Part 10

“Certainly, Joe,” Mr. Allen then resumed. “I will not mention them again. I was only leading to the remark that nightingales serenading through the almond-groves of Sicily probably have nothing particular on our enterprising little city during a night in apple-blossom time. My great trouble, Joe, is never getting _used_ to its being springtime. Every year when it comes around again it hits me just the same way—maybe a little more so each year that I grow older. And this has been the first plumb genuine spring day we’ve had. At the present hour this first true blue spring day is hushing itself down into the first spring evening, and in a little while there’ll be another miracle: the first scented and silvered spring night. All over town the old folks are coming out from their suppers to sit on their front porches, and the children are beginning to play hi-spy in and out among the trees. Pretty soon they’ll all, old and young, be strolling up-town to hear the band play on the courthouse steps. I expect some of the young couples already _have_ started; they like to walk slowly and not say much, on the way to the spring concert, you know.”

Mr. Allen drank another glass of buttermilk, smiled, then murmured with repletion and the pathos of a concluding bit of enthusiasm. “Oh, Lordy, Lordy!” he said, “What it is to be twenty or twenty-five in springtime!”

“Not for me,” Mr. Perley rejoined, shaking his head.

“No, I suppose not. It does seem pretty rough,” said Lucius, sympathetically, “to think of you sitting here in this reeky hole, when pretty nearly every other young fellow in town will be strolling through the apple-blossom smell in the moonlight with a girl on his arm, and the band playing, and all. Old soak Beeslum’ll probably be in here to join you after while, though; and four or five farm hands, and some of the regular Saturday-night town drunks, and maybe two or three Swedes. Oh, I expect you’ll have _company_ enough, Joe!”

“I guess so. Anyhow, I haven’t much choice! This thing’s got me, and I’ve got to go through with it, Lucius.”

“I see. Yes, sir, it’s too bad! Too bad!” And Lucius looked sympathetically down, then cheerfully up again, as the swinging-doors parted to admit the entrance of the returned bartender. “Hello, George!”

“Back a’ready,” said George self-approvingly. “Ham, fried potatoes, coffee, and griddle-cakes, all tucked inside o’ me, too! Didn’t miss any customers, did I?”

“No.”

George came to the table. “Lemme look how many drinks you owe me fer sence I went out, Joe,” he said. “I had the place where she come to in the neck of the bottle marked with my thumb.” He lifted the bottle, regarded it thoughtfully at first, then with some surprise. He set it down upon the table without comment, began to whistle “Little Annie Rooney,” went behind the bar, doffed his hat, resumed his apron, and continued to whistle.

Mr. Allen rose, dusting some crumbs of cracker from his attire. “I guess I must have won the buttermilk record, George,” he said, as he placed a silver dollar upon the bar. “If buttermilk were intoxicating there wouldn’t be a sober creature on the face of the earth. Trouble with your other stuff, George, it _tastes_ so rotten!”

“I take buttermilk sometimes myself, Lu,” said George as he made change. “I guess there ain’t nobody seen me carryin’ much hard liquor sence my second child was born. That was the time they had to jug me, and—whoo, _gosh!_ you’d ought to seen what I went through when I got home that night! She’s little and she was sick-abed, too, but that didn’t git in _her_ way none! No, sir!”

“Good night,” said Lucius cheerily. “I’m going to stroll along Pawpaw Street before the band starts. Moon’ll be ’way up in a little while now, and on such a night as this is going to be did Jessica, the Jew’s daughter—— _You_ know what I mean, George.”

“Yep,” said George blankly. “I gotcha, Lu.”

“I’m going,” said Lucius, “to go and push in with some folks to listen to the band with. Good night, Joe.”

Joe Perley did not turn his head, but sat staring fixedly at the table, his attitude being much the same as that in which Lucius had discovered him.

“Good night, Joe,” the departing gentleman paused to repeat.

“What?”

“Nothing,” said Lucius. “I only said ‘good night.’”

“All right,” said Joe absently. “Good night.”

Mr. Allen took a musical departure. “Oh, as I strolled out one summer evening,” he sang, “for to meet Miss Nellie Green, all the birds and the flow’rs was singing sweetly, wherev-urr they was to be seen!”

Thus, singing heartily, he passed between the swinging-doors and out to the street. Here he continued his euphonic mood, but moderated his expression of it to an inconspicuous humming. Dusk had fallen, a dusk as scented and as alive with spring as he had claimed it would be; and a fair shaft of the rising moon already struck upon the white cupola of the courthouse.

* * * * *

. . . Mary Ricketts was leaning upon the front gate of the Ricketts place when he came there.

“Good evening, Miss Mary,” he said. “Are the Judge and your mother at home?”

“They’re right there on the front porch, Mr. Allen,” she said cordially. “Won’t you come in?”

“In a minute,” he responded. “It does me good to hear you answer when I ask for your parents, Miss Mary.”

“How is that?”

“Why,” he said, “you always sound so friendly when I ask for _them_!”

She laughed, and explained her laughter by saying, “It’s funny you don’t always ask for them!”

“Just so,” he agreed. “I’ve been thinking about that. Are you all going up to the Square pretty soon, to hear the concert?”

“Father and mother are, I think,” she said. “I’m not.”

“Just ‘waiting at the gate’?”

“Not _for_ any one!”

Lucius took off his hat and fanned himself, a conciliatory gesture. “I tell you I feel mighty sorry for one young man in this town to-night,” he said.

“Who’s that, Mr. Allen?”

“Well——” he hesitated. “I don’t know if I ought to tell _you_ about it.”

“Why not me?” she asked, not curiously.

“Well—it’s that young Joe Perley.”

Miss Ricketts was mildly amused; Lucius’s tone was serious, and if she had any interest whatever in Mr. Perley it was of a quality most casual and remote. “Why should you either tell me or not tell me anything about him?” she asked.

“You know he’s such a good-looking young fellow,” said Lucius. “And he’s going to make a fine lawyer, too; I’ve had him with me in a couple of cases, and I’ve an idea he might have something like a real career, if——” He paused.

“Yes?” she said idly. “If what? And why is it you feel so sorry for him, and why did you hesitate to tell _me_? What’s it all about, Mr. Allen?”

“I suppose I’d better explain, now I’ve gone this far,” he said, a little embarrassed. “I was talking with Joe to-day, and—well, the fact is we got to talking about you.”

“You did?” Her tone betokened an indifference unmistakably genuine. “Well?”

Lucius laughed with increased embarrassment. “Well—the fact is we talked about you a long while.”

“Indeed?” she said coldly, but there was a slight interest now perceptible under the coldness; for Miss Mary Ricketts was not unhuman. “Was there a verdict?”

“It—it wasn’t so much what he said, exactly—no, not so much that,” Lucius circumlocuted. “It was more the—the length of time we were talking about you. That was the thing that struck _me_ about it, because I didn’t know—that is, I’d never heard—I——”

“What _are_ you trying to say, Mr. Allen?”

“Well, I mean,” said Lucius, “I mean I hadn’t known that he came around here at all.”

“He doesn’t.”

“That’s why I was so surprised.”

“Surprised at what?” she said impatiently.

“Why,” said Lucius, “surprised at the length of time that we were talking about you!”

“What nonsense!” she cried. “_What_ nonsense! I don’t suppose he’s said two words to me or I to him in two years!”

“Yes,” Lucius assented. “That’s what makes it all the more remarkable! I supposed the only girl he ever thought _anything_ about was Molly Baker, but he told me the only reason he ever goes there is just because she lives next door to him.”

“Not very polite to Molly!” said Miss Ricketts, and she laughed with some indulgence for this ungallantry.

“Still, Molly’s a determined girl,” Lucius suggested; “and she might——”

“She might what?”

“Nothing,” said Lucius. “I was only remembering I’d always heard she was such a—such a _grasping_ sort of girl.”

“Had you?”

“Yes, hadn’t you?”

She was thoughtful for a moment. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“So it seemed to me—well——” He laughed hesitatingly. “Well, it certainly was curious, the length of time we were talking about you to-day!” And he paused again as if awaiting her comment; but she offered none. “Well,” he said, finally, “I expect I better go join the old folks on the porch where I belong.”

He was heartily received and made welcome in that sedate retreat, where, as he said, he belonged; but throughout the greetings and the subsequent conversation he kept a corner of his eye upon the dim white figure in the shadow of the maple trees down by the gate.

Presently another figure, a dark one, graceful and young, came slowly along the sidewalk—slowly, and rather hesitatingly. This figure paused, took a few steps onward again; then definitely halted near the gate.

“Who is that young man out there, talking to Mary?” asked Mary’s mother. “Can you make out, father?”

“It’s that young Joe Perley.”

“I’ve heard he drinks a good deal sometimes,” said Mrs. Ricketts thoughtfully. “His mother says he tries not to, but that it comes over him, and that he’s afraid he’ll turn out like his father.”

Mr. Allen laughed cheerfully. “Anybody at Joe’s age can turn out any way he wants to,” he said. “Mrs. Perley needn’t worry about Joe any more. I just sat with him an hour down at the National House, and there was an open whisky bottle on the table before us, and he never once touched it all the time I was talking with him.”

“Well, I’m glad of that,” said Mrs. Ricketts. “That ought to show he has plenty of will-power, anyhow.”

“Plenty,” said Lucius.

Then Mary’s young voice called from the spaces of night. “I’m going to walk up-town to the concert with Mr. Perley, mother. You’d better wear your shawl if _you_ come.”

And there was the click of the gate as she passed out.

“We might as well be going along then, I suppose,” said Mrs. Ricketts, rising. “You’ll come with us old folks, Lucius?”

* * * * *

As the three old folks sauntered along the moon-speckled sidewalk the two slim young figures in advance were faintly revealed to them, likewise sauntering. And Lucius was right: you could smell apple-blossoms from one end of the town to the other.

“I hope our boys will win the band tournament at the county fair next summer,” said Mrs. Ricketts. “Don’t you think there’s a pretty good chance of it, Lucius?”

For a moment he appeared not to have heard her, and she gently repeated her question:

“Don’t you think there’s a pretty good chance of it?”

“Yes, more than a chance,” he dreamily replied. “It only takes a hint in springtime. They’ll do practically anything you tell ’em to. It’s mostly the apple-blossoms and the little birds.”

WILLAMILLA

MASTER LAURENCE COY, aged nine, came down the shady sidewalk one summer afternoon, in a magnificence that escaped observation. To the careless eye he was only a little boy pretending to be a drummer; for although he had no drum and his clenched fingers held nothing, it was plain that he drummed. But to be merely a drummer was far below the scope of his intentions; he chose to employ his imagination on the grand scale, and to his own way of thinking, he was a full drum-corps, marching between lines of tumultuous spectators. And as he came gloriously down the shouting lane of citizenry he pranced now and then; whereupon, without interrupting his drumming, he said sharply: “Whoa there, Jenny! Git up there, Gray!” This drum-corps was mounted.

He vocalized the bass drums and the snare drums in a staccato chant, using his deepest voice for the bass, and tones pitched higher, and in truth somewhat painfully nasal, for the snare; meanwhile he swung his right arm ponderously on the booms, then resumed the rapid employment of both imaginary sticks for the rattle of the tenor drums. Thus he projected and sketched, all at the same time, every detail of this great affair.

“_Boom!_” he said. “_Boom! Boomety, boomety, boom!_” Then he added:

“Boom! Boom! Boom bought a rat trap, Bigger than a bat trap, Bigger than a _cat_ trap! Boom! Boom! Boomety, boomety, boom!”

So splendid was the effect upon himself of all this pomp and realism, that the sidewalk no longer contented him. Vociferating for the moment as a bugle, the drum-corps swung to the right and debouched to the middle of the street, where such a martial body was more in place, and thenceforth marched, resounding. “_Boom! Boom! Boomety, boomety, boom!_” There followed repetitions of the chant concerning the celebrated trap purchased by Mr. Boom.

A little girl leaned upon a gate that gave admission to a pleasant yard, shaded by a vast old walnut tree, and from this point she watched the approach of the procession. She was a homely little girl, as people say; but a student of small affairs would have guessed that she had been neatly dressed earlier in the day; and even now it could be seen that the submergence of her right stocking into its own folds was not due to any lack of proper equipment, for equipment was visible. She stood behind the gate, eagerly looking forth, and by a coincidence not unusual in that neighbourhood, a beautiful little girl was at the gate of the next yard, some eighty or a hundred feet beyond; but this second little girl’s unspotted attire had suffered no disarrangements, and her face was clean; even her hands were miraculously clean.

When the sonorous Laurence came nearer, the homely little girl almost disappeared behind her gate; her arms rested upon the top of it, and only her hair, forehead and eyes could be seen above her arms. The eyes, however, had become exceedingly sharp, and they shone with an elfin mirth that grew even brighter as the drum-corps drew closer.

“_Boom!_” said Laurence. “_Boomety, boomety, boom!_” And again he gave an account of Mr. Boom’s purchase; but he condescended to offer no sign betokening a consciousness of the two spectators at their gates. He went by the first of these in high military order, executing a manœuvre as he went—again briefly becoming a trumpeter, swinging to the right, then to the left, and so forward once more, as he resumed the drums. “_Boom! Boom! Boomety, boomety, boom!_

“Boom! Boom! Boom bought a rat trap, Bigger than a bat trap——”

But here he was profoundly annoyed by the conduct of the homely little girl. She darted out of her gate, ran to the middle of the street and pranced behind him in outrageous mockery. In a thin and straining voice, altogether inappropriate for the representation of a drum-corps, she piped:

“Boom bought a rat trap, Bigger than a bat trap, Bigger than a _cat_ trap! Boom!”

Laurence turned upon her. “For heavenses’ sakes!” he said. “My good-_nuss_, Daisy Mears, haven’t you got _any_ sense? For heavenses’ sakes, pull up your ole stockin’s!”

“I won’t,” Miss Mears returned with instant resentment. “I guess you can’t order _me_ around, Mister Laurence Coy! I doe’ know who ever ’pointed you to be _my_ boss! Besides, only one of ’em’s fell down.”

“Well, pull _it_ up, then,” he said crossly. “Or else don’t come hangin’ around me!”

“Oh, you don’t say so!” she retorted. “Thank you ever so kinely an’ p’litely for your complimunts just the same, but I pull up my stockin’s whenever _I_ want to, not when every person I happen to meet in the street goes an’ takes an’ tells me to!”

“Well, you better!” said Laurence, at a venture, for he was not absolutely certain of her meaning. “Anyway, you needn’t hang around _me_ unless——”

He stopped, for Daisy Mears had begun, not to hang around him indeed, but to dance around him, and indecorously at that! She levelled her small, grimy right forefinger at him, appearing to whet it with her left forefinger, which was equally begrimed, and at the same time she capered, squealing triumphantly: “Ya-ay, Laurunce! Showin’ off! Showin’ off ’cause Elsie Threamer’s lookin’ at you! Showin’ off for Elsie! Showin’ off for Elsie!”

“I am not!” Laurence made loud denial, but he coloured and glanced wretchedly at the other little girl, who had remained at her own gate. Her lovely, shadowy eyes appeared to be unaware of the dispute in the street; and, crooning almost soundlessly to herself, she had that perfect detachment from environment and events so often observed in Beauties.

“I am _not_!” Laurence repeated. “If I was goin’ to show off before anybody, I wouldn’t show off before Elsie!” And on the spur of the moment, to prove what he said, he made a startling misrepresentation of his sentiments. “I hate her!” he shouted.

But his tormentress was accustomed to deal with wild allegations of this sort, and to discount them. “Ya-ay, Laur-runce!” she cried. “Showin’ off for Elsie! Yes, you were! Showin’ off for Elsie! Show-win’ off for Ell-_see_!” And circling round him in a witch dance, she repeated the taunt till it nauseated him, his denials became agonized and his assertions that he hated Elsie, uproarious. Thus within the space of five minutes a pompous drum-corps passed from a state of discipline to one of demoralization.

“Children! Children!” a woman’s voice called from an open window. “Get out of the street, children. Look out for the automobiles!”

Thereupon the witch dance stopped, and the taunting likewise; Daisy returned to the sidewalk with a thoughtful air; and Master Coy followed her, looking rather morbid, but saying nothing. They leaned against the hedge near where the indifferent and dreamy Elsie stood at her gate; and for some time none of the three spoke: they had one of those apparently inexplicable silences that come upon children. It was Laurence who broke it, with a muttering.

“Anyways, I wasn’t,” he said, seemingly to himself.

“You was, too,” Daisy said quietly.

“Well, how you goin’ to prove it?” Laurence inquired, speaking louder. “If it’s so, then you got to prove it. You either got to prove it or else you got to take it back.”

“I don’t either haf to!”

“You do too haf to!”

“All right, then,” said Daisy. “I’ll prove it by Elsie. He was, wasn’t he, Elsie?”

“What?” Elsie inquired vaguely.

“Wasn’t Laurence showin’ off out in the street? He _was_ showin’ off, wasn’t he?”

“I was not!”

“You was, too! Wasn’t he, Elsie?”

“I doe’ know,” Elsie said, paying no attention to them; for she was observing a little group that had made its appearance at the next corner, a few moments earlier, and now came slowly along the sidewalk in the mottled shade of the maple trees. “Oh, look!” she cried. “Just look at that _darling_ little coloured baby!”

Her companions turned to look where she pointed, and Daisy instantly became as ecstasized as Elsie. “Oh, _look_ at the precious, darling, little _thing_!” she shouted.

As for Laurence, what he saw roused little enthusiasm within his bosom; on the contrary, he immediately felt a slight but distinct antipathy; and he wondered as, upon occasion he had wondered before, why in the world little girls of his own age, and even younger girls, as well as older girls and grown-up women, so often fell into a gesticular and vocal commotion at the sight of a baby. However, he took some interest in the dog accompanying this one.

The baby sat in a small and rickety wooden wagon which appeared to be of home manufacture, since it was merely a brown box on small wheels or disks of solid wood. A long handle projected behind as a propelling device, but the course of the vehicle was continually a little devious, on account of a most visible eccentricity of the front wheels. The infant was comfortable among cushions, however, and over its head a little, ancient, fringed red parasol had been ingeniously erected, probably as much for style as for shade. Moreover, this note of fashion was again touched in the baby’s ribboned cap, and in the embroidered scarf that served as a coverlet, and, though plainly a relic, still exhibited a lively colour.

An unevenly ponderous old coloured woman pushed the wagon; but her complexion was incomparably darker than the occupant’s, which was an extremely light tan, so that no one would have guessed them to be as nearly related as they really were. And although this deeply coloured woman’s weight was such a burden to her that she advanced at a slow, varying gait, more a sag-and-shuffle than a walk, she was of an exuberantly gracious aspect. In fact, her expression was so benevolent that it was more than striking; it was surprising. Her eyes, rolling and curiously streaked, were visibly moist with kindness; her mouth was murmurous in loving phrases addressed sometimes to life generally, sometimes to the baby, and sometimes to the dog accompanying the cortège.

This dog was one of those dogs who feel themselves out of place in the street, and show that they do by the guardedness of their expressions. Their relief when they reach an alley is evident; then they relax at once; the look of strain vanishes from their eyes, and their nerves permit them once more to sit when they massage their ears. They seem intended to be white, but the intention appears to have become early enfeebled, leaving them the colour of a pale oyster;—and they do not wear collars, these dogs. A collar upon one of them would alter his status disturbingly, and he would understand that, and feel confused and troubled. In a word, even when these dogs are seen in an aristocratic environment, for some straying moment, they are dogs instantly recognizable as belonging to coloured persons.

This one was valued highly by his owners; at least that was implied by what the benevolent old woman said to him as they moved slowly along the sidewalk toward the three children at Elsie Threamer’s gate.

“Hossifer,” she said, addressing the dog, “Hossifer, I b’lieve my soul you the fines’ dog in a worl’! I feel the lovin’es’ to you I ever feel any dog. You wuff fo’, fi’ hunnud dolluhs, Hossifer. You wuff fousan’ dolluhs; yes, you is! You a lovin’ dog, Hossifer!” Then she spoke to the baby, but affection and happiness almost overcame her coherence. “Dah-li-dah-li-dah-li-deedums!” she said. “Oh, but you the lovin’, lovin’, lovin’ baby, honey! You is my swee’, swee’, li’l dee-dee-do! Oh, oh, oh, bless Lawd, ain’ it a fine day! Fine day fer my honey lovin’ baby! Fine day f’um lovin’ heaven! Oh, oh, oh, I’m a-happy! Swee’ lovin’ livin’, lem me sing! _Oh_, lem me _sing_!”

She sang, and so loudly that she astonished the children; whereupon, observing their open mouths and earnestly staring eyes, she halted near them and laughed.

“Why all you look at me so funny?” she inquired hilariously. “Li’l whi’ boy, what fer you open you’ mouf at me, honey?”

“I didn’t,” Laurence said.

“Yes’m, indeed you did, honey,” she gaily insisted. “You all free did. Open you’ moufs and look so funny at me—make me laugh an’ holler!” And with unconventional vivacity she whooped and cackled strangely.

Finding her thus so vociferously amiable, Daisy felt encouraged to approach the wagon; and bending down over it, she poked the mulatto baby repeatedly in an affectionate manner. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “I do think this is the darlingest baby!”

“Ain’ it!” the coloured woman cried. “Ain’ it! Yes’m, you say what’s _so_! Ain’ it!”

“Does it belong to you?” Daisy inquired.

“Yes’m, indeed do! I’m baby’ grammaw. Baby my li’l lovin’ gran’chile.”