Mr. Pratt, a novel

Front matter

o

CO G ^ C

1 4 41

Contents

CHAPTER

I The Masters ....

II The Man

Chapter I

1 HEARD about the pair first from Emeline Eldredge, “ Emmie T.” we always call her. She was first mate to the cook at the Old Home House that summer. She come down to the landing one morning afore breakfast and hove alongside of where I was setting in the stern of my sloop, the Dora Bassett, untangling fish lines. She had a tin pail in her fist, indicating that her sailing orders was to go after milk. But she saw me and run down in ballast to swap yarns.

“My sakes! Mr. Pratt,” says she; “have you heard about Nate Scudder? ”

“ Yes,” I says. “ Ever since I come to Wellmouth.”

“ I mean about what him and his wife has just done,” says she. “ It’s the queerest thing! You’ll never guess it in the world.”

“ Ain’t been giving his money to the poor, has he?” says I, for, generally speaking, it takes a strong man and a cold chisel to separate Nate Scudder from a cent.

“ Oh ! ain’t you the funniest thing! ” she squeals. “No indeed! He’s let his house to some city folks, and ”

“Ain’t that the cook calling you?” I asks. I’m a homeopath when it comes to Emmie T. ; I like to take her in small doses — she agrees with me better that way.

It was the cook, and Emeline kited off after the milk, only stopping long enough to yell back: “ Folks say they’re dreadful rich and stylish. I’ll tell you next time I see you.”

Well, I cal’lated she wouldn’t — not if I saw her first — and didn’t pay no more attention to the yarn, except to think that June was pretty early for city folks to be renting houses. There was only three or four boarders at the Old Home so far, and I was to take a couple of ’em over to Trumet in the sloop that very day.

But, while we was on the way over, one of the couple — sort of a high-toned edition of Emmie T. she was — she turns to her messmate, another pullet from the same coop, and says she, “ Oh say ! ” she says. “Have you heard about the two young fellers from New York whoVe rented that Scudder house on the — on the — what do they call it? Oh, yes! the Neck road. I heard Nettie Brown say they were too dear for anything. Let’s drive past there to-morrow; shall we? ”

So there it was again, and I begun to wonder what sort of critters Nate had hooked. I judged that they must be a kind of goldfish or he wouldn’t have baited for ’em. Nate ain’t the man to be satisfied with a mess of sculpins.

I landed the boarders at Trumet and they went up to the village to do some shopping. Then I headed across the harbor to shake hands with the Trumet light keeper, who is a friend of mine. His wife told me he’d gone over to town, too, so I come about and run back to the landing again. And I’m blessed if there wa’n’t Nate Scudder himself, setting on a mackerel keg at the end of the wharf and looking worried.

I hadn’t hoisted the jib on the way down, and now I let the mainsail drop and went forward.

“ Hello, Nate! ” I hailed, as the Dora Bassett slid up to the wharf.

He kind of jumped, and looked at me as if he’d just woke up.

“ Hello, Sol ! ” he says, sort of mournful. Then he turned his eyes toward the bay again and appeared to be starting in on another nap.

“ Hear you got some boarders over to your home,” I says, heaving him a line as a hint for him to come out of his trance and make me fast.

“ Yes,” says he, paying no attention to the line.

“ Come early in the season, ain’t they? ” says I, grabbing hold of one of the wharf spiles and bringing my boat alongside easy as I could.

“ Ya-as,” says he, again. Then he fetched a long breath and opened his mouth as if he was going to go on. But he didn’t; all that come out of the mouth afore it shut up was another “ Yes.”

I made the Dora Bassett fast myself and climbed on to the wharf.

“Are they cal’lating to stay long?” I asks. He’d got me interested. Seemed to have the “ yes ” disease bad.

“ Hey? ” says he. “ Oh — er — yes.”

I was a little mite provoked. Not that I was hankering to have Nate Scudder heave his arms around my neck and tell me he loved me, but I didn’t know any reason why my pumps should suck dry every time I tried ’em.

“Humph!” I grunted, starting to walk off.

“Well, be careful of yourself; look out it don’t develop into nothing worse.”

“ What do you mean? ” he sings out, seeming to be waked up for good, at last.

“ Oh,” says I; “ I judged by the way you kept your mouth shut that you had sore throat and was afraid of getting cold. Good day.”

Would you believe it, he got up off that mackerel keg and chased after me.

“ Hold on, Sol ! ” he says, kind of pleading. “ Don’t be in such a hurry. I wanted to talk to you.”

I had to laugh; couldn’t help it. “ Yes,” says I, “ I kind of suspicioned that you did, from your chatty remarks. If you’d said ‘ yes ’ nine or ten times more I’d have been sure of it.”

“Well, I did,” he says. “I wanted to ask you — I thought I’d see what you thought — you see ”

Here he kind of faded away again, and stood still and wiped his forehead.

“ Look here, Nate Scudder,” I says, “ for a man that wants to talk you make the poorest fist at it of anybody ever I see. Why don’t you try singing or making signs? I wouldn’t wonder if you got ahead faster.”

He grinned, a feeble sort of lop-sided grin, and tried another tack.

“ You was speaking of them boarders of mine,” he says.

“ Yes; / was,” I says.

“ They come day afore yesterday — early,” says he.

“ Um-hum. So I heard,” I says.

He fidgeted a minute or so more. Then he took me by the arm and led me back to the keg.

“ Sol,” he says, “ set down. I want to ask you something. By gum! I got to ask somebody. I’m — I’m worried.”

“ Yes? ” I said, giving him a little of his own medicine.

“ Yes. Them boarders — they worry me. Me and Huldy set up till nigh eleven o’clock last night talking about ’em. She thinks maybe they stole the money, and I don’t know but they’re crazy, run away from an asylum or something. You’ve seen more city folks than I have, being around the hotel so. See what you think.

“ ’Twas this way,” he went on; “I got a letter from the feller in New York that I sell cranberr to. He said a couple of friends of his wante come to a place in the country where ’twas

Did I know of such a place round here? Well, course I wrote back that ’twas nice and quiet right at our house. There wa’n’t no lie in that, was there, Sol?”

44 No,” I says. “ I should say ’twouldn’t be shaving the truth too close if you’d said there was more quietness than anything else down on the Neck road.”

44 Well,” he goes on, not noticing the sarcasm, 44 1 wrote and never got a word back. Me and Huldy had given up hearing. And then, yesterday morning, they come — both of ’em. Nice lookin’ young fellers as ever you see, they are; dressed just like the chaps in the clothes advertisements in the back of the magazines. The biggest one — they’re both half as tall as that mast, seems so — he took up his hat and says, kind of lazy and grand, like a steamboat capt’n :

“ 1 Mr. Scudder? ’ he says.

“ ‘ That’s my name,’ says I. I was kind of suspicious; there’s been so many sewing-machine agents and such round town this spring. And yet I’d ought to have known he wa’n’t no sewing-machine agent.

“ ‘ Ah! ’ he says. ‘ You’ve been expecting us then. Has the luggage come? ’

“ What in time did I know about his ‘ luggage,’ as he called it?

“ ‘ No,’ says I. 4 ’Tain’t.’

“ ‘ Oh, well, never mind,’ he says, just as if a ton or two of baggage didn’t count anyway. ‘ Can you give us two sleeping rooms, two baths, a setting room, and a room for my man? ’

“ ‘ Two baths?’ says I. ‘Can’t you take a bath by yourself? You seem to be having lots of funny jokes with me. Would you mind saying what your name is and what you want ? ’

“ He looked me over sort of odd. * Beg pardon,’ he said. ‘ I thought you were expecting us. Here’s my card.’

“ I looked at it, and there was the name ‘ Edward Van Brunt,’ printed on it. Then I begun to get my bearings, as you might say.

Oh! ’I says. ‘ I see.’

“‘So glad, I’m sure,’ he says. ‘ Now can you give us the sleeping rooms, the baths, and the room for my man? ’

“ 4 Humph! ’ says I, lookin’ back at the house behind me; ‘if me and Huldy bunked in the henhouse and the chore boy in the cellar, maybe wre dould accommodate you, that is, all but the baths.

You’d have to take turns with the washtub for them,’ I says.

“ He laughed. He was so everlasting cool about things that it sort of riled me up.

44 4 Perhaps you’d like to hire the whole shebang? ’ says I, sarcastic, pointing to the house.

44 He looked at it. It looked sort of cheerful, with the syringa over the door and the morningglories hiding where the whitewash was off.

44 4 Good idea ! ’ he says. 4 1 would.’

44 Well, that was too many for me! I went into the house and fetched out Huldy Ann — she’s my wife. There ain’t many women in this town can beat her when it comes to managing and business, if I do say it.

4 4 4 How long would you want the house for? ’ says Huldy, when I told her what was going on.

4 4 4 A month,’ says Van Brunt, turning to the other city feller. 4 Hey, Martin? ’ T’other chap nodded.

4 4 4 All right,’ says Van Brunt. 4 How much? ’

44 Thinks I, 4 I’ll scare you, my line feller.’ And so I says, 4 A month? Well, I don’t know. Maybe, to accommodate, I might let you have it for two hundred.’ I sort of edged off then, thinking sure he’d be mad; but he wa’n’t — not him.

“ ‘Two hundred it is,’ he says, and fished out a little blank book and one of them pocket pens.

“ ‘ Name’s Scudder? ’ he asks.

“ ‘ Yes,’ says I. ‘ Nathan Scudder. One T in Nathan.’

“ And I don’t know as you’ll believe it, Sol,” says Nate, finishing up, “ but that feller made out a check for two hundred and passed it over to me like ’twas a postage stamp. What do you think of that?”

I didn’t know what to think of it. On general principles I’d say that a man who wanted to board with Nate and Huldy Ann Scudder was crazy anyhow ; but of course these fellers didn’t know.

“ It beats me, Nate,” I says. “ What do you think?”

“ Blessed if I know ! ” says Scudder, with another of them long breaths. “ All I’m sure of is that they’re up home, with the parlor blinds open and the carpet fading, and me and Huldy’s living in the barn. She’s doing the cookin’ for ’em till this ‘ man ’ of theirs comes. Land knows what kind of a man he is, too. And that check was on a New York bank, and I’ve just been up to Trumet here with it and the cashier says ’twill be a week afore I know whether it’s good or not. And I

1 1

can’t make out whether them two are thieves, or lunatics, or what. And Huldy can’t neither. I never was so worried in my life.”

I kind of chuckled down inside. The idea of anybody’s skinning Nate Scudder was the nighest to the biter’s being bit of anything I ever come across. And just then I see my two passengers coming.

“ Well, cheer up, Nate,” I says. “ Maybe you’ll get the reward, whether it’s lunatics or thieves. Only you want to look out and not be took up for an accomplice.”

He fairly shriveled up when I said that, and I laughed to myself all the way out of Trumet harbor. One thing I was sure of : them two New Yorkers must be queer birds and I wanted to see ’em.

And the very next afternoon I did see ’em. They come down the Old Home pier together, walking as if they didn’t care a whole continental whether they ever got anywheres or not. One of ’em, the smallest one — he wa’n’t more’n six foot one and a ha’f — looked sort of sick, to me. He had a white face, and that kind of tired, don’t-care look in his eye; and the bigger one sort of ’tended to things for him.

“ Good morning,” says the big one — the Van Brunt one, I judged — cheerful enough. T’other chap said, “ Good morning,” too.

“ Morning,” says I.

“ Can you take us out sailing? ”

“ Why — er — I guess so,” I says. “I don’t know why I can’t, if you feel like going. Course ”

I hadn’t finished what I was going to say afore they was in the boat. * Now, generally speaking, there’s some bargaining to be done afore you take folks out for a three-dollar sail. You naturally expect it, you know — not so much from boarders as from towners, but still, some. But not for these two — no, sir! It was this powerful suddenness of theirs that hit me betwixt wind and water, same as it had Nate. Made me feel sort of like I’d missed the train. Stirred up my suspicions again, too.

’Twas a nice day; one of them clear blue and green days that you get early in June. The water wa’n’t rugged, but just choppy enough to be pretty, and the breeze was about no’theast, givin’ us a fair run down the bay.

“This is grand!” says the big fellow, as the Dora Bassett begun to feel her oats and lay down to her work.

“ Caesar! Van,” said the other one; “ why do you bring me down to earth like that? Grand! Bleecker next ! ” He hollered out this last part in a kind of screechy sing-song. Then they both laughed.

I looked at ’em. There wa’n’t nothing to laugh at, so far as I could see, and the “ Bleecker ” business didn’t appear to have # * either.

They made two or three other speeches that sounded just as foolish. Thinks I, “ I wonder if Scudder’s right? ” They didn’t look like lunatics, but you can’t always tell. Old man Ebenezer Doane went to church of a Sunday morning just as sensible acting as a Second Adventer could be; but when he got home he fired the bean-pot at his wife, chased his children out door with a clam hoe, and they found him settin’ a-straddle of the henhouse singing “ Beulah Land ” to the chickens. These fellers might be harmless loons that had been farmed out, as you might say, by the asylum folks. There was that “ man ” that Nate said was coming. He might be their keeper.

“ I understand you’ve got a friend coming,” says I, by way of ground bait.

“ Friend? ” says the big one. “Friend? I don’t understand.”

“ Scudder said you had another man coming to his house,” says I.

He smiled. “ Oh, I see.” Then he smiled again, a queer lazy kind of a smile, like as if he was amused at himself or his thoughts.

“ I don’t know that I should call him a friend, Mr.— er ”

“ Pratt,” says I. “ Solomon Pratt.”

u Thanks. No, I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a friend; and yet he’s not an enemy — not openly.” He smiled again, and the other chap — whose name I found out was Hartley — Martin Hartley — smiled too.

“ He’s the man Van here belongs to,” explained the Hartley one. They both smiled again.

I kind of jumped, I guess, when he said that. It began to look as if the asylum idea was the right one, and this feller that was coming was the keeper.

“ Hum,” says I, and nodded my head just as if the whole business was as plain as A B C. “ Do you belong to anybody? ” I says to Hartley.

“ I did,” says he, “ but he’s doing time.”

“ Doing time? ” says I.

“ Yes,” says he, explaining, kind of impatient like. “ Up the river, you know.”

I chewed over this for a minute, and all I could think of was that the feller must be in a clock factory or a watchmaker’s or something.

“ Watches? ” I asks.

Hartley seemed to be too tired of life to want to answer, but his chum did it for him.

“ No,” says he. “ I believe it was pearl studs on the showdown.”

Well, this was crazy talk enough for anybody. I didn’t want to stir ’em up none — I’ve always heard that you had to be gentle with lunatics — so I went on, encouraging ’em like.

“ Studs, hey? ” says I.

“ Yes,” says he. “ He was a British beast, and Martin was all balled up in the Street at the time — away from his apartments a good deal — and the B. B. annexed everything in sight.”

“Go ’long!” says I, for the sake of saying something.

“ Beg pardon,” says he.

“ Nothing,” says I; and we stopped talking.

They seemed to enjoy the sail first rate, and acted as rational as could be, generally speaking. They didn’t know a topping lift from a centerboard, so far as boat went, but that wa’n’t strange ; I’d seen plenty of boarders like that. But never afore had I seen two that acted or talked like them.

We got back to the wharf along about dusk, and I walked with ’em a piece on their way to Nate’s. I was keeping a sort of old bach hall just outside the village and so it wa’n’t much out of my way. They had me guessing and I wanted more time to work on the riddle.

We cut across Sears’s meadow, and the frogs was beginning to squeal and the crickets to chirp. To me them early summer noises are as cheerful and restful as a teakettle singing or a cat purring. But, all at once, Hartley, the sick one, stopped and held up his hand.

“ Heavens, Van ! ” he says. “ It sounds like the ticker,” and he said it so prayerful and sad.

Van Brunt shook his head. “ Don’t it? ” says he. “ I can see the tape running off that tree. ‘ Green Apples Preferred, 106 bid and 8 asked.’ Is there no escape ? ” he says.

I left ’em on the hill by the Baptist burying ground. I watched ’em walking down the road, big and straight and handsome, and I pitied ’em from the bottom of my heart.

“ Sol Pratt,” says I to myself, “ here’s a lesson for you. You’re old and homely and your bank

>7 account is nothing, minus a good deal, divided by naught; but don’t you never complain again. S’pose you was good-looking and rich, but out of your head, like them two poor young chaps. Dear ! dear! ”

And I thought about ’em and pitied ’em all that evening, while I was frying my herrings for supper. I hope I’ll get credit somewheres for all that pity.

Chapter II

I SEE ’em pretty often during the next week. They used to loaf down to the landing of a morning, smoking cigars, and with their hands in their pockets. Crazy or not, there was a something about ’em that kind of got me; I own up I begun to like ’em, in spite of their tophamper being out of gear. As a general run I don’t hanker for the average city boarder. He runs too much to yachting clothes and patronizing. Neither the clothes nor the airs set well; kind of look like they was second-hand and made over for him by the folks at home. When one of that kind is out sailing with me, and begins to lord it and show off afore the girls, the Dora Bassett is pretty apt to ship some spray over the bow. A couple of gallons of salt water, sliced off a wave top and poured down the neck of one of them fellers is the best reducer I know of; shrinks his importance like ’twas a flannel shirt.

But Nate Scudder’s private patients wa’n’t that kind. Not that they wa’n’t dressed. Land sakes ! I don’t s’pose they wore the same vests two days running. But they looked like they was used to their clothes, not as if they’d just been introduced and didn’t feel to home in ’em. And they didn’t patronize none to speak of ; called me “ Skipper ” and “Sol” just as sociable as could be. And as for the girls, they never looked twice at any of the hotel ones. Them two skittish females that I took over to Trumet used to get in their way and beg pardon and giggle, hoisting flirtation signals, so to speak, but Van Brunt and Hartley wouldn’t even come up into the wind; just keep on their course like they was carrying the mail. ’Twas these two females that first named ’em “ The Heavenly Twins ’twas shortened later to “ The Heavenlies.”

Every time I took the Heavenlies on a cruise the more certain I was that they were loons — harmless and good-natured, of course, but loons just the same. Most generally they carried a book along with ’em and read it out loud to each other. They’d read a spell and then stop and break out with, “ By Jove ! that’s so. He’s right, isn’t he? ” You’d think that book was a human almost, the way they went on about it. I’ve heard a minister do the same way over the Scriptures ; but this wa’n’t the Bible, the name of it was “ The Natural Life.” I borrowed it once to look at, but ’twas all foolishness to me; telling about money being a cuss, and such rot. I’ve been cussed considerable sence I first went to sea, but not by money — no, sir!

But Van Brunt would read three or four fathom of rubbish out of “ The Natural,” and then heave to and say:

“ Odd we didn’t think of that afore, Martin. It doesn’t count for much, does it? Well, we’re through with it now, thank God! Look at that sunset. Have a smoke, skipper? ”

And then he’d pass over a cigar that had cost as much as ten cusses a box, if I’m any judge of tobacco.

One night, just as we were coming into port, Van says to me:

“ Sol,” he says. “ We may want you and the boat to-morrow. My man’ll let you know in the morning. Meanwhile just dodge the nautical bunch at the hotel, will you? ”

I was a good deal shook up. I’d almost forgot that keeper.

“Man?” says I. “Oh, yes, yes! I see. Is he here now? ”

“ No; coming to-night, I believe. By-by. Just consider yourself engaged till you hear from us.”

They walked off and left me thinking. Thinks I, “ It’s a fair bet that that keeper don’t let you two go boating by yourselves again.”

So the next day about half-past nine, when I’d just about decided to let some of the boarders have the Dora Bassett , I looked up from my fish lines and here was a feller coming down the wharf.

He was a kind of an exhibit for Wellmouth, as you might say. Leastways he was bran-new for me. Six foot two over all, I should judge, and about two foot in the beam. Cast a shadow like a rake handle. Dressed up fine and precise, and prim as a Sunday-school superintendent. He looked sort of gospelly, too, with his smooth upper lip and turned-down mouth, and little two-for-acent side whiskers at half mast on his cheeks. But his eyes was fishy. Thinks I, “ No sir-ee I I don’t want to subscribe to no Temperance Advocate, nor buy 4 The Life of Moses and the Ten Commandments,’ nor I don’t want to have my tintype took neither.”

He stood still by the stringpiece of the wharf and looked me over, kind of grand but well-meaning, same as the Prince of Wales might look at a hoptoad.

“ ’Elio,” says he.

“ Hello, yourself,” says I, keeping on with my work.

“ Mr. Edward ’as ordered the boat for ’alf past eleven,” he says.

“ I want to know,” says I. “ How’ll he have it —fried?”

“ Beg pardon? ” says he.

“ You’re welcome,” says I. I can stand being patronized, sometimes, if I’m paid for it, but I didn’t see this critter developing no cash symptoms.

“ My good man,” he says; “you don’t understand me. I said that Mr. Edward ’ad ordered the boat for ’alf past eleven.”

“ I know you did. And I asked if he’d have it fried.”

He seemed to be turning this over in his mind. And with every turn he got more muddled. I’d concluded by this time that he wa’n’t a book agent. What he was though I couldn’t make out nor I didn’t much care. He riled me, this feller did.

“ Look ’ere,” says he, after a minute. “ Is your name Pratt?”

“ Yup,” I says. “ On Thursdays it is.”

“Thursdays?” says he. “Thursdays? What — what is it on Fridays? ”

“ Mister Pratt,” says I, pretty average brisk.

He seemed to be more muddled than ever. He looked back towards the hotel and then at me again. I had a notion he was going to sing out for help.

“ My man,” he says, again. “ My man ”

“ Humph! ” I interrupted. “ Well, if I’m your man whose man are you? ”

And, by time! he seemed to understand that ! “ I’m Mr. Edward Van Brunt’s man,” says he, “ and Mr. Edward ’as ordered the boat for ’alf ”

And then I begun to understand — or thought I did. ’Twas the keeper. Well, in some ways he looked his job.

“O — oh! ” says I. “All right. Yes, yes. I heard you was coming, Mr. — Mr. ”

“ ’Opper,” says he; “ James ’Opper.”

“ Proud to know you, Mr. Opper,” says I, which was a lie, I’m afraid.

“ Not Hopper,” he says. “ ’Opper.”

“ Sure ! Opper’s what I said,” says I.

He got red in the face. “ ’Opper,” he says. “ Haitch — o-p-p-e-r.”

“ Oh, Hopper!” I says.

u Of course. ’Opper,” he says.

I felt as if I’d been sailing a race and had made a lap and got back to the starting buoy.

“ All right,” says I. “ What’s an H or two between friends? How’s your patients, Mr. Opper Hopper? ”

u Look ’ere, my fine feller,” he says. “ You’re too fresh. For a ’a-penny I’d come down and put a ’ead on you.”

And right then I give up the idea that he was a retired parson. Parsons don’t talk like that.

“ You would? ” says I. “ Well, you go on putting ‘ ’eads ’ on the poor lunatics you have to take care of and don’t try any of your asylum games with me. ’Twould be safer for you and wouldn’t interfere with my work. What do you want? ”

“ I’m Mr. Edward Van Brunt’s vally — ” he says — “’is man-servant; and ’e ’as ordered you j to ”

“His man-servant!” I sung out, setting up straight.

“Of course. Didn’t I says so? His vally; and ”

Well, I’d made a mistake, I judged. If he was a servant he couldn’t be the keeper. I ca’lated

THE MAN a5