Holman Day

“ 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. ”

“ The village sounds in Palermo that sleepy afternoon were only the “summer snorin’s,” as Marriner Amazeen used to say. There was the murmur of flies buzzing lazily around some banana, skins which curled limply in the August sun in front of Asa Brickett’s store. At the side of the building, in a patch of shade, a half-dozen old men, jack-knifed on a rickety settee, droned in intermittent conversation. From open kitchen windows along the village street came subdued sounds of the after-dinner work of the housewives—clash of cutlery and clatter of dishes. ”

“ The tempestuous Hiram, with teeth set close and growling under his breath since his return from New York, was silent from motives ingrained in his showman’s temperament. The fall of Palermo’s tower of financial strength was a sensation that he was planning with as full an eye to the dramatic as he would have planned a slide for life from the peak of the round-top.
“Blast him,” he muttered to Simon over and over in the moments when he “had to talk to some one or bust,” as he expressed it, “he has always put the twisters on our fam’ly before the face and eyes of the people. ”

“ You have lied for him, Sylvie, because your father asked it of you. I know all about it. There are times when a woman’s lie for a man is holy, but not in this case. I say to you that King Bradish is a profligate drunkard, a thief—a worse than thief, for he has dragged your father into dishonesty as well as ruin. There! There’s the bitter blow. Bear it, Sylvie, bear it, for it will make a truer, nobler woman of you.”
Her knees trembled so that he put his arm about her. ”

“ Though Sylvena Willard strove with all her gentle strength to restrain her, the woman tore away and came into the kitchen.
“Bring me my children,” she cried, staring from one to the other with eyes glazed and sunken by woe. “Where’s Klebe? Send him after the children. Something has happened. What is it? Don’t drive me mad, neighbours! What is it?”
Her voice rose in a shriek. She ran first to one man and then to another-, clasping her thin hands around their arms. The men were unresponsive and embarrassed. ”

“ Hiram stood, his arms hanging at his side, his lower jaw drooping, his eye shuttling from face to face evasively.
“Kind o’ makes you drop your tail, Hime—that, eh?” jeered Amazeen from his place in the crowd.
As Hiram still drooped there, Uncle Buck ran his cane into the fallen hat, lifted it with a deft toss, ran his elbow around its nap, and set it on Hiram’s head, standing on tip-toe to do it.
The man never moved or blinked.
“There’s your plug hat, Hime,” he said. “It fell off, and pride goeth before a fall.” ”

“ CHAPTER VI—SQUIRE PHIN HAS A WORD OF BUSINESS WITH KING BRADISH For the dearest affection the heart can hold
Is the honest love of the nine-year-old.
It isn’t checked by the five-barred gate
Of worldly prudence or real-estate,
And that is the reason why, till the end,
A childhood lover is loyal friend.
The little crowd that followed Klebe Willard out of the Look door-yard moved slowly, for the irate skipper formed the nucleus of the group and stopped every few steps to mop at his wounded ear with a big handkerchief, while he grunted threats and promises of vengeance. ”

“ At times like these the Judge turned a wistful gaze on the lawyer, and with something of appeal in his eyes. But he met; always the shake of the head and the tightening of the lips.
“You can’t afford to take a single chance, Judge,” the Squire had told him at the beginning of the business. “You must not owe one man a dollar. Your books and your papers will be your own, then. And they must be burned. ”

“ Before nine o’clock the yard was well filled with men, most of them assembled in knots that constantly changed personnel as voters trudged through the sticky ooze from one to the other, shouting jovial greetings or mumbling certain confidences in undertone. The town clerk, the selectmen and a constable or two had gone into the town house, trailing mud upon Solomon Norton’s fresh sawdust; but the main body of the voters remained outside. ”

“ With his arm about his wife he stumbled away to a corner of the room, dragging her with him, and while the neighbours sat silent and sympathetic, the women sobbing softly, the men grinding their rough knuckles into their palms, the husband and the wife, their foreheads against the wall, washed away in the first tears they had ever shed in a common woe all the wrack of the petty quarrels, the little heart-burnings, the frettings and the misunderstandings—all so mean and small in this shadow of the mightiest tragedy in their lives. ”

“ You have called me various names in the past,” he went on, his eyes flashing and the passionate anger of the Look temperament getting the better of his self-control; “I simply want to say to you now that you”—he leaned forward, supporting himself by his knuckles on the table—“are as miserable a thief as I ever knew. For when you fall—a man trusted by all—you have taken away Palermo’s strongest prop of good example from the poor, weak devils who are trying to be honest in their poverty.” ”

“ With the skill of one who understood what quality of human nature lay under that tough New England exterior, he probed to the depths of her being, pulled away all the husks of selfishness that the years had piled, layer on layer, and reached the mother instinct.
“Esther,” he said at last, “don’t you think you’ll look better with that softness you have now in your eyes when your ’Cilia meets you at the gate of Heaven? Why don’t you practise that look for the rest of your life? But you need something to practise on! ”

“ You’re Cap’n Klebe Willard, ain’t you?” inquired Hiram, affably. And a wordless shout answering him, he said:
“Yes, I know you and I know the mark, because I put it there myself for good reasons.” He looked around at the little group of spectators with an air of secure triumph.
“And you threw my poor old father over his own fence, you coward, when I wasn’t there to defend him. Now, Hime Look, you’ve got to meet a man and not a boy.” ”

“ You are a brave woman, and you can bear it. You can bear it because from this moment I put my body, my strength, my brains, my love, my eternal devotion between you and all those who would be your enemies. ”

“ Did you ever see so much money before in Palermo? No, you never did. Now, all you that have a claim against me of any kind, meet me at my brother’s office any time after to-day, with your interest figured compound at six per cent. No; reckon it better’n that—and even then I’ll give you a bonus on top. You’ll never be able to sneer again behind Hime Look’s back, you of Palermo. Bring your claims, good people!”
“It’s the old army game, gents!” screamed the gray parrot.
Again the Squire tried anxiously to lead his brother away out of the circle. ”

“ He wheeled his horses skilfully and brought the big cart to a standstill opposite the crowded platform, twisted the reins about the brake bar, arose and removed his hat.
The ruling passion of the mob is the same in Palermo as it is in the metropolis.
“Speech!” yelled the crowd enthusiastically above the blare of the instruments.
“It ain’t no time, gents, for speeches now and here,” said Hiram Look in the first silence. “I only want to present to you, the voters of the town of Palermo, your new brass band, with the tallest drum-major in New England, if not in the whole world. ”

“ It’s the Looks together against the world—and you know what the family is!”
“Enough of that, Hiram!” roared the Squire, thumping the table at which he sat deep in thought, as his brother came in. Dishes fell off and were smashed on the floor. He kicked the fragments impatiently. “The Looks are rowdies, plug-uglies and street brawlers, and we ought to be ashamed to lift our heads in the presence of decency and refinement. The trouble with you is, you’re too much of a fool to know that you’re cheap—that we’re all cheap. ”

“ The lawyer walked to the little space before the platform and stood there, his hands behind him, his expression amiable, yet with something of that new determination in it that Palermo had just begun to note.
“The hankering for new brooms is a natural and proper one, fellow-townsmen,” he said, “and I am glad that Palermo has shown so much good sense here to-day. We have chosen an admirable board of town officers up to this time, and I am sure that those still to be elected will be just as good and true men. You are now to choose a treasurer for the town. ”

“ The town of Palermo was accustomed to seeing the Squire at the head of all assemblages. For years he had been the natural selection of the voters at town meetings, after that hot caucus years before when he had defeated Judge Willard, who had been moderator so long that the office had almost become titular with him. It was a bold man who would get up now and suggest that some one else preside. The men stole embarrassed looks at each other, waiting for some one to take the plunge. ”

“ Her fluttering hands grasped the sides of the van and she leaned her convulsed face toward him.
“So your mother died when you was young?” Hiram inquired. His tone had softened.
“I never knew who my mother was.”
“Mine died and left me under fourteen and Phin a baby,” said the showman, looking off across the fields and blinking his eyes. “It’s sort of—sort of startin’ anyone back-handed into the world without a mother to kind of walk hand in hand with up to where the paths split. Bad for a man, worse for a woman.” ”

“ Sime, there, has made just as bad ones as me. You’ve made yours, sissy, but don’t make any more—don’t!”
He patted her cheek with a tenderness that no one ever saw before in Hiram Look.
“We’ve sort of found out each other all at once. Let’s call this place here ‘Orphan Hill’ and always remember it. Let’s kind of brace from now on. We can’t be angels, none of us. We’ve been too much handicapped. But we can brace!” ”

“ For a little space there was utter silence in the barn—-Imogene evidently listening in an attempt to determine whether this new arrival were friend or foe. Then there sounded joyful trumpetings as the exhausted and frightened animal recognised her master. The men could hear Hiram’s voice soothing her, and after a time he appeared at the tie-up door.
“I’ve got another time and place,” he said, addressing them as they came crowding up to him, “for tellin’ you all what I think of a parsul of men that will chase a poor elephant nearly to death. ”

“ You are going out of business—-do you understand? You will resign the town treasurership when I tell you to—and that will be when your books can be safely turned over to some one else. You need not worry about exposure, for the men who were paid and surrendered their town notes to me have their tongues tied fast and solid by methods that I understand how to work. Now for your own tongue! If you breathe one word to your daughter that I supplied the money to square this thing, or that you owe me a cent, I’ll drop you and your affairs as I’d drop a hot plate on to a brick sidewalk. ”

“ Sylvena Willard caught him on the little platform of the school house. “How are you going to return to the village?”
“I was reckoning to foot it, Eli and I.”
“The boy brought me in our team. Won’t you ride with me? I want to talk it all over with you.”
He was about to accept, when out of the gloom to which their eyes were as yet hardly accustomed came a blur of lighter colour. It was the lining of King Bradish’s Goddard buggy, and Bradish leaned out and spoke to her, “I sent the boy home with your hitch, Sylvie. I’ve been waiting for you.” He climbed out and “cramped” the wheel. ”

“ At the skipper’s rush, with the facility an old circus man displays with a pitchfork, he shortened the handle in his grasp, speared one tine through the generous cartilage of Willard’s ear, and before that furious adversary fairly realised what had happened, he swung him on his heel, forced him back by the pain of the pierced ear, and then driving the tines into the side of the barn, set both fists on the end of the handle and had the frantic man a safe prisoner at the end of the fork. ”

“ On the third day, when “Figger-Four” Avery bobbed back from the post-office with the mail, there was a thick packet among the letters that Hiram opened first with trembling fingers, for he had recognised Simon Peak’s handwriting.
It was the letter wrapped around the bankbook that Hiram tackled first. He skimmed it with his one eye bulging like a rabbit’s. It was in a way an apologetic letter, and yet it was flavoured with a note of complaint. Simon Peak went on to state that he had thought it all over prayerfully. Each time that a woman had come into their affairs he had been misjudged. ”

“ Her tone was proud now. “I only ask you to restrain that wretched brother of yours, who apparently has come back to this town simply and solely to make trouble. He is meddling in affairs that do not concern him; he is stirring up strife and factions in our town, and for the credit of Palermo and your family it is your duty to put him where he belongs.” ”

“ Some day there’ll be a man come along and you’ll know what it means to be willing to give up every other thing in this world and not be able to think about letting any one else step between you, and as it will have to be a mighty good man to make you feel that way, I’ll step up then and give you the best word I have, Sylvena, and perhaps I can begin to feel like a brother toward you. ”

“ But after a moment he went on with gentler tone:
“Yes, Hiram, some of the men around here who understand such things say that Wat Mayo plays wonderfully well. I remember that the bandmaster used to brag about him, but what with folks jawing about the noise he made, and his natural laziness, he hasn’t done anything with it. And a bulldog might as well try to chew with a set of store teeth as a man start out to earn a living in Palermo with a cornet.” ”

“ The Squire leaned forward and shook his finger at Badger.
“Let me advise you on one point, Sum. This advice isn’t going to cost a cent. Now, if you ever get so much as one foot into heaven—even get your fingers through the crack in the door, you stay right there. Don’t you ever take any chances on coming away to visit. They might get to asking leading questions about you the next time you came back to the door.” ”