"I'm sorry, old fellow."
"Sorry for what, Mr. Landor?"
"To have driven your little friends away. They evidently had some good
news to tell you."
"Oh! that's all right," said Jack cheerily, "it will keep, you know, and
they were in a hurry--they said they could only stop a moment." Jack was
puzzling his young brain over their abrupt departure, but his loyalty to
all three friends made him wish to hide from Landor the fact that he was
apparently the cause. "I'm so sorry they _were_ in a hurry," he
continued, "for I'm always wishing you knew one another--you'd get on
like a house afire."
"Should we, Jack? I don't know. Recent events don't seem to prove it, do
they?" laughing good-naturedly.
"Oh! that doesn't count. You just wait until some day when they have
more time--I don't know when that'll be, though, for they're regular
hustlers. What do you suppose?" confidentially. "They call their flat
'The Hustle'--isn't that great?"
"I should say so--it sounds enterprising."
"They named it after the private car they used to live in--they've told
me all about it. Gee! wouldn't I like to get aboard of her once! She
must have been a beauty!"
"What became of the car? Did you ever happen to hear, Jack?"
"It's out west somewhere--some railroad's got it, I think, but I'm not
sure. They never spoke of it but once--I could see it went kind of hard
talking about it, though Miss Hester laughed and joked about its being
they who did the hustling now, instead of the car. It must be fine to be
rich and travel all around," exclaimed the boy, "but I'd hate to have
had it and then have to give it all up the way they have. Say, Mr.
Landor, shall I tell you something?" He clasped the arms of the
reclining chair with his thin hands and drew himself up to a sitting
posture.
Landor nodded and drew his seat closer. He encouraged the boy in his
confidences.
"I slumped the other night--clean went all to pieces. I'm fourteen, you
know, but if I'd been four I couldn't have acted more kiddish. Mother
was out and I'd been thinking how I wanted to go to college and
couldn't, because mother can't afford it, and how I wanted to travel
around and couldn't, and how I even wanted to walk and couldn't--not for
a long time yet--and I just lay here and thought there wasn't much sense
in getting any better anyway--I'd just have to go back and be nothing
better than an office boy where I was before I got hurt and--"
"And you succeeded in working yourself up into a fine frenzy of
discontent, didn't you, Jack? I understand, my boy. We all have our
rebellious moments."
"I was crying like a baby when Miss Julie came in."
"Poor old Jack," patting his hand sympathetically.
"Poor nothing!" exclaimed the boy in a tone of infinite disgust, "it
makes me hot all over to think about it and that wasn't the worst! I
_kept on_ crying." Jack's honest nature was abasing itself before his
friend. "I kept on crying till she shamed me out of it."
Landor did not speak, feeling silence at that moment would better
harmonize with the boy's mood. Jack and he understood each other, and
the boy feeling his sympathetic interest drew a long breath and went on
again.
"She made me tell her all about it and I felt so cut up and blue that I
said a lot of things I didn't mean and I told her it was easy enough for
her to be brave--she didn't know what it was to lie still and perhaps be
crippled all your life--the doctor can't tell. _Think of my telling her
that!_" The boy shuddered. "I believe if I'd struck her, Mr. Landor, I
couldn't have hurt her more, for there's her father, you see, a million
times worse off than I am, and I'd forgotten all about him."
Landor pushed back his chair and as if he found action of some kind
necessary paced the room quietly while the boy talked on.
"Her face got so white and her eyes got so dark that it frightened me,
but do you know what she did? I was lying on the couch and she came over
and knelt down beside me and talked to me a long time about her father."
Jack's voice was awed and Landor's hands went deeper down into his
pockets--a way he had when he was moved.
"She called him 'Daddy' and you could see just the way she said it that
she worshiped him, and she told me that when you loved a person very
much it was harder to see him stricken down than if you were ill and
helpless yourself. I hadn't thought of that, but it must be so, mustn't
it, Mr. Landor?"
"Yes, Jack, it must be so." No cloud had ever darkened Kenneth Landor's
pleasure-loving, pleasure-giving life.
"Then she told me that she wasn't brave really. That many a night she
cried herself to sleep because she was heart-broken about her father and
discouraged about their work and tired. I think she just told me that so
I wouldn't feel as if I were a coward because I cried too. I'd stopped
by that time, I can tell you! And then she said she wanted me to help
her and her sister be bright and jolly by being bright and jolly, too.
That made me laugh--to think I could help them! We both laughed and I
felt better. After that she talked a long time about trouble and how it
came to some people very young and how it was a sort of test--did you
ever think of that, Mr. Landor?" gazing earnestly into the man's face.
"No, Jack, there are many things I have never thought of!"
"You would if you knew them, you couldn't help it. She wasn't a bit
preachy--I hate that--but she said the way we took things showed the
kind of characters we had and when we got discouraged we must just
remember we were soldiers--Christ's soldiers--that's what she said." The
boy's voice sank to a whisper. "And that no soldier amounted to shucks
till he was knocked about and disciplined and taught to obey his
superiors."
"That is the truth, my boy." In his heart Landor was marveling at what
he heard.
"And do you know what, Mr. Landor? I'm going to march in the ranks
too--a double-quick step to try to catch up with them and if ever I do
catch up and can march alongside of them, won't I be proud, just!"
Julie's little sermon had sunk deep into his receptive mind and kindled
his imagination to deeds of valor like some knight of old. He leaned
back on his cushions exhausted by this unusual talk, his frail body in
pitiful contrast to the strength of the spirit that had awakened within
him and glowed in his face with a transfiguring light.
Landor came over to his chair and took his hand in a grip that hurt. "I
am going to enter the ranks too, old fellow," said he, carrying out the
illusion partly to please the boy's fancy and partly because he had
never before been so in earnest in his life.
"You!" said the boy, to whom Landor was a hero, "you don't have to
fight--why you can kill buffaloes and Indians and everything!"
Landor smiled. "Perhaps I have more dangerous foes nearer at hand, Jack.
Who knows? Well, I must be going. Shall I lift you onto the couch
first?"
Jack always enjoyed the feeling of Landor's strong arms about him and
gave the man a grateful look as he was laid gently down. The couch was
in reality Jack's bed and the change to the reclining chair had been
brought about by Landor, who sent the chair to him in the early days of
their acquaintance, but laughingly denied any previous knowledge of it
when Jack endeavored to thank him.
"You seem to have a lot of paper about," commented Landor, picking up
some sheets from the floor. "What are you up to these days?"
Jack blushed.
"Out with it, old fellow; you look guilty."
"I'm--I'm trying to write out the stories I make about the people I see
out of my window. You know I like to imagine things about them. _She_
said if I'd write them down the way I tell them they'd entertain her
father very much, but I've gotten sort of disgusted--it seems such awful
rot when it's down on paper."
Landor ran his eye over the sheets Jack indicated.
"They are not rot, Jack, they are pretty good. I am not much of a
literary chap, but I know when a thing is interesting. When you have
taken this way of introducing the neighborhood to Mr. Dale why don't you
send him a weekly bulletin--a regularly gotten up paper with all the
neighborhood news? When there isn't news you can invent it, you know,"
smiling; "that is allowable in the newspaper trade."
"Say, that's great!" cried Jack. "I'll call it the--'In the Ranks' and
make a great big heading for my first column 'News from the Front' (that
means front window) and I know, that'll please Mr. Dale, for mother told
me he was a distinguished officer in the Civil War and Miss Julie says
they were brought up on military principles." Jack snatched paper and
pencil eager to begin.
"Keep on with your stories first, Jack. Why, we shall be setting up a
printing-press here next," and with this delightfully suggestive remark
Landor departed.
He did not go on to the club, as was his wont at that hour, but lighted
a cigar and walked out of the little court and down through Crana Street
to the river, where on the bridge he paused and gazed across to the city
with a rapt, preoccupied air. Then, as if the noise of the ever-whirring
electric cars disturbed him, he retraced his steps and took a road in
the opposite direction which brought him into the quiet and seclusion of
the park. The air was keen and crisp and blew in his face in gusty
whiffs as he strode on, while all about him in their winter nakedness
the trees cast spectral shadows. Usually, from long training and
association with western plains and mountain trails, he took note of
everything as he passed, but to-night he gazed far on ahead, engrossed
in thought. To his annoyance, twice his cigar went out--which was in
itself significant. Finally he threw it away and lighted a little
bull-dog pipe, his solace and companion in many a solitary stroll.
So those were the Dale girls, he was thinking, of whom Dr. Ware had said
so much but of whom, all unconsciously, Jack had revealed more than
years of intercourse with them might tell. He thought of Julie as he had
seen her, quiet and fair-haired, with that gracious little plea that he
should not let them drive him away, to prevent which they had themselves
made a hasty exit from the room. And then there was another Julie as
Jack had pictured her, turning her heart out for a boy that he might be
comforted! He thought of her with reverence. A profound solemnity
possessed him, giving him a strangely subdued sensation as of a man
emerging from a sanctuary. What was he to whom life was an idle pastime,
that he should draw the same breath with her!
Then from out this solemn train of thought danced another picture--two
baffling eyes mocking him. Who was she, this will-o'-the-wisp, that she
should hold him at arm's length in that imperious fashion! He stopped
and half closed his lids as if the better to conjure up a vision of her,
then shook himself and went on--were not those eyes enough and that
light ironical voice in his ears? Why had she snubbed him so--him, who
was surely unoffending? And she was a soldier too, marching in the
ranks. That pretty, piquant, fascinating sprite had shouldered her
knapsack and was fighting a battle royal. Dr. Ware had told him so long
ago, but somehow he only now began to realize it since Jack had
expressed it in Julie's simple way. Jove! the very simplicity of it was
impressive! Thoughts like these carried Landor out into the country and
brought him back to the club two hours later in an unusually quiet frame
of mind. The men with whom he habitually fraternized found him dull and
unresponsive and to his inexpressible relief they left him to finish the
evening alone.