Scattergood Baines Part 62

"Um!... Busy time, eh? Better come back later."

"No. No, indeed. Take this chair right here, Mr. Baines. What can I do for you?"

"Depends. Uh-huh! Depends.... Calc'late to make a perty good livin', Bob?"

"No complaints."

"Studied it yourself, didn't you--out of books? No college?"

"Yes."

"Hard work, wasn't it? Mighty hard work?"

"It might have been easier," said Bob, wondering what Scattergood was getting at.

"Like to be prosecutin' attorney for this county, Bob?"

Prosecuting attorney! With a salary of twenty-five hundred dollars a year--and the prestige! Bob strove valiantly to maintain a look of dignified interest, but with ill success.

"I--I might consider it. Yes, I would consider it."

"Um!... Figgered you would," said Scattergood, dryly. "Hain't got no help in the office," he observed. "Need some, don't you? Somebody to write letters and sort of look after things, eh?"

"Why--er--I've never thought about it."

"If you was to think about it, you'd calc'late on payin' about six dollars a week, wouldn't you?" Bob swallowed hard. Six dollars a week was a great deal of money to this young man, just embarking on the practice of his profession. "Guess that would be about right," he said.

"Got anybody in mind, Bob? Thinkin' of anybody specific for the place?"

Bob shook his head.

"Um!... Nahum Pound's daughter's boardin' with Grandma Penny, that's now Mis' s.p.a.ckles. All-fired perty girl, Bob. Don't call to mind no pertier.

Sairy's her name.... G'-by, Bob. G'-by."

He walked to the door, but paused. "About that six dollars, Bob--I was figgerin' on payin' that out of my own pocket."

Bob Allen was not accustomed to the oversight of employees--least of all to an employee who was very satisfying to look at, who was winsomely young, whose mere presence distracted his thoughts from that rigorous concentration upon the logical principles of the law.... He did not know what to do with Sarah once he had hired her, and it required so much of his time and brain power to think up something for her to do that it is fortunate his practice was neither large nor arduous. It is no mean tribute to the young man that he kept Sarah so busy with apparently necessary matters that she had no occasion to doubt the authenticity of her employment.

Bob faced a second difficulty, due to his inexperience, and that was that he was at a loss how to comport himself toward Sarah, as to how friendly he should be, and as to how much he should maintain a certain grave dignity and reserve in his dealings with her. This was a matter which need not have troubled him, for Nature has a way of taking into her own keeping the bearing of young men toward young women when the two are thrown much into each other's company. Propinquity is a tremendous force in the life of humanity. It has caused as many love affairs as the kicking of other men's dogs has caused street fights--which numbers into infinity. Consequently, while Bob worried much and selected a number of widely differing att.i.tudes--a thing which caused Sarah some uneasiness and no little speculation as to what sort of disposition her employer possessed--the solution lay not with him at all. It took care of itself.

Scattergood noted the significance of symptoms. He made a mental memorandum of the fact that Bob Allen was seldom to be seen among the post-office loafers; that Bob preferred his office to any other spot; that Bob had ordered a new suit from a city tailor; that Bob wore a constant air of anxiety and excitement, and--most expressive symptom of all for a Coldriver young man--he became interested in residence property, in lots, and in the cost of erecting dwellings.... Scattergood looked in vain for reciprocal symptoms to be shown by Sarah. But Sarah was a woman. What symptoms she exhibited were meaningless even to Scattergood.

"Bob," said Scattergood, one auspicious day, "got any pref'rence for prosecutin' attorneys--married or single?"

"It depends," said Bob, cautiously.

"Um!... How's Sairy behavin', Bob?"

"She's--she's--" Bob became incoherent, and then speechless.

"Calc'late I foller you, Bob.... Git your point of view exact.... About prosecutin' attorneys, Bob, I prefer 'em married."

"Mr. Baines," said Bob, "if I could get Sarah Pound to marry me, I wouldn't give a tinker's dam who was prosecutor."

"Mishandlin' of fact sim'lar to that," said Scattergood, dryly, "has been done nigh on to a billion times.... Any idee how Sairy stands on sich a proposition?"

"She's about equally fond of me and the letter press," said Bob, dolefully.

"Good sign," said Scattergood. Then after a short pause: "Say, Bob, still rent out drivin' bosses at the livery?... G'-by, Bob."

Bob was astonished to find how easy it is to ask a girl to go driving the second time--after you have spent an anxious, dubious, fearsome day s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up your courage to ask her the first time. He was delighted, too, because he even fancied Sarah now discriminated between him and the letter press--in his favor. Bob came fresh and unsophisticated to the business in hand, which was courtship. Sarah had never before been courted, but she recognized a courtship when she saw it at such close range, and found it delightfully exciting. Bob did his clumsy, earnest, honest best, and Sarah, somewhat to her surprise, became more satisfied with the universe and with her share in its destinies.... In short, matters were progressing as nature intended they should progress, and Scattergood felt almost that they might be trusted to go forward to a satisfactory denouement without his interference.

Then old Solon Beatty died!

This solved one of Bob Allen's problems; it furnished plenty of authentic work for Sarah Pound--for Bob was retained as attorney for old Solon's estate, which he found to be in an amazing state of confusion.

Old Solon left behind him, reluctantly, property of divers kinds, and in numerous localities, valued at upward of a hundred thousand dollars, split and invested into as many enterprises and mortgages and savings accounts as there were dollars! This made work. There were papers to sort and list, to file and to schedule--clerical work in abundance. It interfered with the more important business of courtship, but even in this respect it was not without a certain value.

"Who's going to get all this money?" Sarah asked, one morning after she had been listing mortgages until her head ached with the sight of figures and descriptions. "Does Mary Beatty get it all?"

"Not unless we find a will somewhere. Everybody thought Solon's niece--which is Mary Beatty--would get the whole estate. Solon intended it should go that way, and the Lord knows she's worked for him and nursed him and coddled him enough to deserve it. Gave her whole life up to the old codger ... But we can't find a will, and so she won't get but half. The rest goes to Solon's nephew, Farley Curtis ... under the statute of descent and distribution, you know," he finished, learnedly.

"Farley Curtis.... I never heard of him."

"He's never been here--at least not for years. But he'll be along now.

We're due to see him soon."

"Correct," said a voice from the door, which had opened silently. In it stood a young man of dress and demeanor not indigenous to Coldriver.

"You're due to see Farley Curtis--so you behold him. Look me over carefully. I was due--therefore I arrive." The young man laughed pleasantly, as if he intended his words to be regarded as whimsical, yet, somehow, Bob felt the whimsicality to be surface deep; that Curtis was a young man with much confidence in himself, who felt that if he were due he would inevitably arrive.

"Mr. Allen, I suppose," said Curtis, extending his hand. "I am told you are handling the legal affairs of my late uncle's estate."

Sarah Pound eyed the newcomer, and as the young men shook hands compared them, to Bob Allen's disadvantage. To inexperience any comparison must be to Bob's disadvantage, for Curtis was handsome, dressed with taste, and gifted with a worldly certainty of manner and an undeniable charm.

Sarah had never encountered all these attributes in a single individual.

She drew on her reading of fiction and knew at once that she was in the presence of that wonderful creature she had seen described so frequently--a gentleman. As for Bob Allen, he was big, rugged, careless of dress, kindly, without pretense of polish.... And besides, to Curtis's advantage there attached to him a certain literary glamour--of heirship--and a mystery due to his sudden appearance out of the great unknown that lay beyond the confines of Coldriver.

"I am in the dark," said Curtis. "All I know is that Uncle Solon is dead. It is proper I should come to you for information, is it not? For instance, there is no harm in asking if there is a will?"

"None has been found," said Bob, not graciously. He had taken a dislike to this stranger instinctively, a dislike which increased at an amazing pace as he noted Curtis's eyes cast admiring glances upon Sarah Pound.

"In which case," said the young man, "I suppose I may regard myself as an interested party."

"Yourself and Miss Beatty are the heirs--so far as has been determined."

"You have searched all my uncle's papers?"

"We have gone through them, but not so thoroughly as to reach a final conclusion. He was a peculiar old man."

"And no will has been found? No--other papers--" Curtis smiled deprecatingly. "It is only natural I should be interested," he said, and smiled at Sarah.