Thankful's Inheritance Part 9

Emily burst out laughing. "Excuse me, please," she said, "but I've been dying to do this for so long. That--that Miss Parker is the oddest person!"

The captain grinned. "Thinkin' about that 'diagram' yarn?" he asked.

"'Tis funny when you hear it the first four or five times. Hannah Parker can get more wrong words in the right places than anybody I ever run across. She must have swallowed a dictionary some time or 'nother, but it ain't digested well, I'm afraid."

Thankful laughed, too. "You must find her pretty amusin', Cap'n Bangs,"

she said.

The captain shook his head. "She's a reg'lar dime show," he observed.

Then he added: "Only trouble with that kind of a show is it gets kind of tiresome when you have to set through it all winter. There! now you can see your property, Mrs. Barnes, and ten mile either side of it. Look's some more lifelike and cheerful than it did last night, don't it?"

It most a.s.suredly did. They had reached the summit of a little hill and before and behind and beneath them was a view of sh.o.r.e and sea that caused Emily to utter an exclamation of delight.

"Oh!" she cried. "WHAT a view! What a wonderful view!"

Behind them, beyond the knoll upon which stood the little Parker house which they had just left, at the further side of the stretch of salt meadow with the creek and bridge, was East Wellmouth village. Along the white sand of the beach, now garlanded with lines of fresh seaweed torn up and washed ash.o.r.e by the gale, were scattered a half dozen fishhouses, with dories and lobster pots before them, and at the rear of these began the gray and white huddle of houses and stores, with two white church spires and the belfry of the schoolhouse rising above their roofs.

At their right, only a few yards from the foot-path where they stood, the high sand bluff broke sharply down to the beach and the sea.

The great waves, tossing their white plumes on high, came marching majestically in, to trip, topple and fall, one after the other, in roaring, hissing Niagaras upon the sh.o.r.e. Over their raveled crests the gulls dipped and soared. The air was clear, the breeze keen and refres.h.i.+ng and the salty smell of the torn seaweed rose to the nostrils of the watchers.

To the left were barren hills, dotted with scrub, and farther on the pine groves, with the road from Wellmouth Centre winding out from their midst.

All these things Thankful and Emily noticed, but it was on the prospect directly ahead that their interest centered. For there, upon the slope of the next knoll stood the "property" they had come to see and to which they had been introduced in such an odd fas.h.i.+on.

Seen by daylight and in the glorious suns.h.i.+ne the old Barnes house did look, as their guide said, more "lifelike and cheerful." A big, rambling, gray-gabled affair, of colonial pattern, a large yard before it and a larger one behind, the tumble-down shed in which General Jackson had been tethered, a large barn, also rather tumble-down, with henhouses and corncribs beside it and attached to it in haphazard fas.h.i.+on. In the front yard were overgrown cl.u.s.ters of lilac and rose bushes and, behind the barn, was the stubble of a departed garden.

Thankful looked at all these.

"So that's it," she said.

"That's it," said Captain Obed. "What do you think of it?"

"Humph! Well, there's enough of it, anyhow, as the little boy said about the spring medicine. What do you think, Emily?"

Emily's answer was prompt and emphatic.

"I like it," she declared. "It looks so different this morning. Last night it seemed lonesome and pokey and horrid, but now it is almost inviting. Think what it must be in the spring and summer. Think of opening those upper windows on a summer morning and looking out and away for miles and miles. It would be splendid!"

"Um--yes. But spring and summer don't last all the time. There's December and January and February to think of. Even March ain't all joy; we've got last night to prove it by. However, it doesn't look quite so desperate as I thought it might; I'll give in to that. Last night I was about ready to sell it for the price of a return ticket to South Middleboro. Now I guess likely I ought to get a few tradin' stamps along with the ticket. Humph! This sartin isn't ALL Poverty Lane, is it? THAT place wa'n't built with tradin' stamps. Who lives there?"

She was pointing to the estate adjoining the Barnes house and fronting the sea further on. "Estate" is a much abused term and is sometimes applied to rather insignificant holdings, but this one deserved the name. Great stretches of lawns and shrubbery, ornamental windmill, greenhouses, stables, drives and a towered and turreted mansion dominating all.

"I seem to have aristocratic neighbors, anyhow," observed Mrs. Barnes.

"Whose tintype belongs in THAT gilt frame?"

Captain Obed chuckled at the question.

"Why, n.o.body's just now," he said. "There was one up to last fall, though I shouldn't have called him a tintype. More of a panorama, if you asked me--or him, either. That place belonged to our leadin' summer resident, Mr. Hamilton Colfax, of New York. There's a good view from there, too, but not as fine as this one of yours, Mrs. Barnes. When your uncle, Cap'n Abner, bought this old house it used to set over on a part of that land there. The cap'n didn't like the outlook so well as the one from here, so he bought this strip and moved the house down. Quite a job movin' a house as old as this one.

"Mr. Colfax died last October," he added, "and the place is for sale.

Good deal of a shock, his death was, to East Wellmouth. Kind of like takin' away the doughnut and leavin' nothin' but the hole. The Wellmouth Weekly Advocate pretty nigh gave up the ghost when Mr. Colfax did. It always cal'lated on fillin' at least three columns with the doin's of the Colfaxes and their 'house parties' and such. All summer it told what they did do and all winter it guessed what they was goin' to do. It ain't been much more than a patent medicine advertisin' circular since the blow struck. Well, have you looked enough? Shall we heave ahead and go aboard your craft, Mrs. Barnes?"

They walked on, down the little hill and up the next, and entered the front yard of the Barnes house. There were the marks in the mud and sand where the depot-wagon had overturned, but the wagon itself was gone.

"Cal'late Winnie S. and his dad come around early and towed it home,"

surmised Captain Obed. "Seemed to me I smelled sulphur when I opened my bedroom window this mornin'. Guess 'twas a sort of floatin' memory of old man Holt's remarks when he went by. That depot-wagon was an antique and antiques are valuable these days. Want to go inside, do you?"

Thankful hesitated. "I haven't got the key," she said. "I suppose it's at that Badger man's in the village. You know who I mean, Cap'n Bangs."

The captain nodded.

"Christopher S. H. Badger, tinware, groceries, real estate, boots and shoes, and insurance," he said. "Likewise justice of the peace and first mate of all creation. Yes, I know Chris."

"Well, he's been in charge of this property of mine. He collected the rent from that Mr. Eldredge who used to live here. I had a good many letters from him, mainly about paintin' and repairs."

"Um--hum; I ain't surprised. Chris sells paint as well as tea and tinware. He's got the key, has he?"

"I suppose he has. I ought to have gone up and got it from him."

"Well, I wouldn't fret about it. Of course we can't go in the front door like the minister and weddin' company, but the kitchen door was unfastened last night and I presume likely it's that way now. You haven't any objection to the kitchen door, have you? When old Laban lived here it's a safe bet he never used any other. Cur'ous old critter, he was."

They entered by the kitchen door. The inside of the house, like the outside, was transformed by day and suns.h.i.+ne. The rooms downstairs were large and well lighted, and, in spite of their emptiness, they seemed almost cheerful.

"Whose furniture is this?" asked Thankful, referring to the stove and chair and sofa in the dining-room.

"Laban's; that is, it used to be. When he died he didn't have chick nor child nor relation, so fur's anybody knew, and his stuff stayed right here. There wa'n't very much of it. That is--" He hesitated.

"But, there must have been more than this," said Thankful. "What, became of it?"

Captain Obed shook his head. "You might ask Chris Badger," he suggested.

"Chris sells antiques on the side--the high side."

"Did old Mr. Eldredge live here ALL alone?" asked Emily.

"Yup. And died all alone, too. Course I don't mean he was alone all the time he was sick. Most of that time he was out of his head and folks could stay with him, but he came to himself occasional and when he did he'd fire 'em out because feedin' 'em cost money. He wa'n't what you'd call generous, Laban wa'n't."

"Where did he die?" asked Thankful, who was looking out of the window.

"Upstairs in the little back bedroom. Smallest room in the house 'tis, and folks used to say he slept there 'cause he could heat it by his cussin' instead of a stove. 'Most always cussin', he was--cussin' and groanin'."

Thankful was silent. Emily said: "Groaning? You mean he groaned when he was ill?"

"Yes, and when he was well, too. A habit of his, groanin' was. I don't know why he done it--see himself in the lookin'-gla.s.s, maybe; that was enough to make anybody groan. He'd groan in his sleep--or snore--or both. He was the noisiest sleeper ever I set up with. Shall we go upstairs?"

The narrow front stairs creaked as loudly in the daytime as they had on the previous night, but the long hall on the upper floor was neither dark nor terrifying. Nevertheless it was with just a suspicion of dread that Mrs. Barnes approached the large room at the end of the hall and the small one adjoining it. Her common-sense had returned and she was naturally brave, but an experience such as hers had been is not forgotten in a few hours. However, she was determined that no one should know her feelings; therefore she was the first to enter the little room.

"Here's where Laban bunked," said the captain. "You'd think with all the big comf'table bedrooms to choose from he wouldn't pick out this two-by-four, would you? But he did, probably because n.o.body else would.

He was a contrary old rooster, and odd as d.i.c.k's hat-band."

Thankful was listening, although not to their guide's remarks. She was listening for sounds such as she had heard--or thought she had heard--on the occasion of her previous visit to that room. But there were no such sounds. There was the bed, the patchwork comforter, the chair and the pictures on the walls, but when she approached that bed there came no disturbing groans. And, by day, the memory of her fright seemed absolutely ridiculous. For at least the tenth time she solemnly resolved that no one should ever know how foolish she had been.

Emily uttered an exclamation and pointed.