The Fascinating Stranger and Other Stories/Ladies' Ways
LADIES’ WAYS
TWO young people, just out of college and pleasing to the eye, ought to appreciate the advantage of living across the street from each other: but Miss Muriel Eliot’s mood, that summer, was so advanced and intellectual that she found all round about her only a cultural desert, utterly savourless. This was her own definition of her surroundings, and when she expressed herself thus impressively to Mr. Renfrew Mears, the young gentleman who lived directly opposite her, he was granted little choice but to suppose himself included among the unspiced vacancies she mentioned. “The whole deadly environment crushes me,” she told him, as they paused at her gate on returning from a walk. “This town is really a base thing.”
“Do you think so, Muriel?” he said. “Well, I don’t know; around here it’s a right pleasant place to live—nice big yards and trees and all. And you know the population is increasing by fifteen to twenty thousand every year. The papers say”
“Listen, Renfrew,” she interrupted, and then said deliberately: “It is a cultural desert, utterly savourless!”
When she had spoken in this way, the first feeling of young Mr. Mears appeared to be one of admiration, and perhaps she understood, or even expected, that some such sensation on his part would be inevitable, for she allowed her eyes to remain uplifted gloomily toward the summer sky above them, so that he might look at her a little while without her seeming to know it. Then she repeated slowly, with a slight shake of the head: “Yes—a cultural desert, utterly savourless!”
But Renfrew now became uneasy. “You mean the looks of the place and the”
“I mean the whole environment,” she said. “These Victorian houses with their Victorian interiors and the Victorian thoughts of the people that live in ’em. It’s all, all Victorian!”
“‘Victorian?’” said Renfrew doubtfully, for he was far from certain of her meaning. His vague impression was that the word might in some remote way bear upon an issue of bonds with which he had some recent familiarity through an inheritance from his grandfather. “You think it’s—Victorian—do you, Muriel?” he thought best to inquire.
“Absolutely!” she said. “Culturally it’s a Victorian desert and utterly savourless.”
“But you don’t mean all of it?” he ventured, being now certain that “Victorian” meant something unfavourable. “That is, not the people?”
“It’s the people I’m talking about,” explained Muriel coldly.
“Well—but not all of ’em?”
“Yes, everybody!”
“You don’t mean every last one of ’em, though, do you, Muriel?” he asked plaintively.
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, but look here,” he said. “You couldn’t mean that. It would include your own family, and all your old family neighbours. Why, it might include some of your very best friends!”
She sighed. “Since I’ve come home, I’ve felt that really I had nothing in common with a single soul in the place. I don’t live on the same plane. I don’t think the same thoughts. I don’t speak the same language.”
He appeared to swallow a little air and to find some difficulty in doing so. “I know,” he said, “you do talk a lot more intellectually than the rest of us dubs around here. It’s because you’ve got a more intellectual nature, and everything like that; and that’s one of the reasons I look up to you the way I do. I always used to think that a girl that usually had an intellectual nature had to wear horn spectacles and have her dress higher on one side than it was on the other, and wear these sensible-looking shoes, and everything like that. But you’ve showed me I was mistaken, Muriel. You made me see that a girl could have an intellectual nature and be prettier and dress niftilier than all the brainless ones put together. But what worries me is” He paused uncomfortably, and repeated, “What worries me is” then paused again, and, with his head on one side, moved his forefinger to and fro between his collar and his neck as if he felt a serious tightness there.
“Well?” Muriel said, after waiting for some time. “Do you wish me to understand it’s your neckwear that worries you, Renfrew?”
“No,” he said absently, and frowning in his pained earnestness, again repeated: “What worries me is” Once more he stopped.
“Well, well!”
“It’s simply this,” he said. “What worries me is simply this. It’s like this. For instance, do you think it’s absolutely necessary for them both to have an intellectual nature?”
“‘Both?’” she inquired. “What do you mean—‘both?’”
“I mean the man and the woman,” he said. “Do you think they both have to have”
“What man and woman?”
“I mean,” said Renfrew, “I mean the husband and the wife.”
“Why, what in the world”
“Would they both have to have one?” he asked hopefully. “They wouldn’t both have to have an intellectual nature, would they?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” she said with emphasis, though a delicate colour had risen in her cheeks, and people seldom blush on account of being puzzled. “I don’t believe you know what you mean, yourself.”
“Yes, I do,” he insisted, his earnestness constantly increasing. “I mean, for instance, wouldn’t it be all right for the woman to go on following her intellectual nature in her own way, if the man provided the house and the food and everything like that? Even if he didn’t have an intellectual nature himself, don’t you think they could get along together all right, especially if he respected hers and looked up to it and was glad she had one, and so—well, and so they could go on and on together—and on and on”
“Renfrew!” she cried. “How long are you going ‘on and on’ about nothing?”
He looked depressed. “I only meant—did you—did you really mean everybody, Muriel?”
“When?”
“When you said that about—about the savage desert that didn’t have any culture or anything.”
“That wasn’t what I said, Renfrew,” she reminded him, and her expression became one of cold disapproval. “I said, ‘A cultural!’”
“Well, anyway,” he urged, “you didn’t really mean everybody, did you?”
“Seriously, Renfrew,” she said; “—seriously, I don’t understand how you can live the life you do.”
“Why, I’m not living any life,” he said reproachfully. “I never did do anything very dissipated.”
“I don’t mean that,” she returned impatiently. “I mean what are you doing with your mind, your soul, your spirit? You never have a thought that the common herd around us doesn’t have. You never read a book that the common herd doesn’t read, and you don’t even read many of them! What do you do with your time? I’m asking you!”
“Well, the truth is,” he said meekly, “if you come right down to it: why, most of the time I loaf around in our front yard waiting to see if you’re not coming out or anything.”
His truthfulness did little to appease her. “Yes!” she said. “You sit hours and hours under that walnut tree over there in a perfect vacuum!”
“Well, it is like that,” he agreed, “when you don’t come out, Muriel.”
“I’m not talking about anything of that sort!” she said quickly. “I mean, how can you bear to stay on such a plane? You don’t have to just sit down and live on what your grandfather left you, do you?”
“Well, but,” he protested, “I told you I was thinking of trying to run for the legislature!”
She stared at him. “Good heavens!” she said. “Do you think that would be rising to a higher plane?”
“A person has to begin,” he ventured to remind her. “Even at that, they tell me I probably couldn’t get nominated till I tried for it two or three times. They tell me I have to keep on going around till I get well known.”
“Renfrew!”
“Well, I haven’t made up my mind about it,” he said. “I see you don’t think much of it, and I’m not sure I do, myself. What do you think I ought to do?”
“What do I think you ought to do?” she cried. “Why, do anything—anything rather than be one of the commonplace herd on the commonplace plane!”
“Well, what do I have to do to get off of it?”
“What?”
“I mean, what’s the best way for me to get on some other plane, the kind you mean? If you think it’s no good my trying for the legislature, what do you think I had better do?”
He asked for information; in all honesty he simply wanted to be told. “I just don’t know how to go about it,” he added; “I don’t know how to even start; that’s the trouble. What had I better do first?”
Muriel stared at him; for in truth, she found herself at a loss. Faced with a request for grovelling details of the lofty but somewhat indefinite processes she had sketched, she was as completely a vacancy as could be found in all the cultural desert about her.
“Really!” she said. “If you don’t know such things for yourself, I don’t believe you could ever find out from anybody else!”
In this almost epigrammatic manner she concealed from him—and almost from herself—that she had no instructions to give him; nor was she aware that she had employed an instinctive device of no great novelty. Self-protection inspires it wherever superiority must be preserved; it has high official and military usages, but is most frequently in operation upon the icier intellectual summits. Yet, like a sword with a poisonous hilt, it always avenges its victim, and he who employs it will be irritable for some time afterward—he is really irritated with himself, but naturally prefers to think the irritation is with the stupidity that stumped him.
Thus Muriel departed abruptly, clashing the gate for all her expression of farewell, and left startled young Mr. Mears standing there, a figure of obvious pathos. She went indoors, and, having ascended to her own room, presently sat down and engaged herself with writing materials. Little shadows of despondency played upon her charming forehead as she wrote:
“Life is so terrible!
Far off—far, far—oh, infinitely distant—oh,
Where far-flung fleets and argosies
Of nobler thoughts abound
Than those I find around me
In this crass, provincial town,
I must go!
For I am lonely here,
One lonely, lonely little figure
Upbearing still one white, white light invisible.
How could those see whose thoughts are all
Of marts and churches, dancing, and the links?”
She paused to apply the blotter upon a tiny area of ink, oozed from the pen to her forefinger, which had pressed too ardently, being tense with creative art; and having thus broken the spell of composition, she glanced frowningly out of the window beside her desk. Across the way, she could see Renfrew Mears sitting under the walnut tree in his own yard. He was not looking toward her, but leaned back in a wicker chair, and to a sympathetic observation his attitude and absent skyward gaze might have expressed a contemplative bafflement. However, this was not Muriel’s interpretation, for she wrote:
“Across the street, ignoble in content,
Under a dusty walnut tree,
A young man flanneled sits,
And dreams his petty burgher dreams
Of burghers’ petty offices.
He’s nothing.
So, lonely in the savourless place, I find
No comrade for my white, white light,
No single soul that understands,
Or glimpses just, my meanings.”
Again the lonely girl looked out of the window, but this time with the sharpest annoyance, and wished herself even lonelier and more remote than her poem declared. Half a dozen lively children, including her own fat little brother Robert, had begun to play in the yard across the street, where the young man flanneled sat; and sometimes one of them came to hide behind his chair, though Renfrew was so immersed in his petty burgher dreams that he did not appear to know it. The shouting of the children interfered with composition, however, and while the poetess struggled on, the interference grew so poignant that it became actually a part of the texture of her poem:
“Oh, I am lonely in this world of noises,
This world of piercing senseless outcries,
I hate it so! I hear the shrill,
Malignant yowls of children,
Growing up like all the rest
Without the power of thinking.
Oh, noises how accursed”
Here her poem came to an end forever—that is to say, it had no end, was never completed, remained a fragment. Muriel jumped up, and the expressions she employed were appropriate for a maddened poet’s use, though they befitted not a maiden’s. The accursed noises across the street had become unbearable; they roused Renfrew from his petty dreams, and he straightened up in his chair to see what was going on.
“Here, here!” he said. “This isn’t the Fourth of July. Quiet down a little, will you?”
Four boys, Masters Robert Eliot, Laurence Coy, Thomas Kimball and Freddie Mears, an eight-year-old cousin of Renfrew’s, were advancing upon him, each evidently operating an imaginary machine-gun. “Bang! Bang! Bang! Bangity, Bangity, Bang! Bang!” they shouted with the utmost violence of their lungs.
“Stop it!” Renfrew commanded, and as the machine-guns seemed to be levelled straight at himself, he added: “Let me alone. I haven’t done anything to you. What do you want to kill me for?”
He mistook their meaning, as he discovered immediately. “Ping! Ping! Ping!” a shrill voice cried out from the ground just behind his chair—another machine-gun, or else an “ottomatick.”
“Pingity, pingity, ping. Ur-r-r-r-r-ping!”
The voice was that of Renfrew’s nine-year-old sister Daisy; and looking round and down, he discovered her crouching low behind his chair, firing continuously. Renfrew perceived that he was a fortification of some sort; for although the presence of a grown person has naturally a stultifying effect upon children, they readily forget him if he remains in his own sphere; then he becomes but part of their landscape; they will use him as a castle, or perhaps as a distant Indian. Renfrew was now a log cabin.
“Ping! Ping! Pingety ur-r-r-r-r-ping!” Daisy shrieked from behind him. “You’re all dead! Lay down!”
“You’re dead yourself,” Robert Eliot retorted. “I guess all us four filled you fuller o’ wounds than you did us, didn’t we? Lay down yourself!”
“I won’t!” And Daisy, rising, began to argue the question vehemently. “I saw you all the time when you came around the house. I shot you first, didn’t I? Wasn’t I sayin’ ‘Ping,’ before ever any one of you said ‘Bang?’”
“No, you wasn’t,” Laurence Coy hotly replied. “Why, if we’d of had real guns, they wouldn’t be enough left o’ you to bury in a hen’s nest.”
“They would, too!” Daisy shouted. “If I’d had a real gun, they wouldn’t be enough left of you to bury in half a hen’s nest!”
“They would, too!” Laurence retorted, and his comrades in arms loudly echoed him. “They would, too!” they shouted.
“You’re dead!” Daisy insisted. “You got to all four lay down. You got to!”
But upon this they raised such a chorus of jeering that she stamped her foot. “You got to!” she cried.
“Listen!” said Laurence. “Listen here! I killed you myself, first thing when we came around the house. I leave it to Elsie Threamer.”
He referred to the one other little girl who was present, though she took no part in these military encounters and seemed, in fact, to disapprove of them. Fastidiously remaining at a distance from the belligerents, she sat alone upon the steps of the large front porch—a dainty little figure in strong contrast to the strident Daisy. Elsie was in smooth and unspotted white linen; and Daisy, too, had been in smooth and unspotted white linen—for a few minutes—but this one point of resemblance was now lost. Elsie was a beautiful child, whereas even the fonder of Daisy’s two grandmothers had never gone so far as to say that Daisy was a beauty. Elsie was known for her sweet disposition, though some people thought that living next door to Daisy was injuring it. When Elsie came into a room where grown people were, they looked pleased; when Daisy came into a room where grown people were, they looked at their watches.
“Yes,” said Robert Eliot, confirming Master Coy’s choice of an umpire. “I leave it to Elsie. Whoever Elsie says is dead, why, they got to be dead.”
“Leave it to Elsie,” the other boys agreed. “Daisy’s dead, isn’t she, Elsie?”
“I am not!” Daisy cried. “I don’t care what Elsie says. I killed every last one of you, and if you don’t lay down, I’ll make you.”
“You will?” the bulky Robert inquired. “How you goin’ to make us?”
“I’ll frow you down,” said the determined Daisy; and she added vindictively: “Then I’ll walk all over you!”
The enemy received this with unanimous hootings. “Yes, you will!” Laurence Coy boasted satirically. “Come on and try it if you don’t know any better!” And he concluded darkly: “Why, you wouldn’t live a minute!”
“Anyway,” Daisy insisted, “I won’t leave it to Elsie, whether I’m dead or not.”
“You got to,” said Laurence, and walking toward Elsie, he pointed to Daisy, and spoke with some deference. “Tell her she’s dead, Elsie.”
Elsie shook her head. “I doe’ care ’nything about it,” she said coldly. “I doe’ care whether she’s dead or whether she isn’t.”
“But she didn’t kill us, did she, Elsie?” Laurence urged her. “Our side’s alive, isn’t it, Elsie?”
“I doe’ care whether you are or whether you’re not,” the cold and impartial Miss Threamer returned. “I doe’ care ’nything about it which you are.”
“I am not dead!” Daisy shouted, jumping up and down as she pranced toward the steps where sat the indifferent judge. “I doe’ care if Elsie says I’m dead a thousan’ times, I guess I got my rights, haven’t I?”
“No, you haven’t,” Robert Eliot informed her harshly.
“I have, too!” she cried. “I have, too, got my rights.” “You haven’t, either,” Laurence said. “You haven’t got any rights. Whatever Elsie says is goin’ to be the rights.”
Daisy strained her voice to its utmost limits: “I got my Rights!” she bawled.
They crowded about Elsie, arguing, jeering, gesticulating, a shrill and active little mob; meanwhile Elsie, seated somewhat above them, rested her chin on her clean little hand, and looked out over their heads with large, far-away eyes that seemed to take no account of them and their sordid bickerings. And Renfrew, marking how aloof from them she seemed, was conscious of a vague resemblance; Elsie, like Muriel, seemed to dwell above the common herd.
Then, as she watched the clamorous group, he noticed that whenever Laurence Coy appealed to Elsie, his voice, though loud, betrayed a certain breathlessness, while frequently after speaking to her he opened his mouth and took in a little air, which he then swallowed with some difficulty, his neck becoming obviously uneasy. Indeed, this symptom was so pronounced that Renfrew, observing it with great interest, felt that there was something reminiscent about it—that is, it reminded him of something; he could not think just what. But he began to feel that Laurence perceived that Elsie was on a higher plane.
Elsie seemed to think so herself. “I doe’ care ’nything about it,” remained her unaltered verdict. “I doe’ care a thing which is dead or which isn’t.”
“Well, then,” said Laurence Coy, “we might as well play somep’m else.”
“All right,” Daisy agreed. “Le’s play I’m a grea’ big Injun woyer, an’ all the rest of you are children I got to come an’ scalp.”
Her proposal met with no general favour—with no favour at all, in fact. “For heaven’s sakes!” Thomas Kimball said. “I’d like to know what you take us for!” And in this scornful view he was warmly seconded by all his fellows.
“Well, this is my yard,” Daisy reminded them severely. “I guess as long as you’re in my yard, you’ll please be p’lite enough to play what I say. I guess I got some rights in my own yard, haven’t I?”
“I guess you better remember you ast us over here to play with you,” Laurence Coy retorted, and his severity was more than equal to hers. “We never came an’ ast you if we could, did we? You better learn sense enough to know that long as you ast us, we got a right to play what we want to, because we’re company, an’ we aren’t goin’ to play have you scalp us!”
“You haf to,” Daisy insisted. “I got a perfect right to play what I want to in my own yard.”
“You go on play it, an’ scalp yourself, then,” Laurence returned ungallantly. “Elsie, what you want to play?”
“I doe’ want to play rough games,” Elsie said. “I doe’ like those fighting games.”
“Well, what do you like?”
“Well, nice quiet games,” she replied. “I’d be willing to play school.”
“How do you play it?”
“Well, I’d be willing to be the teacher,” she said. “You all sit down in a row, an’ I’ll say what punishments you haf to have.”
Daisy instantly objected. “No, I’ll be the teacher!”
“You won’t!” Laurence said. “Elsie’s got to be the teacher because she’s company, an’ anyway she said so first.” And the majority agreeing to this, it was so ordered; whereupon Daisy, after some further futile objections, took her place with the boys. They sat in a row upon the grass, facing Elsie, who stood on the steps confronting them.
“Now, the first thing to do,” she said, “I better find out who’s the worst; because you every one been very, very naughty an’ deserve the terrablest punishments I can think of. I haf to think what I’m goin’ to do to you.” She paused, then pointed at Laurence. “Laurence Coy, you’re the very worst one of this whole school.”
“What did I do?” Laurence inquired.
“You said you hated girls.”
“Well, I did say that,” he admitted; and then, lest his comrades suspect him of weakening, he added: “I hate every last thing about ’em!”
“I bet you don’t,” said Daisy Mears, giggling.
Laurence blushed. “I do!” he shouted. “I hate every last”
“Hush!” said the teacher. “That’s very, very, very naughty, and you haf to be punished. You haf to be—well, I guess you haf to be spanked.”
“I doe’ care!” Laurence said, seeming to forget that this was only a game. “I hate girls and every last thing about ’em!”
“Hush!” Elsie said again. “I ’point Robert Eliot and Freddie Mears monitors. Robert must hold you while Freddie spanks you.”
But Daisy jumped up, uncontrollably vociferous. “No, no!” she shouted. “I’m goin’ to be a monitor! This is my yard, an’ I guess I got some rights around here! Robert can hold him, but I got to spank him.”
“Very well,” said Elsie primly. “I ’point Daisy in Freddie’s place.”
Master Coy did not take this well; he rose and moved backward from the enthusiastic Daisy. “I won’t do it,” he said. “I won’t let her spank me.”
“You haf to,” Daisy told him, clapping her hands. “You haf to do whatever Elsie says. You said so yourself; you said she had to be the teacher, an’ we haf to do whatever she tells us.”
“I won’t!” he responded doggedly, for now he felt that his honour was concerned. “I won’t do it!”
“Robert Eliot!” Elsie said reprovingly. “Did you hear me ’point you a monitor to hold Laurence while he’s punished?”
“You better keep away from me,” Laurence warned Robert, as the latter approached, nothing loth. “I won’t do it!”
“I’m goin’ to do it,” said Daisy. “All you haf to do is hold still.”
“I won’t!” said Laurence.
“I guess I better do it with this,” Daisy remarked, and, removing her left slipper as she and Robert continued their advance upon Laurence, she waved it merrily in the air. “What you so ’fraid of, Laurence?” she inquired boastingly. “This isn’t goin’ to hurt you—much!”
“No, it isn’t,” he agreed. “And you better put it back where it was if you ever want to see it again. I’ll take that ole slipper, an’ I’ll”
“Teacher!” Daisy called, looking back to where Elsie stood. “Didn’t you say this naughty boy had to be spanked?”
“Yes, I did,” Elsie replied. “You hurry up and do it!”
Her voice was sweet; yet she spoke with sharpness, even with a hint of acidity, which the grown-up observer, forgotten by the children, noted with some surprise. Renfrew had been sure that he detected in Master Coy the symptoms of a tender feeling for Elsie. Laurence had deferred to her, had been the first to appeal to her when she sat aloof, had insisted that she should choose the game to play, and when she had chosen, hotly championed her claim to be the “teacher.” Above all was the difference in his voice when he spoke to her, and that swallowing of air, that uneasiness of the neck. Renfrew was sure, too, that Elsie herself must be at least dimly aware of these things, must have some appreciation of the preference for her that they portended—and yet when she was given authority, her very first use of it was to place Master Coy in a position unspeakably distasteful to himself. Sometimes children were impossible to understand, Renfrew thought—and so were some grown people, he added, in his mind, with a despondent glance across the street.
Having glanced that way, his eyes came to rest upon the open window of a room upstairs, where the corner of a little satinwood writing-table was revealed—Muriel’s, he knew. Branches of a tall maple tree gave half the window a rococo frame, and beyond this bordering verdure sometimes he had caught glimpses of a graceful movement, shadowy within the room—a white hand would appear for an instant moving something on the desk, or adjusting the window-shade for a better light; or at the best, it might be half revealed, half guessed, that Muriel was putting on her hat at a mirror. But this befell only on days when she was in a gentle mood with him, and so it was seldom. Certainly it was not to-day, though she might be there; for when she was gloomiest about her environment (of which he was so undeniably a part) she might indeed sit at that charming little satinwood table to write, but sat invisible to him, the curtains veiling her. Of course, at such times, there was only one thing left for Renfrew to do, and legend offers the parallel of the niggardly mother who locked up the butter in the pantry, but let her children rub their dry bread on the knob of the pantry door. Renfrew could look at the window.
The trouble was that when he looked at it, he was apt to continue to look at it for an indefinite period of time, during which his faculties lost their usefulness; people whom he knew might pass along the sidewalk, nod graciously to him, and then, not realizing his condition, vow never to speak again to so wooden a young snob. And into such a revery—if revery it were that held no thoughts, no visions, but only the one glamorous portrait of an empty window—he fell to-day. The voices of the children, sharp with purpose, shrill with protest, but died in his tranced ear as if they came from far away. The whole summer day, the glancing amber of the sunshine, the white clouds ballooning overhead between the tree-tops, the warm touch and smell of the air—these fell away from his consciousness. “He’s nothing,” the lonely poetess brusquely wrote of him; and now, for the time, it was almost true, since he was little more than a thought of a vacant window.
When Renfrew was in this jellied state, something rather unusual was needed to rouse him—though a fire-department ladder-truck going by, with the gong palavering, had done it. What roused him to-day were sounds less metallic, but comparable in volume and in certain ways more sensational. As he stood, fixed upon the window, he slowly and vaguely became aware that the children seemed to be excited about something. Like some woodland dreamer who discovers that a crow commune overhead has been in hot commotion for some time without his noticing it, he was not perturbed, but gradually wakened enough to wonder what the matter was. Then he turned and looked mildly about him.
His sister Daisy still held her slipper, but it was now in her left hand; in her right she had a shingle. Accompanied by Robert Eliot, she was advancing in a taunting manner upon Laurence Coy; and all three, as well as the rest of the children, may be described as continuously active and poignantly vociferous. Master Coy had armed himself with a croquet mallet, and his face expressed nothing short of red desperation; he was making a last stand. He warned the world that he would not be responsible for what he did with this mallet.
Master Eliot also had a mallet; he and Daisy moved toward Laurence, feinting, charging and retreating, while the other children whooped, squealed, danced and gave shrill advice how the outlaw might best be taken.
Daisy was the noisiest of all. “I’ll show you, Mister Laurence Coy!” she cried. “You went an’ tore my collar, an’ you hit me with your elbow on my nose, an’”
“I’m glad I did!” Laurence returned.
“It hurts me, too!” Daisy proclaimed.
“I’m glad it does! You had no business to grab me, an’ I’m glad I”
“We’ll show you!” she promised him. “Soon as we get hold of you I’m goin’ to spank you till this shingle’s all wore out, an’ then I’m goin’ to keep on till my slipper’s all wore out, an’ then I’m goin’ to take off my other slipper an’”
“Look, Daisy!” Elsie Threamer cried. “While Robert keeps in front of him, why don’t you go round behind him? Then you could grab his mallet, and Robert could throw him down.”
At this the dreamy Renfrew looked at Elsie in a moderate surprise. Elsie, earlier so aloof upon her higher plane, was the lady who had objected to roughness; it was she who said she didn’t like “those fighting games.” Yet here she was now, dancing and cheering on the attack, as wolfish as the rest, as intent as any upon violence to the unfortunate Laurence. Nay, it was she who had devised and set in motion the very engine for his undoing.
“Get behind him, Daisy,” she squealed. “That’ll fix him!”
“She better not get behind me!” the grim Laurence warned them. “Her ole nose got one crack already to-day, an’ if it gets another”
“I’ll take care o’ that, Mister Laurence Coy!” Daisy assured him. “I’ll look after my own nose, I kinely thank you.”
“Yes, you will!” he retorted bitterly. “It ain’t hardly big enough to see it, an’ I bet if it comes off on this mallet, nobody could tell it was gone.”
“I’ll—I’ll show you!” Daisy returned, finding no better repartee, though she evidently strove. “I’ll pay you with this paddle for every one of your ole insulks!”
“Run behind him!” Elsie urged her. “Why didn’t you run behind and grab him?”
“You watch!” Daisy cried. “You keep pokin’ at him in front, Robert.” And she darted behind Laurence, striking at the swinging mallet with her shingle.
But Laurence turned too, pivoting; and as he did, Robert Eliot, swinging his own weapon, rushed forward. The two mallets clattered together; there was a struggle—a confused one, for there were three parties to it, Daisy seeming to be at once the most involved and the most vigorous of the three. Her left arm clung about Laurence’s neck, with the sole of her slipper pressed against his face, which he strove hard to disengage from this undesirable juxtaposition; her right arm rose and fell repeatedly, producing a series of muffled sounds.
“I’ll show you!” she said. “I’ll show you whose nose you better talk about so much!”
“Ya-a-ay, Laurence!” the other children shouted. “Gettin’ spanked by a girl! Ya-ay, Laur-runce!”
They uproariously capered between Renfrew and the writhing group; but it struck him that the two mallets, which were both moving rather wildly, might do damage; and he moved toward the mêlée.
“Here!” he called. “What’s all this nonsense? Put down those mallets.”
He spoke too late. The maddened Laurence’s feelings differed little from those of a warrior manhandled by a squaw in the midst of the taunting tribe; and in his anguish his strength waxed exceedingly. His mallet described a brief arc in the air, and not Daisy’s nose, but the more evident nose of fat Robert Eliot, was the recipient. Contact was established audibly.
Robert squawked. He dropped his mallet, clasped his nose, and lay upon the good earth. Then when he looked at his ensanguined fingers, he seemed to feel that his end was hard upon him. He shrieked indeed.
Daisy also complained, an accident having befallen her, though she took it for no accident. “Ooh!” she said. “You made your elbow hit me in the stummick, Laurence Coy!” She stood as a semicircle, and clasped herself, while the noise of the other children was hushed—except the extreme noise of Robert—and the discomfort of sudden calamity fell upon them. Their silent mouths were all open, particularly that of Laurence Coy, whom Daisy did little to reassure.
“I bet I haf to have the doctor,” she prophesied ominously; and then, pointing to the fallen, she added: “An’ I bet Robert’s goin’ to die.”
“Nonsense!” her brother said, bending over Robert. “Nonsense!”
But Laurence Coy did not hear this optimistic word. Laurence had no familiarity with mortal wounds;—to his quaking eye, Robert bore a fatal appearance, and Daisy’s chill prophecy seemed horribly plausible. Laurence departed. One moment he stood there, pallid and dumfounded, but present; and the next, no one could have defined his whereabouts with certainty. All that could be known was that he had gone, and from the manner of his going, it might well be thought that he was shocked to find himself forgetting a rendezvous appointed for this very moment at some distant spot;—he had a hurried air.
Others were almost as deeply affected by Daisy’s gloomy prophecy. As soon as she put the thought in their minds, Thomas Kimball, Freddie Mears and the remarkable Elsie were all convinced that Robert was near his passing, and with natural solicitude they had but the one thought in common: to establish an alibi.
“Well, I never went anywhere near him,” Elsie said. “I never even touched a mallet!”
“Neither’d I!” said Thomas Kimball. “I wasn’t in ten feet of him.”
“I wasn’t in a hunderd!” said Freddie.
“It wasn’t me!” Thomas protested. “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“It was Laurence Coy,” said Freddie. “That’s who it was.”
“It was every bit Laurence Coy,” said Elsie. “I told them not to play such rough games.”
Thus protesting, the three moved shyly toward various exits from the yard, and protesting still, went forth toward their several dwelling-places—and went unnoticed, for Robert was the centre of attention. The volume of sound he produced was undiminished, though the tone had elevated somewhat in pitch, and he seemed to intend words, probably of a reproachful nature; but as his excess of emotion enabled him to produce only vowels, the effect was confused, and what he wished to say could be little more than guessed.
“Hush, hush!” said Renfrew, trying to get him to stand up. “You’ll bring the whole town here!”
Robert became more coherent. “He him me om my mose!”
“I know,” said Renfrew. “But you’re not much hurt.”
Appearing to resent this, Robert cried the louder. “I am, too!” he wailed. “I bet I do die!”
“Nonsense!”
“I bet he does,” said the gloomy Daisy. “He is goin’ to die, Renfrew.”
Pessimism is useful sometimes, but this was not one of the times. When Robert heard Daisy thus again express her conviction, he gave forth an increased bellowing; and it was with difficulty that Renfrew got him to a hydrant in the side yard. Here, plaintively lowing, with his head down, Robert incarnadined Renfrew’s trousers at intervals, while the young man made a cold compress of a handkerchief and applied it to the swelling nose.
“If I—’f I—’f I die,” the patient blubbered, during this process, “they got to ketch that lull-little Lull-Laurence Coy and huh-hang him!”
“Nonsense!” said Renfrew. “Stand still; your nose isn’t even broken.”
“Well, my stummick is,” Daisy said, attending upon them and still in the semicircular attitude she had assumed for greater comfort. “I guess he broke that, if he never broke anything else, and whether he gets hung or not, I bet my mother’ll tell his mother she’s got to whip him, when she finds out.”
“When she finds out what?” Renfrew asked.
“When she finds out what he did to my stummick!”
“Pooh,” said Renfrew. “Both of you were teasing Laurence, and worrying him till he hardly knew what he was doing. Besides, there isn’t really anything to speak of the matter with either of you.”
Both resented his making light of injuries so sensational as theirs; and Robert released his voice in an intolerable howl. “There is, too! An’ if I got to die”
“Stop that!” Renfrew commanded. “How many times must I tell you? You’re not any more likely to die than I am!”
With that he was aware of a furious maiden entering the gate and running toward them across the lawn, and even as she sped, completing a hasty “putting up” of her hair.
“If he isn’t ‘likely to die,’” she cried, “I’d be glad to know whose fault it is! Not yours, I think, Renfrew Mears!”
At sight of his sister, Master Eliot bellowed anew; he wanted to tell his troubles all over again; but emotion in the presence of sympathy was too much for him; and once more he became all vowels, so that nothing definite could be gathered. Muriel clasped him to her. “Poor darling Bobby!” she said. “Don’t cry, darling! Sister’ll take care of you!”
“Here,” said Renfrew, proffering a fresh handkerchief. “Be careful. His nose isn’t quite”
She took the handkerchief and applied it, but gave the donor no thanks. “I never in all my life saw anything like it!” she exclaimed. “I never saw anything to compare with it!”
“Why, it didn’t amount to so very much,” Renfrew said mildly, though he was surprised at her vehemence. “The children were playing, and they got to teasing, and Robert got tapped on the”
“‘Tapped!’” she cried. “He might have been killed! But what I meant was you!”
“Me?”
“Certainly! You! I never saw anything like your behaviour, and I saw it all from the sofa in my room. If I hadn’t had to dress, I’d have been over here in time to stop it long before you did, Renfrew Mears!”
“Why, I don’t understand at all,” he protested feebly. “You seem angry with me! But all I’ve done was to put cold water on Robert’s nose.”
“That’s it!” she cried. “You stood there—I saw you. You stood there, and never lifted a finger while those children were having the most dreadful fight with croquet mallets, not forty feet from you! They might all have been killed; and my poor darling little brother almost was killed”
At this, Robert interrupted her with fresh outcries, and clung to her pitifully. She soothed him, and turned her flashing and indignant eyes upon Renfrew.
“You stood there, not like a man but like a block of wood,” she said. “You didn’t even look at them!”
“Why, no,” said Renfrew. “I was looking at your window.”
Apparently he felt that this was an explanation that explained everything. He seemed to imply that any man would naturally demean himself like a block of wood while engaged in the act of observation he mentioned, even though surrounded by circumstances of murder.
It routed Muriel. She had no words to express her feeling about a person who talked like that; and giving him but one instant to take in the full meaning of her compressed lips, her irate colour and indignant breathing, she turned pointedly away. Then, with Robert clinging to her, she went across the lawn and forth from the gate, while Mr. Mears and his small sister watched in an impressed silence.
Some one else watched Muriel as she supported the feeble steps of the weeping fat boy across the street; and this was the self-styled woman-hater and celebrated malleteer, Master Laurence Coy. He was at a far distance down the street, and in the thorny middle of a hedge where no sheriff might behold him; but he could see, and he was relieved (though solely on his own account) to discover that Robert was still breathing. He was about to come out from the hedge when the disquieting afterthought struck him: Robert might have expressed a wish to be taken to die in his own home. Therefore Laurence remained yet a while where he was.
By the hydrant, Daisy was so interested in the departure of the injured brother and raging sister that she had forgotten her broken stummick and the semicircular position she had assumed to assuage it, or possibly to keep the broken parts together. She stood upright, watching the two emotional Eliots till they had disappeared round their own house in the direction of their own hydrant. Then she turned and looked up brightly at her brother.
“She’s fearful mad, isn’t she?” Daisy said, laughing. “She treats you awful, don’t she?”
“Never mind,” Renfrew said, and then he remembered something that had puzzled him not so painfully; and he wondered if Daisy might shed a light on this. “Daisy, what in the world made you pick on poor little Laurence the way you did?”
“Me?” she asked, surprised. “Why, it was Elsie told us to.”
“That’s it,” Renfrew said. “That’s what I want to know. Laurence was just as nice to her as he could be; he did everything he could think of to please her, and the first chance she got, she set the whole pack of you on him. What did she do a thing like that for?”
Daisy picked a dandelion from the grass and began to eat it. “What?” she inquired.
“What makes Elsie so mean to poor little Laurence Coy?”
“Oh, well,” said Daisy casually, “she likes him best. She likes him best of all the boys in town.” And then, swallowing some petals of the dandelion, she added: “She treats him awful.”
Renfrew looked at her thoughtfully; then his wondering eyes moved slowly upward till they rested once more upon the maple-embowered window over the way, and into his expression there came a hint of something almost hopeful.
“So she does!” he said.