Joseph Crosby Lincoln

“ Time to be getting down to the depot and the post office. At least a dozen male citizens of East Harniss were thinking that very thing at that very moment. It was a community habit of long standing to see the train come in and go after the mail. The facts that the train bore no passengers in whom you were intimately interested, and that you expected no mail made little difference. If you were a man of thirty or older, you went to the depot or the “club,” just as your wife or sisters went to the sewing circle, for sociability and mild excitement. ”

“ No, Issy did not see the hurried and brief meeting between Bartlett and Gertie Higgins, but he had seen enough to cause forgetfulness of mundane things. For an instant he stared after the vanished vision. Then he stepped blindly forward, tripped over something—“his off hind leg,” so Captain Sol afterwards vowed—and fell sprawling, the express package beneath him.
The crash of glass reached the ears of the depot master. He broke away from the conductor and ran toward his prostrate “assistant.” Pushing aside the delighted and uproarious bystanders, he forcibly helped the young man to rise. ”

“ Captain Sol took the cigar from his lips, looked at it, then threw it violently into the gutter.
“What difference does it make where I live?” he snarled. “Who in blazes cares where I live or whether I live at all?”
“Sol Berry, what on airth—”
“Shut up! Let me alone, Sim! I ain't fit company for anybody just now. Clear out, there's a good feller.”
The next moment he was striding down the hill. Mr. Phinney drew a long breath, scratched his head and shook it solemnly. ”

“ And now life in East Harniss became temporarily fevered. Issy McKay dashed out of the station and rushed importantly up and down the platform. Ed Crocker and Cornelius Rowe emerged and draped themselves in statuesque attitudes against the side of the building. Obed Gott came hurrying from his paint and oil shop, which was next to the “general store.” Mr. Higgins, proprietor of the latter, sauntered easily across to receive, in his official capacity as postmaster, the mail bag. Ten or more citizens, of both sexes, and of various ages, gathered in groups to inspect and supervise. ”

“ Olive had opened a “notion store” in her front parlor and had fought on, proudly refusing aid and trying to earn a living. She had failed. Again Phinney stared thoughtfully at the distant house of Captain Sol.
“But Olive,” he said, slowly. “She ain't got no folks, has she? What'll become of her? Where'll she move to?”
“That,” said Mr. Williams, with a wave of a fat hand, “is not my business. I am sorry for her, if she's hard up. But I can't be responsible if men will drink up their wives' money. Look out for number one; that's business. ”

“ He went away and never come back, and after a long spell she give in to her dad and married Bill Edwards. Foolish? 'Well, now, WA'N'T it!”
“Humph!” grunted Crocker. “She must have been a born gump to let a smart man like him get away just for that.”
“There's a good many born gumps not so far from here as her house,” interjected Phinney. “You remember that next time you look in the glass, Ed Crocker. And—and—well, there's no better friend of Sol Berry's on earth than I am, but, so fur as their quarrel was concerned, if you ask me I'd have to say Olive was pretty nigh right.” ”

“ At his elbow stood Captain Berry, the depot master, hands in pockets, cigar in mouth, the personification of calmness and imperturbability. He had come out of his house, which stood close to the corner, and walked over to join his friend.
“Land of love!” exclaimed Simeon. “Why don't you scare a fellow to death, tiptoein' around? I never see such a cat-foot critter!”
Captain Sol smiled. “Jumpin' it, ain't they?” he said, nodding toward the “Colonial.” “Be there by the tenth, won't it?”
“Tenth!” Mr. Phinney sniffed disgust. ”

“ He had been inveigled, by an advertisement in a Boston paper, into buying the Central House at East Harniss. It would afford him, so he reasoned, light employment and a living. The employment was light enough, but the living was lighter. He kept the Central House for a year. Then he gave it up as a bad job and returned to the city. “I might keep my health if I stayed,” he admitted, in explaining his position to Captain Berry, “but if I want to keep to what little money I have left, I'd better go. Might as well die of disease as starvation.” ”

“ From the time we left my shanty at South Orham till we passed the pines at Herrin' Neck I laid back in that stuffed cockpit, feelin' as grand and tainted as old John D. himself. The automobile rolled along smooth but swift, and it seemed to me I had never known what easy trav'lin' was afore. As we rounded the bend by the pines and opened up the twelve-mile narrow white stretch of Setuckit Beach ahead of us, with the ocean on one side and the bay on t'other, I looked at my watch. We'd come that fur in thirteen minutes. ”

“ I fetched a long breath. 'Jonadab,' I says, don't scare a feller this way; I've got a weak heart. If you're goin' to start in and be divilish in your old age, why, do it kind of gradual. Let's go over to the billiard room and have a bottle of sass'parilla and a five-cent cigar, just to break the ice.'
“But that only made him mad.
“'You talk like a fish,' he says. 'I mean it. Why can't we go? It's September, the Old Home House is shut up for the season, you and me's done well—fur's profits are concerned—and we ought to have a change, anyway. ”

“ How much does the Major owe you?”
“Pretty nigh twenty dollars.”
“Humph! You're lucky. He owes me over thirty, and I guess Higgins is worse off than any of us. Ain't that so, Beriah?”
“About seventy, even money,” answered the grocer, shortly. “No use, Obed, we've got to hang together. Wait a week and then see. And, fellers,” he added, “don't tell a soul about this business, 'specially the women folks. There ain't a woman nor girl in this town that don't think Major Hardee's an A1, gold-plated saint, and twouldn't be safe to break the spell on a guess.” ”

“ You never see a man get so red faced and eloquent.
“It wa'n't because he couldn't afford one himself. I know that's the usual reason for them kind of ascensions, but 'twa'n't his. No, sir! the summer hotel business has put a considerable number of dollars in Jonadab's hands, and the said hands are like a patent rat trap, a mighty sight easier to get into than out of. He could have bought three automobiles if he'd wanted to, but he didn't want to. And the reason he didn't was named Tobias Loveland and lived over to Orham.”
“I know Tobias,” interrupted Captain Bailey Stitt. ”

“ Bearse!' gasps the old gent. 'Why, you rascal! I saw you kick the goal that beat Haleton. Your reputation is worldwide.'
“Willie—Fred Bearse, that is—shook his head, sad and regretful.
“'Thank you, Mr. Sterzer,' says he, in his gentle tenor. 'I have no desire to be famous in athletics. My aspirations now are entirely literary.'
“Well, he's got his literary job at last, bein' engaged as sportin' editor on one of Gabe's papers. His dad, old Sol Bearse, seems to be pretty well satisfied, partic'lar as another engagement between the Bearse family and the Sterzers has just been given out.” ”

“ I feel as if the old man's spirit was with us this minute. “He's the apple of my eye,” he says, “and he run away, after me latherin' the life out of him with a wagon spoke. 'Twas all for his good, but he didn't understand, bein' but a child. And now I've heard,” he says, “that he's workin' at 116 East Blank Street in the city of New York. Cap'n Wixon, you're a man of money and a travelin' man,” he says (I was fishin' in them days) . “When you go to New York,” he says, “I want you to promise me to go to the address on this paper and hunt up Jimmie. ”

“ Are yez dead game sports, hey?'
“'Yes, yes!' says Jonadab. 'Course we be. Mr. Kelly and us are old friends. We've come I don't know how fur on purpose to see him. Now where's—'
“'Say no more,' hollers the feller. 'Say no more. Come on with yez.' And he marches down the dark hall to a door with a 'To let' sign on it and fetches it a bang with his fist. It opens a little ways and a face shows in the crack.
“'Hello, Frank!' hails the sunflower, cheerful. ”

“ I'm goin' to stay right aboard my shack while it's movin', and it's so much pleasanter a ride up the hill that I thought I'd go that way. I always envied them who could afford a house on the Boulevard, and now I've got the chance to have one there—for a spell. I'm sartin I shall enjoy it.'
“The foreman growled, disgusted. Mr. Williams got redder yet.
“'Don't you understand?' he snorts. 'You're blockin' the way of the house I'M movin'. I have capable men with adequate apparatus to move it, and they would be able to go twice as fast as your one-horse country outfit. You're blockin' the road. ”

“ I've got to think things out. Run along now, like a good feller. Don't say nothin' about my quittin'. All hands'll know it to-morrow, and that's soon enough.”
Simeon departed, his brain in a whirl. Captain Solomon Berry no longer depot master! The world must be coming to an end.
He remained at his work until supper time. During the meal he ate and said so little that his wife wondered and asked questions. To avoid answering them he hurried out. When he returned, about ten o'clock, he was a changed man. His eyes shone and he fairly danced with excitement. ”

“ Sim had stooped to pick up the quarter the Prince of Wales had hove at him. And that was too much for Susannah, who was watchin' from the window.
“'Don't you touch that money!' she screams. 'Don't you lay a finger on it! Ain't you got any self-respect at all, you miser'ble, low-lived—' and so forth and so on. All the way to the front gate I see Effie leanin' out, lookin' and listenin' and smilin'.
“Then the machine buzzed off in a typhoon of dust and I went back to Jonadab, who was a livin' catechism of questions which neither one of us could answer.” ”

“ Our Cape winter weather was what fixed him. He stood the no'theasters and Scotch drizzles till January, and then he heads for Key West and comfort. Said his heart still beat warm for his native village, but his feet was froze—or words similar. He cal'lated to be back in the spring. Then the Reverend Fisher got a call to somewheres in York State, and felt he couldn't afford not to hear it. Nobody blamed him; the salary paid a minister in South Orham is enough to make any feller buy patent ear drums. But that left our men's club without either skipper or pilot, as you might say. ”

“ He was Captain Sol Berry's assistant at the depot. Why an assistant was needed was a much discussed question. Why Captain Sol, a retired seafaring man with money in the bank, should care to be depot master at ten dollars a week was another. The Captain himself said he took the place because he wanted to do something that was “half way between a loaf and a job.” He employed an assistant at his own expense because he “might want to stretch the loafin' half.” And he hired Issy because—well, because “most folks in East Harniss are alike and you can always tell about what they'll say or do. ”

“ For the rest of that day he was a busy man. As Bailey Stitt expressed it, he “flew round like a sand flea in a mitten,” hiring laborers, engaging masons, and getting his materials ready. That very afternoon the masons began tearing down the chimneys of the little Berry house. Before the close of the following day it was on the rollers. By two of the day after that it was in the middle of the Shore Road, just when its mover had declared it should be. They were moving it, furniture and all, and Captain Sol was, as he said, going to “stay right aboard all the voyage.” ”

“ Sam peered through the glass at the compass.
“Thunder!” he exclaimed. “I should say we had spun around. Instead of north being off here where I thought it was, it's 'way out to the right. Queer how fog'll mix a fellow up. Trumet's about northeast, isn't it?”
“No'theast by no'th's the course. Keep her just there.”
The Lady May, still at half speed, kept on through the mist. Time passed. The twilight, made darker still by the fog, deepened. They lit the lantern in order to see the compass card. Issy had the wheel now. Sam was forward, keeping a lookout and fretting at the delay. ”

“ You've heard of Stingy Gabe, ain't you?”
“I guess we've all heard somethin' about him,” laughed Captain Sol; “but we're willin' to hear more. He was a reformer, wa'n't he?”
“He sartin was! Ho! ho!”
“For the land sakes, tell it, Bailey,” demanded Mr. Gott impatiently. “Don't sit there bouncin' and gurglin' and gettin' purple in the face. Tell it, or you'll bust tryin' to keep it in.”
“Oh, it's a great, long—” began Captain Bailey protestingly.
“Go on,” urged Phinney. “We've got more time than anything else, the most of us. Who was this Stingy Gabe?” ”

“ And what were you and Issy doing? And—”
Her lover broke in eagerly. “Then you're alone now?” he asked.
“Yes, but—”
“Good! Your father can't get a train back from Trumet before to-morrow morning. I don't know what this letter was—but never mind. Perhaps friend McKay knows more about it. It may be that Mr. Higgins is waiting now outside the Baptist church. Gertie, now's our chance. You come with me right up to the minister's. He's a friend of mine. He understands. He'll marry us, I know. Come! We mustn't lose a minute. Your dad may take a notion to drive back.” ”

“ Williams, a freight car full of apparatus arrived at East Harniss. Then came a foreman and a gang of laborers. Horses were hired, and within a week the “pure Colonial” was off its foundations and on its way to the Edwards lot. The moving was no light task. The big house must be brought along the Shore Road to the junction with the Hill Boulevard, then swung into that aristocratic highway and carried up the long slope, around the wide curve, to its destination. ”

“ Dr. Morgan took his notebook from his pocket and wrote a few lines in pencil on one of the pages. Then he tore out the leaf and handed it to the Captain.
“Send that telegram immediately to my assistant in Boston,” he said. “It directs him to send the antitoxin by the early train. If nothing interferes it should be here in time.”
Captain Hiram took the slip of paper and ran out at the door bareheaded.
Dr. Morgan stood in the middle of the floor absent-mindedly looking at his watch. Sophronia was gazing at him appealingly. ”

“ I never bought in cheap mortgages and held 'em for clubs over poor folks, never in my life. Good mornin'.'
“And right to Mr. Williams's own face, too,” concluded Issy. “WHAT do you think of that?”
Here was defiance of authority and dignity, a sensation which should have racked East Harniss from end to end. But most of the men in the village, the tradespeople particularly, had another matter on their minds, namely, Major Cuthbertson Scott Hardee, of “Silverleaf Hall.” The Major and his debts were causing serious worriment. ”

“ The billiard room gang wa'n't the best folks in town, I'll own right up to that. Still, they wa'n't so turrible wicked. Jotham never sold rum, and he'd never allow no rows in his place. But, just the same, his saloon was reckoned a bad influence. Young men hadn't ought to go there—most of us said that. If there was a nicer place TO go, argues the minister, 'twould help the moral tone of the community consider'ble. 'Why not,' says he to Stingy Gabe, 'start a free club for men that'll make the billiard room look like the tail boat in a race?' And says Gabe: 'Bully! ”