Jupiter Lights Part 22

"I'm not keeping him. He stays of his own accord."

"I don't believe it. But, I say, ain't he a regular old despot though!

You ought to hear him hold forth sometimes."

"_I_ don't want to hear him."

"Well, I guess he don't talk that way to you, on the whole. Not much,"

said Hollis, jocularly.

And Paul Tennant did not look like a man who would be a comfortable companion for persons of the aggressive temperament. He was tall and broad-shouldered; not graceful like Ferdie, but powerful. His neck was rather short; the lower part of his face was strong and firm. His features were good; his eyes, keen, gray in hue. His hair was yellow and thick, and he had a moustache and short beard of the same yellow hue. No one would have called him handsome exactly. There was something of the Scandinavian in his appearance; nothing of the German. His manner, compared with Ferdie's quick, light brilliancy, was quiet, his speech slow.

"Have you been thinking about that proposition--that sale?" Hollis went on.

"Yes."

"What are you going to do?"

"It's done. I've declined."

"What! not already? That's sudden, ain't it?"

Paul did not answer; he was adding figures.

"Have you been over the reasons?--weighed 'em?"

"Oh, I leave the reasons to you," said Paul, turning a page.

Hollis gave his almost silent laugh. But he gave it uneasily.

"Positively declined? Letter gone?"

"Yes."

"Oh; well!" He waited a moment; then, as Paul did not speak, he opened the door and edged himself out without a sound.

Ten minutes later his head reappeared with the same stealth. "Oh, I thought I'd just tell you--perhaps you don't know--the mail doesn't go out to-day until five o'clock: you can get that letter back if you like."

"I don't want it back."

"Oh; well." He was gone again.

Outside in the street he saw the judge wandering by, and stopped him.

"That there son-in-law of yours--" he began.

"Son-in-law?" inquired the judge, stiffly.

"Whatever pleases you; step-sister."

"Mr. Tennant is the half-brother of the husband of my granddaughter."

"'T any rate, that man in there, that Paul, he's so tremendously rash there's no counting on him; if there's anything to do he goes and does it right spang off without a why or a wherefore. He absolutely seems to have no reasons!--not a rease!"

"I cannot agree with you. To me Mr. Tennant seems to have a great many."

"But you haven't heard about this. Come along out to the Park for a walk, and I'll tell you."

He moved on. But the judge did not accompany him. A hurrying mulatto, a waiter from one of the steamers, had jostled him off the narrow plank sidewalk; at the same moment a buggy which was pa.s.sing, driven at a reckless speed, spattered him with mud from shoulder to shoe.

"Never mind, come on; it'll dry while you're walking," suggested Hollis from the corner where he was waiting.

The judge stepped back to the planks; he surveyed his befouled person; then he brought out a resounding expletive--half a dozen of them.

"Do it again--if it'll ease you off," called Kit, grinning. "When you're blessing Potterpins, I'm with you every time."

The judge rapped the planks with his cane. "Go on, sir! go on!" he said, violently.

Hollis went loafing on. And presently the judge caught up with him, and trotted beside him in silence.

"Well, that Paul now, as I was telling you, I don't know what to make of him," said Hollis, returning to his topic. "I think I know him, and then, suddenly he stumps me. Once he has made up his mind to anything--and it does not take long--off he goes and _does_ it, I tell you! He _does_ it."

"I don't know what he _does_; his conversation has a good deal of the sledge-hammer about it," remarked the judge.

"So it has," responded Hollis, delighted with the comparison; he was so delighted that he stopped and slapped his thigh. "So it has, by George!--convincing and knock-you-down." The judge walked on. He had intended no compliment. "To-day, now, that fellow has gone and sent off a letter that he ought to have taken six months to think over," Hollis continued. "Told you about his Clay County iron?"

"No."

"Well, he was down there on business--in Clay County. It was several years ago. He had to go across the country, and the roads were awful--full of slew-holes. At last, tired of being joggled to pieces, he got out and walked along the fields, leaving the horse to bring the buggy through the mud as well as he could. By-and-by he saw a stone that didn't look quite like the others, and he gave it a kick. Still it didn't look quite like, so he picked it up. The long and short of it was that it turned out to be hemat.i.te iron, and off he went to the county-seat and entered as much of the land as he could afford to buy.

He hasn't any capital, so he has never been able to work it himself; all his savings he has invested in something or other in South America. But the other day he had a tip-top offer from a company; they wanted to buy the whole thing in a lump. And _that's_ the chance he has refused this identical morning!" The judge did not reply. "More iron may be discovered near by, you know," Hollis went on, warningly, his forefinger out. His companion still remained silent. "He may never have half so good an offer in his whole life again!"

They had now reached the Park, a dreary enclosure where small evergreens had been set out here and there, together with rock-work, and a fountain which did not play. The magnificent forest trees which had once covered the spot had all been felled; infant elms, swathed in rags and tied to whitewashed stakes, were expected to give shade in fifteen or twenty years. There were no benches; Hollis seated himself on the top of a rail-fence which bordered the slight descent to the beach of the lake; the heels of his boots, caught on a rail below, propped him, and sent his knees forward at an acute angle.

"There were all sorts of side issues and possibilities which that fellow ought to have considered," he pursued, ruminatively, his mind still on Paul's refusal. "There were other things that might have come of it. It was an A number one chance for a fortune." The judge did not answer.

"For a fortune," repeated Hollis, dreamily, gazing down at him from his perch. No reply. "A _for_-chun!"

"Da-a-a-m your fortune!" said the judge, at the end of his patience, bringing out the first word with a long emphasis, like a low growl from a bull-dog.

Hollis stared. Then he gave his silent laugh, and, stretching down one long arm, he laid it on the old man's shoulder soothingly. "There, now; we _are_ awful Yankees up here, all of us, I'm afraid; forever thinking of bargains. Fact is, we ain't high-minded; you _can't_ be, if you are forever eating salt pork." The judge had pulled himself from the other's touch in an instant. But Hollis remained unconscious of any offence.

_"'At the battle of the Nile I was there all the while;_ _I was there all the while at the battle of the Nile.'"_

he chanted.

_"'At the bat--'_

"h.e.l.lo, isn't that Miss Bruce coming down the beach? Yes, sure-ly; I know her by the way she carries her head." Detaching his boot-heels from the rail, he sprang down, touching the ground with his long legs wide apart; then, giving his waistcoat a pull over the flatness below it, he looked inquiringly at the judge.

But that gentleman ignored the inquiry. "It is time to return, I reckon," he remarked, leading the way inflexibly towards the distant gate and the road.

Hollis followed him with disappointed tread. "She won't think us very polite, skooting off in this fas.h.i.+on," he hazarded.