Happy Island 9

Happy Island 9

“The’s a good many things might happen,” allowed Uncle William, turning

it slowly in his mind. “The Widow Deman’s well might go dry and then

where ’d you be, with your mortar and plaster and cement, if that well

run dry?”

 

The man looked at him.

 

“You ’d want to put the well in,” Uncle William suggested, “if you

should make the contract—”

 

“You can’t clutter up a contract that way. I’m not going to make any

contract to build a house on this Island.”

 

“He ’ll want to do what’s fair,” said Uncle William. “S’pose you go see

about the well whilst I talk with him,” he added diplomatically.

 

The man moved in the direction of a little house a few rods away and

Uncle William turned toward the tall figure pacing back and forth on the

short-cropped turf.

 

Bodet turned as he came up. “Who cares about building a house!” he said.

“Look at that sky and water and all this—!” His gesture took in the

rocks and turf and the flock of sheep feeding their way up the hill to

the horizon.

 

Uncle William’s eye followed it all placidly. “You do get over being in

a hurry—up here,” he said slowly, “I reckon it’s because the Lord’s done

so well by it—got a chance to finish things up—without folks meddling

too much—it seems kind o’ foolish to hurry ’bout things.... Well, George

’ll do your house for you—if you want him to.”

 

“I’m willing to try him,” said the man with a little note of

condescension. “Where’s he gone!”

 

“He’s just stepped over to the Widow Deman’s well,” said Uncle William.

 

“He ’ll sign the contract, of course!”

 

“Well—” Uncle William hesitated. “He ’ll sign one, I guess, if you say

so—If I was buildin’ a house, I’d just go ahead and build—if I could get

George Manning.”

 

The tall man fidgeted a little. “Suppose he takes a notion—feathers his

own nest while he’s building my house,” he said at last.

 

Uncle William’s eyes grew large—then they laughed. “George Manning ain’t

a bird of the air, Benjy—and he’s pretty well past feathers now....

Curious, I didn’t understand about that contract,” he said after a

little pause. “It never come over me that you thought George wouldn’t

do the square thing by you... and I guess he wouldn’t ’a’ got it through

his head all summer—that you thought he was going to cheat you—! Lucky

I didn’t think of it,” he added, “I’d ’a’ made a muss of it somehow and

you wouldn’t ’a’ got your house built—not this year, anyhow.” He looked

at him sympathetically.

 

Bodet smiled. “I didn’t suppose there was a man left, you could trust

like that,” he said.

 

“Well, George ain’t left exactly. He’s just here with the rest of us,”

said Uncle William—“Folks mean to do ’bout what’s right up here, I

guess. And I do’ ’no’ but that’s about as easy way as any. I’ve tried

both kinds of places—honest and say nothin’—and places where they cheats

and signs papers, and I do’ ’no’ ’s it’s any better ’n our way—just

going along and doing as well as you can and expectin’ other folks

to.... He’s coming back,” said Uncle William. They watched the young

man move across the rocks toward them—thin and spare-built and firm. His

face, tempered fine like a piece of old bronze, held a thoughtful look,

and the stalk of grass between his teeth turned with gentle motion as he

came.

 

“How ’d you find it?” said Uncle William.

 

He looked up. “It’s all right—fourteen feet of water, I guess.” He drew

a slip of paper from his pocket and turned to Bodet—“I’ve been running

it over in my mind a little,” he said slowly “and if that’s any use to

you, I’m willing to sign it.”

 

Bodet took the paper in his thin fingers and swung his glasses to his

nose. Uncle William looked at him with pleased smile.

 

The glasses swung down from the long nose. “What has the Widow Deman’s

well got to do with my house!” he said expressively?

 

Uncle William leaned forward. “That’s my idee, Benjy.” He looked over

the high shoulder—

 

“I will build your house for $25,000, provided and allowed the Widow

Deman’s well holds out.

 

“(Signed) George Manning.”

 

“That’s right, George—that’s fust-rate,” said Uncle William, “You’ve put

it high enough to cover you—and Benjy, too.”

 

“It would seem so,” said Bodet. “Ordway had figured twenty thousand—and

he’s not cheap.”

 

“I told George to make it high—more ’n it could possibly figger up to,”

said Uncle William with satisfaction, “so ’s ’t you ’d get something

back—’stead o’ having to pay out more ’n you expected to. I thought that

was what you wanted the contract for,” he added significantly.

 

“I see—Well, it’s a bargain—and without any pieces of paper.” He

tore what was in his hands through, and handed it back with a little

courteous gesture of decision—“If I’m going to build on the Island, I’ll

build as the Island builds.”

 

“That’s right, Benjy. Now, let’s have a look at them plans.” Uncle

William found a rock and sat down. The other two men moved from point

to point, driving in stakes, and pulling them out, measuring lines and

putting down new ones. While they were doing it, a big wind blew in

around and proceeded to pile up clouds and roll them up the hill behind

them. Uncle William watched the clouds and George Manning and Bodet,

moving to and fro before them.

 

“Manning says it can’t be done,” said Bodet, walking over to him. Two

straight wrinkles stood between his eyes.

 

“I don’t see how it can be—not yet,” said the man. He held out the plan.

“He wants his chimney—”

 

Uncle William nodded. “I know—where the old one was.”

 

“But that chimney isn’t any good. You’ve got to build from the ground

up—You can’t use the old foundation—?”

 

“Well, not exactly use it, mebbe.” Uncle William looked at him

thoughtfully. “I do’ ’no’s I can tell you, George, what he wants it

that way for—You see he set by that chimney when he was a boy—and the’s

something about it—about the idee, you know?”

 

The carpenter looked at him with slow, smiling eyes. “‘Tain’t the

chimney, then—He kind o’ likes the idea of a chimney—does he?... He

didn’t say anything about the idea,” he added, “He just kind o’ fussed

around when I tried to shift her—” He looked at the paper in his hand.

“Well—I can’t tell—yet. I’ve got to figure on it—I’ll go down now and

order my lumber, I guess.” He moved away toward the road and Uncle

William got up.

 

He crossed over to the old chimney and stood looking toward the hill

that mounted above it. The sun had disappeared and the dark turf was

soft.... Long reaches of turf and the cropping sheep that moved across

it in slow shapes. Uncle William drew a deep breath and turned to the

man who stood silent beside him—his eyes on the hill. “Does seem like

home, don’t it, Benjy?” he said quietly, in the big, deep voice that

boomed underneath like the sea.

 

 

 

 

X

 

THE young carpenter approached Bodet cautiously with his solution of the

roof-line. They had talked it over a dozen times and Bodet had become

restlessly impatient.... Ordway might be right, after all.... He looked

at different forms of lattice-work and stone foundations and swore

softly at a terrace—Ordway’s idea—with morning glories alongside....

Uncle William, any day, at any time of day, was in favor of a new plan

altogether. He stood ready to furnish details—like his own house, mebbe,

only bigger.... After this suggestion, every time it came up, he went

out and sat on the rocks a long while and looked at the water. Andy

coming by hailed him. “What you doing?” he called.

 

“Just a-settin’ here a little,” replied Uncle William.

 

“Ain’t Benjy to home?” demanded Andy.

 

“Yes, he’s to home,” admitted William.

 

Andy looked toward the house.

 

“I wouldn’t go in, if I was you,” said William, “He’s kind o’ tending to

things—in his mind.”

 

But if Bodet fretted at delays and slow decisions and failure of

material to arrive, he caught the spirit of the place, after a little,

and settled down to it and held up work—a week at a time—while he

changed details or pottered over new ones. Uncle William—in his

element—went back and forth between the old chimney-place and his house,

carrying ideas and bricks with impartial hand. George Manning, with one

eye on his plans and the other on his men, pushed the work or held it

back, as the wind blew. When the men grumbled over a foundation wall

torn out and put in again, with a hair’s breadth of difference, he

looked at them with slow, sympathetic eye and admitted that it wasn’t so

very much different, maybe—just enough to look different, somehow.

 

It was when he had studied on the roofline a week or more, that he came

in one morning—a look of cautious elation in his face.

 

Bodet sat before the fire reading day-before-yesterday’s paper. Uncle

William was pottering about, finishing the last of the dishes, and Celia

was down at, Andy’s helping Harriet who was ill.

 

Bodet looked up as the young man came in, and laid down his paper. “How

is it coming on?” he said. The tone was mild. He had had a good night’s

rest, and he had come somehow to share Uncle William’s belief that

Manning would find a way out—“only give him time enough and suthin’ to

figger on.”

 

The young man seated himself on the red lounge, his hat between his

knees. “I don’t suppose you ’d like going up and down stairs?” he said.

 

Bodet looked at him a little quizzically and swung his glasses to his

nose. “That depends,” he replied.

 

“It won’t be stairs exactly,” said Manning, “just steps, maybe. You drop

the floor of the south room to get your level and then put some steps

here—” He came over with the paper.

 

Bodet took it in cautious fingers.