"Chet" (Yates)/Chapter 1
"HOW do you suppose Chester will take to having a girl living in the same house with him all the time?"
It was Dad's voice. I sat up in the hammock and wondered if there was anything the matter with my ears. Why on earth should Dad say a thing like that?
The hammock was on the veranda just outside of the dining-room window, and I'd been asleep init. It was a blazing hot day, right in the middle of August, and I had gone out there after dinner to make up my mind what I would do that afternoon. It's funny how quick you'll go to sleep on a hot day! You'll be sitting and swinging your feet and kicking your heels on the floor to see how loud you can make the hooks and staples creak; and then you'll decide, maybe, to go and fix the latch on the back gate; and you give a good hard kick and turn over and stretch out, just to let the old cat die,—and the hammock goes slower and slower, and you cover your eyes to shut out the bright light,—and then the next thing you know, you find yourself just waking up and feeling all damp and sticky around your collar, and your hair plastered all over your forehead,—and likely as not you feel cross.
That's the way I felt when I waked up that day; and I was rubbing my face and trying to start the hammock by wriggling, when I heard Dad's voice come through the dining-room window,—
"How do you suppose Chester will take to having a girl living in the same house with him all the time?"
He had been taking a snooze on the wicker couch just inside the window, before going back to the store; and he and Mother must have been talking for some time; but the first I heard was when my name came through the window.
Mother didn't say anything for a minute, and everything was quiet, and I began to think that perhaps I had only had the nightmare; but by and by she spoke, sort of slow and determined. "Well, Frederick, I don't know," she said; "and I can't help whether he likes it or not. That child's mother was my very best friend, and her daughter isn't going to be sent to any boarding-school as long as I have a home. That is, unless you put your foot down against it."
"Oh, I haven't anything against it," said Dad. "Do as you choose, I don't care; she won't bother me; and if Chester doesn't treat her right, just let me know and I 'I'll settle with him."
Mother sort of sighed, and I heard Dad stamping on his shoes. Then Mother spoke again. "You understand, don't you, Frederick, that she is to stay permanently? She isn't to come here until April; but after that, she is to remain until she is grown up; and she's only thirteen now, just Chester's age."
"Yes, I understand," said Dad. "Fix it any way you choose only you 'I'll have to manage her;—I've got my hands full with Chester. And, by the way, when you get ready to tell him, you would better chloroform him and tie him up, before you break the news," and I heard Dad laugh and start for the door.
"Oh, I'm not going to tell him for a while," said Mother, anxiously. "I'm going to wait. He may not like the idea, just at first; but I'm sure her influence will be good and—"
Gee! That was enough! I didn't care how much Dad "settled" with me; but when it came to the girl and her "influence"—I lit out over the veranda rail.
It's queer how hard it is to think when anything big and horrid walks up to you. All you seem to be able to do is to sit and stare, with your mind, at the thing, and watch it make faces at you. I couldn't think at all that afternoon, for more than half an hour; and then the first thing that really came to me was what a fool I had been to come out to the sweet-apple tree when I was feeling that way. Up to then the sweet-apple tree had always meant fun; and when at last I rolled over in the long grass and wiped the perspiration off of my cheeks with my sleeve, and looked up in the branches and—noticed that one of the cleats leading to the crow's-nest was loose; just then it came to me that I had been and spoiled the tree by coming there with something that hurt;—and Bess was coming home that night, too. I rolled over onto my sleeves again. The tree was Bess's and mine, and here that other girl had gone and spoiled it already. Bess lived next door, and we had been chums for five years, ever since her folks moved there; and now to have some other blamed girl hanging around all the time and having to go everywhere, and do everything that we did, whether we wanted her to or not—you see, that was why I cared most. You can stand just about anything when you're in the house; but to have any one tagging everywhere you go—it made me so mad that I sat up all of a sudden and doubled up my fists and opened my eyes,—and there, square in front of me, stood Bess.
My mouth just simply dropped open.
Bess burst out laughing. "Well, for goodness' sake, Chet," she exclaimed, pretending to dodge, "what are you coming at me that way for? You look awfully pleased that I came home. I'm glad I came."
"'T wasn't much, use," said I, slamming a dried-up apple at a tree.
Bess looked at me with her head on one side. "Trying to be ugly?" she asked.
"Oh, not at you, of course. I just meant that our good times are all spoiled. We can't have any more fun."
Bess sat down on the grass. "What you been doing?" she asked. "Did you have to go without your dinner?"
I gritted my teeth. A girl always thinks you're hungry if you don't grin.
"No, I didn't," I said. "I'm not just blue. It's real trouble,—trouble for both of us."
Bess shook her head soberly and didn't say anything for a while.
"Want to tell me about it, Chet?" she asked, by and by.
I was gnawing the bark off of a little twig of apple-tree. It sort of relieved me to do it. After a while I got it all chewed off. The bark was kind of bitter, and it was hard to get my mouth fixed so I was sure I could tell Bess about things.
By and by I spoke, real steady. "There's a girl coming here," I said.
"A girl," said Bess. "Coming where?"
"Here. To our house."
Bess stared. "How long's she going to stay?"
"Forever."
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"No, but really, Chet?"
"That's it. 'Permanently' they said. Until she's grown up."
Bess gasped. "Who is she? What's she coming for?"
"I don't know."
Bess sat and looked at me. "Chet," she said, almost crossly. "Tell me about it."
"That's all I know," I said.
Bess chewed her lower lip. "Who told you about it?" she asked at last.
"Nobody."
"Oh, Chet!" she exclaimed, suddenly, out of all patience; "why don't you tell me what you know about it, instead of sitting there like a—like a—" she stopped.
"Why don't you say it?" said I, savagely.
"I don't want to," said Bess. "It doesn't do any good to call names;—but I think you might:; tell me, Chester, after saying this much."
"Well, I'll try to," said I. You see, I wasn't meaning to be ugly to Bess; but sometimes you are afraid to go into particulars about things that hurt, because you don't know exactly how your voice is going to act. I tried mine once or twice, and then I said: "Let's knock down some apples first."
Bess said "All right," and after we had thrown a lot of kindlings into the tree, I felt better, and we went back and sat down and I told Bess all about what I had heard.
She looked sober enough when I got through. "I wonder what she's like," she said, jabbing the sod with a little stick. "Don't you know a thing about her, Chet?"
"Not a thing more than I've told you."
I could see that Bess had one of her "moods" coming on, and I was glad of it. Bess's moods are just as ugly as mine, and it was a sort of relief to see the wrinkles coming between her eyes.
"I don't see the sense to it," she said at last, jabbing the stick so hard that it broke. "Why don't they let her go to boarding-school? If she hasn't got any home, that's the place for her, instead of coming boring other people."
"How'd you like to go to boarding-school?" I asked. I didn't want the girl to come; but I wanted Bess to see that she was as ugly as I was.
"I wouldn't go," said Bess. "What's the sense of saying anything like that, anyway? You only said it to be unkind. I'd a lot rather go to boarding-school than to go poking around where I wasn't wanted; I can tell you that."
"She can't help it," I said.
Bess got up and stood in front of me stiffly. "Well, all right, Chester Williams," she said; "If you want her to come, why, have her come,—I don't care. I probably sha'n't see much of either of you, so it won't bother me any," and she turned to walk off.
Gee! Here I had been just about holding my breath for two months, waiting for Bess to get home, and now, in half an hour we were squabbling worse than we ever had in our lives before. It made me mad.
"Bess," I said, "what's the use of your being so blamed unpleasant? You know I don't want her to come,—I've told you so enough times,—so there isn't anything for us to quarrel about;—but what are we going to do about it? That's the question. Can't we boycott her? We haven't either of us any use for her; do you suppose we could make it disagreeable enough so she wouldn't want to stay?"
Bess sat down again and broke off some long stems of grass, and began twisting them together in her fingers and thinking. Bess is a dandy at planning things, and I began to have hopes.
"Maybe we could," she said at last, "if we are just real polite, but don't pay any attention to her,—treat her as if she didn't interest us at all."
"Which she doesn't," I put in. "That's the thing. We'll just say 'good-morning' and 'good-night,' and the rest of the time we simply won't know she's living. Nobody can make a fuss with us, as long as we are polite to her."
"Over-polite," said Bess, smoothing out the grass stems over her knee. "And if they make us take her with us anywhere, we'll treat her like company every minute of the time."
"Good!" said I.
Bess sort of stared, and looked at me suddenly, as if she had just waked up, sort of opening her eyes wide, and blinking them.
"What's the matter now?" I asked.
Bess pressed her lips together and turned her face away and stared off at the hills far over on the West Virginia side, and her eyes looked as if she wanted to cry.
"What's the matter?" I asked again, feeling cross. Bess never cries.
She swallowed hard. "I can't do it, Chet," she said.
"Can't do what?"
"Snub her."
"Well, for goodness' sake, Bess!" I said; "what changed you so quick? 'Two seconds ago you were figuring how you could do it, and now—What struck you?"
"You said 'good,'" said Bess, very low.
"Well," I said, "it is a good plan. What's the matter with it?"
"It isn't good," said Bess. "It's everything but good. It's selfish and mean and unkind,—and we haven't any right to do it."
"Well, she hasn't any right to come here."
"She can't help it."
They were the very words I had used five minutes before; but it was different when she said them, and my temper was up in a second.
"All right," I said; "take her part if you want to,—I don't care,—only you needn't expect me to be traipsing around with you two all the time. There's lots of boys in town. Bob Stevens and I can always have plenty of fun."
"Oh, Chet!" Bess thinks Bob Stevens is about the worst there is, and so does Mother. I don't like him so awfully well, myself, he's too rowdy, and it's catching; but we do have fun, such as it is.
"Well," I said, "what else is there for me to do? If you're going to make a chum of that other girl, I've got to go with somebody, haven't I? I'm not going to flock by myself, and I'm not going to play gooseberry all the time, either. I know how it is when two girls get together."
Bess sat still, nibbling the end of her thumb, a little habit she has when she's thinking. "Chet," she said at last; "let's be right down honest and sensible. You know I don't want her to come here any more than you do;—but we can't help her coming, just the same. Here we've been ugly and quarrelling, and that certainly isn't the other girl's fault; so we'd better look at ourselves and find out what there is in us that makes things seem horrid."
I stared at Bess hard. She was always a great hand to think, and to dig out reasons and causes; and I always liked to hear her talk things out of a tangle; but I couldn't see how we were the least bit to blame in this case, not the least bit. Why, anybody would feel the way we did about it. It was perfectly natural. "What do you mean," I asked.
"Well," said Bess, "when there is inharmony, we have to look to ourselves for the reason."
"'Inharmony'! Gee, where'd you get the big word?"
Bess flushed. "I can use it if I want to, I guess," she said, putting up her chin. Then she laughed. "But 'harmony' is a nicer one, isn't it?" she asked.
"Been studying the dictionary in Boston?"
"No," Bess laughed again, "not the dictionary. But say, Chet, really, you can see that this is all our own fault. It's just because we're selfish."
I got up.
"What are you going to do?" asked Bess.
"Going to see Bob Stevens: What are you going to do?"
"Going to love that other girl," said Bess, sturdily; and we walked off in opposite directions.