Quill's Window Part 5

"How near did the sh.e.l.ls ever come to you?"

"Oh, sometimes as close as twenty or thirty feet. I remember one that dropped in the road about fifty feet ahead of my car, and before I could stop we ran plunk into the hole it made and upset.

I suppose the Windom estate must be a pretty big one, isn't it, Mr. Vick?"

"Taking everything into consideration, it amounts to nearly a million dollars. David Windom had quite a bit of property up in the city, aside from his farm, and he owned a big ranch out in Texas. The grain elevator in Windomville belonged to him,--still belongs to Alix Crown,--and there's a three mile railroad connecting with the main line over at Smith's Siding. Every foot of it is on his land.

He built the railroad about twenty year ago, and the elevator, too,--out of spite, they say, for the men that run the elevator at Hawkins a little further up the road. Hawkins is the place where his daughter and Edward Crown got off the train the night of the murder."

"And this young girl owns all of it,--farms, ranch, railroad and everything?"

"Every cent's worth of it is her'n. There ain't a sign of a mortgage on any of it, either. It's as clear as a blank sheet of writin'

paper."

"When was it you were ga.s.sed, Mr. Thane?" inquired young Caleb.

"Oh, that was when I was in the air service,--only a few weeks before the armistice."

"You left your wings at home, too, I suppose?"

"Yes. Mother likes to look at the only wings I'll probably ever have,--now or hereafter."

"How does it come, Court, that you went into the British air corpse, 'stead of in the U. S. A.?" inquired old Caleb.

"I joined the Royal Flying Corps, Mr. Brown, because the Americans wouldn't have me," replied Thane tersely. "I tried to get in, but they wouldn't pa.s.s me. Said I had a weak heart and a whole lot of rubbish like that. It's no wonder the American Air Service was punk. I went over to Toronto and they took me like a shot in the Royal British. They weren't so blamed finicky and old womanish.

All they asked for in an applicant was any kind of a heart at all so long as it was with the cause. I don't suppose I ought to say it, but the American Air Service was a joke."

"I hope you ain't turning British in your feelings, Court," remarked Amos Vick. "It's purty difficult to be both, you know,--English and Yankee."

"I'm American through and through, Mr. Vick, even though I did serve under the British flag till I was ga.s.sed and invalided out."

"Affects the lungs, don't it?" inquired old Caleb.

"I don't like to talk about it, Mr. Brown. I'm trying to forget what h.e.l.l was like. I was in hospital for four months. It took a lot more nerve to draw a breath then than it did to fly over the German lines with the Boches popping away from all sides. I didn't mind the wounds I sustained,--but the gas! Gee, it was horrible."

"Your ma said in her letter to me that you'd had pneumonia twice since you got back," said Mrs. Vick. "Was that due to the gas?"

"I suppose so. They thought I had tuberculosis for awhile, you see. Then, this spring, I had to go and have a bout with typhoid.

I ought to be dead, with all I've had,--but here I am, alive and happy, and if you keep on feeding me as you have been for the past three days, I'll live forever."

"You mustn't overdo, Courtney," warned the farmer's wife. "Your ma sent you out here to get well, and I feel a kind of responsibility for you. I guess it's about time you was off to bed. Come on, Amos.

It isn't going to bring rain any sooner for you to be setting out here watching for it."

Old Caleb had his say. "I suppose it was all right for you to serve with the British, Court, but if you'd waited a little while longer you might have carried a gun over there under the Stars and Stripes.

But, as you say, you couldn't bear to wait. I give you credit for it. I'm derned glad to see one member of the Thane family that had the nerve to volunteer. At the time of the Civil War your grandpa was what we call a slacker in these days. He hired a feller to go in his place, and when that feller was killed and a second call for volunteers come up, dogged if he didn't up and hire another one. One of your grandpa's brothers skipped off to Canada so's he wouldn't have to serve, and the other,--his name was George Was.h.i.+ngton Thane, by the way,--accidentally shot two of his fingers off while his company was in camp down at Crawfordsville, gettin' ready to go down and meet Morgan's Riders,--and that let him out. I admit it takes right smart of courage to accidentally shoot your fingers off, specially when n.o.body is lookin', but at any rate he had a uniform on when he done it. Course, there wasn't any wars during your pa's day, so I don't know how he would have acted. He wasn't much of a feller for fightin', though,--I remember that. I mean fist fightin'. I'm glad to know you don't take after your granddad. I never had any use for a coward, and that's why I'm proud to shake hands with you, my boy. There was a derned bad streak in your family back in your granddad's day, and it certainly is good to see that you have wiped it out. It don't always happen so. Yeller streaks are purty hard to wipe out. Takes more than two generations to do it as a rule. I'm happy to know you ain't gun shy."

The young man laughed. "I don't mind telling you, Mr. Brown, that I never went into action without being scared half out of my boots.

But I wasn't alone in that, you see. I never knew a man over there who wasn't scared when he went over the top. He went, just the same,--and that's what I call courage."

"So do I," cried Rosabel.

"Did you ever know for sure whether you got a German?" asked the intense young Caleb. "I mean,--did you ever KILL one?"

"That's pretty hard to say, Cale. We never knew, you see,--we fellows up in the clouds. I was in a bombing machine. I'd hate to think that we WASTED any bombs."

"Come now,--all of you,--off to bed," interposed Mrs. Vick. "I don't want to hear any more, Courtney. I wouldn't sleep a wink."

"Strikin' ten," said Amos, arising from his rocking-chair and turning it upside down at the back of the porch.

"Don't do that, Amos," protested old Caleb. "It'll NEVER rain if you--Why, dog-gone it, ain't you learned that it's bad luck to turn a chair bottom-side up when rain's needed? Turn it right-side up and put it right out here in front again where the rain can get at it. Nothin' tickles the weather more'n a chance to spoil something.

That's right. Now we c'n go to bed. Better leave them cus.h.i.+ons on the steps too, Rosie."

Courtney Thane went to his room,--the spare-room on the second floor,--and prepared to retire. The process was attended by the smoking of three cigarettes. Presently he was stretched out on the bed without even so much as a sheet over him. The heat was stifling.

Not a breath of air came in through the wide-open windows. He lay awake for a long time, staring out into the night.

"So my precious granddad had a yellow streak in him, did he?

And father wasn't much of a fighter either. Takes more than two generations to wipe out a yellow streak, does it? I wonder what the old b.o.o.b meant by that rotten slam at my people."

CHAPTER IV

DOWD'S TAVERN

The last week in August Courtney Thane left the Vick farm and, crossing the river, took lodgings at the boarding house conducted by the Misses Dowd in the town of Windomville.

In a letter to his mother, informing her of the change, he had said:

Of course, I appreciate the fact that you are paying the bills, old dear, and out of consideration for you I dare say I ought to stick it out with the Vicks till November as we arranged. But I simply cannot stand it any longer. The old woman almost puts me to bed, the girl almost sits on my lap, the boy drives me crazy with his infernal questions about the war, and old man Brown,--the one who went to school with father out in this gosh awful land of the gra.s.shopper,--he is the limit. He never lets a day go by without some slur about my grandfather or some other member of the family who existed long before I was born. Thinks he's witty. He is always nagging at me about cigarette smoking. I wish you could see the way he mishandles a cigar. As you know, I seldom smoke more than a half dozen cigarettes a day, but he swears to G.o.d I am everlastingly ruining my health, and it has got on my nerves so that if I stay on here another week I'll call the old jay so hard he'll drop dead from the shock. And, my heavens, how lonesome it is here. I almost die of homesickness. I just had to find a place where there is some one to talk to besides the cows and sheep and people who never think of anything but crops and the weather, last Sunday's sermon and Theodore Roosevelt. They are honest, but, my G.o.d, how could they be anything else? It would not be right for me to deny that I have improved a great deal in the last couple of weeks. I am beginning to feel pretty fit, and I've put on four or five pounds.

Still, I'm getting sick of fresh eggs and fresh milk and their everlasting bacon,--they call it side-meat,--and preserves. She simply stuffs me with them. The air is wonderful, even during that awful hot spell I wrote you about. I am sure that another month or two out here,--perhaps three,--will put me back on my pins stronger than ever, and then I'll be in condition to go back to work. I am eager to get at it as soon as possible in order to pay back all you have put up for me during this beastly year. If I did not know you can well afford to do what you have been doing for me, mother dear, I wouldn't allow you to spend another penny on me. But you will get it all back some day, not in cash, of course,--for that means nothing to you,--but in the joy of knowing that it was worth while to bring your only son into the world. Now, as to this change I am going to make. I've been across the river several times and I like it over there much better than here. I think the air is better and certainly the surroundings are pleasanter. Windomville is a funny little village of five or six hundred people, about the same number of dogs (exaggeration!), and the sleepiest place you've ever imagined. Old Caleb Brown says it was laid out back in 1830 or thereabouts by the first Windom to come to these parts. It has a public school, a town hall, a motion-picture house (with last year's reels), a drug store where you can get soda water, a grain elevator, and a wonderful old log hut that was built by the very first settler, making it nearly a hundred years old. Miss Alix Crown, who owns nearly everything in sight,--including the log hut,--has had the latter restored and turned into the quaintest little town library you've ever seen. But you ought to see the librarian! She is a dried-up, squinty old maid of some seventy summers, and so full of Jane Austen and the Bronte women and Mrs. Southworth that she hasn't an inch of room left in her for the modern writers. Her name caps the climax. It is Alaska Spigg. Can you beat it? No one ever calls her Miss Spigg,--not even the kids,--nor is she ever spoken of or to as Alaska. It is always Alaska Spigg. I wish you could see her. Miss Crown is the girl I wrote you about, the one with the dime novel history back of her. She has a house on the edge of the town,--a very attractive place. I have not seen her yet. She is up in Michigan,--Harbor Point, I believe,--but I hear she is expected home within a week or two. I am rather curious to see her. The place where I have taken a room is run by a couple of old maids named Dowd. It is really a sort of hotel. At least, you would insult them if you called it a boarding house. Their grandfather built the house and ran it as a tavern back before the Civil War.

When he died his son carried on the business. And now his two daughters run the place. They have built on a couple of wings and it is really an interesting old shack. Clean as a pin, and they say the grub is good. It will be, as I said, a little more expensive living here than with the Vicks but not enough to amount to anything.

The Dowds ask only fifteen dollars a week for room and board, which is cheaper than the Ritz-Carlton or the Commodore, isn't it?...Here is my new address in the Metropolis of Windomville-by-the-Crick: Dowd's Tavern, Main Street.

Her reply was prompt. She wrote from Bar Harbor, where she was spending the summer:

...perfectly silly of you, dearest, to speak of repaying me. All I possess will be yours some day, so why begrudge you a little of what should be yours now? Your dear father perhaps thought he was doing the right thing for both of us when he left everything to me during my lifetime, but I do not believe it was fair....There will not be a great deal, of course. You understand how heavy my expenses have been....In any case, you are in wretched health, my dear boy. Nothing must stand in the way of your complete recovery.

When you are completely recovered, well and strong and eager to take up life where this cruel war cut it off, I shall be the happiest mother alive. I am sure you will have no difficulty in establis.h.i.+ng yourself. They tell me the returned soldiers are not having an easy time finding satisfactory and lucrative positions. It is a shame the way certain concerns have treated a good many of them, after actually promising to hold their places open for them. But with you it will be different. I spoke to Mr. Roberts yesterday about you.

He wants to have a talk with you. I have an idea he wants to put you in charge of one of their offices in Spain. At any rate, he asked if you spoke Spanish well....So I can easily afford to increase your allowance to one hundred and fifty a month. More, if you should ask for it, but you are so proud and self-reliant I can do absolutely nothing with you, dear boy. I quite understand your unwillingness to accept more than you actually need from me. It is splendid, and I am very proud of you....This girl you wrote me about, is she so very rich?...Your father used to speak of a young man named Windom and how he envied him because he was so tall and handsome. Of course, your dear father was a small boy then, and that is always one of the laments of small boys. That, and falling in love with women old enough to be their mothers....Do write me often. But don't be angry with me if I fail to answer all of your letters. I am so frightfully busy. I rarely ever have more than a minute to myself. How I have managed to find the time to write this long letter to you I cannot imagine. It is really quite a nice long one, isn't it?...and don't be writing home to me in a few weeks to say you are engaged to be married to her. It took me a great many years to convert your dear father into what he was as you knew him. I don't relish the thought at my time of life of transforming a crude farmer's daughter into a Fifth Avenue lady, no matter how pretty she may be in the rough. The days of Cinderella are long since past. One has so much to overcome in the way of a voice with these country girls, to say nothing of the letter r. Your poor father never quite got over being an Indiana farmer's son, but he did manage to subdue the aforesaid letter....And these country-girls take a harmless, amusing flirtation very seriously, dear boy....

Your adoring mother.

Courtney Thane's fame had preceded him to Windomville. By this time, the entire district had heard of the man who was ga.s.sed, and who had actually won two or three medals for bravery in the Great War. The young men from that section of the state who had seen fighting in France were still in New York City, looking for jobs.

Most of them had "joined up" at the first call for volunteers. Some of them had been killed, many of them wounded, but not one of them had received a medal for bravery. The men who had been called by the draft into the great National Army were all home again, having got no nearer to the battle front than an embarkation camp in New Jersey,--and so this tall, slender young fellow from the East was an object not only of curiosity but of envy.

The Misses Dowd laid themselves out to make him comfortable,--as well as prominent. They gave him a corner room on the upper floor of Dowd's Tavern, dispossessing a tenant of twelve years' standing,--a photographer named Hatch, whose ability to keep from living too far in arrears depended on his luck in inveigling certain sentimental customers into taking "crayon portraits" of deceased loved ones, satisfaction guaranteed, frames extra. Two windows, looking out over the roof of the long front porch, gave him an un.o.bstructed view of Main Street, including such edifices as the postoffice, the log-hut library, the ancient watering trough, the drug store, and the steeple of the Presbyterian Church rising proudly above the roofs of the houses in between.

Main Street ran almost parallel with the river. With commendable forethought, the first settlers had built their houses and stores some little distance back from the stream along the summit of a wooded ridge perhaps forty feet above the river at its midsummer low-water level. The tremendous, devastating floods that came annually with the breaking up of winter failed to reach the houses,--although in 1883,--according to the records,--the water came up to within a foot of Joe Roush's blacksmith shop, situated at that time halfway down the slope, compelling the smith to think seriously of "moving up a couple of hops," a precaution that was rendered unnecessary by a subsequent midsummer bolt of lightning that destroyed not only the forge but shocked Joe so severely that he "saw green"

for a matter of six weeks and finally resulted in his falling off the dock into deep water in the middle of what was intended to be a protracted spree brought on by the discovery that his insurance policy did not cover "loss by lightning." To this day, the older inhabitants of Windomville will tell you about the way his widow "took on" until she couldn't stand it any longer,--and then married George Hooper, the butcher, four months after the shocking demise of Joseph.