At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern Part 4

"Whose is it?" demanded Dorothy, when she recovered the faculty of speech.

"I should say," returned Harlan, after due deliberation, "that it belonged to you."

"After this," she said, slowly, her eyes wide with wonder, "we'll take everything apart before we burn it."

Harlan was turning the brooch over in his hand and roughly estimating its value at two thousand dollars. "Here's something on the back," he said.

"'R. from E., March 12, 1865.'"

"Rebecca from Ebeneezer," cried Dorothy. "Oh, Harlan, it's ours! Don't you remember the letter said: 'my house and all its contents to my beloved nephew, James Harlan Carr'?"

"I remember," said Harlan. But his conscience was uneasy, none the less.

III

The First Caller

As Mr. Blake had heard, there was "one hull room mighty nigh plum full o'

nothin' but books"; a grievous waste, indeed, when one already "had a book." It was the front room, opposite the parlour, and every door and window in it could be securely bolted from the inside. If any one desired unbroken privacy, it could be had in the library as nowhere else in the house.

The book-shelves were made of rough pine, unplaned, unpainted, and were scarcely a seemly setting for the treasure they bore. But in looking at the books, one perceived that their owner had been one who pa.s.sed by the body in his eager search for the soul.

Here were no fine editions, no luxurious, costly volumes in full levant.

Illuminated pages, rubricated headings, and fine ill.u.s.trations were conspicuous by their absence. For the most part, the books were simply but serviceably bound in plain cloth covers. Many a paper-covered book had been bound by its purchaser in pasteboard, flimsy enough in quality, yet further strengthened by cloth at the back. Cheap, pirated editions were so many that Harlan wondered whether his uncle had not been wholly without conscience in the matter of book-buying.

Shelf after shelf stretched across the long wall, with its company of mute consolers whose master was no more. The fine flowering of the centuries, like a single precious drop of imperishable perfume, was hidden in this rude casket. The minds and hearts of the great, laid pitilessly bare, were here in this one room, s.h.i.+elded merely by pasteboard and cloth.

Far up in the mountains, amid snow-clad steeps and rock-bound fastnesses, one finds, perchance, a sh.e.l.l. It is so small a thing that it can be held in the hollow of the hand; so frail that a slight pressure of the finger will crush it to atoms, yet, held to the ear, it brings the surge and sweep of that vast, primeval ocean which, in the inconceivably remote past, covered the peak. And so, to the eye of the mind, the small brown book, with its hundred printed pages, brings back the whole story of the world.

A thin, piping voice, to which its fellows have paid no heed, after a time becomes silent, and, ceaselessly marching, the years pa.s.s on by. Yet that trembling old hand, quietly laid at last upon the turbulent heart, in the solitude of a garret has guided a pen, and the ma.n.u.script is left. Ragged, worn, blotted, spotted with candle drippings and endlessly interlined, why should these few sheets of paper be saved?

Because, as it happens, the only record of the period is there--a record so significant that fifty years can be reconstructed, as an entire language was brought to light by a triple inscription upon a single stone.

Thrown like the sh.e.l.l upon Time's ever-receding sh.o.r.e, it is, nevertheless, the means by which unborn thousands shall commune with him who wrote in his garret, see his whole life mirrored in his book, know his philosophy, and take home his truth. For by way of the printed page comes Immortality.

There was no book in the library which had not been read many times. Some were falling apart, and others had been carefully sewn together and awkwardly rebound. Still open, on a rickety table in the corner, was that ponderous volume with an extremely limited circulation: _The Publishers'

Trade List Annual_. Pencilled crosses here and there indicated books to be purchased, or at least sent on approval, to "customers known to the House."

"Some day," said Dorothy, "when it's raining and we can't go out, we'll take down all these books, arrange them in something like order, and catalogue them."

"How optimistic you are!" remarked Harlan. "Do you think it could be done in one day?"

"Oh, well," returned Dorothy; "you know what I mean."

Harlan paced restlessly back and forth, pausing now and then to look out of the window, where nothing much was to be seen except the orchard, at a little distance from the house, and Claudius Tiberius, sunning himself pleasantly upon the porch. Four weeks had been a pleasant vacation, but two weeks of comparative idleness, added to it, were too much for an active mind and body to endure. Three or four times he had tried to begin the book that was to bring fame and fortune, and as many times had failed.

Hitherto Harlan's work had not been obliged to wait for inspiration, and it was not so easy as it had seemed the day he bade his managing editor farewell.

"Somebody is coming," announced Dorothy, from the window.

"Nonsense! n.o.body ever comes here."

"A precedent is about to be established, then. I feel it in my bones that we're going to have company."

"Let's see." Harlan went to the window and looked over her shoulder. A little man in a huge silk hat was toiling up the hill, aided by a cane. He was bent and old, yet he moved with a certain briskness, and, as Dorothy had said, he was inevitably coming.

"Who in thunder--" began Harlan.

"Our first company," interrupted Dorothy, with her hand over his mouth.

"The very first person who has called on us since we were married!"

"Except Claudius Tiberius," amended Harlan. "Isn't a cat anybody?"

"Claudius is. I beg his imperial pardon for forgetting him."

The rusty bell-wire creaked, then a timid ring came from the rear depths of the house. "You let him in," said Dorothy, "and I'll go and fix my hair."

"Am I right," queried the old gentleman, when Harlan opened the door, "in presuming that I am so fortunate as to address Mr. James Harlan Carr?"

"My name is Carr," answered Harlan, politely. "Will you come in?"

"Thank you," answered the visitor, in high staccato, oblivious of the fact that Claudius Tiberius had scooted in between his feet; "it will be my pleasure to claim your hospitality for a few brief moments.

"I had hoped," he went on, as Harlan ushered him into the parlour, "to be able to make your acquaintance before this, but my mult.i.tudinous duties----"

He fumbled in his pocket and produced a card, cut somewhat irregularly from a sheet of white cardboard, and bearing in tremulous autographic script: "Jeremiah Bradford, Counsellor at Law."

"Oh," said Harlan, "it was you who wrote me the letter. I should have hunted you up when I first came, shouldn't I?"

"Not at all," returned Mr. Bradford. "It is I who have been remiss. It is etiquette that the old residents should call first upon the newcomers.

Many and varied duties in connection with the practice of my profession have hitherto--" His eyes sought the portrait over the mantel. "A most excellent likeness of your worthy uncle," he continued, irrelevantly, "a gentleman with whom, as I understand, you never had the pleasure and privilege of becoming acquainted."

"I never met Uncle Ebeneezer," rejoined Harlan, "but mother told me a great deal about him and we had one or two pictures--daguerreotypes, I believe they were."

"Undoubtedly, my dear sir. This portrait was painted from his very last daguerreotype by an artist of renown. It is a wonderful likeness. He was my Colonel--I served under him in the war. It was my desire to possess a portrait of him in uniform, but he would never consent, and would not allow anyone save myself to address him as Colonel. An eccentric, but very estimable gentleman."

"I cannot understand," said Harlan, "why he should have left the house to me. I had never even seen him."

"Perhaps," smiled Mr. Bradford, enigmatically, "that was his reason, or rather, perhaps I should say, if you had known your uncle more intimately and had visited him here, or, if he had had the privilege of knowing you--quite often, as you know, a personal acquaintance proves disappointing, though, of course, in this case----"

The old gentleman was floundering helplessly when Harlan rescued him. "I want you to meet my wife, Mr. Bradford. If you will excuse me, I will call her."

Left to himself, the visitor slipped back and forth uneasily upon his haircloth chair, and took occasion to observe Claudius Tiberius, who sat near by and regarded the guest unblinkingly. Hearing approaching footsteps, he took out his worn silk handkerchief, unfolded it, and wiped the cold perspiration from his legal brow. In his heart of hearts, he wished he had not come, but Dorothy's kindly greeting at once relieved him of all embarra.s.sment.

"We have been wondering," she said, brightly, "who would be the first to call upon us, and you have come at exactly the right time. New residents are always given two weeks, are they not, in which to get settled?"

"Quite so, my dear madam, quite so, and I trust that you are by this time fully accustomed to your changed environment. Judson Centre, while possessing few metropolitan advantages, has distinct and peculiar recommendations of an individual character which endear the locality to those residing therein."