A Modern Instance Part 15

"It's going to get along without me from this out," said Bartley. "This is my last week in Equity."

"No!" retorted Kinney, in tremendous astonishment.

"Yes; I'm off at the end of the week. Squire g.a.y.l.o.r.d takes the paper back for the committee, and I suppose Henry Bird will run it for a while; or perhaps they'll stop it altogether. It's been a losing business for the committee."

"Why, I thought you'd bought it of 'em."

"Well, that's what I expected to do; but the office hasn't made any money.

All that I've saved is in my colt and cutter."

"That sorrel?"

Bartley nodded. "I'm going away about as poor as I came. I couldn't go much poorer."

"Well!" said Kinney, in the exhaustion of adequate language. He went on laying the plates and knives and forks in silence. These were of undisguised steel; the dishes and the drinking mugs were of that dense and heavy make which the keepers of cheap restaurants use to protect themselves against breakage, and which their servants chip to the quick at every edge.

Kinney laid bread and crackers by each plate, and on each he placed a vast slab of cold corned beef. Then he lifted the lid of the pot in which the cabbage and potatoes were boiling together, and p.r.i.c.ked them with a fork.

He dished up the beans in a succession of deep tins, and set them at intervals along the tables, and began to talk again. "Well, now, I'm sorry.

I'd just begun to feel real well acquainted with you. Tell you the truth, I didn't take much of a fancy to you, first off."

"Is that so?" asked Bartley, not much disturbed by the confession.

"Yes, sir. Well, come to boil it down," said Kinney, with the frankness of the a.n.a.lytical mind that disdains to spare itself in the pursuit of truth, "I didn't like your good clothes. I don't suppose I ever had a suit of clothes to fit me. Feel kind of ashamed, you know, when I go into the store, and take the first thing the Jew wants to put off on to me. Now, I suppose you go to Macullar and Parker's in Boston, and you get what _you_ want."

"No; I have my measure at a tailor's," said Bartley, with ill-concealed pride in the fact.

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Kinney. "Well!" he said, as if he might as well swallow this pill, too, while he was about it. "Well, what's the use?

I never was the figure for clothes, anyway. Long, gangling boy to start with, and a lean, stoop-shouldered man. I found out some time ago that a fellow wa'n't necessarily a bad fellow because he had money, or a good fellow because he hadn't. But I hadn't quite got over hating a man because he had style. Well, I suppose it was a kind of a _survival_, as old Tylor calls it. But I tell you, I sniffed round you a good while before I made up my mind to swallow you. And that turnout of yours, it kind of staggered me, after I got over the clothes. Why, it wa'n't so much the colt,--any man likes to ride after a sorrel colt; and it wa'n't so much the cutter: it was the red linin' with pinked edges that you had to your robe; and it was the red ribbon that you had tied round the waist of your whip. When I see that ribbon on that whip, d.a.m.n you, I wanted to kill you." Bartley broke out into a laugh, but Kinney went on soberly. "But, thinks I to myself: 'Here!

Now you stop right here! You wait! You give the fellow a chance for his life. Let him have a chance to show whether that whip-ribbon goes all through him, first. If it does, kill him cheerfully; but give him a chance _first_.' Well, sir, I gave you the chance, and you showed that you deserved it. I guess you taught me a lesson. When I see you at work, pegging away hard at something or other, every time I went into your office, up and coming with everybody, and just as ready to pa.s.s the time of day with me as the biggest bug in town, thinks I: 'You'd have made a great mistake to kill that fellow, Kinney!' And I just made up my mind to like you."

"Thanks," said Bartley, with ironical grat.i.tude.

Kinney did not speak at once. He whistled thoughtfully through his teeth, and then he said: "I'll tell you what: if you're going away _very_ poor, I know a wealthy chap you can raise a loan out of."

Bartley thought seriously for a silent moment. "If your friend offers me twenty dollars, I'm not too well dressed to take it."

"All right," said Kinney. He now dished up the cabbage and potatoes, and throwing a fresh handful of tea into the pot, and filling it up with water, he took down a tin horn, with which he went to the door and sounded a long, stertorous note.

X.

"Guess it was the clothes again," said Kinney, as he began to wash his tins and dishes after the dinner was over, and the men had gone back to their work. "I could see 'em eyin' you over when they first came in, and I could see that they didn't exactly like the looks of 'em. It would wear off in time, but it _takes_ time for it to wear off; and it had to go pretty rusty for a start-off. Well, I don't know as it makes much difference to you, does it?"

"Oh, I thought we got along very well," said Bartley, with a careless yawn.

"There wasn't much chance to get acquainted." Some of the loggers were as handsome and well-made as he, and were of as good origin and traditions, though he had some advantages of training. But his two-b.u.t.ton cutaway, his well-fitting trousers, his scarf with a pin in it, had been too much for these young fellows in their long 'stoga boots and flannel s.h.i.+rts. They looked at him askance, and despatched their meal with more than their wonted swiftness, and were off again into the woods without any demonstrations of satisfaction in Bartley's presence.

He had perceived their grudge, for he had felt it in his time. But it did not displease him; he had none of the pain with which Kinney, who had so long bragged of him to the loggers, saw that his guest was a failure.

"I guess they'll come out all right in the end," he said. In this warm atmosphere, after the gross and heavy dinner he had eaten, he yawned again and again. He folded his overcoat into a pillow for his bench and lay down, and lazily watched Kinney about his work. Presently he saw Kinney seated on a block of wood beside the stove, with his elbow propped in one hand, and holding a magazine, out of which he was reading; he wore spectacles, which gave him a fresh and interesting touch of grotesqueness. Bartley found that an empty barrel had been placed on each side of him, evidently to keep him from rolling off his bench.

"h.e.l.lo!" he said. "Much obliged to you, Kinney. I haven't been taken such good care of since I can remember. Been asleep, haven't I?"

"About an hour," said Kinney, with a glance at the clock, and ignoring his agency in Bartley's comfort.

"Food for the brain!" said Bartley, sitting up. "I should think so. I've dreamt a perfect New American Cyclopaedia, and a p.r.o.nouncing gazetteer thrown in."

"Is that so?" said Kinney, as if pleased with the suggestive character of his cookery, now established by eminent experiment.

Bartley yawned a yawn of satisfied sleepiness, and rubbed his hand over his face. "I suppose," he said, "if I'm going to write anything about Camp Kinney, I had better see all there is to see."

"Well, yes, I presume you had," said Kinney. "We'll go over to where they're cuttin', pretty soon, and you can see all there is in an hour. But I presume you'll want to see it so as to ring in some description, hey?

Well, that's all right. But what you going to do with it, when you've done it, now you're out of the Free Press?"

"Oh, I shouldn't have printed it in the Free Press, anyway Coals to Newcastle, you know. I'll tell you what I think I'll do, Kinney: I'll get my outlines, and then you post me with a lot of facts,--queer characters, accidents, romantic incidents, snowings-up, threatened starvation, adventures with wild animals,--and I can make something worth while; get out two or three columns, so they can print it in their Sunday edition. And then I'll take it up to Boston with me, and seek my fortune with it."

"Well, sir, I'll do it," said Kinney, fired with the poetry of the idea.

"I'll post you! Dumn 'f I don't wish _I_ could write! Well, I _did_ use to scribble once for an agricultural paper; but I don't call that writin'.

I've set down, well, I guess as much as sixty times, to try to write out what I know about loggin'--"

"Hold on!" cried Bartley, whipping out his notebook. "That's first-rate.

That'll do for the first line in the head,--_What I Know About Logging_,--large caps. Well!"

Kinney shut his magazine, and took his knee between his hands, closing one of his eyes in order to sharpen his recollection. He poured forth a stream of reminiscence, mingled observation, and personal experience. Bartley followed him with his pencil, jotting down points, striking in sub-head lines, and now and then interrupting him with cries of "Good!" "Capital!"

"It's a perfect mine,--it's a mint! By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I'll make _six_ columns of this! I'll offer it to one of the magazines, and it'll come out ill.u.s.trated! Go on, Kinney."

"Hark!" said Kinney, craning his neck forward to listen. "I thought I heard sleigh-bells. But I guess it wa'n't. Well, sir, as I was sayin', they fetched that fellow into camp with both feet frozen to the knees--Dumn 'f it _wa'n't_ bells!"

He unlimbered himself, and hurried to the door at the other end of the cabin, which he opened, letting in a clear block of the afternoon suns.h.i.+ne, and a gush of sleigh-bell music, shot with men's voices, and the cries and laughter of women.

"Well, sir," said Kinney, coming back and making haste to roll down his sleeves and put on his coat. "_Here's_ a nuisance! A whole party of folks--two sleigh-loads--right _on_ us. I don't know who they _be_, or where they're from. But I know where I wish they _was_. Well, of course, it's natural they should want to see a loggin'-camp," added Kinney, taking himself to task for his inhospitable mind, "and there ain't any harm in it.

But I wish they'd give a fellow a _little_ notice!"

The voices and bells drew nearer, but Kinney seemed resolved to observe the decorum of not going to the door till some one knocked.

"Kinney! Kinney! h.e.l.lo, Kinney!" shouted a man's voice, as the bells hushed before the door, and broke into a musical clash when one of the horses tossed his head.

"Well, sir," said Kinney, rising, "I guess it's old Willett himself. He's the owner; lives up to Portland, and been threatening to come down here all winter, with a party of friends. You just stay still," he added; and he paid himself the deference which every true American owes himself in his dealings with his employer: he went to the door very deliberately, and made no haste on account of the repeated cries of "Kinney! Kinney!" in which others of the party outside now joined.

When he opened the door again, the first voice saluted him with a roar of laughter. "Why, Kinney, I began to think you were dead!"

"No, sir," Bartley heard Kinney reply, "it takes more to kill me than you suppose." But now he stepped outside, and the talk became unintelligible.

Finally Bartley heard what was imaginably Mr. Willett's voice saying, "Well, let's go in and have a look at it now"; and with much outcry and laughter the ladies were invisibly helped to dismount, and presently the whole party came stamping and rustling in.

Bartley's blood tingled. He liked this, and he stood quite self-possessed, with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and his elbows dropped, while Mr.

Willett advanced in a friendly way.