Part 8

"It is," agreed the Watermelon, who would have agreed to anything Billy said. "It's simply awful."

"What did you mind most," asked Billy, "when you were a newsboy?"

"Let's go look at the universe," suggested the Watermelon hastily. "We can see it much better down the road a bit."

Billy consented, and they strolled away in the dark. The general, who thought he was talking politics, was laying down the law to the hotel clerk, and Henrietta and Bartlett were left alone. They lingered a moment on the porch and then quietly disappeared up the road in the opposite direction from that taken by Billy and the Watermelon.

Bartlett's desire was to reach Maine as soon as possible and get lost over Saturday, but to avoid every city and larger town on the way and to hurry by the smaller places where there might be telegraph or telephone connections.

"Out of touch of the world for a week," he was fond of repeating, "no letters, no papers, no worries and no nerves."

And his desire was the Watermelon's. The more they avoided towns, the better the youth liked it. Telegraph and telephone stations were zealously shunned. He would have liked to have seen a paper, so as to judge what the police thought in the case of the theft of the wealthy young stock-broker's car, provided Batchelor had allowed the thing to become public, which he very much doubted, from the little he knew of the man's character. It was hardly an episode one would care to see in print if one was dignified and self-made. And the Watermelon chuckled.

It took them longer than Bartlett hoped, sticking to narrow, unused country roads, and the next night found them still in Vermont. They spent the night at the village boarding-house, and once again Billy and the Watermelon went down the road a bit to look at the universe, and Henrietta and Bartlett went up the road.

The following day, to Bartlett's satisfaction, they got lost. It was late in the afternoon when they stopped at Milford, a small town in New Hampshire, and made inquiries about the next town. Was it far and would the accommodations be good? It wasn't far, the farmer whom they questioned, assured them, only five miles. He directed them how to go and they thanked him and pushed on.

They went on and on and nightfall found them in a lonely bit of wooded road apparently miles from any town or habitation. Bartlett was pleased. They were lost, and by great good luck they might remain lost for a considerable length of time. The general, too, was delighted. They would make a night of it. It was what he had long wanted to do and now they would have to. The lunch basket had been filled earlier in the day at a country store, so there would be enough to eat. The seats of the autos were soft and one could sleep in the cars or on the ground, as one preferred. It was warm and the rugs and shawls would be covering enough.

They ran the cars out of the road to a convenient clearing. Henrietta got out the basket, shawls were spread on the ground in the light of the two cars and they prepared to make the best of things.

"This is like old times," declared the general genially; "a night on the march, far out on the prairies, not a thing in sight, not a sound but a coyote yelping or the cry of a wolf."

"And Indians," said Henrietta, "hiding back of the nearest hillock, creeping up on you unawares."

Billy glanced behind her at the woods and wished they had chosen a more open place to dine.

"Yes," agreed the general cheerfully, "or down in some southern swamp, with the Johnny Rebs stealing through the bushes."

"Oh, please," begged Billy. "What's the use of telling about things creeping up on you?"

And she glanced again at the bit of wood she could see in the light of the lamps. Far in the west the moon was sinking and here and there a star twinkled between the rolling clouds. A thunder-head was now and then revealed distinctly by flashes of distant lightning, and thunder rumbled ominously in the sultry night. A whippoorwill called steadily and once a bat on graceful wing flew by in the eery light.

The general laughed. "That was living in those days, Billy," he said. "A man was a man and not an office automaton, a dimes saving bank."

*CHAPTER XIV*

*BILLY, BILLY EVERYWHERE*

Bartlett nodded. He had been watching Henrietta through half-lazy, half-closed lids, leaning against a fallen log. Somehow out there in the coolness and sweetness of the summer night, in the open country, with only the drumming of the insects and the shrill clamor of frogs to break the silence, nothing seemed to matter, to be worth struggling for. He felt that he hardly cared what was happening in his absence, back there in the hot, crowded, dirty city. A few more millions added to the useless many he already owned, what did it matter? What amount could buy the night, the peace and sweetness and content? He glanced at the Watermelon and felt no triumph in the thought that this was Wednesday and so far not a paper had been received, not a letter sent to spoil his plans. He wondered lazily that he had gone to the bother of planning the small, petty intrigue of the small, petty city, like dogs snarling over a worm-eaten bone. How trivial it all was!

"You're right, General," said he, watching the play of Henrietta's thin white hands in the lamp light, as she and Billy arranged the evening meal. "A man's not a man in the city--nothing but a dirty, money-grubbing proposition. Dollars and cents, dollars and cents, the only reason of his being."

"I know," agreed Henrietta, nodding. "I sometimes wonder why it was so arranged--the world, you know. Why couldn't love, courage, honor have been made the medium of exchange, the most vital necessity of life? Every one has to have money, so every one has to struggle for it. Why couldn't things have been started differently?"

"Potatoes, two kisses a peck," suggested the Watermelon.

"Three," said Bartlett, "if the purchaser is young and pretty. A smile would be enough, if she were old and wrinkled and unwed."

"A motor-car would probably necessitate a wedding," said the general.

"No, no, no," protested Henrietta. "How silly! You don't understand me at all."

"I would hate to be a clerk at a bargain sale," said the Watermelon, pilfering a cracker from the box Billy held.

"Yes," agreed Bartlett, "think of the microbes--"

"Microbes?" asked Billy who had not been following the conversation. "Where?"

"In kisses, Billy," said the general. "I should think you would have found it out by this time. Everybody you kiss--"

"I never kiss anybody," protested Billy, blushing delightfully.

"Father used to say--" began the Watermelon.

"Look here," interrupted Bartlett, "that father of yours was a minister, you say. I vow he could know nothing about this subject."

"He married more people than you have," said the Watermelon.

"Yes," said Henrietta kindly, "he must have known all about it. Do tell us what he said."

"He used to say that kissing was just the reverse of poker--"

"Poker," cried Bartlett. "No wonder your father left the ministry."

"It says in the papers that your father was a policeman," declared the general.

"A policeman of souls," said Henrietta softly.

The general waved the sentiment aside as immaterial. "How could he have been a policeman and a minister?"

"I can't say," answered the Watermelon, and turned to help Billy with a sardine can as the best way out of a tight place.

"How is kissing the reverse of poker?" asked Henrietta, always amused by the Reverend Mr. Batchelor's remarks.

"A pair would beat a royal flush," replied the Watermelon.

"Surely," persisted the general, "if your father were a minister--"

The Watermelon looked up from the key of the tin he was laboriously turning and glanced gently at the general, his woman's eyes amused and pitying, the expression they always wore for the general.

"Why, you see that is just what I always fancied. He used to preach and have a church--but if the papers say he was a cop, he probably was."

"It's a wise child that knows his own father," said Henrietta. "Come to supper everybody."

Bartlett spread the filmy paper napkin on his knees and taking the plate Henrietta handed him, balanced it on his lap with great nicety. He was so sure that the Watermelon was William Hargrave Batchelor that it never occurred to him to doubt it. There were the cards, the monogram on the automobile and the general to vouch for it. The papers were a bit wrong.

Supper over, the general conceived the sudden inspiration of tinkering a while with the cars. Alphonse stood by to assist and the others wandered off down the road before turning in for the night.

Billy and the Watermelon soon drifted away by themselves up a tiny cow lane, fragrant with sweetbrier. They wandered up it side by side, like two children, neither saying a thing, content to be together. At the end of the lane, they leaned for a while on the pasture bars. The sultriness of the earlier part of the evening had passed. The thunder was less ominous and only sheet lightning, low on the horizon, was visible. A breeze, cool and sweet, whispered by. The fireflies danced in gay little flashes of light among the shadows.

The two stood side by side, their elbows on the top rail, their hands before them. They said nothing. There was nothing to say, just the night and they two, alone, among the sweetbriers and the fireflies.

Now and then Billy sighed, unconsciously and happily. A great silence had enwrapped Billy for the last two days, a silence in which she was content to dream and in which words seemed superfluous and uncalled for. She wondered that Henrietta could talk so much. What was there to say? Billy had never been in love. She wondered vaguely if the enfolding content, the longing for solitude and her own thoughts were forerunners of approaching death. The good die young, and Billy felt that she was content to go, to drift away into the eternal peace of the after life. She was not of an analytical disposition and she only knew that she was happy, causelessly happy, and did not ask the reason. The Watermelon stood so closely beside her that once when he turned she could smell the tobacco on his breath. She wanted to rub her head on his shoulder like a kitten, and wondered if she were growing weak-minded.

Without warning the bushes at her side parted and a cow with great gentle eyes peered out at them, so near that Billy could feel the breath, warm and sweet, upon her cheek. With a little cry, she shrank close to the Watermelon.

He felt her slender body, soft and yielding, nestling against him, smelt the fragrance of her curly hair, and suddenly a great tide of longing, of passion, of desire welled up in him and choked him. He wanted to crush her to him, to cover eyes and hair with kisses, to hold her so tightly that she would cry for release. All the ungoverned feelings of the past few years surged over him and threatened to carry both for ever out of sight of land and decency. But, blindly, not knowing what he did, he turned from her and picked up a stick to hurl at the cow. She had turned to him in her fear, and with the honor of his clerical father, he controlled himself.

Billy laughed and straightened up, as the cow, grieved and surprised, backed off in the dark. "I'm not afraid of cows, Willie," said she. "Don't you know it? She just came so suddenly I was startled."

"Yes," agreed the Watermelon dully. "So was I. Why did you call me Willie?"

"Short for William, and William is your name, goose. Don't you remember your own name?" crooned Billy, leaning toward him in the dark.

"Yes, surely," said the Watermelon. "But I hate my name. Call me Jerry. That's what the boys call me."

He did not add that his name was Jeroboam Martin. He being the seventh young Martin to arrive, his distracted parents had turned to the Bible for help in names as well as in the more vital necessities.

"Jerry?" laughed Billy questioningly.

"Yes," said Jeroboam gravely, and added abruptly, "Let's go back."

They turned and retraced their steps, Billy all athrill with she knew not what, singing a foolish little song beneath her breath, the Watermelon staring angrily before him, denying hotly to himself what would not be denied, that he loved Billy. He loved her, not as he had loved other women, not as a careless, lazy tramp, taking what offered, good, bad or worse, with airy indifference, but as the son of his poor virtuous, mother and of his gentle, reverend father would love and cherish the one woman.

But who was he to love like that? The past few years had branded him as a thing apart from Billy. He tried to think it out, but the blood pounded in his temples and he could not think, could only know that he loved her more than he did himself, with a love stronger than the mad passion and longing for her that throbbed in his pulses like leaping fire. The knowledge had come so suddenly, he was so unprepared, that he could not reason it out, could only know that Billy must never dream of such a thing. A companion of Mike and James, who was he to talk of love to Billy? God!

His head moved restlessly as though in pain and his hands, unconsciously jingling the keys in his trousers pockets, clenched tightly. Billy swayed against him in the dark and straightened up with a laugh and a smothered yawn.

"Oh, law," said she, "I'm tired."

"So am I," said the Watermelon moodily. "Tired of living."

"Do you know," said Billy, "I was just thinking that death might not be so awful, just to close your eyes and drift out into space, on and on and on."

"It would be a darned sight better than living," answered the Watermelon. "Hell would be preferable. I beg your pardon."

"Aren't you well?" asked Billy anxiously. "As for me, I never really want to die unless I am feeling perfectly well."

Henrietta and Bartlett strolled up as they approached the cars, where they found the general pacing up and down the road, filled with righteous indignation and anger.

It seemed Alphonse had long ago taken his rug and pillow and retired to the edge of the woods and slumber. Left alone the general had lighted a cigar and was walking slowly back and forth in front of the cars, waiting for the others to return, when a buggy, with two men in it, passed, the horse shying a bit and the general offering his assistance and advice. To his surprise they had not gone by more than three yards, when they stopped, tied the horse and came back on foot.

"First," said the general, as the four gathered around him in the light of the car lamps, "first I thought they were hold-up men. The lamps on my car had gone out and they did not see it, thought that there was only one car, so there would not be many to defend it; besides, I was the only one they had seen, and doubtless they surmised I was alone and they could have held me up easily."

"Father," cried Henrietta, "what did you do?"

"Before I could do anything they asked me the make of my car. I told them. They said it didn't look like a Packard, and I saw that they were looking at Will's car and hadn't seen mine, back near the wall and with the lights out. I pointed to it and said that was my car. They seemed surprised to see two cars. I told them my name, gave them my card, and told them I was motoring to Maine with a party of friends and asked them what they were going to do about it."

"What did they say?" asked Bartlett, while the Watermelon slowly rolled a cigarette.

"Oh, they apologized," admitted the general. "But what I want to know, and what I don't like at all, is why every one is so curious to know the make of my car, the engine number and the license number. What business is it of theirs?"

The two girls slept in one car, Bartlett and the general in the other. The Watermelon lay on the grass on Billy's side of the car and sought to reason the thing out, to plan what to do. Alone in the dark, he did not sleep, but stared before him, ears attuned to the many sounds of the summer night.

In every whir of insects' wings, in every whispering breeze that passed, he heard Billy's soft sweet voice. He stared up at the stars and likened them to Billy's eyes, twinkling points of light as far above him as Billy was, for Billy was Billy, and he was a tramp, a hobo--a Weary Willie.

*CHAPTER XV*

*LOVE IN IDLENESS*

One not born a vagabond in heart can never understand a vagabond's love for the open places, for absolute freedom, to go where he wants, see what he wants, work when he wants. To a vagabond an office is intolerable, the accumulation of dollars, grinding another man to gain a petty advance for oneself, utterly uninspiring, conventionality, the ceaseless humdrum round of existence as a clerk at ten per, revolting. Following step by step in the well-worn, beaten path, where no man dares step aside lest he be jeered at, where none dares fall, lest he be pushed from the road and another take his place, where all think alike, look alike, act alike, spending one's days in an office, bent over a littered, dusty, shabby desk, one's nights at some cheap play-house, seeking to find an outlet for the battered nerves, for the ceaseless strain of the day by stupefying the senses with some garish parody of life, is not living to a vagabond. He is willing to work if the work is a part of himself, a development of that clamorous ego that must find peace in the open, in the physical side of existence. If he is born rich, he will become a traveler, a mountain climber, an aviator; if poor, a tramp, and the Watermelon was born poor.

For the last few years his feet had followed his errant will, now here, now there. He was impervious to hardship while he could wander as he wished, indifferent to good clothes when the price was eight hours a day spent in a stuffy office, bent, round-shouldered, hump-backed, over a column of figures. Beneath good clothes or shabby, there was nothing but a human body, all more or less alike. So the Watermelon had gone his careless, contented way, now resting here, now working there, unworried by rent days falling due, by collars fraying around the edges, coats getting shabby and shiny at the seams, and then Billy came along, Billy, young, sweet, conventional, an honored member of convention's band, walking around and around the same well-beaten path, in the same small inclosure. If he had elected to be one of the throng, he would never have met her. Struggling along at ten per, he would have been so far down the line, plodding painfully on, that Billy would never have seen him.

But now he was out and a fence unscalable was between them. If he climbed the fence again, it would do no good. No vagabond can ever fall in line and keep step, and there is not room enough in the inclosure for the man who has dared to climb the fence and drop down the other side.

Bartlett, like Billy, wondered if he were growing simple-minded. A desire to confide in Henrietta, to tell her what he was up to, had come upon him and seemed too strong to be resisted. Last night, up the quiet country road, alone with Henrietta, he had been forced to suppress the desire sternly, and now in the garish light of day it was still upon him. He took a seat beside her on the stone wall where she tried to be comfortable as she fished olives from a nearly empty bottle, the remains of last night's supper.

"I wonder," said he, hovering on the edge of his foolish desire, "if any one can become a man with nothing to regret."

"Certainly not," said Henrietta. "There would always be the years."

"I mean something that he had done himself," explained Bartlett soberly, a sandwich in one hand, a buttered roll in the other.

"Don't tell me your troubles," said Henrietta, thinking miserably of the years it would soon be so hard to deny. "I have enough of my own. Confession may be good for the soul, but it's the death-blow to your reputation."

"Father used to say that if there were public confession instead of private in the Catholic church, there would be no Catholics," said the Watermelon, helping Billy to the last of the sardines.

"Let's have a public confession," cried the artless Billy. "Everybody tell the worst thing that they ever did in their lives."

The Watermelon laughed and leaned toward her, a moth flirting with the candle flame. "Oh, kid; I'll bet the worst you ever did was to swipe the jam-pot when ma wasn't looking."

"No," said Billy, "I did an awful thing once."

"Let's hear it."

Billy took the olive bottle from Henrietta, speared an olive and passed the bottle on before she spoke. "Will you confess, if I do?" she asked, pausing with the olive half way to her mouth.

"Sure," said the Watermelon. "I robbed an apple orchard once."

"You're fooling," accused Billy. "I'm not. I'm really serious."

"So am I," vowed the Watermelon.

"Billy," said Henrietta, "spare us. I am too young to listen to a tale of depravity."

But the lure of the confessional held Billy and she passed Henrietta's remark without notice. She turned to the Watermelon. "If I tell you the worst thing I ever did, will you tell me the worst you ever did?"

"I haven't done the worst yet," explained the Watermelon.

The general having nearly wrecked the cars and seen the damage repaired by Alphonse, hurried to the four sitting on the stone wall.

"Come on," said he. "It is time we were going. We have no blue book, you know."

"I shouldn't wonder," said Henrietta, "if there were not a rare chance for some one to confess a heinous crime."

She looked at Bartlett as he held out his hand to help her down and her eyes laughed deep into his.

"In self-defense--" he pleaded in a whisper.

It was very early. The freshness of night still clung to fields and wood. The air was full of the clamor of birds and from the valley below came the stentorian crow of a rooster. Little wisps of white clouds drifted by in the deep blue of the sky and a breeze played gently with the girls' long auto veils.

So in the freshness of the early morning they dipped down the hill into the valley, passed farm-houses and corn lands. They stopped about nine at a farm-house and partook of a breakfast of coffee, bacon and eggs. Alphonse filled the cars at a village store and they went on. The glory of the day, the close proximity of Henrietta, who sat beside him, dainty, merry, feminine, the success so far of his plan, which in his saner moments he still cherished, raised Bartlett's spirits higher and higher and they went faster and faster. They swept over the boundary line into Maine with a rush, taking the hills at high speed and skimming into the valleys, now entering a stretch of cool dark wood, now tearing into the sunshine again, past corn-fields, hay-fields, and rocky pastures. Cows whisked their tails at the cars' approach and dashed awkwardly away from the fence rails. Chickens squawked and tore madly to safety with flapping wings. Farmhouses appeared and disappeared in a cloud of dust. Lakes were seen one moment and gone the next. They swept around a bend in the road and into a man trap, a pile of wood across the road and three farmers waiting grimly with loaded guns.