Part 36 (1/2)

”HENRY FAIR.”

March started up, but sat again and gazed at the missive.

”Well, I will swear!” He smiled, held it at arm's length, and read again facetiously. ”'Alliance with Leggett is, of course, out of the question; but if you can consent and undertake to exploit your lands on the line of operation sketched by him----'

”Now, where's that n.i.g.g.e.r's letter?--I wonder if I--” a knock at the door--”come in!--could have dropped it when my hat--O come in--ha!

ha!--this isn't a private bedroom; I'm dressed.”

XL.

ROUGH GOING

”Ah! Mr. Pettigrew, why'n't you walk right in, sir? I wasn't at prayer.”

Mr. Pettigrew, his voice made more than usually ghostly by the wind and a cold, whispered that he thought he had heard conversation.

”O no, sir, I was only blowing up my a.s.sistant for losing a letter. Why, well, I'll be dog--You picked it up in the street, didn't you? Well, Mr.

Pettigrew, I'm obliged to you, sir. Will you draw up a chair. Take the other one, sir; I threw that one at a friend the other day and broke it.”

As the school-teacher sat down John dragged a chair close and threw himself into it loungingly but with tightly folded arms. Dinwiddie hitched back as if unpleasantly near big machinery. John smiled.

”I'm glad to see you, Mr. Pettigrew. I've been wanting a chance to say something to you for some time, sir.”

Pettigrew whispered a similar desire.

”Yes, sir,” said John, and was silent. Then: ”It's about my mother, sir.

Your last call was your fourth, I believe.” He frowned and waited while the pipe-clay of Mr. Pettigrew's complexion slowly took the tint of old red sandstone. Then he resumed: ”You used to tell us boys it was our part not so much to accept the protection of the laws as to protect them--from their own mistakes no less than from the mistakes of those who owe them reverence--much as it becomes the part of a man to protect his mother. Wasn't that it?”

The school-master gave a husky a.s.sent.

”Well, Mr. Pettigrew, I'm a man, now, at least bodily--I think. Now, I'm satisfied, sir, that you hold my mother in high esteem--yes, sir, I'm sure of that--don't try to talk, sir, you only irritate your throat. I know you think as I do, sir, that one finger of her little faded hand is worth more than the whole bad lot of you and me, head, heart, and heels.”

The listener's sub-acid smile protested, but John--

”I believe she thinks fairly well of you, sir, but she doesn't really know you. With me it's just the reverse. Hm! Yes, sir. You know, Mr.

Pettigrew, my dear mother is of a highly wrought imaginative temperament. Now, I'm not. She often complains that I've got no more romance in my nature than my dear father had. She idealizes people. I can't. But the result is I can protect her against the mistakes such a tendency might even at this stage of life lead her into, for they say the poet's heart never grows old. You understand.”

The school-master bowed majestically.

”My mother, Mr. Pettigrew, can never love where she can't idealize, nor marry where she can't love; she's too true a woman for that. I expect you to consider this talk confidential, of course. Now, I don't know, sir, that she could ever idealize you, but against the bare possibility that she might, I must ask you not to call again. Hm! That's all, sir.”

Mr. Pettigrew rose up ashen and as mad as an adder. His hair puffed out, his eyes glistened. John rose more leisurely, stepped to the hearth, picked up a piece of box stuff and knocked a nail out of one end.

”I'll only add this, sir: If you don't like the terms, you can have whatever satisfaction you want. But I remember”--he produced a large spring-back dirk-knife, sprung it open and began curling off long parings from the pine stick--”that in college, when any one of us vexed you, you took your spite out on us, and generally on me, in words.

That's all right. We were boys and couldn't hold malice.” A shaving fell upon Mr. Pettigrew's shoulder and stayed there. ”But once or twice your venomous contempt came near including my father's name. Still that's past, let it go. But now, if you do take your spite out in words be careful to let them be entirely foreign to the real subject, and be dead sure not to involve any name but mine. Or else don't begin till you've packed your trunk and bought your railroad ticket; and you'd better have a transatlantic steamer ticket, too.”

Mr. Pettigrew had drawn near the door. With his hand on it he hissed, ”You'll find this is not the last of this, sir.”