Chapter 6

A serious disposition can make more trouble for itself by its own seriousness than all the misfortunes that come can make for it. If I had just a little touch of Roxanne Byrd's foamy spirits, I would be a much more comfortable companion for myself. All night I lay awake, anchored in the middle of the huge old Byrd bedstead, and sorrowed over the misfortune that had come to Roxanne and the Idol. Over and over I went in my mind to see where I could clear Mr. Rogers of my suspicions until my thoughts were so pale in color that I could hardly make them out, and at last I fell asleep in despair.

In the morning I dressed so slowly that it was nine o'clock before I was buttoned into my dress and felt that I could go over and help Roxanne bear the calamity. It was Saturday, so I knew she would need help in doing all the things she leaves undone until this blessed day of relief from school cares and responsibilities comes.

It is strange how ignorant one can be of the disposition of the very person she loves best on earth. Did I find Roxanne Byrd dissolved in an indigo sea on the day after she had lost a huge fortune? Not at all! She was floating still higher on a still more rosy cloud and eating a large slice of the most delicious nut cake, while Lovelace Peyton did likewise.

"Oh, Phyllis, I was just going to call you to get a piece of Uncle Pompey's nut cake before it gets cold. It is famous in Byrdsville, and I've been dying to have one made to give you ever since you came; only I couldn't get the materials. It takes every good thing in a grocery, from ginger to preserved cherries, to go in it, and it is best hot. Uncle Pompey said for me to wait until the second pan came out of the stove to call you, because it is always best. He has out the Sheffield tray with the old point cover on it and one of great-grandmother Byrd's willow plates to put it on for you. I'll let him bring it to you and see you taste it. Poor Uncle Pompey is a famous cook, and economy has been agony to him. I'm going to let him make every good thing he wants to this week. He has been held down so long." Roxanne bubbled along like a lovely mountain torrent of cheerfulness, while I stood rooted to the spot in an astonishment that I could not conceal.

"Oh, Roxanne," I said weakly, as I sank into a chair.

"Yes, Phyllis, I suppose it is funny to see me enjoying the cake like this after what happened last night; but the Byrds always make other plans as soon as anything happens to the first one. Douglass and I decided to rest from the steel invention by having things we want for two or three months, and then he knows something greater to invent than steel could ever be. He hasn't told me yet, but I'll tell you when he does. Oh, there's Uncle Pompey with the cake. It's lovely, isn't it, Phyllis?"

If a person went to a funeral and met the dead friend at the door handing her a piece of cake, I suppose she would feel about like I did when that funny old black man handed me that lovely and elegant tray with a grin on his face so wide that it is a wonder it didn't meet itself at the back of his head. I wonder to this moment where I got the enthusiasm with which I accepted it.

"Eat all you want to, Phyllis, 'cause I've got a good plaster to put on the place when the ache comes," Lovelace Peyton advised from his seat on the floor where he was alternately eating his piece of cake and rolling black pills from the crumbs that he caught in a pasteboard box.

And as I sat and munched that piece of historic Byrd cookery my brain turned over in my head and settled itself in a new way. My whole nature underwent a revolution. I saw that a person can either accept life as a piece of fluffy cake when it is handed to her or look on it all as--soggy. I'm going to follow Roxanne's example after this and see the fluffiness of the cake determinedly.

"And, Phyllis, I'll tell you what else I'm going to do," continued Roxanne, rocking and nibbling and smiling so that I would like to have eaten her up, from shabby shoes to the curl down the back of the neck. "When I went down to the grocery before breakfast to get the things to console Uncle Pompey after we had told him about the robbery, I saw the loveliest blue muslin in the window at Mr. Hadley's store, and I 'in going to buy it to-day and make me a dress for commencement. I had expected to wear the family linen, but Douglass says let's spend all his salary this month in having things we want; so the blue muslin will be my part. Do you think blue will be prettier than pink, or would you have--?"

But just here we were interrupted by Tony's appearance at the door, and the expression on his face matched the one I had had of condolence as I came over through the garden; but he has known Roxanne longer than I have and boys' minds are supposed to be stronger than girls'--privately I don't think they are--so he accepted the situation and the cake with more grace than I had.

However he was cruelly insistent about questioning and talking about the robbery. The Idol had told him about it as Tony walked out to the furnace with him, which is a Saturday habit with Tony as the Jonathan to Mr. Douglass. Tony had known all along about the steel, but was surprised to know that I had been able to keep it to myself. I suppose it is best never to notice an unconscious insult, and boys are often that way with girls.

"Doug and I both think that this is not the first time the robber has been in or around the shed," Tony said thoughtfully. "Do you remember that shadow we saw dodge through the yard the evening we came from the Raccoon outing, Phyllis?"

"Yes," I answered; and the uneasy feeling I had about Mr. Rogers that night so I couldn't sleep slightly tipped the rosy cloud I had decided to climb upon and stay upon forever. "But it may have been Uncle Pompey, like I thought it was," I added hopefully.

"Well, Doug told me to come and nose around and see what I could find in the way of clues. Want to come out and have a look with me? You two Palefaces might as well learn something about gumshoeing a villain now as ever."

Lots of boys, and grown-up people for that matter, like to keep interesting things and doings to themselves; but Tony Luttrell is as generous in disposition as he is in mouth.

We went out to the shed with him, and Lovelace Peyton went too, but refused to come in the shed door because he said he was still on honor to the Idol, no matter what Roxanne said, not to come nearer than one yard, which was marked with sticks all around the shed. It was funny to see the snake-doctor lean across the dead-line and crane his sweet little neck to try to hear and see Tony inside the shed. And after Tony had squinted at and touched and nosed almost every inch of the shed, he came out with his hands in his pockets.

"Any clue?" asked Roxanne, as anxiously as Roxanne could ask about anything from the cloud.

"N--o," he said in a hesitating sort of way that seemed just as professional as the way the detectives talk in the wonderful stories in the magazines that my governess always reproved me for reading. "That was a slick artist who got away on greased heels, but there is a--smell in there that I've never felt before in the shed. And yet I have met it somewhere, I feel certain. It seems to my nose somewhat like the bug-doctor at his worst."

"No, Tony," said Lovelace Peyton, positively but perfectly calmly, "I ain't been in that shed and my bottles ain't got legs."

We all laughed and came to the house--but I had got a whiff of that odor and I knew where I had met it before. It was raw onion and tar, and it was the mixture that Lovelace Peyton had given Father in the bottle he wrapped in his handkerchief and put in his pocket. I felt weak all over for a second, but I immediately remembered my duty to respect my father even in my thoughts. I had decided that in the watches of last night, after I had found his heart and hugged it up outside of Mother's door.

In the first place, I had no business to read those magazines that my governess told me not to, even if she did have so little sense that her brain must have been made of tatting work originally, which she was always doing by the yard. And while the explanation of what an evil it is to get millions and millions of dollars together when the poor have so little, and that no man who has a human heart in his breast would want to do it is perfectly true, still that man who wrote the article might not have known about my father. I can see how a man might go on for years and do a great wrong to his brother man and really not realize what a monster it makes of him. I believe my father is just blind on that side of things like some people are in one eye. I pray God that he may wake up sometime, and die happy but poor! Of course, I know he had nothing to do with taking the steel secret, and I am going to get on the cloud again and not worry over Roxanne's troubles until she needs something; and then I will come down and get it for her while she stays in the air,--if I can.

The really important things in a person's life underlie the daily occurrence like the sand that is at the bottom of the rose-bushes. School is the sand-bank of a girl's life, rather heavy, but supporting the roses of debates and picnics and commencement and expression impersonations like the one Friday night is to be.

Of course Byrd Academy graduated Judge Luttrell and the Colonel and Roxanne's Father as well as Miss Prissy, and all the other learned ladies in the Browning Society; but for all its historical antiquity, it is one of the most advanced places of learning in the South, and mostly on account of the progressiveness of the Junior Class, which is Tony and Roxanne and the rest of us.

The Senior Class this year is a great failure, because all are girls but the Petway boy, who is terribly feminine, and crochets his own silk ties, Tony says. I don't approve of the seniors at all, and both Roxanne and I are worried over the way Helena Kirby, Belle's sister, will insist on talking to the Idol when we come out of church. We both know how important it is for a great man to have lady friends that are great enough to appreciate him. Of course, Helena can only admire his wonderful eyes, which makes no difference to us at all, for she could never gauge his high soul and genius. Roxanne says she trusts to the patches on his trousers to keep him from going to walk with her and from sitting on her front steps. Oh, if we just can keep him pure from prosperity in the shape of new clothes until he makes this second great invention, we will be so thankful, I encourage Roxanne to spend the money on food and her own clothes, so he will not be able to buy a new suit. We feel so safe with him mortifyingly shabby.

"Oh, Douglass is never going to be in love or marry anybody," said Roxanne when we were speculating on why Helena would flirt her eyes so at him. "I feel perfectly sure we'll have him always."

I felt relieved that Roxanne felt that way, but I had to remind myself often of her rose-cloud disposition and watch carefully to see that no troubles that I can avert--like Helena Kirby--shall come to her or the Idol.

But I started on the subject of the impersonations that the Expression Class of Juniors is to give the last day of April, before the whole academy is turned over to the affairs of the Seniors, like graduation essays being practised from morning to night until you speak each one in your own dreams. This is the first time they ever had such a thing in the academy, and the whole town is as excited and interested as it well can be.

Mr. Douglass Byrd thought it all up a month ago for us Juniors because of our Senior oppression and after his great loss he went on just the same helping us practise and seemed to be as interested in us as if we had been explosives in a bottle or a test-tube or a retort. His great serenity of soul is a constant lesson to me. Good-night, Louise. You are a comfort; you settle my thoughts, though just of leather.

This is the night of the impersonations and they are over. It was one of the greatest triumphs ever experienced at the Byrd Academy. It will probably be mentioned in the future with the same praise as the Colonel's valedictory that left not a dry eye in the house, because they all knew that all the boys in the Senior Class of sixty-one would go to the war the next week. I choke up whenever I hear the Colonel tell of it, as I have many times in these last two months of my life in Byrdsville. Miss Prissy always cries copiously when he gets to the place where she gave him a flower when he had walked home with her--she only fourteen years old and in short dresses--and which he wore in battle in his pocket Bible. What would she do if she should lose the Colonel by sudden death before she has rewarded his affections by marrying him? She ought to think of that.

Belle did beautifully, first on the program, dressed up in grown clothes and having a Byrdsville society conversation over an imaginary telephone. It sounded just like Helena, and I thought it was not very nice of her to impersonate her own sister, but it was a comfort to see how the Idol enjoyed it. If he liked Helena to any extent, he would have displayed indignation. Instead the corners of his mouth twitched for minutes afterward. I believe at some time Helena must have telephoned him.

Mamie Sue did a delicious old lady telling about her grandson to the two Willises, who were company to tea, that made Hie audience shake with jollity. There was a perfectly darling trace of Miss Priscilla in the way she did it, that made the Colonel almost unable to keep his seat, and Miss Priscilla laughed out loud twice. The affection I bear Mamie Sue fattens in my heart at the same rate the object does in real life.

"The way the two Willises impersonated their own silence was a triumph of art," the Idol said in my ear after it was over. It embarrassed me greatly to have him be obliged to crowd into a seat with Lovelace Peyton and me, but it was crowded everywhere else, too. If I had had my way he would have had the best seat in the house, comfortably alone.

Sam Hayes was "Old Hickory," General Andrew Jackson, the night before the battle of New Orleans. Mr. Douglass Byrd wrote his piece and Judge Luttrell, who is the son of one of that famous Tennessee hero's best friends and staff-officers, was so affected he blew his nose feelingly.

Pink would be a negro, so as for once to be rid--by the aid of burnt cork--of the disgrace of his unmasculine beauty, and he was so like Uncle Pompey that Lovelace Peyton insisted on calling out to him from the second seat until Pink had to tell him who he was before he could go on with his hen story, which was one of Uncle Pompey's own, and which was rib-aching funny.

Tony and Roxanne did the most interesting real Scout adventure, without words, and the audience sat spellbound while she fainted from heat prostration, and he put around her head a wet bandage made with his and her handkerchief, raised a signal for other Scouts to come and help, and finally took her up on his back and carried her off the platform behind the curtain. The applause was deafening, though Lovelace Peyton didn't like the scene one bit, and he kept feeling Roxanne's head after she came and sat down in front of us in the audience.

Nobody knew that I was going to be or do a thing, for I had begged them not to make me, because of the difficulty I have in managing my feet and elbows on account of their rapid growth right now. But I did! I think I have caught the family pride habit and that is what made me do it. This is how I felt. I looked down at the seats of honor reserved for the Byrdsville distinguished citizens, and saw my father sitting in one of the high places, as it were, between Judge Luttrell and Mr. Chadwell, and his face was just beaming with enjoyment of the way all those other men's sons and daughters were distinguishing themselves with their beauty and talent. And then out in the audience Judge Luttrell had Tony's mother, dressed in lovely black silk and also full of pride, while Mr. Chadwell kept nodding to Pink's mother at everything that Pink did, like there never had been a negro minstrel before. I thought of Father being the only lonely one up on the platform and with only me to be a credit to him--and me not doing it. I prayed for an immediate plan and as I prayed, as is my custom, I acted. I asked Mr. Douglass Byrd quick, if there was time for me to do an impersonation, and he answered with the most wonderfully encouraging smile:

"Go ahead, Miss Phyllis, and you can heat them all."

Now, the only person in the world I could ever be like is my own self, or Father himself, and as I sat and looked at him the idea came. Last year the governess took me to hear Father make a speech when he presented a library building to the college from which he graduated. It was such a fine one and full of so much humor and pathos, as all speeches should be to hold the attention of an audience, that it was published in all the papers in New York, and I learned it by heart from pride over it. That was what I impersonated--my own father with him looking on!

All the others had had costumes and burnt cork and things to help them; but I had on a pink flowered organdie and pink slippers with a huge pink bow on my head, and my looks were all dead against my success. But I did succeed! I knew I would when I took my stand and looked down into Father's surprised and alarmed face. I shrugged my shoulders in my dress just as he did in his dress coat, dropped my head on one side, and pursed my mouth up on the left corner and let my right eye droop as his does. Then I began--and for that five minutes I _was_ Father. The speech just rolled off my eloquent tongue and the people laughed in the right places, just as the people at the college did, and the Colonel blew his nose like a trumpet when I said the short sentences about the memorial table to be put in the hallway to the "fellows who have gone," while the end-up, with its funny little dedication to the immortals bound in leather that would live on the library shelf and the ones hound in serge and corduroy that would sit at the tables in reading-room, brought the storm of applause that sounded like a tornado.

When I stopped being Father and came to my own self I was sitting beside the Idol in the audience and watching Judge Luttrell slap Father on the back and Mr. Chadwell laughing so that he and the Colonel looked like jolly, bald-headed boys. Mr. Chadwell is as disgracefully handsome as Pink, and doesn't look much older. And I never saw my father's face look like it did to-night, and I had never hoped to see him in a position that fitted him like the one on the platform with Byrdsville's distinguished citizens. I ought to be a happy girl, and I am.

Only Tony Luttrell troubles me, he is so quiet for him; and when he walked home with me, he was as gentle and affectionate to me as if I had been sick. Could something be the matter with me and I not know it? I felt like I did when the secret was first stolen two weeks ago, though Roxanne and the Idol seem to have forgotten all about it and nobody else knows.

There is such a lovely moon out over the garden that I can't put out the light and go to bed, though I saw Roxanne put hers out a half-hour ago. I wonder why I ever started a record of myself and my friends like I am doing? But I'm glad I did; for as I turn each leaf of you, leather Louise, things seem to get brighter and happier for me, and as I look at all these clean sheets in the future I wonder what I can find to make them as lovely as the happenings on the others have been. I'm thankful for the air that makes Mother sleep, and for the moral surroundings for Father, and for the loving-kindness of my fellow-men--girls and boys--to me. Yes, I realize that being beloved is a novelty to me, but I know better than to think it will ever wear off--the pleasures of it, I mean. Good-night!