In a Little Town Part 2

"Now he's already sorry that he married me. What can he see in me to love? Nothing! Nothing!"

When they clambered into the carriage Eddie said, "Well, Mrs. Pouch, give your old husband a kiss!"

Ellaphine shrank away from him, however, crying again. He was hurt and puzzled until he remembered that it is the business of brides to cry.

He held her hand and tried to console her for being his victim, and imagined almost every reason for her tears but the true one.

The guests at the church straggled to Mrs. Govers's home, drawn by the call of refreshments. Luella was the gayest of them all. People wondered why Eddie had not married her instead of Ellaphine. Luella heard some one say, "What on earth can he see in her?"

Luella answered, "What on earth can she see in him?" It was hardly playing fair, but Luella was a poor loser. She even added, to clinch it, "What on earth can they see in each other?"

That became the town comment on the couple when there was any comment at all. Mainly they were ignored completely.

Eddie and Ellar were not even honored with the usual outburst of the ign.o.blest of all sports--bride-baiting. n.o.body tied a white ribbon to the wheel of the hack that took them to the depot. Old shoes had not been provided and rice had been forgotten. They were not pelted or subjected to immemorial jokes. They were not chased to the train, and their elaborate schemes for deceiving the neighbors as to the place of their honeymoon were wasted. n.o.body cared where they went or how long they stayed.

They returned sheepishly, expecting to run a gantlet of humor; but people seemed unaware that they had been away. They settled down into the quiet pool of Carthage without a splash, like a pair of mud-turtles slipping off a log into the water. Even the interest in Eddie's inheritance did not last long, for Uncle Loren's fortune did not last long--not that they were spendthrift, for they spent next to nothing; but money must be fed or it starves to death. Money must grow or wither.

V

Eddie found that his uncle's reputation for hard dealing had been a condition of his success. He soon learned that the feather-duster factory could be run at a profit only by the most microscopic care.

Wages must be kept down; hours kept up; the workers driven every minute, fined if they were late, nagged if they dawdled. Profit could be wrung from the trade only by ugly battles with dealers and purchasers. Raw material had to be fought down, finished product fought up; bills due fought off, accounts fought in; the smallest percentage of a percentage wrestled for.

Eddie was incapable of such vigilant hostility toward everybody. The factory almost immediately ceased to pay expenses. Eddie was prompt to meet debts, but lenient as a collector. The rest of his inheritance fared no better. Eddie was an ideal mortgagee. The first widow wept him out of his interest in five tears. Having obliged her, he could hardly deny the next person, who had money but wanted more, "to carry out a big deal."

Eddie first gained a reputation for being a kind-hearted gentleman and a Christian, and later a notoriety for being an easy mark. Eddie overheard such comment eventually, and it wounded him as deeply as it bewildered him. Bitterer than the contempt for a hard man is the contempt for a soft man who is betrayed by a vice of mercy. Eddie was hopelessly addicted to decency.

Uncle Loren had been a miser and so close that his nickname had implied the ability to skin a flint. People hated him and raged against him; but it suddenly became evident that they had worked hard to meet their bills payable to him. They had sat up nights devising schemes to gain cash for him. He was a cause of industry and thrift and self-denial. He paid poor wages, but he kept the factory going. He squeezed a penny until the eagle screamed, but he made dusters out of the tail feathers, and he was planning to branch out into whisk brooms and pillows when, in the words of the pastor, he was "called home." The pastor liked the phrase, as it did not commit him to any definite habitat.

Eddie, however, though he worked hard and used thrift, and, with Ellaphine's help, practised self-denial, found that he was not so big a man as the small man he succeeded. He increased the wages and cut down the hours, and found that he had diminished the output of everything except complaints. The men loafed shamelessly, cheated him of the energy and the material that belonged to him, and whined all the time. His debtors grew s.h.i.+ftless and contemptuous.

It is the irony, the meanness, of the trade of life that virtue may prove vicious in effect; and viciousness may produce good fruit. Figs do grow from thistles.

For a time the Pouch couple attracted a great deal of attention from the people of Carthage--the sort of attention that people on sh.o.r.e devote to a pair of capsized canoeists for whom n.o.body cares to risk his life.

Luella Thickins had forced the note of gaiety at the wedding, but she soon grew genuinely glad that Eddie had got away. She began to believe that she had jilted him.

VI

People who wondered what Mr. and Mrs. Pouch saw in each other could not realize that he saw in her a fellow-sufferer who upheld him with her love in all his terrors. She was everything that his office was not--peace without demand for money; glowing admiration and raptures of pa.s.sion.

What she saw in him was what a mother sees in a crippled child that runs home to her when the play of the other boys is too swift or too rough.

She saw a good man, who could not fight because he could not slash and trample and loot. She saw what the Belgian peasant women saw--a little cottage holder staring in dismay at the hostile armies cras.h.i.+ng about his homestead.

The only comfort Eddie found in the situation was the growing realization that it was hopeless. The drowsy opiate of surrender began to spread its peace through his soul. His torment was the remorse of proving a traitor to his dead uncle's glory. The feather-dustery that had been a monument was about to topple into the weeds. Eddie writhed at that and at his feeling of disloyalty to the employees, who would be turned out wageless in a small town that was staggering under the burden of hard times.

He made a frantic effort to keep going on these accounts, but the battle was too much for him. He could not imagine ways and means--he knew nothing of the ropes of finance. He was like a farmer with a scythe against sharpshooters. Ellaphine began to fear that the struggle would break him down. One night she persuaded him to give up.

She watched him anxiously the next morning as his fat little body, bulging with regrets, went meekly down the porch steps and along the walk. The squeal of the gate as he shoved through sounded like a groan from his own heart. He closed the gate after him with the gentle care he gave all things. Then he leaned across it to wave to his Pheeny. It was like the good-by salute of a man going to jail.

Ellaphine moped about the kitchen, preparing him the best dinner she could to cheer him when he came home at noon. To add a touch of grace she decided to set a bowl of petunias in front of him. He loved the homely little flowers in their calico finery, like farmers' daughters at a picnic. Their cheap and almost palpable fragrancy delighted him when it powdered the air. She hoped that they would bring a smile to him at noon, for he could still afford petunias.

She was squatting by the colony aligned along the walk, and her big sunbonnet hid her unbeautiful face from the pa.s.sers-by and theirs from her, when she caught a glimpse of Luella Thickins coming along, giggling with the banker's son. Luella put on a little extra steam for the benefit of Ellaphine, who was glad of her sunbonnet and did not look up.

Later there came a quick step, thumping the boardwalk in a rhythm she would have recognized but for its allegrity. The gate was opened with a sweep that brought a shriek from its old rheumatic hinge, and was permitted to swing shut with an unheeded smack. Ellaphine feared it was somebody coming with the haste that bad news inspires. Something awful had happened to Eddie! Her knees could not lift her to face the evil tidings. She dared not turn her head.

Then she heard Eddie's own voice: "Pheeny! Pheeny, honey! Everything's all right!"

Pheeny spilled the petunias and sat down on them. Eddie lifted her up and pushed his glowing face deep into her sunbonnet, and kissed her.

Luella Thickins was coming back and her giggling stopped. She and the banker's son, who were just sauntering about, exchanged glances of disgust at the indecorous proceeding. Later Luella resumed her giggle and enjoyed hugely her comment:

"Ellar looks fine in a sunbonnet! The bigger it is, the better she looks."

VII

Meantime Eddie was supporting his Pheeny into the house. His path was strewn with petunias and she supposed he had some great victory to announce. He had; but he was the victim.

The conqueror was the superintendent of the factory, Jabez Pittinger, who had survived a cycle of Uncle Loren's martinetism with less resentment than a year of Eddie's lenience. But Eddie is telling Ellaphine of his glorious achievement:

"You see, I went to the fact'ry feeling like I was goin' to my grave."

"I know," she said; "but what happened?"

"I just thought I'd rather die than tack up the notice that we were going to shut down and turn off those poor folks and all."

"I know," said Ellaphine; "but tell me."

"Well, finally," Eddie plodded along, "I tried to draw up the 'nouncement with the markin'-brush; but I just couldn't make the letters. So I called in Jabe Pittinger and told him how it was; and I says to him: 'Jabe, I jest naturally can't do it m'self. I wisht you'd send the word round that the factory's goin' to stop next Sat'd'y.' I thought he'd show some surprise; but he didn't. He just shot a splash of tobacco-juice through that missin' tooth of his and says, 'I wouldn't if I's you.' And I says, 'Goodness knows I hate to; but there's no way out of it.' And he wopsed his cud round and said, 'Mebbe there is.'

'What do you mean?' I says. And he says, 'Fact is, Eddie'--he always called me Mr. Pouch or Boss before, but I couldn't say anything to him, seeing--"

"I know!" Ellaphine almost screamed. "But what'd he say? What's the upshot?"

Eddie went on at his ox-like gait. "'Well,' he says, 'fact is, Eddie,' he says, 'I been expectin' this, and I been figgerin' if they wasn't a way somewhere to keep a-runnin',' says he; 'and I been talkin'

to certain parties that believes as I do, that the fault ain't with the feather-duster business, but with the way it's run,' he says. 'People gotter have feather dusters,' he says; 'but they gotter be gave to 'em right.' O' course I knew he was gettin' at me, but I was in no p'sition to talk back."

"Oh, please, Eddie!" Ellaphine moaned. "Please tell me! I'm goin' crazy to know the upshot of it, and I smell the pie burnin'--it's rhubob, too."

"You got rhubob pie for dinner to-day?" Eddie chortled. "Oh, crickety, that's fine!"

He followed her into the kitchen and helped her carry the things to the dining-room, where they waited on each other in alternate dashes and clashes of "Lemme get it!" and "You set right still!"

Eventually he reached the upshot, which was that Mr. Pittinger thought he might raise money to run the factory if Eddie would give him the control and drop out. Eddie concluded, with a burst of rapture: "I'm so tickled I wisht I could telegraft poor Uncle Loren that everything's all right!"

VIII

It was an outrageous piece of petty finance on high models, and it euchred Eddie out of everything he had in the world except his illusion that Jabez was working for the good of the factory.