第11章

Diadama Busteed, who was acting as nurse in the family and had been sworn in as witness to the agreement between husband and wife, declared to the day of her death that that death was hastened by the shock to her nervous and moral system caused by Captain Thad's language when old Jedidah hove in sight.He vowed over and over again that he would be everlastingly condemned if he would label a young-one of his with such a crashety-blank-blanked outrage of a name as "Jedidah." "Jedidiah" was bad enough, but there WERE a few Jedidiahs in Ostable County, whereas there was but one Jedidah.

Mrs.Winslow, who did not fancy Jedidah any more than her husband did, wept; Captain Thad's profanity impregnated the air with brimstone.But they had solemnly sworn to the agreement and Mrs.

Busteed had witnessed it, and an oath is an oath.Besides, Mrs.

Winslow was inclined to think the whole matter guided by Fate, and, being superstitious as well as romantic, feared dire calamity if Fate was interfered with.It ended in a compromise and, a fortnight later, the Reverend Clarence, keeping his countenance with difficulty, christened a red-faced and protesting infant "Jedidah Edgar Wilfred Winslow."Jedidah Edgar Wilfred grew up.At first he was called "Edgar" by his father and "Wilfred" by his mother.His teachers, day school and Sunday school, called him one or the other as suited their individual fancies.But his schoolmates and playfellows, knowing that he hated the name above all else on earth, gleefully hailed him as "Jedidah." By the time he was ten he was "Jed" Winslow beyond hope of recovery.Also it was settled locally that he was "queer"--not "cracked" or "lacking," which would have implied that his brain was affected--but just "queer," which meant that his ways of thinking and acting were different from those of Orham in general.

His father, Captain Thaddeus, died when Jed was fifteen, just through the grammar school and ready to enter the high.He did not enter; instead, the need of money being pressing, he went to work in one of the local stores, selling behind the counter.If his father had lived he would, probably, have gone away after finishing high school and perhaps, if by that time the mechanical ability which he possessed had shown itself, he might even have gone to some technical school or college.In that case Jed Winslow's career might have been very, very different.But instead he went to selling groceries, boots, shoes, dry goods and notions for Mr.

Seth Wingate, old Jedidah's younger brother.

As a grocery clerk Jed was not a success, neither did he shine as a clerk in the post office, nor as an assistant to the local expressman.In desperation he began to learn the carpenter's trade and, because he liked to handle tools, did pretty well at it.But he continued to be "queer" and his absent-minded dreaminess was in evidence even then.

"I snum I don't know what to make of him," declared Mr.Abijah Mullett, who was the youth's "boss." "Never know just what he's goin' to do or just what he's goin' to say.I says to him yesterday: 'Jed,' says I, 'you do pretty well with tools and wood, considerin' what little experience you've had.Did Cap'n Thad teach you some or did you pick it up yourself?' He never answered for a minute or so, seemed to be way off dreamin' in the next county somewheres.Then he looked at me with them big eyes of his and he drawled out: 'Comes natural to me, Mr.Mullett, I guess,' he says.'There seems to be a sort of family feelin' between my head and a chunk of wood.' Now what kind of an answer was that, I want to know!"Jed worked at carpentering for a number of years, sometimes going as far away as Ostable to obtain employment.And then his mother was seized with the illness from which, so she said, she never recovered.It is true that Doctor Parker, the Orham physician, declared that she had recovered, or might recover if she cared to.

Which of the pair was right does not really matter.At all events Mrs.Winslow, whether she recovered or not, never walked abroad again.She was "up and about," as they say in Orham, and did some housework, after a fashion, but she never again set foot across the granite doorstep of the Winslow cottage.Probably the poor woman's mind was slightly affected; it is charitable to hope that it was.

It seems the only reasonable excuse for the oddity of her behavior during the last twenty years of her life, for her growing querulousness and selfishness and for the exacting slavery in which she kept her only son.

During those twenty years whatever ambition Jedidah Edgar Wilfred may once have had was thoroughly crushed.His mother would not hear of his leaving her to find better work or to obtain promotion.

She needed him, she wailed; he was her life, her all; she should die if he left her.Some hard-hearted townspeople, Captain Hunniwell among them, disgustedly opined that, in view of such a result, Jed should be forcibly kidnaped forthwith for the general betterment of the community.But Jed himself never rebelled.He cheerfully gave up his youth and early middle age to his mother and waited upon her, ran her errands, sat beside her practically every evening and read romance after romance aloud for her benefit.And his "queerness" developed, as under such circumstances it was bound to do.

Money had to be earned and, as the invalid would not permit him to leave her to earn it, it was necessary to find ways of earning it at home.Jed did odd jobs of carpentering and cabinet making, went fishing sometimes, worked in gardens between times, did almost anything, in fact, to bring in the needed dollars.And when he was thirty-eight years old he made and sold his first "Cape Cod Winslow windmill," the forerunner of the thousands to follow.That mill, made in some of his rare idle moments and given to the child of a wealthy summer visitor, made a hit.The child liked it and other children wanted mills just like it.Then "grown-ups" among the summer folk took up the craze."Winslow mills" became the fad.