Chapter 14

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_ CHAPTER XIV

The Hunniwell Thanksgiving dinner was an entire success. Even Captain Sam himself was forced to admit it, although he professed to do so with reluctance.

"Yes," he said, with an elaborate wink in the direction of his guests, "it's a pretty good dinner, considerin' everything. Of course 'tain't what a feller used to get down at Sam Coy's eatin'- house on Atlantic Avenue, but it's pretty good--as I say, when everything's considered."

His daughter was highly indignant. "Do you mean to say that this dinner isn't as good as those you used to get at that Boston restaurant, Pa?" she demanded. "Don't you dare say such a thing."

Her father tugged at his beard and looked tremendously solemn.

"Well," he observed, "as a boy I was brought up to always speak the truth and I've tried to live up to my early trainin'. Speakin' as a truthful man, then, I'm obliged to say that this dinner ain't like those I used to get at Sam Coy's."

Ruth put in a word. "Well, then, Captain Hunniwell," she said, "I think the restaurant you refer to must be one of the best in the world."

Before the captain could reply, Maud did it for him.

"Mrs. Armstrong," she cautioned, "you mustn't take my father too seriously. He dearly loves to catch people with what he hopes is a joke. For a minute he caught even me this time, but I see through him now. He didn't say the dinner at his precious restaurant was BETTER than this one, he said it wasn't like it, that's all. Which is probably true," she added, with withering scorn. "But what I should like to know is what he means by his 'everything considered.'"

Her father's gravity was unshaken. "Well," he said, "all I meant was that this was a pretty good dinner, considerin' who was responsible for gettin' it up."

"I see, I see. Mrs. Ellis, our housekeeper, and I are responsible, Mrs. Armstrong, so you understand now who he is shooting at. Very well, Pa," she added, calmly, "the rest of us will have our dessert now. You can get yours at Sam Coy's."

The dessert was mince pie and a Boston frozen pudding, the latter an especial favorite of Captain Sam's. He capitulated at once.

"'Kamerad! Kamerad!'" he cried, holding up both hands. "That's what the Germans say when they surrender, ain't it? I give in, Maud. You can shoot me against a stone wall, if you want to, only give me my frozen puddin' first. It ain't so much that I like the puddin'," he explained to Mrs. Armstrong, "but I never can make out whether it's flavored with tansy or spearmint. Maud won't tell me, but I know it's somethin' old-fashioned and reminds me of my grandmother; or, maybe, it's my grandfather; come to think, I guess likely 'tis."

Ruth grasped his meaning later when she tasted the pudding and found it flavored with New England rum.

After dinner they adjourned to the parlor. Maud, being coaxed by her adoring father, played the piano. Then she sang. Then they all sang, all except Jed and the captain, that is. The latter declared that his voice had mildewed in the damp weather they had been having lately, and Jed excused himself on the ground that he had been warned not to sing because it was not healthy.

Barbara was surprised and shocked.

"Why, Uncle Jed!" she cried. "You sing EVER so much. I heard you singing this morning."

Jed nodded. "Ye-es," he drawled, "but I was alone then and I'm liable to take chances with my own health. Bluey Batcheldor was in the shop last week, though, when I was tunin' up and it disagreed with HIM."

"I don't believe it, Uncle Jed," with righteous indignation. "How do you know it did?"

"'Cause he said so. He listened a spell, and then said I made him sick, so I took his word for it."

Captain Sam laughed uproariously. "You must be pretty bad then, Jed," he declared. "Anybody who disagrees with Bluey Batcheldor must be pretty nigh the limit."

Jed nodded. "Um-hm," he said, reflectively, "pretty nigh, but not quite. Always seemed to me the real limit was anybody who agreed with him."

So Jed, with Babbie on his knee, sat in the corner of the bay window looking out on the street, while Mrs. Armstrong and her brother and Miss Hunniwell played and sang and the captain applauded vigorously and loudly demanded more. After a time Ruth left the group at the piano and joined Jed and her daughter by the window. Captain Hunniwell came a few minutes later.

"Make a good-lookin' couple, don't they?" he whispered, bending down, and with a jerk of his head in the direction of the musicians. "Your brother's a fine-lookin' young chap, Mrs. Armstrong. And he acts as well as he looks. Don't know when I've taken such a shine to a young feller as I have to him. Yes, ma'am, they make a good-lookin' couple, even if one of 'em is my daughter."

The speech was made without the slightest thought or suggestion of anything but delighted admiration and parental affection. Nevertheless, Ruth, to whom it was made, started slightly, and, turning, regarded the pair at the piano. Maud was fingering the pages of a book of college songs and looking smilingly up into the face of Charles Phillips, who was looking down into hers. There was, apparently, nothing in the picture--a pretty one, by the way-- to cause Mrs. Armstrong to gaze so fixedly or to bring the slight frown to her forehead. After a moment she turned toward Jed Winslow. Their eyes met and in his she saw the same startled hint of wonder, of possible trouble, she knew he must see in hers. Then they both looked away.

Captain Hunniwell prated proudly on, chanting praises of his daughter's capabilities and talents, as he did to any one who would listen, and varying the monotony with occasional references to the wonderful manner in which young Phillips had "taken hold" at the bank. Ruth nodded and murmured something from time to time, but to any one less engrossed by his subject than the captain it would have been evident she was paying little attention. Jed, who was being entertained by Babbie and Petunia, was absently pretending to be much interested in a fairy story which the former was improvising--she called the process "making up as I go along"--for his benefit. Suddenly he leaned forward and spoke.

"Sam," he said, "there's somebody comin' up the walk. I didn't get a good sight of him, but it ain't anybody that lives here in Orham regular."

"Eh? That so?" demanded the captain. "How do you know 'tain't if you didn't see him?"

"'Cause he's comin' to the front door," replied Mr. Winslow, with unanswerable logic. "There he is now, comin' out from astern of that lilac bush. Soldier, ain't he?"

It was Ruth Armstrong who first recognized the visitor. "Why," she exclaimed, "it is Major Grover, isn't it?"

The major it was, and a moment later Captain Hunniwell ushered him into the room. He had come to Orham on an errand, he explained, and had stopped at the windmill shop to see Mr. Winslow. Finding the latter out, he had taken the liberty of following him to the Hunniwell home.

"I'm going to stay but a moment, Captain Hunniwell," he went on. "I wanted to talk with Winslow on a--well, on a business matter. Of course I won't do it now but perhaps we can arrange a time convenient for us both when I can."

"Don't cal'late there'll be much trouble about that," observed the captain, with a chuckle. "Jed generally has time convenient for 'most everybody; eh, Jed?"

Jed nodded. "Um-hm," he drawled, "for everybody but Gab Bearse."

"So you and Jed are goin' to talk business, eh?" queried Captain Sam, much amused at the idea. "Figgerin' to have him rig up windmills to drive those flyin' machines of yours, Major?"

"Not exactly. My business was of another kind, and probably not very important, at that. I shall probably be over here again on Monday, Winslow. Can you see me then?"

Jed rubbed his chin. "Ye-es," he said, "I'll be on private exhibition to my friends all day. And children half price," he added, giving Babbie a hug. "But say, Major, how in the world did you locate me to-day? How did you know I was over here to Sam's? I never told you I was comin', I'll swear to that."

For some reason or other Major Grover seemed just a little embarrassed.

"Why no," he said, stammering a trifle, "you didn't tell me, but some one did. Now, who--"

"I think I told you, Major," put in Ruth Armstrong. "Last evening, when you called to--to return Charlie's umbrella. I told you we were to dine here to-day and that Jed--Mr. Winslow--was to dine with us. Don't you remember?"

Grover remembered perfectly then, of course. He hastened to explain that, having borrowed the umbrella of Charles Phillips the previous week, he had dropped in on his next visit to Orham to return it.

Jed grunted.

"Humph!" he said, "you never came to see me last night. When you was as close aboard as next door seems's if you might."

The major laughed. "Well, you'll have to admit that I came to- day," he said.

"Yes," put in Captain Sam, "and, now you are here, you're goin' to stay a spell. Oh, yes, you are, too. Uncle Sam don't need you so hard that he can't let you have an hour or so off on Thanksgiving Day. Maud, why in time didn't we think to have Major Grover here for dinner along with the rest of the folks? Say, couldn't you eat a plate of frozen puddin' right this minute? We've got some on hand that tastes of my grandfather, and we want to get rid of it."

Their caller laughingly declined the frozen pudding, but he was prevailed upon to remain and hear Miss Hunniwell play. So Maud played and Charles turned the music for her, and Major Grover listened and talked with Ruth Armstrong in the intervals between selections. And Jed and Barbara chatted and Captain Sam beamed good humor upon every one. It was a very pleasant, happy afternoon. War and suffering and heartache and trouble seemed a long, long way off.

On the way back to the shop in the chill November dusk Grover told Jed a little of what he had called to discuss with him. If Jed's mind had been of the super-critical type it might have deemed the subject of scarcely sufficient importance to warrant the major's pursuing him to the Hunniwells'. It was simply the subject of Phineas Babbitt and the latter's anti-war utterances and surmised disloyalty.

"You see," explained Grover, "some one evidently has reported the old chap to the authorities as a suspicious person. The government, I imagine, isn't keen on sending a special investigator down here, so they have asked me to look into the matter. I don't know much about Babbitt, but I thought you might. Is he disloyal, do you think?"

Jed hesitated. Things the hardware dealer had said had been reported to him, of course; but gossip--particularly the Bearse brand of gossip--was not the most reliable of evidence. Then he remembered his own recent conversation with Leander and the latter's expressed fear that his father might get into trouble. Jed determined, for the son's sake, not to bring that trouble nearer.

"Well, Major," he answered, "I shouldn't want to say that he was. Phineas talks awful foolish sometimes, but I shouldn't wonder if that was his hot head and bull temper as much as anything else. As to whether he's anything more than foolish or not, course I couldn't say sartin, but I don't think he's too desperate to be runnin' loose. I cal'late he won't put any bombs underneath the town hall or anything of that sort. Phin and his kind remind me some of that new kind of balloon you was tellin' me they'd probably have over to your camp when 'twas done, that--er--er--dirigible; wasn't that what you called it?"

"Yes. But why does Babbitt remind you of a dirigible balloon? I don't see the connection."

"Don't you? Well, seems's if I did. Phin fills himself up with the gas he gets from his Anarchist papers and magazines--the 'rich man's war' and all the rest of it--and goes up in the air and when he's up in the air he's kind of hard to handle. That's what you told me about the balloon, if I recollect."

Grover laughed heartily. "Then the best thing to do is to keep him on the ground, I should say," he observed.

Jed rubbed his chin. "Um-hm," he drawled, "but shuttin' off his gas supply might help some. I don't think I'd worry about him much, if I was you."

They separated at the front gate before the shop, where the rows of empty posts, from which the mills and vanes had all been removed, stood as gaunt reminders of the vanished summer. Major Grover refused Jed's invitation to come in and have a smoke.

"No, thank you," he said, "not this evening. I'll wait here a moment and say good-night to the Armstrongs and Phillips and then I must be on my way to the camp. . . . Why, what's the matter? Anything wrong?"

His companion was searching in his various pockets. The search completed, he proceeded to look himself over, so to speak, taking off his hat and looking at that, lifting a hand and then a foot and looking at them, and all with a puzzled, far-away expression. When Grover repeated his question he seemed to hear it for the first time and then not very clearly.

"Eh?" he drawled. "Oh, why--er--yes, there IS somethin' wrong. That is to say, there ain't, and that's the wrong part of it. I don't seem to have forgotten anything, that's the trouble."

His friend burst out laughing.

"I should scarcely call that a trouble," he said.

"Shouldn't you? No, I presume likely you wouldn't. But I never go anywhere without forgettin' somethin', forgettin' to say somethin' or do somethin' or bring somethin'. Never did in all my life. Now here I am home again and I can't remember that I've forgot a single thing. . . . Hum. . . . Well, I declare! I wonder what it means. Maybe, it's a sign somethin's goin' to happen."

He said good night absent-mindedly. Grover laughed and walked away to meet Ruth and her brother, who, with Barbara dancing ahead, were coming along the sidewalk. He had gone but a little way when he heard Mr. Winslow shouting his name.

"Major!" shouted Jed. "Major Grover! It's all right, Major, I feel better now. I've found it. 'Twas the key. I left it in the front door lock here when I went away this mornin'. I guess there's nothin' unnatural about me, after all; guess nothin's goin' to happen."

But something did and almost immediately. Jed, entering the outer shop, closed the door and blundered on through that apartment and the little shop adjoining until he came to his living-room beyond. Then he fumbled about in the darkness for a lamp and matchbox. He found the latter first, on the table where the lamp should have been. Lighting one of the matches, he then found the lamp on a chair directly in front of the door, where he had put it before going away that morning, his idea in so doing being that it would thus be easier to locate when he returned at night. Thanking his lucky stars that he had not upset both chair and lamp in his prowlings, Mr. Winslow lighted the latter. Then, with it in his hand, he turned, to see the very man he and Major Grover had just been discussing seated in the rocker in the corner of the room and glaring at him malevolently.

Naturally, Jed was surprised. Naturally, also, being himself, he showed his surprise in his own peculiar way. He did not start violently, nor utter an exclamation. Instead he stood stock still, returning Phineas Babbitt's glare with a steady, unwinking gaze.

It was the hardware dealer who spoke first. And that, by the way, was precisely what he had not meant to do.

"Yes," he observed, with caustic sarcasm, "it's me. You needn't stand there blinkin' like a fool any longer, Shavin's. It's me."

Jed set the lamp upon the table. He drew a long breath, apparently of relief.

"Why, so 'tis," he said, solemnly. "When I first saw you sittin' there, Phin, I had a suspicion 'twas you, but the longer I looked the more I thought 'twas the President come to call. Do you know," he added, confidentially, "if you didn't have any whiskers and he looked like you you'd be the very image of him."

This interesting piece of information was not received with enthusiasm. Mr. Babbitt's sense of humor was not acutely developed.

"Never mind the funny business, Shavin's," he snapped. "I didn't come here to be funny to-night. Do you know why I came here to talk to you?"

Jed pulled forward a chair and sat down.

"I presume likely you came here because you found the door unlocked, Phin," he said.

"I didn't say HOW I came to come, but WHY I came. I knew where you was this afternoon. I see you when you left there and I had a good mind to cross over and say what I had to say before the whole crew, Sam Hunniwell, and his stuck-up rattle-head of a daughter, and that Armstrong bunch that think themselves so uppish, and all of 'em."

Mr. Winslow stirred uneasily in his chair. "Now, Phin," he protested, "seems to me--"

But Babbitt was too excited to heed. His little eyes snapped and his bristling beard quivered.

"You hold your horses, Shavin's," he ordered. "I didn't come here to listen to you. I came because I had somethin' to say and when I've said it I'm goin' and goin' quick. My boy's been home. You knew that, I suppose, didn't you?"

Jed nodded. "Yes," he said, "I knew Leander'd come home for Thanksgivin'."

"Oh, you did! He came here to this shop to see you, maybe? Humph! I'll bet he did, the poor fool!"

Again Jed shifted his position. His hands clasped about his knee and his foot lifted from the floor.

"There, there, Phin," he said gently; "after all, he's your only son, you know."

"I know it. But he's a fool just the same."

"Now, Phin! The boy'll be goin' to war pretty soon, you know, and--"

Babbitt sprang to his feet. His chin trembled so that he could scarcely speak.

"Shut up!" he snarled. "Don't let me hear you say that again, Jed Winslow. Who sent him to war? Who filled his head full of rubbish about patriotism, and duty to the country, and all the rest of the rotten Wall Street stuff? Who put my boy up to enlistin', Jed Winslow?"

Jed's foot swung slowly back and forth.

"Well, Phin," he drawled, "to be real honest, I think he put himself up to it."

"You're a liar. YOU did it."

Jed sighed. "Did Leander tell you I did?" he asked.

"No," mockingly, "Leander didn't tell me. You and Sam Hunniwell and the rest of the gang have fixed him so he don't come to his father to tell things any longer. But he told his step-mother this very mornin' and she told me. You was the one that advised him to enlist, he said. Good Lord; think of it! He don't go to his own father for advice; he goes to the town jackass instead, the critter that spends his time whittlin' out young-one's playthings. My Lord A'mighty!"

He spat on the floor to emphasize his disgust. There was an interval of silence before Jed answered.

"Well, Phin," he said, slowly, "you're right, in a way. Leander and I have always been pretty good friends and he's been in the habit of droppin' in here to talk things over with me. When he came to me to ask what he ought to do about enlistin', asked what I'd do if I was he, I told him; that's all there was to it."

Babbitt extended a shaking forefinger.

"Yes, and you told him to go to war. Don't lie out of it now; you know you did."

"Um . . . yes . . . I did."

"You did? You DID? And you have the cheek to own up to it right afore my face."

Jed's hand stroked his chin. "W-e-e-ll," he drawled, "you just ordered me not to lie out of it, you know. Leander asked me right up and down if I wouldn't enlist if I was in his position. Naturally, I said I would."

"Yes, you did. And you knew all the time how I felt about it, you SNEAK."

Jed's foot slowly sank to the floor and just as slowly he hoisted himself from the chair.

"Phin," he said, with deliberate mildness, "is there anything else you'd like to ask me? 'Cause if there isn't, maybe you'd better run along."

"You sneakin' coward!"

"Er--er--now--now, Phin, you didn't understand. I said 'ask' me, not 'call' me."

"No, I didn't come here to ask you anything. I came here and waited here so's to be able to tell you somethin'. And that is that I know now that you're responsible for my son--my only boy, the boy I'd depended on--and--and--"

The fierce little man was, for the moment, close to breaking down. Jed's heart softened; he felt almost conscience-stricken.

"I'm sorry for you, Phineas," he said. "I know how hard it must be for you. Leander realized it, too. He--"

"Shut up! Shavin's, you listen to me. I don't forget. All my life I've never forgot. And I ain't never missed gettin' square. I can wait, just as I waited here in the dark over an hour so's to say this to you. I'll get square with you just as I'll get square with Sam Hunniwell. . . . That's all. . . . That's all. . . . DAMN YOU!"

He stamped from the room and Jed heard him stumbling through the littered darkness of the shops on his way to the front door, kicking at the obstacles he tripped over and swearing and sobbing as he went. It was ridiculous enough, of course, but Jed did not feel like smiling. The bitterness of the little man's final curse was not humorous. Neither was the heartbreak in his tone when he spoke of his boy. Jed felt no self-reproach; he had advised Leander just as he might have advised his own son had his life been like other men's lives, normal men who had married and possessed sons. He had no sympathy for Phineas Babbitt's vindictive hatred of all those more fortunate than he or who opposed him, or for his silly and selfish ideas concerning the war. But he did pity him; he pitied him profoundly.

Babbitt had left the front door open in his emotional departure and Jed followed to close it. Before doing so he stepped out into the yard.

It was pitch dark now and still. He could hear the footsteps of his recent visitor pounding up the road, and the splashy grumble of the surf on the bar was unusually audible. He stood for a moment looking up at the black sky, with the few stars shining between the cloud blotches. Then he turned and looked at the little house next door.

The windows of the sitting-room were alight and the shades drawn. At one window he saw Charles Phillips' silhouette; he was reading, apparently. Across the other shade Ruth's dainty profile came and went. Jed looked and looked. He saw her turn and speak to some one. Then another shadow crossed the window, the shadow of Major Grover. Evidently the major had not gone home at once as he had told Jed he intended doing, plainly he had been persuaded to enter the Armstrong house and make Charlie and his sister a short call. This was Jed's estimate of the situation, his sole speculation concerning it and its probabilities.

And yet Mr. Gabe Bearse, had he seen the major's shadow upon the Armstrong window curtain, might have speculated much. _

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