“I'm going up to the village,” I told Dorinda, taking my cap from the hook behind the dining-room door.
“What for?” asked Dorinda, pushing me to one side and reaching for the dust-cloth, which also was behind the door.
“Oh, just for the walk,” I answered, carelessly.
“Um-hm,” observed Dorinda.
“Um-hm” is, I believe, good Scotch for “Yes.” I have read that it is, somewhere—in one of Barrie's yarns, I think. I had never been in Scotland, or much of anywhere else, except the city I was born in, and my college town, and Boston—and Cape Cod. “Um-hm” meant yes on the Cape, too, except when Dorinda said it; then it might mean almost anything. When Mother asked her to lower the window shade in the bed-room she said “Um-hm” and lowered it. And, five minutes later, when Lute came in, loaded to the guards with explanations as to why he had forgotten to clean the fish for dinner, she said it again. And the Equator and the North Pole are no nearer alike, so far as temperature is concerned, than those two “Um-hms.” And between them she had others, expressing all degrees from frigid to semi-torrid.
Her “Um-hm” this time was somewhere along the northern edge of Labrador.
“It's a good morning for a walk,” I said.
“Um-hm,” repeated Dorinda, crossing over to Greenland, so to speak.
I opened the outside door. The warm spring sunshine, pouring in, was a pleasant contrast and made me forget, for the moment, the glacier at my back. Come to think of it, “glacier” isn't a good word; glaciers move slowly and that wasn't Dorinda's way.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Work,” snapped Dorinda, unfurling the dust cloth. “It's a good mornin' for that, too.”
I went out, turned the corner of the house and found Lute sound asleep on the wash bench behind the kitchen. His full name was Luther Millard Filmore Rogers, and he was Dorinda's husband by law, and the burden which Providence, or hard luck, had ordered her to carry through this vale of tears. She was a good Methodist and there was no doubt in her mind that Providence was responsible. When she rose to testify in prayer-meeting she always mentioned her “cross” and everybody knew that the cross was Luther. She carried him, but it is no more than fair to say that she didn't provide him with cushions. She never let him forget that he was a steerage passenger. However, Lute was well upholstered with philosophy, of a kind, and, so long as he didn't have to work his passage, was happy, even if the voyage was a rather rough one.
Just now he was supposed to be raking the back yard, but the rake was between his knees, his head was tipped back against the shingled wall of the kitchen, and he was sleeping, with the sunshine illuminating his open mouth, “for all the world like a lamp in a potato cellar,” as his wife had said the last time she caught him in this position. She went on to say that it was a pity he wouldn't stand on his head when he slept. “Then I could see if your skull was as holler as I believe it is,” she told him.
Lute heard me as I passed him and woke up. The “potato cellar” closed with a snap and he seized the rake handles with both hands.
“I was takin' a sort of observation,” he explained hurriedly. “Figgerin' whether I'd better begin here or over by the barn. Oh, it's you, Roscoe, is it! Land sakes! I thought first 'twas Dorindy. Where you bound?”
“Up to the village,” I said.
“Ain't goin' to the post-office, be you?”
“I may; I don't know.”
Lute sighed. “I was kind of cal'latin' to go there myself,” he observed, regretfully. “Thoph Newcomb and Cap'n Jed Dean and the rest of us was havin' a talk on politics last night up there and 'twas mighty interestin'. Old Dean had Thoph pretty well out of the race when I hauled alongside, but when I got into the argument 'twas different. 'What's goin' to become of the laborin' men of this country if you have free trade?' I says. Dean had to give in that he didn't know. 'Might have to let their wives support 'em,' he says, pompous as ever. 'That would be a calamity, wouldn't it, Lute?' That wasn't no answer, of course. But you can't expect sense of a Democrat. I left him fumin' and come away. I've thought of a lot more questions to ask him since and I was hopin' I could get at him this mornin'. But no! Dorindy's sot on havin' this yard raked, so I s'pose I've got to do it.”
He had dropped the rake, but now he leaned over, picked it up, and rose from the wash bench.
“I s'pose I've got to do it,” he repeated, “unless,” hopefully, “you want me to run up to the village and do your errand for you.”
“No; I hadn't any errand.”
“Well, then I s'pose I'd better start in. Unless there was somethin' else you'd ruther I'd do to-day. If there was I could do this to-morrer.”
“To-morrow would have one advantage: there would be more to rake then. However, judging by Dorinda's temper this morning, I think, perhaps, you had better do it to-day.”
“What's Dorindy doin'?”
“She is dusting the dining-room.”
“I'll bet you! And she dusted it yesterday and the day afore. Do you know—” Lute sat down again on the bench—“sometimes I get real worried about her.”
“No! Do you?”
“Yes, I do. I think she works too hard. Seems's if sometimes it had kind of struck to her brains—work, I mean. She don't think of nothin' else. Now take the dustin', for instance. Dustin's all right; I believe in dustin' things. But I don't believe in wearin' 'em out dustin' 'em. That ain't sense, is it?”
“It doesn't seem like it, that's a fact.”
“You bet it don't! And it ain't good religion, neither. Now take—well, take this yard, for instance. What is it that I'm slavin' myself over this fine mornin'? Why, rakin' this yard! And what am I rakin'? Why, dead leaves from last fall, and straws and sticks and pieces of seaweed and such that have blowed in durin' the winter. And what blowed 'em in? Why, the wind, sartin! And whose wind was it? The Almighty's, that's whose! Now then! if the Almighty didn't intend to have dead leaves around why did he put trees for 'em to fall off of? If he didn't want straws and seaweed and truck around why did He send them everlastin' no'theasters last November? Did that idea ever strike you?”
“I don't know that it ever did, exactly in that way.”
“No. Well, that's 'cause you ain't reasoned it out, same as I have. You've got the same trouble that most folks have, you don't reason things out. Now, let's look at it straight in the face.” Lute let go of the rake altogether and used both hands to illustrate his point. “That finger there, we'll say, is me, rakin' and rakin' hard as ever I can. And that fist there is the Almighty, not meanin' anything irreverent. I rake, same as I'm doin' this mornin'. The yard's all cleaned up. Then—zing!” Lute's clenched fist swept across and knocked the offending finger out of the way. “Zing! here comes one of the Almighty's no'theasters, same as we're likely to have to-morrer, and the consarned yard is just as dirty as ever. Ain't that so?”
I looked at the yard. “It seems to be about as it was,” I agreed, with some sarcasm. Lute was an immune, so far as sarcasm was concerned.
“Yup,” he said, triumphantly. “Now, Dorindy, she's a good, pious woman. She believes the Powers above order everything. If that's so, then ain't it sacrilegious to be all the time flyin' in the face of them Powers by rakin' and rakin' and dustin' and dustin'? That's the question.”
“But, according to that reasoning,” I observed, “we should neither rake nor dust. Wouldn't that make our surroundings rather uncomfortable, after a while?”
“Sartin. But when they got uncomfortable then we could turn to and make 'em comfortable again. I ain't arguin' against work—needful work, you understand. I like it. And I ain't thinkin' of myself, you know, but about Dorindy. It worries me to see her wearin' herself out with—with dustin' and such. It ain't sense and 'tain't good religion. She's my wife and it's my duty to think for her and look out for her.”
He paused and reached into his overalls pocket for a pipe. Finding it, he reached into another pocket for the wherewithal to fill it.
“Have you suggested to her that she's flying in the face of Providence?” I asked.
Lute shook his head. “No,” he admitted, “I ain't. Got any tobacco about you? Dorindy hove my plug away yesterday. I left it back of the clock and she found it and was mad—dustin' again, of course.”
He took the pouch I handed him, filled his pipe and absently put the pouch in his pocket.
“Got a match?” he asked. “Thanks. No, I ain't spoke to her about it, though it's been on my mind for a long spell. I didn't know but you might say somethin' to her along that line, Roscoe. 'Twouldn't sound so personal, comin' from you. What do you think?”
I shook my head. “Dorinda wouldn't pay much attention to my ideas on such subjects, I'm afraid,” I answered. “She knows I'm not a regular church-goer.”
Lute was plainly disappointed. “Well,” he said, with a sigh, “maybe you're right. She does cal'late you're kind of heathen, though she hopes you'll see the light some day. But, just the same,” he added, “it's a good argument. I tried it on the gang up to the post-office last night. I says to 'em, says I, 'Work's all right. I believe in it. I'm a workin' man, myself. But to work when you don't have to is wrong. Take Ros Paine,' I says—”
“Why should you take me?” I interrupted, rather sharply.
“'Cause you're the best example I could think of. Everybody knows you don't do no work. Shootin' and sailin' and fishin' ain't work, and that's about all you do. 'Take Ros,' says I. 'He might be to work. He was in a bank up to the city once and he knows the bankin' trade. He might be at it now, but what would be the use?' I says. 'He's got enough to live on and he lives on it, 'stead of keepin' some poor feller out of a job.' That's right, too, ain't it?”
I didn't answer at once. There was no reason why I should be irritated because Luther Rogers had held me up as a shining example of the do-nothing class to the crowd of hangers-on in a country post-office. What did I care for Denboro opinion? Six years in that gossipy village had made me, so I thought, capable of rising above such things.
“Well,” I asked after a moment, “what did they say to that?”
“Oh, nothin' much. They couldn't; I had 'em, you see. Some of 'em laughed and old Cap'n Jed he hove out somethin' about birds of a feather stickin' up for each other. No sense to it. But, as I said afore, what can you expect of a Democrat?”
I turned on my heel and moved toward the back gate. “Ain't goin', be you?” asked Lute. “Hadn't you better set down and rest your breakfast a spell?”
“No, I'm going. By the way, if you're through with that tobacco pouch of mine, I'll take it off your hands. I may want to smoke by and by.”
Lute coolly explained that he had forgotten the pouch; it had “gone clean out of his head.” However, he handed it over and I left him seated on the wash bench, with his head tipped back against the shingles. I opened the gate and strolled slowly along the path by the edge of the bluff. I had gone perhaps a hundred yards when I heard a shrill voice behind me. Turning, I saw Dorinda standing by the corner of the kitchen, dust cloth in hand. Her husband was raking for dear life.
I walked on. The morning was a beautiful one. Beside the path, on the landward side, the bayberry and beach-plum bushes were in bud, the green of the new grass was showing above the dead brown of the old, a bluebird was swaying on the stump of a wild cherry tree, and the pines and scrub oaks of the grove by the Shore Lane were bright, vivid splashes of color against the blue of the sky. At my right hand the yellow sand of the bluff broke sharply down to the white beach and the waters of the bay, now beginning to ebb. Across the bay the lighthouse at Crow Point glistened with new paint and I could see a moving black speck, which I knew was Ben Small, the keeper, busy whitewashing the fence beside it. Down on the beach Zeb Kendrick was overhauling his dory. In the distance, beyond the grove, I could hear the carpenters' hammers on the roof of the big Atwater mansion, which was now the property of James Colton, the New York millionaire, whose rumored coming to Denboro to live had filled the columns of the country weekly for three months. The quahaug boats were anchored just inside the Point; a clam digger was wading along the outer edge of the sedge; a lobsterman was hauling his pots in the channel; even the bluebird on the wild cherry stump had a straw in his beak and was plainly in the midst of nest building. Everyone had something to do and was doing it—everyone except Lute Rogers and myself, the “birds of a feather.” And even Lute was working now, under compulsion.
Ordinarily the sight of all this industry would not have affected me. I had seen it all before, or something like it. The six years I had spent in Denboro, the six everlasting, idle, monotonous years, had had their effect. I had grown hardened and had come to accept my fate, at first rebelliously, then with more of Lute's peculiar kind of philosophy. Circumstances had doomed me to be a good-for-nothing, a gentleman loafer without the usual excuse—money—and, as it was my doom, I forced myself to accept it, if not with pleasure, at least with resignation. And I determined to get whatever pleasure there might be in it. So, when I saw the majority of the human race, each with a purpose in life, struggling to attain that purpose, I passed them by with my gun or fishing rod on my shoulder, and a smile on my lips. If my remnant of a conscience presumed to rise and reprove me, I stamped it down. It had no reasonable excuse for rising; I wasn't what I was from choice.
But, somehow, on this particular morning, my unreasonable conscience was again alive and kicking. Perhaps it was the quickening influence of the spring which resurrected it; perhaps Luther's quotation from the remarks of Captain Jedediah Dean had stirred it to rebellion. A man may know, in his heart, that he is no good and still resent having others say that he is, particularly when they say that he and Luther Rogers are birds of a feather. I didn't care for Dean's good opinion; of course I didn't! Nor for that of any one else in Denboro, my mother excepted. But Dean and the rest should keep their opinions to themselves, confound them!
The path from our house—the latter every Denboro native spoke of as the “Paine Place”—wound along the edge of the bluff for perhaps three hundred yards, then turned sharply through the grove of scrub oaks and pitch pines and emerged on the Shore Lane. The Shore Lane was not a public road, in the strictest sense of the term. It was really a part of my land and, leading, as it did, from the Lower Road to the beach, was used as a public road merely because mother and I permitted it to be. It had been so used, by sufferance of the former owner, for years, and when we came into possession of the property we did not interfere with the custom. Land along the shore was worth precious little at that time and, besides, it was pleasant, rather than disagreeable, to hear the fish carts going out to the weirs, and the wagons coming to the beach for seaweed, or, filled with picnic parties, rattling down the Lane. We could not see them from the house until they had passed the grove and emerged upon the beach, but even the noise of them was welcome. The Paine Place was a good half-mile from the Lower Road and there were few neighbors; therefore, especially in the winter months, any sounds of society were comforting.
I strode through the grove, kicking the dead branches out of my way, for my mind was still busy with Luther and Captain Dean. As I came out into the Lane I looked across at the Atwater mansion, now the property of the great and only Colton, “Big Jim” Colton, whose deals and corners in Wall Street supplied so many and such varied sensations for the financial pages of the city papers, just as those of his wife and family supplied news for the society columns; I looked across, I say, and then I stopped short to take a longer look.
I could see the carpenters, whose hammers I had heard, at work upon the roof of the barn, now destined to do double duty as a stable and garage. They, and the painters and plumbers, had been busy on the premises for months. The establishment had been a big one, even when Major Atwater owned it, but the new owners had torn down and added and rebuilt until the house loomed up like a palace or a Newport villa. A Newport villa in Denboro! Why on earth any one should deliberately choose Denboro as a place to live in I couldn't understand; but why a millionaire, with all creation to select from, should build a Newport villa on the bluff overlooking Denboro Bay was beyond comprehension. The reason given in the Cape Cod Item was that Mrs. Colton was “in debilitated health,” whatever that is, and had been commanded by her doctors to seek sea air and seclusion and rest. Well, there was sea air and rest, not to mention seclusion or sand and mosquitoes, for a square mile about the new villa, and no one knew that better than I, condemned to live within the square. But if Mrs. Colton had deliberately chosen the spot, with malice aforethought, the place for her was a home for the feeble minded. At least, that was my opinion on that particular morning.
It was not the carpenters who caused me to pause in my walk and look across the lane and over the stone wall at my new neighbor's residence. What caught my attention was that the place looked to be inhabited. The windows were open—fifty or so of them—smoke was issuing from one of the six chimneys; a maid in a white cap and apron was standing by the servants' entrance. Yes, and a tall, bulky man with a yachting cap on the back of his head and a cigar in his mouth was talking with Asa Peters, the boss carpenter, by the big door of the barn.
I had not been up to the village for two days, having been employed at our boat-house on the beach below the house, getting my motor dory into commission for the summer. But now I remembered that Lute had said something about the Coltons being expected, or having arrived, and that he seemed much excited over it. He would have said more, but Dorinda had pounced on him and sent him out to shut up the chickens, which gave him the excuse to play truant and take his evening's trip to the post-office. It was plain that the Coltons HAD arrived. Very likely the stout man with the yachting cap was the mighty “Big Jim” himself. Well, I didn't envy him in his present situation. He had my pity, if anything.
Possibly the fact that I could pity some one other than myself helped to raise my spirits. At any rate I managed to shake off a little of my gloom and tramped on up the Lane, feeling more like a human being and less like a yellow dog. Less as I should imagine a yellow dog ought to feel, I mean, for, as a matter of fact, most yellow dogs of my acquaintance seem to be as happy as their brown or white or black relatives. I walked up the Lane, turned into the Lower Road, and headed for the village. The day was a gorgeous one, the air bracing as a tonic, and my thirtieth birthday was not yet so far astern as to be lost in the fog. After all, there were some consolations in being alive and in a state of health not “debilitated.” I began to whistle.
A quarter of a mile from the junction of the Shore Lane, on the Lower Road, was a willow-shaded spot, where the brook which irrigated Elnathan Mullet's cranberry swamp ran under a small wooden bridge. It was there that I first heard the horn and, turning, saw the automobile coming from behind me. It was approaching at a speed of, I should say, thirty miles an hour, and I jumped to the rail of the bridge to let it pass. Autos were not as common on the Cape then as they have become since. Now the average pedestrian of common-sense jumps first and looks afterwards.
However, I jumped in time, and stood still to watch the car as it went by. But it did not go by—not then. Its speed slackened as it approached and it came to a halt on the bridge beside me. A big car; an aristocratic car; a machine of pomp and price and polish, such as Denboro saw but seldom. It contained three persons—a capped and goggled chauffeur on the front seat, and a young fellow and a girl in the tonneau. They attracted my attention in just that order—first the chauffeur, then the young fellow, and, last of all, the girl.
It was the chauffeur who hailed me. He leaned across the upholstery beside him and, still holding the wheel, said:
“Say, Bill, what's the quickest way to get to Bayport?”
Now my name doesn't happen to be Bill and just then I objected to the re-christening. At another time I might have appreciated the joke and given him the information without comment. But this morning I didn't feel like joking. My dissatisfaction with the world in general included automobilists who made common folks get out of their way, and I was resentful.
“I should say that you had picked about as quick a way as any,” I answered.
The chauffeur didn't seem to grasp the true inwardness of this brilliant bit.
“Aw, what—” he stammered. “Say, what—look here, I asked you—”
Then the young man in the tonneau took charge of the conversation. He was a very young man, with blond hair and a silky mustache, and his clothes fitted him as clothes have no right to fit—on Cape Cod.
“That'll do, Oscar,” he ordered. Then, turning to me, he said:
“See here, my man, we want to go to Bayport.”
I was not his man, and wouldn't have been for something. The chauffeur had irritated me, but he irritated me more. I didn't like him, his looks, his clothes, and, particularly, his manner. Therefore, because I didn't feel like answering, I showed my independence by remaining silent.
“What's the matter?” he demanded, impatiently. “Are you deaf? I say we want to go to Bayport.”
A newspaper joke which I had recently read came to my mind. “Very well,” I said, “you have my permission.”
It was a rude thing to say, and not even original. I don't attempt to excuse it. In fact, I was sorry as soon as I had said it. It had its effect. The young man turned red. Then he laughed aloud.
“Well, by Jove!” he exclaimed. “What have we here? A humorist, I do believe! Mabel, we've discovered a genuine, rural humorist. Another David Harum, by Jove! Look at him!”
The girl in the tonneau swept aside her veil and looked, as directed. And I looked at her. The face that I saw was sweet and refined and delicate, a beautiful young face, the face of a lady, born and bred. All this I saw and realized at a glance; but what I was most conscious of at the time was the look in the dark eyes as they surveyed me from head to foot. Indifference was there, and contemptuous amusement; she didn't even condescend to smile, much less speak. Under that look my self-importance shrank until the yellow dog with which I had compared myself loomed as large as an elephant. She might have looked that way at some curious and rather ridiculous bug, just before calling a servant to step on it.
The young man laughed again. “Isn't it a wonder, Mabel?” he asked. “The native wit on his native heath! Reuben—pardon me, your name is Reuben, isn't it?—now that you've had your little joke, would you condescend to tell us the road which we should take to reach Bayport in the shortest time? Would you oblige us to that extent?”
The young lady smiled at this. “Victor,” she said, “how idiotic you are!”
I agreed with her. Idiot was one of the terms, the mildest, which I should have applied to that young man. I wanted very much to remove him from that car by what Lute would call the scruff of the neck. But most of all, just then, I wanted to be alone, to see the last of the auto and its occupants.
“First turn to the right, second to the left,” I said, sullenly.
“Thank you, Reuben,” vouchsafed the young man. “Here's hoping that your vegetables are fresher than your jokes. Go ahead, Oscar.”
The chauffeur threw in the clutch and the car buzzed up the road, turning the corner at full speed. There was a loose board projecting from the bridge just under my feet. As a member—though an inactive one—of the Village Improvement Society I should have trodden it back into place. I didn't; I kicked it into the brook.
Then I walked on. But the remainder of my march was a silent one, without music. I did not whistle.
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