From a Bench in Our Square Part 20

"Bartholomew Storrs said that her feet took hold on h.e.l.l."

Mr. Hines's face remained impa.s.sive. Only his hands worked slightly, perhaps kneading an imaginary throat. I perceived him to be a person of considerable and perhaps formidable self-control.

"Not that she hadn't her friends. The Bonnie La.s.sie would have stood by her if she had come back, and little Mrs. Morse, and our Dr. Smith, and MacLachan, who thought he had lost his own girl the same way, and--and others, plenty."

"And you, Dominie," said the hard, pink Mr. Hines.

"My dear sir, old men cannot afford harsh judgments. They are too near their own time."

"Yeh?" said Mr. Hines absently. "I guess that's right." But his mind was plainly elsewhere. "When would you say would be the best time to do business with old Funeral-Clothes?" he asked after a thoughtful pause.

"You want to see Bartholomew Storrs?" I interpreted.

"Sure. I gotta deliver the death certificate to him if he runs the graveyard, haven't I?"

"Such is the procedure, I believe."

"Besides," he added with a leer, "I want to get some of that weepy poetry of his."

"Well; he'll sell it to you readily."

"I'll say he'll sell it to me," returned Mr. Hines with a grimness which I failed to comprehend.

"Now is as good a time as any to catch him in his office." I pointed to a sign at the farther end of the yard.

Mr. Hines seemed in no hurry to go. With his elegantly lacquered cane, he picked at the sod, undecidedly. His chill, veiled eyes roved about the open s.p.a.ce. He lifted his pearl-gray derby, and, for lack of a handkerchief, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Although the May day was cool and brisk with wind, his knuckles glistened when they descended. I began to suspect that, despite his stony self-command, Mr.

Hines's nerves were not all that they should be.

"Perhaps you'd like me to introduce you to Mr. Storrs," I hazarded.

The cold and filmy eyes gleamed with an instant's dim warmth. "Dominie, you're a good guy," responded Mr. Hines. "If a dead cinch at ten to one, all fruited up for next week, the kind of thing you don't hand on to your own brother, would be any use to you--No? I'm off again," he apologized. "Well--let's go."

We went. At the doorstep of Bartholomew Storrs's office he paused.

"This s.e.xton-guy," he said anxiously, "he don't play the ponies, ever, I wouldn't suppose?"

"No more often than he commits murder or goes to sleep in church," I smiled.

"Yeh?" he answered, disheartened. "I gotta get to him some other way. On the poetry--and that's out of my line."

"I don't quite see what your difficulty is."

"By what you tell me, it's easier to break into a swell Fifth Avenue Club than into this place."

"Except for those having the vested right, as your wife has."

"And this s.e.xton-guy handles the concession for--he's got the say-so,"

he corrected himself hastily--"on who goes in and who stays out. Is that right?"

"Substantially."

"And he'd rather keep 'em out than let 'em in?"

"Bartholomew," I explained, "considers that the honor of G.o.d's Acre is in his keeping. He has a fierce sort of jealousy about it, as if he had a proprietary interest in the place."

"I get you!" Mr. Hines's corded throat worked painfully. "You don't suppose the old goat would slip Min a blackball?" he gulped.

"How can he? As an 'Inalienable'--"

"Yeh; I know. But wasn't there something about a clean record? I'll tell _you_, Dominie"--Mr. Hines's husky but a.s.sured voice trailed away into a miserable, thick whisper--"as to what he said--about her feet taking hold on h.e.l.l--I guess there was a time--I guess about one more slip--I guess I didn't run across her any too quick. But there never was a straighter, truer girl than Min was with me. I gotta get her planted _right_, Dominie. I gotta do it," he concluded with pathetic earnestness.

"I see no difficulty," I a.s.sured him. "The charter specifies '_died_ in honorable estate.' Matrimony is an honorable estate. How she lived before that is between her and a gentler Judge than Bartholomew Storrs."

"Give her a straight course and a fair judge and I'll back Min to the limit," said Mr. Hines so simply and loyally that no suggestion of irreverence could attach to him.

Nevertheless, doubt was mingled with determination in his florid face as he rang the bell. Bartholomew Storrs opened to us, himself. When he saw me, he hastily pocketed a Rhyming Dictionary. I introduced my companion, stating, by way of a favorable opening, that he was interested in memorial poetry.

"Very pleased," said Bartholomew Storrs in his deep, lugubrious tones.

"Bereaved husband?"

Mr. Hines nodded.

"Here's a tasty thing I just completed," continued the poet, and, extending a benignant hand toward the visitor he intoned nasally:

"Together we have lived our life Till thou hast gone on high.

But I will come to thee, dear Wife, In the sweet bye-and-bye."

"That style five dollars," he said.

"You're on," barked Mr. Hines. "I'll take it."

"To be published, I suppose, on the first anniversary of death. Shall I look after the insertion in the papers?" queried the obliging poet, who split an advertising agent's percentage on memorial notices placed by him.

"Sure. Got any more? I'd spend a hundred to do this right."

With a smile of astounded gratification, Bartholomew accepted the roll of bills, fresh and crisp as the visitor himself. To do him justice, I believe that his pleasure was due as much to the recognition of his genius as to the stipend it had earned.

"Perhaps you'd like a special elegy to be read at the grave," he rumbled eagerly. "When and where did the interment take place?"

The other glared at him in stony surprise. "It ain't taken place. It's to-morrow. Ain't you on? I'm Hines."

A frown darkened the s.e.xton's heavy features. He shook a reprehensive head. "An unfortunate case," he boomed; "most unfortunate. I will not conceal from you, Mr. Hines, that I have consulted our attorneys upon this case, and unhappily--unhappily, I say--they hold that there is no basis for exclusion provided the certificate is in form. You have it with you?"

Impa.s.sive and inscrutable, Mr. Hines tapped his breast-pocket.

The conscience of a responsible s.e.xton being a.s.suaged, Bartholomew's expression mollified into that of the flattered poet.

"Such being the case," he pursued, "there can be no objection to the reading of an elegy as part of the service. Who is to officiate?"