The Belted Seas Part 21

"Some," and cast his eyes and jerked his thumb vaguely upward, toward the ceiling.

"If she throws 'em at him--Aye--" He struggled with the thought, bringing it slowly out of dim recesses to the light. "She ought to pour the bilin' off first. It ain't right."

Silence fell over us again. At last Captain Tom said:

"Supposing a man is loose-jointed in his mind, like Abe, or Billy Corliss a trifle, and gets took back of the ear with something hard, that steadies him, it's no great harm if it's warm."

"She ought to pour off the bilin'," said Uncle Abimelech uneasily.

After that we sat for a while, each taken with his own thoughts, until Pemberton was knocking out his pipe, like one approaching the idea of a night's rest, when there came a noise in the outer hall, and the wind blew snow under the crack below the inner door. Some one bounced into the room like a storm. He was a short, thickset man with white side whiskers, and looked like an infuriated Santa Claus, for he was covered with snow.

"Most miserable, infernal, impossible night ever made, Mr. Pemberton!

Forty thousand devils---Ah! Give me some of that, hot! Detestable night!"

"It is so, Andrew," said Pemberton, soothing and agreeable. "You're near right."

"As referring to weather," said Stevey Todd, "though not putting it so strong, you might--"

But the newcomer broke in, and beat the table with his fist.

"Weather! No! Not weather. Mr. Pemberton, I'll tell you what's the matter. Here's my daughter run away to be married with the coolest, freshest, limber-tongued young codfish that ever escaped salting. Not if I know it! I'll salt him! I'll pickle him! I will, if my name's McCulloch."

He puffed hard, and sat down. Stevey Todd looked at Andrew McCulloch, then he looked at the others and winked cautiously, and Pemberton winked back. But Captain Tom did not look up. Uncle Abimelech too kept his eyes on the fire. He seemed to be following his old train of thought, which Andrew McCulloch's coming had started again in his mind, for he began:

"Before I was married, her mother she used to throw kettles at me. They was kettles," he said bitterly, "with spouts and handles. Aye, afterward she did too, some."

Andrew McCulloch puffed and looked surprised and Pemberton said:

"Ran in the family?"

"Aye. Then she come across the bay in a rowboat, and I was diggin'

clams, and she says. 'If you dasn't come to the house, what dast you do?' I see the minister down the beach, diggin' clams, an' he had eleven children, he had, diggin' clams, and she looked at him too, and I says, 'I das' say he'd rather'n dig clams.' We went fishin' afterward, and got eight barrel o' herring."

"You don't say!" says Andrew McCulloch, puffing and looked surprised.

Uncle Abimelech kept his eyes fixed on the kettle and wandered away in his mind. Then Captain Tom roused himself, and spoke thoughtfully.

"It was different with me," he said. "Her parents wanted another one.

He was richer, but nowise so good-looking. I says to her, 'Cut and run!'

but she wouldn't, as being undutiful. She took him. His name was Jones.

He went bankrupt, and got paralysis, and is living still. Her parents died in different poorhouses."

Pemberton looked surprised at this too, and then thoughtful, and then he winked at Stevey Todd, who pa.s.sed it back.

"I got my wife out of the back window of a boarding school, second story," said Pemberton. "She came down the blinds." And he wiped his face with his coat sleeve.

"Mine came through the cellar," said Stevey Todd. "She brought a pot of jam in her pocket, or else," he added cautiously, "or else it was pickles. It might've been pickles, but it runs in my mind it was jam."

But Pemberton's wife had been a widow first, as he once told me, and Captain Tom's and Stevey Todd's romances didn't run that way, by accounts. But as to Uncle Abimelech, it may be what he said was true.

They all fell silent again, except Andrew McCulloch, who whistled: "Whew, whew, whew!" and pulled his whiskers, now this one and that, and said:

"Bless my soul! You don't mean it!" and fidgeted in his chair. "I didn't suppose it was so usual, I didn't! G.o.d bless my soul!"

"It's their nature," said Captain Buckingham at length. "They're made that way."

"You don't mean it!"

"The best thing for 'em is hotel keeping."

"Eh!"

"Nothing like it, you can take my word. 'Pemberton's Hotel. Pemberton and Buckingham, Owners and Proprietors. B. Corliss, Manager. Peace, Propriety, and Patronage.' Aye, that's it. They get restless. If they elopes, let 'em keep a hotel. Nothing like it."

"Whew, whew!" whistled Andrew McCulloch. "But they've gone!" he says.

"See here! How you going to catch 'em? How you going to set 'em to hotel keeping when they elope off your hands? Where've they gone? That's the point. Where've they gone?"

"Up," said Uncle Abimelech.

"Eh!"

"Connubilated," said Uncle Abimelech, pointing. "Gone up."

"Prayed over fifteen minutes," said Stevey Todd, "which I wouldn't so state without watching the clock."

"What!" cried Andrew McCulloch. "Do you mean to say, you aided and abetted, Mr. Pemberton--"

"Peace and connubiality was his last words," went on Stevey Todd, following his train of thought. "Peace and connubiality, he says, and he meant the same."

"Ain't the same!" said Uncle Abimelech.

"Do you mean to say," cried Andrew McCulloch--

"Don't throw nothin' till you pour off the bilin'," said Uncle Abimelech uneasily. "It ain't right."

Andrew McCulloch puffed, "Whew! whew! whew!" as if blowing off the steam of his boiling. Then he said:

"Give me some of that, hot!"

And we all fell silent again.

The kettle sang, the chimney coughed in its throat. One heard outside the whistle of the wind, the moan of the surf far off in the night, and the snow snapping against the windows.

The clock struck ten.

THE END