Scattergood Baines Part 18

"Huh!..."

"And she's an obedient daughter."

"Has she said so?"

"Y-yes."

"Ho! Kind of human, after all, hain't you? Look pleased when she said it?"

"She cried."

"Comfort her--some."

"I--She--she loves me, Mr. Baines."

"Well, I snum! Kind of disobedient to love you, hain't it? Knows her father 'd be set ag'in' it?"

"Yes, but she can't help that."

"Why?"

"You--why, you _fall_ in love! You don't do it on purpose, Mr. Baines.

It just comes to you."

"From where?" said Scattergood, abruptly.

The young minister stared.

"Who's to blame for there bein' love?" Scattergood demanded.

After a pause the young man answered. "G.o.d," he said. "Why does He send it?"

"So that people will marry, and the love will keep them together, strong to bear the trials and labors of life. I think love is a kind of wages that G.o.d pays to men and women for living on His earth."

"Um!... Does He send love sort of helter-skelter and hit-or-miss, or does He aim it at certain folks?"

"I have often preached that marriages were made in heaven."

"Then it's a kind of a command, hain't it?"

"Yes."

"Which d'ye calculate is the wust disobedience? To refuse to obey an order sich as this, or to disobey a parent that runs counter to the wants of the Almighty?"

The young man's face was alight with happiness. "Mr. Baines," he said, "I'm grateful to you. I shall marry Selina."

"Maybe," said Scattergood. "It runs in my mind you got to have dealin's with Deacon Pettybone, and the deacon always figgers that the news he gits from heaven is fresher and more dependable than what anybody else gits. Might ask him and see."

A few days after that Coldriver knew that Parson Hooper had asked the hand of Selina from her father and had been rejected with language and almost with violence. Then a strange thing took place. If Jason had married Selina without opposition, his congregation would have been enraged. He might have been forced from his pulpit. Now it regarded him as a martyr, and with clacking tongues and singleness of purpose it espoused his cause and declared that their minister was good enough to marry any girl alive, and that Deacon Pettybone was a mean, narrow-minded, bigoted, cantankerous old grampus. The thing became a public question, second in importance only to the sidewalk.

"Hold your hosses," Scattergood advised Jason. "Let's see what a mite of d.i.c.kerin' and persuasion'll do with the deacon. Then, if measures fails, my advice to you as a human bein' and a citizen is to git Seliny into a buckboard and run off with her. But hold on a spell."

So Jason held on, and the town meeting approached, and Scattergood continued to sit in idleness on the piazza of his store and twiddle his bare toes in the suns.h.i.+ne. Deacon Pettybone was a busy man, organizing the forces of the Baptists, and seeking diligently to round up the votes of neutrals. Elder Hooper, the leader of the Congregationalist party, was equally occupied, and no man might hazard a guess at the outcome of the affair.

"This here is a great principle," said Deacon Pettybone, "and men gives their lives and sacrifices their families for sich. I'm a-goin' to fight to the last gasp."

"Don't blame ye a mite," said Scattergood. "If them Congregationalists rule this town meetin' you might's well throw up your hands. They'll rule the town forever."

"It's got to be pervented."

"And n.o.body but you kin manage it," said Scattergood. "The hull thing rests with you. Why, if you was sick so's to be absent from that meetin'

the Congregationalists 'u'd win, hands down."

"I b'lieve it," said the deacon, "and nothin' on earth'll keep me away--nothin'. If I was a-layin' at my last gasp I'd git myself carried there."

"Deacon," said Scattergood, solemnly, "much is dependin' on you.

Coldriver's fort'nit to have sich a man at the helm."

Even the cribbage game under the barber shop was suspended, and the cribbage game was an inst.i.tution. It was the deacon's one shortcoming, but even there he strove to get the better of the enemy, for the two men who were considered his only worthy antagonists at the game were Congregationalists. The three bickered and quarreled and threatened each other with violence, but they played daily. There were few afternoons when a ring of spectators did not surround the table, breathlessly watching the champions. It was the great local sporting event, and who shall quarrel with the good deacon for touching cards in the innocent game of cribbage? Certainly his pastor did not do so, nor did the fellow members of his congregation. Indeed, there was even pride in his prowess.

But the game was discontinued, and Hamilcar Jones and Tilley Newcamp were loud in their excoriations of their late antagonist. The Congregationalists had no hotter adherents than they, nor none who entered the conflict with more bitterness of spirit. Scattergood saw to it that he encountered them on the evening before the momentous town meeting.

"Evenin', Ham. Evening Tilley."

"Howdy, Scattergood?"

"How's things lookin' for to-morrer?"

"Mighty even, Scattergood. If 'twan't for that ol' gallus Pettybone, we'd git that sidewalk with votes to spare."

"Um!... If he was absent from the meetin' things might git to happen."

"Ho! Tie him to home, and there wouldn't even be a fight."

"Got a wooden leg, hain't he?"

"Wisht he had three."

"Got two, one hangin' in the harness room. Harness room's never locked.

If 'twas a boy could squirm through the window."

"What of it?"

"Nothin'. Jest happened to think of it.... Ever stop to think what a comical thing it 'u'd be if somebody was to ketch a wooden-legged man and saw his leg off about halfway up? Jest lay him across a saw buck and saw her off while he hollered and fit. Most comical notion I ever had."

"Would make a feller laugh."

"More 'special if his spare leg was stole away and he didn't have nothin' but the sawed-off one. Sich a man would have difficulty gittin'