Hepsey Burke

The planking was soon laid, and the erection of the tent was left to Nickey’s captaining—all hands assisting. With his manual in one hand he laid it out, rope by rope, poles in position, and each helper at his place. Then at a word, up it soared, with a “bravo” from the puzzled onlookers.

“We want a poet here,” laughed Maxwell. “Longfellow’s ‘Building of the Ship,’ or Ralph Connor’s ‘Building the Barn’ aren’t a circumstance to Nickey’s ‘Pitching the Parson’s Tent.’”

It was next divided off into three convenient rooms, for sleeping, eating and cooking—and Hepsey, with three scouts, having driven across to the old rectory 216 while the finishing touches were being put to the new, she and her military escort soon returned with Mrs. Betty, and a load of furniture and other belongings.

“Why, this is perfect!” cried Betty. “The only thing lacking to complete the illusion is a trout brook in the front yard, and the smell of pines and the damp mossy earth of the forests. We’ll wear our old clothes, and have a bonfire at night, and roast potatoes and corn in the hot coals, and have the most beautiful time imaginable.”

The town visitors who still lingered on the scene were received cordially by Maxwell and Mrs. Betty, who seemed to be in rather high spirits; but when the visitors made any inquiries concerning structural matters they were politely referred to Nickey Burke for any information they desired, as he had assumed official management of the work.

Just before the various helpers left at six o’clock, smoke began to issue from the little stove-pipe sticking out through the canvas of the rear of the tent, and Mrs. Betty, with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows and her cooking apron on, came out to watch it with all the pride of a good housekeeper.

“Isn’t it jolly, Mrs. Burke,” she exclaimed. “I was afraid that it would not draw, but it really does, you see. This will be more fun than a month at the 217 seashore; and to-morrow we are going to have you and Nickey dine with us in the tent; so don’t make any other engagement. Don’t forget.”

By noon of the following day everybody in town knew that the Maxwells had been dispossessed, and were camping on the church lot; and before night most of the women and a few of the men had called to satisfy their curiosity, and to express their sympathy with the rector and his wife, who, however, seemed to be quite comfortable and happy in their new quarters. On the other hand, some of the vestry hinted strongly that tents could not be put up on church property without their formal permission, and a few of the more pious suggested that it was little short of sacrilege thus to violate the sanctity of a consecrated place. Nickey had painted a large sign with the word Rectory on it, in truly rustic lettering, and had hung it at the entrance of the tent. The Editor of the Durford Daily Bugle appeared with the village photographer, and after an interview with Maxwell requested him and his wife to pose for a picture in front of the tent. This they declined with thanks; but a half-column article giving a sensational account of the affair appeared in the next issue of the paper, headed by a half-tone picture of the tent and the church. Public sentiment ran strongly against Bascom, 218 to whom rumor quickly awarded the onus of the incident. In reply to offers of hospitality, Maxwell and Mrs. Betty insisted that they were very comfortable for the time being, and were not going to move or make any plans for the immediate future. The morning of the fourth day, Maxwell announced to Mrs. Betty that he had a strong presentiment that Bascom would soon make another move in the game, and he was not surprised when he saw Nelson approaching.

“Thank goodness we are in the open air, this time,” Maxwell remarked to Betty as he caught sight of the visitor. “I’ll talk to him outside—and perhaps you’d better shut the door and keep out the language. I may have to express myself more forcibly than politely.”

Nelson began:

“I am sorry to have to intrude upon you again, Mr. Maxwell, but I must inform you that you will have to vacant that tent and find lodgings elsewhere.”

“Why, pray? This tent is my property for as long as I require it.”

“Ah! But you see it has been put up on the land that belongs to the church, and you have no title to use the land, you know, for private purposes.”

“Pardon me,” Maxwell replied, “but while the legal 219 title to all church property is held by the wardens and vestry collectively, the freehold use of the church building and grounds is held by the rector for the purpose of the exercise of his office as rector. No church property is injured by this tent. This lot was originally purchased for a rectory. To all intents and purposes (excuse me; I am not punning) this tent is the rectory pro tem. The use of a rectory was offered me as part of the original agreement when I accepted the call to come to this parish.”

“Hm! You speak quite as if you belonged to the legal profession yourself, Mr. Maxwell. However, I am afraid that you will have to get off the lot just the same. You must remember that I am simply carrying out Mr. Bascom’s instructions.”

“Very well; please give my compliments to Mr. Bascom and tell him that he is welcome to come here and put me out as soon as he thinks best. Moreover, you might remind him that he is not an autocrat, and that he cannot take any legal action in the matter without a formal meeting of the vestry, which I will call and at which I will preside. He can appeal to the Bishop if he sees fit.”

“Then I understand that you propose to stay where you are, in defiance of Mr. Bascom’s orders?”

“I most certainly do. It is well known that Mr. 220 Bascom has successfully intimidated every one of my predecessors; but he has met his match for once. I shall not budge from this tent until I see fit.”

“Well, I should be very sorry to see you forcibly ejected.”

“Don’t waste any sympathy on me, sir. If Mr. Bascom attempts to molest me, I shall take the matter to the courts and sue him for damages.”

“Your language is somewhat forcible, considering that you are supposed to be his pastor and spiritual advisor.”

“Very well; tell Mr. Bascom that as his spiritual advisor I strongly suggest that his spiritual condition will not be much improved by attempting to molest us here.”

“But to be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Maxwell, he can force you to leave, by stopping the payment of your salary, even if he does not eject you by force.”

“I rather think not. Until he can bring specific charges against me, he is liable for the fulfillment of our original contract, in his writing. Moreover, I may have more friends in the parish than he imagines.”

Nelson was visibly disturbed by the rector’s firm hold on the situation. 221

“But,” he stuttered, “Mr. Bascom is the richest man in the parish, and his influence is strong. You will find that everyone defers to his judgment as a matter of course.”

“All right; then let me add, for your own information, that I can earn my living honestly in this town and take care of myself without Mr. Bascom’s assistance, if necessary; and do my parish work at the same time. I have two muscular arms, and if it comes down to earning a livelihood, independent of my salary, I can work on the state road hauling stone. Williamson told me yesterday he was looking for men.”

“I can scarcely think that the parishioners would hold with their rector working like a common laborer, Mr. Maxwell,” admonished Nelson.

“We are all ‘common,’ in the right sense, Mr. Nelson. My view is that work of any kind is always honorable when necessary, except in the eyes of the ignorant. If Mr. Bascom is mortified to have me earn my living by manual labor, when he is not ashamed to repudiate a contract, and try to force me out of the parish by a process of slow starvation, his sense of fitness equals his standard of honor.”

“Well, I am sure that I do not know what I can do.”

“Do you want me to tell you?” 222

“If it will relieve your feelings,” Nelson drawled insolently.

“Then get out of this place and stay out. If you return again for any purpose whatever I am afraid it is I who will have to eject you. We will not argue the matter again.”

“Well, I regret this unfortunate encounter, and to have been forced to listen to the unguarded vituperation of my rector.” With which retort he departed.

Soon after Nelson had left, Mrs. Burke called in, and Betty gave her a highly amusing and somewhat colored version of the interview.

“You know, I think that our theological seminaries don’t teach budding parsons all they ought to, by any means,” she concluded.

“I quite agree with you, Betty dear; and I thank my stars for college athletics,” laughed Maxwell, squaring up to the tent-pole.

“What did I tell you,” reminded Hepsey, “when you had all those books up in your room at my place. It’s just as important for a country parson to know how to make a wiped-joint or run a chicken farm or pull teeth, as it is to study church history and theology. A parson’s got to live somehow, and a trade school ought to be attached to every seminary, according to my way of thinking! St. Paul made tents, 223 and wasn’t a bit ashamed of it. Well I’m mighty glad that Bascom has got come up with for once. Don’t you give in, and it will be my turn to make the next move, if this don’t bring him to his senses. You just wait and see.”

CHAPTER XIX

COULEUR de ROSE

Hepsey had been so busy with helping the Maxwells that for some time no opportunity had occurred for Jonathan to press his ardent suit. Since his first attempt and its abrupt termination, he had been somewhat bewildered; he had failed to decide whether he was an engaged man open to congratulations, or a rejected suitor to be condoled with. He tried to recall exactly what she had said. As near as he could recollect, it was: “I’ll think it over, and perhaps some day—” Then he 225 had committed the indiscretion of grasping her hand, causing her to drop her stitches before she had ended what she was going to say. He could have sworn at himself to think that it was all his fault that she had stopped just at the critical moment, when she might have committed herself and given him some real encouragement. But he consoled himself by the thought that she had evidently taken him seriously at last; and so to the “perhaps some day” he added, in imagination, the words “I will take you”; and this seemed reasonable.

The matter was more difficult from the very fact that they had been on such intimate terms for such a long time, and she had never hitherto given him any reason to think that she cared for him other than as a good neighbor and a friend. Ever since the death of his wife, she seemed to feel that he had been left an orphan in a cold and unsympathetic world, and that it was her duty to look after him much as she would a child. She was in the habit of walking over whenever she pleased and giving directions to Mary McGuire in regard to matters which she thought needed attention in his house. And all this had been done in the most open and matter-of-fact way, so that the most accomplished gossip in Durford never accused her of making matrimonial advances to the 226 lonesome widower. Even Jonathan himself had been clever enough to see that she regarded him much as she would an overgrown boy, and had always accepted her many attentions without misinterpreting them. She was a born manager, and she managed him; that was all. Nothing could be more unsentimental than the way in which she would make him take off his coat during a friendly call, and let her sponge and press it for him; or the imperative fashion in which she sent him to the barber’s to have his beard trimmed. How could a man make love to a woman after she had acted like this?

But he reminded himself that if he was ever to win her he must begin to carry out the advice outlined by Mrs. Betty; and so the apparently unsuspecting Hepsey would find on her side porch in the morning some specially fine corn which had been placed there after dark without the name of the donor. Once a fine melon was accompanied by a bottle of perfumery; and again a basket of peaches had secreted in its center a package of toilet soap “strong enough to kill the grass,” as Hepsey remarked as she sniffed at it. Finally matters reached a climax when a bushel of potatoes arrived on the scene in the early dawn, and with it a canary bird in a tin cage. When Hepsey saw Jonathan later, she remarked casually that 227 she “guessed she’d keep the potatoes; but she didn’t need a canary bird any more than a turtle needs a tooth-pick; and he had better take it away and get his money back.”

However, Jonathan never allowed her occasional rebuffs to discourage him or stop his attentions. He kept a close watch on all Hepsey’s domestic interests, and if there were any small repairs to be made at Thunder Cliff, a hole in the roof to be mended, or the bricks on the top of the chimney to be relaid, or the conductor pipe to be readjusted, Jonathan was on the spot. Then Jonathan would receive in return a layer cake with chopped walnuts in the filling, and would accept it in the same matter-of-fact way in which Hepsey permitted his services as general caretaker.

This give-and-take business went on for some time. At last it occurred to him that Mrs. Burke’s front porch ought to be painted, and he conceived the notion of doing the work without her knowledge, as a pleasant surprise to her. He waited a long time for some day when she should be going over to shop at Martin’s Junction,—when Nickey usually managed to be taken along,—so that he could do the work unobserved. Meantime, he collected from the hardware store various cards with samples of different colors 228 on them. These he would combine and re-combine at his leisure, in the effort to decide just what colors would harmonize. He finally decided that a rather dark blue for the body work would go quite well, with a bright magenta for the trimmings, and laid in a stock of paint and brushes, and possessed his soul in patience.

So one afternoon, arriving home burdened with the spoils of Martin’s Junction, great was Mrs. Burke’s astonishment and wrath when she discovered the porch resplendent in dark blue and magenta.

“Sakes alive! Have I got to live inside of that,” she snorted. “Why, it’s the worst lookin’ thing I ever saw. If I don’t settle him,” she added, “—paintin’ my porch as if it belonged to him—and me as well,” she added ambiguously. And, catching up her sun-bonnet, she hastened over to her neighbor’s and inquired for Jonathan. “Sure, he’s gone to Martin’s Junction to see his brother, Mrs. Burke. He said he’d stay over night, and I needn’t come in again till to-morrow dinner-time,” Mary McGuire replied.

Hepsey hastened home, and gathering all the rags she could find, she summoned Nickey and Mullen, one of the men from the farm, and they worked with turpentine for nearly two hours, cleaning off the fresh 229 paint from the porch. Then she sent Nickey down to the hardware store for some light gray paint and some vivid scarlet paint, and a bit of dryer. It did not take very long to repaint her porch gray—every trace of the blue and the magenta having been removed by the vigorous efforts of the three.

When it was finished, she opened the can of scarlet, and pouring in a large quantity of dryer she sent Nickey over to see if Mary McGuire had gone home. All three set to work that evening to paint the porch in front of Jonathan’s house. At first Mullen protested anxiously that it was none of his business to be painting another man’s porch, but Mrs. Burke gave him a look which changed his convictions; so he and Nickey proceeded gleefully to fulfill their appointed task, while she got supper.

When the work was quite finished. Hepsey went over to inspect it, and remarked thoughtfully to herself: “I should think that a half pint of dryer might be able to get in considerable work before to-morrow noon. I hope Jonathan’ll like scarlet. To be sure it does look rather strikin’ on a white house; but then variety helps to relieve the monotony of a dead alive town like Durford; and if he don’t like it plain, he can trim it green. I’ll teach him to come paintin’ my house without so much as a by-your-leave, or with-your-leave, 230 lettin’ the whole place think things.”

As it happened, Jonathan returned late that night to Durford—quite too late to see the transformation of his own front porch, and since he entered by the side door as usual, he did not even smell the new paint. The next morning he sauntered over to Thunder Cliff, all agog for his reward, and Mrs. Burke greeted him at her side door, smiling sweetly.

“Good mornin’, Jonathan. It was awful good of you to paint my front porch. It has needed paintin’ for some time now, but I never seemed to get around to it.”

“Don’t mention it, Hepsey,” Jonathan replied affably. “Don’t mention it. You’re always doin’ somethin’ for me, and it’s a pity if I can’t do a little thing like that for you once in a while.”

Hepsey had strolled round to the front, as if to admire his work, Jonathan following. Suddenly he came to a halt; his jaw dropped, and he stared as if he had gone out of his senses.

“Such a lovely color; gray just suits the house, you know,” Mrs. Burke observed. “You certainly ought to have been an artist, Jonathan. Any man with such an eye for color ought not to be wastin’ his time on a farm.”

Jonathan still gazed at the porch in amazement, 231 blinked hard, wiped his eyes and his glasses with his handkerchief, and looked again.

“What’s the matter with you? Have you a headache?” Hepsey inquired solicitously.

“No, I haven’t got no headache; but when I left that porch yesterday noon it was blue, and now I’m blamed if it don’t seem gray. Does it look gray-like to you, Hepsey?”

“Why certainly! What’s that you say? Do you say you painted it blue? That certainly’s mighty queer. But then you know some kinds of paint fade—some kinds do!” She nodded, looking suspiciously at the work.

“Fade!” Jonathan sneered. “Paints don’t fade by moonlight in one night. That isn’t no faded blue. It’s just plain gray. I must be goin’ color blind, or something.”

“It looks gray to me, and I’m glad it is gray, so don’t you worry about it, Jonathan. Blue would be somethin’ awful on the front of a white house, you know.”

“Well,” continued the bewildered Junior Warden, “I’m blessed if this isn’t the queerest thing I ever see in all my born days. If I catch the fellow that sold me that paint, I’ll make it lively for him or my name isn’t Jackson.” 232

“Oh, I wouldn’t do anything like that! What difference does it make, so long as I like the color myself; it’s my house. I should have been very much put out if you’d painted it blue; yes, I should.”

“But I don’t like to be cheated down at the store; and I won’t, by gum! They said it was best quality paint! I’ll go down to Crosscut’s and see about this business, right now. I’ve traded with him nigh on twenty years, and he don’t bamboozle me that way.”

Hepsey turned away choking with laughter, and retreated to her kitchen.

Jonathan started back towards his house to get his hat and coat, and then for the first time he caught sight of his own porch, done in flaming scarlet, which fairly seemed to radiate heat in the brilliant sunlight. He stood motionless for nearly a minute, paralyzed. Then the color began to rise in his neck and face as he muttered under his breath:

“Hm! I’m on to the whole business now. I ought to have known that Hepsey would get the best of me. I guess I won’t go down to Crosscut’s after all.”

Then he walked up to the porch and touched the scarlet paint with his finger and remarked:

“Set harder than a rock, by gum! She must have used a whole lot of dryer. I’ll get even with her for this. See if I don’t.” 233

In the afternoon Jonathan brought over some fine apples and presented them to Hepsey, who was knitting on her side porch. She thanked him for the gift, and the conversation drifted from one thing to another while she waited for the expected outburst of reproach which she knew would come sooner or later. But curiously enough, Jonathan was more cheery and cordial than usual, and made no allusion whatever to the scarlet porch, which was conspicuously visible from where they sat. Again and again Hepsey led the conversation around to the point where it seemed as if he must break covert, but he remained oblivious, and changed the subject readily. Not a word on the subject passed his lips that afternoon.

Then, from day to day the neighbors called and inquired of her if Jackson had gone off his head, or what was the matter. His flaming porch outraged Durford’s sense of decency. She was at her wits end to answer, without actually lying or compromising herself; so the only thing she said was that she had noticed that he had been acting a bit peculiar lately, now they mentioned it. As time went on, the scarlet porch became the talk of the town. It was duly discussed at the sewing society, and the reading club, and the general sentiment was practically unanimous that Jackson must be suffering from incipient cataract 234 or senile dementia, and needed a guardian. Even Mary McGuire remarked to Mrs. Burke that she was afraid “that there front porch would sure set the house on fire, if it wasn’t put out before.” Everybody agreed that if his wife had lived, the thing never could have happened.

Meantime, Jonathan went about his daily business, serene and happy, apparently oblivious of the fact that there was anything unusual in the decoration of his house. When his friends began to chaff him about the porch he seemed surprised, and guessed it was his privilege to paint his house any color he had a mind to, and there was no law ag’in’ it; it was nobody’s business but his own. Tastes in color differed, and there was no reason in the world why all houses should be painted alike. He liked variety himself, and nobody could say that scarlet wasn’t a real cheerful color on a white house.

Occasionally people who were driving by stopped to contemplate the porch; and the Durford Daily Bugle devoted a long facetious paragraph to the matter. All of which Mrs. Burke knew very well, and it was having its effect on her nerves. The porch was the most conspicuous object in view from Hepsey’s sitting-room windows, and every time she entered the room she found herself looking at the flaming terror 235 with increasing exasperation. Verily, if Jonathan wanted revenge he was getting far more than he knew: the biter was badly bit. The matter came to a crisis one day, when Jonathan concluded a discussion with Mrs. Burke about the pasture fence. She burst out abruptly:

“Say, Jonathan Jackson, why in the name of conscience don’t you paint your porch a Christian color? It’s simply awful, and I’m not goin’ to sit in my house and have to look at it all winter.”

Jonathan did not seem greatly stirred, and replied in an absent-minded way:

“Why don’t you move your sittin’ room over to the other side of the house, Hepsey? Then you wouldn’t have to see it. Don’t you like scarlet?”

“No, I don’t like it, and if you don’t paint it out, I will.”

“Don’t do nothin’ rash, Hepsey. You know sometimes colors fade in the moonlight—some colors, that is. Maybe that scarlet porch’ll turn to a light gray if you let it alone.”

Mrs. Burke could stand it no longer; so, laying down her work she exploded her pent-up wrath:

“Jonathan Jackson, if that paint isn’t gone before to-morrow, I’ll come over and paint it myself.”

“Oh, that isn’t necessary, Hepsey. And it might 236 set people talkin’. But if you won’t move your sittin’-room to the other side of your own house, why don’t you move it over to my house? You wouldn’t see so much of the red paint then.”

Hepsey snorted and spluttered in baffled rage.

“Now, now, Hepsey,” soothed Jonathan, “if that don’t suit you, I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll paint it over myself on one condition!”

“And what’s that, I’d like to know?”

“That you’ll marry me,” snapped Jonathan hungrily.

Instead of resenting such bold tactics on the part of her suitor, Mrs. Burke gazed at him a long time with a rather discouraged look on her face.

“Land sakes!” she exclaimed at last with assumed weariness and a whimsical smile, “I didn’t know I’d ever come to this; but I guess I’ll have to marry you to keep you from makin’ another kind of fool of yourself; widowers are such helpless mortals, and you certainly do need a guardian.” She shook her head at him despondently.