Thankful's Inheritance Part 15

"Kenelm's an old bach, you know. One time he used to work, or pretend to, because he needed the money; but his Aunt Phoebe up to Brockton died and left him four or five thousand dollars and he ain't worked of any account since. He's a gentleman now, livin' on his income--and his sister.

"Hannah ain't got but precious little money of her own, but she knows how to take care of it, which her brother don't. She was housekeepin'

for some folks at Wapatomac, but when the inheritances landed she headed straight for East Wellmouth, rented that little house they're in now, and took charge of Kenelm. He wa'n't overanxious to have her do it, but that didn't make any difference. One of her pet bugaboos was that, now her brother was well-off--'cordin' to her idea of well-offness--some designin' woman or other would marry him for his money. Down she come, first train, and she's been all hands and the cook, yes, and paymaster--with Kenelm a sort of steerage pa.s.senger, ever since. She keeps watch over him same as the sewin' circle does over the minister's wife, and it's 'No Anchorage for Females' around that house, I can tell you.

"Another of her special despisin's--next to old maids and young widows--used to be tobacco smoke. We had a revival preacher in East Wellmouth that first winter and he stirred up things like a stick in a mudhole. He was young and kind of good-lookin', with a voice like the Skakit foghorn, and he took the sins of the world in his mouth, one after the other, as you might say, and shook 'em same's a pup would a Sunday bunnit. He laid into rum and rum sellin', and folks fairly got in line to sign the pledge. 'Twas 'Come early and avoid the rush.' Got so that Chris Badger hardly dast to use alcohol in his cigar-lighter.

"Then, havin' dried us up, that revival feller begun to smoke us out. He preached six sermons on the evils of tobacco, and every one was hotter'n the last. Accordin' to him, if you smoked now you'd burn later on. Lots of the men folks threw their pipes away, and took to chewin' slipp'ry ellum.

"Now, Kenelm smoked like a peat fire. He lit up after breakfast and puffed steadily until bedtime, only puttin' his pipe down to eat, or to rummage in his pocket for more tobacco. Hannah got him to go to one of the anti-tobacco meetin's. He set through the whole of it, interested as could be. Then, when 'twas over, he stopped in the church entry to load up his pipe, and walked home with his sister, blowin' rings and scratchin' matches and talkin' loud about how fine the sermon was.

He talked all next day about that sermon; said he'd go every night if they'd let you smoke in there.

"So Hannah was set back a couple of rows, but she wa'n't discouraged--not by a forty fathom. She got after her brother mornin', noon and night about the smokin' habit. The most provokin' part of it, so she said, was that he always agreed with her.

"'It's ruinin' your health,' she'd say.

"'Yes,' says Kenelm, lookin' solemn, 'I cal'late that's so. I've been feelin' poorly for over a year now. Worries me consider'ble. Pa.s.s me that plug on the top of the clock, won't you, Hannah?'

"Now what can you do with a feller like that?

"She couldn't start him with fussin' about HIS health, so she swung over on a new tack and tried her own. She said so much smoke in the house was drivin' her into consumption, and she worked up a cough that was a reg'lar graveyard quickstep. I heard her practicin' it once, and, I swan, there was harps and halos all through it!

"That cough made Kenelm set up and take notice; and no wonder. He listened to a hundred or so of Hannah's earthquakes, and then he got up and pranced out of the house. When he came back the doctor was with him.

"Now, this wa'n't exactly what his sister was lookin' for. She didn't want to see the doctor. But Kenelm said she'd got to have her lungs sounded right off, and he guessed they'd have to use a deep-sea lead, 'cause that cough seemed to come from the foundations. He waylaid the doctor after the examination was over and asked all kinds of questions.

The doctor tried to keep a straight face, but I guess Kenelm smelt a rat.

"Anyway, Hannah coughed for a day or two more, and then her brother come totin' in a big bottle of med'cine.

"'There!' he says. 'That'll fix you!'

"'Where'd you get it?' says she.

"'Down to Henry Tubman's,' he says.

"'Henry Tubman! What on earth! Why, Henry Tubman's a horse doctor!'

"'I know he is,' says Kenelm, solemn as a roostin' pullet, 'but we've been fis.h.i.+n' with the wrong bait. 'Tain't consumption that's ailin' you, Hannah; you've got the heaves.'

"So Hannah didn't cough much more, 'cause, when she did, Kenelm would trot out the bottle of horse med'cine, and chuck overboard a couple of barrels of sarcasm. She tried openin' all the windows, sayin' she needed fresh air, but he locked himself up in the kitchen and filled that so full of smoke that you had to navigate it by dead reckonin'--couldn't see to steer. So she was about ready to give up; somethin' that anybody but a stubborn critter like her would have done long afore.

"But one afternoon she was down to the sewin' circle, and the women folks there, havin' finished pickin' to pieces the characters of the members not on hand, started in to go on about the revivals and how much good they was doin'. 'Most everybody had some relation, if 'twa'n't nothin' more'n a husband, that had stopped smokin' and chewin'.

Everybody had some brand from the burnin' to brag about--everybody but Hannah; she could only set there and say she'd done her best, but that Kenelm still herded with the goats.

"They was all sorry for her, but the only one that had any advice to give was Abbie Larkin, she that was Abbie Dillin'ham 'fore she married old man Larkin. Larkin had one foot in the grave when she married him, and she managed to crowd the other one in inside of a couple of years afterward. Abbie is a widow, of course, and she is middlin' good-lookin'

and dresses pretty gay. Larkin left her a little money, but I guess she's run through most of it by this time. The circle folks was dyin'

to talk about her, but she was always on hand so early that they hardly ever got a chance.

"Well, after supper was over, Abbie gets Hannah over in a corner, and says she:

"'Miss Parker,' says she, 'here's an advertis.e.m.e.nt I cut out of the paper and saved a-purpose for you. I want you to look at it, but you mustn't tell anybody I gave it to you.'

"So Hannah unfurls the piece of newspaper, and 'twas an advertis.e.m.e.nt of 'Kill-Smudge,' the sure cure for the tobacco habit. You could give it to the suff'rer unbeknownst to him, in his tea or soup or somethin', and in a couple of shakes he'd no more smoke than he'd lend money to his brother-in-law, or do any other ridic'lous thing. There was testimonials from half a dozen women that had tried it, and everyone showed a clean bill.

"Hannah read the advertis.e.m.e.nt through twice. 'Well, I never!' says she.

"'Yes,' says Abbie, and smiles.

"'Of course,' says Hannah, lookin' scornful, 'I wouldn't think of tryin' the stuff, but I'll just take this home and read it over. It's so curious,' she says.

"'Ain't it?' says Abbie, and smiles some more.

"So that night, when Kenelm sat by the stove, turnin' the air blue, his sister set at the other side of the table with that advertis.e.m.e.nt hid behind the Wellmouth Advocate readin' and thinkin'. She wrote a letter afore she went to bed and bought a dollar's worth of stamps at the postoffice next day. And for a week she watched the mails the way one of these city girls does when the summer's 'most over and eight or nine of her fellers have finished their vacations and gone back to work.

"About ten days after that Kenelm begins to feel kind of off his feed, so's to speak. Somethin' seemed to ail him and he couldn't make out what 'twas. They'd had a good many cranberries on their bog that year and Hannah'd been cookin' 'em up fast so's they wouldn't spile. But one night she brings on a cranberry pie, and Kenelm turned up his nose at it.

"'More of that everlastin' sour stuff!' he snorts. 'I've et cranb'ries till my stomach's puckered up as if it worked with a gath'rin' string.

Take it away! I don't want it!'

"'But, Kenelm, you're always so fond of cranb'ry pie.'

"'Me? It makes me shrivel just to look at it. Pa.s.s that sugar bowl, so's I can sweeten s.h.i.+p.'

"Next day 'twas salt fish and potatoes that wa'n't good. He'd been teasin' for a salt-fish dinner for ever so long, so Hannah'd fixed up this one just to please him, but he swallered two or three knifefuls and then looked at her kind of sad and mournful.

"'To think,' says he, 'that I've lived all these years to be p'isoned fin'lly! And by my own sister, too! Well, that's what comes of bein'

wuth money. Give me my pipe and let me forget my troubles.'

"'Course this kind of talk made Hannah mad, but she argued that 'twas the Kill-Smudge gettin' in its work, so she put a double dose into his teacup that night, and trusted in Providence.

"And the next day she noticed that he swallered hard between every pull at his pipe, and when, at last, he jumped out of his chair, let out a swear word and hove his pipe at the cat, she felt consider'ble encouraged. She thought 'twas her duty, however, to warn him against profane language, but the answer she got was so much more prayerful than his first remarks, that she come about and headed for the sittin'-room quick.

"Well, to make a long yarn short, the Kill-Smudge done the bus'ness.

Kenelm stuck to smokin' till he couldn't read a cigar sign without his ballast s.h.i.+ftin', and then he give it up. And--as you might expect from that kind of a man--he was more down on tobacco than the Come-Outer parson himself. He even got up in revival meetin' and laid into it hammer and tongs. He was the best 'horrible example' they had, and Hannah was so proud of him that she couldn't sleep nights. She still stuck to the Kill-Smudge, though--layin' in a fresh stock every once in a while--and she dosed the tea about every other day, so's her brother wouldn't run no danger of relapse. I'm 'fraid Kenelm didn't get any too much joy out of his meals.

"And so everything was all right--'cordin' to Hannah's reckonin'--and it might have stayed all right if she hadn't took that trip to Was.h.i.+ngton.

Etta Ellis was goin' on a three weeks' cut-rate excursion, and she talked so much about it, that Hannah got reckless and fin'lly said she'd go, too.

"The only thing that worried her was leavin' Kenelm. She hated to do it dreadful, but he seemed tame enough and promised to change his flannels if it got cold, and to feed the cat reg'lar, and to stay to home, and one thing and another, so she thought 'twas safe to chance it. She cooked up a lot of pie and frosted cake, and wrote out a kind of time-table for him to eat and sleep by, and then cried and kissed him good-by.

"The first three days after she was gone Kenelm stayed 'round the house and turned in early. He was feelin' fine, but 'twas awful lonesome.

The fourth day, after breakfast, he had a cravin' to smoke. Told me afterward it seemed to him as if he MUST smoke or die of the fidgets. At last he couldn't stand it no longer, but turned Hannah's time-table to the wall and went out for a walk. He walked and walked and walked. It got 'most dinner time and he had an appet.i.te that he hadn't had afore for months.

"Just as he was turnin' into the road by the schoolhouse who should come out on the piazza of the house on the corner but Abbie Larkin. She'd left the door open, and the smell of dinner that blew through it was tantalizin'. Abbie was dressed in her Sunday togs and her hair was frizzed till she couldn't wrinkle her forehead. If the truth was known, I cal'late she'd seen Kenelm go past her house on the way downtown and was layin' for him when he come back, but she acted dreadful surprised.

"'Why, Mr. Parker!' says she, 'how DO you do? Seems's if I hadn't seen you for an age! Ain't it dreadful lonesome at your house now your sister's away?'

"Kenelm colored up some--he always h'isted danger signals when women heave in sight--and agreed that 'twas kind of poky bein' all alone. Then they talked about the weather, and about the price of coal, and about the new plush coat Cap'n Jabez Bailey's wife had just got, and how folks didn't see how she could afford it with Jabez out of work, and so on. And all the time the smell of things cookin' drifted through the doorway. Fin'lly Abbie says, says she:

"'Was you goin' home, Mr. Parker?'