The Skipper and the Skipped Part 61

up cross-eyed. I was through an insane horsepittle once, and they had patients there just like that. I'd just as soon have a bullhead snake in the room with me."

"He's gettin' up his pome, that's all," Hiram explained. "I've seen lit'ry folks in my time. They act queer, but there ain't any harm in 'em."

"That may be," allowed the Cap'n, "but I shall be almighty glad when this centennial is over and I can get Pote Tate out of that corner, and put the broom and poker back there, and have something sensible to look at."

Preparations for the great event went on smartly. The various societies and interests conferred amicably, and the whole centennial day was blocked out, from the hundred guns at early dawn to the last sputter of the fireworks at midnight. And everything and every one called for money; money for prizes, for souvenirs for entertainment of visitors, for bands, for carriages--a mult.i.tude of items, all to be settled for when the great event was over. If Cap'n Sproul had hoped to save a remnant of his treasure-fund he was soon undeceived.

Perspiring over his figures, he discovered that there wouldn't be enough if all demands were met. But he continued grimly to apportion.

One day he woke the poet out of the trance into which he had fallen after delivering to his chairman a great pile of sealed letters to be counted for stamps.

"What do I understand by all these bushels of epistles to the Galatians that you've been sluicin' out?" he demanded. "Who be they, and what are you writin' to 'em for? I've been lookin' over the names that you've backed on these envelopes, and there isn't one of 'em I ever heard tell of, nor see the sense in writin' to."

Mr. Tate untangled his twisted legs and came over to the table, quivering in his emotion.

"Never heard of them? Never heard of them?" he repeated, gulping his amazement. He shuffled the letters to and fro, tapping his thin finger on the superscriptions. "Oh, you must be joking, Captain Sproul, dear sir! Never heard of the poets and orators and _savants_ whose names are written there? Surely, 'tis a joke."

"I ain't feelin' in no very great humorous state of mind these days,"

returned the Cap'n with vigor. "If you see any joke in what I'm sayin'

you'd better not laugh. I tell ye, I never heard of 'em! Now you answer my question."

"Why, they are great poets, authors, orators--the great minds of the country. They--"

"Well, they ain't all mind, be they? They're hearty eaters, ain't they? They'll want three square meals when they get here, won't they?

What I want to know now is, how many thousands of them blasted gra.s.shoppers you've gone to work and managed to tole in here to be fed? I'm just wakin' up to the resks we're runnin', and it makes me sweat cold water." He glanced apprehensively at the papers bearing his computations.

"All the replies I have received so far have been regrets," murmured Mr. Tate, sorrowfully. "I took the greatest names first. I was ambitious for our dear town, Captain. I went directly to the highest founts. Perhaps I looked too high. They have all sent regrets. I have to confess that I have not yet secured the orator of the day nor any of the other speakers. But I was ambitious to get the best."

"Well, that's the first good news I've heard since we started on this lunatic fandango," said the Cap'n, with soulful thanksgiving. "Do you think there's any in this last mess that 'll be li'ble to come if they're asked?"

"I have been gradually working down the scale of greatness, but I'm afraid I have still aimed too high," confessed Mr. Tate. "Yet the effort is not lost by any means." His eyes kindled. "All my life, Captain Sproul, I have been eager for the autographs of great men--that I might gaze upon the spot of paper where their mighty hands have rested to write. I have succeeded beyond my fondest dreams. I have a collection of autograph letters that make my heart swell with pride."

"So that's how you've been spendin' the money of this town--writin'

to folks that you knew wouldn't come, so as to get their autographs?"

He touched the point better than he realized. Poet Tate's face grew paler. After his first batch of letters had brought those returns from the regretful great he had been recklessly scattering invitations from the Atlantic to the Pacific--appealing invitations done in his best style, and sanctioned by the aegis of a committee headed by "Captain Sproul, Chairman." Such unbroken array of declinations heartened him in his quest, and he was reaping his halcyon harvest as rapidly as he could.

"I was going to put them on exhibition at the centennial, and make them the great feature of the day," mumbled the poet, apologetically.

"So do! So do!" advised the Cap'n with bitter irony. "I can see a ramjam rush of the people away from the tub-squirt, right in the middle of it, to look at them autographs. I can see 'em askin' the band to stop playin' so that they can stand and meditate on them letters. It'll bust up the hoss-trot. Folks won't want to get away from them letters long enough to go down to the track. I wish I'd 'a' knowed this sooner, Pote Tate. Take them letters and your pome, and we wouldn't need to be spendin' money and foolin' it away on the other kind of a programmy we've got up! Them Merino rams from Vienny, Canaan, and surroundin' towns that 'll come in here full of h.e.l.l and hard cider will jest love to set down with you and study autographs all day!"

Mr. Tate flushed under the satire by which the Cap'n was expressing his general disgust at Smyrna's expensive attempt to celebrate. He exhibited a bit of spirit for the first time in their intercourse.

"The literary exercises ought to be the grand feature of the day, sir! Can a horse-trot or a firemen's muster call attention to the progress of a hundred years? I fear Smyrna is forgetting the main point of the celebration."

"Don't you worry any about that, Pote," snapped the selectman. "No one round here is losin' sight of the main point. Main point is for churches and temperance workers and wimmen's auxiliaries to sell as much grub as they can to visitors, and for citizens to parade round behind a bra.s.s-band like mules with the spring-halt, and to spend the money that I had ready to clear off the town debt. And if any one thinks about the town bein' a hundred years old, it'll be next mornin' when he wakes up and feels that way himself. You and me is the losin' minority this time, Pote. I didn't want it at all, and you want it something diff'runt." He looked the gaunt figure up and down with a little of the sympathy that one feels for a fellow-victim.

Then he gave out stamps for the letters. "As long as it's got to be spent, this is about the innocentest way of spendin' it," he muttered.

x.x.xII

As the great occasion drew nearer, Mr. Tate redoubled his epistolary efforts. He was goaded by two reasons. He had not secured his notables for the literary programme; he would soon have neither excuse nor stamps for collecting autographs. He descended into the lower levels of genius and fame. He wound up his campaign of solicitation with a stack of letters that made the Cap'n gasp. But the chairman gave out the stamps with a certain amount of savage satisfaction in doing it, for some of the other hateful treasury-raiders would have to go without, and he antic.i.p.ated that Poet Tate, suggester of the piracy, would meet up with proper retribution from his own ilk when the committee in final round-up discovered how great an inroad the autograph-seeker had made in the funds. The Cap'n had shrewd fore-vision as to just how Smyrna would view the expenditure of money in that direction.

For the first time, he gazed on his secretary with a sort of kindly light in his eyes, realizing and relishing the part that Consetena was playing. On his own part, Poet Tate welcomed this single gleam of kindly feeling, as the Eskimo welcomes the first glimpse of the vernal sun. He ran to his portfolio.

"I have it finished, Captain!" he cried. "It is the effort of my life.

To you I offer it first of all--you shall have the first bloom of it. It begins"--he clutched the bulky ma.n.u.script in shaking hands--"it begins:

"Ethereal G.o.ddess, come, oh come, I pray, And press thy fingers, on this festal day, Upon my fevered brow and--"

"May I ask what you're settin' about to do, there?" inquired Cap'n Sproul, balefully.

"It is my poem! I am about to read it to you, to offer it to you as head of our munic.i.p.ality. I will read it to you."

The Cap'n waited for the explanation patiently. He seemed to want to make sure of the intended enormity of the offence. He even inquired: "How much do you reckon there is of it?"

"Six thousand lines," said Mr. Tate, with an author's pride.

"Pote Tate," he remarked, solemnly, "seein' that you haven't ever been brought in very close touch with deep-water sailors, and don't know what they've had to contend with, and how their dispositions get warped, and not knowin' my private opinion of men-grown potes, you've set here day by day and haven't realized the chances you've been takin'. Just one ordinary back-handed wallop, such as would only tickle a Portygee sailor, would mean wreaths and a harp for you! Thank G.o.d, I haven't ever forgot myself, not yet. Lay that pome back, and tie them covers together with a hard knot."

The Cap'n's ominous calm, his evident effort to repress even a loud tone, troubled Poet Tate more than violence would have done. He took himself and his portfolio away. As he licked his stamps in the post-office he privately confided to the postmistress his conviction that Cap'n Sproul was not exactly in his right mind at all times, thus unconsciously reciprocating certain sentiments of his chairman regarding the secretary's sanity.

"I don't think I'll go back to the office," said Mr. Tate. "I have written all my letters. All those that come here in printed envelopes for Captain Sproul I will take, as secretary."

At the end of another ten days, and on the eve of the centennial, Mr. Tate had made an interesting discovery. It was to the effect that although genius in the higher alt.i.tudes is not easily come at, and responds by courteous declinations and regrets, genius in the lower levels is still desirous of advertising and an opportunity to shine, and can be cajoled by promise of refunded expenses and lavish entertainment as guest of the munic.i.p.ality.

The last batch of letters of invitation, distributed among those lower levels of notability, elicited the most interesting autograph letters of all; eleven notables accepted the invitation to deliver the oration of the day; a dozen or so announced that they would be present and speak on topics connected with the times, and one and all a.s.sured Captain Aaron Sproul that they thoroughly appreciated his courtesy, and looked forward to a meeting with much pleasure, and trusted, etc., etc.

Poet Tate, mild, diffident, unpractical Poet Tate, who in all his life had never been called upon to face a crisis, did not face this one.

The bare notion of going to Cap'n Aaron Sproul and confessing made his brain reel. The memory of the look in the Cap'n's eyes, evoked by so innocent a proposition as the reading of six thousand lines of poetry to him, made Mr. Tate's fluttering heart bang against his ribs. Even when he sat down to write a letter, making the confession, his teeth chattered and his pen danced drunkenly. It made him so faint, even to put the words on paper, that he flung his pen away.

A more resourceful man, a man with something in his head besides dreams, might have headed off the notables. But in his panic Poet Tate became merely a frightened child with the single impulse to flee from the mischief he had caused. With his poem padding his thin chest, he crept out of his father's house in the night preceding the great day, and the blackness swallowed him up. Uneasy urchins in the distant village were already popping the first firecrackers of the celebration. Poet Tate groaned, and fled.

Cap'n Aaron Sproul arrived at the town office next morning in a frame of mind distinctly unamiable. Though his house was far out of the village, the unearthly racket of the night had floated up to him--squawking horns, and clanging bells, and exploding powder. The hundred cannons at sunrise brought a vigorous word for each reverberation. At an early hour Hiram Look had come over, gay in his panoply as chief of the Ancient and Honorables, and repeated his insistent demand that the Cap'n ride at the head of the parade in an imported barouche, gracing the occasion as head of the munic.i.p.ality.

"The people demand it," a.s.severated Hiram with heat. "The people have rights over you."

"Same as they had over that surplus in the town treasury, hey?"

inquired the Cap'n. "What's that you're luggin' in that paper as though 'twas aigs?"

"It's one of my plug hats that I was goin' to lend you," explained his friend, cheerily. "I've rigged it up with a c.o.c.kade. I figger that we can't any of us be too festal on a day like this. I know you ain't no ways taken to plug hats; but when a man holds office and the people look to him for certain things, he has to bow down to the people. We're goin' to have a great and glorious day of this, Cap,"

he cried, all his showman's soul infected by gallant excitement, and enthusiasm glowing in his eyes. It was a kind of enthusiasm that Cap'n Sproul's gloomy soul resented.

"I've had consid'able many arguments with you, Hiram, over this affair, first and last, and just at present reck'nin' I'm luggin'

about all the canvas my feelin's will stand. Now I won't wear that d.a.m.nation stove-funnel hat; I won't ride in any baroosh; I won't make speeches; I won't set up on any platform. I'll simply set in town office and 'tend to my business, and draw orders on the treasury to pay bills, as fast as bills are presented. That's what I started out to do, and that's all I will do. And if you don't want to see me jibe and all go by the board, you keep out of my way with your plug hats and barooshes. And it might be well to inform inquirin' friends to the same effect."