The Brass Bound Box Part 23

The Widow Sprigg held up a shaking hand protesting against this volley of questions and answering none. But after a little time the woman in her got the better of the judge, and, rising, she went to the wall cupboard and took from it a bottle containing brown fluid and plainly labelled, "Cholera Mixture. Poison." Pouring a generous dose into a gla.s.s, she diluted it with water and was returning to the bed when Katharine caught her hand to stay it, crying:

"Why, Susanna! How dare you? That's marked poison!"

The widow shook the girl's hand off, calmly replying:

"My suz! I guess I know what I'm about. That 'cholera mixture' 's one the old doctor's own prescriptions, an' I've give more of it to more folks 'an you could shake a stick at. It's marked 'poison' so's to keep childern like you from meddlin' with it. A dose of it won't hurt n.o.body, an' if his malady is the sort I cal'late, I'm treatin' him like the Good Samaritan would on the Sabbath Day. I've made it a powerful dose, an' I 'low it'll settle his hash one way or other. But I hate to touch him. I certainly do."

A last faint moan issued from the sufferer, and his eyes turned upon the girl. He looked so wan and so forlorn that her own natural repugnance left her, and she caught the medicine-gla.s.s from Susanna to present it to the sick man's lips. He opened them and drank obediently, even smacking his lips over the fiery mixture, and Kate, having finished her task, hastily withdrew to the outer room.

But what had come over the Widow Sprigg? Her whole manner had changed.

Fear seemed to have left her and a stern determination taken its place.

Katharine could only observe, wondering, as the mistress of the cottage caught up a pail, and going to the well drew it full several times, throwing out all but the last pailful, which she brought back into the house and set on a table in the bedroom. Beside it she placed a dipper, and observed:

"That water's all right. Moses, he had the well cleaned out for me only last month. We always do do it twicet a year, lest somebody comes along an' drinks it stale. More'n that, the well's fed by a spring, runnin' in an' out, so really don't need any cleanin', but--"

Such solicitude on account of that detested tramp! It was amazing. Yet her next procedure was even more so. Going up-stairs, she looked that the window was shut, and the nail, its only fastening, put in above the lower sash. Anybody inside could have opened it, of course, but that did not occur to her. Each of the windows was thus treated, and, beckoning to Katharine, she led the way out-doors. The door was locked on the outside and Susanna started homeward. She was no longer a weary or a sad-faced woman. She was alert, silent, but unmistakably cheerful.

Kate kept close pace with the now swift steps of the housekeeper, and finally ventured to ask: "Who is he?"

"We may not all hope to be constables, but some of us is constables without ever runnin' for office! Well, well, well! I shouldn't be surprised if the end o' the world happens along now, any time," said Susanna, irrelevantly, and fell into such a brown study that Katy dared not interrupt her, and the rest of the way home was pa.s.sed in silence.

The deacon was waiting restlessly. He had not liked to desert his post and leave the disabled Moses alone in the house. Neither had he liked to lose his Sunday afternoon nap, well-earned refreshment of a diligent man. One other thing he had not liked: Moses' flat refusal to discuss their employer's affairs. This had led to other controversies, and two disgruntled men were ready to greet the tardy wanderers.

"Hm-m. Thought you never was a-comin' back. That's all the sense a silly woman has; let her get off grounds an' she don't know when to step on to 'em again. The deacon, he's been purty patient, but--I guess we'll be better friends if we part for a spell now," was Moses' greeting; and, instead of resenting it, Susanna said never a word.

In silence she brought him his cup of beef tea. In silence she went out and fed the poultry; came in and gave Sir Philip his bowl of milk and Punch his plate of sc.r.a.ps. She had long since taken the feeding of both animals upon herself, declaring, with some show of truth, that they did not dare "muss around" for her as they did for Eunice or Kate.

Till it was supper-time she sat in absolute silence beside the sitting-room window, her eyes fixed upon vacancy, and an expression of great perplexity.

Katharine bore this as long as she could, then stole softly up to the hired man's room, careless whether he were asleep or not. She had not been bidden to secrecy, and, finding him awake, she poured out the story of the afternoon so fast that her words fairly tripped each other up.

Then Moses made her go back and tell it all over again, and when she had finished, exclaimed:

"Beats thunder! A silly woman! An' me, a man! Bedrid here, like an old block of wood, an' her--She thinks she's arrested somebody, Susanna does! She thinks she's made herself into a constable, does she? Turned her house into a jail--an' forgot to fasten the winders outside! Ho! Ho!

Silly women!"

The disappointed old fellow got as much enjoyment as he could out of the situation, and was more than delighted by thought of a tramp's shoes smirching the log-cabin quilt. It served the widow right, he maintained, because she had wasted so much labor on the thing. "Bought good new Merrimac print, she did, an' then set there o' nights a snip-snip-snippin' it up into little sc.r.a.ps an' sewin' 'em together again. If a woman'll do that, it's proof what sort o' brains she's got."

Then, with sudden energy, he advised: "Don't you never let her set you a sewin' patchwork, Kitty Keehoty. It's all on a piece with knittin'

mittens for the Hottentots--a waste of time. A waste o' sinful time, I mean a sinful waste of--Oh, hum!"

She waited till he had cooled off from his own vexation, and then asked:

"Uncle Moses, will you tell me all about Montgomery's father?"

If she had surprised him before she startled him now. Flashing his keen old eyes upon her, he asked in return:

"Why do you want to know? Who egged you on to say that?"

"n.o.body. Why, surely, n.o.body at all. But it seems so queer that none talk of him, yet of his mother speak so often and so lovingly. Aunt Eunice says she was a Marsden lady, a farmer's daughter, and 'as lovely as a flower.' Even Madam, who didn't like her at first, grew to be fond of her and to call her 'my sweet daughter.' But when I asked Monty of his father, and had told him all about mine, about everything, about the second Mrs. John, the s...o...b..a.l.l.s, and all--he just said: 'I guess I'll go hunt old Whitey,' and off he went, without saying 'excuse me.' His face was as red as red, and there came a queer look in his eyes as if--as if he was ashamed. Was his father a wicked man, Uncle Moses?"

Quite diverted by this time from his own vexations, the hired man lay silently thinking for a moment. Then he said:

"Well, little Kitty Keehoty, I hain't seen that your warm heart gets any colder toward folks when they get into trouble 'an when they don't. That tramp, now, that stole your victuals--Oh, I know! I did know last night, though you didn't know that I knowed--"

"'I saw Esau kissing Kate, Esau saw that I saw,'" quoted this other Kate, in laughing interruption.

Moses laughed, too, as he was glad to do. He had had enough of gloom and grumble for that sweet Lord's Day, now so near its close. And though the story he was going to tell was anything but a bright one, he meant to tell it in such wise that his young listener should be the tenderer and more compa.s.sionate because of hearing it.

"Well, Keehoty, it's ruther a long yarn. That is, it goes a good way back, clean to the old Squire's time--no such a Squire as Pettijohn, forename James, mind ye--but a good, high-sprung, old-fashioned gentleman; with high-up English blood in his veins, an' a reg'lar English temper to balance the blood. Never did a dirty trick in his life nor an unjust one--except to his own and only son. That was Monty's father, poor little stutterin' shaver! Well, along of his late years the old Squire had bad feelin's in his head, suffered terr'ble agony, an'

hardly knowed what he did do or say. He got a notion that he was goin'

to be robbed, an' used to carry 'round with him a cur'ous old box that folks said held his bonds an' money an' the old family jewels that had been brought over from England a hunderd years afore. If he went a-ridin'--an' he was the splendidest horseman ever seen in these parts--he'd have the thing on the saddle afore him. If he druv, 'twould be in the box o' the carriage-seat. n.o.body ever seen the inside that box, an' 'twas 'lowed there wasn't none could open it, except him an'

the Madam."

"Oh!" gasped Katharine, leaning forward, breathlessly intent. Naturally such close attention flattered the narrator, who went on with renewed earnestness:

"The old Squire an' his son didn't hit it off together very well. Never did from the time Verplanck, 'Planck he was called for short, was born.

He was a good deal like Monty is, only more oneasy--if anybody could be; an' from the time he could toddle he was hand in glove with Jim Pettijohn's little tacker, Nate. Nate, he wasn't so smart as some folks.

Not a fool, uther, an' consid'able better'n half-witted, but queer--queer. He just worshipped Planck Sturtevant, an' where you see one you see t'other, sure. Well, they growed up, an' Planck got married.

That seemed to 'bout break Nate's heart, an' he got queerer an' queerer.

Old Squire got queerer, too. Nothin' Verplanck could do or say was right in his father's eyes; an' though he managed to work the farm fairly well, he never made any money off it, an' that made the old man mad.

Planck, he bore it patient for a spell, 'cause his wife--she that was Elizabeth Morton from up-mountain--thought the world an' all of the old folks an' they o' her. She'd been raised on a farm an' could an' did turn her hand to every sort o' work, but 'twasn't no use. She loved them, but she loved her husband better; an', one night, after there'd been more hard talk 'an common 'twixt the Squire an' Verplanck, there was three folks missin' from Marsden township. They was somethin' else missin', too, an' that was the queer bra.s.s bound box with all the Squire's money an' vallybles. The hired man told 'bout the box, else n.o.body might ever have heard that part. He was carryin' in the day's wood next mornin' an' overheard the Squire an' the Madam talkin' 'bout it; him callin' his son a 'thief,' an' forbiddin' his name ever to be spoke in that house again. She declarin' that no child of them two honest people could ever be a thief. Hot an' heavy they had it, though n.o.body had ever heard them two quarrel afore. An' right on top of that stalks in Jim Pettijohn--him that's a sort o' Squire, a justice of the peace, now--an' demands his son. He'd let the feller grow up without good trainin' or lookin' after of any kind, though 'twas needed bad enough. All Nate did know, or the little he knowed, was badness an'

deviltry. Why, he used to go with your own pa, Johnny, consid'able, an'

'peared to like him almost as well as he did Verplanck, an' many's the time I've had the three on my hands a-fishin'. But Johnny didn't tackle much to ary one them other boys. He was all for trompin' 'round by himself, drawin' pictur's on whatever come handy, or lyin' under the trees a-dreamin' the summer days through. In the winter he'd dream afore the wood fire just the same idle way, an' finally he dreamed himself out o' Marsden an' run away to be an artist. Eunice, she was set an'

determined he should be a minister, else maybe 'twouldn't never ha'

turned out as it did. But Johnny was good, good clean through to the core, parson or artist or what not; an' 'twasn't o' him I set out to tell. An' I must hurry up, anyway, 'cause Susanna she'll be in purty soon, an' that'll end all our nice time."

"Oh, Uncle Moses! I like Susanna better to-day than I ever did before.

She showed me the real inside of herself, and it isn't half as crusty as the outside."

"Huh! What'd she do to manage that? She seems powerful still an'

sot-lookin' sence she come back from inspectin' her 'prope'ty.' By the way, did you happen to notice whuther the slat top to that cistern o'

hers was over the manhole? Out in the open shed, or lean-to? 'Cause she's a great notion of leavin' it off to 'air'--as if a cistern that hasn't had no water in it for fifteen twenty years wasn't dry as a pipe-stem a'ready or needed 'airin''! Gen'ally, after she's been out there I take a look 'round myself. I wouldn't admire to have anything, even a tramp, fall down that cistern, though it might not hurt 'em much, 'cause it's shallower 'n it's broad. A real good 'system,' I 'low, even if that everlastin' Sprigg did build it. But what's the inside o'

Susanna 't you saw an' liked?"

"She showed me her baby's things, an' looked as sad as if it had died only yesterday. But she showed me, too, her shroud--her _shroud_! Just think of it, Uncle Moses! And that was horrible."

"Pooh! That's nothin'. Lots of women has 'em laid by. Same's some fool-men has a coffin built an' kep' handy. As for me, I'm goin' to worry 'bout things only up till the day o' my death, an' not a minute beyond. But, I was tellin' of Verplanck Sturtevant, an' must finish the job. Squire, he had always given the cold shoulder to Jim, an' despised him out an' out. Jim was crafty an' underhand, Squire was open an' above board--an' them two kinds don't mix. Still, Jim had been able to get his claw on the Squire's meat, so to speak; that is, he'd made money himself, lawin' an' grindin' the face of them worse off 'an he was, an'

the Squire needin' ready cash, to make some improvements he'd better ha'

let alone, Jim advanced it an' Squire give a mortgage. That was the beginnin', an' now, they say, Pettijohn owns about every acre of the old Sturtevant property, an' could turn the Madam out any day. Yet, somehow, he da.s.sent. Indeed, I'd like to see the man could walk straight up to that old lady an' say: 'Your house is mine. Please to get out.' Out she'd go at the first word; head up, back straight as one her own hall chairs, but a look in her eye that that man wouldn't forget in his lifetime. Verplanck, he was of the same sort--prouder'n Lucifer; an'

even if she'd knowed where to send for him his mother would ha'

understood 'twouldn't done a mite o' good. But she didn't send. She obeyed her husband to the last say-so. An' he didn't live long after that, anyway. Elizabeth, she come back, bringin' Monty with her; but her own folks tell as how there was never a thing said betwixt even them two, except Elizabeth sayin': 'I've come home, Mother Sturtevant, to bring your grandson to the old place. I haven't long to live; but Verplanck will never come till he has made a fortune and redeemed everything. Let us not talk of him.' They never did. Where he was or how, his old mother could only guess. Then Elizabeth died and there was just them two--Madam an' Montgomery--left in the Mansion. Every year she let Jim Pettijohn get a tighter clutch on the property, till, as I tell ye, he prob'ly owns all.

"That's all of Monty's father. 'Twas ten years or more ago when Elizabeth fetched him; why, my sake! it must be full twelve or up'ards, but time does fly so I forget. I never believed Verplanck stole a thing.

I mis...o...b.. if the box ever was took. The Squire bein' queer might ha'

hid it somewheres, more'n likely. But there's them that does believe, an' I hear the Madam's amongst 'em. She's searched the Mansion from A to Izzard, knowin' every crane an' cranny of it, an' found nothin'. So that's why Monty's face got red when you asked about his father.

Marsden's like every other village, full o' gossip, an' what his grandmother has tried to keep from him hearin' there's been plenty loose tongues to let slip. More'n once I've seen the poor little shaver sit broodin' an' solemn as if his heart was breakin', an' I've fancied he was thinkin' 'bout his pa. But he ain't one the broodin' kind, thanks be; an' the very next thing I knowed he'd be up to some mischief or other, lively as a cricket. But don't you ever let on what I've told ye, 'less he speaks of it himself. I'm glad you're good friends, an' likely enough he'll out with the hull business an' all he's thought an' felt about it. If ever he does, Kitty Keehoty, you remember that it's a woman's part--such women as Eunice an' the Madam an' her that was Elizabeth Morton--to comfort an' cheer them 'at are downcast. Though I needn't caution ye, I guess, sence I found out some time ago that you've got a power o' sympathy in your fly-about little body. Hm-m. I've 'most talked the legs off the iron pot, hain't I? It's time to quit, an'--hark! Them's wheels! They're drivin' in here. They're on our gravel, sure. Look out the winder, child, an' see who 'tis. I'm most too tuckered out for more comp'ny to-night. The deacon, he's a good man, but he dreadful fatiguin'."