"Shut up! Shavin's, you listen to me. I don't forget. All my life I've never forgot. And I ain't never missed gettin' square. I can wait, just as I waited here in the dark over an hour so's to say this to you. I'll get square with you just as I'll get square with Sam Hunniwell. . . . That's all. . . . That's all. . . . DAMN YOU!"
He stamped from the room and Jed heard him stumbling through the littered darkness of the shops on his way to the front door, kicking at the obstacles he tripped over and swearing and sobbing as he went. It was ridiculous enough, of course, but Jed did not feel like smiling. The bitterness of the little man's final curse was not humorous. Neither was the heartbreak in his tone when he spoke of his boy. Jed felt no self-reproach; he had advised Leander just as he might have advised his own son had his life been like other men's lives, normal men who had married and possessed sons. He had no sympathy for Phineas Babbitt's vindictive hatred of all those more fortunate than he or who opposed him, or for his silly and selfish ideas concerning the war. But he did pity him; he pitied him profoundly.
Babbitt had left the front door open in his emotional departure and Jed followed to close it. Before doing so he stepped out into the yard.
It was pitch dark now and still. He could hear the footsteps of his recent visitor pounding up the road, and the splashy grumble of the surf on the bar was unusually audible. He stood for a moment looking up at the black sky, with the few stars shining between the cloud blotches. Then he turned and looked at the little house next door.
The windows of the sitting-room were alight and the shades drawn. At one window he saw Charles Phillips' silhouette; he was reading, apparently. Across the other shade Ruth's dainty profile came and went. Jed looked and looked. He saw her turn and speak to some one. Then another shadow crossed the window, the shadow of Major Grover. Evidently the major had not gone home at once as he had told Jed he intended doing, plainly he had been persuaded to enter the Armstrong house and make Charlie and his sister a short call. This was Jed's estimate of the situation, his sole speculation concerning it and its probabilities.
And yet Mr. Gabe Bearse, had he seen the major's shadow upon the Armstrong window curtain, might have speculated much.
CHAPTER XV
The pity which Jed felt for Phineas Babbitt caused him to keep silent concerning his Thanksgiving evening interview with the hardware dealer. At first he was inclined to tell Major Grover of Babbitt's expressions concerning the war and his son's enlistment. After reflection, however, he decided not to do so. The Winslow charity was wide enough to cover a multitude of other people's sins and it covered those of Phineas. The latter was to be pitied; as to fearing him, as a consequence of his threat to "get square," Jed never thought of such a thing. If he felt any anxiety at all in the matter it was a trifling uneasiness because his friends, the Hunniwells and the Armstrongs, were included in the threat. But he was inclined to consider Mr. Babbitt's wrath as he had once estimated the speech of a certain Ostable candidate for political office, to be "like a tumbler of plain sody water, mostly fizz and froth and nothin' very substantial or fillin'." He did not tell Grover of the interview in the shop; he told no one, not even Ruth Armstrong.
The—to him, at least—delightful friendship and intimacy between himself and his friends and tenants continued. He and Charlie Phillips came to know each other better and better. Charles was now almost as confidential concerning his personal affairs as his sister had been and continued to be.