Blow The Man Down Part 29

"I beg your pardon, sir," called the young man. "But do you know anything about the inwardness of this business on Hue and Cry Island?"

"I can tell you _all_ about it," stated the person who had been hailed.

He sauntered up and sat down on the edge of the porch. He showed the air of a man who was killing time. "I'm in charge of it."

"Not of putting those people off the island?"

"Sure! That's what I'm here for. I'm state agent on pauper affairs, acting for the Governor and Council."

"You say the state is back of this?" demanded Mayo, incredulously.

"Certainly! It's a matter that the state was obliged to take up. State has bought that island from the real heirs, has ordered off those squatters, and we shall burn down their shacks and clear the land up.

Of course, we allow heads of families some cash for their houses, if you can call 'em houses. That's under the law regulating squatter improvements. But improvements is a polite word for the buildings on that island. It is going to cost us good money to clear up for that New York party who has made an offer to the state--he's going to use the island for a summer estate."

He flicked the ashes from his cigar and broke in on Mayo's indignant retort.

"It had to be done, sir. They have intermarried till a good many of the children are fools. The men are breaking into summer cottages, after the owners leave in the fall. They steal everything on the main that isn't nailed down. They have set false beacons in the winter, and have wrecked coasters. Every little while some city newspaper has written them up as wild men, and it has given the state a bad name. We're going to break up the nest."

"But where will they go?"

"Fools to the state school for the feeble-minded, cripples to the poorhouse. The able-bodied will have to get out and go to work at something honest."

"But, look here, my dear sir! Those poor devils are starting out with too much of a handicap. After three generations on that island they don't know how to get a living on the main."

"That's their own lookout, not the state's! State doesn't guarantee to give shiftless folks a living."

"How about using a little common sense in the case of such people?"

"You are not making this affair your business, are you?" asked the commissioner, with acerbity.

"No."

"Better not; and you'd better not say too much to _me!_" He rose and dusted off his trousers. "I have investigated for the Governor and Council and they are acting on my recommendations. You might just as well advise nursing and coddling a nest of brown-tail moths--and we are spending good money to kill off moths. We don't propose to encourage the breeding of thieves. We are not keeping show places of this sort along the coast for city folks to talk about and run down the state after they go back home. It hurts state business!" He marched away.

Captain Mayo strode up and down the porch and muttered some emphatic opinions in regard to the intellects and doings of rulers.

"You see, I know the sort of people who live on that island, Miss Candage. I have seen other cases alongsh.o.r.e. They are blamed for what they don't know--and what they are led into. Amateur missionaries will load them down in a spasm of summer generosity with a lot of truck and make them think that the world owes them a living. The poor devils haven't wit enough to look ahead. When it comes winter they are starving--and when children are hungry and cold a man will tackle a proposition that is more dangerous than a summer cottage locked up for the winter. Next comes along some chap like that state agent, who prides himself on being straight business and no favors! He puts the screws to 'em! There's n.o.body to help those folks in the real and the right way. I pity them!"

"I live in the country and I know how unfeeling the boards of selectmen are in many of the pauper cases. When it's a matter of saving money for the voters and making a good town record, they don't care much how poor folks get along."

Mayo continued to patrol the porch. "I'm in a rather rebellious state of mind just now, I reckon," he admitted. "Seems to me that a lot of folks, including myself, are getting kicked. I'm smarting! I have a fellow-feeling for the oppressed." He laughed, but there was no merriment in his tones. "It's the little children who will suffer most in this, Miss Candage," he went on. "They are not to blame--they don't understand."

"And of course nothing can be done."

"Nothing sensible, I'm afraid." He walked to and fro for many minutes.

"You see, it's none of my business," he commented, when he came and sat down beside her.

"I suppose there's not one man in the world to step forward and say a good word for them," said the girl, softly, uttering her thoughts.

"Words wouldn't amount to anything--with the machinery of the state grinding away so merrily as it is. But this matter is stirring my curiosity a little, Miss Candage. That's because I am one of the oppressed myself, I reckon." Again his mirthless chuckle. "I intended to take the stage out of here in the morning, but I have an idea that I'll stay over and see what happens when that gentleman who represents our grand old state proceeds to scatter those folks to the four winds."

"I was hoping you would stay over, Captain Mayo." She declared that with frank delight.

"But you don't expect me to do anything, of course!"

"It's not that. You see, I'd like to go down to the island and--and father is so odd he might not be willing to escort me," she explained, trying to be matter-of-fact, her air showing that she regretted her outburst.

"I volunteer, here and now."

She rose and put out her hand to him. "I have not thanked you for saving my life--saving us all, Captain Mayo. It is too holy a matter to be profaned by any words. But here is my hand--like a friend--like a sister--no"--she held herself straight and looked him full in the face through the gloom and tightened her hold on his fingers--"like a man!"

He returned her earnest finger-clasp and released her hand when her pressure slackened. That sudden spirit, the suggestion that she desired to a.s.sume the att.i.tude of man to man with him, seemed to vanish from her with the release of her fingers.

She quavered her "Good night!" There was even a hint of a sob. Then she ran into the house.

Mayo stared after her, wrinkling his forehead for a moment, as if he had discovered some new vagary in femininity to puzzle him. Then he resumed his patrol with the slow stride of the master mariner. Hue and Cry raised dim bulk in the harbor jaws, showing no glimmer of light. It was barren, treeless, a lump of land which towns had thrust from them and which county boundaries had not taken in. He admitted that the state had good reasons for desiring to change conditions on Hue and Cry, but this callous, brutal uprooting of helpless folks who had been attached to that soil through three generations was so senselessly radical that his resentment was stirred. It was swinging from the extreme of ill-considered indulgence to that of utter cruelty, and the poor devils could not in the least understand!

"There seem to be other things than a spiked martingale which can pick a man up and keep him away from his own business," he mused. "What fool notion possesses me to go out there to-morrow I cannot understand.

However, I can go and look on without b.u.t.ting into stuff that's no affair of mine."

Two men were shuffling past in the road. In the utter silence of that summer night their conversation carried far.

"Yes, sir, as I was saying, there he lays dead! When I was with him on the _Luther Briggs_ he fell from the main crosstrees, broke both legs and one arm, and made a dent in the deck, and he got well. And a week ago, come to-morrow, he got a sliver under his thumb, and there he lays dead."

"It's the way it often is in life. Whilst a man is looking up into the sky so as to see the big things and dodge 'em, he goes to work and stubs his toe over a knitting-needle."

"That's right," Captain Mayo informed himself; "but I can't seem to help myself, somehow!"

XII - NO PLACE POR THE SOLES OP THEIR FEET

Don't you hear the old man roaring, Johnny, One more day? Don't you hear that pilot bawling, One more day? Only one more day, my Johnny, One more day! O come rock and roll me over, One more day.

--Windla.s.s Song.

When the subject of the proposed expedition to Hue and Cry was broached at the breakfast-table, Captain Epps Candage displayed prompt interest.

"It's going to be a good thing for the section round about here--roust 'em off! Heard 'em talking it over down to Rowley's store last evening.

I'll go along with you and see it done."

Mayo and Polly Candage exchanged looks and refrained from comment.

It was evident that Captain Candage reflected the utilitarian view of Maquoit.

Mayo had put off that hateful uniform of Marston's yacht, and the girl gave him approving survey when he appeared that morning in his sh.o.r.e suit of quiet gray. With the widow's ready aid Polly Candage had made her own attire presentable once more. When they walked down to the sh.o.r.e she smiled archly at Mayo from under the brim of a very fetching straw poke.

"I ran down to the general store early and bought a boy's hat," she explained. "I trimmed it myself. You know, I'm a milliner's apprentice.

Does it do my training credit?"