24. By The Flank
When Lathers had left Colonel Bonamy, the old man did not look at the blazing brass ball any more, br.t looked steadily at the floor as he resumed his pacing to and fro. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his brown linen trowsers and laughed inaudibly.
" By George ! " The colonel drew the first word out to its fullest length and then cut the other off short and sharp, with a faint inward chuckle at the end. It was his note of triumph. There was then a road out of this embarrassment about a son who had the misfortune to inherit a streak of moral enthusiasm from his mother. It was a favorite maxim with the old lawyer : " concede small points to carry large ones."
" I will give him his first point and gain the suit," he soliloquized. Then after a while he came out with an appeal to some private deity of his own whom he called " Godomighty." For the colonel was rather full of such words for a man who was an ostentatious disbeliever in any god.
When he had looked at his empty Franklin stove a while he suddenly became interested in his boots. He lifted his left foot and examined the sole carefully, then he looked at the right one, then he took his beaver hat from the mantel-piece and went out into the scorching heat, oi the summer afternoon. The little shop of Mr. Adams stood in the main street which ran toward the river; there were higher buildings all abcut it, but it had held its place for more than a generation, having been a store, and the only one in the town at the beginning. It was in some sense the germ cell from which all the trade of the place had grown. The door of the old shoe-shop was wide open, the smell of leather diffused itself into the street without, and scraps and bits from the shop were scattered as far as the gutter. The meditative Adams sat doubled together, hammering vigorously upon a bit of leather. Did his trade give him his sturdy speech ? Of all mechanical occupations, that of the shoe-maker is the most favorable to reflection and to vehement expression. Adams hammered theories, as he did the leather on 'iis lap-stone.
By Adams's side sat little Ben Boone, an illegitimate child in a family doomed to poverty in all its generations. There are whole races of people who have a genius for wretchedness ; it comes to them as a vocation.
" Why don't you take the shoe and go ? " demanded the shoe-maker sternly, pausing in his hammering.
" Gran'mother says she can't pay you till "
" Go 'long with you, and don't say another word," burst out the shoe-maker.
The boy started out, frightened into silence.
" Stop ! " called the shoe-maker, relenting. " Tell your grandmother when the shoe gives out again, to send it to me. Don't take my work over to Jim Hone's shop. Here's some leather to make a whirligig of. Go, now. Out with you ! "
"Aha!-' said Bon a my, as he entered the shop. "I didn't know you kept charity customers."
" Charity I pshaw ! You know, Colonel, that I'm a fool to give away time and good leather to shiftless people like the BooL.es. And if you had the politeness that people say you have, you would not twit me with it. We all nave our weaknesses."
" I don't know," said Bonamy, who was, as usual, left by the ambiguousness of Adams's tone, in a perplexing doubt as to whether he were jesting or quarreling, a doubt which Adams was generally unable to solve himself. "I don't know about that, Mr. Adams. I have out-grown most of mine, and yours seem to be very commendable ones."
Saying this, the colonel took a seat on the vacant bench, which was occupied in busy seasons by a journeyman. Pie sat down on this low bench, among bits of leather, pegs, wax, lasts, hammers and what-nots, with all of his accustomed stateliness, gently lifting his coat-tails and posing bis tall figure by the side of the stooped and grizzled shoemaker, with an evident sense of his picturesqueness.
" That boot needs a few pegs in the hollow of the foot, I think."
"Widowers are dreadful particular, Colonel. There's nothing much the matter with the boot."
" You forget that you're a widower, too. But young folks are likely to beat us. They do say now that my Mark and your Roxy "
" Are a couple of fools," cried the irascible shoemaker, stung by something in Bonamy's tone which he interpreted to mean that the house of Adams ought to feel very much flattered by its present juxtaposition, in the gossip of the village, with the house of Bonamy.
" I agree with you," said the lawyer.
"For two fools like them to be talking of goitig to Texas to ea^-y the Gospel is an outrage. I think Texas convert the missionary instead of the missionary converting Texas. It's bad enough for Mark to make a foo of himself. I wish he would go to Texas and be done with it, and not turn Roxy's head."
"Do you really think they care for each other?" put the lawyer, diplomatically.
" Mark would be a fool, sir, if he didn't like Roxy. And what does he mean by all his attentions if he doesn't care for her? He ought to be shot if he doesn't care. I've half a mind to interfere and break it up. I would if I was the man I ought to be."
" Between you and me, I don't think Mark will go. I'm glad he likes Roxy. It will keep him at home."
" She's as crazy as he is," said Adams. " These Methodists have made loons out of both of them."
" Well, we'll see." And after a minute the old lawyer took back his boot, in which a few pegs had been tightened, drew it on and sauntered out of the shop, and thence down the street and around the corner to his office. Mark sat writing at his own desk in the office, full of anger at what Lathers had told him.
" Mark ! " said the father.
" Sir," answered the son, using the respectful word prescribed in the code of manners of Western and Southern society, but uttering it in anything but a decent tone.
" You've really made up your mind to go to Texas? "
" Of course I have."
" They tell me you've been paying attention to Tom Adams's Roxy."
" I think you might speak a little more respectfully of a lady that I have paid attentions to."
"Can't you answer me in a Christian spirit, young man ? " said the colonel, adding a gentle blasphemy to this appeal.
" Well, I think I can attend to my own love affairs."
" I suppose you can. But how in the name of the Old Hoy, will you keep a wife on a hundred dollars a year, on the Brazos River ? "
" I don't propose to take a wife with me."
" Then what in thunder are you making love to Tom Adams's to Roxy Adams for ? "
" I wish you would let me manage my own affairs," said Mark, scowling.
" Oh, of course ! But sometimes an old man's advice is worth having, even if the old man does happen to be an infidel. A father is entitled to some respect even from Christians, I suppose."
The young man was silent.
" Now, I believe you don't intend to go for six weeks or so. If you must go, marry a good wife ; Tom Adams's daughter excuse me, Miss Roxy Adams will do."
" How can I, as you said, on a hundred a year ? "
"Why, I propose, if you must go out there, to take care of you. I'll do better than the church. I'll see 'em that and go one better. Three hundred dollars is a large sum in Texas. I don't want you to go out there and die. With a wife you'll stand some chance of living. You can think it over, consult the girl and let me know." With that he took up his pen to begin writing.
Mark was full of surprise. His first thought was that this offer gave him a chance of escape from the dire necessity of leaving Roxy. His second feeling was one of shame that he had treated his father bo cavalierly. He rose impulsively and said, " I beg your pardon for speaking as I did. You are very kind." And he held out his hand.
But the elder did not look up. He uttered something about the devil, and said that it was all right, of course.
Mark left the office full of cheerfulness. The gift horse was too valuable to be examined closely. Such ia the case generally in the matter of gift horses, notwithstanding the bitter experience of the Trojans.
The wily old lawyer, when once the young man was gone, relaxed his face into a noncommittal smile, and ejaculated the name of his heathen diviiity again.