Part 53 (2/2)

”Just a minute. Did they say--did this general impression say why I was givin' up the job?”

”No-o, no, I think not. I believe it was hinted that you were not well and--perhaps somewhat tired--a little discouraged--that sort of thing.

As I say, it was mere rumor.”

Sears smiled now--that is, his lips smiled, his eyes were grave enough.

”Well,” he observed, deliberately, ”if you have a chance, Mr. Phillips, you can tell those mere rumorers that I'm not tired at all. My health is better than it has been for months. So far from bein' discouraged, you can tell 'em that--well, you know what Commodore Paul Jones told the British cap'n who asked him to surrender; he told him that he had just begun to fight. That's the way it is with me, Mr. Phillips, I've just begun to fight.”

The cane was lifted from the flower bed. Egbert nodded in polite appreciation.

”Really?” he said. ”How interesting, Captain!”

Kendrick nodded, also. ”Yes, isn't it?” he agreed. ”Were you goin' into the Harbor, Phillips? So am I. We'll walk along together.”

But that night he went to his bed in better spirits. Egbert's little dig had been the very thing he needed, and now he knew it. He had been discouraged; in spite of his declaration in his letter to Elizabeth Berry, he had wished that it were possible to run away from the Fair Harbor and everything connected with it. But now--now he had no wish of that kind. If Judge Knowles could rise from the grave and bid him quit he would not do it.

Quit? Not much! Like Paul Jones, he had just begun to fight.

CHAPTER XV

But there was so little that was tangible to fight, that was the trouble. If Mr. Egbert Phillips was the villain of the piece he was such a light and airy villain that it was hard to take him seriously enough.

Even when Kendrick was most thoroughly angry with him and most completely convinced that he was responsible for all his own troubles, including the loss of Elizabeth Berry's friends.h.i.+p--even then he found it hard to sit down and deliberately plan a campaign against him. It seemed like campaigning against a b.u.t.terfly. The captain disliked him extremely, but he never felt a desire to knock him down. To kick him--yes. Perhaps to thump the beaver hat over his eyes and help him down the brick path of the Harbor with the judicious application of a boot, grinning broadly during the process--that was Sears Kendrick's idea of a fitting treatment for King Egbert the Great.

The captain had done his share of fighting during an adventurous lifetime, but his opponents had always been men. Somehow Phillips did not seem to him like a man. A creature so very ornamental, with so much flourish, so superlatively elegant, so overwhelmingly correct, so altogether and all the time the teacher of singing school or dancing school--how could one seriously set about fighting such a bundle of fluff? A feather-duster seemed a more fitting weapon than a shotgun.

But the fluff was flying high and in the suns.h.i.+ne and was already far out of reach of the duster. Soon it would be out of reach of the shotgun. Unless the fight was made serious and deadly at once there would be none at all. Unless having already lost about all that made life worth living, Sears Kendrick wished to be driven from Bayport in inglorious rout, he had better campaign in earnest. Pa.s.sive resistance must end.

As a beginning he questioned Judah once more concerning Phillips'

standing in the community. It was unchanged, so Judah said. He was quite as popular, still the brave and uncomplaining martyr, always the idol of the women and a large proportion of the men.

”Did you hear about him down to the Orthodox church fair last week?”

asked Mr. Cahoon. ”You didn't! Creepin'! I thought everybody aboard had heard about that. Seems they'd sold about everything there was to sell, but of course there was a few things left, same as there always is, and amongst 'em was a patchwork comforter that old Mrs. Jarvis--Capn'

Azariah Jarvis's second wife she was--you remember Cap'n Azariah, don't ye, Cap'n Sears? He was the one that used to swear so like fury. Didn't mean nothin' by it, just a habit 'twas, same as usin' tobacco or rum is with some folks. Didn't know when---- Eh? Oh, yes, about that comforter.

Why, old Mrs. Jarvis she made it for the fair and it wan't sold. 'Twas one of them log-cabin quilts, you know. I don't know why they call 'em log cabins, they don't look no more like a log cabin than my head does.

I cal'late they have to call 'em somethin' so's to tell 'em from the risin' sun quilts and the mornin'-glory quilts and--and the Lord-knows-what quilts. The womenfolks make mo-ore kinds of them quilts and comforters, seems so, than----

”Eh? Oh, yes, I'm beatin' up to Egbert, Cap'n Sears; I'll be alongside him in a minute, give me steerage way. Well, the log-cabin quilt wan't sold and they wanted to sell it, partly because old Mrs. Jarvis would feel bad if n.o.body bought it, and partly because the meetin'-house folks would feel worse if any money got away from 'em at a fair. So Mr. Dishup he says, 'We'll auction of it off,' he says, 'and our honored and beloved friend, Mr. Phillips, will maybe so be kind enough to act as auctioneer.' So Eg, he got up and apologized for bein' chose, and went on to say what a all-'round no-good auctioneer he'd be but how he couldn't say no to the folks of the church where his dear diseased wife had wors.h.i.+ped so long, and then he started in to sell that comforter.

Did he _sell_ it? Why, creepin', crawlin', hoppin' ... Cap'n Sears, he could have sold a s.h.i.+pload of them log-cabins if he'd had 'em handy. He held the thing up in front of 'em, so they tell me, and he just praised it up same as John B. Gough praises up cold water at a temp'rance lecture. He told how the old woman had worked over it, and set up nights over it, and got her nerves all into a t.i.tter and her finger ends all rags, as you might say, and how she had done it just to do somethin' for the meetin'-house she thought so much of, the church that her loved and lost husband used to come to so reg'lar. _That_ was all fiddlesticks, 'cause Cap'n Az never went to church except for the six weeks after he was married, and pretty scattern' 'long the last three of _them_.

”Well, he hadn't talked that way very long afore he had that whole vestry as damp as a fis.h.i.+n' schooner's deck in a Banks fog. All hands--even the men that had been spendin' money for the fair things, tidies and ap.r.o.ns and splint work picture-frames and such, even they was cryin'. And then old Mrs. Jarvis--and she was cryin', too--she went and whispered to the minister and he whispered to Phillips and Phillips, he says: 'Ladies and gentlemen,' he says, 'I have just learned that a part of this quilt was made from a suit of clothes worn by Cap'n Jarvis on his last v'yage,' he says. '_Just_ think of it,' says he, 'this blue strip here is a part of the coat worn by him as he trod the deck of his s.h.i.+p homeward bound--bound home to his wife, bound home to die.'

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