were looped around his neck. Between his hands, huge as hams, moaned and sucked and snuffled and droned a much-patched accordion. To its accompaniment the man sang words that he fitted to the tune of “Old Dog Tray,” trolling lustily at the end of each verse, “An honest friend is old hoss Joe.”
“Whoa, there! Whup!” screamed Hiram’s parrot, swinging by one foot.
“Ain’t you kind of workin’ a friend to the limit, and a little plus?” inquired Hiram, sarcastically. The old horse, at the parrot’s command, had stopped before the gate, legs straddled, head down, the dust rising in little puffs as he breathed.
“Joachim loves music,” said the stranger, with a mild smile. “He’ll travel all day if I’ll only play and sing to him.”
“Love of music will be the death of Joachim, then,” commented Hiram, briefly.
“Is there a hostelry near by?” asked the other, lifting his tall beaver hat politely. In the atmosphere of rough-and-ready Palermo the little action seemed an exaggeration. With satirical courtesy Hiram lifted his hat—and at the psychological moment the only “plug” hats in the whole town of Palermo saluted each other.
“There’s a hossery down the road, and a mannery, too, all run by old Fyles.”
“Crack ’em down, gents,” rasped the parrot. “Twenty can play as well as one.”
The man under the chaise-top pricked up his ears and cast a rather startled look at the plug hat in the yard. Plug hat in the yard seemed suddenly to recognise some affinity or comradeship in plug hat under the chaise-top. The Squire saw only another of those fantastic wanderers who occasionally went dragging through the village, peddling their wares. He backed slowly to the porch and sat down. His brother trudged out into the road and walked around the outfit, his nose elevated with a curiosity that was almost canine.
At last he planted himself in the highway before the man of the chaise-top, his knuckles on his hips, his eye flashing under brows wrinkled with thought, and stared long and silently.
“Who be I?” he demanded at last.
The stranger surveyed him for a long time, his head drooping lower and lower, until it was hugged between his shoulders.
“You,” he huskily ventured, “so I should jedge, though I ain’t seen you for a good many years, you—I should say—you——”
“Well, up and out with it!”
“You are Look’s Leviathan Circus and Menagerie, H. Look, Proprietor.”
“You win a cigar,” assented Hiram, with a snap of his head. “And as for you, you’re Sime Peak, billed as Mounseer Hercules, and I’m glad you called when you came along.”
There was a grim significance under his words that made the stranger flinch.
“Let’s see!” pursued Hiram, his eyes narrowing, “it’s quite a while to remember back, but didn’t you throw up your job with me kind o’ sudden?”
The man on the van scratched a trembling forefinger through a cheek tuft.
“I don’t exactly recollect how the—how the change came about,” he faltered.
“Well, I do!” Hiram came close and wagged a forefinger up at the man. “You ducked out across country the night of that punkin freshet, when I was mud-bound in that pennyr’yal settlement and the elephant was afraid of the bridges. And you took my dancin’, turkey outfit and a cage of monkeys and a few other things that didn’t belong to you, and—her!” He almost shouted the last word, and then looked around with sudden apprehension that he was overheard by his brother. But the Squire sat on the porch without apparent interest. “What became of her, Sime Peak?” demanded Hiram, hissing the words at him. He seized a spoke of the old, dished wheel and shook the vehicle impatiently. The spoke came away in his hand.
“Never mind it,” quavered the man. “It ain’t nothin’. We’re all comin’ to pieces, me and the whole caboodle. But don’t hit me with it.”
He was eyeing the spoke in Hiram’s clutch.
“What did you steal her for, Sime Peak?”
“There isn’t anything sure about her goin’ away with me,” the other protested weakly.
Hiram yanked away another spoke in the vehemence of his emotions.
“Don’t you lie to me!” he snarled. “The both of you done me when I was tied up with my circus clear’n to the hubs in mud. Mounseer Hercules of the curly hair!” he snorted, and ran a sneering gaze over the outfit. “She wouldn’t chase you very fur now. You took her, I say, a girl I’d lifted off the streets and made the champion lady rider of—and was goin’ to marry and thought more of”—another cautious look at the Squire, “yess’r, thought more of than I did of anyone else in the world. What did you do with her?”
“Well, I was startin’ and she wanted to go along and so I took her aboard. She seemed to want to get away from your show, as near as I could find out.” The giant hugged his knees together and blinked appealingly.
“It must be a bang-up livin’ you’re givin’ her.” Again Hiram disdainfully surveyed the equipage.
“Seems as if you hadn’t heard the latest news,” broke in Peak, his face suddenly clearing of the puckers of apprehension. “She never stuck to me no time—honest to Gawd, Look. She only made believe she was goin’ to marry me. It was so I’d take her along. She ducked out with ev’ry cent of the sixteen hundred I’d saved up and run away with Signor Dellybunko—or whatever his name was—who was waiting for her along the road. Honest, I ain’t seen hide nor hair of her since, nor I don’t ever want to,” he rattled on eagerly, “and I’ve still got the letter that she left for me, and I’ll prove what I say. She said in it that she’d been plannin’ to do the same thing with you, but she had made up her mind that you wasn’t as easy as I was and she couldn’t work you.”
Hiram’s shoulders straightened and he pulled his trailing moustaches with a bit of swagger.
“She was out just to do someone so’s she and Dellybunko could get away with the stuff,” insisted Peak.
“She says so in the letter, and you was smart and I was easy—that’s all!”
“It’s the old army game, gents!” squawked the parrot. He cracked his beak against the bars of the cage.
Hiram shoved his hands into his pockets and with a sort of meditative air of conscious superiority kicked another spoke out of the wheel.
“Hadn’t you just as soon tear pickets off’n the fence, there, or something of that sort?” wistfully asked Peak. “This is all I’ve got left, and, honestly, I’ve never had no great courage to do anything since she run away with that sixteen hundred. I never had no great enterprise and ability like you’ve got, anyway. I just went all to pieces.”
He scrubbed his raspy palms on his upcocked knees.
“I didn’t really want to run away with her, Hiram, but she bossed me into it. I never was no hand to stand up for my rights. I could lift weights and let ‘em crack a marble block on my chest, but anyone with a limber tongue could allus talk me ’round—and I guess they allus can. I wish she’d stuck to you and let me alone.” His big hands trembled on his knees, and his weak face with its flabby chops had the wistful look one sees on a foxhound’s visage. “When did you give up the road?” he asked, evidently willing to change the subject.
“Haven’t given it up,” snapped Hiram, scowling. “There’s the waggons over there, and the round-top and seats are stored, and I’ve got my elephant. I’m liable to buy a lemon and a square hunk of glass and start out again ’most any time.”
Hiram couldn’t help winking his good eye at his old partner in “shenanigan,” though his face hardened again the moment after. Peak chuckled fulsome appreciation, Still eager to placate, he said:
“I don’t suppose you really have to.” He blinked watery eyes at Hiram’s big watch chain with its bunch of charms, and at the ring on his thick finger, with its blazing stone.
“Forty thousand or so in the bank and plenty more out at int’rest,” returned Hiram. He put both thumbs into the armholes of his vest. Then with the patronising air of the “well-fixed” he inquired:
“How are you gettin’ your three squares nowadays?”
“Lecture on Lost Arts and Free Love, mesmerise and cure stutterin’ in one secret lesson, pay in advance,” Peak explained listlessly. “But there ain’t the three squares in no such graft in these times. I ain’t got your head. I wish I’d been as sharp as you are and never let a woman whiffle me into a scrape.” Hiram glowed with the same warmth that he felt when “Figger-Four” daily regaled him with stories of how Myra Willard made life miserable for Kleber with her tongue and her folly. This gossip had been “Figger-Four’s” first recommendation to the notice of the showman, and Avery had sagaciously pursued it. Hiram now looked up at the man on the van with a pride that was gloomy, but none the less apparent.
“Nobody ever come it over me,” he said in low tones, with a side glance to see that Avery didn’t overhear. “Still, another way you look at it, she did come it over me and so did——” He suddenly checked himself.
“But she didn’t come it over you,” insisted Peak. “I’m the one she come it over, and look at me!” He made a despairing gesture that embraced all his pathetic belongings. “You’re the one that’s come out ‘unrivalled, stupendous and triumphant,’ as your full sheeters used to say. If I was any help in steerin’ her away I’m humbly glad of it, Hime, for I allus liked you.”
This gradual assuming of the rôle of benefactor was not entirely to Hiram’s taste, as his frown indicated, but the constant iteration of admiration for his shrewdness and good fortune was having its effect. The old grudge ached less. It was like having opodeldoc stuffed into a bad tooth. Hiram felt as though he would like to listen to a lot more of that comforting talk. Moreover, his showman’s heart was hungry for some of that association of the old days and for a chance to swap old stories.
“Sime,” he cried with a heartiness that surprised even himself, “you’re a poor old devil that’s been abused, and you seem to be all in.” He surveyed the wheezy horse and kicked another spoke from the wheel.
“Crack ’em down, crack ’em down, gents!” squalled the parrot.
“If it wasn’t for Absalom, there, to holler that to me with an occasional ‘Hey, Rube!’ I don’t believe I could stay in this God-forsaken place fifteen minutes. There’s no one here that can talk about anything except ensilage and new-milk cows. Now, what say, Sime? Store your old traps along o’ mine, squat down and take it comfortable a little while. I reckon that you and me can find a few things to talk about that really amount to something.”
The man on the van unhooked the reins from around his neck and let them fall to the ground. But he still hesitated to climb down.
“I should hate to feel that I was a burden on you,” he faltered. “But if there’s any stutterers around here I might earn a little something on the side to help out on my board.”
“Me with forty thousand in the bank takin’ board money from an old friend, or lettin’ a guest of mine graft for his livin’?” snorted Hiram. “Not by a blame sight! You just shut up and h’ist yourself down here and help me unharness old Polyponeesus.”
Hiram introduced his guest to his brother with curt brevity.
“And I guess I’ll do as you hinted this mornin’ about takin’ the other half of the house, Phin,” he said. “I don’t want any friends of mine to be underfoot for you. As long as you suggested splittin’ off, I’ll do it. Old Aunt What’s-Her-Name can do for both of us.”
“I didn’t mean it that way, Hime,” said the Squire, earnestly. “Your friends are my friends and we can all get along comfortably together just as we are.”
“I’d ruther have the side-show privilege than a share in the big show,” persisted the stubborn relative; “it’s your proposition, and I can take a hint.” The presence of Peak and his mute suggestion of the old associations were already having their effect on Hiram’s undisciplined temperament. He had begun to wonder before this if getting acquainted again with a brother after so many years was altogether a success. He had been a bit ashamed in spite of Phineas’s candid forgiveness; this calm, earnest, educated man made him feel ill at ease. Suddenly, he realised perfectly why he had clutched at this stroller and hauled him into this haven.
Hiram always acted first and reflected afterwards. He knew now that he had seized upon this man to hold him between his brother and himself, as he would have interposed a shield. He had anticipated that his brother would interfere in his resolution to “make Coll Willard curl.” For weeks he had been dreading the hour when Phineas would come to him for an understanding. No man knew better than he what the Look grit was, and as he had fully made up his mind to carry out his plan of vengeance, and realised that the Squire would as vigorously oppose him, he had been trembling each noon and night for many days, as he sat upon the porch and watched the lawyer’s approach.
Now he stood up close beside the amiable giant.
“Sime and me is pretty close chums, Phin,” he said, “and we shall be together all the time talkin’ mighty busy, and it ain’t in no ways right for us to be gabblin’ round where you be and takin’ your mind off’n your business. So I’ll have another cook-stove set up in my part and we won’t trouble you a mite.”
He took Peak by the arm and drew him away with some eagerness.
“I want you to come in and see if Imogene remembers you, Sime. Then we’ll look over the carts.”
Avery had been crowding up closely, mutely appealing for an introduction. His jealousy was aroused by the attention that was shown to this new arrival, and he followed them toward the barn as they started away.
“Say, look-a-here, Figger-Four,” said Hiram, whirling on him and speaking with a gruffness that wounded Avery’s devoted heart, “you get back onto your job, there, and you mind it dern close from this time on. I don’t want you trailin’ me no more. You keep your place after this.”
The cripple stood gazing after Hiram until he had slammed the barn door behind him. Then he settled slowly down upon his short leg and turned to the Squire a face on which there was astonishment as well as grief.
“Seems like I never seen a changeabler man,” he observed.
The lawyer looked at the discarded companion a little while, and the poor fellow’s distress was so sincere that he pitied him, even in his own sorrow.
“Don’t mind it too much, Avery,” he said. “Hiram has had a good many things happen in his life to sour him and spoil his disposition. Some day he’ll find out who his real friends are and then you and I will have our innings.”
He put his hands behind his back and walked into the house, and Avery went on with his varnishing. At first his strokes were slow and his face was melancholy. But as he pondered on his insult, his brush flicked faster and soon he was slapping away at a lively gait, keeping time to a song that he hummed, the last two lines running:
“Good boy Phin, he don’t raise time,
But pepper sass is hot and hell’s in Hime."-