Chapter 12

Just then the colonel comes puffing up the hill. He looked as if he'd heard news.

“My child,” he says in a kind of horrified whisper, “can you realize that we have actually passed the night in the--in the ALMSHOUSE?”

Mabel held up her hand. “Hush, papa,” she says. “Hush. I know all about it. Come away, quick; I've got something very important to say to you.”

And she took her dad's arm and went off down the hill, mopping her pretty eyes with her handkerchief and smiling back, every once in a while, through her tears, at Asaph.

Now, it happened that there was a selectmen's meeting that afternoon at four o'clock. I was on hand, and so was Zoeth Tiddit and most of the others. Cap'n Poundberry and Darius Gott were late. Zoeth was as happy as a clam at high water; he'd sold the poorhouse property that very day to a Colonel Lamont, from Harniss, who wanted it for a summer place.

“And I got the price we set on it, too,” says Zoeth. “But that wa'n't the funniest part of it. Seems's old man Lamont and his daughter was very much upset because Debby Badger and Ase Blueworthy would be turned out of house and home 'count of the place being sold. The colonel was hot foot for giving 'em a check for five hundred dollars to square things; said his daughter'd made him promise he would. Says I: 'You can give it to Debby, if you want to, but don't lay a copper on that Blueworthy fraud.' Then I told him the truth about Ase. He couldn't hardly believe it, but I finally convinced him, and he made out the check to Debby. I took it down to her myself just after dinner. Ase was there, and his eyes pretty nigh popped out of his head.

“'Look here,' I says to him; 'if you'd been worth a continental you might have had some of this. As it is, you'll be farmed out somewheres--that's what'll happen to YOU.'”

And as Zoeth was telling this, in comes Cap'n Benijah. He was happy, too.

“I cal'late the Lamonts must be buying all the property alongshore,” he says when he heard the news. “I sold that old shack that I took from Blueworthy to that Lamont girl to-day for three hundred and fifty dollars. She wouldn't say what she wanted of it, neither, and I didn't care much; _I_ was glad to get rid of it.”

“_I_ can tell you what she wanted of it,” says somebody behind us. We turned round and 'twas Gott; he'd come in. “I just met Squire Foster,” he says, “and the squire tells me that that Lamont girl come into his office with the bill of sale for the property you sold her and made him deed it right over to Ase Blueworthy, as a present from her.”

“WHAT?” says all hands, Poundberry loudest of all.

“That's right,” said Darius. “She told the squire a long rigamarole about what a martyr Ase was, and how her dad was going to do some thing for him, but that she was going to give him his home back again with her own money, money her father had given her to buy a ring with, she said, though that ain't reasonable, of course--nobody'd pay that much for a ring. The squire tried to tell her what a no-good Ase was, but she froze him quicker'n--Where you going, Cap'n Benije?”

“I'm going down to that poorhouse,” hollers Poundberry. “I'll find out the rights and wrongs of this thing mighty quick.”

We all said we'd go with him, and we went, six in one carryall. As we hove in sight of the poorhouse a buggy drove away from it, going in t'other direction.

“That looks like the Baptist minister's buggy,” says Darius. “What on earth's he been down here for?”

Nobody could guess. As we run alongside the poorhouse door, Ase Blueworthy stepped out, leading Debby Badger. She was as red as an auction flag.

“By time, Ase Blueworthy!” hollers Cap'n Benijah, starting to get out of the carryall, “what do you mean by--Debby, what are you holding that rascal's hand for?”

But Ase cut him short. “Cap'n Poundberry,” says he, dignified as a boy with a stiff neck, “I might pass over your remarks to me, but when you address my wife--”

“Your WIFE?” hollers everybody--everybody but the cap'n; he only sort of gurgled.

“My wife,” says Asaph. “When you men--church members, too, some of you--sold the house over her head, I'm proud to say that I, having a home once more, was able to step for'ard and ask her to share it with me. We was married a few minutes ago,” he says.

“And, oh, Cap'n Poundberry!” cried Debby, looking as if this was the most wonderful part of it--“oh, Cap'n Poundberry!” she says, “we've known for a long time that some man--an uncommon kind of man--was coming to offer me a home some day, but even Asaph didn't know 'twas himself; did you, Asaph?”

We selectmen talked the thing over going home, but Cap'n Benijah didn't speak till we was turning in at his gate. Then he fetched his knee a thump with his fist, and says he, in the most disgusted tone ever I heard:

“A house and lot for nothing,” he says, “a wife to do the work for him, and five hundred dollars to spend! Sometimes the way this world's run gives me moral indigestion.”

Which was tolerable radical for a Come-Outer to say, seems to me.

JONESY

'Twas Peter T. Brown that suggested it, you might know. And, as likewise you might know, 'twas Cap'n Jonadab that done the most of the growling.

“They ain't no sense in it, Peter,” says he. “Education's all right in its place, but 'tain't no good out of it. Why, one of my last voyages in the schooner Samuel Emory, I had a educated cook, feller that had graduated from one of them correspondence schools. He had his diploma framed and hung up on the wall of the galley along with tintypes of two or three of his wives, and pictures cut out of the Police News, and the like of that. And cook! Why, say! one of the fo'mast hands ate half a dozen of that cook's saleratus biscuit and fell overboard. If he hadn't been tangled up in his cod line, so we could haul him up by that, he'd have been down yet. He'd never have riz of his own accord, not with them biscuits in him. And as for his pie! the mate ate one of them bakeshop paper plates one time, thinking 'twas under crust; and he kept sayin' how unusual tender 'twas, at that. Now, what good was education to that cook? Why--”

“Cut it out!” says Peter T., disgusted. “Who's talking about cooks? These fellers ain't cooks--they're--”

“I know. They're waiters. Now, there 'tis again. When I give an order and there's any back talk, I want to understand it. You take a passel of college fellers, like you want to hire for waiters. S'pose I tell one of 'em to do something, and he answers back in Greek or Hindoo, or such. _I_ can't tell what he says. I sha'n't know whether to bang him over the head or give him a cigar. What's the matter with the waiters we had last year? They talked Irish, of course, but I understood the most of that, and when I didn't 'twas safe to roll up my sleeves and begin arguing. But--”

“Oh, ring off!” says Peter. “Twenty-three!”

And so they had it, back and forth. I didn't say nothing. I knew how 'twould end. If Peter T. Brown thought 'twas good judgment to hire a mess of college boys for waiters, fellers who could order up the squab in pigeon-English and the ham in hog-Latin, I didn't care, so long as the orders and boarders got filled and the payroll didn't have growing pains. I had considerable faith in Brown's ideas, and he was as set on this one as a Brahma hen on a plaster nest-egg.

“It'll give tone to the shebang,” says he, referring to the hotel; “and we want to keep the Old Home House as high-toned as a ten-story organ factory. And as for education, that's a matter of taste. Me, I'd just as soon have a waiter that bashfully admitted 'Wee, my dam,' as I would one that pushed 'Shur-r-e, Moike!' edge-ways out of one corner of his mouth and served the lettuce on top of the lobster, from principle, to keep the green above the red. When it comes to tone and tin, Cap'n, you trust your Uncle Pete; he hasn't been sniffling around the tainted-money bunch all these days with a cold in his head.”

So it went his way finally, as I knew it would, and when the Old Home opened up on June first, the college waiters was on hand. And they was as nice a lot of boys as ever handled plates and wiped dishes for their board and four dollars a week. They was poor, of course, and working their passage through what they called the “varsity,” but they attended to business and wa'n't a mite set up by their learning.

And they made a hit with the boarders, especially the women folks. Take the crankiest old battle ship that ever cruised into breakfast with diamond headlights showing and a pretty daughter in tow, and she would eat lumpy oatmeal and scorched eggs and never sound a distress signal. How could she, with one of them nice-looking gentlemanly waiters hanging over her starboard beam and purring, “Certainly, madam,” and “Two lumps or one, madam?” into her ear? Then, too, she hadn't much time to find fault with the grub, having to keep one eye on the daughter. The amount of complaints that them college boys saved in the first fortnight was worth their season's wages, pretty nigh. Before June was over the Old Home was full up and we had to annex a couple of next-door houses for the left-overs.

I was skipper for one of them houses, and Jonadab run the other. Each of us had a cook and a waiter, a housekeeper and an up-stairs girl. My housekeeper was the boss prize in the package. Her name was Mabel Seabury, and she was young and quiet and as pretty as the first bunch of Mayflowers in the spring. And a lady--whew! The first time I set opposite to her at table I made up my mind I wouldn't drink out of my sasser if I scalded the lining off my throat.

She was city born and brought up, but she wa'n't one of your common “He! he! ain't you turrible!” lunch-counter princesses, with a head like a dandelion gone to seed and a fish-net waist. You bet she wa'n't! Her dad had had money once, afore he tried to beat out Jonah and swallow the stock exchange whale. After that he was skipper of a little society library up to Cambridge, and she kept house for him. Then he died and left her his blessing, and some of Peter Brown's wife's folks, that knew her when she was well off, got her the job of housekeeper here with us.

The only trouble she made was first along, and that wa'n't her fault. I thought at one time we'd have to put up a wire fence to keep them college waiters away from her. They hung around her like a passel of gulls around a herring boat. She was nice to 'em, too, but when you're just so nice to everybody and not nice enough to any special one, the prospect ain't encouraging. So they give it up, but there wa'n't a male on the place, from old Dr. Blatt, mixer of Blatt's Burdock Bitters and Blatt's Balm for Beauty, down to the boy that emptied the ashes, who wouldn't have humped himself on all fours and crawled eight miles if she'd asked him to. And that includes me and Cap'n Jonadab, and we're about as tough a couple of women-proof old hulks as you'll find afloat.

Jonadab took a special interest in her. It pretty nigh broke his heart to think she was running my house instead of his. He thought she'd ought to be married and have a home of her own.

“Well,” says I, “why don't she get married then? She could drag out and tie up any single critter of the right sex in this neighborhood with both hands behind her back.”

“Humph!” says he. “I s'pose you'd have her marry one of these soup-toting college chaps, wouldn't you? Then they could live on Greek for breakfast and Latin for dinner and warm over the leavings for supper. No, sir! a girl hasn't no right to get married unless she gets a man with money. There's a deck-load of millionaires comes here every summer, and I'm goin' to help her land one of 'em. It's my duty as a Christian,” says he.

One evening, along the second week in July 'twas, I got up from the supper-table and walked over toward the hotel, smoking, and thinking what I'd missed in not having a girl like that set opposite me all these years. And, in the shadder of the big bunch of lilacs by the gate, I see a feller standing, a feller with a leather bag in his hand, a stranger.

“Good evening,” says I. “Looking for the hotel, was you?”

He swung round, kind of lazy-like, and looked at me. Then I noticed how big he was. Seemed to me he was all of seven foot high and broad according. And rigged up--my soul! He had on a wide, felt hat, with a whirligig top onto it, and a light checked suit, and gloves, and slung more style than a barber on Sunday. If I'D wore them kind of duds they'd have had me down to Danvers, clanking chains and picking straws, but on this young chap they looked fine.

“Good evening,” says the seven-footer, looking down and speaking to me cheerful. “Is this the Old Ladies' Home--the Old Home House, I should say?”

“Yes, sir,” says I, looking up reverent at that hat.

“Right,” he says. “Will you be good enough to tell me where I can find the proprietor?”

“Well,” says I, “I'm him; that is, I'm one of him. But I'm afraid we can't accommodate you, mister, not now. We ain't got a room nowheres that ain't full.”

He knocked the ashes off his cigarette. “I'm not looking for a room,” says he, “except as a side issue. I'm looking for a job.”

“A job!” I sings out. “A JOB?”

“Yes. I understand you employ college men as waiters. I'm from Harvard, and--”

“A waiter?” I says, so astonished that I could hardly swaller. “Be you a waiter?”

“_I_ don't know. I've been told so. Our coach used to say I was the best waiter on the team. At any rate I'll try the experiment.”

Soon's ever I could gather myself together I reached across and took hold of his arm.

“Son,” says I, “you come with me and turn in. You'll feel better in the morning. I don't know where I'll put you, unless it's the bowling alley, but I guess that's your size. You oughtn't to get this way at your age.”

He laughed a big, hearty laugh, same as I like to hear. “It's straight,” he says. “I mean it. I want a job.”

“But what for? You ain't short of cash?”

“You bet!” he says. “Strapped.”

“Then,” says I, “you come with me to-night and to-morrer morning you go somewheres and sell them clothes you've got on. You'll make more out of that than you will passing pie, if you passed it for a year.”

He laughed again, but he said he was bound to be a waiter and if I couldn't help him he'd have to hunt up the other portion of the proprietor. So I told him to stay where he was, and I went off and found Peter T. You'd ought to seen Peter stare when we hove in sight of the candidate.

“Thunder!” says he. “Is this Exhibit One, Barzilla? Where'd you pick up the Chinese giant?”

I done the polite, mentioning Brown's name, hesitating on t'other chap's.

“Er-Jones,” says the human lighthouse. “Er-yes; Jones.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Jones,” says Peter. “So you want to be a waiter, do you? For how much per?”

“Oh, I don't know. I'll begin at the bottom, being a green hand. Twenty a week or so; whatever you're accustomed to paying.”

Brown choked. “The figure's all right,” he says, “only it covers a month down here.”

“Right!” says Jones, not a bit shook up. “A month goes.”

Peter stepped back and looked him over, beginning with the tan shoes and ending with the whirligig hat.

“Jonesy,” says he, finally, “you're on. Take him to the servants' quarters, Wingate.”

A little later, when I had the chance and had Brown alone, I says to him:

“Peter,” says I, “for the land sakes what did you hire the emperor for? A blind man could see HE wa'n't no waiter. And we don't need him anyhow; no more'n a cat needs three tails. Why--”

But he was back at me before I could wink. “Need him?” he says. “Why, Barzilla, we need him more than the old Harry needs a conscience. Take a bird's-eye view of him! Size him up! He puts all the rest of the Greek statues ten miles in the shade. If I could only manage to get his picture in the papers we'd have all the romantic old maids in Boston down here inside of a week; and there's enough of THEM to keep one hotel going till judgment. Need him? Whew!”

Next morning we was at the breakfast-table in my branch establishment, me and Mabel and the five boarders. All hands was doing their best to start a famine in the fruit market, and Dr. Blatt was waving a banana and cheering us with a yarn about an old lady that his Burdock Bitters had h'isted bodily out of the tomb. He was at the most exciting part, the bitters and the undertaker coming down the last lap neck and neck, and an even bet who'd win the patient, when the kitchen door opens and in marches the waiter with the tray full of dishes of “cereal.” Seems to me 'twas chopped hay we had that morning--either that or shavings; I always get them breakfast foods mixed up.

But 'twa'n't the hay that made everybody set up and take notice. 'Twas the waiter himself. Our regular steward was a spindling little critter with curls and eye-glasses who answered to the hail of “Percy.” This fellow clogged up the scenery like a pet elephant, and was down in the shipping list as “Jones.”

The doc left his invalid hanging on the edge of the grave, and stopped and stared. Old Mrs. Bounderby h'isted the gold-mounted double spyglass she had slung round her neck and took an observation. Her daughter “Maizie” fetched a long breath and shut her eyes, like she'd seen her finish and was resigned to it.

“Well, Mr. Jones,” says I, soon's I could get my breath, “this is kind of unexpected, ain't it? Thought you was booked for the main deck.”

“Yes, sir,” he says, polite as a sewing-machine agent, “I was, but Percy and I have exchanged. Cereal this morning, madam?”

Mrs. Bounderby took her measure of shavings and Jones's measure at the same time. She had him labeled “Danger” right off; you could tell that by the way she spread her wings over “Maizie.” But I wa'n't watching her just then. I was looking at Mabel Seabury--looking and wondering.

The housekeeper was white as the tablecloth. She stared at the Jones man as if she couldn't believe her eyes, and her breath come short and quick. I thought sure she was going to cry. And what she ate of that meal wouldn't have made a lunch for a hearty humming-bird.

When 'twas finished I went out on the porch to think things over. The dining room winder was open and Jonesy was clearing the table. All of a sudden I heard him say, low and earnest:

“Well, aren't you going to speak to me?”

The answer was in a girl's voice, and I knew the voice. It said:

“You! YOU! How COULD you? Why did you come?”

“You didn't think I could stay away, did you?”

“But how did you know I was here? I tried so hard to keep it a secret.”

“It took me a month, but I worked it out finally. Aren't you glad to see me?”

She burst out crying then, quiet, but as if her heart was broke.

“Oh!” she sobs. “How could you be so cruel! And they've been so kind to me here.”

I went away then, thinking harder than ever. At dinner Jonesy done the waiting, but Mabel wa'n't on deck. She had a headache, the cook said, and was lying down. 'Twas the same way at supper, and after supper Peter Brown comes to me, all broke up, and says he:

“There's merry clink to pay,” he says. “Mabel's going to leave.”

“No?” says I. “She ain't neither!”

“Yes, she is. She says she's going to-morrer. She won't tell me why, and I've argued with her for two hours. She's going to quit, and I'd rather enough sight quit myself. What'll we do?” says he.

I couldn't help him none, and he went away, moping and miserable. All round the place everybody was talking about the “lovely” new waiter, and to hear the girls go on you'd think the Prince of Wales had landed. Jonadab was the only kicker, and he said 'twas bad enough afore, but now that new dude had shipped, 'twa'n't the place for a decent, self-respecting man.

“How you goin' to order that Grand Panjandrum around?” he says. “Great land of Goshen! I'd as soon think of telling the Pope of Rome to empty a pail of swill as I would him. Why don't he stay to home and be a tailor's sign or something? Not prance around here with his high-toned airs. I'm glad you've got him, Barzilla, and not me.”

Well, most of that was plain jealousy, so I didn't contradict. Besides I was too busy thinking. By eight o'clock I'd made up my mind and I went hunting for Jones.

I found him, after a while, standing by the back door and staring up at the chamber winders as if he missed something. I asked him to come along with me. Told him I had a big cargo of talk aboard, and wouldn't be able to cruise on an even keel till I'd unloaded some of it. So he fell into my wake, looking puzzled, and in a jiffy we was planted in the rocking chairs up in my bedroom.

“Look here,” says I, “Mr.--Mr.--”

“Jones,” says he.

“Oh, yes--Jones. It's a nice name.”

“I remember it beautifully,” says he, smiling.

“All right, Mr. Jones. Now, to begin with, we'll agree that it ain't none of my darn business, and I'm an old gray-headed nosey, and the like of that. But, being that I AM old--old enough to be your dad, though that's my only recommend for the job--I'm going to preach a little sermon. My text is found in the Old Home Hotel, Wellmouth, first house on the left. It's Miss Seabury,” says I.

He was surprised, I guess, but he never turned a hair. “Indeed?” he says. “She is the--the housekeeper, isn't she?”

“She was,” says I, “but she leaves to-morrer morning.”

THAT hit him between wind and water.

“No?” he sings out, setting up straight and staring at me. “Not really?”

“You bet,” I says. “Now down in this part of the chart we've come to think more of that young lady than a cat does of the only kitten left out of the bag in the water bucket. Let me tell you about her.”

So I went ahead, telling him how Mabel had come to us, why she come, how well she was liked, how much she liked us, and a whole lot more. I guess he knew the most of it, but he was too polite not to act interested.

“And now, all at once,” says I, “she gives up being happy and well and contented, and won't eat, and cries, and says she's going to leave. There's a reason, as the advertisement folks say, and I'm going to make a guess at it. I believe it calls itself Jones.”

His under jaw pushed out a little and his eyebrows drew together. But all he said was, “Well?”

“Yes,” I says. “And now, Mr. Jones, I'm old, as I said afore, and nosey maybe, but I like that girl. Perhaps I might come to like you, too; you can't tell. Under them circumstances, and with the understanding that it didn't go no farther, maybe you might give me a glimpse of the lay of the land. Possibly I might have something to say that would help. I'm fairly white underneath, if I be sunburned. What do you think about it?”

He didn't answer right off; seemed to be chewing it over. After a spell he spoke.

“Mr. Wingate,” says he, “with the understanding that you mentioned, I don't mind supposing a case. Suppose you was a chap in college. Suppose you met a girl in the vicinity that was--well, was about the best ever. Suppose you came to find that life wasn't worth a continental without that girl. Then suppose you had a dad with money, lots of money. Suppose the old fo--the gov'nor, I mean--without even seeing her or even knowing her name or a thing about her, said no. Suppose you and the old gentleman had a devil of a row, and broke off for keeps. Then suppose the girl wouldn't listen to you under the circumstances. Talked rot about 'wasted future' and 'throwing your life away' and so on. Suppose, when you showed her that you didn't care a red for futures, she ran away from you and wouldn't tell where she'd gone. Suppose--well, I guess that's enough supposing. I don't know why I'm telling you these things, anyway.”

He stopped and scowled at the floor, acting like he was sorry he spoke. I pulled at my pipe a minute or so and then says I:

“Hum!” I says, “I presume likely it's fair to suppose that this break with the old gent is for good?”

He didn't answer, but he didn't need to; the look on his face was enough.