Part 5 (1/2)
Flint smiled.
”Every man, you know, must be either a fool or a physician when he reaches maturity. Some may be both. However, since you were kind enough to come to my a.s.sistance last night, I cannot be induced to quarrel with you this morning, and you ought to be the last man to find fault with me for feeling the benefit of your medicine sooner than you expected.”
Dr. Cricket was as easy to be placated as to be stirred to anger; and when Flint urged him to come into the stuffy little office and partake of a lemonade with the addition of a stronger fluid from a bottle in Flint's room, he forgot his wrath or drowned it in the cooling drink, and at length parted in kindliness, only bidding his patient wear cabbage-leaves in his hat, and be sure to take wraps in case of a change in the weather, not forgetting to put on his ”gums” if he walked on the wet beach.
When he had gone, Flint found the Doctor's gold-bowed spectacles in a chair. ”Brady and I will walk up with them this evening,” he said to himself. ”Perhaps I was not as civil to the old gentleman as I might have been.”
When Marsden learned that Flint was planning an expedition to South East, he suggested that he would ”take it kindly” if Flint could make it convenient to bring down a few packages of groceries, as some of the store supplies had run out, and the relays were not expected until the next day.
Flint reproached himself for weakness in complying, and growled still further when he saw the length of the list which Marsden handed to him as he took his seat in the carryall.
”What a cursed fool I am,” he muttered as he drove off, ”to hire this man's beast for the privilege of doing his errands!”
The three-o'clock train puffed into the station at South East nearly an hour behind time. The period of waiting in the intense mid-day heat had not improved Flint's temper. For all his hearty greeting to Brady, he could not shake off a sense of irritation, intensified by the fact that he had no one on whom to wreak it.
Brady's trunk was strapped onto the carryall, the various bottles, jugs, and packages which Flint, with such unusual urbanity, had consented to bring down to the Beach for Marsden, were stowed away under the seat, and nothing remained but the mail. To get this Flint drew up at the post-office. The postmaster was a grouty old store-keeper who, through political influence, retained his position in spite of the efforts of the town's-folk to oust him. This afternoon a line of wagons stood at the door, and a line of men stood at the little window within. Seeing his own name in the list of those for whom there were letters, Flint waited for the window to open, and took his place in the line. When he reached the window, he asked for his letter.
”No letter for you,” growled the postmaster.
Flint stepped out of line and consulted the list. There was no mistake. Again he presented himself before the window.
”What cher want?”
”My letter.”
”Ain't no letter, I told cher.”
”Perhaps you will be kind enough to look at the list.”
The postman, in the worst of humors, went to a drawer of his desk, and, after much hunting about and turning over of parcels, he found a letter which he threw out at Flint without a remark. Flint took it also in silence, turned away and resumed his place at the end of the line. Again he returned to his old post before the little window. This time the postman grew purple with rage.
”Get out o' this you! What cher want now?”
”I simply wish,” answered Flint, in his low, clear, gentlemanly voice, ”to tell you that you have behaved like an insolent blackguard, and deserve to be removed from office.”
Flint's words were the signal for a storm of applause from the loiterers, and he walked out a hero. He was in a more amiable frame of mind when he climbed into the carryall. The old horse, feeling his head turned homeward, needed less urging than usual, and the young men lolled back, talking busily of old times and new.
Brady was a typical business-man of the West,--cheerful, practical, a bit boastful, square-shouldered, clear-eyed and ruddy-faced, confident of himself, proud of his surroundings, sure that there were no problems of earth or Heaven with which America in general, and Philip Brady in particular, were not fitted to cope.
Before he had uttered a dozen sentences, Flint began to realize how far apart they had drifted in the ten years since they had met. He experienced a vaguely hopeless sense of complexity in the presence of his friend's bustling frankness. He felt almost a hypocrite, and yet it seemed to him that any attempt at self-revelation would be useless, because the relative value, the _chiaro-oscuro_ of life, was so different to each. He took refuge, as we all do under such circ.u.mstances, in objectivity--asked heartily for the health of each member of Brady's family, listened with polite interest to the statistics of the growth of Bison, and then began to wonder what he should talk about next. As he cast his eye downward, a very practical subject suggested itself, for he saw with dismay that the cork was out of the mola.s.ses jug, from which the sticky fluid had already oozed forth, and was rapidly spreading itself over the floor of the carryall.
”This is what comes of being obliging. Just look at this mess! What in time are we going to do about it, Brady?”
Brady, being a man of action, wasted no energy in discussion. He jumped to the ground, pulled out first his overcoat and gripsack, fortunately unharmed, then the paper parcels of oatmeal and hominy, sticky and dripping. Swiftly corking the jug, he lifted it out of the carryall, together with the oilcloth strip, and deftly stood both against a fence by the roadside. Flint watched him with admiration. He felt himself supremely helpless in the presence of the direful calamity. How was he ever to get these bundles into condition to be put back into the wagon? How cleanse the oilcloth and the fatal jug?
No house was in sight.
Flint stood gloomily gazing down at his boots covered with the oozy brown fluid. ”Jupiter aid us!” he exclaimed; and as if in answer to his call, ”a daughter of the G.o.ds, divinely tall,” rose on their sight, coming towards them from over the ridge of the hill. She came on swiftly, yet without hurry. She walked (a process little understood by the feminine half of the world, hampered as they are by their stays and tenpenny heels). This woman neither hobbled, nor waddled, nor tripped. With the leg swinging out from the hip (no awkward knee-movement, yet no stride), she swept down the hill as serenely as though she were indeed a messenger sent by Jupiter to their a.s.sistance. Beside her trotted a large dog who now and again excursionized in search of tempting adventure, but as constantly returned to rub his head lovingly against his mistress's skirt, and lick her hand, as if to a.s.sure her that, in spite of his wandering propensities, his heart remained faithful.
”The hoodoo!” muttered Flint.
”What a pretty girl!” exclaimed Brady.