Chapter 4

Pretty soon out comes Peter, looking dubious at the sky.

“If it was anybody else but Beriah,” he says, “I'd say this mornings prophecy ought to be sent to Puck. Where is the seventh son of the seventh son--the only original American seer?”

He wasn't in the weather-shanty, and we finally found him on one of the seats 'way up on the edge of the bluff. He didn't look 'round when we come up, but just stared at the water.

“Hey, Elijah!” says Brown. He was always calling Beriah “Elijah” or “Isaiah” or “Jeremiah” or some other prophet name out of Scripture. “Does this go?” And he held out the telegraph-blank with the morning's prediction on it.

Beriah looked around just for a second. He looked to me sort of sick and pale--that is, as pale as his sun-burned rhinoceros hide would ever turn.

“The forecast for to-day,” says he, looking at the water again, “is cloudy in the forenoon, but clearing later on. Wind sou'east, changing to south and sou'west.”

“Right you are!” says Peter, joyful. “We start for Setuckit, then. And here's where the South Shore Weather Bureau hands another swift jolt to your Uncle Sam.”

So, after breakfast, the catboats loaded up, the girls giggling and screaming, and the men boarders dressed in what they hoped was sea-togs. They sailed away 'round the lighthouse and headed up the shore, and the wind was sou'east sure and sartin, but the “clearing” part wasn't in sight yet.

Beriah didn't watch 'em go. He stayed in the shanty. But by and by, when Eben drove the buggy out of the barn and Emma come skipping down the piazza steps, I see him peeking out of the little winder.

The Kelly critter had all sail sot and colors flying. Her dress was some sort of mosquito netting with wall-paper posies on it, and there was more ribbons flapping than there is reef-p'ints on a mainsail. And her hat! Great guns! It looked like one of them pictures you see in a flower-seed catalogue.

“Oh!” she squeals, when she sees the buggy. “Oh! Mr. Cobb. Ain't you afraid to go in that open carriage? It looks to me like rain.”

But Eben waved his flipper, scornful. “My forecast this morning,” says he, “is cloudy now, but clearing by and by. You trust to me, Mis' Kelly. Weather's my business.”

“Of COURSE I trust you, Mr. Cobb,” she says, “Of course I trust you, but I should hate to spile my gown, that's all.”

They drove out of the yard, fine as fiddlers, and I watched 'em go. When I turned around, there was Beriah watching 'em too, and he was smiling for the first time that morning. But it was one of them kind of smiles that makes you wish he'd cry.

At ha'f-past ten it begun to sprinkle; at eleven 'twas raining hard; at noon 'twas a pouring, roaring, sou'easter, and looked good for the next twelve hours at least.

“Good Lord! Beriah,” says Cap'n Jonadab, running into the Weather Bureau, “you've missed stays THIS time, for sure. Has your prophecy-works got indigestion?” he says.

But Beriah wasn't there. The shanty was closed, and we found out afterwards that he spent that whole day in the store down at the Port.

By two o'clock 'twas so bad that I put on my ileskins and went over to Wellmouth and telephoned to the Setuckit Beach life-saving station to find out if the clambakers had got there right side up. They'd got there; fact is, they was in the station then, and the language Peter hove through that telephone was enough to melt the wires. 'Twas all in the shape of compliments to the prophet, and I heard Central tell him she'd report it to the head office. Brown said 'twas blowing so they'd have to come back by the inside channel, and that meant landing 'way up Harniss way, and hiring teams to come to the Port with from there.

'Twas nearly eight when they drove into the yard and come slopping up the steps. And SUCH a passel of drownded rats you never see. The women-folks made for their rooms, but the men hopped around the parlor, shedding puddles with every hop, and hollering for us to trot out the head of the Weather Bureau.

“Bring him to me,” orders Peter, stopping to pick his pants loose from his legs; “I yearn to caress him.”

And what old Dillaway said was worse'n that.

But Beriah didn't come to be caressed. 'Twas quarter past nine when we heard wheels in the yard.

“By mighty!” yells Cap'n Jonadab; “it's the camp-meeting pilgrims. I forgot them. Here's a show.”

He jumped to open the door, but it opened afore he got there and Beriah come in. He didn't pay no attention to the welcome he got from the gang, but just stood on the sill, pale, but grinning the grin that a terrier dog has on just as you're going to let the rat out of the trap.

Somebody outside says: “Whoa, consarn you!” Then there was a thump and a sloshy stamping on the steps, and in comes Eben and the widder.

I had one of them long-haired, foreign cats once that a British skipper gave me. 'Twas a yeller and black one and it fell overboard. When we fished it out it looked just like the Kelly woman done then. Everybody but Beriah just screeched--we couldn't help it. But the prophet didn't laugh; he only kept on grinning.

Emma looked once round the room, and her eyes, as well as you could see 'em through the snarl of dripping hair and hat-trimming, fairly snapped. Then she went up the stairs three steps at a time.

Eben didn't say a word. He just stood there and leaked. Leaked and smiled. Yes, sir! his face, over the mess that had been that rainbow necktie, had the funniest look of idiotic joy on it that ever _I_ see. In a minute everybody else shut up. We didn't know what to make of it.

'Twas Beriah that spoke first.

“He! he! he!” he chuckled. “He! he! he! Wasn't it kind of wet coming through the woods, Mr. Cobb? What does Mrs. Kelly think of the day her beau picked out to go to camp-meeting in?”

Then Eben came out of his trance.

“Beriah,” says he, holding out a dripping flipper, “shake!”

But Beriah didn't shake. Just stood still.

“I've got a s'prise for you, shipmate,” goes on Eben. “Who did you say that lady was?”

Beriah didn't answer. I begun to think that some of the wet had soaked through the assistant prophet's skull and had give him water on the brain.

“You called her Mis' Kelly, didn't you?” gurgled Eben. “Wall, that ain't her name. Her and me stopped at the Baptist parsonage over to East Harniss when we was on the way home and got married. She's Mis' Cobb now,” he says.

Well, the queerest part of it was that 'twas the bad weather was really what brought things to a head so sudden. Eben hadn't spunked up anywhere nigh enough courage to propose, but they stopped at Ostable so long, waiting for the rain to let up, that 'twas after dark when they was half way home. Then Emma--oh, she was a slick one!--said that her reputation would be ruined, out that way with a man that wa'n't her husband. If they was married now, she said--and even a dummy could take THAT hint.

I found Beriah at the weather-shanty about an hour afterwards with his head on his arms. He looked up when I come in.

“Mr. Wingate,” he says, “I'm a fool, but for the land's sake don't think I'm SUCH a fool as not to know that this here storm was bound to strike to-day. I lied,” he says; “I lied about the weather for the first time in my life; lied right up and down so as to get her mad with him. My repertation's gone forever. There's a feller in the Bible that sold his--his birthday, I think 'twas--for a mess of porridge. I'm him; only,” and he groaned awful, “they've cheated me out of the porridge.”

But you ought to have read the letters Peter got next day from subscribers that had trusted to the prophecy and had gone on picnics and such like. The South Shore Weather Bureau went out of business right then.

THE DOG STAR

It commenced the day after we took old man Stumpton out codfishing. Me and Cap'n Jonadab both told Peter T. Brown that cod wa'n't biting much at that season, but he said cod be jiggered.

“What's troubling me just now is landing suckers,” he says.

So the four of us got into the Patience M.--she's Jonadab's catboat--and sot sail for the Crab Ledge. And we hadn't more'n got our lines over the side than we struck into a school of dogfish. Now, if you know anything about fishing you know that when the dogfish strike on it's “good-by, cod!” So when Stumpton hauled a big fat one over the rail I could tell that Jonadab was ready to swear. But do you think it disturbed your old friend, Peter Brown? No, sir! He never winked an eye.

“By Jove!” he sings out, staring at that dogfish as if 'twas a gold dollar. “By Jove!” says he, “that's the finest specimen of a Labrador mack'rel ever I see. Bait up, Stump, and go at 'em again.”

So Stumpton, having lived in Montana ever sence he was five years old, and not having sighted salt water in all that time, he don't know but what there IS such critters as “Labrador mack'rel,” and he goes at 'em, hammer and tongs. When we come ashore we had eighteen dogfish, four sculpin and a skate, and Stumpton was the happiest loon in Ostable County. It was all we could do to keep him from cooking one of them “mack'rel” with his own hands. If Jonadab hadn't steered him out of the way while I sneaked down to the Port and bought a bass, we'd have had to eat dogfish--we would, as sure as I'm a foot high.

Stumpton and his daughter, Maudina, was at the Old Home House. 'Twas late in September, and the boarders had cleared out. Old Dillaway--Peter's father-in-law--had decoyed the pair on from Montana because him and some Wall Street sharks were figgering on buying some copper country out that way that Stumpton owned. Then Dillaway was took sick, and Peter, who was just back from his wedding tower, brought the Montana victims down to the Cape with the excuse to give 'em a good time alongshore, but really to keep 'em safe and out of the way till Ebenezer got well enough to finish robbing 'em. Belle--Peter's wife--stayed behind to look after papa.

Stumpton was a great tall man, narrer in the beam, and with a figgerhead like a henhawk. He enjoyed himself here at the Cape. He fished, and loafed, and shot at a mark. He sartinly could shoot. The only thing he was wishing for was something alive to shoot at, and Brown had promised to take him out duck shooting. 'Twas too early for ducks, but that didn't worry Peter any; he'd a-had ducks to shoot at if he bought all the poultry in the township.

Maudina was like her name, pretty, but sort of soft and mushy. She had big blue eyes and a baby face, and her principal cargo was poetry. She had a deckload of it, and she'd heave it overboard every time the wind changed. She was forever ordering the ocean to “roll on,” but she didn't mean it; I had her out sailing once when the bay was a little mite rugged, and I know. She was just out of a convent school, and you could see she wasn't used to most things--including men.

The first week slipped along, and everything was serene. Bulletins from Ebenezer more encouraging every day, and no squalls in sight. But 'twas almost too slick. I was afraid the calm was a weather breeder, and sure enough, the hurricane struck us the day after that fishing trip.

Peter had gone driving with Maudina and her dad, and me and Cap'n Jonadab was smoking on the front piazza. I was pulling at a pipe, but the cap'n had the home end of one of Stumpton's cigars harpooned on the little blade of his jackknife, and was busy pumping the last drop of comfort out of it. I never see a man who wanted to get his money's wuth more'n Jonadab, I give you my word, I expected to see him swaller that cigar remnant every minute.

And all to once he gives a gurgle in his throat.

“Take a drink of water,” says I, scared like.

“Well, by time!” says he, pointing.

A feller had just turned the corner of the house and was heading up in our direction. He was a thin, lengthy craft, with more'n the average amount of wrists sticking out of his sleeves, and with long black hair trimmed aft behind his ears and curling on the back of his neck. He had high cheek bones and kind of sunk-in black eyes, and altogether he looked like “Dr. Macgoozleum, the Celebrated Blackfoot Medicine Man.” If he'd hollered: “Sagwa Bitters, only one dollar a bottle!” I wouldn't have been surprised.

But his clothes--don't say a word! His coat was long and buttoned up tight, so's you couldn't tell whether he had a vest on or not--though 'twas a safe bet he hadn't--and it and his pants was made of the loudest kind of black-and-white checks. No nice quiet pepper-and-salt, you understand, but the checkerboard kind, the oilcloth kind, the kind that looks like the marble floor in the Boston post-office. They was pretty tolerable seedy, and so was his hat. Oh, he was a last year's bird's nest NOW, but when them clothes was fresh--whew! the northern lights and a rainbow mixed wouldn't have been more'n a cloudy day 'longside of him.

He run up to the piazza like a clipper coming into port, and he sweeps off that rusty hat and hails us grand and easy.

“Good-morning, gentlemen,” says he.

“We don't want none,” says Jonadab, decided.

The feller looked surprised. “I beg your pardon,” says he. “You don't want any--what?”

“We don't want any 'Life of King Solomon' nor 'The World's Big Classifyers.' And we don't want to buy any patent paint, nor sewing machines, nor clothes washers, nor climbing evergreen roses, nor rheumatiz salve. And we don't want our pictures painted, neither.”

Jonadab was getting excited. Nothing riles him wuss than a peddler, unless it's a woman selling tickets to a church fair. The feller swelled up until I thought the top button on that thunderstorm coat would drag anchor, sure.

“You are mistaken,” says he. “I have called to see Mr. Peter Brown; he is--er--a relative of mine.”

Well, you could have blown me and Jonadab over with a cat's-paw. We went on our beam ends, so's to speak. A relation of Peter T.'s; why, if he'd been twice the panorama he was we'd have let him in when he said that. Loud clothes, we figgered, must run in the family. We remembered how Peter was dressed the first time we met him.

“You don't say!” says I. “Come right up and set down, Mr.--Mr.--”

“Montague,” says the feller. “Booth Montague. Permit me to present my card.”

He drove into the hatches of his checkerboards and rummaged around, but he didn't find nothing but holes, I jedge, because he looked dreadful put out, and begged our pardons five or six times.

“Dear me!” says he. “This is embarassing. I've forgot my cardcase.”

We told him never mind the card; any of Peter's folks was more'n welcome. So he come up the steps and set down in a piazza chair like King Edward perching on his throne. Then he hove out some remarks about its being a nice morning, all in a condescending sort of way, as if he usually attended to the weather himself, but had been sort of busy lately, and had handed the job over to one of the crew. We told him all about Peter, and Belle, and Ebenezer, and about Stumpton and Maudina. He was a good deal interested, and asked consider'ble many questions. Pretty soon we heard a carriage rattling up the road.

“Hello!” says I. “I guess that's Peter and the rest coming now.”

Mr. Montague got off his throne kind of sudden.

“Ahem!” says he. “Is there a room here where I may--er--receive Mr. Brown in a less public manner? It will be rather a--er--surprise for him, and--”

Well, there was a good deal of sense in that. I know 'twould surprise ME to have such an image as he was sprung on me without any notice. We steered him into the gents' parlor, and shut the door. In a minute the horse and wagon come into the yard. Maudina said she'd had a “heavenly” drive, and unloaded some poetry concerning the music of billows and pine trees, and such. She and her father went up to their rooms, and when the decks was clear Jonadab and me tackled Peter T.

“Peter,” says Jonadab, “we've got a surprise for you. One of your relations has come.”

Brown, he did look surprised, but he didn't act as he was any too joyful.

“Relation of MINE?” says he. “Come off! What's his name?”

We told him Montague, Booth Montague. He laughed.

“Wake up and turn over,” he says. “They never had anything like that in my family. Booth Montague! Sure 'twa'n't Algernon Cough-drops?”

We said no, 'twas Booth Montague, and that he was waiting in the gents' parlor. So he laughed again, and said somethin' about sending for Laura Lean Jibbey, and then we started.

The checkerboard feller was standing up when we opened the door. “Hello, Petey!” says he, cool as a cucumber, and sticking out a foot and a half of wrist with a hand at the end of it.

Now, it takes considerable to upset Peter Theodosius Brown. Up to that time and hour I'd have bet on him against anything short of an earthquake. But Booth Montague done it--knocked him plumb out of water. Peter actually turned white.

“Great--” he began, and then stopped and swallered. “HANK!” he says, and set down in a chair.

“The same,” says Montague, waving the starboard extension of the checkerboard. “Petey, it does me good to set my eyes on you. Especially now, when you're the real thing.”

Brown never answered for a minute. Then he canted over to port and reached down into his pocket. “Well,” says he, “how much?”

But Hank, or Booth, or Montague--whatever his name was--he waved his flipper disdainful. “Nun-nun-nun-no, Petey, my son,” he says, smiling. “It ain't 'how much?' this time. When I heard how you'd rung the bell the first shot out the box and was rolling in coin, I said to myself: 'Here's where the prod comes back to his own.' I've come to live with you, Petey, and you pay the freight.”

Peter jumped out of the chair. “LIVE with me!” he says. “You Friday evening amateur night! It's back to 'Ten Nights in a Barroom' for yours!” he says.

“Oh, no, it ain't!” says Hank, cheerful. “It'll be back to Popper Dillaway and Belle. When I tell 'em I'm your little cousin Henry and how you and me worked the territories together--why--well, I guess there'll be gladness round the dear home nest; hey?”

Peter didn't say nothing. Then he fetched a long breath and motioned with his head to Cap'n Jonadab and me. We see we weren't invited to the family reunion, so we went out and shut the door. But we did pity Peter; I snum if we didn't!

It was most an hour afore Brown come out of that room. When he did he took Jonadab and me by the arm and led us out back of the barn.

“Fellers,” he says, sad and mournful, “that--that plaster cast in a crazy-quilt,” he says, referring to Montague, “is a cousin of mine. That's the living truth,” says he, “and the only excuse I can make is that 'tain't my fault. He's my cousin, all right, and his name's Hank Schmults, but the sooner you box that fact up in your forgetory, the smoother 'twill be for yours drearily, Peter T. Brown. He's to be Mr. Booth Montague, the celebrated English poet, so long's he hangs out at the Old Home; and he's to hang out here until--well, until I can dope out a way to get rid of him.”

We didn't say nothing for a minute--just thought. Then Jonadab says, kind of puzzled: “What makes you call him a poet?” he says.

Peter answered pretty snappy: “'Cause there's only two or three jobs that a long-haired image like him could hold down,” he says. “I'd call him a musician if he could play 'Bedelia' on a jews'-harp; but he can't, so's he's got to be a poet.”

And a poet he was for the next week or so. Peter drove down to Wellmouth that night and bought some respectable black clothes, and the follering morning, when the celebrated Booth Montague come sailing into the dining room, with his curls brushed back from his forehead, and his new cutaway on, and his wrists covered up with clean cuffs, blessed if he didn't look distinguished--at least, that's the only word I can think of that fills the bill. And he talked beautiful language, not like the slang he hove at Brown and us in the gents' parlor.

Peter done the honors, introducing him to us and the Stumptons as a friend who'd come from England unexpected, and Hank he bowed and scraped, and looked absent-minded and crazy-like a poet ought to. Oh, he done well at it! You could see that 'twas just pie for him.

And 'twas pie for Maudina, too. Being, as I said, kind of green concerning men folks, and likewise taking to poetry like a cat to fish, she just fairly gushed over this fraud. She'd reel off a couple of fathom of verses from fellers named Spencer or Waller, or such like, and he'd never turn a hair, but back he'd come and say they was good, but he preferred Confucius, or Methuselah, or somebody so antique that she nor nobody else ever heard of 'em. Oh, he run a safe course, and he had HER in tow afore they turned the first mark.

Jonadab and me got worried. We see how things was going, and we didn't like it. Stumpton was having too good a time to notice, going after “Labrador mack'rel” and so on, and Peter T. was too busy steering the cruises to pay any attention. But one afternoon I come by the summerhouse unexpected, and there sat Booth Montague and Maudina, him with a clove hitch round her waist, and she looking up into his eyes like they were peekholes in the fence 'round paradise. That was enough. It just simply COULDN'T go any further, so that night me and Jonadab had a confab up in my room.

“Barzilla,” says the cap'n, “if we tell Peter that that relation of his is figgering to marry Maudina Stumpton for her money, and that he's more'n likely to elope with her, 'twill pretty nigh kill Pete, won't it? No, sir; it's up to you and me. We've got to figger out some way to get rid of the critter ourselves.”

“It's a wonder to me,” I says, “that Peter puts up with him. Why don't he order him to clear out, and tell Belle if he wants to? She can't blame Peter 'cause his uncle was father to an outrage like that.”

Jonadab looks at me scornful. “Can't, hey?” he says. “And her high-toned and chumming in with the bigbugs? It's easy to see you never was married,” says he.

Well, I never was, so I shut up.

We set there and thought and thought, and by and by I commenced to sight an idee in the offing. 'Twas hull down at first, but pretty soon I got it into speaking distance, and then I broke it gentle to Jonadab. He grabbed at it like the “Labrador mack'rel” grabbed Stumpton's hook. We set up and planned until pretty nigh three o'clock, and all the next day we put in our spare time loading provisions and water aboard the Patience M. We put grub enough aboard to last a month.

Just at daylight the morning after that we knocked at the door of Montague's bedroom. When he woke up enough to open the door--it took some time, 'cause eating and sleeping was his mainstay--we told him that we was planning an early morning fishing trip, and if he wanted to go with the folks he must come down to the landing quick. He promised to hurry, and I stayed by the door to see that he didn't get away. In about ten minutes we had him in the skiff rowing off to the Patience M.

“Where's the rest of the crowd?” says he, when he stepped aboard.

“They'll be along when we're ready for 'em,” says I. “You go below there, will you, and stow away the coats and things.”

So he crawled into the cabin, and I helped Jonadab get up sail. We intended towing the skiff, so I made her fast astern. In half a shake we was under way and headed out of the cove. When that British poet stuck his nose out of the companion we was abreast the p'int.

“Hi!” says he, scrambling into the cockpit. “What's this mean?”

I was steering and feeling toler'ble happy over the way things had worked out.

“Nice sailing breeze, ain't it?” says I, smiling.

“Where's Mau-Miss Stumpton?” he says, wild like.

“She's abed, I cal'late,” says I, “getting her beauty sleep. Why don't YOU turn in? Or are you pretty enough now?”

He looked first at me and then at Jonadab, and his face turned a little yellower than usual.

“What kind of a game is this?” he asks, brisk. “Where are you going?”