X—THE ART OF PUTTING ON A FRONT
HAVING caught a train out of the city at a fairly early hour in the forenoon, I made a daylight ride of it to Levant, and I stepped out upon the platform at Lower Comers just before sundown.
I remember that the red March sun was almost touching the rocky edge of the beech ridge, and, with the bare trunks of the trees striping it, looked like a coal fire with the stove cover off and a griddle on. In fact, as I looked up at the sun and reflected on the general condition of my affairs, I felt as if I were the particular live lobster destined for the griddle in Levant.
But I walked past the platform loafers, leaving my satin-lined overcoat open so that they might get the full effect of my frock suit. No one seemed to recognize me; Levant Comers is all of three miles from Levant village, and there was never much mixing between the communities when I was a boy. I set off at a good pace to walk the three miles to Dodovah Vose’s tavern.
Men in several teams which overtook me offered a lift, and one of them addressed me as “Elder.” Evidently my clothes were producing an impression! But I declined all offers. I had waved the stage-driver aside, and now if I accepted a free ride I might have brought suspicion on my financial ability. So I told them all politely that I needed exercise and walked on in all my dignity—and, being encumbered by nothing except a skull under my arm, I found my tramp pleasurable.
I went along at such a clip that I topped the long rise from the river where the railroad winds and was able to look down on distant Levant village before the lingering dusk had settled into night. The stripped trees had left all the houses bare and rather bleak; there was no beauty anywhere. The afternoon chill had hardened the road mud into iron ridges. Being back on my native heath was not so consoling and heart-thrilling as I had pictured. That faded, sodden, frozen landscape was depressing. I looked like a millionaire, but I belonged on the town farm. There was one thing to remember, however. My uncle as first selectman was also overseer of the poor, by virtue of his office.
I wondered what he would say to me if I walked up to him and tried to borrow money! On second thought, I knew so well what he would say that I promptly decided that I would keep my mouth shut in regard to my finances.
I hurried on, for there was an inviting twinkle of light in the windows of Vose’s tavern. I was carrying a rather gruesome ticket of admission, but a message from Jodrey Vose went along with it and it would make me especially welcome.
For some distance the highway was bordered by woods, and at last I saw a roadside sign which gave me a bit of a thrill, for it bore the magic name of Kingsley.
“For Sale. This Wood-lot. Apply to Z. Kingsley.”
That’s what the sign said.
Before I was fairly on my way, after stopping to read, I was able to put eyes on Z. Kingsley, himself. He was in a carriage which was coming in my direction and his daughter was driving a horse which was too likely-looking to have been furnished by my uncle.
I did not reflect or consider. I had no clear notion in my mind at that instant. I suppose I was overcome by an irresistible hankering to hear her voice—to speak to her.
At any rate, backed by that longing or by courage or cheek or whatever else it might be called, I stepped out into the middle of the road and put up my hand. I reckon if Judge Kingsley had been driving he would have run over me. His blessed daughter pulled up short.
I took off my hat and he gave me a sharp glance and recognized me. And so did Celene, for she smiled even while she looked a bit startled.
“Drive on!” snapped her father.
“Judge Kingsley, I want to—”
He checked me with much impatience, and I was glad of it, for I was not prepared to tell him just what I did want. I knew I wanted to rush up to her and say a lot of things, but I was conscious that the action would not have made much of a hit with her father.
“I have no time to waste on you, sir. I have to catch a train.”
“But the train has gone along,” I stalled. “I just came in on it.”
“I am going the other way—to the city!” He showed considerable temper.
“We have plenty of time before the down train is due, father,” Celene told him. He reached after the reins, but she held them away from him, showing that she had more or less of the Kingsley obstinacy, herself.
“What do you want, sir? Quick!”
It was a rather contemptuous command, but it was showing more consideration for a member of the Sidney family than I had dared to hope for. If he had taken up the whip and lashed at me at first meeting I would not have been surprised. It was evident that my personal appearance was having weight with him. I ventured to believe that the Sortwell boys had been advertising me in town, though they were only a few hours ahead of me.
I rolled my eyes around, trying to think of something sensible. I saw the sign again.
“What is your price on this wood-lot, Judge Kingsley?”
“I can’t stop to talk business, sir.”
“But I’m simply asking the price. You’re advertising it. You must have put a price on it.”
“I’ll be back in a week or ten days. Come to me then. I’m in a hurry.”
I put on a fine air of importance.
“So am I, Judge Kingsley! So are the big interests which I represent. But we are never in too much of a hurry to answer polite questions in business. I say, what is your price?”
“Two thousand dollars,” he cracked out.
“How many acres?”
“Forty.”
I raised my hat and stepped to one side.
“That’s all, sir. I’ll investigate and be ready to talk with you when you return. Good evening!”
I could see that he was taken aback a bit by my own shortness in the matter. He sat there holding his mouth open as if he intended to say something more, but I walked on; it came to me that perhaps he was going to say that he wouldn’t do any business with a Sidney—and I was avoiding all argument on that point.
Celene gave me another flicker of a smile when she started the horse. They went on at a good clip, and the moment they were out of sight around a bend in the road I turned back, climbed the fence, and sat down beside some bushes. My heart was so warm within me that I was not afraid of a chill.
I was guessing that she would not waste any time in making that trip to the railroad station; you see, I was building high merely on the glances she had been giving me—on the flush which was on her cheek when she drove away. Would she hurry back to overtake me? She did.
When I saw her coming, snapping her whip to make the horse trot at a brisker pace, I climbed back over the pitch-pole fence and leaned against it. It was pretty dark, but she spied me and stopped the horse.
“I have done something rather foolish,” I told her, staying where I stood.
“Yes?”
“And I have found out all over again that haste makes waste. I wanted to get a peep at that stand of timber and I went racing around in the dark—and so I have wrenched my ankle.”
“Oh, I am so sorry!”
“It’s my own fault! It’s what the city does to a man! Keeps him on the gallop! Makes him too impatient to wait for morning.”
“Can you get to the carriage?”
“But I don’t like to trouble you, Miss Kingsley! If you will send a team—”
“No, you shall ride with me! The idea of my leaving you in the woods alone! I’ll come and help you.”
“No, I’ll manage!”
So I limped to the carriage and climbed in. She watched me anxiously and asked after my hurt with solicitude. I was doing a pretty mean thing, I knew, but the opportunity to be alone with Celene Kingsley that first hour of my arrival in town was a favor to be grabbed for and hugged jealously. She walked the horse, and I sat beside her and was so happy in that first intimacy that I was not a bit ashamed of my deceit.
“So you are doing wonderful things in the city!” she said, after a time. I had not spoken, for I was afraid of blurting out something foolish.
“Nothing so very grand,” I faltered.
“But Dave and Ardon Sortwell have had something to say about that since they have been home. I am very glad for you, Mr. Sidney.”
“I’d rather please you than anybody else.” That was a mighty awkward answer and I was just as much embarrassed as she was.
“Good news about Levant boys pleases us all up here.’
“Sometimes I have thought they liked the bad news best—the most of ’em. The way they drove me out and then talked behind my back was—”
“I know all the truth of it—and most of the folks do now, I think,” she broke in. “You must put it all out of your mind. You must not come back with resentment toward anybody. There’s too much of that in the world. There’s too much in Levant.”
She hesitated a moment and then burst out with a tremble in her voice.
“Oh, Mr. Sidney, I am so thankful because you have come home! I do hope you can have some influence with your uncle. I ask your forgiveness for bringing it up so soon. But my heart is so full of it all! I hurried back, hoping I could overtake you.”
So that was why she had hurried!
“I don’t know about having influence with my uncle,” I said, and I could not keep all of the rasp out of my voice. Her welcome of me simply as an uncle-tamer had pricked me in a mighty tender place. “I don’t believe he is going to give me either three cheers or a hug and kiss when he sees me.”
“But you are an important man, now, and he must be proud of you and your success. He will look up to you now that you have money and position.”
Like a bang on the head the conviction struck me that I had cut out a fine bit of work for myself when I dropped back into my home town.
I had been all too well advertised by my loving friends.
Celene Kingsley had touched squarely on one truth: the only way to handle my uncle was to appear important even if I were not important. Mere bluff would go a little way—but not far. I must have money!
And here I was picked by her as her champion in the family feud!
If I had only stayed in the city! There was money to be come at there. Dollars in Levant were nailed down with spikes.
“We haven’t one happy hour in our home,” she wailed. “Your uncle is breaking my father’s heart, Mr. Sidney. I don’t understand what your uncle is doing; mother doesn’t understand it! Father has never told his business to us. But he sits in his office and figures and figures. Sometimes he stays there ’most all night. And it’s all on account of your uncle! I know that! For my father says your uncle is hounding him to death. You must find out what he is doing. I know you will find out and tell him he must stop.”
“I will look into the matter,” I said, as bravely as I could. “Of course there’s been hard feeling between my uncle and your father for a good many years.”
“But my father is sorry now for anything in the past. He says so to us, to mother and me. He sent mother to your uncle to ask him if he would not stop persecuting. Yes, she went to your uncle because father asked her to do so.”
That statement nigh took my breath away!
Mrs. Kingsley going as suppliant to my uncle Deck? Judge Zebulon Kingsley requesting her to do it? I shut my eyes and could picture her—frail, pale, aristocratic. The exigency must be desperate when Judge Kingsley would submit his wife to such employment.
“But please keep that a secret,” she pleaded.
I saw that I was headed into something which was bigger and more baleful than I had dreamed of. And more than before did I feel my deficiencies as a fraud who could not even turn a trick for his own wants, let alone those greater affairs in Levant.
“This mystery in our home is killing us all,” she went on. “There have been strangers in town and they have been much with my father. I do not like their looks. He would not tell us, but I am afraid they have coaxed him away to the city on this trip he is making. Perhaps your uncle has set those men on to harm him.”
I had never gauged my uncle Deck as a hirer of assassins, but I had not seen him for some years, and I admitted to myself that there was never any telling where a man’s grudge would lead him.
“Mother and I tried to make him stay at home. But he would not stay and he would not tell us why he was going to the city. Oh, how I hate those strangers, for I believe they have coaxed him away.”
I looked sideways at her, and a little shiver tingled in me. There was real venom in her tone and I saw that I had not guessed the depths in Miss Celene Kingsley.
“I wish I had a brother,” she mourned. “I believe he would feel as I feel now, and would follow up and kill the man who would harm my father.”
It was so strange an utterance from a girl and seemed so contrary to what I had supposed her nature to be that I remembered that outburst for a long time.
I juggled the skull on my knee and pondered awhile before I said anything, and she was silent, too, evidently trying to get control of her emotions.
“I want to say this to you, Miss Kingsley. The Sort-well boys gave me some news of the home town and they told me that my uncle was after your father in bitter fashion. That’s one reason why I have hurried up here. I don’t know just what I can do with my uncle, but I’ll truly do my best.”
We had come into the edge of the village and had passed the first houses.
“I put my trust in you,” she said, gently. “I always knew you had good impulses in you. I remember our talk that day on Purgatory Hill. And I know you kept your promise you gave to me then. You did your best to make the boys good.”
“And I’ll do my best to make my uncle good.”
“I do hope your business will not call you away until you have straightened matters out. Oh, you asked about the price of the wood-lot! Does it mean that you expect to have some business with father?”
I had not given another thought to the wood-lot since I had used it for an excuse in an emergency. I did not see at that moment how I could use a wood-lot for anything else than that excuse.
“If only you could have some business with my father—it would smooth things so much for all of us, perhaps,” she pleaded.
“We’ll see what can be done,” I assured her. “This syndicate—this combination—a very large concern,” I floundered on, trying to think up some sort of a plausible lie to account for my interest in a wood-lot, “it’s—er—ah!—you see, I can’t give out much information locally because we do so many kinds of business—it’s all linked up—it’s necessary to move carefully, but I think I’ll tell you this much, confidentially, just between ourselves!” Again my hankering to have some sort of a secret between Celene Kingsley and myself! “One branch of our business is building all the tall brick chimneys in the eastern part of the country. We use millions of bricks and so we need a great deal of wood for burning the bricks. So that’s why, maybe, I can pay your father’s price for the wood-lot. Now you understand!” I ended up with a lot of relief, for I had to dive pretty deep for that lie.
“I do see, and I’m glad there’s a prospect you’ll stay in town. And then, too, there’s your ankle to nurse!”
I was glad she mentioned the ankle, for I had forgotten all about it, and would certainly have betrayed myself when I jumped out of the carriage at the tavern. Really, to be a good liar a fellow should take one of those courses in memory-training! As it was, I descended carefully and promised her to apply cloths and liniment that night. She tendered her little hand, and I pressed it, and she left with me the memory of a smile which was like a rose gemmed with dew—-for there were tears in her eyes.
I waited in the tavern yard till she was well on her way, and then I marched in without any limp, for I was not minded to keep up that special lie for the benefit of all Levant.
Dodovah Vose walked behind his catty-cornered counter, plucked a rusty pen from its potato scabbard, whirled the register around under my nose, and tendered the pen.
“Rather nippy evenings, though pleasant enough daytimes for this time of year, Squire,” he said, by way of welcome to the arriving guest.
That tickled me. He didn’t recognize me. He was looking at my rig rather than at my face. When I had splashed my name on the page he pulled his spectacles to the end of his nose and inspected the signature. Then he snapped upright and stared at me.
“Godfrey domino Peter!” he bawled. “Then them Sortwell boys ain’t such condemned liars as I suspected they were! When Jod wrote me that you had quit diving I reckoned you had gone plunk square to tophet!”
“Oh, there’s always a chance for a fellow in the city, if he keeps hustling,” I told him. I chinked the little handful of small change in my pocket. “I’m going to stay here with you for a spell, Mr. Vose. Have you a rule that guests without baggage must pay in advance?” I grinned and he took it as a great joke.
“If you can tell me enough about Jod I may adopt you and give you free board the rest of your life,” he chuckled.
Then I handed over his present with a word of explanation, and he unwrapped the grisly object and surveyed it with as much satisfaction as if it had been a golden nugget.
“Jod always knows what will hit me to a T. Of course, he says to you, ‘Tell Dod to make up a story to go with it’!”
“Exactly what he said, sir.”
“Sure! That’s what I have done with every curio he has given me.”
For the first time I realized that in my boyhood I had accumulated a fine line of fiction from Dodovah Vose.
But I forgave him in my thoughts, for he took me into the big kitchen and fried me the finest chicken I ever ate. And while he fixed up my supper I told him how I had learned diving with his brother. I comforted him, too, by telling him that I had given up the work only temporarily.
But I switched him when he tried to find out what I was up to at that time. The plug-hat part of my program seemed to puzzle him very much. I was not ready with any good explanation. I figured that I might have some kind of a story ready in the morning, after I had slept on the thing. I began to rely considerably on my work as a fabricator; I had shown quite a lot of aptitude and readiness on short notice, I reflected.
I found myself holding an impromptu reception in the tavern office that evening—and they were all there with their little gimlets of questions, boring for information, you can bet! Therefore I broke away early and went to bed. I staved them all off in good shape, for I could be dignified in those clothes I was wearing. What I was afraid of was that Uncle Deck would pop in. He would not have used any gimlet; he would have set upon me with a pod-auger of inquisition, and would have ridden on it so as to bear down hard! And I had not my story ready!