A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill Part 10

"It's one of them plaster casts, I'll be bound," Myrtella continued. "I might 'a' knowed you'd git the mate to the other one, and not a square inch of s.p.a.ce in the house to set it on! What did you give fer it?"

Mrs. Flathers withdrew her ap.r.o.n, and tenderly dusted the highly colored features of an Indian squaw, whose head-feathers reposed upon her arm.

Then she placed it on a corner of the stove where its imposing dignity produced a momentary impression upon even the flinty Myrtella.

"How much?" she demanded heartlessly.

"A quarter down, and ten cents a week." Maria sighed. "'Twouldn't be no trouble at all if it wasn't for Phineas spending so much car-fare going to church and that bow-legged, onery rent-man, that comes sneakin' round here every week, acting like poor people just kep' money settin' 'round in jars waitin' fer the likes of him!"

Maria's hatred of the rent man was the one emotion that seemed to be left in her withered bosom. To baffle him, to evade him, to antic.i.p.ate his coming and be away from home, const.i.tuted the chief object of her existence.

A bang of the gate announced the arrival of the head of the household, which was promptly followed by the strains of a hymn cheerfully whistled in rag-time.

Phineas Flathers, after months of abstinence, had reached that period where he felt that not only his const.i.tution, but his profession would profit by a temporary fall from grace. Solicitude for his moral welfare was beginning to flag at the Church; his regular attendance, his apparent absorption in the sermon, and his emotional execution of the hymns, all went to lift him from the cla.s.s of interesting converts, to the deadly commonplace of regular members. Only that afternoon he had decided to revive interest in his case at any cost. He had just treated others, as he would have others treat him at the Cant-Pa.s.s-It, when he was summoned home to see his sister.

He now presented himself in his own doorway, a hand on either side of the jamb, and bowed profoundly:

"Miss Flathers! Pleased to meet you! I see you still continue to favor yourself in looks. Lost your place, I suppose?"

"That's right, be insultin'!" Myrtella flared up haughtily; "throw it in my face that I'm hard to please, and ain't willin' to put up with any old place I come to."

"Now I wouldn't put it that I was throwing it in yer face exactly,"

began Phineas, anxious to propitiate.

"Which means I'm a story-teller?" Myrtella squared herself for action.

"Oh, come on along," coaxed Phineas; "no harm's meant. Go on an' tell us what you left fer."

"Who said I'd left? Puttin' words in my mouth I never thought of utterin'! I ain't left, and what's more I ain't going to. I got a good place."

Phineas whistled an aggravatingly attenuated note of surprise: "The lady you are working for must be a deef-mute."

"She is. The same as you'll be some day. She's been dead three years."

The triumph with which she made this announcement put a momentary quietus on Phineas, and enabled her to proceed:

"It's a widower gentleman with three children that I'm cookin' for, and I ain't set eyes on one of 'em except at meal times since I hired to 'em. Queerington's their names, out on College Street, right around the corner from the Immanuel Church. He's a teacher or something, one of them bookwormy men, whose head never pays no attention to what the rest of him is doing. 'Take charge,' said he, 'of everything, do the ordering, and cooking, and don't bother me with nothing.'"

"But does he bother you?" put in Phineas astutely; "that's the real point."

"Wasn't I just tellin' you that he didn't? He's been off on a trip to Virginia; gets home to-night. I've got the whole house in the pa'm of my hand, from cellar to attic. Miss Connie, she's the oldest, as flighty as a pidgeon and head so full of boys she don't pay no attention to another livin' thing. Then there's Miss Hattie, the second one, jes' at that spiteful thirteen age, but so busy peckin' on her sister, she ain't no time left for me--"

"Thought you said there was three children," put in Maria mildly.

"I did. You didn't think I lied, did you? Always ready to s.n.a.t.c.h up a person's words before they git 'em out of their mouth! The third one is a boy, Bertie they call him, sick and spin'ly, but a right nice little fellow. Where'd Chick go?"

"He's settin' out there on the door-step. Did you hear 'bout our shootin'?"

"Maria was tryin' to tell me, but she didn't seem to have nothin' clear to tell. Who do you think done it?"

Phineas Flathers, balancing himself on the hind legs of his chair, with his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, was nothing loath to launch forth into a full recital of the affair, embellishing it with many a flourish as he went along. In the bosom of his family he was freed from those bonds of restraint that embarra.s.sed his utterance when in more formal society. The amount of profanity that he could dispose of in the course of an ordinary conversation was little short of astounding. This being more than an ordinary conversation and his mood being mellow, called for an extra vocabulary. He graphically set forth the facts in the case, then gave his imagination full sway in accounting for them.

He interpreted the whole affair as a clash between capital and labor, a conflict between the pampered aristocrat and the common man. The shooting was the result of a deep-laid plan: Dillingham and Morley had met by appointment, moved by what motive he did not make clear, to kill Sheeley, an honest laboring man. Hadn't the one on horseback, that they say was Mr. Morley, stopped him at the crossing, on the very afternoon of the shooting, and engaged him in conversation? Phineas a.s.sured his listeners that he trembled even now when he thought of the danger he had been in!

"I'd seed him afore that day a ridin' with a pretty young lady, that most got her neck broke under a engine, but this time he was by hisself, a settin' there on his horse, as proud as a king and stirrin' me up about the rich folks not allowing us poor working cla.s.ses to have no streets out here. I suspicioned somethin' right then; says I to myself, 'he's got a handsome face but his mind is a well of corruption.' And when I heard he'd shot Sheeley ...Now what in thunder is the matter with you, Chick?"

During this recital Chick had been sitting in the doorway, his knees drawn up to his chin, listening intently, but at this point he cried out in a sputter of protesting sounds.

"It's the shootin', it's done got on his mind," explained Maria, winding her long thin hair into a yet tighter knot at the back of her head. "He takes on like that every time he hears us talkin' 'bout it, and n.o.body can't make out a word he's sayin'. Fer two or three days I couldn't scarcely git him to eat nothin'."

"If your cooking ain't any better than it used to be I ain't surprised,"

Myrtella said. "How bad was Sheeley shot, Phineas?"

"Oh, he'll be laid up fer a month yit. They say the retinue of his eye was cracked right across the middle. But that ain't worryin' Sheeley.

He's livin' in style at the hospital, all his bills paid, and the swells lookin' after him. I hear he ain't even goin' to prosecute. They've fixed him all right; besides he don't want to git that fly young gang down on his place. He's countin' on startin' up them sparrin' matches ag'in, as soon as the police quit noticin' him. Say, Sis, you don't happen to have a quarter 'bout you, do you?"

The peculiar persuasiveness of Phineas' voice when he threw out these financial suggestions, was very insidious. In some subtle way he made the favor all on the side of the recipient; he gave the donor, as it were, a chance to acquire merit.

But Myrtella wore the armor of experience. "No, I ain't!" she said, taking a firmer grasp on her bag. "I'm payin' the grocery man now, and buyin' clothes for Chick. What good does it do? I no more than git his hide covered than you go and sell the clothes offen his back. When are you goin' to git a job?"

"Well, you might say I had one now. Leastwise I'm a followin' Scriptures and bearin' one another's burdens. Jires, the flagman, over to the Junction has been laid up with rheumatism and he don't want the boss to know it. He sets in his box and hires me to go out and flag the trains like he tells me to."

"How many trains a day?"

"Two ups, three downs and a couple of freights."

"Should think you'd die of the exertion. How much do you get?"

"Oh, it ain't so much. But I ain't a ambitious man. What's the use of me a-slavin' and a-hordin' when I ain't got a child to leave it to? If Claude had a lived, or McKinley, I might 'a' had somethin' to work for."

"You mean you'd 'a' had somethin' to work for you. The Lord certainly done a good job when he changed His mind about letting them babies live."

"They're having onions next door fer supper," said Maria feebly, by way of diverting an old discussion. "I ain't been able to git 'em off my mind all afternoon."

Chick, who had been sent to the grocery to see what time it was, came back holding up five fingers.

"Gee, I got to be hiking!" said Phineas. "The pa.s.senger train from Virginia's due at five sixteen. It won't git here before a quarter of six, but I'm always there on the minute. That's what Jires pays me fer, fer bein' regular and reliable. Jes' let me get a regular habit and a clock ain't in it with me. Why, if I was to come in late at church, they'd stop the service!"

"Well, don't you be gittin' a regular habit of comin' 'round to the Queeringtons!" was Myrtella's parting shot as he rose unsteadily. "When I got anything to say to you I'll come here."

"That's right!" a.s.sented Phineas cordially; "you jes' make yourself at home. My home is your home. Maria'll tell you that I says to her only last night, I says, 'Maria, you needn't feel so cut up 'bout askin'

Myrtella fer the rent this month, because this is her home, too. There ain't a board in it but I'd share with her, she knows that.' You tell her all I said, Maria, don't you keep back nothin'. Farewell!" and with an affectionate glance and a wave of the hand Phineas departed.

Now if he had followed the straight and narrow path, indicated by the rocks and tin cans, that led to the Junction, instead of the broad highway indicated by the plank walk that led to the Cant-Pa.s.s-It, the tragedy that hovered over Billy-goat Hill might have been averted.

But he had left the saloon in the midst of a heated controversy with two Italians, concerning the supremacy of America over all other nations.

The fact that his country had never been proud of him in no way deterred him from being very proud of his country. Until the dispute was properly ended he felt that the honor of the nation was at stake.

His patriotic fervor ran so high that by the time he reached the crossing, the pa.s.senger train was already in sight. Jires, helpless and terrified at his post, was distractedly shouting directions from his little sentinel box.

"Flathers! There's a washout down the road! We've got to hold up the pa.s.senger train. Get out the red flag! Quick man! Be ready to signal the engineer. Three times cross ways! The red flag, you fool! the RED FLAG!