4. Glory Be!
At the house of Plott, down the street, ''she" had returned from her mission, as Parker was appraised before he had opportunity to turn the knob of the front door. Scarcely, indeed, had his foot lifted to the porch level when the portal threw open and a wisp-woman in black and white - homespun black of dress, starched white of collar and cuffs - rushed at him.
Of her Identity there could be no doubt. Her cordial, outstretched hands, the lack of reservation in her smile, the beam of her brown eyes behind silver-rimmed spectacles - all would have proclaimed her one of the ''aunts" of the world. And when she spoke, the name "Hootie" fitted, no matter what its derivation or acquired meaning.
"Welcome, friend Parker!" she exclaimed.
Her voice was peculiar - Southern-soft, yet highpitched - a sort of muffled staccato.
"After looking forward to your arrival so anxiously," she continued, "it seems too bad that I could not have been here to greet you. Many as are Hezekiah's virtues, he sometimes fails in cordiality. Of course, poor man, it's only natural that his profession should harden him to the finer feelings of others. But, whatever comes, we're both on your side, which is the right side, glory be !"
On the printed page, these remarks are punctuated according to custom; as Mrs. Plott delivered them, they were hooted without a pause.
Parker could have found no place to interrupt, even had he wished to do so. In truth, his mind was fully engaged with the jig-saw puzzle her words presented - the "friend Parker" of her opening, the declaration that she had been expecting him, the reference to their companionable stand on the side of ''right." Glory be - that expressed it.
"I - I fear there has been some mistake," he interpolated when able.
Reproach entered, but did not mar the graciousness of her expression.
"I reckon it is short notice to expect you to trust me, but you don't look like a person slow at learning. Time is all-important and "
"But I could not have been expected," he was so successful as to interrupt, "and I never take sides when any one but myself is concerned. Certainly I can't lay claim to virtues which "
"Oh, you jewel - you jewel! He wouldn't for anything let his right hand know, would he, now?"
Her manner was nothing short of rapturous. Clamping his arm with a grip that was violence as contrasted with her bird claw of a hand, she propelled him across the porch and through the doorway into the hall.
"Let my right know?" he muttered, rather stupidly, en route,
"Oh, you jewel!" she hooted. "Now don't you say another word ! Pve got a-plenty more than five senses, and I understand - understand to the fullest degree. You're just what I prayed you'd be. You're deep, but I see down Into you. I see victory ahead if only you won't be too drastic at the start. You've got to promise your Aunt Hootle right here and now that you'll be mighty careful."
That warning again!
"Madam," he began in as sane and commonplace a manner as he could command, "your advice is the third such I have received since my arrival in Dismal Gap a couple of hours ago; may I so far trespass upon your kindness as to inquire why and of just what I should be careful?"
"Superb ! You sure enough will fill the bill. The set of your jaw foretells the end. You'll win your fight."
These ejaculations were backward-flung, as the little lady tripped along the hall toward that "best room" door.
Parker followed, but not until he had directed the inquiring look of one man just meeting another into his reflection in the small hat-rack mirror.
Back in the room that was temporarily his own by right of rental, he listened to her from the perch she had selected on the edge of the bed with the growing conviction that the face he had seen in the mirror was a strange one.
"I've tidied things up as best I might. As I said to Hezekiah, we can't do too much for a young man who is taking his very life in his hands. At least you will have the bulwark of our prayers and all the encouragement of our loyal hearts, which may help a little, even though a fight in behalf of right is always its own best reward."
Parker slumped into a rocking-chair. Stretching open his large palms, he examined their emptiness curiously. Just what they had told him at home - his hfe, his future he must take into his own hands. Just what Sylvia had told him at the last meeting, although couched In different words - that the most earnest well-wishes of her heart would go with him, but that his victory must needs be his reward, since he had proved to their world that she was not enough. He must fight out his fight in new scenes, alone; that was what they all had agreed.
Yet what could this wisp-woman know about It? Never, except that last awful once, had he brooked discussion of his - well, his peculiarity.
He straightened in his seat, gazed across at her.
"I fear you're suffering some misapprehension as to my Identity, Mrs. Plott. I'm just a more-or-less Inoffensive citizen, visiting the Blue Ridge for the first time in my life on business which concerns none but myself. Dismal Gap happened to be recommended to me by a friend named Pope, because he "
"Pope - Spencer Pope? I hoped It - I knew It!"
Her state of ecstasy seemed to have reached a superlative degree. She clasped thin arms across a thin chest and hugged herself, her brown eyes held dotingly on him the while.
Parker's small accession of dignity deserted, leaving him with a helpless feeling. "You - you know Spencer?"
"Know him? Didn't he board with us for months over at Killpeter Cove, when Hezekiah and I first came down from Virginia, looking for a cavity - a dental opening?"
"Do you mean to tell me," queried Parker in turn, "that Pope has written you - told you that I was coming, and why?"
The brown-gray head wagged slyly. "It Is enough to know that he sent you - enough for any of us stalwart drys !"
She favored him with a confidential smile. Additionally, one of her eyelids fluttered downward in what looked very like a wink of reassurance.
To Parker there came a new conviction. She, too, believed him a revenue sleuth!
"DId you," she asked, with Intentional Irrelevance, "take to Hezeklah? There is a man for you! Strength of the Lord' is what his name means, and never in all our married years has he been daunted by the stubbornest root set In human gums, no more than he has so far capitulated to the Demon Rum as to let a drop of intoxicating liquor pass his lips."
"How unfortunate that all men have not Hezeklah's advantages!" Reduced to flattery in the emergency, Parker focused upon her his peculiarly winning smile. "A woman of your sort must - must change a man vastly."
"In your case," she added, "I appreciate a difference. Hezeklah needs nerve, to be sure, jerking teeth; but you need nerve of a different sort, battling for the right with these blockaders. What with all that's ahead of you, with the necessity of absolute self-control, with one emergency close after the one that's gone before - well, I believe you ought to be allowed anything that helps you. In you I could even excuse the occasional use of a drop or two of alcoholic spirits - of course, for medicinal purposes only - to strengthen those poor nerves of yours, which must be frazzled at times, the life you lead."
No matter how much the little woman was mistaken in him, she spoke truly. His nerves were frazzled - and from the life he had led! Could he convince her of this? Dared he put her broadmindedness to an immediate test?
"If it weren't for our nerves, life would be a different sort of thing, wouldn't it?" he began, allowing his smile to deepen, to quiver, as if struggling to survive against odds. He grasped the support of the rocker arms. "You may have heard how I was dumped off the stage to-day. I'm ashamed of the way I feel, but I'm not overly strong and I - 1 have had a most trying "
His voice dwindled; his eyes closed; he looked overcome.
Aunt Hootie sped to him, seized and began to chafe his hands, demonstrated anew the appropriateness of her title.
"You poor boy - you poor, brave boy!" she exclaimed. "You must lie flat and get rested up. And you need something to brace you. Would you now - do you think a little sip of spirits - just a thimbleful - y/ould strengthen you?"
Parker shrank back, as if to ward off a repugnant suggestion. Then : "It - it might," he admitted.
She hastened away. He kept his eyes closed until he heard her in the hall, opened them to gaze around him dazedly.
Was he dreaming some bright dream? Or was it true that the despairing demands of the comptroller within were about to be supplied from the very least likely source? He moistened his parched lips in anticipation.
Canceled were the obligations he had acknowledged to Sylvia, the vows he had made to her and Spencer Pope after that last, humiliating night In New York. What was a fellow's obligation toward others, compared with that toward himself?
Exorcised was the spirit that had incited him to fling from a Pullman window the half-emptied flask which Spencer mercifully had slipped him at the last. What was any new resolve compared to the screaming need of all past years?
Total abstinence was not a man's vow, ran his mental argument. It was an acknowledgment of weakness rather than of strength. He would work out his own salvation, yes; but work it out according to deep-deduced theories of his own. Wine was good and meant for the use of mankind, just as were other fruits of the earth. He would learn its proper usage, would learn control. He would parse for Spencer and Sylvia the meaning of the word temperance. What was there In life If one might not have his cake and nibble at It, too?
She was returning, Aunt Hootle. Her light, decisive footsteps were loudening toward him from the hall. His spirits chirked up at the sound; a great affection for her was prematurely born. Dear, quaint, kind Aunt Hootle - to think that she of all the world should be the self-elected pharmacist to revise the prescription especially written for him!
His eyes were again closed as she hurried to him, but closed over exultation. In one glance he had seen and measured the bottle she carried - a pint container, or he never had emptied one - nearly full of red-brown liquid. His hands wavered toward her, in one the wash-stand tumbler, of which he had possessed himself. But i
"Better let me pour it, friend Parker. How many drops?"
Horrified, he heard her question. His lids flashed up over eyes swimming in the moisture of unfeigned agony. He saw that she held in her other hand an eye-cup half full of water and a medicine dropper. He groaned aloud as he sank, limp and despairing, back into the chair. The tumbler fell with a small crash to the floor.
Although far from a ruse on his part, this demonstration had a magical effect upon the nurse of medicinal intent. She proved herself an advocate of heroic treatment. Flitting to the wash-stand, she laid down the dropper, emptied into the pitcher the water from the eye-cup, poured it full of undiluted whisky,, forced It to the lips of him In so pitiful a state of collapse.
"Poor, brave boy - you sure do need the medicine!" ;
Parker drained the draft, waited a few seconds, glanced up at her with gratitude too vital for words.
No matter what called - "medicine," "drops," "curse" - the liquor she had supplied was beyond criticism, even from him. It was mellow, dynamic, smooth. It aroused the necessity for more.
"I - I seem to be coming 'round," he faltered. "You are very good to me. So sorry to worry you. That spilx from the stage must have jolted me worse than I realized. Perhaps if I forced down another, I- I "
An Imperative knocK on the front door sounded.
In the act of measuring him a second dose, Aunt Hootie paused. She glanced at him anxiously, handed him both cup and bottle, hurried into the hall.
On her return she must have seen that he had not suffered from her enforced neglect. Relief, perhaps, blinded her to the fact that the liquid for medicinal purposes only, whose bottle now stood upon the wash-hand-stand, had lost the red-brown richness of its color. Rather, it was a pale, translucent amber.
"If you feel well enough " She hesitated,
one hand held behind her. "It seems very strange that we heard the knock, but not any steps on the stoop. Not a soul was there when I opened. I found this tucked under the sill - a letter addressed to you."
The incident did seem strange, even before he tore open the flap. "Mr. C. A. Parker, Care of His Friends," was scrawled across the envelope. After he had read the contents once to himself, he reread them aloud:
"C. A. Parker, New York.
"Sir: We know you. The stage leaves for the railroad at 3 P.M. A word is supposed to be sufficient to the wise. You ain't wise, so we write you several. Unless you hanker to ride out in a box, youll heed them.
"Folks That Say What They Mean AND Mean What They Say."
When Parker glanced up, he saw tha' a look of positive terror was distorting Mrs. Plott's face. Both hands were clawed into the neat white collar at her throat.
"All, all is lost!" she cried. "They have recognized you."
"Everybody seems to have recognized me except myself."
He achieved his feet and gazed around uncertainly, as if returned by the note to his "frazzled" state.
"Undoubtedly they are aware of your mission."
"In that, too, they have the advantage over me."
She began to hurry about the room.
"A terrible advantage - that is certainly so !" she exclaimed, ignoring what evidently she regarded as camouflage. "They mean to do you up unless you go at once. Far be it from us to add another victim to the score ! That clock is right - I set it this A.M. It is ten of three now. Here, I'll help you pack! It will be all you can do to make the stage."
Parker seemed to be estimating the value of luggage against that of life.
"All I can do, if I pack. But why take unnecessary risks? Three, you say? I - I guess I won't wait!"
Suddenly bereft of audience, the little lady stood gaping in the direction of his sudden disappearance, hooting mentally and regretfully.
What a shame it was - and he had looked such a jewel! Yet she couldn't blame any one fleeing those liquor-maddened fiends of hell. Would the drys never be able to stifle the deadly fumes? Poor boy, he sure was a wreck from the life he had led! She had best be packing up his traps ; he would likely mail her an address. What a narrow escape !