Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
He sauntered up and sat down on the edge of the porch. He showed the air
of a man who was killing time. “I'm in charge of it.”
“Not of putting those people off the island?”
“Sure! That's what I'm here for. I'm state agent on pauper affairs,
acting for the Governor and Council.”
“You say the state is back of this?” demanded Mayo, incredulously.
“Certainly! It's a matter that the state was obliged to take up. State
has bought that island from the real heirs, has ordered off those
squatters, and we shall burn down their shacks and clear the land up.
Of course, we allow heads of families some cash for their houses, if
you can call 'em houses. That's under the law regulating squatter
improvements. But improvements is a polite word for the buildings on
that island. It is going to cost us good money to clear up for that New
York party who has made an offer to the state--he's going to use the
island for a summer estate.”
He flicked the ashes from his cigar and broke in on Mayo's indignant
retort.
“It had to be done, sir. They have intermarried till a good many of the
children are fools. The men are breaking into summer cottages, after the
owners leave in the fall. They steal everything on the main that isn't
nailed down. They have set false beacons in the winter, and have wrecked
coasters. Every little while some city newspaper has written them up as
wild men, and it has given the state a bad name. We're going to break up
the nest.”
“But where will they go?”
“Fools to the state school for the feeble-minded, cripples to the
poorhouse. The able-bodied will have to get out and go to work at
something honest.”
“But, look here, my dear sir! Those poor devils are starting out with
too much of a handicap. After three generations on that island they
don't know how to get a living on the main.”
“That's their own lookout, not the state's! State doesn't guarantee to
give shiftless folks a living.”
“How about using a little common sense in the case of such people?”
“You are not making this affair your business, are you?” asked the
commissioner, with acerbity.
“No.”
“Better not; and you'd better not say too much to _me!_” He rose and
dusted off his trousers. “I have investigated for the Governor and
Council and they are acting on my recommendations. You might just as
well advise nursing and coddling a nest of brown-tail moths--and we are
spending good money to kill off moths. We don't propose to encourage the
breeding of thieves. We are not keeping show places of this sort along
the coast for city folks to talk about and run down the state after they
go back home. It hurts state business!” He marched away.
Captain Mayo strode up and down the porch and muttered some emphatic
opinions in regard to the intellects and doings of rulers.
“You see, I know the sort of people who live on that island, Miss
Candage. I have seen other cases alongshore. They are blamed for what
they don't know--and what they are led into. Amateur missionaries will
load them down in a spasm of summer generosity with a lot of truck
and make them think that the world owes them a living. The poor
devils haven't wit enough to look ahead. When it comes winter they are
starving--and when children are hungry and cold a man will tackle a
proposition that is more dangerous than a summer cottage locked up for
the winter. Next comes along some chap like that state agent, who prides
himself on being straight business and no favors! He puts the screws to
'em! There's nobody to help those folks in the real and the right way. I
pity them!”
“I live in the country and I know how unfeeling the boards of selectmen
are in many of the pauper cases. When it's a matter of saving money for
the voters and making a good town record, they don't care much how poor
folks get along.”
Mayo continued to patrol the porch. “I'm in a rather rebellious state of
mind just now, I reckon,” he admitted. “Seems to me that a lot of
folks, including myself, are getting kicked. I'm smarting! I have
a fellow-feeling for the oppressed.” He laughed, but there was no
merriment in his tones. “It's the little children who will suffer most
in this, Miss Candage,” he went on. “They are not to blame--they don't
understand.”
“And of course nothing can be done.”
“Nothing sensible, I'm afraid.” He walked to and fro for many minutes.
“You see, it's none of my business,” he commented, when he came and sat
down beside her.
“I suppose there's not one man in the world to step forward and say a
good word for them,” said the girl, softly, uttering her thoughts.
“Words wouldn't amount to anything--with the machinery of the state
grinding away so merrily as it is. But this matter is stirring my
curiosity a little, Miss Candage. That's because I am one of the
oppressed myself, I reckon.” Again his mirthless chuckle. “I intended to
take the stage out of here in the morning, but I have an idea that I'll
stay over and see what happens when that gentleman who represents our
grand old state proceeds to scatter those folks to the four winds.”
“I was hoping you would stay over, Captain Mayo.” She declared that with
frank delight.
“But you don't expect me to do anything, of course!”
“It's not that. You see, I'd like to go down to the island and--and
father is so odd he might not be willing to escort me,” she explained,
trying to be matter-of-fact, her air showing that she regretted her
outburst.
“I volunteer, here and now.”
She rose and put out her hand to him. “I have not thanked you for saving
my life--saving us all, Captain Mayo. It is too holy a matter to be
profaned by any words. But here is my hand--like a friend--like a
sister--no”--she held herself straight and looked him full in the face
through the gloom and tightened her hold on his fingers--“like a man!”
He returned her earnest finger-clasp and released her hand when her
pressure slackened. That sudden spirit, the suggestion that she desired
to assume the attitude of man to man with him, seemed to vanish from her
with the release of her fingers.
She quavered her “Good night!” There was even a hint of a sob. Then she
ran into the house.
Mayo stared after her, wrinkling his forehead for a moment, as if he had
discovered some new vagary in femininity to puzzle him. Then he resumed
his patrol with the slow stride of the master mariner. Hue and Cry
raised dim bulk in the harbor jaws, showing no glimmer of light. It was
barren, treeless, a lump of land which towns had thrust from them and
which county boundaries had not taken in. He admitted that the state had
good reasons for desiring to change conditions on Hue and Cry, but this
callous, brutal uprooting of helpless folks who had been attached to
that soil through three generations was so senselessly radical that
his resentment was stirred. It was swinging from the extreme of
ill-considered indulgence to that of utter cruelty, and the poor devils
could not in the least understand!
“There seem to be other things than a spiked martingale which can pick
a man up and keep him away from his own business,” he mused. “What
fool notion possesses me to go out there to-morrow I cannot understand.
However, I can go and look on without butting into stuff that's no
affair of mine.”
Two men were shuffling past in the road. In the utter silence of that
summer night their conversation carried far.
“Yes, sir, as I was saying, there he lays dead! When I was with him on
the _Luther Briggs_ he fell from the main crosstrees, broke both legs
and one arm, and made a dent in the deck, and he got well. And a week
ago, come to-morrow, he got a sliver under his thumb, and there he lays
dead.”
“It's the way it often is in life. Whilst a man is looking up into the
sky so as to see the big things and dodge 'em, he goes to work and stubs
his toe over a knitting-needle.”
“That's right,” Captain Mayo informed himself; “but I can't seem to help
myself, somehow!”
XII ~ NO PLACE POR THE SOLES OP THEIR FEET
Don't you hear the old man roaring, Johnny,
One more day? Don't you hear that pilot bawling,
One more day? Only one more day, my Johnny,
One more day! O come rock and roll me over,
One more day.
--Windlass Song.
When the subject of the proposed expedition to Hue and Cry was broached
at the breakfast-table, Captain Epps Candage displayed prompt interest.
“It's going to be a good thing for the section round about here--roust
'em off! Heard 'em talking it over down to Rowley's store last evening.
I'll go along with you and see it done.”
Mayo and Polly Candage exchanged looks and refrained from comment.
It was evident that Captain Candage reflected the utilitarian view of
Maquoit.
Mayo had put off that hateful uniform of Marston's yacht, and the girl
gave him approving survey when he appeared that morning in his shore
suit of quiet gray. With the widow's ready aid Polly Candage had made
her own attire presentable once more. When they walked down to the shore
she smiled archly at Mayo from under the brim of a very fetching straw
poke.
“I ran down to the general store early and bought a boy's hat,” she
explained. “I trimmed it myself. You know, I'm a milliner's apprentice.
Does it do my training credit?”
He was somewhat warm in his assurances that it did.
“I ought to be pleased by your praise,” she said, demurely, “because
women wear hats for men's approval, and if my customers go home and hear
such nice words from their husbands my business career is sure to be a
success.”
“Your business career?”
“Certainly, sir!” She bobbed a little courtesy. “I have money, sir!
Money of my own. Five thousand dollars in the bank, if you please! Oh,
you need not stare at me. I did not earn it. My dear mother's sister
left it to me in her will. And some day when you are walking down the
city street you'll see a little brass sign--very bright, very neat--and
there'll be 'Polly' on it. Then you may come up and call on the great
milliner--that will be this person, now so humble.”
“But that young man!” he protested, smiling at her gaiety.
“Oh, that young man?” She wrinkled her nose. Then she flushed, conscious
that he was a bit surprised at her tone of disdain. “Why, he will wear a
frock-coat and a flower in the buttonhole and will bow in my customers.
You didn't think my young man was a farmer-boy, did you?”
She hurried ahead of him to the beach, where her father was waiting with
his men. Captain Candage had borrowed a dory for the trip. He installed
himself in the stern with the steer-oar, and the young man and the girl
sat together on the midship seat. The skipper listened to their chat
with bland content.
“There's a fellow that's one of our kind, and he ain't trying to court
my girl,” he had confided to Mr. Speed. “He is spoke for and she knows
it. And under them circumstances I believe in encouraging young folks to
be sociable.”
It was still early morning when they arrived at the island, but the
state agent was there ahead of them. They saw him walking briskly about
among the scattered houses, puffing on his cigar.
He was making domiciliary visits and was transacting business in a loud
tone of voice. That business was paying over the money which the state
had allowed for “squatter improvements.” In the case of the settlers on
Hue and Cry the sums were mere pittances; their improvements consisted
of tottering shacks, erected from salvaged flotsam of the ocean and
patched over and over with tarred paper.
There was only one building on the island which deserved
the name of dwelling; from this their communicative caller of the
preceding evening was removing his scant belongings. His wife and
children were helping. He set down a battered table when he met Mayo and