In Pawn. Butler Ellis Parker
Читать онлайн книгу.
is a note. It’s got to be paid as an’ when specified.”
So Sue Redding had the note and Harvey had her money, and for a while he enjoyed sitting behind a counter telling Lem to hand out canned corn and bluing and to weigh out sugar. When Lem was at school Harvey found it more comfortable to sit in the rocker and tell the children who came to buy that he guessed he was out of whatever it was they asked for, and when he had no more money with which to replenish his stock he sold what remained of the grocery and took up the junk business.
The junk business had the advantage of being a slow, sedentary business. When one wished one could sit and smoke; when the weather was favorable one could tell Lem to harness the horse and then take a slow, comfortable drive through bough-shaded streets, nobly heralded by clanking cowbells. There was no money to be made in the junk business as Harvey conducted it, but there could not be much loss. And always, regularly, the twenty-five dollars allowance came to him on the first of the month. It was ideal. Even Moses Shuder, despite Harvey’s complaints, was a blessing. He was an excuse for the lack of profit in the junk business and he was something to talk of and grow angry about. Harvey seemed to be, at last, in an ideal business, and one in which he could remain forever. And then the old horse died.
When Lem, sent to feed the horse, came back from the shack at the far end of the lot and reported that the old horse was dead, Harvey “dod-basted” his luck heartily.
“Well,” he drawled a moment later, “if he’s dead he’s dead, an’ it ain’t no fault of mine. You go downtown, Lem, an’ see who you can git to haul him away for about two dollars.”
The boy hurried away. Harvey puffed at his pipe and looked out of the gate of the junkyard at the street. It was late June. Now and then he slapped the bald spot on his head vigorously. He was giving things more thought than he had given anything in years. His affairs had reached a crisis. He could not be a junkman without a horse and he had no money with which to buy another horse. He owed Sue five hundred dollars and, the way she had been pressing him for payments recently, he knew she was not likely to lend him more. She was pestering him unmercifully for what he already owed her.
With his twenty-five dollars a month he could get along well enough, with no business to demand part of it, but he saw no comfort in life if Sue was to be continually drumming at him and nagging him for the repayment of the money. Except for Sue he could give up the pretense of being in business and take life comfortable, but Sue had only left him in semi-peace because he appeared to be doing business. When she learned that he was not even attempting to make money, she would be too annoying for comfort. Harvey sighed heavily and took up his book. It was the “Lives of the Saints.”
When Lem returned with a negro and a team of horses, Harvey put his hand in his trousers’ pocket and gave the negro two dollars and went on reading. A few minutes later he looked up from his book, for the negro’s team had stopped with their noses at his shoulder.
“Say, what you haulin’ that carcass out this way for?” Harvey demanded. “Whyn’t you take it out the back way?”
“‘Cause, boss, de gate ain’t wide ‘nuff. Got to go out dis yere way.”
“Well, dod-baste it! I guess I got to move,” said Harvey, and he got out of his rocker, groaned and moved it three feet to the left, and lost himself in the “Lives of the Saints” again.
CHAPTER II
Riverbank in June is beautiful. Climbing the hills above the Mississippi the streets are arches of elms and maples, the grass richly green, and the shrubs are in blossom.
Up one of these rather steep hill streets, the last day of June, Harvey Redding climbed, with Lem now at his side and now falling behind to investigate something that caught his attention. Harvey was hot. He had put on a coat and the sun was warm and the climb stiff for a fat man. He stopped once in a while to take off his hat and wipe his face. When he did he called to Lem with unwonted gentleness.
“Lem, you come here! Don’t be strayin’ around all over the neighborhood!”
To these mild commands Lem paid no attention whatever.
Occasionally, but not often, some one passed them, going up or down the hill. To some of these Harvey spoke, stopping for long conversations about the weather or similar exciting subjects. Those he did not know went by without speaking. Now and then a boy went by and Lem straightened up and looked at him.
The peculiar thing was that although Harvey was on his way to see his creditor sister his fat, puffy face was strangely placid. Now and then, when he paused for breath he folded his plump hands across his plump belly; when he spoke to a foot passenger it was slowly, with carefully chosen words and in a gentle voice. He was almost meek.
There was something else peculiar about Harvey this day. He was not smoking his old black pipe. You might have said that he knew Susan would give him Hail Columbia, and that he had prepared for it by assuming in advance an attitude of perfect non-resistance, but this was not the secret of his strangely gentle demeanor.
It was rather late in the afternoon, the warmest time of day. Beyond the neatly painted fences and the trimmed lawns the porches of some of the houses were brightened by the white dresses of ladies. In some of the yards the ladies, and now and then a young fellow, were playing croquet, the balls clicking together with a pleasant sound of well-seasoned wood. Lem put his face to the fences and stared in at these games while Harvey puffed on ahead.
At Sue Redding’s gate Harvey paused to wipe his face. The place was large, one hundred and twenty feet of white picket fence along the walk, with a terrace of six feet or more rising steeply inside the fence, so that only at the gate and beyond it could a man see those who sat on the wide porch. Harvey looked at the porch anxiously, but even at that distance – the big, white house was set far back – he could see that Sue was not on the porch, and he was relieved.
“Come here, Lem, dod – I mean, come here, Lem,” he ordered. “Lemme look at your face. Don’t seem to do no good to wash your face at all. Well – ”
He opened the gate and climbed the steps to the walk that led between two rows of pine trees to the porch.
Two young women, white-clad, were sitting on the step of the porch. One was one of Miss Redding’s boarders; the other from a house across the way.
“Miss Redding?” said the boarder, whom
Harvey did not remember to have seen before. “She’s in the kitchen, I think. I’ll call her – ”
“Nemmine,” said Harvey. “Me an’ Lem’ll go right through. I’m her brother,” he added in explanation. He opened the screen door and passed into the cool, deep hall. Lem followed him.
Sue Redding was making cookies, cutting them out of the flattened dough with a fluted dough-cutter. She was a large woman, almost as heavy as Harvey himself, but remarkably quick in every movement for one so heavy. She turned when Harvey entered, but she did not seem particularly pleased to see him.
“Hello, Lem,” she said, greeting the boy first. “What you want now, Harvey? I don’t suppose you’ve come to pay that note, it ain’t likely.”
Harvey seated himself ponderously on one of the kitchen chairs.
“I come to tell you, Sue, that I’ve given up business,” he said gently, as one not wishing to arouse anger.
The effect was magical. Miss Redding turned on him, her face flushing, her eyes gleaming.
“You come here and dare tell me that, in my own kitchen?” she burst forth. “You don’t dare give up business! What did you tell me when I let you go out of the grocery business and into the junk business, Harvey Redding? Did n’t you say, ‘If you let that note stand, I ‘ll keep in business until I get it paid up if it takes all my born days!’ All right! I suppose you’re here to pay up that note, then?”
“Well, now, Susan – ”
“A nice right you have to come and say you are going to quit business! Of all the good-for-nothing – ”
“The hoss died on me,” said Harvey. “What’s