But old Dillaway had something to say.
"Cap"n," he says, looking round to make sure none of the comp"ny was follering him out to the ice-boat. "I"ve wanted to speak to you afore, but I haven"t had the chance. You mustn"t b"lieve too much of what Mr.
Catesby-Stuart says, nor you mustn"t always do just what he suggests.
You see," he says, "he"s a dreadful practical joker."
"Yes," says Jonadab, beginning to look sick. I didn"t say nothing, but I guess I looked the same way.
"Yes," said Ebenezer, kind of uneasy like; "Now, in that matter of Mrs.
Granby. I s"pose Phil put you up to asking her about her son"s laundry.
Yes? Well, I thought so. You see, the fact is, her boy is a broker down in Wall Street, and he"s been caught making some of what they call "wash sales" of stock. It"s against the rules of the Exchange to do that, and the papers have been full of the row. You can see," says Dillaway, "how the laundry question kind of stirred the old lady up. But, Lord! it must have been funny," and he commenced to grin.
I looked at Jonadab, and he looked at me. I thought of Marm Granby, and her being "dying to know us," and I thought of the lies about the "hod of change" and all the rest, and I give you my word _I_ didn"t grin, not enough to show my wisdom teeth, anyhow. A crack in the ice an inch wide would have held me, with room to spare; I know that.
"Hum!" grunts Jonadab, kind of dry and bitter, as if he"d been taking wormwood tea; "_I_ see. He"s been having a good time making durn fools out of us."
"Well," says Ebenezer, "not exactly that, p"raps, but--"
And then along comes Archie and his crowd in the other ice-boat.
"Hi!" he yells. "Who sailed that boat of yours? He knew his business all right. I never saw anything better. Phil--why, where IS Phil?"
I answered him. "Phil got out when we jibed," I says.
"Was THAT Phil?" he hollers, and then the three of "em just roared.
"Oh, by Jove, you know!" says Archie, "that"s the funniest thing I ever saw. And on Phil, too! He"ll never hear the last of it at the club--hey, boys?" And then they just bellered and laughed again.
When they"d gone, Jonadab turned to Ebenezer and he says: "That taking us out on this boat was another case of having fun with the countrymen.
Hey?"
"I guess so," says Dillaway. "I b"lieve he told one of the guests that he was going to put Cape Cod on ice this morning."
I looked away up the river where a little black speck was just getting to sh.o.r.e. And I thought of how chilly the wind was out there, and how that ice-water must have felt, and what a long ways "twas from home.
And then I smiled, slow and wide; there was a barge load of joy in every half inch of that smile.
"It"s a cold day when Phil loses a chance for a joke," says Ebenezer.
""Tain"t exactly what you"d call summery just now," I says. And we hauled down sail, run the ice-boat up to the wharf, and went up to our room to pack our extension cases for the next train.
"You see," says Jonadab, putting in his other shirt, "it"s easy enough to get the best of Cape folks on wash sales and lying, but when it comes to boats that"s a different pair of shoes."
"I guess Phil"ll agree with you," I says.
THE COUNT AND THE MANAGER
The way we got into the hotel business in the first place come around like this: Me and Cap"n Jonadab went down to Wellmouth Port one day "long in March to look at some property he"d had left him. Jonadab"s Aunt Sophrony had moved kind of sudden from that village to Beulah Land--they"re a good ways apart, too--and Cap"n Jonadab had come in for the old farm, he being the only near relative.
When you go to Wellmouth Port you get off the cars at Wellmouth Center and then take Labe Bea.r.s.e"s barge and ride four miles; and then, if the horse don"t take a notion to lay down in the road and go to sleep, or a wheel don"t come off or some other surprise party ain"t sprung on you, you come to a place where there"s a Baptist chapel that needs painting, and a little two-for-a-cent store that needs trade, and two or three houses that need building over, and any Lord"s quant.i.ty of scrub pines and beach gra.s.s and sand. Then you take Labe"s word for it that you"ve got to Wellmouth Port and get out of the barge and try to remember you"re a church member.
Well, Aunt Sophrony"s house was a mile or more from the place where the barge stopped, and Jonadab and me, we hoofed it up there. We bought some cheese and crackers and canned things at the store, "cause we expected to stay overnight in the house, and knew there wasn"t no other way of getting provender.
We got there after a spell and set down on the big piazza with our souls full of grat.i.tude and our boots full of sand. Great, big, old-fashioned house with fourteen big bedrooms in it, big barn, sheds, and one thing or "nother, and perched right on top of a hill with five or six acres of ground "round it. And how the March wind did whoop in off the sea and howl and screech lonesomeness through the pine trees! You take it in the middle of the night, with the shutters rattling and the old joists a-creaking and Jonadab snoring like a chap sawing hollow logs, and if it wan"t joy then my name ain"t Barzilla Wingate. I don"t wonder Aunt Sophrony died. I"d have died "long afore she did if I knew I was checked plumb through to perdition. There"d be some company where I was going, anyhow.
The next morning after ballasting up with the truck we"d bought at the store--the feller "most keeled over when he found we was going to pay cash for it--we went out on the piazza again, and looked at the breakers and the pine trees and the sand, and held our hats on with both hands.
"Jonadab," says I, "what"ll you take for your heirloom?"
"Well," he says, "Barzilla, the way I feel now, I think I"d take a return ticket to Orham and be afraid of being took up for swindling at that."
Neither of us says nothing more for a spell, and, first thing you know, we heard a carriage rattling somewhere up the road. I was shipwrecked once and spent two days in a boat looking for a sail. When I heard that rattling I felt just the way I done when I sighted the ship that picked us up.
"Judas!" says Jonadab, "there"s somebody COMING!"
We jumped out of our chairs and put for the corner of the house. There WAS somebody coming--a feller in a buggy, and he hitched his horse to the front fence and come whistling up the walk.
He was a tall chap, with a smooth face, kind of sharp and knowing, and with a stiff hat set just a little on one side. His clothes was new and about a week ahead of up-to-date, his shoes shined till they lit up the lower half of his legs, and his pants was creased so"s you could mow with "em. Cool and slick! Say! in the middle of that deadliness and compared to Jonadab and me, he looked like a bird of Paradise in a coop of moulting pullets.
"Cap"n Wixon?" he says to me, sticking out a gloved flipper.
"Not guilty," says I. "There"s the skipper. My name"s Wingate."
"Glad to have the pleasure, Mr. Wingate," he says. "Cap"n Wixon, yours truly."
We shook hands, and he took each of us by the arm and piloted us back to the piazza, like a tug with a couple of coal barges. He pulled up a chair, crossed his legs on the rail, reached into the for"ard hatch of his coat and brought out a cigar case.
"Smoke up," he says. We done it--I holding my hat to shut off the wind, while Jonadab used up two cards of matches getting the first light. When we got the cigars to going finally, the feller says:
"My name"s Brown--Peter T. Brown. I read about your falling heir to this estate, Cap"n Wixon, in a New Bedford paper. I happened to be in New Bedford then, representing the John B. Wilkins Unparalleled All Star Uncle Tom"s Cabin and Ten Nights in a Bar-room Company. It isn"t my reg"lar line, the show bus"ness, but it produced the necessary "ham and"
every day and the excelsior sleep inviter every night, so--but never mind that. Soon as I read the paper I came right down to look at the property. Having rubbered, back I go to Orham to see you. Your handsome and talented daughter says you are over here. That"ll be about all--here I am. Now, then, listen to this."
He went under his hatches again, rousted out a sheet of paper, unfolded it and read something like this--I know it by heart:
"The great sea leaps and splashes before you as it leaped and splashed in the old boyhood days. The sea wind sings to you as it sang of old.
The old dreams come back to you, the dreams you dreamed as you slumbered upon the cornhusk mattress in the clean, sweet little chamber of the old home. Forgotten are the cares of business, the scramble for money, the ruthless hunt for fame. Here are perfect rest and perfect peace.
"Now what place would you say I was describing?" says the feller.
"Heaven," says Jonadab, looking up, reverent like.
You never see a body more disgusted than Brown.
"Get out!" he snaps. "Do I look like the advance agent of Glory? Listen to this one."
He unfurls another sheet of paper, and goes off on a tack about like this: