Chapter 5

THE OLD SHOP

"Ah! poor Real Life, which I love, can I make others share the delight I find in thy foolish and insipid face?"

The sun was already low in the west, when Flint and Brady, having supped heartily on boiled lobster and corn bread, lighted their pipes and strolled toward the door of the tiny shop which leaned up against the inn as if for support. A bird, looking down upon it in his flight, might have mistaken it for some great mud-turtle, so close did it sprawl along the ground.

For some years it had served as a turkey-house on the farm; but as Marsden had begun to discover possibilities of profit in a shop which should both draw custom to the inn, and find customers in the chance guests of the tavern, he had turned his attention to the work of transforming the poultry-house into a village store, and had been surprised to find how well it adapted itself to its new purpose. True, the beams ran across only a few inches above Marsden's head; but that was rather an advantage than otherwise, for they thus made an excellent substitute for counters, and the wares were well displayed and within easy reach. Along one beam hung a row of boots of every style and size,--from giant rubbers, reaching to the thighs, in which the Nepaug farmers went wading for seaweed fertilizer, to the clumsy baby shoes, jauntily set off with a scarlet tassel at the top, in that pathetic effort of the poor to express in their children's dress the poetry so scantily supplied in their own lives. Another beam was hung with wooden pails, and a third gleamed with the reflections of bright-new tinware.

On the shelves opposite the door lay bright hued calicoes flanked by jars of peppermint candies, some of which were rendered doubly irresistible to youthful customers by being cut in heart-shape and decorated with sentimental mottoes chiefly in verse.

Marsden fitted his shop so well, that he seemed little more than an animated bundle of secondhand goods. His cowhide boots were the fellows of those that dangled from the fourth beam. His gayly checked flannel shirt harmonized delightfully with the carriage robes in the corner, and the soft brown-felt hat toned æsthetically with the plug tobacco in the case behind him.

When Flint and Brady looked in at the door, a girl was standing at the counter, turning over the pile of calicoes. She had brought with her a pailful of blueberries which she evidently wished to barter for a remnant of the prints. She showed much disappointment when Marsden declined to trade except upon a cash basis.

"What might this be wuth?" she asked at length, pointing to a red and white calico on the second shelf. Marsden, Yankee-like, answered her question by another. "What'll ye give fur it? It's the end of the piece, and I dunno but I'd as lives you'd hev it ez anybody."

"Wall," answered the girl, cautiously, "I wouldn't give no more'n six cents a yard for it."

"Take it along," said Marsden, wrapping it, as he spoke, in coarse brown paper. As he handed it to her he said: "I _wuz_ goin' to offer it to you for five cent."

The girl's face fell.

"You see," whispered Flint to Brady, "there never was a woman who could really enjoy anything unless she thought she had paid less than it was worth. It is my own belief that Eve bought the apple from the Serpent as a bargain, and that Satan assured her that he would not have sold it to Adam at double the price."

As the maiden withdrew, a buggy rattled up to the door of the little shop. In the broad strip of light formed by the lamp opposite the door, the creaking vehicle stopped short. A dumpy female in a nondescript black garment took the reins, while her male companion descended heavily, putting both feet upon the step, and cautiously lowering himself to the ground close beside the spot where Flint and Brady stood. Once assured that he had reached the ground in safety, he proceeded to take off his wrinkled duster, fold it tenderly, and lay it on the seat, from beneath which he pulled out a bulky bundle, securely tied up in bed-ticking.

Flint watched the rustic with idle curiosity, as the old man entered the store and deposited his bundle on the counter. Marsden sat on a chair with no back, nursing his knee and assuming indifference to the entrance of the new-comer.

"Be thar any market naow for _quilts_, or _be_ thar?" asked the old farmer, somewhat anxiously, while untying the knots of his parcel.

"I dunno ez thar be, and I dunno _ez_ thar be," Marsden answered.

Both parties seemed to understand each other perfectly. They approached as warily as two foxes. When the roll was finally spread out on the counter, the dim lamplight flickered over a patchwork quilt of the familiar log-cabin pattern, gay with colors as varied as those of Joseph's coat.

"What cher s'pose yer could give fur this?" the new-comer asked with a relapse into unwary eagerness, and an irrepressible pride in this evidence of the household industry of his women folk.

"Dunno, I'm sure," said Marsden, slowly, shifting his quid of tobacco and spitting meditatively on the floor. "Shop-keepin' 's all a resk anyhow. I'll give yer seventy-five cents for it though, jest for a gamble; but nobody has much use for quilts in this weather, except to hide their heads under from the skeeters."

"Truth will out," whispered Flint. "Marsden always declares that mosquitoes are unknown at Nepaug."

The owner of the quilt shook his head dubiously.

"Couldn't you go a dollar on it?" he queried. "It took my wife a month to make it, sewin' evenin's."

"Did--did it?"

"Yaas, 'n' it's made out of pieces of the children's clothes, and some on 'em 's dead--and associations ought to caount for somethin'."

"Will it last?" questioned the cautious Marsden, twitching it this way and that, and testing the material with his thumb-nail, which he kept long and sharp apparently for the purpose of detecting flaws in dry-goods.

"Wall," assumed the other, somewhat nettled by the purchaser's skepticism, "I reckon it'll last ez long ez a dollar will."

"Mebbe," said Marsden, quite impressed by the logic of this last statement. "Anyhaow I'll give you ninety cents, and that's my last figger."

The man glanced furtively over his shoulder at the female in the buggy, who sat twitching the reins impatiently, then he hitched up closer to Marsden and held out a dime.

"Take it," he whispered, "'n' give me the greenback. I promised I wouldn't let it go fur less'n a dollar, 'n' I dassent."

The two men winked at each other like brothers in the freemasonry of married life, and the knight of the duster disappeared in the gathering dusk. His departure emptied the little shop, and Flint and Brady entered and seated themselves on a couple of kegs on opposite sides of the door.

"Ef it's all the same, gentlemen," drawled Marsden. "I'd recommend you to take another seat with yore pipes, fur one of them kags is filled with ile, and the other with gun-paowder."

Brady jumped up in haste, and felt of his coat-tails as though they might even then be on fire.

Even Flint moved with greater alacrity than usual, quite concurring in the wisdom of seeking another seat, especially as the new one brought him opposite the low doorway, through which he could see the sky, and watch the night drawing in over bay and cove.

On the fence-rail opposite, a flock of turkeys had composed themselves to sleep. The crickets in the corn-field were tuning their wings for their habitual evening concert. The night-moth flapped heavily against the small, square window-pane.

It was a scene bare but tranquil; and Flint was possessed by its dreary charm. The dim quiet of the twilight suited him; and it struck him jarringly, like a false note in an orchestra, when there fell on his ear a high, shrill voice, exclaiming,--

"Pa, ma wants to know if the yeast-cakes have come."

Tilly Marsden gave a little start of surprise, as she came down the steps from the house-door, at the sight of Flint and Brady, who rose at her entrance, and removed their pipes from their mouths.

"Enter woman--exit comfort," thought Flint.

"I hope you're better, Mr. Flint," said Tilly, edging a little nearer him while her father searched among the blue boxes for the desired yeast-cakes.

"Thanks."

"Wasn't the sun awful hot up to town?"

"Quite so."

"But you didn't get sun-struck?"

"No."

"I'm awful glad. I says to ma this morning, 'I do hope,' says I, 'Mr. Flint has taken Pa's big white umbrella lined with green. You know his head is so weak.'"

Flint felt Brady's amused glance upon him. "Thank you," he answered stiffly, "my head is quite well again. Come, Brady," he added, turning to his friend, "if you are ready, we'll get our stroll before we turn in."

"Here, Tilly," said Marsden, at the same time, "here's the yeast-cake; but I don't see what ma wants with it, fur I gev her two this arfternoon."

Tilly blushed, and looked furtively toward the doorway where the young men stood. The girl had a kind of flimsy prettiness which suggested a cotillon favor. Her hair was fluffy, and coquettishly knotted at the back with blue ribbon. Her freshly ironed white dress set off her hourglass figure, and the fingers on which she was continually twisting the rings were white and slender. Her lips were set in a somewhat simpering smile, and her voice was soft with a view to effect. Brady watched her artless artfulness with some amusement. When they had gone out, he hinted something to Flint in regard to the conquest he appeared to have made; but found him so loftily unconscious that his jest fell flat, and he dropped the subject to take up a more serious theme as they strolled along the road, and at length seated themselves where the turkeys had made their roost, on the gray rail-fence in the moonlight.

"I wonder, Flint," said Brady, "if we shall be able to take up our old association where we dropped it."

"Of course not," Flint answered, "don't imagine it for a moment!"

"I don't see why we should not."

"You don't?"

"No, I do not."

"Well, that fact alone is enough to show the gap between us. I can see it plainly enough. You have spent these last ten years in active, quick decisions, accumulating energy, push, drive--what you call hustling; while I have been trying to see into things a little, trying to find out what is worth hustling for--whether anything is. Now do you suppose that two people with such opposite training are going to fit together like a cup and ball, as they used to do when they were chums in college, and had had no training at all?"

"I don't know," said Brady, more dubiously. Then he went on, with the air of one who is not to be balked in speaking his mind, "I am not quite sure that I think your training has improved you."

"Very likely not," said Flint, imperturbably puffing away at his pipe.

"I suppose," continued Brady, "that it is very cultivating, and philosophical, and up-to-date to lie back like that, and let your soul expand, to wonder whether anything is worth while, and smile at the struggle of the dull people around you who are foolish enough to believe that something is worth while; but I'll be hanged if I like it. I would rather be the lowest of the warm-blooded animals than the highest of the cold-blooded. I beg your pardon," he added a little lamely, "I did not mean to put it quite so strong as that."

"You have made a very clear statement, my dear fellow. Don't weaken it by apologies. What you say of me is as true as gospel--truer perhaps. The only mistake you make is in ascribing to training what is really to be attributed to temperament. What is bred in the bone, you know-- But never mind, I detest talking of myself. Now you have had experiences worth talking of; let us hear some of your doings out West, there!"

Long and late that night the two friends sat together. Now that the first strangeness had worn off, and with it the consciousness of the divergence of the roads which they had travelled since the old days, Flint began to find his liking springing up as strong as ever, only the liking was of a different kind. It was after midnight when he came into the house, and betook himself to his own room. As he was pulling off his coat, he suddenly remembered his unopened letter. He smiled grimly, as it recalled the scene at the post-office, the glowering official, and the grinning bystanders. He was still smiling as he took the candle from the mantel-shelf and set it on the bureau, to which he drew up his one rickety chair. He sat down and scrutinized the letter again, and more closely.

The envelope was a large, square one, with the editorial address of the "Transcontinental Magazine" in the left-hand corner. The writing was in the large, loose scrawl of Brooke, the junior editor. He wrote in haste as usual. All at the office was going well, new subscriptions were coming in fast, and if Flint would keep away long enough, the success of the "Transcontinental" would be secure. The letter which he enclosed had been opened by mistake, being apparently a business communication with no other address than "To the Editor;" but finding it personal in character, he forwarded it unread, and remained as always, Flint's faithful friend, C. Brooke.

The enclosed letter to which Brooke alluded presented a curious contrast to his own. The handwriting was firm, but delicate--distinctively feminine.

"I want to thank you," so the letter began, "not only for accepting my verses on 'A Thimble,' but also for the words of encouragement with which you accompany the acceptance. You say that you are especially glad to print the verses because they suggest a return to the type of womanhood of an earlier day, for which you retain an old-fashioned admiration. Now, I scarcely know whether my verses are very deceitful, or whether it is the realest and truest side of my nature which finds expression when I take my pen in hand.

"I wonder if a bit of autobiography would bore you. I should feel that it would most men; but I think of you as a genial, elderly gentleman with a face like Thackeray's, and with a broad human interest in all phases of life."

Flint grinned. "So much," he said to himself, "for the intuitions of woman." Yet he felt a trifle vexed at being set down as elderly, and secretly elated at the allusion to Thackeray,--as if a wide mouth, a turned-up nose, and eye-glasses carried with them fee-simple to "Henry Esmond" and the "Newcomes."

"I am twenty-two years old!" the letter went on. "As a young girl I knew nothing of city life. My father owned a sheep ranch in the Northwest, and there I grew up, roaming about as freely as the sheep themselves. I learned to ride and to shoot. Until I was a woman grown, I never took a needle in my hand. Perhaps it may seem strange to you, but out of this aloofness from feminine pursuits there grew up within me a sort of reverence for the feminine ideal. I felt a vague awe, such as I imagine strikes a man at sight of a rose-lined parasol, or a thimble laid on a pile of stitchery. It is this sense of the poetry of women's occupation which must give what little value they possess to my verses; and perhaps you will not care for any more now that you know they are no part of the real _me_, but only an ideal."

The letter was signed "Amy Bell," and the only address given, a New York post-office box.

"A pretty name," said Flint to himself, as he studied it, "a very pretty name!" Then he fell to musing on how this girl must look; and he found himself making a likeness from the picture over the mantel, only he would have the face a trifle rounder, with a dimple in either cheek, and a hint more of tenderness in that firm under-lip, whose smile savored of delicate irony. His thoughts unconsciously reverted to the reflections of the morning, as he looked at the portrait.

"How shy we all are of self-revelation!" he murmured, as he folded the letter slowly, and slid it into his vest-pocket; "and then, when we have gone about for years hedging ourselves in with barriers of ice, suddenly some emotion thaws them, and out flow all the tides of feeling which we have been damming up so long." Flint's musings ended in a determination to answer this letter, and to answer it now while the genial mood was on him. The writer had taken pains to give little clue to her identity. Well, he would answer her from behind the same veil of impersonality. She need never know how widely she had missed her guess in her picture of him. She might keep her poor little illusions--yes, "elderly gentleman" and all. He would speak to her, as one soul might speak to another, unhampered by all the trammels of outward circumstance. It was his to offer help, sympathy, encouragement, and he dispensed it in no stinted measure.

As he drew pen and paper towards him, there swept over him a sense of the oneness of humanity, and a vision of what the world might be, if man were tenderer, and woman held the wider vision. Such a training as hers, he wrote to Amy Bell, might give her something of both, might grant her a standpoint from which she could see clearer than most women, just because she saw life in larger outlines, undimmed by detail,--a life as different from that of the average woman as the sweep of the garments of the Greek caryatides from the fussy, beruffled gowns of the nineteenth-century women. The question, the vital pressing question in her case, was how she would use this freedom. Should it slip into the hardness of the new woman, on the one hand, or, on the other, allow itself to be fettered to the dulness of every-day decorum, her opportunity would be lost; but if she could hold the delicate equilibrium where she stood,--self-poised, and yet swaying to the influences which must work on every soul for its highest development, plastic yet firm,--then he believed, firmly believed, that there might lie in her a power for which the world would be the better and the richer.

"There!" said he, as he blotted and sealed the letter. "That, I should say, is as prosy and didactic as a discourse of my venerated ancestor. I wonder if the tendency to sermonize runs in the blood. I dare say if I had the good fortune to have any religious convictions, I should dogmatize over them in the pulpit, and pound the cushions as vigorously as any itinerant evangelist. Well, well! heredity is a queer thing. We think we get away from it, but it is always cropping up in unexpected places. Our ancestors are like _atra cura_, and ride behind every man's saddle."

The clock struck three as he finished his musings. He pushed away his chair, and set back the lamp on the mantel. The light, flaring a little in the draught from the open window, lent a startling look of life to the portrait above it. Flint seemed almost to hear the voice of the dying sea-captain whispering: "God bless you, Ruth--I wish I had understood you better!"

Upon his exalted mood the morning voice of a barnyard cock broke mockingly.

"Pshaw!" he exclaimed, "what a fool I am!--and at my age, too. I am ashamed. And, by the way, we never took back Dr. Beetle's--no--Dr. Cricket's spectacles. Well-to-morrow will answer as well."