Teeftallow/Chapter 31

TO ABNER TEEFTALLOW the effect of his new life was sheer legerdemain. Here he was lodged with the Sandages again, but instead of the bare poverty of the old poor farm, the young man found himself in a bungalow so garishly new that it still smelled of paint and plaster. A low piazza surrounded three sides of the building with heavy square-cut columns. the lawn, bare as Abner's palm, had been levelled, manured, and seeded, and cement strips were laid down for Beatrice's car to cross to a garage in the rear.

To Abner the most extraordinary feature of the building was the bathroom. Sandages had installed a private light and water system run by a little gasoline engine. It always amazed Abner to hear the engine burst into a feverish pumping on its own accord, and a few minutes later give a gasp and stop when the compression tank was full or the batteries charged. It was an oddly human sort of thing, a little entity which knew how to do perfectly just two things, but all else was excluded from its queer electric intelligence.

When Abner moved into his room Jim took him covertly to the bathroom and explained in a low tone the manipulation of the bowl, bath, and commode. He turned the water on and off with a naïve delight in seeing it work.

"All the modern improvements, Ab," he boasted in a whisper, "right here in the house, too. I don't come here much myse'f; seems to me like it's more for women an' the sick."

All these conveniences in the Sandage ménage did not originate with Jim or his wife, but came through Beatrice Belle under the inspiration of Adelaide Jones. Adelaide was just returned from a girls' seminary in Nashville and possessed a girl's memory for house furnishings. Mrs. Sandage ​gave Miss Jones full credit for what she had done. One morning, in her white-enamelled kitchen, she said to Abner, "Addy told me about this dreener," pointing to the wire holdall in the sink, "great convenience. She's one of the smartest girls I ever see, Ab. They ain't no kind of a dish she don't know how to make; scientific, too. Domestic science, they call it. I wonder you don't notice her more, Ab; she certainly will make some man a good wife."

At this the Negro girl whom the Sandages had hired for a cook but to whom Mrs. Sandage had never been able to resign her pretty kitchen, gave an audible titter. It irritated the two white persons.

"Aline!" snapped Mrs. Sandage roughly, "mind your work!"

Aline, who was peeling turnips, continued her task in silence.

But the woman so recently from the poor farm could not correct her servant briefly or with dignity.

"Snickerin' like that before your betters—if I had my way I'd run ever' nigger—" She meant to add "out of the county," but realized in time that this sentiment characterized only the very poorest class of whites. She turned to Abner again.

"I think Addy is the liveliest girl; always in a flutter. Jim says it's put on, but I think it's nachel. She picked out all this chiner. I wanted some with more flowers, but she said I'd git tired of it, an' this does look sweet. I tell Jim I feel like some sort of a bride agin—an' it all come through the railroad."

"How did that do it?" asked Abner curiously.

"Brought business in the county. Made the trustee's office a very payin' job." Here she paused in her speech to adjust her new false teeth with her tongue. These teeth were too white, too broad, and too long. They gave her a corpse-like look when she smiled, so that her mirth was ghastly rather than merry. The plate was the work of the village dentist.

"Yes, the railroad shore made the trustee's office pay good. ​Jim feels like he mighty near owes all he's got to Railroad Jones. He certainly is a good man, an' so sharp—brainiest man in Lane County, an' his daughter's jest like him." She paused in scolloping a pie crust. "There's Addy now, blowin' for B'atrice. Abner, step an' tell her B'atrice's gone. She went to carry our washin' to niggertown."

The young man went out on the piazza and saw Adelaide Jones in a big yellow roadster in front of the gate. The girl leaned forward and waved.

"How are you this morning, Mr. Teeftallow? Where's Beatrice?"

"She took the clothes to the washerwoman."

Adelaide pouted. "I'm so peeved. What made you let her go?"

"I didn't have nothin' to do with it," said Abner heavily.

"Well, I suppose you want to go to town, you've developed into such a business man; come on and climb in.—Well, say, do you want to ride with me, or don't you?"

"Yes, yes," hastened Abner, starting abruptly for the car as if Adelaide had touched off a spring.

"You didn't seem very enthusiastic."

Abner, who never possessed a syllable of light chatter, reddened faintly and said, "I wasn't expectin' a invitation."

The girl stared, then dimpled into sudden laughter.

"What do you require for them—a nerve tonic?"

"Why, no-o—" dragged out Abner, growing more uncomfortable; then he remembered the cook Aline's titter and he thought with a certain resentment, "She thinks she's better'n me. . . ."

Abner entered the motor in silence. The girl pushed forward a lever and the big car whispered off.

"Where do you want to go?" asked Adelaide.

"Why, nowhere in particklar."

"Then evidently we're out for a joy ride?"

"That suits me," agreed Abner stiffly.

"I declare, Mr. Teeftallow," cried the girl, "do you always let your enthusiasms run away with you like this?"

​Abner suspected the irony, but it was so much lighter than what he had been accustomed to in the Irontown garage that he had no answer at all. So he sat uncomfortable and faintly resentful in the rush of cold air. Now and then he gave a side glance at Adelaide and at her small square-cut hands on the wheel.

Abner did not like this girl, and he wondered why he had ever got into her motor, but his glances gave him a confused but pleasant impression of her yellow wool sweater, amused brown eyes, and curly brown hair against the yellow leather upholstery of the car. He did not observe these details consciously but the ensemble had its effect on him.

Adelaide no doubt noticed his pique, for presently she said soberly enough, "I hear you have placed your land claims in the hands of Buckingham Sharp."

"Who told you?"

"Why, Buck himself."

This astonished Abner so much that his mind was diverted.

"Do you know him?"

Miss Jones shrugged. "Rather; he was the only eligible man in this town until a few days ago, when a certain very melodramatic young landholder exploded into our midst as the long-lost scion of an old and noble strain." She glanced at Abner with quizzical bright eyes.

Abner did not follow the details of this raillery because Adelaide had used words unfamiliar to him. However, he knew in a general way what she had said. He stuck to his own text of Buckingham Sharp,

"Do you like him?"

"A drowning girl doesn't quarrel with her life preserver, Mr. Teeftallow, when she is going under the third and last time."

This figure was so whimsical that Abner burst into loud laughter. He looked at her frankly.

"You're the funniest girl I ever saw," he stated simply. "You don't act a bit like I'm a man."

​Adelaide whistled in amazement, "Aren't I taking you motoring?"

"Why, sure."

"And didn't I see Beatrice Belle well on her road before I drove around to your place? My dear Mr. Teeftallow, if I'm not acting as if you were one of the opposite sex, then I'll quit trying—there isn't any way to do it."

Adelaide's little gusts always caught Abner up in the air and left him without any footing whatever. He grinned rather emptily now and repeated, "Well, you're a funny girl, anyway."

"Do you know why I decided to drive with you this morning instead of with Beatrice or Buck Sharp?"

"I don't know," admitted Abner, looking at her curiously.

"Can't you guess?"

"No, kain't guess."

"Your agility is surprising. Well, I'll tell you. Buck is too—too slippery. I never know what he really thinks by what he says, and what's worse, I can't tell by looking at him."

"Is that the way you usually tell?"

"It's the only way, Mr. Teeftallow. Men don't know what they mean themselves. A girl has to look and see. They all put their arms around you and kiss you in the same way, and you've got to find out why, and you haven't much time to do it in, either."

Abner had a shocked sense that Adelaide was a very improper person.

"That's what I like about you," concluded Adelaide; "you're so frank and open."

They were well out of the village now and around them lay the colourful autumn woods. Abner harked back to the original subject of their discussion, which interested him somehow.

"If you don't like Buckingham Sharp, what makes you let him come to see you?"

He is a sort of Romeo to my Juliet. You see, he is suing ​Dad for the debt Dad owes the Irontown bank. That makes Dad despise Buck. He has told me a hundred times not to let Buck come to our house again. I supposed that's the only reason I keep on doing it."

Abner knew now that Adelaide was indeed the worst girl he had ever seen. He glanced at the depraved creature and was surprised to find her face still gay and her bobbed hair still blowing about in merry ringlets.

"By the way," proceeded Adelaide after she had smiled to herself in silence, "your putting your claims in Buck Sharp's hands works rather a hardship on Daddy. You see, since Buck represents the bank that is trying to take Dad's railroad from him, he will use these claims to embarrass Papa. Of course, Buck wouldn't compromise for anything, because your claims will help freeze Dad out—you see that, don't you?"

"Yes," nodded Abner, surprised at this sudden change to seriousness.

Here the girl's attention skipped to the scenery around them. "Look at that old crow," she pointed, "with the martens after him!"

Abner looked across a new ground of ripened corn. Over the tops of the dead black trees a crow winged his way with awkward haste, harried by the darting attack of two martens. Now and then in its flight the crow gave a lugubrious call.

"Now, that's what I don't like to see," declared Adeladie, "two birds fighting one; two anything fighting one. It isn't fair!"

"Well," suggested Abner guardedly, for they were both thinking of something other than birds, "a crow really ort to be run off. A crow's a pest."

Miss Jones had slowed her motor to a crawl to watch the chase.

"You're like everyone else, against the crow because he takes what he can. I'm not against him. I'm for him. You are bound to admit he's the wiliest bird we have."

​"He's that, all right," agreed Abner.

"And besides, those martens really can't do anything to him when they catch him. They're too little."

They sat and watched the chase until the martens were reduced to black specks, and then became invisible. The crow hurried on and on, its distressed caws growing fainter and fainter until at last it, too, became a mere dot and then melted into the wind-swept sky.