A couple of tears squeezed out and down over Avery’s flabby cheeks.
“This ain’t the first time you’ve misjudged me, when I’ve been doing you a favor,” said he. “And it’s all on account of the same mis’able woman that I’m misjudged—and we was living so happy here, me and you. I wish she was in——” His voice broke.
“I ain’t responsible for what I’m saying, Avery,” pleaded Buck, contritely. “You know what things have happened to stir me up the last few hours—yes, all my life, for that matter. I ain’t been comfortable in mind for thirty years till you come here and cheered me up and showed me what’s what. I appreciate it and I’ll prove that to you before we’re done. We’ll get along together all right after this. All is, you must see me through.”
Then the two plug hats bent together in earnest conference.
The next morning Avery, armed with an order on the savings bank at the shire for six thousand six hundred dollars, and with Buck’s bank book in his inside pocket, drove up to the door of Fyles’ tavern in Buck’s best carriage, and Signora Rosyelli flipped lightly up beside the peace commissioner.
He was to pay over the money on the neutral ground at the shire, receive the letters, put her aboard a train and then come back triumphantly into that interrupted otium cum dignitate of Smyrna Corner.
For two days a solitary and bereaved plug hat on the emporium’s platform turned its fuzzy gloss toward the bend in the road at the clump of alders. But the sleek black nose of Buck’s “reader” did not appear.
On the third day the bank book arrived by mail, its account minus six thousand six hundred dollars, and between its leaves a letter. It was an apologetic letter, and yet it was flavored with a note of complaint. Brick Avery stated that after thinking it all over he felt that, having been misjudged cruelly twice, it might happen again, and being old, he could not endure griefs of that kind. He had supported the first two, but being naturally tender-hearted and easily influenced, the third might be fatal. Moreover, the conscience of Signora Rosyelli had troubled her, so he believed, ever since the affair of the one thousand six hundred dollars. So he had decided that he would quiet her remorse by marrying her and taking entire charge of her improved finances. In fact, so certain was he that she would waste the money—being a woman fickle and vain—that he had insisted on the marriage, and she, realizing her dependence on his aid in cashing in, assented, and now he assured her that as her husband he was entitled to full control of their affairs—all of which, so the letter delicately hinted, was serving as retribution and bringing her into a proper frame of mind to realize her past enormities. The writer hoped that his own personal self-sacrifice in thus becoming the instrument of flagellation would be appreciated by one whom he esteemed highly.
They would be known at the fairs as Moseer and Madame Bottotte, and would do the genteel and compact gift-sale graft from the buggy—having the necessary capital now—and would accept the buggy and horse as a wedding present, knowing that an old friend with forty-three thousand four hundred dollars still left in the bank would not begrudge this small gift to a couple just starting out in life, and with deep regard for him and all inquiring friends, they were, etc.
In the more crucial moments of his life Buck had frequently refrained from anathema as a method of relief. Some situations were made vulgar and matter-of-fact by sulphurous ejaculation. It dulled the edge of rancor brutally, as a rock dulls a razor.