Hepsey Burke

“What’s the matter with you? Have you a headache?” Hepsey inquired solicitously.

“No, I haven’t got no headache; but when I left that porch yesterday noon it was blue, and now I’m blamed if it don’t seem gray. Does it look gray-like to you, Hepsey?”

“Why certainly! What’s that you say? Do you say you painted it blue? That certainly’s mighty queer. But then you know some kinds of paint fade—some kinds do!” She nodded, looking suspiciously at the work.

“Fade!” Jonathan sneered. “Paints don’t fade by moonlight in one night. That isn’t no faded blue. It’s just plain gray. I must be goin’ color blind, or something.”

“It looks gray to me, and I’m glad it is gray, so don’t you worry about it, Jonathan. Blue would be somethin’ awful on the front of a white house, you know.”

“Well,” continued the bewildered Junior Warden, “I’m blessed if this isn’t the queerest thing I ever see in all my born days. If I catch the fellow that sold me that paint, I’ll make it lively for him or my name isn’t Jackson.” 232

“Oh, I wouldn’t do anything like that! What difference does it make, so long as I like the color myself; it’s my house. I should have been very much put out if you’d painted it blue; yes, I should.”

“But I don’t like to be cheated down at the store; and I won’t, by gum! They said it was best quality paint! I’ll go down to Crosscut’s and see about this business, right now. I’ve traded with him nigh on twenty years, and he don’t bamboozle me that way.”

Hepsey turned away choking with laughter, and retreated to her kitchen.

Jonathan started back towards his house to get his hat and coat, and then for the first time he caught sight of his own porch, done in flaming scarlet, which fairly seemed to radiate heat in the brilliant sunlight. He stood motionless for nearly a minute, paralyzed. Then the color began to rise in his neck and face as he muttered under his breath:

“Hm! I’m on to the whole business now. I ought to have known that Hepsey would get the best of me. I guess I won’t go down to Crosscut’s after all.”

Then he walked up to the porch and touched the scarlet paint with his finger and remarked:

“Set harder than a rock, by gum! She must have used a whole lot of dryer. I’ll get even with her for this. See if I don’t.” 233

In the afternoon Jonathan brought over some fine apples and presented them to Hepsey, who was knitting on her side porch. She thanked him for the gift, and the conversation drifted from one thing to another while she waited for the expected outburst of reproach which she knew would come sooner or later. But curiously enough, Jonathan was more cheery and cordial than usual, and made no allusion whatever to the scarlet porch, which was conspicuously visible from where they sat. Again and again Hepsey led the conversation around to the point where it seemed as if he must break covert, but he remained oblivious, and changed the subject readily. Not a word on the subject passed his lips that afternoon.

Then, from day to day the neighbors called and inquired of her if Jackson had gone off his head, or what was the matter. His flaming porch outraged Durford’s sense of decency. She was at her wits end to answer, without actually lying or compromising herself; so the only thing she said was that she had noticed that he had been acting a bit peculiar lately, now they mentioned it. As time went on, the scarlet porch became the talk of the town. It was duly discussed at the sewing society, and the reading club, and the general sentiment was practically unanimous that Jackson must be suffering from incipient cataract 234 or senile dementia, and needed a guardian. Even Mary McGuire remarked to Mrs. Burke that she was afraid “that there front porch would sure set the house on fire, if it wasn’t put out before.” Everybody agreed that if his wife had lived, the thing never could have happened.

Meantime, Jonathan went about his daily business, serene and happy, apparently oblivious of the fact that there was anything unusual in the decoration of his house. When his friends began to chaff him about the porch he seemed surprised, and guessed it was his privilege to paint his house any color he had a mind to, and there was no law ag’in’ it; it was nobody’s business but his own. Tastes in color differed, and there was no reason in the world why all houses should be painted alike. He liked variety himself, and nobody could say that scarlet wasn’t a real cheerful color on a white house.

Occasionally people who were driving by stopped to contemplate the porch; and the Durford Daily Bugle devoted a long facetious paragraph to the matter. All of which Mrs. Burke knew very well, and it was having its effect on her nerves. The porch was the most conspicuous object in view from Hepsey’s sitting-room windows, and every time she entered the room she found herself looking at the flaming terror 235 with increasing exasperation. Verily, if Jonathan wanted revenge he was getting far more than he knew: the biter was badly bit. The matter came to a crisis one day, when Jonathan concluded a discussion with Mrs. Burke about the pasture fence. She burst out abruptly:

“Say, Jonathan Jackson, why in the name of conscience don’t you paint your porch a Christian color? It’s simply awful, and I’m not goin’ to sit in my house and have to look at it all winter.”

Jonathan did not seem greatly stirred, and replied in an absent-minded way:

“Why don’t you move your sittin’ room over to the other side of the house, Hepsey? Then you wouldn’t have to see it. Don’t you like scarlet?”

“No, I don’t like it, and if you don’t paint it out, I will.”

“Don’t do nothin’ rash, Hepsey. You know sometimes colors fade in the moonlight—some colors, that is. Maybe that scarlet porch’ll turn to a light gray if you let it alone.”

Mrs. Burke could stand it no longer; so, laying down her work she exploded her pent-up wrath:

“Jonathan Jackson, if that paint isn’t gone before to-morrow, I’ll come over and paint it myself.”

“Oh, that isn’t necessary, Hepsey. And it might 236 set people talkin’. But if you won’t move your sittin’-room to the other side of your own house, why don’t you move it over to my house? You wouldn’t see so much of the red paint then.”

Hepsey snorted and spluttered in baffled rage.

“Now, now, Hepsey,” soothed Jonathan, “if that don’t suit you, I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll paint it over myself on one condition!”

“And what’s that, I’d like to know?”

“That you’ll marry me,” snapped Jonathan hungrily.

Instead of resenting such bold tactics on the part of her suitor, Mrs. Burke gazed at him a long time with a rather discouraged look on her face.

“Land sakes!” she exclaimed at last with assumed weariness and a whimsical smile, “I didn’t know I’d ever come to this; but I guess I’ll have to marry you to keep you from makin’ another kind of fool of yourself; widowers are such helpless mortals, and you certainly do need a guardian.” She shook her head at him despondently.

Jonathan advanced towards her deliberately, and clinched the matter:

“Well, Hepsey, seein’ that we’re engaged–”

“Engaged? What do you mean? Get away, you–” She rose from her chair in a hurry. 237

“Now Hepsey, a bargain’s a bargain: you just said you’d have to marry me, and I guess the sooner you do it and have it over with, the better. So, seein’ that we are engaged to be married, as I was about to remark when you interrupted me....” Relentlessly he approached her once more. She retreated a step or two.

“Well! Sakes alive, Jonathan! Whatever’s come over you to make you so masterful. Well, yes then—I suppose a bargain’s a bargain, all right. But before your side of it’s paid up you’ve got to go right over and paint that porch of yours a respectable color.”

So, for once, Hepsey’s strategy had been manipulated to her own defeat: Jonathan went off to town with flying colors, and bought himself a can of pure white paint.

CHAPTER XX

MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY

It was eleven o’clock at night. Mrs. Betty had retired, while her husband was still struggling to finish a sermon on the importance of foreign missions. Ordinarily, the work would have been congenial and easy for him, because he was an enthusiast in the matter of missionary work: but now for some reason his thoughts were confused; his enthusiasm was lacking, and his pen dragged. He tried hard to pull himself together, but over and over again the question kept repeating itself in his tired brain: Why 239 should the Church support foreign missions, while she lets her hard working clergy at home suffer and half starve in their old age, and even fails to give them decent support while they are working in their prime? Why should a doctor reach his highest professional value at seventy, and a parson be past the “dead-line” at forty-five? Here he was, subject to the caprice and ill-will of a sour and miserly Senior Warden, and a cowed and at least partially “bossed” vestry—and he, the rector, with no practical power of appeal for the enforcement of his legal contract. It was only thanks to Jonathan Jackson, the Junior Warden, that any revenue at all reached him; for Bascom had used every grain of influence he possessed to reduce or stop Maxwell’s salary. Mrs. Betty, plucky and cheery though she was, already showed the results of the weary struggle: it was not the work that took the color from her cheeks and the freshness from her face, but the worry incidental to causes which, in any other calling in life but his, would be removable.

Already he had parted with a considerable number of his books to eke out, and meet the many calls upon him—urgent and insistent calls. It became abundantly clear, as his mind strayed from the manuscript before him and turned to their immediate situation, 240 that he was already forced to choose between two alternatives: either he must give up, and own himself and all the better influences in the place beaten by Bascom and his satellites; or he must find some means of augmenting his means of living, without allowing his time and energy to be monopolized to the neglect of essential parish and church duties.

As he thought on these things, somehow his enthusiasm for foreign missions ebbed away, and left him desperately tired and worried. He made several abortive attempts to put some fire into his missionary plea, but it was useless; and he was about to give up when he heard Mrs. Betty’s gentle voice inquiring from the next room:

“May I come in? Haven’t you finished that wretched old missionary sermon yet?”

“No, dear; but why aren’t you asleep?”

“I have been anxious about you. You are worn out and you need your rest. Now just let the heathen rage, and go to bed.”

Maxwell made no reply, but picked at his manuscript aimlessly with his pen. Betty looked into his face, and then the whole stress of the situation pierced her; and sitting down by his side she dropped her head on his shoulder and with one arm around his neck stroked his cheek with her fingers. For a few 241 moments neither of them spoke; and then Maxwell said quietly:

“Betty, love, I am going to work.”

“But Donny, you are one of the hardest working men in this town. What do you mean?”

“Oh, I mean that I am going to find secular work, the work of a day laborer, if necessary. Matters have come to a crisis, and I simply cannot stand this sort of thing any longer. If I were alone I might get along; but I have you, sweetheart, and–”

Maxwell stopped suddenly, and the brave little woman at his side said: