Shavings Part 68

"Jed!" roared the captain. "Jed Winslow! Jed!"

Jed lifted his head from his hands. He most decidedly did not wish to see Captain Sam or any one else.

"Jed!" roared the captain again.

Jed accepted the inevitable. "Here I am," he groaned, miserably.

The captain did not wait for an invitation to enter. Having ascertained that the owner of the building was within, he pulled the door open and stamped into the kitchen.

"Where are you?" he demanded.

"Here," replied Jed, without moving.

"Here? Where's here? . . . Oh, you're in there, are you? Hidin'

there in the dark, eh? Afraid to show me your face, I shouldn't wonder. By the gracious king, I should think you would be! What have you got to say to me, eh?"

Apparently Jed had nothing to say. Captain Sam did not wait.

"And you've called yourself my friend!" he sneered savagely.

"Friend--you're a healthy friend, Jed Winslow! What have you got to say to me . . . eh?"

Jed sighed. "Maybe I'd be better able to say it if I knew what you was talkin' about, Sam," he observed, drearily.

"Know! I guess likely you know all right. And according to her you've known all along. What do you mean by lettin' me take that-- that state's prison bird into my bank? And lettin' him a.s.sociate with my daughter and--and . . . Oh, by gracious king! When I think that you knew what he was all along, I--I--"

His anger choked off the rest of the sentence. Jed rubbed his eyes and sat up in his chair. For the first time since the captain's entrance he realized a little of what the latter said. Before that he had been conscious only of his own dull, aching, hopeless misery.

"Hum. . . . So you've found out, Sam, have you?" he mused.

"Found out! You bet I've found out! I only wish to the Lord I'd found out months ago, that's all."

"Hum. . . . Charlie didn't tell you? . . . No-o, no, he couldn't have got back so soon."

"Back be hanged! I don't know whether he's back or not, blast him.

But I ain't a fool ALL the time, Jed Winslow, not all the time I ain't. And when I came home tonight and found Maud cryin' to herself and no reason for it, so far as I could see, I set out to learn that reason. And I did learn it. She told me the whole yarn, the whole of it. And I saw the scamp's letter. And I dragged out of her that you--you had known all the time what he was, and had never told me a word. . . . Oh, how could you, Jed!

How could you!"

Jed's voice was a trifle less listless as he answered.

"It was told me in confidence, Sam," he said. "I COULDN'T tell you. And, as time went along and I began to see what a fine boy Charlie really was, I felt sure 'twould all come out right in the end. And it has, as I see it."

"WHAT?"

"Yes, it's come out all right. Charlie's gone to fight, same as every decent young feller wants to do. He thinks the world of Maud and she does of him, but he was honorable enough not to ask her while he worked for you, Sam. He wrote the letter after he'd gone so as to make it easier for her to say no, if she felt like sayin'

it. And when he came back from enlistin' he was goin' straight to you to make a clean breast of everything. He's a good boy, Sam.

He's had hard luck and he's been in trouble, but he's all right and I know it. And you know it, too, Sam Hunniwell. Down inside you you know it, too. Why, you've told me a hundred times what a fine chap Charlie Phillips was and how much you thought of him, and--"

Captain Hunniwell interrupted. "Shut up!" he commanded. "Don't talk to me that way! Don't you dare to! I did think a lot of him, but that was before I knew what he'd done and where he'd been. Do you cal'late I'll let my daughter marry a man that's been in state's prison?"

"But, Sam, it wan't all his fault, really. And he'll go straight from this on. I know he will."

"Shut up! He can go to the devil from this on, but he shan't take her with him. . . . Why, Jed, you know what Maud is to me. She's all I've got. She's all I've contrived for and worked for in this world. Think of all the plans I've made for her!"

"I know, Sam, I know; but pretty often our plans don't work out just as we make 'em. Sometimes we have to change 'em--or give 'em up. And you want Maud to be happy."

"Happy! I want to be happy myself, don't I? Do you think I'm goin' to give up all my plans and all my happiness just--just because she wants to make a fool of herself? Give 'em up! It's easy for you to say 'give up.' What do you know about it?"

It was the last straw. Jed sprang to his feet so suddenly that his chair fell to the floor.

"Know about it!" he burst forth, with such fierce indignation that the captain actually gasped in astonishment. "Know about it!"

repeated Jed. "What do I know about givin' up my own plans and-- and hopes, do you mean? Oh, my Lord above! Ain't I been givin'

'em up and givin' 'em up all my lifelong? When I was a boy didn't I give up the education that might have made me a--a MAN instead of--of a town laughin' stock? While Mother lived was I doin' much but give up myself for her? I ain't sayin' 'twas any more'n right that I should, but I did it, didn't I? And ever since it's been the same way. I tell you, I've come to believe that life for me means one 'give up' after the other and won't mean anything but that till I die. And you--you ask me what I know about it! YOU do!"

Captain Sam was so taken aback that he was almost speechless. In all his long acquaintance with Jed Winslow he had never seen him like this.

"Why--why, Jed!" he stammered. But Jed was not listening. He strode across the room and seized his visitor by the arm.

"You go home, Sam Hunniwell," he ordered. "Go home and think-- THINK, I tell you. All your life you've had just what I haven't.

You married the girl you wanted and you and she were happy together. You've been looked up to and respected here in Orham; folks never laughed at you or called you 'town crank.' You've got a daughter and she's a good girl. And the man she wants to marry is a good man, and, if you'll give him a chance and he lives through the war he's goin' into, he'll make you proud of him. You go home, Sam Hunniwell! Go home, and thank G.o.d you're what you are and AS you are. . . . No, I won't talk! I don't want to talk! . . .

Go HOME."

He had been dragging his friend to the door. Now he actually pushed him across the threshold and slammed the door between them.

"Well, for . . . the Lord . . . sakes!" exclaimed Captain Hunniwell.

The sc.r.a.ping of the key in the lock was his only answer.

CHAPTER XXI

A child spends time and thought and energy upon the building of a house of blocks. By the time it is nearing completion it has become to him a very real edifice. Therefore, when it collapses into an ungraceful heap upon the floor it is poor consolation to be reminded that, after all, it was merely a block house and couldn't be expected to stand.

Jed, in his own child-like fashion, had reared his moonshine castle beam by beam. At first he had regarded it as moonshine and had refused to consider the building of it anything but a dangerously pleasant pastime. And then, little by little, as his dreams changed to hopes, it had become more and more real, until, just before the end, it was the foundation upon which his future was to rest. And down it came, and there was his future buried in the ruins.

And it had been all moonshine from the very first. Jed, sitting there alone in his little living-room, could see now that it had been nothing but that. Ruth Armstrong, young, charming, cultured-- could she have thought of linking her life with that of Jedidah Edgar Wilfred Winslow, forty-five, "town crank" and builder of windmills? Of course not--and again of course not. Obviously she never had thought of such a thing. She had been grateful, that was all; perhaps she had pitied him just a little and behind her expressions of kindliness and friendship was pity and little else.

Moonshine--moonshine--moonshine. And, oh, what a fool he had been!

What a poor, silly fool!

So the night pa.s.sed and morning came and with it a certain degree of bitterly philosophic acceptance of the situation. He WAS a fool; so much was sure. He was of no use in the world, he never had been. People laughed at him and he deserved to be laughed at.

He rose from the bed upon which he had thrown himself some time during the early morning hours and, after eating a cold mouthful or two in lieu of breakfast, sat down at his turning lathe. He could make children's whirligigs, that was the measure of his capacity.

All the forenoon the lathe hummed. Several times steps sounded on the front walk and the latch of the shop door rattled, but Jed did not rise from his seat. He had not unlocked that door, he did not mean to for the present. He did not want to wait on customers; he did not want to see callers; he did not want to talk or be talked to. He did not want to think, either, but that he could not help.

And he could not shut out all the callers. One, who came a little after noon, refused to remain shut out. She pounded the door and shouted "Uncle Jed" for some few minutes; then, just as Jed had begun to think she had given up and gone away, he heard a thumping upon the window pane and, looking up, saw her laughing and nodding outside.

"I see you, Uncle Jed," she called. "Let me in, please."