Galusha the Magnificent Part 51

about--I cal'late none of 'em did fur's that goes, and no wonder--but the name of Lucifer sort of stuck in her head 'cause she thought 'twas kind of pretty. And when she got back home they told her the baby had fetched loose from the bed where it had been asleep and fell onto the floor and pretty nigh busted itself in two. And it never hardly cried at all--was a reg'lar angel they said--and that made her think about the fallen-down angel she'd just heard tell of to camp meetin' and its name was Lucifer. And they hadn't named the baby yet, so--"

"I see. Ha, ha! Primmie, you are--well, there aren't many like you, I'm sure. Now I must go. Well, what is it?"

"Oh, nothin', only I ain't told you why I think Mr. Bangs may be comin'

down with dropsy. You see, Aunt Lucy--this Lucifer one I've been tellin'

you about--she had it. I only remember her 'long towards her last. She wan't heavin' any teakittles at folks then; my savin' soul, no! She used to set in a big rockin'-chair over by the stove and was all puffed-up like--like a featherbed, you might say; and she'd kind of doze along and doze along and you could holler your head off and she wouldn't pay no attention, and then she'd kind of wake up, as you might say, and sing out, 'Hey? What say?' just like Mr. Bangs, for all the world. And 'twas dropsy she had, so now you see, don't you, Miss Martha?"

"Yes, yes, Primmie, I see. Tut, tut, tut! You certainly have a great imagination, of its kind. I shouldn't worry about Mr. Bangs' disease, if I were you. The poor man isn't really strong yet and he has been runnin'

back and forth to Boston lately altogether too much for his own good. He is tired and his nerves are tired, too; so we must make it as easy as we can for him, Primmie, you and I."

"Yes'm. He's a good man, ain't he?"

"Indeed he is!"

"Yes'm. Even if he is so kind of--of funny."

Often, in earlier conversations with her housemaid, Miss Phipps had agreed that her lodger was, to say the least, "funny"; but now she seemed to resent the word.

"Humph!" she observed, crisply, "if he is, I presume likely he has the right to be. And I know this, if there were more 'funny' people like him in this world it would be a big improvement. Primmie, go and do your sweepin'."

CHAPTER XIV

With the end of the following week spring came in earnest to Gould's Bluffs, not yet as a steady boarder--spring in New England is a young lady far too fickle for that--but to make the first of her series of ever-lengthening visits. Galusha found her, indeed, a charming young person. His walks now were no longer between snowdrifts or over frozen fields and hills. Those hills and fields were still bare and brown, of course, but here and there, in sheltered hollows, tiny bits of new green began to show. In April, by disturbing the layers of dead leaves and sodden vegetation through which these hints of greenness peeped, one was likely to come upon fragrant treasures, the pink and white blossoms of the trailing arbutus.

There was a superfluity of mud, of course, and as Miss Phipps often informed him, Galusha's boots and lower trouser legs were "sights to see" when he came back from those walks. He expressed contrition and always proclaimed that he should be much more careful in future--much more, yes. But he was not, nor did he care greatly. He was feeling quite well again, better than he had felt for years, and spring was in his middle-aged blood and was rejuvenating him, just as it was rejuvenating the world and its creatures about him, including Lucy Larcom, Martha's ancient and rheumatic Thomas cat. Lucy--an animal as misnamed as Primmie's "Aunt Lucifer"--instead of slumbering peacefully and respectably in his cushioned box in the kitchen, which had been his custom of winter nights, now refused to come in at bedtime, ignored his mistress' calls altogether, and came rolling home in the morning with slit ears and scarred hide and an air of unrepentant and dissipated abandon.

Galusha, inspecting the prodigal's return one morning, observed: "Luce, when I first met you, you reminded me strongly of my Aunt Clarissa. The air of--ah--dignity and respectable disapproval with which you looked me over was much like hers. But now--now, if you wore a hat on one side and an--ah--exuberant waistcoat, you would remind me more of Mr. Pulcifer."

With April came the fogs, and the great foghorn bellowed and howled night after night. Galusha soon learned to sleep through the racket. It was astonishing, his capacity for sleep and his capability in sleeping up to capacity. His appet.i.te, too, was equally capable. He was, in fact, feeling so very well that his conscience began troubling him concerning his duty to the Inst.i.tute. He wrote to the directors of that establishment suggesting that, as his health was so greatly improved, perhaps he had better return to his desk. The reply was prompt. The directors were, so the letter said, much pleased to hear of his improved health, but they wished him to insure the permanence of that improvement by remaining away for another six months at least. "We have," the writer added, "a plan, not yet definite and complete, although approaching that condition, which will call for your knowledge and experienced guidance.

Our plan will probably materialize in the fall or winter. I can say no more concerning it now, except to add that we feel sure that it will be acceptable to you and that you should take every precaution to gain strength and health as a preparatory measure."

Galusha could not guess what the plan might be, but he was a bit surprised to find himself so willing to agree to the directors' mandate that he remain in East Wellmouth for the present. His beloved desk in his beloved study there in Washington had been torn from him, or rather he had been torn from it, and for a time it had really seemed as if the pangs of severance might prove fatal. By all that was fit and proper he should fiercely resent the order to remain away for another six months.

But he did not resent it fiercely; did not resent it at all; in fact, to be quite honest, he welcomed it. He was inwardly delighted to be ordered to remain in East Wellmouth. Such a state of mind was surprising, quite nonunderstandable.

And, day by day and week by week, the fear that his guilty secret concerning the Wellmouth Development stock might be discovered became less and less acute. Captain Jethro never mentioned it; Martha Phipps, when she found that he preferred not to discuss it, kept quiet, also.

Perhaps, after all, no one would ever know anything about it. And the change in Martha's spirits was glorious to see.

He and Lulie Hallett had many quiet talks together. Ever since the evening of the seance when, partially by craft and partially by luck, he had prevented her father's discovering young Howard's presence in the house, she had unreservedly given him her friendship. And this gift Galusha appreciated. He had liked her when they first met and the liking had increased. She was a sensible, quiet, unaffected country girl. She was also an extremely pretty girl, and when a very pretty girl--and sensible and unaffected and the rest--makes you her confidant and asks your advice concerning her love affair and her heart's most precious secrets, even a middle-aged "mummy duster," whose interest in the female s.e.x has, until very recently, centered upon specimens of that s.e.x who have been embalmed several thousand years--even such a one cannot help being gratified by the subtle flattery.

So when Lulie asked his advice Galusha gave it, such as he happened to have in stock, whole-heartedly and without reserve. He and she had many chats and the subjects of these chats were almost invariably two--her father and Nelson Howard. How could she reconcile the one with and to the other? Mr. Bangs' council was, of course, to wait and hope, but a council of procrastination is, to say the most, but partially satisfying.

One afternoon, in the middle of May, he met her on the way back from the village and, as they walked on together, he asked her if there were any new developments in the situation. She looked troubled.

"I don't exactly know what you mean by developments," she said. "If you mean that father is any more reconciled to Nelson, he isn't, that's all.

On any other subject he is as nice as he can be. If I wanted anything in the world, and he had money enough to buy it, I do believe I could have it just for the asking. That is a good deal to say," she added, with a half smile, "considering how fond father is of money, but honestly, Mr.

Bangs, I think it's true."

Galusha declared that he had no doubt of its truth, indeed, no.

"But, you see," continued Lulie, "the one thing I do want--which is for father to like Nelson--can't be bought with money. I try to talk with him, and argue with him; sometimes when he is especially good-natured and has been especially nice to me, I try to coax him, but it always ends in one way; he gets cross and won't listen. 'Don't talk to me about that Howard swab, I won't hear it.' That's what he always says. He always calls Nelson a 'swab.' Oh, dear! I'm so tired of it all."

"Yes--ah--yes, I'm sure you must be. Ah--um--swab? Swab? It doesn't sound agreeable. What is a--ah--swab, may I ask?"

"Oh, I believe it's a kind of mop that the sailors use aboard ship to clean decks with. I believe that is what it is."

"Indeed? Yes, yes, of course. Now that is quite interesting, isn't it?

A mop--yes. But really, I don't see why Mr. Howard should be called a--ah--mop. There is nothing about him which suggests a mop to me. Now in my case--why, this very morning Miss Mar--Miss Phipps suggested that my hair needed cutting very badly. I hadn't noticed it, myself, but when she called my attention I looked in the mirror and--ah--really, I was quite a sight. Ah--s.h.a.ggy, you know, like a--like a yak."

"A what?"

"A yak. The--ah--Tibetan animal. I spent a season in Tibet a number of years ago and they use them there for beasts of burden. They have a great deal of hair, you know, and so did I--ah--this morning. Dear me, yes; I was quite yaklike."

Lulie turned an amused glance at him. "So Martha tells you when--"

she began, and then stopped, having spoken without thinking. But her companion was not offended.

"Oh, yes, yes," he said cheerfully. "She tells me many things for my own good. She quite manages me. It is extremely good of her, for goodness knows I need it. Dear me, yes!" He thoughtfully rubbed his shorn neck and added, "I told that barber that my hair needed cutting badly.

I--ah--fear that is the way he cut it.... I read that joke in the paper, Miss Lulie; it isn't original, really."

He smiled and she burst out laughing. But she did not laugh long. When she next spoke she was serious enough.

"Mr. Bangs," she said, "you don't think it dishonorable, or mean to father, for me to keep on seeing Nelson, do you? Father keeps ordering me not to, but I never say I won't. If he asked me I should tell him that I did."

Galusha's answer was promptly given.

"No, I don't think it dishonorable," he said. "Of course, you must see him. It is too bad that you are obliged to see him in--ah--ah--dear me, what is the word I want? Clan--clan--sounds Scottish, doesn't it?--oh, yes, clandestine! It is too bad you are obliged to see him clandestinely, but I suppose your father's att.i.tude makes anything else impossible. I am very sorry that my claiming to be the evil influence has had so little effect. That was a mistake, I fear."

"Don't say that, Mr. Bangs. You saved us all from a dreadful scene, and father himself from--I hate to think what. Don't ever say that it was a mistake, please. But I do so hate all this hiding and pretending. Some day it will have to end, but how I don't know. Nelson comes first, of course; but how can I leave father? I shall see him--Nelson, I mean--to-night, Mr. Bangs. He has written me saying he is coming over, and I am going to meet him. He says he has good news. I can't think what it can be. I can't think of any good news that could come for him and me, except that father has stopped believing in Marietta Hoag's spirits and has gotten over his ridiculous prejudice; and that WON'T come--ever."

"Oh, yes, it will! I'm sure it will. Dear me, you mustn't lose heart, you know."

"Mustn't I? No, I suppose I mustn't. Thank you, Mr. Bangs. Nelson and I are ever and ever so much obliged to you. You are a great comfort to me.

I told Martha that very thing yesterday," she added.

Galusha could not help looking pleased. "Did you, indeed?" he observed.

"Well, well--ah--dear me, that was a rather rash statement, wasn't it?"

"Not a bit. And do you want to know what she said? She said you were a great comfort to a good many people, Mr. Bangs. So there; you see!"

That evening the moon rolled, like a silver bowl, over the liquid rim of the horizon, and, upsetting, spilled shimmering, shining, dancing fire in a broad path from sky edge to the beach at the foot of Gould's Bluffs. At the top of that bluff, in the rear of a clump of bayberry bushes which shielded them from the gaze of possible watchers at the lighthouse, Nelson Howard and Lulie, walking slowly back and forth, saw it rise.

Nelson told her the good news he had mentioned in his letter. It was that he had been offered a position as operator at the great wireless station in Trumet. It was what he had been striving for and hoping for and his war record in the radio service had made it possible for him to obtain it. The pay was good to begin with and the prospect of advancement bright.

"And, of course, the best of it is," he said, "that I shall be no further away from you than I am now. Trumet isn't a bit farther than South Wellmouth. There! Don't you think that my good news IS good news?"

Of course she did and said so.