At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern. Reed Myrtle
can’t never tell,” continued the driver, shifting his quid. “Now, I’ve took folks up there goin’ on ten year now, an’ some I’ve took up looked considerable more healthy than I be when I took ’em up. Comin’ back, howsumever, it was different. One young feller rode up with me in the rain one night, a-singin’ an’ a-whistlin’ to beat the band, an’ when I took him back, a month or so arterward, he had a striped nurse on one side of him an’ a doctor on t’ other, an’ was wearin’ a shawl. Couldn’t hardly set up, but he was a-tryin’ to joke just the same. ‘Hank,’ says he, when we got a little way off from the place, ‘my book of life has been edited by the librarians an’ the entire appendix removed.’ Them’s his very words. ‘An’,’ says he, ‘the time to have the appendix took out is before it does much of anythin’ to your table of contents.’
“The doctor shut him up then, an’ I didn’t hear no more, but I remembered the language, an’ arterwards, when I got a chanst, I looked in the school-teacher’s dictionary. It said as how the appendix was sunthin’ appended or added to, but I couldn’t get no more about it. I’ve hearn tell of a ‘devil child’ with a tail to it what was travellin’ with the circus one year, an’ I’ve surmised as how mebbe a tail had begun to grow on this young feller an’ it was took off.”
“You don’t say!” ejaculated the blacksmith.
By reason of his professional connection with the sanitarium, Mr. Henry Blake was, in a sense, the oracle of Judson Centre, and he enjoyed his proud distinction to the full. Ordinarily, he was taciturn, but the present hour found him in a conversational mood.
“He’s married,” he went on, returning to the original subject. “I took him an’ his wife up to the Jack-o’-Lantern last night. Come in on the nine forty-seven from the Junction. Reckon they’re goin’ to stay a spell, ’cause they’ve got trunks – one of a reasonable size, an’ ’nother that looks like a dog-house. Box, too, that’s got lead in it.”
“Books, maybe,” suggested the blacksmith, with unexpected discernment. “Schoolteacher boarded to our house wunst an’ she had most a car-load of ’em. Educated folks has to have books to keep from losin’ their education.”
“Don’t take much stock in it myself,” remarked the driver. “It spiles most folks. As soon as they get some, they begin to pine an’ hanker for more. I knowed a feller wunst that begun with one book dropped on the road near the sanitarium, an’ he never stopped till he was plum through college. An’ a woman up there sent my darter a book wunst, an’ I took it right back to her. ‘My darter’s got a book,’ says I, ‘an’ she ain’t a-needin’ of no duplicates. Keep it,’ says I, ‘fer somebody that ain’t got no book.”
“Do you reckon,” asked the blacksmith, after a long silence, “that they’re goin’ to live in the Jack-o’-Lantern?”
“I ain’t a-sayin’,” answered Mr. Blake, cautiously. “They’re educated, an’ there’s no tellin’ what educated folks is goin’ to do. This young lady, now, that come up with him last night, she said it was ‘a dear old place an’ she loved it a’ready.’ Them’s her very words!”
“Do tell!”
“That’s c’rrect, an’ as I said before, when you’re dealin’ with educated folks, you’re swimmin’ in deep water with the shore clean out o’ sight. Education was what ailed him.” By a careless nod Mr. Blake indicated the Jack-o’-Lantern, which could be seen from the main thoroughfare of Judson Centre.
“I’ve hearn,” he went on, taking a fresh bite from his morning purchase of “plug,” “that he had one hull room mighty nigh plum full o’ nothin’ but books, an’ there was always more comin’ by freight an’ express an’ through the post-office. It’s all on account o’ them books that he’s made the front o’ his house into what it is. My wife had a paper book wunst, a-tellin’ ‘How to Transfer a Hopeless Exterior,’ with pictures of houses in it like they be here an’ more arter they’d been transferred. You bet I burnt it while she was gone to sewin’ circle, an’ there ain’t no book come into my house since.”
Mr. Blake spoke with the virtuous air of one who has protected his home from contamination. Indeed, as he had often said before, “you can’t never tell what folks’ll do when books gets a holt of ’em.”
“Do you reckon,” asked the blacksmith, “that there’ll be company?”
“Company,” snickered Mr. Blake, “oh, my Lord, yes! A little thing like death ain’t never going to keep company away. Ain’t you never hearn as how misery loves company? The more miserable you are the more company you’ll have, an’ vice versey, etcetery an’ the same.”
“Hush!” warned the blacksmith, in a harsh whisper. “He’s a-comin’!”
“City feller,” grumbled Mr. Blake, affecting not to see.
“Good-morning,” said Harlan, pleasantly, though not without an air of condescension. “Can you tell me where I can find the stage-driver?”
“That’s me,” grunted Mr. Blake. “Be you wantin’ anythin’?”
“Only to pay you for taking us up to the house last night, and to arrange about our trunks. Can you deliver them this afternoon?”
“I ain’t a-runnin’ of no livery, but I can take ’em up, if that’s what you’re wantin’.”
“Exactly,” said Harlan, “and the box, too, if you will. And the things I’ve just ordered at the grocery – can you bring them, too?”
Mr. Blake nodded helplessly, and the blacksmith gazed at Harlan, open-mouthed, as he started uphill. “Must sure have a ailment,” he commented, “but I hear tell, Hank, that in the city they never carry nothin’ round with ’em but perhaps an umbrell. Everythin’ else they have ‘sent.’”
“Reckon it’s true enough. I took a ham wunst up to the sanitarium for a young sprig of a doctor that was too proud to carry it himself. He was goin’ that way, too – walkin’ up to save money – so I charged him for carryin’ up the ham just what I’d have took both for. ‘Pigs is high,’ I told him, ‘same price for one as for ’nother,’ but he didn’t pay no attention to it an’ never raised no kick about the price. Thinkin’ ’bout sunthin’ else, most likely – most of ’em are.”
Harlan, most assuredly, was “thinkin’ ’bout sunthin’ else.” In fact, he was possessed by portentous uneasiness. There was well-defined doubt in his mind regarding his reception at the Jack-o’-Lantern. Dorothy’s parting words had been plain – almost to the point of rudeness, he reflected, unhappily, and he was not sure that “a brute” would be allowed in her presence again.
The bare, uncurtained windows gave no sign of human occupancy. Perhaps she had left him! Then his reason came to the rescue – there was no way for her to go but downhill, and he would certainly have seen her had she taken that path.
When he entered the yard, he smelled smoke, and ran wildly into the house. A hasty search through all the rooms revealed nothing – even Dorothy had disappeared. From the kitchen window, he saw her in the back yard, poking idly through a heap of smouldering rubbish with an old broomstick.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, breathlessly, before she knew he was near her.
Dorothy turned, disguising her sudden start by a toss of her head. “Oh,” she said, coolly, “it’s you, is it?”
Harlan bit his lips and his eyes laughed. “I say, Dorothy,” he began, awkwardly; “I was rather a beast, wasn’t I?”
“Of course,” she returned, in a small, unnatural voice, still poking through the ruins. “I told you so, didn’t I?”
“I didn’t believe you at the time,” Harlan went on, eager to make amends, “but I do now.”
“That’s good.” Mrs. Carr’s tone was not at all reassuring.
There was an awkward pause, then Harlan, putting aside his