It was incredible to David as he thought it over afterwards, but he
actually slept away that wonderful night on the railroad! When he
climbed on to the shutting-up shelf behind red and green striped
curtains, nothing had been further from his mind than sleep. It was his
intention to sit bolt upright and watch the lamps swinging in the
aisle, to crane his neck over the top of the curtains and look out of
the small hinged window at the smoke all thick with sparks from the
locomotive engine, and at the mountains with the stars hanging over
them, and--at the Horseshoe Curve! But instead of seeing all these
wonders that he and Dr. Lavendar had talked about for the last few
weeks, no sooner had he been lifted into his berth than, in a flash,
the darkness changed to bright daylight. Yes; the dull, common,
every-night affair of sleep, had interfered with all his plans. He did
not speak of his disappointment the next morning, as he
dressed--somehow--in the jostling, swaying little enclosure where the
washstands were; but he thought about it, resentfully. Sleep! "When I'm
a man, I'll never sleep," he assured himself; then cheered up as he
realized that absence from Sarah had brought at least one opportunity
of manhood--he would not have to wash behind his ears! But he brooded
over his helplessness to make up for that other loss. He was so silent
at breakfast in the station that Dr. Lavendar thought he did not like
his food.
"You can have something else, David. What do you want?"
"Ice-cream," David said, instantly alert.
"At breakfast!" David nodded, and the ice-cream appeared. He ate it in
silence, and when he had scraped the saucer, he said,
"Can you ever get back behind, sir?"
"Behind what?" Dr. Lavendar asked. He was looking at David and
wondering what was different about the child; he did not have quite his
usual aspect. "I must have left off some of his clothes," Dr. Lavendar
thought anxiously, and that question about getting back behind
suggested buttons. "Are your braces fastened?" he asked.
"And do it over again," David said. "Is there any way you can get back
behind, and do it over again?"
"Do what over again?" Dr. Lavendar said. "If they've come unfastened--"
"I don't like sleeping," said David. "If I could get behind again, I
wouldn't."
Dr. Lavendar gave it up, but he fumbled under David's little coat and
discovered that the buttons were all right. "There seems to be
something different about you, David," he said, as they pushed their
chairs from the table. David had no explanation to offer, so Dr.
Lavendar consulted the waitress: "Is there anything wrong about this
little boy's clothing? He doesn't look just right--"
"I guess he hasn't had his hair brushed, sir," said the smiling young
woman, and carried the child off to some lair of her own, whence he
emerged in his usual order.
"Thank you, my dear," said Dr. Lavendar. He took David's hand, and out
they stepped into the world! For a moment they stood still on the
sidewalk to get their breaths in the rush and jostle of the crowd that
surged along the street; a simple, happy pair--an old man in a blue
muffler and broad-brimmed felt hat, a child in a little surtout and
visored cap. David gripped Dr. Lavendar's hand tight, and looked up
into his face; its smile beaming upon all these hurrying people,
reassured the child, and he paced along beside the old gentleman in
grave content. They stopped at the first shop-window, and gazed at a
row of fish bedded in ice--beautiful iridescent mackerel, fat red
pompoms, and in the middle, in a nest of seaweed, green-black
creatures, with great claws that ended in pincers and eyes that looked
like pegs stuck into their heads. David stared, open-mouthed; then he
put a hand into his pocket.
"How much would one cost, sir?"
"I don't know," said Dr. Lavendar.
"I think I will buy one, and take it home and keep it in a cage."
At which Dr. Lavendar said gravely, that he feared the creatures would
not be happy in a cage--"And besides, people eat them, David."
David was silent; then, in a suppressed voice, he said, "Are they happy
when people eat them? I think they'd rather be in a cage; I would hang
it in my window."
But Dr. Lavendar only said, "Dear me! What have we here?" and drew him
to the next shop, at the door of which stood a wooden Indian, a
tomahawk in one hand, and a cigar-box in the other. Dr. Lavendar bade
David wait outside while he went into this shop, which the little boy
was perfectly willing to do, for it isn't every day you get the chance
to examine a wooden Indian, even to climbing up on his pedestal and
feeling his tomahawk with respectful fingers. When Dr. Lavendar came
out, David took his kind old hand, and burst into confidences.
"When I'm big I'm going to fight Indians. Or else I'll drive fast
horses. I don't know which. It's hard to decide, ain't it, sir?"
"Very hard. If you choose the horses, I'll give you Goliath."
David was silent; then he sighed: "I guess I'll fight Indians, sir," he
said.
But a moment later he was cheerfully confidential; he had thirty cents
to spend! "Dear, dear," said Dr. Lavendar, "we mustn't do anything
rash. Here, let's look in this window."
Oh, how many windows there were, and all of them full of beautiful
things! Dr. Lavendar was willing to stop at every one; and he joined in
David's game of "mine," with the seriousness that all thoughtful
persons give to this diversion.
"That's _mine!_" David would cry, pointing to a green china toad behind
the plate glass; and Dr. Lavendar would say gravely,
"You may have it, David; you may have it."
"Now it's your turn!" David would instruct him.
"Must I take something in this window?" Dr. Lavendar would plead. And
David always said firmly that he must. "Well, then, that's mine," Dr.
Lavendar would say.
"Why, that's only a teacup! We have thousands of them at our house!"
David boasted. "I should think you would rather have the toad.
I'll--I'll give you the toad, sir?"
"Oh, dear me, no," Dr. Lavendar protested; "I wouldn't rob you for the
world." And so they sauntered on, hand in hand. When they came to a
book-store, Dr. Lavendar apologized for breaking in upon their "game."
"I'm going to play _mine_, in here," he said.
David was quite content to wait at the door and watch the people, and
the yellow boxes full of windows, drawn by mules with bells jingling on
their harness. Sometimes he looked fearfully back into the shop; but
Dr. Lavendar was still playing "mine," so all was well. At last,
however, he finished his game and came to the door.
"Come along, David; this is the most dangerous place in town!"
David looked at him with interest. "Why did you skip with your eye when
you said that, sir?" he demanded.
At which the clerk who walked beside them laughed loudly, and David
grew very red and angry.
But when Dr. Lavendar said, "David, I've got a bone in my arm; won't
you carry a book for me?" he was consoled, and immediately began to ask
questions. It seemed to Dr. Lavendar that he inquired about everything
in heaven and earth and the waters under the earth, and at last the old
gentleman was obliged, in self-defence, to resort to the formula which,
according to the code of etiquette understood by these two friends,
signified "stop talking."
"What is--" David began, and his companion replied glibly:
"Layovers for meddlers and crutches for lame ducks."
And David subsided into giggles, for it was understood that this remark
was extremely humorous.
After that they went to dinner with a gentleman who wore a long black
coat and no shirt; at least, David could not see any shirt. Dr.
Lavendar called him Bishop, and they talked a great deal about
uninteresting things. David only spoke twice: His host took occasion to
remark that he did not finish all his mashed potato--"Some poor child
would be glad of what you waste," said the Bishop. To which David
replied, "If I ate it, what then, for the poor child?" And the
gentleman with no shirt said in a grave aside to Dr. Lavendar that the
present generation was inclined to pertness. His second remark was made
when the clergymen pushed their chairs back from the table. But David
sat still. "We haven't had the ice-cream yet," he objected, gently.
"Hush! Hush!" said Dr. Lavendar. And the gentleman laughed very hard,
and said that he had to send all his ice-cream to the heathen. David,
reddening, looked at him in stolid silence. In the afternoon there was
a pause; they went to church, and listened to another gentleman, who
talked a long, long time. Sometimes David sighed, but he kept pretty
quiet, considering. After the talk was over, Dr. Lavendar did not seem
anxious to get away. David twitched his sleeve once or twice to
indicate his own readiness, but it appeared that Dr. Lavendar preferred
to speak to the talking gentleman. And the talking gentleman patted
David's head and said:
"And what do you think of foreign missions, my little boy?"
David did not answer, but he moved his head from under the large white
hand.
"You were very good and quiet," said the talking gentleman. "I saw you,
down in the pew with Dr. Lavendar. And I was very much complimented;
you never went to sleep." "I couldn't," said David, briefly; "the seats
are too hard." The talking gentleman laughed a little, and you might
have thought Dr. Lavendar skipped with his eye;--at any rate, he
laughed.
"They don't always tell us why they keep awake," he said. And the
talking gentleman didn't laugh any more.
At last, however, they stopped wasting time, and took up their round of
dissipation again. They went to see Liberty Bell; then they had supper
at a marble-topped table, in a room as big as a church! "Ice-cream,
suh?" suggested a waiter, and David said "Yes!" Dr. Lavendar looked
doubtful, but David had no doubts. Yet, half-way through that pink and
white and brown mound on his saucer, he sighed, and opened and shut his
eyes as if greatly fatigued.
"Finished?" Dr. Lavendar asked.
"No, sir," David said sadly, and started in with a spurt; but the mound
did not seem to diminish, and suddenly his chin quivered. "If you have
to pay for what I don't eat, I'll try," he said; "but my breast is
cold." Reassured on this point, and furtively rubbing his little chilly
stomach, David put down his spoon and slipped out of his chair, ready
to make a night of it. For, supper over, they went to see a magician!
"I don't know what Mrs. Richie will say to me," said Dr. Lavendar. "You
won't get to bed before ten o'clock!"
"She'll say 'all right,'" said David. Then he added, "The gentleman at
dinner tells lies, or else he's foolish. It would melt before the
heathen got it."
Dr. Lavendar, singing to himself--
Hither ye faithful, haste with songs of triumph,--
did not hear the morals of his bishop aspersed. He took David's hand,
and by and by they were sitting staring open-mouthed at a man who put
eggs in a pan, and held it over a fire, and took out live pigeons! Oh,
yes, and many other wonders! David never spoke once on his way back to
the hotel, and Dr. Lavendar began to be worried for fear the child was
overtired. He hustled him to bed as quickly as possible, and then sat
down under the far-off chandelier of the hotel bedroom, to glance at a
newspaper and wait until David was asleep before he got into his own
bed. He did not have to wait long for the soft breathing of childish
sleep. It had been poor David's intention to go over in his mind every
single thing he saw the magician do, so that he wouldn't leave out
anything at recess on Monday. Alas, before he could begin to think, the
sun was shining again!
It was Dr. Lavendar who did the thinking before the sunlight came.
Twice, in his placid, wakeful night, he rose to make sure the child was
all right, to pull up an extra blanket about the small shoulders or to
arrange the pillow, punched by David's fist to the edge of the bed. In
the morning he let the little boy look out of the window while he
packed up their various belongings; and when it was time to start,
David could hardly tear himself away from that outlook, which makes
such a mystical appeal to most of us--huddling roofs and chimneys under
a morning sky. But when he did turn to look at Dr. Lavendar, tucking
things into his valise and singing to himself, it was to realize again
the immutable past. "No," he said slowly, "you can't get back behind,
and begin again." Dr. Lavendar, understanding, chuckled.
"Can God?" said David.
At that Dr. Lavendar's face suddenly shone. "David," he said, "the
greatest thing in the world is to know that God is always beginning
again!"
But David had turned to the window to watch a prowling cat upon a roof;
and then, alas, it was time to start.
"Well," said Dr. Lavendar, as, hand in hand, they walked to the big,
roaring place where the cars were, "Well, David, to-morrow we shall be
at home again! You sit down here and take care of my bag while I go and
get the tickets."
David slid sidewise on to the slippery wooden settee. He had nothing to
say; again he felt that bleak sinking right under his little
breast-bone; but it stopped in the excitement of seeing Mrs. Richie's
brother coming into the waiting-room! There was a young lady at his
side, and he piloted her across the big, bare room, to the very settee
upon which David was swinging his small legs.
"I must see about the checks, dear," he said, and hurried off without a
glance at the little boy who was guarding Dr. Lavendar's valise.
The sun pouring through the high, dusty window, shone into David's
eyes. He wrinkled his nose and squinted up at the young lady from under
the visor of his blue cap. She smiled down at him, pleasantly, and then
opened a book; upon which David said bravely, "You're nineteen. I'm
seven, going on eight."
"What!" said the young lady; she put her book down, and laughed. "How
do you know I am nineteen, little boy?"
"Mrs. Richie's brother said so."
She looked at him with amused perplexity. "And who is Mrs. Richie's
brother?"
David pointed shyly at the vanishing figure at the end of the
waiting-room.
"Why, no, dear, that's my father."
"_I_ know," said David; "he's Mr. Pryor, Mrs. Richie's brother. He
comes and stays at our house."
"Stays at your house? What on earth are you talking about, you funny
little boy! Where is your house?"
"O' Chester," said David.
The young lady laughed and gave him a kind glance. "You've made a
mistake, I think. My father doesn't know Mrs. Richie."
David had nothing to say, and she opened her book. When Mr. Pryor
returned, hurrying to collect the bags and umbrellas, David had turned
his back and was looking out of the window.
It was not until they were in the train that Alice remembered to speak
of the incident. "Who in the world is Mrs. Richie?" she demanded gayly,
"and where is Old Chester?"
The suddenness of it was like a blow. Lloyd Pryor actually gasped; his
presence of mind so entirely deserted him, that before he knew it, he
had lied--and no one knew better than Lloyd Pryor that it is a mistake
to lie hurriedly.
"I--I don't know! Never heard of either of them."
His confusion was so obvious that his daughter gave him a surprised
look. "But I'm told you stay at Mrs. Richie's house, in Old Chester,"
she said laughing.
"What are you talking about!"
"Why, father," she said blankly; his irritation was very disconcerting.
"I tell you I never heard of such a person!" he repeated sharply; and
then realized what he had done. "Damn it, what did I lie for?" he said
to himself, angrily; and he began to try to get out of it: "Old
Chester? Oh, yes; I do remember. It's somewhere near Mercer, I believe.
But I never went there in my life." Then he added in his own mind,
"Confound it, I've done it again! What the devil has happened? Who has
told her?" Aloud, he asked where she had heard of Old Chester.
She began to tell him about a little boy, who said--"it was too funny!"
she interrupted herself, smiling--"who said that _you_ were 'Mrs.
Richie's brother,' and you stayed at her house in Old Chester, and--"
"Perfect nonsense!" he broke in. "He mistook me for some one else, I
suppose."
"Oh, of course," she agreed, laughing; upon which Mr. Pryor changed the
subject by saying that he must look over some papers. "Don't talk now,
dear," he said.
Alice subsided into her novel; but after a while she put the book down.
No; the little boy had not mistaken him for somebody else; "he's Mr.
Pryor," the child had said. But, of course, the rest was all a funny
mistake. She took the book up again, but as she read, she began to
frown. Old Chester: Where had she heard of Old Chester? Then she
remembered. A gentleman who came to call,--King? Yes; that was his
name; Dr. King. He said he had come from Old Chester. And he had spoken
of somebody--now, who was it? Oh, yes, Richie; Mrs. Richie. And once
last spring when her father went to Mercer he said he was going to Old
Chester; yet now he said he had never heard of the place.--Why! it
almost seemed as if she had blundered upon a secret! Her uneasy smile
faded involuntarily into delicate disgust; not because the nature of
the secret occurred to her, but because secrecy in itself was repugnant
to her, as it is to all nobler minds. She said to herself, quickly,
that her father had forgotten Old Chester, that was all. Of course, he
had forgotten it!--or else--She did not allow herself to reach the
alternative which his confusion so inevitably suggested:--secrecy,
protected by a lie. In the recoil from it she was plunged into remorse
for a suspicion which she had not even entertained. Truth was so much
to this young creature, that even the shadow of an untruth gave her a
sense of uneasiness which she could not banish. She looked furtively at
her father, sorting out some papers, his lips compressed, his eyebrows
drawn into a heavy frown, and assured herself that she was a wicked
girl to have wondered, even for a minute, whether he was perfectly
frank. He! Her ideal of every virtue! And besides, why should he not be
frank? It was absurd as well as wicked to have that uneasy feeling. "I
am ashamed of myself!" she declared hotly, and took up her novel....
But David had thrown the smooth stone from the brook!
It was a very little stone; the giant did not know for many a day where
he had been hit; yet it had struck him in the one vulnerable point in
his armor--his daughter's trust in him. How the wound widened does not
belong to this story.
When Dr. Lavendar came bustling back with his tickets, David was
absorbed in thought. He had very little to say on the long day's
journey over the mountains. When they reached Mercer where they were to
spend the night, he had nothing whatever to say: his eyes were closing
with fatigue, and he was asleep almost before his little yellow head
touched the pillow. In the morning he asked a question:
"Is it a Aunt if you don't know it?" "What?" said Dr. Lavendar, winding
his clean stock carefully around his neck.
But David relapsed into silence. He asked so few questions that day
that crutches for lame ducks were referred to only once.
They took the afternoon stage for Old Chester. It was a blue, delicious
October day, David sat on the front seat between Dr. Lavendar and
Jonas, and as Jonas told them all that had happened during their long
absence, the child felt a reviving interest in life. Dr. Lavendar's
humming broke out into singing; he sang scraps of songs and hymns, and
teased David about being sleepy. "I believe he's lost his tongue,
Jonas; he hasn't said boo! since we left Mercer. I suppose he won't
have a thing to tell Mrs. Richie, not a thing!"
"Well, now, there!" said Jonas, "her George gimme a letter for you, and
I'll be kicked if I ain't forgot it!" He thrust his left leg out, so
that his cow-hide boot hung over the dashboard, and fumbled in his
pocket; then thrust out the right leg and fumbled in another pocket;
then dived into two or three coat pockets; finally a very crumpled
note, smelling of the stable, came up from the depths and was handed to
Dr. Lavendar.
"Slow down these two-forties on a plank road, Jonas, till I get my
glasses on." said Dr. Lavendar.
After he read the letter he did not sing any more; his face fell into
deeply puzzled lines. "I must ask Willy what it's all about," he said
to himself. Certainly the note did not explain itself:
"DEAR DR. LAVENDAR: If it will not inconvenience you, will you let
David stay at the rectory tonight?--and perhaps for a few days longer.
I am not sure whether I shall be able to keep him. I may have to give
him back to you. Will you let him stay with you until I can decide what
to do?
"HELENA R."
"I wonder if that brother has interfered?" thought Dr. Lavendar.
"Something has happened; that's evident. Keep him? Well, I guess I
will!" He looked down at David, his old eyes beaming with pleasure.
"Mrs. Richie wants you to stay with me tonight; what do you think of
that?"
"I wanted to see the rabbits," said David; "but I don't mind
staying--very much."