Part 12

"How?" asked Billy through white lips, staring at him from where she stood in the middle of the tiny cow lane, winding away up the hill among the sweet fern and the bracken.

The Watermelon raised his hand to his head and gently brushed his back hair with futile embarrassment. "Why, you know that guy we heard coughing in the bushes? Well, he put me wise to the fact that your father--er--that your father and Batchelor were enemies on the Street and I thought--maybe--er--if--why, your father asked me to go with you on the trip, you know, and I thought--er--that if Batchelor was in the city alone and your father thought he was with him--why, Batchelor could beat him on the Street and not mind the loss of the few things I had to take--er--see, I deceived the gang of you for a week's fun. See what a cheap guy I am, Billy? A bad egg."

"Yes," said Billy. "Father asked you to go. Why did he do that?"

The Watermelon flushed. "Why--er--"

"Father knew you were an enemy. He told me that you, Batchelor, I mean, had made him lose a lot of money last week and would probably make him lose more next week. Maybe father thought as you did, that if you were out of the city--" she knitted her brows and gazed off across the valley. "Father telegraphed just before we went to that place behind the bam, right after dinner. I know, for I saw him go to the office. Why don't you tell me the truth, Jerry?"

"God, Billy, ain't I giving you the straight goods?"

"Not about father," replied Bartlett's daughter gravely.

"Why--er--he may have telegraphed--"

"Certainly, he did," said Billy. "This whole trip was father's idea." She brushed the subject aside as one to be returned to later. "Tell me, Jerry, isn't your father a minister?"

"Yes, that's straight. He was poor, darned poor. We were all poor. He used to say that a man with more children than brains had no place in the ministry."

"I should think that possibly your father had brains," suggested Billy.

"Yes," admitted the Watermelon. "But they didn't keep pace with the children."

"What happened to you all? Why--er--why couldn't you have worked at something?"

She was gazing at him bewildered, trying to get a grasp on the new state of affairs.

"Aw, we went from bad to worse," muttered the Watermelon sullenly. "Father left the ministry. He used to say that you could appreciate the glory of the Almighty much better in a dollar bill than in the Bible."

"Maybe he had--er--no leanings toward the ministry," murmured Billy, endeavoring to express as politely as possible her growing conviction that the Reverend Mr. Martin was not a godly man.

"Maybe not," agreed the Watermelon. "But when a man's down, every one's down on him. Nothing father did went right. Ma died and the home broke up--I don't know what's become of all the others--working, I suppose, day after day, like slaves in a galley, you know. I tried it, and every night I drank to drown the damnable monotony and stupidity of it all. So, you see what I am, a bum--a tramp."

"And yourself, my love, my Jerry."

Billy held out her hands and he caught them and held them tightly in both his own for a moment, then dropping them, turned away with half a sob.

"Don't, Billy. Don't make it so hard for me, dear. We can't marry. I'm filth and you're sweetness and purity."

"But other men have married. You aren't the only one who isn't clean."

"I know, but I love you. See? When you love a person, you don't make them suffer for it. You can't understand, Billy, for you have never known life. You don't begin to know what it means. I will probably marry a girl from the streets, or one with no brains and no soul. But, you see, I love you."

Billy's eyes blazed. "You will never marry any one else with me alive," said she.

"How could I marry you, dear? I have nothing--absolutely nothing. We couldn't have a home anywhere."

"We can make a home," pleaded Billy. She leaned toward him and laid her hand on his arm, smiling into his moody face with all the charm, the daring, the tenderness of a woman who loves and is fighting for her happiness with every weapon at her command.

"You can't make a home with nothing to make it on," said the Watermelon.

"Ah, but we have something to make it on," cried Billy. "We have you and me."

"But no money."

"Why, Jerry, I have money; hundreds, thousands, dear."

But the Watermelon shook his head. "Money wouldn't be any good when I'm rotten," said he.

"Dear," crooned Billy, and kissed him on the chin, for she could reach no higher.

"Billy," he groaned.

"Tell me you love me, Jerry."

"Tell you I love you? Ah, sweetheart."

"Tell it to me, Jerry."

"Billy, I love you so, that if there is a God, I will thank Him all my life for this week and the thought of you."

"You may not," said Billy, "when we have been married a year."

"We can't marry, dear. Don't you understand? I am a tramp."

"And so am I."

"Your father will kick me out when he knows--"

"It's none of my father's business," said Billy with a saucy tilt of her small chin. "He's marrying whom he pleases and I shall do the same."

"Wait until I speak to him--"

"No," said Billy promptly. "I will speak, Jerry. Promise me that you won't say a thing until we get to the town where we can telegraph. Oh, Jerry, my love, promise me."

"I promise, Billy, kid."

"Promise you won't say a thing until I speak."

"I won't say a thing until I can't help it, but what good will that do?"

"Let's be happy while we can," returned Billy, with a pretty evasion. "We have one more day."

"Oh, Billy," whispered the Watermelon.

Billy turned and led the way up the path to the house while the Watermelon picked up the two suit-cases and followed her.

At the house they found the general with his usual inability to conceal a thing, explaining that they had no money, but wished to have a two-seated team and a driver to take them to the nearest town.

The farmer did not hail the proposition with unalloyed joy. He looked thoughtfully from one to the other while Bartlett explained earnestly who he was, who the general was, who they all were, in a vain attempt to undo the general's commendable, if mistaken, frankness. Upon promising to let the driver keep his watch as a guaranty of good faith, to be returned when the money they were to telegraph for arrived, Bartlett persuaded the man to give in and go to the barn for the horses.

Billy drew her father aside, while the general, Henrietta and the Watermelon retired discreetly to the well for a drink.

"Father," said Billy, coming directly to the point and evading it with a skill that befitted her father's daughter. "Jerry wants to marry me. Oh, father, I love him so. I love him as much as you do Henrietta."

Bartlett flushed and dismissed Henrietta from the conversation. "My dear Billy, you have only known him a week."

"I know, father," agreed Billy, "but a week is long enough to fall in love in. Truly, it is, father. And we both care so much, so very much."

Bartlett was secretly elated at the idea. He and Batchelor, with their differences reconciled, fighting together, instead of each other, would become rulers of the Street, could attain to any height. Batchelor was young, clever, lovable. There seemed nothing to object to. But he felt that he should. Conventionality, Henrietta, Mrs. Grundy, one or all would clearly see that there was something wrong, would counsel delay, waiting. He had never given a daughter away in marriage and was not sure what to do. He hemmed and hawed and wished that he could consult Henrietta.

"We don't want the others to know," went on Billy guilefully. "Wait until we get to the town before you say anything, won't you, father?"

"But, Billy, a week."

"Now, father," advised Billy, "just forget it. And I will forget about you and Henrietta."

"About me and Henrietta?" snapped Bartlett.

"Yes," said Billy, "and last night on the porch when you thought we had all gone in."

"That will do, Billy. We did nothing at all but say good night. I have no objection to Batchelor as a son-in-law from what I know of him; but only a week--"

"It was only an hour," said Billy. "I loved him that very first day. And please, father, you won't say anything, will you, even to him, about it? Just be nice to him, you know. And then I won't say anything."

"Certainly I won't say a thing if you don't want me to, Billy--but there is nothing whatever that you could say."

"No," said Billy, "only what I heard."

The carriage drove up at that moment, which was well.

*CHAPTER XXIII*

*BACK TO THE ROAD*

Bartlett took the telegram the clerk handed him in an elation it was hard to conceal from Batchelor, who leaned against the counter of the store and telegraph office combined, and watched him moodily.

"Realizes that it was a piece of foolishness, his taking that trip," thought Bartlett with the sympathy of the victor for the beaten. "Has probably forgotten Billy for the time. Poor Billy!"

He tore open the telegram quickly and read it eagerly and then slowly and still again more slowly, while his florid face grew first red and then white.

"Come back, for God's sake. B. here all the time. Where have you been?" signed by his broker's name.

After the third reading, Bartlett raised his eyes and glanced dully at the Watermelon, leaning against the counter, among the gay rolls of calico and boxes of rubber overshoes and stockings, watching him with thoughtful wary eyes, and Bartlett wondered if he were going mad.

It was late in the afternoon. The general and the girls, having telegraphed for money, had gone to the hotel to wait for the answers, while Bartlett and the Watermelon had remained in the store, Bartlett eager to receive the answer to the joyful congratulations he had sent his broker on the success of his plan, and the Watermelon because he scorned to run away like a whipped cur, preferring Bartlett to know who he was.

"To ask me for Billy," Bartlett had at first decided, but changed his mind as the youth's gloom became apparently impenetrable.

Bartlett's jaw was set squarely, sternly, his eyes gleamed angrily and a small pulse beat in his cheek. He handed the Watermelon the telegram and watched him as he read it.

"Who are you?" he demanded hoarsely, when the Watermelon had finished reading the message and returned it.

"Jeroboam Martin," said the Watermelon slowly, a grim amusement in his half-shut eyes.

"Jero--what?"

"Jeroboam Martin."

"But Batchelor," stammered Bartlett, confused. The power of suggestion had been so strong that, though he occasionally thought the youth a bit eccentric for a stock-broker, it had never entered his head to question his identity.

"Batchelor is in New York," returned the Watermelon. "I just telegraphed him, C.O.D., where he could find his blooming car. Don't suppose the police had sense enough to look for it at the hotel."

"A low dirty trick," sputtered Bartlett.

The Watermelon agreed. "Typical of the Street," he sneered. "Yah, it fairly reeks with the filth of money, your plan and mine."

"My plan?" Bartlett flushed and looked away. "Stung," said he humbly, and crumpled the telegram in his hand as he gazed moodily through the open door to the village street, impotent to refute the words of the Watermelon.

The Watermelon nodded without any undue elation, in fact, not thinking at all about Bartlett, he was too entirely absorbed in his own troubles.

"I suppose you are his partner--friend?" questioned Bartlett, after a moment's painful readjusting of ideas.

"No, I am a stranger. We met by chance, as you might say. I am a tramp."

"A tramp!" Bartlett's business chagrin vanished before the rush of his paternal alarm and surprise. "But, by heavens, man, I told Billy she could marry you."

The horror in his tones angered the Watermelon. The hot blood leaped into his face and his hands clenched.

"Well, why not?" he demanded. "I am a man if I am a tramp."

"Bah," sneered Bartlett. "A man? A cow, rather, an animal too lazy to work. I suppose you stole your clothes."

Both talked in low voices that the clerk, who only restrained himself from approaching by the exertion of tremendous will power, might not hear them. The Watermelon's face was very white, and he spoke slowly, carefully, as he retold the episode of the swimming-hole and the stolen car, still leaning against the varied assortment of dress goods. "I borrowed these clothes," he concluded, "to keep you away from New York for a week. That object may not sound original to you, and it wasn't. You were the one who suggested it to me through the telegraph clerk last Sunday."

"That boy would take candy from the baby," swore Bartlett gently.

"You were stung, that's all. I love Billy and she loves me. I hate work, but for Billy I will work and am going to work. I love her."

"Does she know you are a tramp?"

"Yes."

"You haven't a cent, I suppose."

"No, but I can earn some."

"How?"

"Working."

"At what?"

"Something."

"What?"

"Anything. Damn it, I ain't incapable of anything but sleep!"

"I've lost thousands through that dirty trick of yours--"

"Yours. You originated it, you know."

Bartlett leaned against the counter beside the Watermelon and glared at the floor. Neither thought to leave the store, and even forgot the clerk, who gazed at them dubiously from a discreet distance and wondered how many more telegrams they wanted.

Bartlett knew Billy. Billy said that she was going to marry this man and so she would marry him--unless something more effective than verbal opposition were used. He had never exerted any authority over Billy and knew that it would be too late to begin now. Billy would only laugh at him. But after all, he was Billy's father, he loved the girl and had some right to object to her marriage with a tramp.

He glanced at the thin clever face beside him and admitted that the man had brains and apparently was not besotted or brutalized, merely indifferent, lazy and wholly unambitious; besides, very young, impatient of restraint and the dull grind of a poor man's life.

"Who are your people?" asked Bartlett to gain time. He must make a plan to separate Billy from this impecunious suitor. Authority was useless. He must use tact, finesse.

"My father was a minister," returned the Watermelon. "Yours was a grocer. Billy told me. Families don't count in America."

Bartlett nodded agreement. "Why did you become a tramp?"

"Through inclination, not the whisky bottle. Not that I am above getting full once in a while, 'cause I ain't. Just, I'm not a drunkard. See? I didn't keep on losing jobs through drink and finally had to take to the road because I was a bum. I took to tramping because I hate to work. It takes too much of your time. An office is like a prison to me. A man loses his soul when he stays all day bent over a desk. He isn't a man. He's a sort of up-to-date pianola to a desk, that's all. There's a lot of things to think about that you can't in an office. I wanted to think and so I took to tramping. Besides, I don't like work."

"Lazy--"

"Yes," snapped the Watermelon, "but a man. I love your Billy--my Billy, and I can work for her."

Bartlett nodded indifferently, hardly hearing what the other said. He frowned thoughtfully at the floor as he pondered the situation. If he objected to the youth in Billy's presence, she would stand up for him, all her love would be aroused to arms and she would see no wrong in her hero. If the fellow snapped his fingers, she would run away with him. What did Billy, tender, gently-guarded Billy, know of tramps, of the rough, unhappy side of existence? Nothing. But if she caught a glimpse of it with her own eyes, saw this lover of hers in his true light, dirty, drunk, disreputable, the shock would kill her love utterly and Bartlett would not have to use that authority of his which was no authority, which Billy would refuse to obey. She had been free too long for any one to govern her now. The only person who could effectually break the unfortunate tangle was the Watermelon himself. Bartlett glanced at the gloomy face beside him and read it as he had grown used to reading men and events.

The Watermelon was young, hardly older than Billy; he was desperately in love, with a love that was pure and true and generous. He was thinking of Billy and not of himself. His opposition to Bartlett was merely the anger aroused by Bartlett's sneers. He was in reality filled with humility and repentence to a degree that he would do anything to kill the love Billy bore for him, knowing with his man's knowledge that he was not worthy of her, and longing with his youth and love to sacrifice himself for her best good, seeing through young, unhappy eyes, only the past, his own shame and profession. Forgetting the possibilities of the future, he had gone to the extreme of self-loathing. The one thing he saw was his past, that past that was wholly unfit for Billy. It blocked the entire view, crushed him with the weight of inexorable facts. To the young there are but two colors, black and white, and the Watermelon was very young. Bartlett looked at him keenly and decided that his plan would work, that he would not have to take a last desperate and ineffectual stand against Billy.

"See here. In August we are going to our place in Westhaven. It's a small town in this state, up the coast away north of Portland. Come to her there at the end of August, come as you are, a tramp, dirty, shabby, drunk--"

"I don't drink, not as the others do."

"Come drunk. Let her understand what being a tramp means, what your life has been. If she still wants you, I hardly see how I can stop her. That's only fair, for what does she know about you and your life? You know all about her, what she has done and been and is going to do. Leave her now, this evening. Go on being a tramp and then come to her, at the last of August. Come as a tramp, mind. Don't let her think that it is a test she is being put to or she will only laugh at it and us and go on wanting you just the same, scorning to be tested, to think that her love could fail. Give her some other excuse for your going. You must see that it is only fair to the little girl to let her see what she is up against."

"Yes, I see. I tried to tell her," agreed the Watermelon gloomily.

"If she loves you through it all, she can have you, and I suppose I will have to consent. I can afford a penniless son-in-law and I guess an American tramp is preferable to a European noble."

"I won't be penniless," said the Watermelon. "I could work like a nigger for a month and own forty dollars, thirty of which I would owe for board."

"That's just it," declared Bartlett promptly. "You can't support Billy in the way she is used to being supported, can't give her the things that have become necessities to her."

"I can support her in my own way," said the Watermelon, trying to reason down his own benumbing repentence and humiliation as well as to convince Bartlett of that which he himself knew to be all wrong.

"But that isn't Billy's way. You couldn't give her a servant, for instance, and servants to Billy are like chairs to some people, absolutely necessary."

"We love each other," said the Watermelon simply.

"That's all right. But you can't always be sure your love is like elastic and stretchable. Come as a tramp and I will give my consent." Bartlett grew bold, positively convinced that Billy could no longer care when she had once seen the drunken sot, promised as he had grown used to doing on the Street, to do that which he knew he would not have to do. "I will give my consent, if Billy still can care. I know that Billy would be a lot happier with my consent, too, than without it. For, though the modern child has no respect for her parent's authority, she likes to have her wedding peaceful and conventional."

"Can I say good-by to her?"

"Yes, but I trust you not to let her know that she is to be put to a test. If you love her, you can see that I am right."

"Yes," said the Watermelon, "I love her and will not let her know."

He straightened up and pushed his hat farther back, with the slow, inbred languor of the thoroughly lazy man. "I love Billy, and that is why I consent. I tried to make her understand what I am, have been, but I couldn't." He took a handful of beans from a near-by barrel and let them run slowly through his fingers. "I suppose she will give me the double cross."

"I hope so," answered Bartlett. "I'm not very particular, but a tramp--"

"A gentleman pedestrian," suggested the Watermelon, with a faint flicker of his usual sublime arrogance.

Bartlett laughed and held out his hand. "Well, good-by. I've enjoyed the week immensely, for all this rotten ending. That scurvy trick of yours--"

"Of yours," corrected the Watermelon.

"Yes, yes, I suppose so. I hope that Henrietta won't ever know. Do you think Billy does?"

"Billy isn't as simple as you think," returned the Watermelon.

"What did she say?"

"'Father suggested the trip and he telegraphed after dinner,' or something like that."

"You didn't tell her it was my plan?" begged Bartlett. "I have to go on living with her."

"No, I didn't tell her, but she's next to the fact."

"I will speak to her," said Bartlett hastily. "I wouldn't like Henrietta to find out about it. Billy has wanted a motor boat for some time. I may give her one."

They walked slowly toward the door and once more shook hands.

"I would gladly have given the thousands I have lost to have you Batchelor, boy," said Bartlett gently.

"Aw, thanks," said the Watermelon.

"Tell the others I will be around when I have sent another telegram."

The Watermelon found Billy sitting on the steps of the only hotel in town. It was a big, square, uncompromising affair, blank and unattractive, and Billy, alone on the top step, looked somehow small and forlorn and child-like. The Watermelon sat down beside her.

"Where's Henrietta?" he asked, ignoring her eyes and the question they asked.

"Up-stairs," said Billy, "fixing up." She raised her hands to her own soft hair and bit her lip to get up courage to voice the question her eyes had already asked.

"Where's the general?" asked the Watermelon.

Billy nodded backward. "In the office, trying to convert the landlord. The landlord's a democrat, you know."

"Come and walk down the road with me a bit?" asked the Watermelon. He rose and held out his hand to help her up.

Billy rose with a trembling laugh that failed miserably in its manifest attempt to be brave.

It was late afternoon, sweet and cool as they left the village behind. The deep quiet of the last of the day was over fields and woods and road, the heat and strenuous business of the morning done. Cows were slowly meandering across the pastures to the familiar bars, empty teams rattled by on the way home, the driver humped contentedly over the reins, thinking of the day's bargains and of the supper waiting for him. The shadows were lengthening, long and graceful across the village green.

Neither Billy nor the Watermelon spoke until they had left the village some little way behind and had come to four cross-roads with the usual small dingy school-house, door locked, dirty windows closed for the summer and shabby, faded blinds drawn.