A TWOFOLD REFORMATION.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2479, 3 May 1909, Page 2

A TWOFOLD REFORMATION.

(By Arthur E. MTarlane.)

And there were reasons enough why they liked Aunt Breckenridge,” said the Colonel, stopping at his first cigar because it was Sunday evening. “She was one of the finest old war-horses of good works and straight theology that ever charged a line of false doctrine, or snorted high challenge under the battlements of Beelzebub. Nor did she snort in challenge, either, so much as in contempt! Sirs, if the Adversary had ever ventured to come up against her slic’d have had him off the premises an’ breakin’ for cover mighty quick. “I reckon, too, that havin’ neither husband nor ’children it was only nature for her to *act the way she did and give the most of her time to lookin’ after her nephews an’ nieces. She was good to them, too. Sho couldn’t treat them well enough. If sho bossed them it was for their own best interests. An’ when you stop to consider how naturally perverse an’ wrong-headed the younger generation always is, sho had a most wide-extendin’ charity. “It was charity, moreover, in both senses of the world. Maybe for her misfortune the dear old girl had been left a little prope’ty of her own—the old place an’ a few thousand dollars in ready money to keep it fenced with. And that ready money she regarded, as a matter of co’se, as somethin’ just intrusted to her to gfve away! I reckon it was about the readiest ready money over disseminated south of Covington. When one of her brother Cal’s girls married, it went without sayin’ that she, Aunt B, was to be allowed to set her up in clothes an’ furnishin’s. And as fast as Clay Conkey’s or her sister J’n Ann Townley’s boys could follow each other over to Richmond to law or medical school, why, as nothin’ but her right an’ privilege in the matter, she supplied the money. As she might have said herself, ‘lf I didn’t supply it, who would? For none o’ the rest of them have any.’ And for the same reason, or lack of it, by degrees they all gob to have the feelin’ that what Aunt B had was sort of naturally inexhaustible.

“Well, no need to say that that couldn’t go on forever. And in the end even she had to come to see it—when neither ker bankbook nor her little, old, red lacquer cashbox would let her see anything else. But sho wasn’t confessin’ her shame to tho world. What sho did was to go up to Lexington under color of standin’ godmother to another Bixby babe, and put a mortgage on her property! Of co’se you couldn’t say that sho really knew what sho was doin’. As she put it, she was honorin’ those Lexington trust people to permit them to advance money—pa-ticu-larly so comparatively triflin’ a sum—on that place of hers. Wasn’t it straightdescended Breckenridge land, to say nothin’ more about it?

“And that started her again with almost as much as she’d had any time in the last two years. Granted, she’d have to pay back a little, with interest, every three months or so. But, sho’, with all the rest clear, no cause to wbrry whatever ! Inside three -weeks she was doin’ what she’d been honin’ to do since New Year’s—settin’ her nephew, Charlie Breckenridge, up in business again. “I’ve said that she had a most wideoxtendin’ charity. And what she'd been doin’ for this Charlie boy might well have put in as exhibits ‘A,’ ‘B’ an’ ‘C’ in standin’ proof of that. When he was a little shaver he’d been what you'd call a limb. Many an’ many's the time he’d run for Aunt B’s to save himself a lickin’. And, grown up, ho was a bigger limb! Ho had the brains of bis family, an’ good nature enough for all outdoors. But for gettin’ along without work, an’ stirrin up natural old Satan ! By this time, too, ho was past twenty-five, but no more responsible than as if he’d never got into long trousers. If he’d been through for law at Richmond, nothin’ had ever been able to get him to practice. You’d said he’d only learned his law so as to experiment in the ways there was of puttin’ himself on the wrong side of it. Oh—< savin’ that he was always a gentleman, of co’se—he was sho’ the Breckenridge black sheep. And no one knew that better than Aunt B did herself. But no matter. Of all her legion of nieces an’ nephews, Charlie it was she liked the best. And, as said before, inside three weeks she had his sign out. “It was supposed to be a land office business he’d opened up, this time. And along then, too, there was consid’able of a boom in town, because of the two new railroads connectin’ above there, on the river. It should have been a right good time for cut-tin’ up and sellin* land. But this here worthless Charlie, it seemed like ho needed all the lands that come into his hands to sow more wild oats on. I calculate that for every township map an’ roll of surveyor’s paper in that standup desk of his, there was never a day when there wasn’t fifteen dead bottles in tho cupboard under it. An’ as for any business cards he might have around, they were never less than two inches deep beneath the sort with the round corners an’ the white-faced kings an’ queens on them. “Yet tho thing that Aunt B couldn’t in no wise stand for was this. More because his dad had accused him of doin’ it than for anything else, Charlie had taken to carryin’ a. line of lottery tickets. I don’t know as he ever sold a whole one all the time he had them. And it just kept him busy rememberin’ to send them back on time, if he wasn’t to have to buy ’em in himself. But he let on that he was makin’ a heap of money out of that agency work of his. And I reckon, too, he paid himself in the fun he got out of gettin’ Aunt B layin’ into him over it. “Mind, I want you to know that he was most mighty fond of her. Certain as Sunday evenin’ came, up there with the old dame you -could be sure to find him spendin’ it. Never was a girl in town got grip enough on him to switch him off from that. He used' to call it his private way of goin’ to church. . . But, any time Aunt B didn’t begin about the lottery business of herself, he’d manage to think up some way to set her goin’! “ ‘Aunt,’ he’d say, sittin’ back from table with a face as (long as an experience meetin’, ‘l’ve been doin’ a lot of thinkin’ lately, about what you were sayin’ last time I was here, and I made fist to borrow a Bible an’ look up what Agag an’ Shimei an’ Abimelech have to say about lottery sellin’; and, Lawd, I hate to tell you for fear of hurtin’ your feelings. But, Aunt, they’re all of them dead again’ you. So far as I can study it out there’s nothin’ those lads were more given to, from Genesis to Jerusalem, than the drawin’ of lots. Look at the way they divided up the land of Israel. Look at the Levites: didn’t they get up a reg’lar out-an’-outer of a lottery, with old King David to draw for ’em? Take Joshua, too, didn’t he cast lots, down in Shiloh? An’ then, why, there was old Lot himself

“By that time Aunt B she’d he under a steam pressure of a thousand to the inch. An’ ‘Charlie Breckenridge!’ she’d let go. ‘Ain’t you —ain’t you askared for yourself? Not only arguin’ for lotteries, but fetchin’ your arguments from the Scriptures! I tell you, my lad, you —you —you wouldn’t dast do it in a thunderstorm !”

“An’ Charlie, he’d -go back to town tickled enough to -hold him for another week. Maybe, too, next Sunday, he’d let her take him to church in earnest. And then all the Jeremiah in her would get tangled up in the motherly tender. I reckon her heart was about as fine an’ simple an old root-knot of bittersweet as was ever grown in that part of Kaintucky. “An* so it went on till one day it came that for the best of reasons the lottery business didn’t look as funny to Charlie. He’d -gone down river to help entertain a gentleman from Bowling Green.

And there’d been consid’able of a mad time. The result was that he didn’t get back to liis office till next day afternoon. And one of the first things his eyes lit on when he did get back was a little package of tickets—three in part and one uncut —that should have been returned South to headquarters at latest by the first mail that morning; and not havin’ been so returned, beyond any doubt whatever they’d be checked off against Charlie’s account as sold* Even at his agent's price he stood to lose somethin’ like seventy dollars. And for the next halfhour he sat rubbin’ up his back hair an’ lookin’ sho’ foolish. If he sold lottery tickets he’d never before kept any out for his own use. He knew a sight too much about the chance you got with them. “I say he sat there lookin’ sho’ foolish for the next half-hour. But there was Tilson blood in him. ‘lf a man kin git into a thing, he kin git out of it ag’in,’ as old Grandy Tilson used to say himself; an’ Charlie was the dead spit of him. And by the end of the hour a grin begins to work out around his left eye, an’ ‘Why, ya’as,’ he says, ‘ iSho ’ ! Ya-as, of co’se! Now I remember about these here tickets. Seemed like I must have had some idea in keepin’ them around this way. These here tickets are the tickets I got to sell to Aunt 13!’ "And, leavin’ himself unshaved, he puts on a black stock, takes the road out of town, an’ climbs the hill to the old place, head down an’ arms draggin’ just about as if he’d been followin’ a hearse. "She met him half-way down the piazza. An’ ‘ Charlie!’ she says, ‘ whatever in the nation has been an’ taken you?’ “ ‘Aunt,’ he says, ‘ I reckon I been served my notice to turn over a new leaf.’

‘‘Well, by this time Aunt Breckenridge, she’s had a lot of experience of Charlie. An’ ‘ Whatever it is,’ she tells herself, ‘l’m not goin’ to let him fool me.’ An’ she gets out her specs an’ adjusts ’em, an’ takes a good, long, heart-search-in’ look at him. “But he stood it as if he hadn’t noted that she was lookin’ in his direction, “An’ then—‘ Son,’ she says, ‘ tell me right out what it was—a dream?’ “ ‘Supposin’ I told you I’d seen the ghost of Armless Solomon?’ he says. “An’ lawks, anybody that saw the ghost of Armless Solomon! —Shucks, it was doubtful if they was goin’ to get even the chance to repent! “ ‘Oh, I wish it had. been a dream,’ hj« says; ‘an’, before 1 cant another bottle — before I turn another card ’ “ ‘Charles!’ she says, spreadin’ herself out over him like a benediction. ‘ Charles ! —even if you are a-foolin’ me ’ ‘“I know,’ he says, ‘l’m goin’ to be powerful laughed at ’ “ ‘Laughed at! Laughed at!’ she saw. ‘Let ’em laugh! Be proud an’ rejoice to hear ’em laugh!’ “ An’ as for those cussed lottery tickets,’ he says, ‘ if I ever tetch another of them! Of co’se I’l have to sell what I got on me now, but once they’re gone an’ quit with ’ “Well, when he’d said that —an’ when her mind had seized the fact that he had those tickets right there with him—if anything on earth was sure, it was sure that they were never goin’ to see outside daylight again. “At first she was for havin’ them right away to a candle an’ burn them for a cleansin’ sacrifice. But “ ‘But, no —oh, goodness, no,’ ho tells her, ‘ he can’t do that. He owes Hickson for those clothes he’s sittin’ in,’ he tells her, ‘an’ Willis three months’ keep for that black Johnnie horse of his. As a mere matter of payin’ his debts—in common honesty,’ he says, ‘ he’s forced to realise on them.’ “An’ then there was only one thing for it. Her eyes had begun to turn toward that little, red lacquer strong-box of hers already. An’ yet the time had come again when she felt she couldn’t rightly afford it. “She wasn’t sayin’ nothin’ to any one, of co’se; but in another month it did sho’ look as if she was goin’ to be pinched for ready money as bad as ever. There’d been times when the thought of that was xnakin’ her nothin’ less than nervous. “‘Why, Aunt,’ says Charlie, ‘you look at me as if I was expectin’ you to buy those tickets.’ “An’ so I will,’ sho says, ‘if there’s nc other way of managin’ it. But the Lawd knows there’s reasons enough why I hadn’t ought to do it. Aw, now, lovin’s, you ain’t a-foolin’ me?’’ “And if he puts hand on heart over it, that’s only because, as I’ve tried to make plain, like everybody else, he’d naturally got into the’ way of thinkin’ of Aunt B as if she had the money of Hetty Green. This, too, in his favor; he lets her see only that whole ticket and one of the parts, they bein’ enough at retail to cover what he’s due to pay in at wholesale on them all. ... “Once they were hers, of co’se she was right for buntin’ them now herself.-' Yet no, on second thoughts, she won’t. A new Charlie’s goin’ to date from that day afternoon. An’ she leafs them away among some old love-letters of hers that nobody knew she had, to be a remembrancer for all time to come. “And Charlie, he goes back home that night tellin’ himself that takin’ into account size, quality an’ completeness, as a joke on the old girlhe reckons he has a right to feel that he’s established a new record. He does make up his mind to fet that seventy back to her somehow. !ut he well knows that it’s the do that’s goin’ to bring her up just a-rarin’. When, next Sunday, or maybe the Sunday after, he’ll break it to her, he can see her just rise mouth open, an’ lose her specs in her rush to get at him, an’ wool him till neither of them can speak any more ! ‘ An’ to think/ he’ll tell her, ‘how it’d look if anybody else heard of you buyin’ lottery tickets!’ He’ll have to tax her another fifty for not lettin’ it get any further! “Yet that next Sunday came, an’ the Sunday after, and she didn’t just seem to be in the right condition o’ mind for it. Week after, too, she went up to see tho Lexington Bixbys again. An’ the next, she said she didn’t know as she felt right well. So Charlie had to decide that he’d have to hold that joke from her a little longer. “He was still boldin’ it from her when, one Tuesday mornin’, he opens his Despatch. An’ there, spread out over two top columns, were the figures for the last drawin’. He reads ’em—reads ’em again—and his fingers begin to get the shakes so he can hardly get his memo, book out of his pocket Aant B hadn’t drawed the capital prize, but she’d drawed the second, for fifty thousand—and with her whole ticket, at that! “Well, he don’t know where that puts him. It’s long enough before he can even get his mental breath for it. But he was game when he did. He just ketches himself one clip on the jaw, an’, ‘This was due you!’ he says; * it was due an’ overdue. An’ I reckon the question now is how to get at the blessed old girl to make her keep it. The first- an’ most dang’ous thing is to get her safely told!’ “And with that, right away for Aunt B’s he starts. ‘ Blim blam you, too, for your smartness, Charlie Breckenridge!’ ho says, his feelin’s gettin’ away from him in a vsort of final groan as he makes her gate. ‘How d’you know but what you could ’a’ used some of that fifty thousand?’ “Ho hadn’t any chalice to tell her, not at first. He could see in a minute that Aunt B had been cryin’—an’ cryin’ for a day an’ a night! “ ‘Why, Aunt,’ he says—‘ Aunt!’ “An’, ‘Oh, Charlie boy,’ she answers him, ‘you find me sittin’ in a heap o’ trouble!’ “ ‘Trouble! In a heap o’ trouble! Now. whatever trouble was it possible for Aunt B to get into?’ “‘Oh,’ she says, ‘they’ll all of them know soon enough, an’ I reckon I might

as well start with tellin’ you. Two or three years ago, up at Lexington, I had to go into some little business dealin’s — some business dealin’s over raisin’ money. An’ at the time it was all just as straightforward an’ as simple. But now—oh, darlin’, one o’ their people was up here yesterday, an’ if you could have heard how he talked to me! Oh, if what they say ain’t just lettin’ on ’ “Tchck! Not much lacks for her to be gettin’ right hysterical. “ ‘Aunt!’ says Charlie, ‘ what you—what you gettin’ at? A little more an’ I’ll think you been puttin’ a mortgage on yourself!’ “ ‘An’, my dear, darlin’ boy,’ she says, ‘ I reckon that’s just what I been a-doin’! Some of it your props’ty, too, as set down legally in my will the week I got it! Oughtn’t that to keep them from tetchin’ it, alone? But you know about law, an’ maybe I’d best just let you see their papers for yourself.’ “An’ out of her red lacquer box she brings what don’t need to be unfolded to show itself for a mortgage. It was a mortgage, too, that, as values were in that end of the town } was good to swallow the old place just in one first gulp! So a second time that day Charlie sits there tryin’ to get back his mental breath. “An, of co’se, that reminds him of what he’d lost his breath over the first time, an’ what he’d come up there to tell her in the beginnin’. “Well, there was just one thing to do, to sit an’ hold her old hands so she’ll have to listen, an’ tell her it all, right now. . . . “An’ when he’s finished, for a minute it leaves them both without a word. “ ‘Oh, Charlie —Charlie, son !’ she cries, an’ just lets the tears run. ‘ Oh, you ain’t a-foolin’ me again, now—just because you find me ketched this way?’ An’

•- . > , ‘ Oh, I don’t reckon I ought to take it. I don’t reckon I can!’ “An’ then, when he tries to say somethin’ to put a laugh into it, for if he can’t laugh he’s sho’ goin’ to do somethin’ else-—* Gh, son, it ain’t anything to joke about,’ she says; ‘it’s somethin’ to pray over.’ “An’ down there she goes on her knees, and, her hand clutchin’ cold to his, she takes liim with her. And, as soon as she can speak for cryin’, she starts in to tell , just how it’d been about that morti gage. ... i “ ‘She’d only intended it as a tempo’ary matter, along of her bavin’ to have a little ready money just for the . time bein’. When J’n Aim’s Elizabeth had gone an’ married up that way, it’d ■ ketched her never lookin’ for it. An’ she’d had to have a little, too, for Benf’s boy to pay his fees an’ get liim a few , clothes so he could go to college lookin’ a Breckenridge. An’ then she’d had to have so much more for Charlie, there beside i hex-, to set him up in his land office; because he hadn’t felt himself just fitted for the law, an’ so he’d never really had; a chance before.” , “An’ that fetched Charlie. If his fun, , an’ Aunt B’s belief in him, meant such hours for her as this! , . . . “‘An’ it wasn’t,’ Aunt B’s goin’ on again—‘it wasn’t as if she’d been careless an’ free an’ spendthrift with that s money, an’ puttin’ it on herself. Sho > could just show how she’d used ©very cent of it. An’, oh Lawd,’ she says, just ■j hungerin’, ‘if You been an’ fixed that i lottery business just to com© in this way an’ help me out—if, now, it’d be all ■> right for me to take half an’ make Chari lie here take the other half?’ ' “Well, when Charlie gets to his feet again he’s still most almighty shaken; ' there’s a change in hiixx that extends right to his voice. But the change is, that ’ somehow or other, in that five minutes, he’s become a grown man. He’s become , a grown man, and, after bearin’ Aunt B _ pourin’ out all her simplicity there, it’s ’ just as if, somehow, too, she’s become a ' little girl—maybe a little niece of his that’s been ketched in mischief an’ sent to the Mournex's’ Bench. And he, as the [ grown nxaxx, has got to help her out. It’s him that first begins to feel that he’s . gettin’ the answer to that prayer of hers. An’ it’s the right answer, too! The ’ Lawd—well, well, of co’se He’s terrible .set agaixx’ the lottexy business. But—• ‘ well, He reckons H© ain’t got any rules He can’t bresk once in a while.’ “And after that there’s four five minutes I that there’s no call for me to go into. Suffice to say, that Aunt B, she gets the most pax't of Charlie’s tears an’ he gets 1 the most part of hex's—an’ two people never got much closer. ! “But, by an’ bye, they can. begin to talk ' once more. An’, ‘Well, Aunt,’ says Oharj lie, ‘as nigh as I can see it, w© not oxxly fot our chance to make oxxr start again, ut —as soon as you’ve fetched two fresh haxx’kerchiefs from the press—we got to - start to make it.’ j “‘Oh, Charlie,’ she says, ‘after this I dion’t feel as if I could ever have any 5, confidence in myself no more.’ , “‘Hot another word, Aunt,’ says Charr lie; ‘l’ve felt—felt that way bo many r times—so many times, myself, that I r couldn’t really tell you. An’ I know what it means, too. It means that if you don t . take good advice px'etty soon you’ll be mortgagin’ for ready money again—an , then nothin’ for it but to start talon’ more flyers in the lottery business. An’, he i says, ‘you come down her© by me, an ~ I’ll tell you just what we’r© goin’ to do. We’ve goin’ to enter into a regular offii cial agreement for mutual coadjuvancy an’ support.’ , “ ‘Mutual 00-coad—now what in the nation does he mean by that?” “ ‘Why, you hereby give me your solemn oath an’ promise that now an’ henceforth you won’t do any more givin’ away without callin’ me in as consultin’ counsel. An’ I’ll hav© to go ’way somewheres — up to Covington or Louisville—no use me try in’ to do anything around here—an’ try the whirl of my life at the law again.’ “‘Oh, my dear son!’ she says. “ ‘How, Aunt, you stop—you let me alone—Fll scream !’ “ ‘Oh, but I will. An’ now that you’ve once made up your mind for it, I can see you already just takin’ your seat in the supreme court!’ —an’ then she salts. ‘Oh, Charlie —but about that money—your half of it. I want to be light sure you’re goin’ to act hon’able about that?’ “Which sho’ sticks him for a while. But ‘Aunt,’ he says, at last, Til tell you what we’ll do about it. I’ll take five hundred to make my start with. An’ you tank the rest along with yours. If I want it I’ll call on you. But I must let you know right now that if I do so call, it’ll be because I’ve broke our agreement like a low-down dog, an’ backslidden once more.’ “But he didn’t backslide. Those years were the beginnin’ of the South’s growin’ time. An’ if at the first it was Charlie’s droppin’ the Bourbon an’ curds that began to get him a practice, it wasn’t so long till the size of his practice was beginnin’ of itself to be the best certainty that he wouldn’t get back to them. Yet never for more than two weeks did 1 his practice cixxwd out his Sunday visits to Aunt B. “And as for Aunt B, well, she stuck to her part of the agreement as close—well, sho’, as close as could be expected. Of co’se she couldn’t tell Charlie everything. If she’d told him how Christmas had ketched the Bixbys that year, it’d been nothixx’ less than a breach of confidence. An’ sho couldn’t tell him about the Eastover Townleys needin’ help, nor all the baby clothes due to be called for by Elizabeth Townley’s twins. Tchck—things like that weren’t for a man to know. “Audi when, of a Sunday night, he’d go over to that little, old, ted lacquer strongbox of hens, an’ ‘How, Aunt,’ he’d say, ‘we’ll herewith devote a few minutes to auditin’ of the bankbook,’ well, she could always show him that she "was keepin’ a little ready money ahead, in case of emergencies, anyhow.”-