Chapter 26

"I ain't any hand to make love to Portygee sailors," he cried; "I don't believe I could stand it to hold one on my knee more'n half an hour at a time. I don't like a dude. I hate a land-pirut lawyer. But a critter I've al'ays reckoned I'd kill on sight is a grown man that writes portry and lets his folks support him. I've heard of that Concert--whatever his name is--Tate. I ain't ever wanted to see him. I've been afraid of what might happen if I did. Him and me run this thing together? Say, look here, Hiram! You say a few more things like that to me and I shall reckon you're tryin' to give me apoplexy and get rid of me that way!"

Hiram sighed. His car of hopes so laboriously warped to the top summit of success had been sluiced to the bottom. But he understood the temper of the populace of Smyrna in those piping days better than Cap'n Sproul did. Consetena Tate was not to be put aside with a wave of the hand.

Hiram began again. At first he talked to deaf ears. He even had to drown out contumely. But his arguments were good! Consetena Tate could write the many letters that would be necessary. There were many organizations to invite to town, many prominent citizens of the county to solicit, for the day would not shine without the presence of notables. There was all the work of that sort to be done with the delicate touch of the literary man--work that the Cap'n could not do. Mr. Tate had earned the position--at least the folks in town thought he had--and demanded him as the man through whom they could accomplish all epistolary effects.

In the end Hiram won the Cap'n over even to this concession. The Cap'n was too weary to struggle farther against what seemed to be his horrid destiny.

"I'll have him at town office to-morrow mornin'," declared Hiram, grabbing at the first growl that signified submission. "You'll find him meek and humble and helpful--I know you will." Then he promptly hurried away before the Cap'n revived enough to change his mind.

Cap'n Sproul found his new secretary on the steps of the town office the next morning, and scowled on him. Mr. Tate wore a little black hat cocked on his shaggy mane, and his thin nose was blue in the crisp air of early May. He sat on the steps propping a big portfolio on his knees. His thin legs outlined themselves against his baggy trousers with the effect of broomsticks under cloth.

He arose and followed the sturdy old seaman into the office. He sat down, still clinging to the portfolio, and watched the Cap'n build a fire in the rusty stove. The selectman had returned no answer to the feeble attempts that Mr. Tate had made to open conversation.

"Far asunder your life aims and my life aims have been, Cap'n Sproul," observed the secretary at last. "But when ships hail each other out of the darkness--"

"Three-stickers don't usually luff very long when they're hailed by punts," grunted the old skipper.

"There is a common ground on which all may meet," insisted Mr. Tate; "I frequently inaugurate profitable conversations and lay the foundations of new friendships this way: Who are your favorite poets?"

"Say, now, look here!" blurted the Cap'n, coming away from the stove and dusting his hard hands together; "you've been rammed into my throat, and I'm havin' pretty blamed hard work to swallow you. I may be able to do it if you don't daub on portry. Now, if you've got any idea what you're here for and what you're goin' to do, you get at it. Do you know?"

"I had ventured upon a little plan," said Mr. Tate, meekly. "I thought that first of all I would arrange the literary programme for the day, the oration, the poem, the various addresses, and I already have a little schedule to submit to you. I have a particular request to make, Cap'n Sproul. I wish that you, as chairman of the committee, would designate me as poet-laureate of the grand occasion."

"You can be any kind of a pote you want to," said the selectman, promptly. "And I'll tell you right here and now, I don't give a continental thunderation about your programmy or your speech-makers--not even if you go dig up old Dan'l Webster and set him on the stand. I didn't start this thing, and I ain't approvin' of it. I'm simply grabbin' in on it so that I can make sure that the fools of this town won't hook into that money with both hands and strew it galley-west. That's me! Now, if you've got business, then 'tend to it! And I'll be 'tendin' to mine!"

It was not an encouraging prospect for a secretary who desired to be humble and helpful. Cap'n Sproul busied himself with a little pile of smudgy account-books, each representing a road district of the town. He was adding "snow-bills." Mr. Tate gazed forlornly on the fiercely puckered brow and "plipping" lips, and heard the low growl of profanity as the Cap'n missed count on a column and had to start over again. Then Mr. Tate sighed and opened his portfolio. He sat staring above it at the iron visage of the first selectman, who finally grew restive under this espionage.

"Say, look-a-here, Pote Tate," he growled, levelling flaming eyes across the table, "if you think you're goin' to set there lookin' at me like a Chessy cat watchin' a rat-hole, you and me is goin' to have trouble, and have it sudden and have it vi'lent!"

"I wanted to ask you a question--some advice!" gasped the secretary.

"Haven't I told you to pick out your business and 'tend to it?" demanded the Cap'n, vibrating his lead-pencil.

"But this is about spending some money."

"Well, mebbe that's diff'runt." The selectman modified his tone. "Go ahead and stick in your paw! What's this first grab for?" he asked, resignedly.

"To make my letters official and regular," explained Mr. Tate, "I've got to have stationery printed with the names of the committee on it--you as chairman, per Consetena Tate, secretary."

"Go across to the printin'-office and have some struck off," directed the selectman. "If havin' some paper to write on will get you busy enough so't you won't set there starin' me out of countenance, it will be a good investment."

For the next few days Mr. Tate was quite successful in keeping himself out from under foot, so the Cap'n grudgingly admitted to Hiram. He found a little stand in a corner of the big room and doubled himself over it, writing letters with patient care. The first ones he ventured to submit to the Cap'n before sealing them. But the chairman of the committee contemptuously refused to read them or to sign. Therefore Mr. Tate did that service for his superior, signing: "Capt. Aaron Sproul, Chairman. Per Consetena Tate, Secretary." He piled the letters, sealed, before the Cap'n, and the latter counted them carefully and issued stamps with scrupulous exactness. Replies came in printed return envelopes; but, though they bore his name, Cap'n Sproul scornfully refused to touch one of them. The stern attitude that he had assumed toward the Smyrna centennial celebration was this: Toleration, as custodian of the funds; but participation, never!

During many hours of the day Mr. Tate did not write, but sat and gazed at the cracked ceiling with a rapt expression that made the Cap'n nervous. The Cap'n spoke of this to Hiram.

"That feller ain't right in his head," said the selectman. "He sets there hours at a time, like a hen squattin' on duck-eggs, lookin' 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 multitude 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 grasshoppers 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 hell 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 brass-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.

XXXII

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 anticipated 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 manuscript in shaking hands--"it begins:

"Ethereal Goddess, 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 municipality. 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 God, 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 altitudes 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 municipality.

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 assured 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 municipality.

"The people demand it," asseverated 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 cockade. 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 damnation 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."

He pushed away the head-gear that Hiram still extended toward him, and tramped out of the house and down the hill with his sturdy sea-gait. Dodging firecrackers that sputtered and banged in the highway about his feet, and cursing soulfully, he gained the town office and grimly sat himself down.

He knew when the train from down-river and the outside world had arrived by the riotous accessions to the crowds without in the square. Firemen in red shirts thronged everywhere. Men who wore feathered hats and tawdry uniforms filled the landscape. He gazed on them with unutterable disgust.

A stranger awakened him from his reverie on the vanities of the world. The stranger had studied the sign

SELECTMEN'S OFFICE

and had come in. He wore a frock coat and shiny silk hat, and inquired whether he had the pleasure of speaking to Captain Aaron Sproul, first selectman of Smyrna.

"I'm him," said the Cap'n, glowering up from under knotted eyebrows, his gaze principally on the shiny tile.

"I was just a little surprised that there was no committee of reception at the station to meet me," said the stranger, in mild rebuke. "There was not even a carriage there. But I suppose it was an oversight, due to the rush of affairs to-day."

The Cap'n still scowled at him, not in the least understanding why this stranger should expect to be carted into the village from the railroad.

"I will introduce myself. I am Professor William Wilson Waverley, orator of the day; I have had some very pleasant correspondence with you, Captain Sproul, and I'm truly glad to meet you face to face."

"You've got the advantage of me," blurted the Cap'n, still dense. "I never heard of you before in my life, nor I never wrote you any letter, unless I got up in my sleep and done it."

With wonderment and some irritation growing on his face, the stranger pulled out a letter and laid it before the Cap'n.

The selectman studied it long enough to see that it was an earnest invitation to honor the town of Smyrna with a centennial oration, and that the town would pay all expenses; and the letter was signed, "Captain Aaron Sproul, First Selectman and Chairman of Committee, Per Consetena Tate, Secretary."

"I never saw that before," insisted the Cap'n.

"Do you mean that you disown it?"

"No, I reckon it's all official and regular. What I just said about not havin' seen it before might have sounded a little queer, but there's an explanation goes with it. You see, it's been this way. I--"