Part 5

“Not at all,” he returned, cheerfully. “It’s a good thing. There are lots of families that ought to learn how to use a sidewalk again. It’s doing all of our family good. We’d got like too many other people; we’d got to believing the only place where we could walk was a golf course. Bankruptcy’s been a great thing for my father—I believe it’ll add ten years to his life.”

Anne laughed and Mrs. Cromwell was pleased, for although the laugh was languid, it was genuine. The mother’s glance passed from her daughter to the caller and lingered with some favour upon his shrewd and cheerful face. Perhaps it was just as well that he had come, if he could amuse Anne a little.

“I never heard of any one who took that view before,” the girl said. “It’s pretty plucky of you, I think.”

“Not at all,” he said. “We’re all of us having a great time. Never had to do anything we didn’t want to before, and it’s such a novelty it’s more fun than Christmas. If it hadn’t happened I doubt if I’d ever have found out that I like to work.”

“But you did work, Hobart.”

“Yes,” he said, dryly. “For my father. This is a pretty good receiver we’ve got, and he’s showed me the difference between working for my father and working for other people.” He paused and chuckled. “Best thing ever happened to me!”

Anne did not hear him. The automobile signal that had caught her attention a little while before was again audible from the street, and she had turned to look. The long, gray, foreign car came slowly by, moving flexibly through a momentary clustering of other machines, and it seemed to guide itself miraculously, for the driver had no apparent interest in where it went. His attention was all upon the occupant of the seat that had been vacant a few minutes before;—upon her he gazed with such aching solicitude that he could be known for a lover at a distance all round about him of fifty paces and more. And not only he, but his companion also seemed enclosed within the spell that comes upon lovers, shutting out the world from them; for, as he gazed upon her, so she likewise gazed receptively upon him. But, being a girl, she was in fact aware of certain manifestations in the world outside the spell, which he was not, and she knew that she was observed from a Georgian terrace.

She detached her eyes from Harrison’s long enough to wave her slim hand, and received in return a beaming smile from Anne, across the balustrade, and a wave of the hand most cordial. Harrison remained in his trance, incapable of making or receiving any salutation, and Hobart Simms, looking after the car as it passed northward, did not see how bleak and blank Anne looked as she sank back in her chair.

He laughed. “Poor old Harry Crisp!” he said. “He didn’t even see us, so it’s all up with him. It’s too bad: he might have got something out of life; but it’s all over now.”

“I don’t follow you, I’m afraid,” Anne said, coldly, in a tired voice.

“No? Well, in the first place, he’s working for his father. That’s bad, but it can be got over. What’s really fatal, he’s going to marry that Miss Ealing. I’ve heard it rumoured, and after looking at ’em just now I see it’s true. That’s something he can’t get over.”

“Can’t he?” Anne’s tired voice was a little tremulous. “You mean he’ll always be in love with her? I should think that rather desirable if they’re to marry.”

“Oh, he’ll get over _that_,” Hobart said, briskly. “I mean he’ll never get over his having married Miss Ealing.”

Anne looked puzzled; but she did not try to make him be more explicit. Instead, she asked indifferently, “Don’t you call her ‘Sallie,’ Hobart? I thought all the men called her ‘Sallie’ by this time. She’s been here several weeks.”

“No, I don’t,” he answered. “I haven’t called her anything, in fact.”

“What? Didn’t she take the trouble to fascinate you, Hobart?”

He laughed. “You’d hardly think she would, but she did—a little. I don’t suppose you could say she went out of her way to do it, or took any trouble, exactly; but she did invite me to join, as it were.”

Anne was more interested. Since the passing of Harrison Crisp’s car she had been leaning back in her long chair, but now she sat upright and looked frowningly at her caller.

“‘Invited you to join?’” she said. “What do you mean?”

“I mean she invited me to get on the bandwagon,” he explained. “Not right up on a front seat, of course; but anyhow I was given a ticket to hang on behind somewhere.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Probably you don’t,” Hobart said, and he looked thoughtful. “You’re always so above the crowd, Anne, probably you wouldn’t understand Miss Ealing’s invitations. You see I’m in a pretty good position to see things that you wouldn’t, so to speak. Of course, strangers never pay any attention to the little shrimps in a crowd, and when Miss Ealing did pay me a slight attention I wasn’t so grateful as I should have been;—I thought it was pretty funny.”

“‘Funny’!” Anne exclaimed. “Why?”

“Because it only showed her up, you see. Of course, it didn’t mean she had any interest in me; it only meant she had a use for me. She already had most of the rest of ’em excited about her; but she’s a real collector and she wanted the _whole_ collection—even me! You see, the girl that makes ’em _all_ think she’s thinking about them isn’t thinking about _any_ of ’em, of course. She’s only thinking about herself, like any other selfish little brute.”

“Hobart!”

“Of course, I don’t mean to say she gave me a pressing invitation to join,” he explained, laughing cheerfully at himself. “Naturally, that couldn’t be expected. The big, hand-painted, gilt-edged card was for Harrison Crisp, of course; and then there were a number of handsomely engraved ones for tall eligibles. She just slipped me a little one printed on soft paper—a sort of handbill, you know, when she was delivering ’em around to the residue.”

Anne’s languor had vanished now. She stared at him incredulously. “Hobart Simms,” she cried, “what do you mean by ‘handbills’?”

“It’s simple enough,” he began. “That is, it is to me. Taller men with fathers that aren’t in the hands of a receiver wouldn’t have much of a chance to understand it, I imagine. She’s made a real stir in our little Green Hills midst with her handbills and——”

Anne interrupted sharply: “I asked you what you meant by her ‘handbills.’”

“Yes; I’m trying to tell you, but it’s so ridiculous I’m afraid you won’t be able to see what I mean. It’s like this: she’ll be passing you, for instance, dancing with some other man, or hanging to his arm, and she’ll whisper to you quickly over his shoulder, ‘I _heard_ something about you,’ or, ‘I’ve found _out_ something about you,’ or, maybe, ‘Can’t you even _look_ at me?’ Something like that, you know,—and you’re supposed to get excited and follow up the mystery. You’re supposed to wonder just how much she _is_ thinking about you, you see. That’s what I mean by her handbills, because if you _don’t_ get excited, but look around a little, you’ll notice she’s passing ’em pretty freely. That’s why I thought it was funny when she even gave me one!”

“Hobart!” Anne cried, and her voice was free and loud, “Hobart Simms!”

“Yes?” he said, inquiringly, not comprehending the vehemence of her exclamation.

Anne did not respond at once. Instead, she sat staring at him, and her mother marked how a small glow of red came into the daughter’s cheek. Then Mrs. Cromwell also stared at little Hobart Simms; and for the first time noticed what a good profile he had and what a well-shaped head. Slowly and wonderingly the daughter’s eyes turned to meet the mother’s, and each caught the marvel of the other’s thought: that it was this unconsidered little Hobart Simms who fitted Mrs. Cromwell’s definition of a “superman.”

“Why, yes,” Anne said, slowly. “If you really care to go for a walk, I’d like to go with you, Hobart.”

Mrs. Cromwell watched them as they went forth, outwardly the most ill-assorted couple in her sight that day; for Hobart was a full “head” the shorter. They talked amiably together as they went, however, and Mrs. Cromwell’s heart was lightened by the sound of Anne’s laughter, which came back to her even when the two had gone but a little distance.

The mother’s heart might have known less relief, that afternoon, had she suspected this walk to be the beginning of “anything serious.” And yet, had she been a good soothsayer and seeress she might well have been pleased; for not many years were to pass before Hobart Simms’s electrified fellow citizens were to remind one another frequently that Napoleon was a little man, too.

VIII MRS. DODGE’S ONLY DAUGHTER

THAT capable and unsentimental matron, Mrs. Dodge, was engaged in the composition of an essay for the Woman’s Saturday Club (founded 1882) and the subject that had been assigned to her was “Spiritual Life and the New Generation.” Her work upon it moved slowly because the flow of her philosophical thinking met constant interference, due to an anxiety of her own connected with the New Generation, though emphatically not (in her opinion) with its Spiritual Life. Anxiety always makes philosophy difficult; but she sat resolutely at her desk whenever her apprehensions and her general household duties permitted; and she was thus engaged upon a springtime morning a week before her “paper” was to be presented for the club’s consideration.

She wrote quotations from Ruskin, Whitman, Carlyle, and Schopenhauer, muttering pleasantly to herself that the essay was “beginning to sound right well”; but, unfortunately for literature, the window beside her desk looked down upon the street. Nothing in the mild activities of “the finest suburb’s finest residential boulevard” should have stopped an essay, and yet a most commonplace appearance there stopped Mrs. Dodge’s. Her glance, having wandered to the window, became fixed in a widely staring incredulity; then rapidly narrowed into most poignant distaste. She dropped her pen, and from her parted lips there came an outcry eloquent of horror.

Yet what she saw was only a snub-nosed boy shambling up the brick path to her front door, walking awkwardly, and obviously in a state of embarrassment.

At the same moment Mrs. Dodge’s only daughter, Lily, aged eighteen, standing at a window of the drawing-room downstairs, looked forth upon precisely the same scene; but discovered no boy at all upon the brick path. Where her mother saw a snub-nosed boy shambling, Lily beheld a knight of Arthur’s court, bright as the sun and of such grace that he came toward the house like a bird gliding in a suave curve before it lights. Merlin wafted him; she had no consciousness that feet carried him; no consciousness that he wore feet at all. She knew only that this divine bird of hers was coming nearer and nearer to her, while her heart melted within her.

Then, investing him with proper human feet for the purpose of her desire, she wanted to throw herself down before the door, so that he would step upon her as he entered. But, instead, she ran to admit him, and, gasping, took him by the hand, led him into the drawing-room, moaned, and cast herself upon his bosom, weeping.

“They want to separate us!” she sobbed. “Forever! But you have come to me!”

Upstairs, her mother set a paperweight upon the manuscript of “Spiritual Life and the New Generation,” realizing at once that emotional conflict was to occupy her for the next hour or so, if not longer. She descended fiercely to the drawing-room, where the caller, rosy as fire, removed his arm from Lily’s waist, and would have stepped away from her. But Lily moaned, “No!” and clung to him.

“Stand away from my daughter!” Mrs. Dodge said. “Explain what you mean by daring to come here.”

“I—I want to,” he stammered. “That’s just what I—it’s what I came for. I—I want to——”

But Mrs. Dodge interrupted him. “Did you understand me? I said, ‘Stand away from my daughter!’”

“I would,” he said, deferentially. “I would, but—but——”

He was unable to explain in words a difficulty that was too evident without them: the clinging Lily resisted his effort to detach himself, and it was clear that in order to obey her mother’s command he would need assistance. This, however, was immediately forthcoming.

“Lily!” Mrs. Dodge rushed upon her; but Lily clung only the more tragically.

“No, no!” she moaned. “This is my place and it is my right!”

Mrs. Dodge set really violent hands upon her, and unmistakably there hovered a possibility, in the imminent future, that Lily would not only be removed from her lover but would also get a shaking. Rather than be seen under such undignified circumstances, she succumbed upon a sofa, weeping there. “You _see_,” she wailed;—“you _see_ how they treat me!”

“Now, before you march out of here,” her mother said to the intruder, “you explain how you dared to come.”

“Well, that’s what I came for,” he responded. “I wanted to explain.”

“You make it perfectly clear in one stroke,” Mrs. Dodge said. “You came here to explain why you came here!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Brilliant!” she cried. “But I hadn’t looked for better. I think you may trouble yourself to take your instant departure, Mr. Oswald Osborne!”

As she pronounced this name, which she did with oppressive distinctness, the young man winced as at the twinge of an old wound reopened. “I don’t think that’s fair,” he said, plaintively.

“It isn’t ‘fair’ for me to choose whom I care to see in my own house?” Mrs. Dodge inquired with perfect hypocrisy, for she knew what he meant.

“I’m talking about ‘Oswald’,” he explained. “I can’t help my name, and I don’t think it’s fair to taunt me with it. My parents did have me christened ‘Oswald,’ I admit; but they were sorry when I got older and they saw how I felt about it and what it would do to me. You know as well as I do, Mrs. Dodge, I’ve struggled pretty long to get people to quit calling me ‘Oswald,’ and almost everybody calls me Crabbe now. It isn’t a very good middle name, but anyhow it’s better than——”

“Good heavens!” Mrs. Dodge interrupted. “Are you going to stand here all morning talking about your _name_? I’m afraid you overlook the circumstance that you’ve been requested to leave my house.”

“I know it,” he said, apologetically. “But it really isn’t fair to call me ‘Oswald’ any more, when practically nobody else does, and that’s what threw me off. What I came here for, I had to see Lily.”

“_I_ had to see _you_!” Lily cried from the sofa. “If I hadn’t, I should have died!” And at a scornful look from her mother, she passionately insisted upon the accuracy of this view. “Oh, yes, I should, Mamma! You don’t _know_ what you and Papa have been putting me through! You don’t _know_ what it does to me! You don’t know what it’s making me suffer! You don’t understand!”

“I understand too much, unfortunately,” the mother retorted. “I understand that you’ve got yourself into such a hysterical state over a young man who couldn’t possibly buy a pair of shoes for you—or for himself!—and that your father and I daren’t let you step out of the house alone for fear you’ll try to run away with him again.”

Young Mr. Osborne protested with some heat. “Why, I’m not barefooted, Mrs. Dodge!” he said. “What I came here to say this morning is right on the point you’re discussing. You and Mr. Dodge haven’t once been fair to me during the whole trouble we’ve had about this matter, and when you say I couldn’t even give Lily a pair of shoes——”

“Could you?” Mrs. Dodge inquired, breathing deeply. “Am I misinformed by my husband? I seem to recall he told me that when you and Lily were eloping last week—in a borrowed car—he overtook you at a refilling station, where she was offering her watch and rings for gasoline.”

“I didn’t ask her to,” Crabbe Osborne said, flushing deeper. “I admit she offered ’em, but I was arguing about it with her when Mr. Dodge got there. Anyhow, the gas man wouldn’t take ’em.”

“Oh, he should have!” Lily moaned. “Then we wouldn’t have all this to go through. We’d have been out of it all. We’d have been together for always!”

“Would you?” her mother asked, with a hard laugh. “Just how would you have obtained a marriage license, since there weren’t enough funds for gasoline?”

“I had that all thought out,” the young man replied. “We were going to stop and get married at Saline. I’ve got a cousin living in Saline, and I could have borrowed as much as we needed from him. He’d have trusted me, because he knows I’d pay him back.”

“And would you?” Mrs. Dodge inquired.

This brought a protest from both of the afflicted lovers. Young Mr. Osborne said, “Oh, look here, Mrs. Dodge,” and swallowed, but Lily made a real outcry. She sprang up, facing her mother angrily.

“Shame!” she cried. “You taunt him with his poverty! Has he ever pretended for one moment to be a rich man? If he had, there might be some point to your taunts, but you know he hasn’t. From the very first I defy you to say he hasn’t been absolutely frank about it! I do, Mamma! I defy you to say so!”

“Sit down,” said her mother.

“‘Sit down?’ I won’t, Mamma; I won’t sit down! Indeed, I won’t, and you haven’t any right to make me! You and Papa order me to do this; you order me to do that; you order me to do everything; but the time’s past when I obeyed you like a Myrmidon. I don’t trust your wisdom any more, Mamma; nor Papa’s, either—not since you’ve tried to keep me an absolute prisoner and won’t let Crabbe even step inside the yard!”

“‘Inside the yard?’” Mrs. Dodge said. “It strikes me he’s rather farther than that.” She turned upon the perplexed young man. “How many times do you usually have to be requested to leave a house?”

“Why, I expect to go,” he responded, feebly. “I do expect to go, Mrs. Dodge. I think I have a right to explain, though, and if you’d just listen a minute——”

“Very well. I’ll give you a minute.”

“It’s like this,” he said. “I know you and Mr. Dodge object to me as—as a son-in-law——”

“We do, indeed!”

“Well, you see,” he went on, “that’s just the injustice of it. I’m twenty-two-and-a-half years old, and while I admit I’ve had considerable trouble in some of the positions I’ve filled in a business way, why, you can’t expect hard luck to keep on being against me forever. It’s bound to turn, Mrs. Dodge. Luck doesn’t always run just one way, not by any means. My own father said last night he wouldn’t be surprised if I’d get hold of something pretty soon that would interest me so much I’d do mighty well at it. Well, he’s been prejudiced against me a good long while now, and I thought if he had faith in me to say as much as that, it was certainly time for other people to begin to show a little faith in me, too. What I came here for this morning, Mrs. Dodge, was to tell Lily about my father saying that to me. I thought she ought to know about it. You see, Father speaking that way started me to thinking, and I’ve realized with the positions I’ve held so far I couldn’t get myself interested in the work. That’s just exactly what’s been the main difficulty. So I wanted to tell Lily I’ve made up my mind I’m going to look for a position where the work _will_ interest me. I thought if she knew I’d taken this stand on the question——”

“Excuse me,” Mrs. Dodge interrupted, “I believe the minute I agreed to listen is up. I must remind you of my request to leave this house.”

“Well—” he said, uncertainly, “if you put it like that——”

“I do, if you please.”

“Well——” he said, again, and took a step toward the door, but was detained by Lily, who made an impassioned effort to reach him in spite of the fact that her large and solid mother instantly placed herself between them.

“You sha’n’t go!” Lily cried. “If you do, I’ll go with you. I’ll die if you leave me! I will, Mamma!”

“Stop that!” Mrs. Dodge commanded, and again found herself in the predicament of a lady who is compelled to use force. Lily struggled, and, unable to pass, looked agony upon her lover, wept at him over her mother’s shoulder, and also extended an imploring arm and hand toward him above this same impediment.

“You mustn’t leave me!” she begged, hoarsely. “I can’t _stand_ it! Take me _away_ with you!” And to this she added a word that her mother found incredible, even though Mrs. Dodge had been through some amazing scenes lately, and thought the utmost of Lily’s extravagance already within her experience. Yet the mother might have been wiser here, might have understood that for a girl of Lily’s emotional disposition, and in Lily’s condition of tragic love, no limits whatever may be set.

To Lily herself the word she used was not extravagant at all; it was merely her definition of Crabbe Osborne. As he went toward the door Lily saw a brightness moving with him, an effulgence that would depart with him and leave but darkness when he had passed the threshold. No doubt the true being of young Crabbe was neither as Mrs. Dodge conceived it nor as Lily saw it;—no earthly intellect could have defined just what he was: nor, for that matter, can any earthly intellect say what anything is, since all of our descriptive words express nothing more than how the things appear to ourselves; and our descriptions, therefore, are all but bits of autobiography. Thus, Lily’s word really expressed not Crabbe but her own condition, and that was what shocked her mother. Yet Lily sincerely believed that the word described Crabbe; and, in her opinion, since her lover’s effulgence was divine, this word was natural, moderate, and peculiarly accurate.

“Take me away with you,” she wailed; and then, in a voice beset with tears, she hoarsely called him, “Angel”!

“Oh, murder!” cried Mrs. Dodge. And she was inspired to turn upon Crabbe Osborne a look that expressed in full her critical thought of Lily’s term for him.

Unquestionably he found himself in difficulties. Called “angel” in the presence of a third party, he may have been hampered by some sense of personal inadequacy. He produced a few sounds in his throat, but nothing in the way of appropriate response; and under the circumstances the expression of Mrs. Dodge was not long to be endured by any merely human being.

“I guess maybe—maybe I better be stepping along,” he murmured, and acted upon the supposition that his guess was a correct one.

Lily cried, “No! Don’t _leave_ me!” And piteously she used her strange word for him again; but her mother held her fast until after the closing of the front door was heard. “Oh, Heaven!” Lily wailed, “won’t you even let me go and watch him till he’s out of sight? Won’t you even let me _look_ at him?”

“No, I won’t!”

Upon this the daughter slid downward from the mother’s grasp and cast herself upon the floor. “He’s gone!” she sobbed. “Oh, he’s gone! He’s gone, and you drove him out! You drove him! You did! You drove him!”

“Get up from there,” Mrs. Dodge said, fiercely. “Be quiet! Do you want the servants to hear you?”

“What do _I_ care who hears me? You drove him! You drove him, Mamma! You did! You _drove_ him!”

IX MRS. DODGE’S HUSBAND

“SPIRITUAL Life and the New Generation” lay meekly upon Mrs. Dodge’s desk for all the rest of that day, and nothing was added to it. Late in the afternoon Lily consented to take a little beef tea and toast in her room; but she was still uttering intermittent gurgles, like sobs too exhausted for a fuller expression, when her mother brought her tray to her—or perhaps Lily merely renewed the utterance of these sounds at sight of her mother—and all in all the latter had what she called “a day indeed of it!”

So she told Mr. Dodge upon his arrival from his office that evening. “_Haven’t_ I, though!” she added, and gave him so vivid an account that, although he was tired, he got up from his easy chair and paced the floor.