The number of reasons given by Mr. Bangs one after the other, to prove that it would be quite impossible for him to be Mrs. Beasley's charioteer was a credit to the resources of his invention. The blacksmith might be back any minute; it was dinner time, and he was hungry; Henry, the horse, was tired; it wasn't a nice day for riding, and he would come over some other time and take the widow out; he—But Debby had a conclusive answer for each protest.
“You said yourself the blacksmith wouldn't be back for an hour,” she observed. “And you can leave word with the boy what he's to do when he does come. As for dinner, I'll be real glad to give you and Miss Dorcas a snack soon's we get back. I don't mind if it ain't a pleasant day; a little fresh air 'll do me good. I been shut up here house-cleanin' ever since I got back from out West. Now, hurry right along, and fetch your horse. I'll unlock the barn.”
“But, Mrs. Beasley,” put in the schoolmistress, “why couldn't you give us a note to Mrs. Atwood and let us stop for the diary on our way home? I could return it to you by mail. Or you might get it yourself some other day and mail it to me.”
“No, no! Never put off till to-morrer what you can do to-day. My husband was a great hand to put off and put off. For the last eight years of his life I was at him to buy a new go-to-meetin' suit of clothes. The one he had was blue to start with, but it faded to a brown, and, toward the last of it, I declare if it didn't commence to turn green. Nothin' I could say would make him heave it away even then. Seemed to think more of it than ever. Said he wanted to hang to it a spell and see what 'twould turn next. But he died and was laid out in that same suit, and I was so mortified at the funeral I couldn't think of nothin' else. No, I'll go after them papers and the diary while they're fresh in my mind. And besides, do you s'pose I'd let Sarah Ann Atwood rummage through my trunks? I guess not!”
Phoebe began to be sorry she had thought of sending for the diary, particularly as the chance of its containing valuable information was so remote. 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.
Bailey stared into the black interior of the barn.
“Which is it?” he shouted.
Mrs. Beasley pointed with her ear trumpet.
“Why, that one there, of course. 'Tother's a truck cart. You wouldn't expect me to ride in that, would you?”
Mr. Bangs entered the barn, seized the vehicle indicated by the shafts, and drew it out into the yard. He inspected it deliberately, and then sat weakly down on the chopping block near by. Apparently he was overcome by emotion.
The “sulky” bequeathed by the late doctor had been built to order for its former owner. It was of the “carryall” variety, except that it had but a single narrow seat. Its top was square and was curtained, the curtains being tightly buttoned down. Altogether it was something of a curiosity. Miss Dawes, who had come out to see the start, looked at the “sulky,” then at Mr. Bangs's face, and turned her back. Her shoulders shook:
“It used to be a real nice carriage when Ezra had it,” commented the widow admiringly. “It needs ilin' and sprucin' up now, but I guess 'twill do. Come!” to Bailey, who had not risen from the chopping block. “Hurry up and harness or we'll never get started. Thought you wanted to get back for dinner?”
Mr. Bangs stood up and heaved a sigh.
“I did,” he answered slowly, “but,” with a glance at the sulky, “somethin' seems to have took away my appetite. Teacher, do you mean to—”
But Miss Dawes had withdrawn to the corner of the house, from which viewpoint she seemed to be inspecting the surrounding landscape. Bailey seized Henry by the bridle and backed him into the shafts.
“Back up!” he roared. “Back up, I tell you! You needn't look at me that way,” he added, in a lower tone. “I can't help it. You ain't any worse ashamed than I am. There! the ark's off the ways. All aboard!”
Turning to the expectant widow, he “boosted” her, not too tenderly, up to the narrow seat. Then he climbed in himself. Two on that seat made a tight fit. Bailey took up the reins. Debby leaned forward and peered around the edge of the curtains.
“You!” she shouted. “You, Miss What's-your-name—Dorcas! Come here a minute. I want to tell you somethin'.”
The schoolmistress, her face red and her eyes moist, approached.
“I just wanted to say,” explained Debby, “that I ain't real sure as that diary's there. I burnt up a lot of my old letters and things a spell ago, and seems to me I burnt some old diaries, too, but maybe that wan't one of 'em. Anyhow, I can get them Arizona papers, and I do want you to see 'em. They're the most INTERESTIN' things. Now,” she added, turning to her companion on the seat, “you can git dap just as soon as you want to.”
Whether or not Mr. Bangs wanted to “git dap” is a doubtful question. But at all events he did. Before the astonished Miss Dawes could think of an answer to the observation concerning the diary, the carriage, its long unused axles shrieking protests, moved out of the yard. The schoolmistress watched it go. Then she returned to the sitting room and collapsed in a rocking chair.
Once out from the shelter of the house and on the open road, the sulky received the full force of the wind. The first gust that howled in from the bay struck its curtained side with a sudden burst of power that caused Mrs. Beasley to clutch her driver's arm.
“Good land of mercy!” she screamed. “It blows real hard, don't it?”
Mr. Bangs's answer was in the form of delicate sarcasm, bellowed into the ear trumpet.
“Sho!” he exclaimed. “I want to know! You don't say! Now you mention it, seems as if I had noticed a little air stirrin'.”
Another gust tilted the carriage top. Debby clutched the arm still tighter.
“Why, it blows awful hard!” she cried. “I'd no idee it blew like this.”
“Want to 'bout ship and go home again?” whooped Bailey, hopefully. But the widow didn't intend to give up the rare luxury of a “ride” which a kind Providence had cast in her way.
“No, no!” she answered. “I guess if you folks come all the way from Bayport I can stand it as fur's the Center. But hurry all you can, won't you? I'm kind of 'fraid of the springs.”
“Springs? What springs? Let go my arm, will you? It's goin' to sleep.”
Mrs. Beasley let go of the arm momentarily.
“I mean the springs on this carriage,” she explained. “Last time I lent it to anybody—Solon Davis, 'twas—he said the bolts underneath was pretty nigh rusted out, and about all that held the wagon part on was its own weight. So we'll have to be kind of careful.”
“Well—I—swan—to—MAN!” was Mr. Bangs's sole comment on the amazing disclosure; however, as an expression of concentrated and profound disgust it was quite sufficient. He spoke but once during the remainder of the trip to the “Center.” Then, when his passenger begged to know if “that Whittaker man” had been well since she left, he shouted: “Yes—EVER since,” and relapsed into his former gloomy silence.
The widow's stop at the Atwood house, which was in the immediate rear of the Atwood store, was of a half hour's duration. Bailey refused to leave the seat of the sulky and sat there, speaking to no one; not even replying to the questions of a group of loungers who gathered to inspect the ancient vehicle, and professed to be in doubt as to whether it had been washed in with the tide or been “left” to him in a will.
At last Debby made her appearance, her arms filled with newspapers. The latter she piled under the carriage seat, and then climbed to her former place beside the driver. Henry, in response to a slap from the reins, got under way once more. The axles squeaked and screamed.
“Gee!” cried one youngster, from the steps of the store. “It's the steam calliope. When's the rest of the show comin'?”
“Hi!” yelled another. “See how close they're hugged up together. Ain't they lovin'! It's a weddin'!”
“Shut up!” roared the tortured Bailey, whose hat had blown back into the body of the sulky, leaving his bald head exposed to the cutting wind.
The audience begged him to give them a lock of his hair, and added other remarks of a personal nature concerning the youth and beauty of the bridal couple and their chariot. Mr. Bangs was in a state of dumb frenzy. Debby, who, without her trumpet, had heard nothing of all this, was smiling and garrulous.
“I found all the papers,” she said. “They're right under the seat. I'm goin' to look 'em over so's to have the interestin' parts all ready to show Miss Dorcas when we get home. Ain't it nice I found 'em?”
In spite of her driver's remonstrances, unheard because of the nonadjustment of the trumpet, she reached under the seat and brought out the pile of Blazeton weeklies. With her feet upon the pile to keep it from blowing away, she proceeded to unfold one of the papers. It crackled and snapped in the wind like a loose mainsail.
“Keep that dratted thing out of my face, won't you?” shrieked the agonized Bailey. “How'm I goin' to see to steer with that smackin' me between the eyes every other second?”
“Hey? Did you speak to me?” asked the widow sweetly.
“Did I SPEAK? No, I screeched! What in tunket—”
“I want you to see this picture of the mayor's house in Blazeton. Eva, my husband's niece, lives right acrost the road from him. Many's the time I've set on their piazza and seen him come out and go to the City Hall.”
“Keep it out of my face, I tell you! Reef it! Furl it, you—you woman! I wish to thunder the piazza had caved in on you! I never see such an old fool in my born days. TAKE IT AWAY!”
Mrs. Beasley removed the paper, but only to substitute another.
“Here's Eva's brother-in-law,” she screamed. “He's one of the prominent business men out there, so they put him in the paper. Ain't he nice lookin'?”
Bailey's comments on the prominent business man's appearance were anything but flattering. Debby continued to reach for more papers, carefully replacing those she had inspected in the pile beneath her feet. The wind blew as hard as ever; even harder, for it was now almost dead ahead. Henry plodded along. They were in the hollow at the foot of the last long hill, that from which the blacksmith shop had first been sighted.
“I know what I'll do,” declared the passenger. “I'll hunt for that missin' husband advertisement of Desire Higgins's. Let's see now! 'Twill be down at the bottom of the pile, 'cause the paper it's in is a last year one.”
She bobbed down behind the high dashboard. Mr. Bangs stood up in order that her gymnastics might interfere, to a lesser degree, with his driving. The equipage began to move up the slope of the hill, bouncing and twisting in the frozen ruts.
“Here 'tis!” exclaimed Debby. “I remember it's in this number, 'cause there's a picture of the Palace Hotel on the front page. Let's see—'Dog lost'—no, that ain't it. 'Corner lot for sale'—wish I had money enough to buy it; I'd like nothin' better than to live out there. 'Information wanted of my husband'—Here 'tis! Um—hum!”
She straightened up and eagerly began reading the advertisement. The hill was very steep just at its top, and the sulky slanted backward at a sharp angle. A terrific burst of wind tore around the corner of the bluff. It eddied through the sulky between the dashboard and the curtained sides. The widow, in her excitement at finding the advertisement, had inadvertently removed her feet from the pile of papers. In an instant the air was filled with whirling copies of the Blazeton Weekly Courier.
Henry, the horse, was a sober animal who had long ago reached the age of discretion. But to have his old ears and eyes suddenly blanketed with a flapping white thing swooping apparently from nowhere was too much even for his sedate nerves. He jumped sidewise. The reins were jerked from the driver's hands and fell in the road.
“Mercy on us!” shrieked Debby, clutching her companion about the waist. “What—”
“Let go of me!” howled Bailey, pushing her violently aside. “Whoa! Stand still!”
But Henry refused to stand still. The flapping paper still clung to his agitated head. He reared and pranced, jerking the sulky back and forth, its wheels still wedged in the ruts. Bailey sprang to the ground to pick up the reins. He seized them, but fell as he did so. The tug at his bits turned Henry's head, literally and figuratively. He reared and whirled about. The sulky rose on two wheels. The screaming Mrs. Beasley collapsed against its downward side. Another moment, and the whole upper half of the sulky—body, seat, curtains, and Debby—tilted over the lower wheels, and, the rusted bolts failing to hold, slid with a thump to the frozen road. The wind, catching it underneath as it slid, tipped it backward. Then Henry ran away.
Miss Dawes, left alone in the house at the foot of the hill, had amused herself for a time with the Beasley library, which partially filled a shelf in the sitting room. But “The Book of Martyrs” and “A Believer's Thoughts on Death” were not cheering literature, particularly as the author of the latter volume “thought” so dismally concerning the future of all who did not believe precisely as he did. So the teacher laid down the book, with a shudder, and wandered about the room, inspecting the late Mr. Beasley's portrait, the photographs in splintwork frames, the “alum basket” on the mantel, the blue castles, blue trees, and blue people pictured on the window shades, and other works of art in the apartment. She even peeped into the parlor, but the musty, shut-up smell of that dusky tomb was too much for her, and she sat down by the sitting-room window, under the empty bird cage, to look up the road and watch for the return of the sulky and its occupants.
Sitting there, she was a witness of the alarming catastrophe on the hilltop, and reached the front gate just in time to see Henry go galloping by, dragging the four wheels and springs of the sulky, while, sprawled across the rear axle and still clinging to the reins, hung a familiar, howling, and most wickedly profane individual by the name of Bangs.
The runaway dashed on toward the blacksmith shop. Phoebe, bareheaded and coatless, ran up the hill. Before she reached the crest, she was aware of muffled screams, which sounded as if the screamer was shut up in a trunk.
“O-o-oh!” screamed Mrs. Beasley. “O-o-oh! Ow! Let me out! Help! I'm stuck! My back's broke! He-e-lp!”
The upper part of the sulky, with its boxlike curtained top, lay on its side in the road. From somewhere within the box came the groans and screams. The gale swept the hilltop, and, for a quarter mile to leeward, the scenery was animated by soaring, fluttering copies of the Blazeton Courier, that swooped and ducked like mammoth white butterflies.
The panting and alarmed teacher stooped and peered into the dark shadow between the dashboard and the back curtain. All she could make out at first were a pair of thin ankles and “Congress” shoes in agitated motion. These bobbed up and down behind the overturned seat and its displaced cushion.
“O Mrs. Beasley!” screamed Phoebe. “Are you hurt?”
Debby, of course, did not hear the question. She continued to groan and scream for help. Her lungs were not injured, at all events. The schoolmistress, dropping on her knees, reached into the sulky top and tugged at the seat. It was rather tightly wedged, but she managed to loosen it and pull it toward her.
The widow raised herself on an elbow and looked out between the flowers of her smashed bonnet.
“Who is it?” she demanded. “Oh, is that you, Miss Dorcas? Oh, my soul and body! Oh, my stars! Oh, my goodness me!”
“Are you hurt?” shrieked Phoebe.
“Hey? I don't know! I don't know WHAT I be! I don't know nothin'!”
“Can you help yourself? Can you get up?”
“Hey? I don't know. Maybe I can if you haul that everlastin' seat out of the way. Oh, my sakes alive!”
Her rescuer pulled the seat forward, and, with an effort, tumbled it clear of the curtains. Debby raised herself still higher.
“Oh!” she groaned. “Talk about—Land sakes! who's comin'? Men, ain't it? Let me out of here quick! QUICK!”
She scrambled out of her prison on hands and knees, and jumped to her feet with reassuring alacrity. Her fur-collared cape was draped in a roll about her neck, and her bonnet hung jauntily over her left eye.
“I'm a sight, ain't I?” she asked. “Haul this bunnet straight, quick's ever you can. Hurt? No, no! I ain't hurt none but my feelin's. Hurry UP! S'pose I want them men folks to see me with everything all hind side to?”
Miss Dawes, relieved to find that the accident had had no serious consequences, and trying her hardest not to laugh, assisted the widow to rearrange her wearing apparel. The blacksmith and his helper came running up the hill.
“Hello, Debby!” hailed the former. “What's the matter? Hurt, be you?”
Mrs. Beasley, whether she heard or not, did not deign to reply.
“Get my horn out of that carriage,” she ordered. “Don't stand there gapin'. Get it.”
The ear trumpet was resurrected from the interior of the vehicle. The widow adjusted it with dignity.
“Had a spill, didn't you, Debby?” inquired the blacksmith. “Upset, didn't you?”
Debby glared at him.
“No,” she replied with sarcasm. “Course I didn't upset! Just thought I'd roll round in the road for the fun of it. Smart question, that is! Where's that Bailey Bangs gone to with the rest of my carriage?”
The blacksmith pointed to his shop in the hollow. Before it stood Mr. Bangs, holding Henry by the bridle, and staring in their direction.
“He's all right,” volunteered the “helper.” “The horse stopped runnin' soon's he got to the foot of the next hill.”
Mrs. Beasley was not, apparently, overjoyed at the news.
“Humph!” she grunted. “I 'most wish he'd broke his neck! Pesky, careless thing! gettin' us run away with and upset. Who's goin' to pay for fixin' my sulky, I want to know?”
“Mr. Bangs will pay for it, I'm sure,” said Phoebe soothingly. “If he doesn't, I will. Oh, Mrs. Beasley! did you find the diary?”
“Diary? No, no! I told you I was afraid I'd burnt it up. Well, I had, and a whole lot more of them old ones. But I did get all them Arizona papers, and took the trouble to tote 'em all the way here so's you could look at 'em. And now”—she shook with indignation and waved her hand toward a section of horizon where little white dots indicated the whereabouts of the Couriers—“now look where they be! Blowed from Dan to Beersheby! Come on to the house and let me set down. I been standin' on my head till I'm tired. Here, Jabez,” to the blacksmith, “you tend to that carriage, will you?”
She stalked off down the hill. The schoolmistress turning to follow her, caught a glimpse of the “helper” doubled up with silent laughter, and the blacksmith grinning broadly as he stooped toward the capsized sulky.
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!
Debby marching down the hill, continued to sputter about the lost weeklies.
“It's an everlastin' shame!” she declared. “I'd just found the one with that advertisement in it and was readin' it. I remember the part I read, plain as could be. While we're eatin' dinner I'll tell you about it.”
But Miss Dawes did not care for dinner. Like Mr. Tidditt and the captain, she had had about all the Debby Beasley she wanted.
“Yes, yes, you will stop, too,” affirmed the widow. “I want to tell you more about Blazeton. I can see that advertisement this minute, right afore my eyes—'Information wanted of my husband, Edward Higgins. Five foot eight inches tall, sandy complected, brown hair, and yellowish mustache; not lame, but has a peculiar slight limp with his left foot—'”
“What?” asked the schoolmistress, stopping short.
“Hey? 'Has a peculiar limp with his left foot.' I remember how Desire used to talk about that limp. She said 'twas almost as if he stuttered with his leg. He hurt it when he was up in Montana, and—”
“Oh!” cried Miss Dawes. The color had left her face.
“Yes. You see he used to be a miner or somethin' up there. He'd never say much about his younger days, but one time he did tell that. I'd just got as far as that limp when the sulky upset. Talk about bein' surprised! I never was so surprised in my life as when that horse critter rared up and—”
Phoebe interrupted. Her color had come back, and her eyes were shining.
“Mrs. Beasley,” she cried, “I think I shall change my mind. I believe I will stay to dinner after all. I'm EVER so much interested in Arizona.”
Bailey and the teacher began their long drive home about four o'clock. The buggy axle had been fixed, and the wind was less violent. Mr. Bangs was glum and moody. He seemed to be thinking.
“Say, teacher,” he said at length, “I'd like to ask a favor of you. If it ain't necessary, I wish you wouldn't say nothin' about that upsettin' business to the folks to home. It does sound so dum foolish! I'll never hear the last of it.”
Miss Dawes, who had been in high spirits, now took a moment for reflection.
“All right!” she said, nodding vigorously. “We won't mention it, then. We won't tell a soul. You can say that I called at the Atwoods', if you want to; that will be true, because I did. And we'll have Mrs. Beasley for our secret—yours and mine—until we decide to tell. It's a bargain, Mr. Bangs. We must shake hands on it.”
They shook hands, and Bailey, looking in her face, thought he never saw her look so well or as young. She was pretty, he decided. Then he thought of his own choice of a wife, and—well, if he had any regrets, he hasn't mentioned them, not even to his fellow-member of the Board of Strategy.
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