The Fascinating Stranger and Other Stories/Maytime in Marlow
MAYTIME IN MARLOW
IN MAY, when the maple leaves are growing large, the Midland county seat and market town called Marlow so disappears into the foliage that travellers, gazing from Pullman windows, wonder why a railroad train should stop to look at four or five preoccupied chickens in a back yard. On the other hand, this neighbourly place is said to have a population numbering more than three thousand. At least, that is what a man from Marlow will begin to claim as soon as he has journeyed fifteen or twenty miles from home; but to display the daring of Midland patriotism in a word, there have been Saturdays (with the farmers in town) when strangers of open-minded appearance have been told, right down on the Square itself, that Marlow consisted of upwards of four thousand mighty enterprising inhabitants.
After statistics so dashing, it seems fairly conservative to declare that upon the third Saturday of last May one idea possessed the minds and governed the actions of all the better bachelors of Marlow who were at that time between the ages of seventeen and ninety, and that the same idea likewise possessed and governed all the widowers, better and worse, age unlimited.
She was first seen on the Main Street side of the Square at about nine o’clock in the morning. To people familiar with Marlow this will mean that all the most influential business men obtained a fair view of her at an early hour, so that the news had time to spread to the manufacturers and professional men before noon.
Mr. Rolfo Williams, whose hardware establishment occupies a corner, was the first of the business men to see her. He was engaged within a cool alcove of cutlery when he caught a glimpse of her through a window; but in spite of his weight he managed to get near the wide-spread front doors of his store in time to see her framed by the doorway as a passing silhouette of blue against the sunshine of the Square. His clerk, a young married man, was only a little ahead of him in reaching the sidewalk.
“My goodness, George!” Mr. Williams murmured. “Who is that?”
“Couldn’t be from a bit more’n half a mile this side o’ New York!” said George, marvelling. “Look at the clo’es!”
“No, George,” his employer corrected him gently. “To me it’s more the figger.”
The lady was but thirty or forty feet away, and though she did not catch their words, the murmur of the two voices attracted her attention. Not pausing in her light stride forward, she looked back over her shoulder, and her remarkable eyes twinkled with recognition. She smiled charmingly, then nodded twice—first, unmistakably to Mr. Williams, and then, with equal distinctness, to George.
These dumfounded men, staring in almost an agony of blankness, were unable to return the salutation immediately. The attractive back of her head was once more turned to them by the time they recovered sufficiently to bow, but both of them did bow, in spite of that, being ultimately conscientious no matter how taken aback. Even so, they were no more flustered than was old Mr. Newton Truscom (Clothier, Hatter, and Gents’ Furnisher), just emerging from his place of business next door; for Mr. Truscom was likewise sunnily greeted.
“My goodness!” Mr. Williams gasped. “I never saw her from Adam!”
Mr. Truscom, walking backward, joined the hardware men. “Seems like fine-lookin’ girls liable to take considerable of a fancy to us three fellers,” he said; “whether they know us or not!”
“Shame on you, Newt!” George returned. “Didn’t you see her give me the eye? Of course, after that, she wanted to be polite to you and Mr. Williams. Thought him and you were prob’ly my pappy and gran’daddy!”
“Look!” said Mr. Truscom. “She’s goin’ in Milo Carter’s drug-store. Sody-water, I shouldn’t wonder!”
“It just this minute occurred to me how a nectar and pineapple was what I needed,” said George. “Mr. Williams, I’ll be back at the store in a few min—”
“No, George,” his employer interrupted. “I don’t mind your lollin’ around on the sidewalk till she comes out again, because that’s about what I’m liable to do myself, but if you don’t contain yourself from no nectar and pineapple, I’m goin’ to tell your little bride about it—and you know what Birdie will say!”
“Rolfo, did you notice them shoes?” Mr. Truscom asked, with sudden intensity. “If Baker and Smith had the enterprise to introduce a pattern like that in our community”
“No, Newt, I didn’t take so much notice of her shoes. To me,” said Mr. Williams dreamily, “to me it was more the whole figger, as it were.”
The three continued to stare at the pleasing glass front of Milo Carter’s drug-store; and presently they were joined by two other men of business who had perceived from their own doorways that something unusual was afoot; while that portion of Main Street lying beyond Milo Carter’s also showed signs of being up with the times. Emerging from this section, P. Borodino Thompson and Calvin Burns, partners in Insurance, Real Estate, Mortgages and Loans, appeared before the drug-store, hovered a moment in a non-committal manner that was really brazen, then walked straight into the store and bought a two-cent stamp for the firm.
Half an hour later, Mortimer Fole was as busy as he could be. That is to say, Mortimer woke from his first slumber in a chair in front of the National House, heard the news, manœuvred until he obtained a view of its origin, and then drifted about the Square exchanging comment with other shirt-sleeved gossips. (Mortimer was usually unemployed; but there was a Mexican War pension in the family.)
“Heard about it?” he inquired, dropping into E. J. Fuller’s (E. J. Fuller & Co., Furniture, Carpets and Wall-Paper).
“Yes, Mortimore,” E. J. Fuller replied. “Anybody know anything?”
“Some of ’em claim they do,” said Mortimer. “Couple fellers I heard says she must belong with some new picture theatre they claim an out-o’-town firm’s goin’ to git goin’ here, compete with the Vertabena. Howk, he says thinks not; claims it’s a lady he heard was comin’ to settle here from Wilkes-Barry, Pennsylvania, and give embroidery lessons and card-playin’. Cousin of the Ferrises and Wheelers, so Howk claims. I says, ‘She is, is she?’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘that’s the way I look at it.’ ‘Oh, you do, do you?’ I says. ‘Then what about her speakin’ to everybody?’ I ast him, right to his face; and you’d ought to seen him! Him and all of ’em are wrong.”
“How do you know, Mortimore?” asked Mr. Fuller. “What makes you think so?”
“Listen here, Ed,” said Mortimer. “What’d she do when she went into Charlie Murdock’s and bought a paper o’ pins? You heard about that, yet?”
“No.”
“She went in there,” said Mr. Fole, “and spoke right to Charlie. ‘How are you, Mister Murdock?’ she says. Charlie like to fell over backwards! And then, when he got the pins wrapped up and handed ’em to her she says, ‘How’s your wife, Mr. Murdock?’ Well, sir, Charlie says his wife was just about the last woman in the world he had in his mind right then!”
“Where’s she supposed to be now?” Mr. Fuller inquired, not referring to Mrs. Murdock. “Over at the hotel?”
“Nope,” Mortimer replied. “She ain’t puttin’ up there. Right now she’s went upstairs in the Garfield Block to Lu Allen’s office. Haven’t heard what Lu’s got to say or whether she’s come out. You git to see her yet?”
“No, sir,” Mr. Fuller returned, rather indifferently. “What’s she look like, Mortimore?”
“Well, sir, I can give you a right good notion about that,” said Mortimer. “I expect I’m perty much the only man in town that could, too. You remember the time me and you went over to Athens City and took in the Athens City lodge’s excursion to Chicago? Well, remember somebody got us to go to a matinée show without any much cuttin’ up or singin’ in it, but we got so we liked it anyhow—and went back there again same night?”
“Yes, sir. Maude Adams.”
“Well, sir, it ain’t her, but that’s who she kind o’ put me in mind of. Carryin’ a blue parasol, too.”
Mr. Fuller at once set down the roll of wall-paper he was measuring, and came out from behind his counter.
“Where goin’, Ed?” Mortimer inquired, stretching himself elaborately, though somewhat surprised at Mr. Fuller’s abrupt action—for Mortimer was indeed capable of stretching himself in a moment of astonishment.
“What?”
“Where goin’?”
Mr. Fuller, making for the open, was annoyed by the question. “Out!” he replied.
“I got nothin’ much to do right now,” said the sociable Mortimer. “I’ll go with you. Where’d you say you was goin’, Ed?”
“Business!” Mr. Fuller replied crossly.
“That suits me, Ed. I kind o’ want to see Lu Allen, myself!”
Thereupon they set forth across the Square, taking a path that ran through the courthouse yard; but when they came out from behind the old, red brick building and obtained a fair view of the Garfield Block, they paused. She of the blue parasol was disappearing into the warm obscurity of Pawpaw Street; and beside her sauntered Mr. Lucius Brutus Allen, Attorney at Law, his stoutish figure and celebrated pongee coat as unmistakable from the rear as from anywhere. In the deep, congenial shade of the maple trees her parasol was unnecessary, and Lucius dangled it from his hand, or poked its ferule idly at bugs in shrubberies trembling against the picket fences that lined the way.
At any distance it could be seen that his air was attentive and gallant—perhaps more than that, for there was even a tenderness expressed in the oblique position of his shoulders, which seemed to incline toward his companion. Mr. Rolfo Williams, to describe this mood of Lucius Allen’s, made free use of the word “sag.” Mr. Williams stood upon the corner with his wife, that amiable matron, and P. Borodino Thompson, all three staring unaffectedly. “That’s Lu Allen’s lady-walk,” said Rolfo, as E. J. Fuller and Mortimer joined them. “He always kind o’ sags when he goes out walkin’ with the girls. Sags toe-ward ’em. I’ll say this much: I never see him sag deeper than what he is right now. Looks to me like he’s just about fixin’ to lean on her!”
“Don’t you worry!” his wife said testily. “Lucy’d slap him in a minute! She always was that kind of a girl.”
“‘Lucy!’” Mortimer echoed. “Lucy who?”
“Lucy Cope.”
“What on earth are you talkin’ about, Miz Williams? That ain’t Lucy Cope!”
Mrs. Williams laughed. “Just why ain’t it?” she asked satirically. “I expect some o’ the men in this town better go get the eye-doctor to take a look at ’em! Especially”—she gave her husband a compassionate glance—“especially the fat, old ones! Mrs. Cal Burns come past my house ’while ago; says, ‘Miz Williams, I expect you better go on up-town look after your husband,’ she says. ‘I been huntin’ fer mine,’ she says, ‘but I couldn’t locate him, because he knows better than to let me to,’ she says, ‘after what P. Borodino Thompson’s just been tellin’ me about him! Lucy Cope Ricketts is back in town,’ she says, ‘and none the men reckanized her yet,’ she says, ‘and you better go on up to the Square and take a look for yourself how they’re behavin’! I hear,’ she says, ‘I hear hasn’t anybody been able to get waited on at any store-counter in town so far this morning, except Lucy herself.’”
“Well, sir,” Mr. Williams declared. “I couldn’t hardly of believed it, but it certainly is her.” He shook his head solemnly at Mrs. Williams, and, gently detaching her palm-leaf fan from her hand, used it for his own benefit, as he continued: “Boys, what I’m always tellin’ ma here is that there ain’t nothin’ on earth like bein’ a widow to bring out the figger!”
“You hush up!” she said, but was constrained to laugh and add, “I guess you’d be after me all right if I was a widow!”
“No, Carrie,” he said, “I wouldn’t be after nobody if you was a widow.”
“I mean if I was anybody else’s,” Mrs. Williams explained. “Look how George says you been actin’ all morning about this one!”
Mr. Fuller intervened in search of information. He was not a native, and had been a citizen of Marlow a little less than four years. “Did you say this lady was one of the Ricketts family, Mrs. Williams?” he inquired.
“No. She married a Ricketts. She’s a Cope; she’s all there is left of the Copes.”
“Did I understand you to say she was a widow?”
“I didn’t say she was one,” Mrs. Williams replied. “She is one now, though. Her and Tom Ricketts got married ten years ago and went to live in California. He’s been dead quite some time—three-four years maybe—and she’s come back to live in the Copes’ ole house, because it belongs to her, I expect. Everybody knew she was comin’ some time this spring—everybody’d heard all about it—but none you men paid any attention to it. I’ll have to let you off, Mr. Fuller. You’re a widower and ain’t lived here long, and you needn’t take what I’m sayin’ to yourself. But the rest of all you rag-tag and bob-tail aren’t goin’ to hear the last o’ this for some time! Mr. Fuller, if you want to know why they never took any interest up to this morning in Lucy Cope Ricketts’ goin’ to come back and live here again, it’s because all they ever remembered her she was kind of a peakid girl; sort of thin, and never seemed to have much complexion to speak of. You wouldn’t think it to look at her now, but that’s the way she was up to when she got married and went away. Now she’s back here, and a widow, not a one of ’em reckanized her till Mrs. Cal Burns come up-town and told ’em—and look how they been actin’!”
“It all goes to show what I say,” said Rolfo. “She always did have kind of a sweet-lookin’ face, but I claim that there’s nothin’ in the world like being a happy widow to bring out the complexion and the”
“Listen to you!” his wife interrupted. “How you do keep out o’ jail so long I certainly don’t know!” She turned to the others. “That man’s a born bigamist,” she declared. “And at that I don’t expect he’s so much worse’n the rest of you!”
“You ought to leave me out along with E. J. Fuller, Mrs. Williams,” Mr. Thompson protested. “I’ve never even been married at all.”
But this only served to provoke Rolfo’s fat chuckle, and the barbed comment: “It is a heap cheaper at mealtimes, Bore!”
“How’s it happen Lu Allen’s so thick with Mrs. Ricketts?” E. J. Fuller inquired. “How’s it come that he”
“He’s her lawyer,” Mrs. Williams informed him, “and he was executor of the Cope will, and all. Besides that, he used to be awful attentive to her, and nobody was hardly certain which she was goin’ to take, Lu Allen or Tom Ricketts, right up to a year or two before she got married. Looks like Lu was goin’ to get a second chance, and money throwed in!”
“Well, Lu’s a talker, but he’ll have to talk some now!” P. Borodino Thompson announced thoughtfully. “I used to know her, too, but I never expected she was going to turn out like this!”
“You and I been gettin’ to be pretty fair friends, Bore,” said Mr. Fuller, genially, as the group broke up. “Think you could kind of slide me in along with you when you go up there to call?”
“No, sir!” Mr. Thompson replied emphatically. “Red-headed Lu Allen isn’t much of a rival, but he’s enough for me. If you think of starting in, first thing I do I’m going to tell her you’re an embezzler. I’m going home now to get out my cutaway suit and white vest, and you can tell ’em all to keep out of my road! I’m going calling this evening, right after supper!”
“Never mind!” Fuller warned him. “I’ll get up there some way!”
Meanwhile, in the sun-checkered shadow of a honeysuckle vine that climbed a green trellis beside an old doorway, Mr. Lucius Brutus Allen was taking leave of his lovely friend.
“Will you come this evening, Lucius, and help me decide on some remodeling for the house?” she asked; and probably no more matter-of-fact question ever inspired a rhapsody in the bosom of a man of thirty-five.
“No, thanks,” said Mr. Allen. “I never could decide which I thought your voice was like, Lucy: a harp or a violin. It’s somewhere between, I suspect; but there are pictures in it, too. Doesn’t make any difference what you say, whenever you speak a person can’t help thinking of wild roses shaking the dew off of ’em in the breezes that blow along about sunrise. You might be repeating the multiplication table or talking about hiring a cook, but the sound of your voice would make pictures like that, just the same. I had to hear it again to find out how I’ve been missing it. I must have been missing it every single day of these ten years whether I knew it or not. It almost makes me sorry you’ve come back, because if you hadn’t I’d never have found out how I must have been suffering.”
Mrs. Ricketts looked at him steadily from within the half-shadow of the rim of her pretty hat. “When will you come and help me with the plans?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Mr. Allen returned absently; and he added with immediate enthusiasm: “I never in my life saw any girl whose hair made such a lovely shape to her head as yours, Lucy! It’s just where you want a girl’s hair to be, and it’s not any place you don’t want it to be. It’s the one thing in the world without any fault at all—the only thing the Lord made just perfect—except your nose and maybe the Parthenon when it was new.”
That brought a laugh from her, and Lucius, who was pink naturally and pinker with the warm day, grew rosy as he listened to Lucy’s laughter. “By George!” he said. “To hear you laugh again!”
“You always did make me laugh, Lucius.”
“Especially if I had anything the matter with me,” he said. “If I had a headache or toothache I’d always come around to get you to laugh. Sometimes if the pain was pretty bad, it wouldn’t go away till you laughed two or three times!”
She laughed the more; then she sighed. “Over ten years, almost eleven—and you saying things like this to every girl and woman you met, all the time!”
“Well,” Mr. Allen said thoughtfully, “nobody takes much notice what a chunky kind of man with a reddish head and getting a little bald says. It’s quite a privilege.”
She laughed again, and sighed again. “Do you remember how we used to sit out here in the evenings under the trees, Lucius? One of the things I’ve often thought about since then was how when you were here, papa and mamma would bring their chairs and join us, and you’d talk about the moon, and astronomy, and the Hundred Years War, and”
“Yes!” Lucius interrupted ruefully. “And then some other young fellow would turn up—some slim, dark-haired Orlando—and you’d go off walking with him while I stayed with the old folks. I’d be talking astronomy with them, but you and Orlando were strolling under the stars—and didn’t care what they were made of!”
“No,” she said. “I mean what I’ve thought about was that papa and mamma never joined us unless you were here. It took me a long while to understand that, Lucius; but finally I did.” She paused, musing a moment; then she asked: “Do the girls and boys still sit out on front steps and porches, or under the trees in the yard in the evenings the way we used to? Do you remember how we’d always see old Doctor Worley jogging by in his surrey exactly as the courthouse bell rang nine, every night; his wife on the back seat and the old doctor on the front one, coming home from their evening drive? There are so many things I remember like that, and they all seem lovely now—and I believe they must be why I’ve come back here to live—though I didn’t think much about them at the time. Do the girls and boys still sit out in the yards in the evening, Lucius?”
Lucius dangled the ferule of the long-handled blue parasol over the glowing head of a dandelion in the grass. “Not so much,” he answered. “And old Doc Worley and his wife don’t drive in their surrey in the summer evenings any more. They’re both out in the cemetery now, and the surrey’s somewhere in the air we breathe, because it was burnt on a trash-heap the other day, though I’ve seemed to see it driving home in the dusk a hundred times since it fell to pieces. Nowadays hardly any, even of the old folks, ride in surreys. These ten years have changed the world, Lucy. Money and gasoline. Even Marlow’s got into the world; and in the evenings they go out snorting and sirening and blowing-out and smoking blue oil all over creation. Bore Thompson’s about the only man in town that’s still got any use for a hitching-post. He drives an old white horse to a phaeton, and by to-morrow afternoon at the latest you’ll find that old horse and phaeton tied to the ring in the hand of that little old cast-iron stripe-shirted nigger-boy in front of your gate yonder.”
Mrs. Ricketts glanced frowningly at the obsolete decoration he mentioned; then she smiled. “That’s one of the things I want you to advise me about,” she said. “I don’t know how much of the place to alter and how much to leave as it is. And why will I find Mr. Thompson’s horse tied to our poor old cast-iron darky boy?”
“He’s seen you, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, but he looked startled when I spoke to him. Besides, he used to see me when I was a girl, and he was one of the beaux of the town, and he never came then.”
“He will now,” said Lucius.
“Oh, surely not!” she protested, a little dismayed.
“He couldn’t help it if he tried, poor thing!”
At that she affected to drop him a curtsey, but nevertheless appeared not over-pleased. “You seem to be able to help it, Lucius,” she said; and the colour in his cheeks deepened a little as she went on: “Of course you don’t know that the way you declined to come this evening is one of the things that make life seem such a curious and mixed-up thing to me. After I—when I’d gone away from here to live, you were what I always remembered when I thought of Marlow, Lucius. And I remembered things you’d said to me that I hadn’t thought of at all when you were saying them. It was so strange! I’ve got to knowing you better and better all the long, long time I’ve been away from you—and I could always remember you more clearly than anybody else. It seems queer and almost a little wicked to say it, but I could remember you even more clearly than I could papa and mamma—and, oh! how I’ve looked forward to seeing you again and to having you talk to me about everything! Why won’t you come this evening? Aren’t you really glad I’m home again?”
“That’s the trouble!” he said; and seemed to feel that he had offered a satisfactory explanation.
“What in the world do you mean?” she cried.
“I gather,” he said slowly, “from what you’ve said, that you think more about me when I’m not around where you have to look at me! Besides”
“Besides what?” she insisted, as he moved toward the gate.
“I’m afraid!” said Lucius; and his voice was husky and honest. “I’m afraid,” he repeated seriously, as he closed the gate behind him. “I’m afraid to meet Maud and Bill.”
She uttered half of a word of protest, not more than that; and it went unheard. Frowning, she compressed her lips, and in troubled silence stood watching his departure. Then, all at once, the frown vanished from her forehead, the perplexity from her eyes; and she pressed an insignificant handkerchief to a charming mouth overtaken by sudden laughter. But she made no sound or gesture that would check Lucius Brutus Allen or rouse him to the realization of what he was doing.
The sturdy gentleman was marching up Pawpaw Street toward the Square, unconscious that he had forgotten to return the long-handled blue parasol to its owner—and that he was now jauntily carrying it over his right shoulder after the manner of a musket. Above the fence, the blue parasol and the head of Lucius bobbed rhythmically with his gait, and Mrs. Ricketts, still with her handkerchief to her lips, watched that steady bobbing until intervening shrubberies closed the exhibition. Then, as she opened the door of the old frame house, she spoke half-aloud:
“Nobody—not one—never anywhere!” she said; and she meant that Lucius was unparalleled.
When Mr. Allen debouched upon Main Street from Pawpaw, he encountered Mortimer Fole, who addressed him with grave interest:
“Takin’ it to git mended, I suppose, Lu?”
“Get what mended?” asked Lucius, pausing.
“Her parasol,” Mr. Fole responded. “If you’ll show me where it’s out of order, I expect I could get it fixed up about as well as anybody. Frank Smith that works over at E. J. Fuller’s store, he’s considerable of a tinker, and I reckon he’d do it fer nothin’ if it was me ast him to. I’d be willin’ to carry it up to her house for you, too. I go by there anyhow, on my way home.”
“No, Mortimore, thank you.” Lucius brought the parasol down from his shoulder and stood regarding it seriously. “No; it isn’t out of order. I—I just brought it with me. What’s the news?”
“Well, I don’t know of much,” said Mortimer, likewise staring attentively at the parasol. “Some wall-paperin’ goin’ on here and there over town, E. J. Fuller says. Ed says P. Borodino Thompson told him he was goin’ to drop round and call this evening, he says; but afterwards I was up at the hardware store, and Bore come in there and Rolfo Williams’s wife talked him out o’ goin’. ‘My heavens!’ she says, ‘can’t you even give her a couple days to git unpacked and straighten up the house?’ So Bore says he guessed he’d wait till to-morrow afternoon and ast her to go buggy-ridin’ in that ole mud-coloured phaeton of his. Milo Carter’s fixin’ to go up there before long, and I hear Henry Ledyard says he’s liable to start in mighty soon, too. You and Bore better look out, Lu. Henry’s some years younger than what you and Bore are. He ain’t as stocky as what you are, nor as skinny as what Bore is, and he certainly out-dresses the both of you every day in the week an’ twicet on Sunday!”
“Thank you, Mortimore,” Lucius responded, nodding. “I’d been calculating a little on a new necktie—but probably it wouldn’t be much use if Henry Ledyard’s going to”
“No, sir,” Mortimer interrupted to agree. “Henry buys ’em a couple or more at a time. Newt Truscom’s goin’ to be a rich man if Henry don’t quit. So long, Lu!”
Mr. Allen, turning in at the entrance to the stairway that led to his office, waved his left hand in farewell, his right being employed in an oddly solicitous protection of the parasol—though nothing threatened it. But Mortimer, having sauntered on a few steps, halted, and returned to the stairway entrance, whence he called loudly upward:
“Lu! Oh, Lu Allen!”
“What is it?”
“I forgot to mention it. You want to be lookin’ out your window along around three o’clock or half-past, to-morrow afternoon.”
“What for?”
“Why, P. Borodino was talkin’ and all so much, about that buggy-ride, you know, so Rolfo Williams bet him a safety-razor against three dollars’ worth of accident insurance that he wouldn’t git her to go with him, and Bore’s got to drive around the Square, first thing after they start, to prove it. There’s quite a heap of interest around town in all this and that; and you better keep your eye out your window from three o’clock on!”
Thus, at three o’clock, the next afternoon, Mr. Allen was in fact looking—though somewhat crossly—out of his office window. Below, P. Borodino Thompson was in view, seated in his slowly moving phaeton, exuberantly clad for a man of his special reputation for “closeness,” and with his legs concealed by a new dust-robe, brilliantly bordered; but he was as yet unaccompanied.
A loud and husky voice ascended to the window: “On his way!” And Lucius marked the form and suspender of Mortimer upon the sidewalk below; whereupon Mortimer, seeing that Lucius observed him, clapped hand to mouth, and simulated a jocular writhing in mockery of P. Borodino. “Hay, Bore!” he bellowed. “Floyd Kilbert’s wife’s got a sewin’-machine she wants you to move fer her in that empty seat you’ll have in your phaeton when you git back here to the Square in a few minutes!”
Mr. Thompson waved his whip condescendingly, attempting no other retort; and turned into the maple shade of Pawpaw Street. Five minutes later, “General,” the elderly white horse, was nosing the unyielding hand of the cast-iron darky boy, and the prophecy made by Mr. Allen on the preceding morning was fulfilled.
A neat young woman, descendant of vikings, but tamed in all except accent, showed Mr. Thompson into an Eighteen-Eighty parlour; went away, returned, and addressed him as “yentleman.” Mrs. Ricketts would be glad to see him, she reported, adding: “Yust wait some minute.”
The visitor waited some minutes, then examined his reflection in the glass over the Eastlake mantel; and a slight rustling in the hall, near the doorway, failed to attract his attention, for he was engaged in a fundamental rearrangement of his tie.
“Wookin’ at himseff in the wookin’-gwass!”
This unfavourable comment caused him to tuck his tie back into the neck of his white waistcoat in haste, and to face the doorway somewhat confusedly. Two pretty little children stood there, starchy and fresh, and lustrously clean, dressed in white: a boy about seven and a girl about five—and both had their mother’s blue eyes and amber hair.
“He’s dressin’ himself,” said the boy.
“Wookin’ at himseff in the wookin’-gwass!” the little girl repeated, and, pointing a curling forefinger, she asked: “Who? Who that man?”
“Well, tots,” the visitor said, rather uncomfortably, but with proper graciousness, “who are you? What’s your name, little girl?”
“Maud,” the little girl replied, without any shyness.
“What’s yours, little man?”
“Bill,” said the boy. “Bill Ricketts. You got somep’m stickin’ out of your vest at the top.”
Mr. Thompson incautiously followed an impulse to turn again to the mirror, whereupon the child, Maud, instantly shouted:
“Wookin’ at himseff in the wookin’-gwass!”
Her voice was so loud, and the information it imparted so discomfiting, that the visitor felt himself breaking out suddenly into a light perspiration. Foolishly, he attempted to defend himself against the accusation. “Why, no, I wasn’t, little Maudie,” he said, with an uneasy laugh.
To his horror, she responded by shouting at an even higher pitch than before:
“Wookin’ at himseff in the wookin’-gwass!”
She did not stop at that, for children in such moods are terrible, and they have no pity. P. Borodino Thompson, substantial citizen, of considerable importance financially, not only in Marlow but throughout the county, and not without dignity to maintain, found himself at the mercy of this child who appeared to be possessed (for no reason whatever) by the old original Fiend of malice. She began to leap into the air repeatedly; leaping higher and higher, clapping her hands together, at arms’-length above her head, while she shrieked, squealed, and in all ways put pressure upon her lungs and vocal organs to distribute over the world the scandal that so horridly fascinated her:
“Caught him! Wookin’ at himseff in the wookin’-gwass! Caught him wookin’ at himseff in the wookin’-gwass! Wookin’ at himseff in the wookin’-GWASS!”
Meanwhile, her brother did not escape infection. He, likewise, began to leap and to vociferate, so that it was not possible to imagine any part of the house, or of the immediate neighbourhood, to which the indictment was not borne.
“Stickin’ out of his vest!” shouted Bill. “Got somep’n stickin’ out of his vest! Out of his vest, vest, vest! Out of his vest, vest, VEST!”
Then, without warning, he suddenly slapped his sister heartily upon the shoulder. “Got your tag!” he cried; darted away, and out through the open front door to the green sunshiny yard, whither Maud instantly pursued him.
Round and round the front yard they went, the two little flitting white figures, and round the house, and round and round the old back yard with its long grape-arbour and empty stable. By and by, when each had fallen separately four or five times, they collided and fell together, remaining prone, as by an unspoken agreement. Panting, they thus remained for several minutes; then Bill rose and walked into the stable, until now unexplored; and Maud followed him.
When they came out, two minutes later, Bill was carrying, to the extreme damage of his white blouse, a large can of red paint, while Maud was swinging a paint-brush that had been reposing in the can; and the look upon their two flushed faces was studious but inscrutable.
Maud applied the brush to the side of the house, leaving a broad red streak upon the gray weather-boarding; but Bill indignantly snatched the brush from her hand.
“Shame!” he said. “You know what you got once!”
“When?” Maud demanded. “When did I got it?”
“You know!” her brother responded darkly. “For markin’ on the nurs’ry wall with my little box o’ paints.”
“She did not!”
“She did, too!”
“Not!”
“Did!” said Bill. “And you’ll get one now if she finds out you stuck paint on the house. You will!”
“I won’t!”
“Will, too! You know it’s wrong to stick paint on a house.”
“’Tisn’t!” Maud insisted. “She spanks you more’n she spanks me.”
“You wait an’ see!”
He shook his head ominously, and for a moment Maud was depressed, but the signs of foreboding vanished from her angelic brow, and she made the natural inquiry:
“What we goin’ to paint?”
To Bill also, it was evident that something had to be painted; but as he looked about him, the available material seemed sparse. As a being possessed of reason, he understood that a spanking applied to his sister in order to emphasize the immunity of houses, might well be thought to indicate that stables and fences were also morally unpaintable. Little appeared to remain at the disposal of a person who had just providentially acquired a can of red paint and a brush. Shrubberies were obviously impracticable, and Bill had his doubts about the trunks of trees: they were made of wood, he knew, like many houses and fences and stables.
As he stood, thinking profoundly, there came loudly through the still afternoon the sound of General, shaking his harness and stamping the ground, as a May fly persisted in annoying him.
Maud pointed with her curling forefinger. “Wet’s paint that,” she said.
“That” was the horse; Maud was pointing at General. And immediately Bill’s eyes showed his relief from a great strain, and became eager and confident: nobody had ever told him not to paint a horse.
Hand-in-hand, the brother and sister approached General. The kind old horse, worried by the fly and the heat, was pleased to have the fly chased away; and after the first stroke of the cool wet brush on his right foreleg, he closed one eye in hushed ecstasy and stood motionless, lest he break the spell.
General’s owner, meanwhile, in the quiet parlour, had not quite recovered his usual pallor; but the departure of the children mightily relieved him, and he found time to complete the bestowal of his tie. Thereafter, Mrs. Ricketts still not making her appearance, he had leisure to acquaint himself with the design of romantic musical instruments inlaid in pearl upon the top of the centre-table; and with the two tall alabaster pitchers upon the mantelpiece, each bearing the carved word “Souvenir;” and with the Toreador burnt upon a panel of wood and painted, but obscure with years of standing in an empty house—though nothing was dusty, for plainly the daughter of vikings had been “over” everything thoroughly. Altogether, Mr. Thompson considered the room (which spoke of Lucy Cope’s mother rather than of Lucy) a pleasant and comfortable one—that is, if those children
A step descending the stair, a whispering of silk—and Mr. Thompson, after a last settling of his neck into his collar, coughed reassuringly, and faced the door with a slight agitation. More would have been warranted by the vision that appeared there.
She came quickly toward him and gave him her hand. “How kind of you to remember me and come to see me!” she said. “And how inhospitable you’re thinking me to have kept you waiting so long in such a stuffy room!” She turned to the nearest window as she spoke, and began to struggle delicately with the catch of the old-fashioned “inside shutters.” “We’ll let some air in and some light, too; so that we can both see how little we’ve changed. The children were the reason I was so long: they were washed and dressed like little clean angels, but they’re in rather high spirits—you know how children are for the first few days after coming to a new place—and they slipped down into the cellar, which we haven’t had time to get put in order yet, and they found an old air-passage to the furnace, and crawled through it, and so they had to be all washed and dressed over again; and when I got through doing it, I had to be all washed and dressed over again! I hope they didn’t annoy you, Mr. Thompson: I thought I heard them romping down here, somewhere. They’re really not so wild as they must seem; it’s only that coming to a place altogether strange to them has upset them a little, and There!” The catch yielded, and she spread the shutters wide. “Now we can have a little more li”
She paused in the middle of the word, gazing fixedly out of the window.
But the caller did not follow the direction of Mrs. Ricketts’s gaze; he was looking at her with concentrated approval, and mentally preparing the invitation it was his purpose to extend. After coughing rather formally, “I have called,” he said, “or, rather, I have stopped by on my way to take a drive, because I thought, perhaps, as the weather was warm, it might be cooler than sitting indoors to take a turn around the Square first and then drive out toward the Athens City Pike, and return by way of”
“Mercy!” exclaimed Mrs. Ricketts in a tone so remarkable that he stopped short; and then his eyes followed the direction of hers.
He uttered a stricken cry.
All four of General’s legs had been conscientiously painted, and Maud, standing directly under his stomach, so to speak, was holding the can of paint clasped in her arms, while the older artist began work on the under side of General’s ribs. General’s expression was one of dreamy happiness, though his appearance, and that of the children’s clothes, hands, cheeks, and noses suggested a busy day at the abattoir.
“Don’t move!” Mrs. Ricketts called suddenly, but not alarmingly, as she raised the window. “Stand still, Maud! Now walk straight this way—walk toward me. Instantly!”
And as Maud obeyed, her mother jumped out of the window, a proceeding that both children recognized as extraordinary and ill-omened. Bill instinctively began to defend himself.
“You never told us we couldn’t paint horses!” he said hotly. “We haven’t painted him much, we’ve only”
“March!” said his mother in the tone that meant the worst. “Round to the kitchen—not through the house! Both of you! Quick!”
Bill opened his mouth to protest further, but, almost to his own surprise, a wail came forth instead of an argument, and at that sound, Maud dropped the sanguinary can and joined him in loud dole. Shouting with woe, holding their unspeakable hands far from them, with fingers spread wide, they marched. Round the corner of the house went the dread pageant, and the green grass looked like murder where it passed. But when Mrs. Ricketts returned, after delivering Maud and Bill into the hands of a despairing servitress, General and the phaeton were gone.
“Oh, oh, oh!” she murmured, and, overcome by the dreadful picture that rose before her imagination, she went droopingly into the house. In her mind’s eye she saw Mr. Thompson in all his special dressiness and lemon-yellow tie, driving through the streets and explaining to people: “Yes, Lucy Ricketts has come back and her children did this!” She saw him telling Lucius—and she remembered what Lucius had said: “I’m afraid to meet Maud and Bill!”
She began to feel strickenly sure that Lucius would return her parasol by a messenger. If he did that (she thought) what was the use of coming all the way from California to live in a town like Marlow!
But the parasol was not sent, nor did Lucius bring it. It remained, as did Mr. Allen himself, obscured from her sight and from her knowledge. Nor was there brought to her any account of P. Borodino’s making a dreadful progress through the town as she had imagined. Mr. Thompson had, in fact, led General as hastily as possible into the nearest alley—so Mortimer Fole explained to Lucius one week later, almost to the hour.
Mortimer had dropped into Mr. Allen’s office and had expressed surprise at finding its tenant in town. “I been up here two three times a day fer a week, Lu,” he said, seating himself. “Where on earth you been?”
“Argument before the Federal court in Springfield,” Lucius answered. “What did you want to see me about, Mortimer?”
“Well, they’s been some talk about our pension goin’ out the family,” said Mortimer, “in case it happened my wife’s stepmother was to die. It comes through that branch, you know, Lu.”
“Is she ailing?”
“No,” said Mortimer. “She gits the best of care. We were only talkin’ it over, and some of ’em says, ‘Suppose she was to go, what then?’”
“I wouldn’t worry about it until she did,” his legal adviser suggested. “Anything else?”
Mortimer removed his hat, and from the storage of its inner band took half of a cigar, which, with a reflective air, he placed in the corner of his mouth. Then he put his hat on again, tilted back against the wall, and hooked his heels over a rung of his chair. “Heard about Henry Ledyard yet?” he inquired.
“No.”
“Well, sir, he went up there,” said Mortimer. “He only went oncet!”
“What was the trouble?”
Mr. Fole cast his eyes high aloft, an ocular gesture expressing deplorable things.
“Maud and Bill,” he said.
“What did they do?”
“Henry was settin’ in the parlour talkin’ to their mother, and, the way I heard it, all of a sudden they heard somep’n go ‘Pop!’ outside, in the hall, and when they come to look, it was that new, stiff, high-crowned straw hat he went and ordered from New York and had shipped out here by express. They got a woman up there cookin’ and a Norwegian lady to do extra work, and I hear this here Norwegian tells some that the way it happened was Maud was settin’ on it, kind of jouncin’ around to see if it wouldn’t bounce her up and down. Seems this Norwegian she says spankin’ and shuttin’ up in the closet don’t do neither of ’em one little bit o’ good. Says there ain’t nothin’ in the world’ll take it out of ’em. Them two chuldern have just about got this town buffaloed, Lu!”
“Oh, only breaking a straw hat,” said Lucius. “I don’t see how that’s”
“The two of ’em come up-town,” Mortimer interrupted firmly. “They come up-town to the Square, the next afternoon after they busted Henry’s twelve-dollar hat, and they went into E. J. Fuller’s store and Ed says they come mighty near drivin’ him crazy, walkin’ up and down behind him singin’ ‘Gran’-mammy Tipsytoe.’ Then they went on over to Milo Carter’s, and they had a dollar and forty cents with ’em that they’d went and got out of their little bank. They et seven big ice-cream sodies apiece and got sick right in the store. Milo had to telephone fer their mother, and her and the Norwegian come and had to about carry ’em home. And that ain’t half of it!”
“What’s the other half?” Lucius asked gravely.
“Well, you heard about Bore, of course.”
“No, I haven’t.”
Mortimer again removed his hat, this time to rub his head. “I reckon that might be so,” he admitted. “I guess you must of left town by the time it leaked out.”
“By the time what leaked out?”
“Well, you remember how he started off, that day,” Mortimer began, “to git her to go out buggy-ridin’ in his phaeton with ole General?”
“Yes.”
“Well, sir, you know he was goin’ to drive back here and around the Square to win that bet off o’ Rolfo, and he never come. ’Stead o’ that he turned up at the hardware store about two hours later and settled the bet. Says he lost it because she wasn’t feelin’ too well when he got there, and so they just set around and talked, instead of ridin’. But Bore never went back there, and ain’t goin’ to, you bet, any more than what Henry Ledyard is! There ain’t hardly a man in town but what Maud and Bill’s got buffaloed, Lu.”
Mr. Allen occupied himself with the sharpening of a pencil. “What did they do to Thompson?” he asked casually.
“Well, sir, fer the first few days I expect I was the only man in town knowed what it was.” Mr. Fole spoke with a little natural pride. “You see, after he went up there and wasn’t no sign of him on the Square fer awhile, why I didn’t have nothin’ much to do just then, and thinks I, ‘Why not go see what’s come of him?’ thinks I. So I walked around there the back way, by Copes’s alley, and just as I was turnin’ in one end the alley, by Glory! here come P. Borodino Thompson leadin’ ole General and the phaeton in at the other end, and walkin’ as fur away from him as he could and yet still lead him.
“Well, sir, I almost let out a holler: first thing I thought was they must of been in the worst accident this town had ever saw. Why, pore ole General—honest, he looked more like a slaughter-house than he did like a horse, Lu! ‘What in the name of God is the matter, Bore!’ I says, and you never hear a man take on the way he done.
“Seems Maud and Bill had painted ole General red, and they painted him thick, too, while Bore was in the house fixin’ to take their mother out on this here buggy-ride. And, well, sir, to hear him take on, you’d of thought I was responsible for the whole business! Says it might as well be all over town, now he’d ran into me! Truth is, he talked like he was out of his mind, but I kind o’ soothed him down, and last I fixed it up with him to give me credit fer a little insurance my wife’s been wantin’ to take out on her stepmother, if I’d put General and the phaeton in George Coles’s empty barn, there in the alley, until after dark, and not say nothin’ to George or anybody about it, and then drive him over to Bore’s and unhitch him and wash him off with turpentine that night.
“Well, sir, we got it all fixed up, and I done everything I said I would, but of course you can’t expect a thing like that not to leak out some way or other; so I’m not breakin’ any obligation by tellin’ you about it, because it got all over town several days ago. If I’ve told Bore Thompson once I’ve told him a hunderd times, what’s the use his actin’ the fool about it! ‘What earthly good’s it goin’ to do,’ I says, ‘to go around mad,’ I says, ‘and abusin’ the very ones,’ I says, ‘that done the most to help you out? The boys are bound to have their joke,’ I says to him, ‘and if it hadn’t been you, why, like as not they might of been riggin’ somep’n on Lu Allen or Cal Burns, or even me,’ I says, ‘because they don’t spare nobody! Why, look,’ I says. ‘Ain’t they goin’ after Milo Carter almost as much as they are you and Henry,’ I says, ‘on account of what happened to Milo’s store?’ I says, ‘And look at E. J. Fuller,’ I says. ‘Ain’t the name o’ Gran’-mammy Tipsytoe perty near fastened on him fer good? He don’t go all up and down pickin’ at his best friend,’ I says. ‘E. J. Fuller’s got a little common sense!’ I says. Yes, sir, that’s the way I look at it, Lu.”
Mortimer unhooked his heels, and, stretching himself, elevated his legs until the alternation thus effected in the position of his centre of gravity brought his tilted chair to a level—whereupon he rose, stretched again, sighed, and prepared to conclude the interview.
“Speakin’ o’ the devil, Lu,” he said, as he moved to the door—“yes, sir, them two chuldern, Maud and Bill, have perty much got our whole little city buffaloed! They’s quite some talk goin’ on about the brain work you been showin’ Lu. I expect your reputation never did stand no higher in that line than what it does right to-day. I shouldn’t wonder it’d bring you a good deal extry law-practice, Lu: Mrs. Rolfo Williams says she always did know you were the smartest man in this town!”
“Now what are you talking about?” Lucius demanded sharply, but he was growing red to the ears, and over them.
“Goin’ out o’ town,” said Mortimer admiringly. “Keepin’ out the way o’ them chuldern and lettin’ other fellers take the brunt of ’em. Yes, sir; there isn’t a soul raises the question but what their mother is the finest-lookin’ lady that ever lived here, or but what she does every last thing any mortal could do in the line o’ disciplinn; but much as everybody’d enjoy to git better acquainted with her and begin to see somep’n of her, they all think she’s liable to lead kind of a lonesome life in our community unless—” Mortimer paused with his hand upon the door-knob—“unless somep’n happens to Maud and Bill!”
He departed languidly, his farewell coming back from the stairway: “So long, Lu!”
But the blush that had extended to include Mr. Allen’s ears, at the sound of so much praise of himself, did not vanish with the caller; it lingered and for a time grew even deeper. When it was gone, and its victim restored to his accustomed moderate pink, he pushed aside his work and went to a locked recess beneath his book-shelves. Therefrom he took the blue parasol, and a small volume in everything dissimilar to the heavy, calf-bound legal works that concealed all the walls of the room; and, returning to his swivel-chair, placed the parasol gently upon the desk. Then, allowing his left hand to remain lightly upon the parasol, he held the little book in his right and read musingly.
He read, thus, for a long time—in fact, until the setting in of twilight; and, whatever the slight shiftings of his position, he always kept one hand in light contact with the parasol. Some portions of the book he read over and over, though all of it was long since familiar to him; and there was one part of it in which his interest seemed quite unappeasable. Again and again he turned back to the same page; but at last, as the room had grown darker, and his eye-glasses tired him, he let the book rest in his lap, took off the glasses and used them to beat time to the rhythm of the cadences, as he murmured, half-aloud:
“The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise,
As I turn it low to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes.
And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke
Its fate with my tobacco and to vanish with the smoke.
’Tis a fragrant retrospection—for the loving thoughts that start
Into being are like perfume from the blossoms of the heart:
And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine
When my truant fancy wanders with that old sweet-heart of mine.”
He fell silent; then his lips moved again:
“And I thrill beneath the glances of a pair of azure eyes
As glowing as the summer and as tender as the skies.
I can see”
Suddenly he broke off, and groaned aloud: “My Lord!” he said all in a breath. “And thirty-five years old—blame near thirty-six!”
He needs interpretation, this unfortunate Lucius. He meant that it was inexplicable and disgraceful for a man of his age to be afraid of a boy of seven and a girl of five. He had never been afraid of anybody else’s children. No; it had to be hers! And that was why he was afraid of them; he knew the truth well enough: he was afraid of them because they were hers. He was a man who had always “got on” with children beautifully; but he was afraid of Maud and Bill. He was afraid of what they would do to him and of what they would think of him.
There, in brief, is the overwhelming part that children can play in true romance!
“Lordy, Lordy!” sighed Lucius Brutus Allen. “Oh, Lordy!”
But at last he bestirred himself. He knew that Saruly, his elderly darky cook, must be waiting for him with impatience; she would complain bitterly of dishes overcooked because of his tardiness. Having glanced down into the Square and found it virtually devoid of life, for this was the universal hour of supper, he set his brown straw hat upon his head, and took the parasol under his arm—not because he meant to return it. He took it with him merely for the pleasure of its society.
Upon the bottom step of the flight of stairs that led down to the street, he found seated a small figure in a white “sailor suit.” This figure rose and spoke politely.
“How do you do?” it said. “Are you Uncle Lucius?”
“Who What’s your name?”
“Bill. Bill Ricketts,” said Bill.
Lucius made a hasty motion to reascend the stairs, but Bill confidingly proffered a small, clean hand that Mr. Allen was constrained to accept. Once having accepted it, he found himself expected to retain it.
“Mamma lef’ me sittin’ here to wait till you came downstairs,” Bill explained. “That man that came out said he couldn’t say but he was pretty sure you were up there. She told me to wait till either you came downstairs or she came back for me. She wants her parasol. Come on!”
“Come on where?”
“Up to your house,” said Bill. “She lef’ Maud waitin’ up there for you.”
It was the truth. And after a rather hurried walk, during which the boy spoke not once unless spoken to, but trotted contentedly at Lucius’s side, confidingly hand-in-hand with him, when they came in sight of the small brick house in the big yard, where Lucius lived, a tiny white figure was discernible through the dusk, rocking patiently in a wicker rocking-chair on the veranda.
At sight of them she jumped up and came running to the gate to meet them. But there she paused, gravely.
She made a curtsey, formal but charming.
“How do do, Uncka Wucius?” she said. “Mamma would wike her paraso’.”
Saruly, looming dark and large behind her, supplemented this information: “Miz Ricketts done lef’ the little girl here to wait fer you, Mist’ Allen. She tell me ask you please be so kine as to bring the chillun along home with you, an’ her parasol with ’em. She tell me the chillun been a little upset, jest at first, ’count o’ movin’ to a new place, but they all quieted down now, an’ she think it’ll be safe fer you to stay to dinnuh. An’ as ev’ything in my kitchen’s plum done to a crisp ’count o’ you bein’ so late, Mist’ Allen, if you leave it to me I think you bettuh.”
“I’ll leave it to you, Saruly,” said Lucius, gently. “I think I’d better.”
And then, with the parasol under his arm, and the hand of a child resting quietly in each of his, he turned with Bill and Maud, and, under the small, bright stars of the May evening, set forth from his own gate on his way to Lucy’s.