Joseph Crosby Lincoln

“ There was rejoicing at the Cy Whittaker place. The Board of Strategy came and performed an impromptu war dance around the dining-room table.
“Whe-e-e!” shouted Bailey Bangs, tossing Bos'n above his head. “Your Uncle Cy's weathered the Horn and is bound for clear water now. Three cheers for our side! Won't we give him a reception when we get him back here!”
“Won't we?” crowed Asaph. “Well, I just guess we will! You ought to hear Angie and the rest of 'em chant hymns of glory about him. A body'd think they always knew he was the salt of the earth. ”

“ Phoebe was downcast and disappointed. She was convinced, in her own mind, that the Honorable Atkins had some hidden motive for his espousal of the Thomas cause. Asaph's fruitless quest in Orham had not shaken her faith. Captain Cy had refused to seek Debby Beasley for information concerning the Thayers, and so she, on her own responsibility, had done so. And this was the ridiculous ending of her journey. The diary had been a forlorn hope; now that was burned. Poor Bos'n! and poor—some one else! ”

“ Drive nothin'! The blacksmith's out, and won't be back for another hour. His boy's there, but he's a big enough lunkhead to try bailin' out a dory with a fork, and that buggy axle is bent so it's simply got to be fixed. I'd no more go home to Ketury with that buggy as 'tis than I'd—Oh! my land of love!”
The ejaculation was almost a groan. There at the corner, ear trumpet adjusted, and spectacles glistening, stood Debby Beasley. Bailey appeared to wilt under her gaze as if the spectacles were twin suns. Miss Dawes looked as if she very much wanted to laugh. The widow stared in silence. ”

“ But Miss Dawes was indignant.
“Captain Whittaker,” she declared, “one would think you were a hundred years old to hear you. You are always calling yourself an old man. Does Mr. Atkins call himself old? And he is older than you.”
“Well, I'm over fifty, Phoebe.” In spite of the habit for which he had just been reproached, the captain found this a difficult statement to make.
“I know. But you're younger than most of us at thirty-five. You see, I'm confessing, too,” she added with a laugh and a little blush.
Captain Cy made a mental calculation. ”

“ And your appeal won't stand, either. If any money is due, it belongs to her father. She isn't of age! No, sir! her father—”
Captain Cy's patience had been giving way. Now he lost it altogether. He strode across the room and shook his forefinger in his victim's face.
“So!” he cried. “That's your tack, is it? By the big dipper! You GO to her father—just you go to him and tell him! Just hint to him that you owe his daughter thirty-odd thousand dollars, and see what he'll do. Good heavens above! he was ready to sell her out to me for fifty dollars' wuth of sand bank in Orham. ”

“ Bayport has a generous allowance of storms and gales during a winter, although, as a usual thing, there is more rain than snow and more wind than either. But we can count with certainty on at least one blizzard between November and April, and about the time when Captain Cy, feverish and ill, the delayed telegram in his pocket and a great fear in his heart, boarded the sleeper of the East-bound train at Washington, snow was beginning to fall in our village. ”

“ Myrick was accorded the privilege of the floor, in spite of Tad's protests, and proceeded to nominate Cyrus Whittaker for the school committee. Lem had devoted hours of toil and wearisome mental struggle to the preparation of his address, and it was lengthy and florid. Captain Cy was described as possessing all the virtues. Bailey, listening with a hand behind his ear, was moved to applause at frequent intervals, and even Asaph forgot the dignity of his exalted position on the platform and pounded the official desk in ecstasy. The only person to appear uninterested was the nominee himself. ”

“ The sitting room and dining room were gay with evergreens and old-fashioned flowers. Our living room windows in the winter time are usually filled with carefully tended potted plants, and the neighbors had loaned their geraniums and fuchsias and heliotrope and begonias to brighten the Whittaker house for its owner's return. Captain Cy, who was sitting in the rocker, with Bos'n on his knee, looked about him. ”

“ And now Asaph Tidditt, who should know better, even though he was a bachelor, wanted to bring a wife into this paradise; not a paid domestic who could be silenced, or discharged, if she became a nuisance, but a WIFE! Bailey guessed not; not if he could prevent it.
So he lay awake nights thinking of possible housekeepers for Captain Cy, and carefully rejecting all those possessing dangerous attractions of any kind. Each morning, after breakfast, he ran over the list with the captain, taking care that Asaph was not present. ”

“ Mrs. Tripp sighed and affirmed that going out of town for a woman to do housework was ridiculous on the face of it; there were plenty of Bayport ladies, women of capability and sound in their religious views, who might be hired if they were approached in the right way. Keturah gave, as her opinion, that if the captain knew when he was well off, he would “take his meals out.” Asaph snorted and intimated that that Debby Beasley wasn't fit to “keep house in a pigsty, and anybody but a born gump would have known it.” Bailey, the “born gump,” said nothing, but looked appealingly at his chum. ”

“ Before bedtime it was known, from the last house in Woodchuck Lane to the fish shanties at West Bayport, that “young Cy” Whittaker had come back; that he had come back “for good”; that he was staying temporarily at the perfect boarding house; that he was “awful well off”—having made lots of money down in South America; that he intended to “fix over” the Whittaker place, and that it was to be fixed over, not in a modern manner, with plush parlor sets—a la Sylvanus Cahoon—nor with onyx tables and blue and gold chairs like those adorning the Atkins mansion. ”

“ It was after five as they entered the kitchen.
“Anybody been here while I was out?” asked the captain of Georgianna. The housekeeper's eyes were red and swollen, and she hugged Bos'n as she helped her off with her jacket and hood.
“Yes, there has,” was the decided answer. “First Ase Tidditt, and then Bailey Bangs, and then that—that Angie Phinney.”
“Humph!” mused Captain Cy slowly. “So Angie was here, was she? Where the carcass is the vultures are on deck, or words similar. Humph! Did our Angelic friend have much to say?”
“DID she? And I had somethin' to say, too! I never in my life!” ”

“ Bayport was buried under a white coverlet, three feet thick on a level, which shone in the winter sun as if powdered with diamond dust. The street-shoveling brigade, meaning most of the active male citizens, was busy with plows and shovels. Simmons's was deserted in the evenings, for most of the regular habitues went to bed after supper, tired out.
Two days of this. Then Gabe Lumley, his depot wagon replaced by a sleigh, drove the panting Daniel into the yard of the Cy Whittaker place. Gabe was much excited. ”

“ Do you imagine that you're not respected by everyone whose respect counts for anything? Yes, and by others, too. Don't you suppose Mr. Atkins respects you, down in his heart—if he has one? Doesn't your housekeeper, who sees you every day, respect and like you? And little Emily—doesn't she love you more than she does all the rest of us together?”
“Well, I guess Bos'n does care for the old man some, that's a fact. She says she likes you next best, though. ”

“ The party in the carriage was a gay one.
“Getting tired, captain?” asked Peabody.
“Who? Me? Well, I guess not. 'Most home, Bos'n. There's the salt works ahead there.”
They passed the abandoned salt works, the crumbling ruins of a dead industry, and the boundary stone, now half hidden in a drift, marking the beginning of Bayport township. Then, from the pine grove at the curve farther on, appeared two capped and coated figures, performing a crazy fandango.
“Who's them two lunatics,” inquired Captain Cy, “whoopin' and carryin' on in the middle of the road? ”

“ Mrs. Beasley went into the house to dress for the ride. The schoolmistress went with her as far as the sitting room. The perturbed Bailey stalked off, muttering, to the blacksmith's.
In a little while he returned, leading Henry by the bridle. Debby, adorned with the beflowered bonnet she had worn when she arrived at the Cy Whittaker place, and with a black cloth cape over her lean shoulders, was waiting for him by the open door of the barn. The cape had a fur collar—“cat fur,” so Mr. Bangs said afterwards in describing it.
“Pull the sulky right out,” commanded the widow. ”

“ There's the records to prove the sale. There's the receipt for the seventy-five thousand signed by you, on behalf of yourself and your partner's widow. There's old man Everdean alive and competent to testify. There's John Thayer's will on file over to Orham. Proofs! Why, you THIEF! if it's proofs you want, I've got enough to send you to state's prison for the rest of your life. Don't you dare say 'proofs' to me again! Heman Atkins, you owe me, as Bos'n's guardian, thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars, with interest since 1854. ”

“ Asaph Tidditt was a regular sojourner at the store. Bailey Bangs, happening in to purchase fifty cents' worth of sugar or to have the molasses jug filled, lingered occasionally, but not often. Captain Cy explained Bailey's absence in characteristic fashion.
“Variety,” observed the captain, “is the spice of life. Bailey gets talk enough to home. What's the use of his comin' up here to get more?”
“Oh, I don't know,” said Josiah Dimick, with a grin, “we let him do some of the talkin' himself up here. Down at the boardin' house Keturah and Angie Phinney do it all.” ”

“ Bailey chuckled again.
“We WAS a spunky, dare-devil lot in the old days, wan't we, Ase?” he said. “Spunk was kind of born in us, as you might say. And even now we're—”
The Atkins tower clock boomed once—a solemn, dignified stroke. Mr. Tidditt and his companion started and looked at each other.
“Godfrey scissors!” gasped Asaph. “Is that half past twelve?”
Mr. Bangs pulled a big worn silver watch from his pocket and glanced at the dial.
“It is!” he moaned. “As sure's you're born, it is! We've kept Ketury's dinner waitin' twenty minutes. You and me are in for it now, Ase Tidditt! ”

“ Captain Cy looked provokingly indifferent; he even whistled.
“Good mornin', Mr. Atkins,” hailed the town clerk, raising his voice because of the whistle. “I'm proud to see you back among us, sir. Hope you and Alicia had a nice time out West. How is she—pretty smart?”
Mr. Atkins smiled a bland, congressional smile. He approached the group by the fence and extended his hand.
“Ah, Asaph!” he said; “it is you then? I thought so. And Bailey, too. It is certainly delightful to see you both again. Yes, my daughter is well, I thank you. ”

“ Atkins, “I'm sorry to see that you take it this way. You haven't the shadow of a right. We have the law with us, and your conduct will lead us to invoke it. The constable is outside. Shall I call him in?”
“Uncle Bedny” was the town constable and had been since before the war. The purely honorary office was given him each year as a joke. Captain Cy grinned broadly, and even Tad was obliged to smile.
“Don't be inhuman, Heman,” urged the captain. “You wouldn't turn me over to be man-handled by Uncle Bedny, would you?”
“This is not a humorous affair—” began the congressman, with dignity. ”