A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill
“That there Mrs. Ivy's been after me agin to send him to the Widows and
Orphans' Home. She says she can git him in, and they'll learn him to
read and write.”
“Well, he ain't goin'! I guess as long as I'm a payin' the grocery
bills, I got a right to say who'll eat the food! What's that you are
hidin'?”
Maria, who had been attempting to remove something surreptitiously from
the table, looked apologetic.
“It's one of them plaster casts, I'll be bound,” Myrtella continued. “I
might 'a' knowed you'd git the mate to the other one, and not a square
inch of space in the house to set it on! What did you give fer it?”
Mrs. Flathers withdrew her apron, and tenderly dusted the highly colored
features of an Indian squaw, whose head-feathers reposed upon her arm.
Then she placed it on a corner of the stove where its imposing dignity
produced a momentary impression upon even the flinty Myrtella.
“How much?” she demanded heartlessly.
“A quarter down, and ten cents a week.” Maria sighed. “'Twouldn't be no
trouble at all if it wasn't for Phineas spending so much car-fare going
to church and that bow-legged, onery rent-man, that comes sneakin' round
here every week, acting like poor people just kep' money settin' 'round
in jars waitin' fer the likes of him!”
Maria's hatred of the rent man was the one emotion that seemed to be
left in her withered bosom. To baffle him, to evade him, to anticipate
his coming and be away from home, constituted the chief object of her
existence.
A bang of the gate announced the arrival of the head of the household,
which was promptly followed by the strains of a hymn cheerfully whistled
in rag-time.
Phineas Flathers, after months of abstinence, had reached that period
where he felt that not only his constitution, but his profession would
profit by a temporary fall from grace. Solicitude for his moral welfare
was beginning to flag at the Church; his regular attendance, his
apparent absorption in the sermon, and his emotional execution of the
hymns, all went to lift him from the class of interesting converts, to
the deadly commonplace of regular members. Only that afternoon he had
decided to revive interest in his case at any cost. He had just treated
others, as he would have others treat him at the Cant-Pass-It, when he
was summoned home to see his sister.
He now presented himself in his own doorway, a hand on either side of
the jamb, and bowed profoundly:
“Miss Flathers! Pleased to meet you! I see you still continue to favor
yourself in looks. Lost your place, I suppose?”
“That's right, be insultin'!” Myrtella flared up haughtily; “throw it
in my face that I'm hard to please, and ain't willin' to put up with any
old place I come to.”
“Now I wouldn't put it that I was throwing it in yer face exactly,”
began Phineas, anxious to propitiate.
“Which means I'm a story-teller?” Myrtella squared herself for action.
“Oh, come on along,” coaxed Phineas; “no harm's meant. Go on an' tell us
what you left fer.”
“Who said I'd left? Puttin' words in my mouth I never thought of
utterin'! I ain't left, and what's more I ain't going to. I got a good
place.”
Phineas whistled an aggravatingly attenuated note of surprise: “The lady
you are working for must be a deef-mute.”
“She is. The same as you'll be some day. She's been dead three years.”
The triumph with which she made this announcement put a momentary
quietus on Phineas, and enabled her to proceed:
“It's a widower gentleman with three children that I'm cookin' for, and
I ain't set eyes on one of 'em except at meal times since I hired to
'em. Queerington's their names, out on College Street, right around the
corner from the Immanuel Church. He's a teacher or something, one of
them bookwormy men, whose head never pays no attention to what the
rest of him is doing. 'Take charge,' said he, 'of everything, do the
ordering, and cooking, and don't bother me with nothing.'”
“But does he bother you?” put in Phineas astutely; “that's the real
point.”
“Wasn't I just tellin' you that he didn't? He's been off on a trip to
Virginia; gets home to-night. I've got the whole house in the pa'm of my
hand, from cellar to attic. Miss Connie, she's the oldest, as flighty as
a pidgeon and head so full of boys she don't pay no attention to another
livin' thing. Then there's Miss Hattie, the second one, jes' at that
spiteful thirteen age, but so busy peckin' on her sister, she ain't no
time left for me--”
“Thought you said there was three children,” put in Maria mildly.
“I did. You didn't think I lied, did you? Always ready to snatch up a
person's words before they git 'em out of their mouth! The third one is
a boy, Bertie they call him, sick and spin'ly, but a right nice little
fellow. Where'd Chick go?”
“He's settin' out there on the door-step. Did you hear 'bout our
shootin'?”
“Maria was tryin' to tell me, but she didn't seem to have nothin' clear
to tell. Who do you think done it?”
Phineas Flathers, balancing himself on the hind legs of his chair, with
his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, was nothing loath to launch
forth into a full recital of the affair, embellishing it with many a
flourish as he went along. In the bosom of his family he was freed from
those bonds of restraint that embarrassed his utterance when in more
formal society. The amount of profanity that he could dispose of in the
course of an ordinary conversation was little short of astounding. This
being more than an ordinary conversation and his mood being mellow,
called for an extra vocabulary. He graphically set forth the facts in
the case, then gave his imagination full sway in accounting for them.
He interpreted the whole affair as a clash between capital and labor,
a conflict between the pampered aristocrat and the common man. The
shooting was the result of a deep-laid plan: Dillingham and Morley had
met by appointment, moved by what motive he did not make clear, to kill
Sheeley, an honest laboring man. Hadn't the one on horseback, that they
say was Mr. Morley, stopped him at the crossing, on the very afternoon
of the shooting, and engaged him in conversation? Phineas assured his
listeners that he trembled even now when he thought of the danger he had
been in!
“I'd seed him afore that day a ridin' with a pretty young lady, that
most got her neck broke under a engine, but this time he was by hisself,
a settin' there on his horse, as proud as a king and stirrin' me up
about the rich folks not allowing us poor working classes to have no
streets out here. I suspicioned somethin' right then; says I to myself,
'he's got a handsome face but his mind is a well of corruption.' And
when I heard he'd shot Sheeley ...Now what in thunder is the matter with
you, Chick?”
During this recital Chick had been sitting in the doorway, his knees
drawn up to his chin, listening intently, but at this point he cried out
in a sputter of protesting sounds.
“It's the shootin', it's done got on his mind,” explained Maria, winding
her long thin hair into a yet tighter knot at the back of her head. “He
takes on like that every time he hears us talkin' 'bout it, and nobody
can't make out a word he's sayin'. Fer two or three days I couldn't
scarcely git him to eat nothin'.”
“If your cooking ain't any better than it used to be I ain't surprised,”
Myrtella said. “How bad was Sheeley shot, Phineas?”
“Oh, he'll be laid up fer a month yit. They say the retinue of his eye
was cracked right across the middle. But that ain't worryin' Sheeley.
He's livin' in style at the hospital, all his bills paid, and the swells
lookin' after him. I hear he ain't even goin' to prosecute. They've
fixed him all right; besides he don't want to git that fly young gang
down on his place. He's countin' on startin' up them sparrin' matches
ag'in, as soon as the police quit noticin' him. Say, Sis, you don't
happen to have a quarter 'bout you, do you?”
The peculiar persuasiveness of Phineas' voice when he threw out these
financial suggestions, was very insidious. In some subtle way he made
the favor all on the side of the recipient; he gave the donor, as it
were, a chance to acquire merit.
But Myrtella wore the armor of experience. “No, I ain't!” she said,
taking a firmer grasp on her bag. “I'm payin' the grocery man now, and
buyin' clothes for Chick. What good does it do? I no more than git his
hide covered than you go and sell the clothes offen his back. When are
you goin' to git a job?”
“Well, you might say I had one now. Leastwise I'm a followin' Scriptures
and bearin' one another's burdens. Jires, the flagman, over to the
Junction has been laid up with rheumatism and he don't want the boss to
know it. He sets in his box and hires me to go out and flag the trains
like he tells me to.”
“How many trains a day?”
“Two ups, three downs and a couple of freights.”
“Should think you'd die of the exertion. How much do you get?”
“Oh, it ain't so much. But I ain't a ambitious man. What's the use of
me a-slavin' and a-hordin' when I ain't got a child to leave it to? If
Claude had a lived, or McKinley, I might 'a' had somethin' to work for.”
“You mean you'd 'a' had somethin' to work for you. The Lord certainly
done a good job when he changed His mind about letting them babies
live.”
“They're having onions next door fer supper,” said Maria feebly, by way
of diverting an old discussion. “I ain't been able to git 'em off my
mind all afternoon.”
Chick, who had been sent to the grocery to see what time it was, came
back holding up five fingers.
“Gee, I got to be hiking!” said Phineas. “The passenger train from
Virginia's due at five sixteen. It won't git here before a quarter of
six, but I'm always there on the minute. That's what Jires pays me fer,
fer bein' regular and reliable. Jes' let me get a regular habit and
a clock ain't in it with me. Why, if I was to come in late at church,
they'd stop the service!”
“Well, don't you be gittin' a regular habit of comin' 'round to the
Queeringtons!” was Myrtella's parting shot as he rose unsteadily. “When
I got anything to say to you I'll come here.”
“That's right!” assented Phineas cordially; “you jes' make yourself at
home. My home is your home. Maria'll tell you that I says to her only
last night, I says, 'Maria, you needn't feel so cut up 'bout askin'
Myrtella fer the rent this month, because this is her home, too. There
ain't a board in it but I'd share with her, she knows that.' You tell
her all I said, Maria, don't you keep back nothin'. Farewell!” and with
an affectionate glance and a wave of the hand Phineas departed.
Now if he had followed the straight and narrow path, indicated by the
rocks and tin cans, that led to the Junction, instead of the broad
highway indicated by the plank walk that led to the Cant-Pass-It, the
tragedy that hovered over Billy-goat Hill might have been averted.
But he had left the saloon in the midst of a heated controversy with two
Italians, concerning the supremacy of America over all other nations.
The fact that his country had never been proud of him in no way deterred
him from being very proud of his country. Until the dispute was properly
ended he felt that the honor of the nation was at stake.
His patriotic fervor ran so high that by the time he reached the
crossing, the passenger train was already in sight. Jires, helpless and
terrified at his post, was distractedly shouting directions from his
little sentinel box.
“Flathers! There's a washout down the road! We've got to hold up the
passenger train. Get out the red flag! Quick man! Be ready to signal the
engineer. Three times cross ways! The red flag, you fool! the RED FLAG!
Oh, my God!”
For Phineas Flathers, to whom all flags now looked red, white and blue,
was standing at the crossing, joyously waving a white flag, while the