safely, penetrated the wood and came at length upon a part of Mr.
McBride's secret. It was a rough little flight of steps, made with the
help of John, the wheelbarrow, and the boards, which led to the top of a
high brick wall. The wall astounded Katrina even more than did the
steps, which is saying a good deal. The whole elaborate contrivance for
keeping people away, puzzled Katrina. It was some time before she
mounted the steps and looked over the wall, but when she finally did so,
she ceased to be merely puzzled. She became lost in a maze of wonder.
Stretching before her, was a wide expanse of green. Just opposite stood
a long, low building of workmanlike appearance. At the left was a very
presentable rose garden. At the right, a rustic summer-house.
Surrounding all was the high brick wall. But it was none of these things
that amazed Katrina.
Moving toward her, from the door of the long building, came a little
procession--men and women, walking slowly, sedately dressed in old-time
silks and finery, decked with plumes, jewels, laces, bouquets of
flowers. Arrived at a broad space near the summer-house, the company,
after a series of low and preliminary bows, launched forth into a
stately dance. Katrina, conscious of music, descried an individual in
very modern blue overalls, who manipulated a phonograph. A voice from
beyond the summer-house, called forth instructions at intervals, with a
huskiness vaguely suggestive of old Coney.
"More side-play there, Miss Beals. Just imagine he's a young hobo you're
in love with and yer father won't let him up the steps. You're doing the
Merry Widow act while the old man's not looking. Don't bow so low you
hide your face, Mr. Peters. Your face is worth money to us all. And
everybody get a move on! You're too slow! Hit it up a bit, Jim."
The overalls, thus adjured, accelerated the time of his machine, and a
new spirit animated the group. Katrina leaned far over the wall in order
to miss nothing. At length, the dance, moving toward a finale, reached
it with a succession of stirring chords, and a flourish of curtseys, and
the group dissolved.
"That'll do for to-day. You can knock off now," began the husky voice,
when Jim, glancing up from his phonograph, beheld Katrina in her
rose-laden hat, leaning far over the wall. If he had stopped to reflect,
he might have ignored the vision, for he was but man, and the vision a
guilelessly pretty one, but he did not stop to reflect. With Jim, to see
a thing was to proclaim it abroad. Immediately, he yelled:
"Hey! Get on to the lady on the wall! Hey! Mr. Connor, come around here.
There's somebody on the wall. Hey!"
At once Katrina, to her utmost discomfort, became the centre of the
stage. Everybody turned, saw her, and began to stare. The silken ladies,
the velvet gentlemen, delayed their return to modern apparel, and took
her in. Jim stared clamorously. Mr. Connor, rounding the summer-house,
glared angrily. To Katrina, even the long building blinked its windows
at her, and she thought, with sudden longing, of Grandfather McBride.
She wished she had not come. Most of all, she wished to go, but she did
not quite dare.
At once, Mr. Connor took charge of the situation. "Say, young lady," he
demanded, in a truculent manner, "what do you mean by gettin' into these
grounds and rubberin' at us over our wall? Don't you know you can be run
in for passin' those signs? Didn't you see that gate?"
"Oh, yes," faltered Katrina; "yes--I saw the gate."
"Well, how'd you get past that gate and them signs," Mr. Connor wanted
to know.
"I--I climbed the gate," hesitated Katrina.
Clearly this was not what Mr. Connor expected. Such simplicity must
cover guile. A suppressed smile glimmered through the group and Mr.
Connor became more suspicious of Katrina.
"I don't want no kiddin' now, do you hear?" he burst forth. "You're in a
tight place, young woman, and you may as well wake up to the fact at
once. The Knickerbocker is doin' things on a plane of high art, and our
methods are our own. Now, I want to know who you represent? And
freshness don't go, d'you see?"
Katrina hardly heard Mr. Connor. Her mind was occupied with the freedom
that lay clear behind her, and the possible patrol-wagons and police
stations before her. Perhaps she might conciliate this red-faced man by
allowing him to talk, by being mild and meek and polite. Perhaps a
chance might come for a desperate attempt at escape. But Mr. Connor,
conversing fluently, read her very soul.
"Bring that there light ladder, Jim," he interrupted himself to order,
"and if you try to get away, young woman, it'll be the worse for you.
Now, I want to know what yellow sheet you represent?"
"Yellow--why do you take me for a newspaper woman?" cried Katrina. "I'm
not. I'm nothing of the sort. I've never been inside a newspaper office
in my life."
"Of course not," observed Mr. Connor, ironically. "They never have.
Always society ladies that can't write their own names. You stand just
where you are, miss, till that ladder arrives. Then I'm coming up to
confiscate any little sketches and things you may have handy.
"You are a brute," said Katrina, lips trembling but head held high. "I
am Miss Prentiss. I live near here, and you will not dare to detain me."
"Oh, won't I?" returned Mr. Connor. "I have a picture of myself letting
you go. And where the deuce is Jim?" He turned impatiently toward the
building across the lawn, then somewhat relaxed his frown. "Oh, well, I
can take an orchestra chair," observed Mr. Connor. "Here comes the
boss."
Katrina, with deepening concern, glanced from Mr. Connor toward the long
building. A young man was sprinting across the stretch of green--a
clean-cut young man in gray flannels. At the first sight of him, Katrina
caught her breath sharply and blushed. It was Katrina's despair that she
blushed so easily. As the young man neared them the spectators achieved
the effect of obliterating themselves from the landscape. They melted
into space. There remained the young man, Mr. Connor, and a divinely
flushed Katrina.
The young man looked up at her without smiling. He bowed to her gravely.
Then he turned to Mr. Connor. With a few low-spoken words, he wilted Mr.
Connor. Katrina, gazing at the rose-garden, heard something in spite of
herself. She heard her name, and caught Mr. Connor's articulate
amazement. She heard mentioned some "old gentleman." She heard a
recommendation to Mr. Connor to go more slowly in the future and to mend
his manners at all times. After a hint to Mr. Connor to look up Jim and
the ladder, she heard that gentleman withdraw much more quietly than he
had come, and her eyes finally left the rose-garden and looked straight
down into those of warm gray, belonging to the young man below her.
"Will you mind--waiting--just a moment longer?" he asked. "This is more
luck than I've had lately."
Katrina smiled tremulously. "It's in my power to go, then," she said.
"No," said the young man, firmly, "it isn't. On second thoughts, you are
to stay just where you are till that blockhead brings the ladder. I've
a good deal to say. I'm going to walk home with you."
"Oh," said Katrina. "And what will become of your fancy-dress party?"
"My fancy-dress party," returned the young man, "will catch the next
trolley for New York. Oh! Here labors the trusty henchman across the
green. Right you are, Jim! No, the lady is not to come down. I'm to go
up." And go up he did, in the twinkling of an eye, and in less than
another the rose-wreathed hat and the young man's gray cap had
disappeared from view together.
"Well, what do you know about that?" observed Jim, under his breath,
staring at the top of the wall. He whistled softly. Then he grinned.
"Hypnotized, by thunder," concluded Jim, returning with the ladder.
Meanwhile, the two lingered homeward through the deepening twilight. The
gate opened easily to a key from the young man's pocket; the signs
glimmered dimly. They talked lightly, but what they said proved to both
simply an airy veil for what they did not say. Katrina spoke of the club
and the tennis tournament.
"Of course, we lost," she said. "Our best man," with a sidelong look,
"did not enter. The committee said that he was away--on business. I see
now that they were misinformed."
"But they weren't," said the young man, eagerly, "if you mean me. I am
'away on business.' Why, do you know it's seven days since I've seen
you?"
Katrina regarded her neat brown shoes.
"The fact is," continued the young man, diffidently, "I've been trying a
new method with you. I've been endeavoring to be missed. And I'm afraid
to hear that I haven't been."
"A little wholesome fear is good for anyone," observed Katrina,
judicially, "but I can truthfully say that I rejoiced at the sight of
you this afternoon. That red-faced man was about to drag me off the wall
by the hair."
"Oh, Connor," said the young man. "Connor's not polished, but in his
line, he's a jewel. He used to be a stage manager, and considered in
that light, he's really mild."
"Is he?" said Katrina, drily. "Does he stage manage for you?"
"Practically that. Don't scoff--please. You see, there's a big future in
this business. My father growled at first, but he's come clean around.
The land was mine, and we are using it this way. The American public are
going in for this thing. They want amusement and they want it quick. And
the thing is to provide them with what they want, when they want it."
"Oh," said Katrina. "And you are providing the American public with what
they want--back there?" with a tilt of her head behind her.
"Exactly," he answered. "That's our plant. We are the Knickerbocker Film
Manufacturing Company."
"Oh," said Katrina, again. "And the fancy-dress people?"
"We are getting up 'Romeo and Juliet,'" said the young man. "Please
don't laugh. It's been proven that the moving picture audiences like
Shakespeare canned."
"Moving picture audiences," repeated Katrina in surprise, and then as
the light broke, she stopped short and looked at the young man.
"Why, didn't you guess?" he queried. "The summer-house--why, of course,
the summer-house must have hidden the camera." He looked at her
dejectedly. "I've wanted you so much to know all about it," he said,
"and now that you do, it sounds--oh, drivelling."
"But it doesn't," cried Katrina, eyes shining. "It sounds splendid. It
sounds thrilling. I'm sure it will be a success. You're bound to make it
one. I congratulate you. You've left out a good deal. You've told your
story very badly, but I'm good at filling in. The fact is, I'm proud to
know you, and you may shake hands with me if you wish to."
"Oh, Katrina," murmured the young man, and they clasped hands. It was
just here that Grandfather McBride turned into the lane from the back
garden and came upon them. When they became aware of him, leaning
heavily upon his stick and frowning at them through the dusk, Katrina
braced herself to meet whatever might come. But, suddenly, to her
intense surprise, Mr. McBride beamed upon them radiantly.
"Well, well, Katriny," he said, in high good humor, "so you've been over
that gate again, eh? Been lookin' over that wall, eh? I knew you would,
my dear, I knew you would. There's some of the McBride spirit in you
after all, thank God. I meant to take you myself, but you got ahead of
me." Here he shook hands with the young man. "Glad to see you again, my
boy," said Grandfather McBride. "Brought my little girl home, eh?"
"Well, we were on the way," admitted the young man with enthusiasm. "I
see you got the steps up, sir."
"Yes," said Mr. McBride, "oh, yes. I'm much obliged to you for the
permission. It's as good as any vaudeville, and it's a sight nearer
home. You're bound to make money. I tell my granddaughter," with a
triumphant nod to the lady in question, "to bank on brains and energy
and American push. I tell her," with a profound wink to Katrina, "to let
this old family nonsense and society racket go hang. I'm glad she met
you."
"But we mustn't stand here in the lane, Grandfather," put in Katrina,
hurriedly. "It's getting damp."
"That's so," agreed Mr. McBride, "and it's getting late." He hooked his
cane about the young man's arm. "Come in and have dinner with us," he
said.
Katrina stared in amazement at Mr. McBride. The young man looked eagerly
at Katrina. "If Miss Prentiss will allow me----" he began.
"Huh! Miss Prentiss," spoke up Mr. McBride. "What's she got to say about
it? I allow you." And as Katrina, behind Mr. McBride's back, smiled and
nodded, the young man accepted promptly.
Together the three went through the back garden and up to the house.
Arrived there, Katrina disappeared. Grandfather McBride, after settling
his guest, came straight upstairs and stopped at her door.
"Little cuss," beamed Mr. McBride, "goin' off, locking up her old
grandfather and meetin' young chaps. Say, Katriny," he remarked
casually, "he's a fine fellow, ain't he?"
Katrina, busy with her hair, nodded.
"Now, if I was a girl," continued Mr. McBride, diplomatically, "and a
fellow like that took a shine to me I'd show a glimmer of sense. I'd up
and return it."
"Would you?" remarked Katrina. "I'm glad you like him. You see,
Grandfather, you are too smart for me. I didn't know until just now that
you had even met Mr. Park."
Mr. McBride's smile stiffened, then froze, finally disappeared. He
opened his mouth, and shut it. He swallowed hard. At last, he got it
out. "Katriny--Katriny, is _that_ Sparks--that fellow downstairs? Is
that _Sparks_?"
"Hush," said Katrina. "Of course, that is Willoughby Park. Why,
Grandfather, didn't you ask his name?"
"No," said Mr. McBride, "I didn't. I just saw he was a fine, likely----"
He stopped abruptly. "Well, I'll be damned," said Mr. McBride.
Katrina came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder. Mr. McBride
looked into space. Standing so, he spoke once more. "Do you--do you
really like him, Triny?" he asked, and although he looked into space,
Mr. McBride saw Katrina's blush. He patted her hand once, and left her.
On his way downstairs, the grimness of Mr. McBride's face relaxed. In
the lower hall, he went so far as to chuckle. When he joined Mr. Park on
the porch, he grinned at him amiably.
"I'm a good sport," remarked Mr. McBride, irrelevantly, "but I know when
to retire to my corner and stay there. Say," continued Mr. McBride,
unconscious of discrepancies between thought and action, "after dinner
I'm goin' to take you children across the street to see that parrot."
III
RURAL INSURANCE
The Story of a Wayside Halt
By CLOTILDE GRAVES
EXHAUSTED by the effort involved in keeping the thermometer of the
closing day of August at an altitude intolerable to the human kind and
irksome to the brute, a large, red-hot sun was languidly sinking beyond
an extensive belt of dusky-brown elms fringing the western boundary of a
seventy acre expanse of stubbles diagonally traversed by a parish
right-of-way leading from the village of Bensley to the village of
Dorton Ware. A knee-deep crop of grasses, flattened by the passage of
the harvest wains, clothed this strip of everyman's land, and a narrow
footpath divided the grass down the middle, as a parting divides hair.
A snorting sound, which, accompanied by a terrific clatter of old iron
and the crunching of road-mendings, had been steadily growing from
distant to near, and from loud to deafening, now reached a pitch of
utter indescribability; and as a large splay-wheeled, tall-funneled,
plowing engine rolled off the Bensley highroad and lumbered in upon the
right-of-way, the powerful bouquet of hot lubricating oil nullified all
other smells, and the atmosphere became opaque to the point of solidity.
As the dust began to settle it was possible to observe that attached to
the locomotive was a square, solid, wooden van, the movable residence of
the stoker, the engineer, and an apprentice; that a Powler cultivator, a
fearsome piece of mechanism, apparently composed of second-hand anchors,
chain-cables, and motor driving-wheels, was coupled to the back of the
van, and that a bright green water-cart brought up the rear. Upon the
rotund barrel of this water-cart rode a boy.
The plowing-engine came to a standstill, the boy got down from the
water-cart and uncoupled the locomotive from the living-van. During the
operations, though the boy received many verbal buffets from both his
superiors, it was curiously noticeable that the engineer and stoker,
while plainly egging one another on to wreak physical retribution upon
the body of the neophyte, studiously refrained from personally
administering it.
"Hook off, can't ye, hook off!" commanded the engineer. "A 'ead like a
dumpling, that boy 'as!" he commented to the stoker, as Billy wrought
like a grimy goblin at the appointed task.
"A clout on the side of it 'ud do 'im good!" pronounced the stoker, who
was as thin and saturnine as the engineer was stout and good-humored.
"Boys need correction."
"I'll allow you're right," said the engineer. "But it ain't my business
to 'it Billy for 's own good. Bein' own brother to 'is sister's
'usband--it's plainly your place to give 'im wot for if 'e 'appens to
need it."
The stoker grunted and the clock belonging to the Anglo-Norman church
tower of the village struck six. Both the engineer and his subordinate
wiped their dewy foreheads with their blackened hands, and
simultaneously thought of beer.
"Us bein' goin' up to Bensley for a bit, me an' George," said the
engineer, "an' supposin' Farmer Shrubb should come worritin' along this
way and ask where us are, what be you a-going to tell 'im, Billy boy?"
"The truth, I 'ope," said the stoker, with a vicious look in an eye
which was naturally small and artificially bilious.
"Ah, but wot is the truth to be, this time?" queried the engineer.
"Let's git it settled before we go. As far as I'm consarned, the answer
Billy's to give in regards to my question o' my whereabouts is:
'Anywhere but in the tap o' the Red Cow.'"
"And everythink but decently drunk," retorted the stoker.
"That's about it," assented the unsuspecting engineer.
The stoker laughed truculently, and Billy ventured upon a faint echo of
the jeering cachinnation. The grin died from the boy's face, however, as
the engineer promptly relieved a dawning sense of injury by cuffing him
upon one side of the head, while the stoker wrung the ear upon the
other.
"Ow, hoo," wailed Billy, stanching his flowing tears in the ample sleeve
of his coat, "Ow, hoo, hoo!"
"Stop that blubberin', you," commanded the stoker, who possessed a
delicate ear, "and make th' fire an' git th' tea ready against Alfred
and me gits back. You hear me?"
"Yes, plaize," whimpered Billy.
"An' mind you warms up the cold bacon pie," added the stoker.
"And don't you forget to knock in the top of that tin o' salmon," added
the engineer, "an' set it on to stew a bit. An' don't you git pickin'
the loaf wi' they mucky black fingers o' yours, Billy, my lad, or you'll
suffer for it when I comes home."
"Yes, plaize," gasped Billy, bravely swallowing the recurrent hiccough
of grief. "An' plaize where be I to build fire?"
"The fire," mused the engineer. He looked at the crimson ball of the
sun, now drowning in a lake of ruddy vapors behind the belt of elms; he
nodded appreciatively at the palely glimmering evening star and pointed
to a spot some yards ahead. "Build it there, Billy," he commanded
briefly.
The stoker hitched his thumbs in his blackened leather waist-strap and
spat toward the rear of the van. "You build the fire nigh th' hedge
there," he ordered, "so as us can sit wi' our faces to'rds yon bit o'
quick an' hev th' van to back of us, an' git a bit o' comfort outside
four walls fur once. D' ye hear, boy?"
"Yes, George," quavered Billy.
The sleepy eye of the engineer had a red spark in it that might have
jumped out of his own engine-furnace as he turned upon the acquiescent
Billy. "Didn't you catch wot I said to you just now, my lad?" he
inquired with ill-boding politeness.
"Yes, Alfred," gasped the alarmed Billy.
"If the boy doesn't mind me," came from the stoker, who was thoroughly
roused, "and if I don't find a blazin' good fire, an' victuals welding
hot, ready just in the place I've pointed out to 'im, when I've 'ad my
pipe and my glass at the 'Red Cow,' I'll----" A palpably artificial fit
of coughing prevented further utterance.
"You'll strap 'im within an inch of 'is life, I dursay," hinted the
engineer. "You pipe what George says, Billy?" he continued, as Billy
applied his right and left coat cuffs to his eyes in rapid succession.
"He's give you his promise, and now I give you mine. If I don't find a
roarin' good fire and the rest to match, just where I've said they're to
be when I come back from where I've said I'm a-goin'----"
"You'll wallop 'im a fair treat, I lays you will," said the stoker,
revealing a discolored set of teeth in a gratified smile. "We'll bide by
wot the boy does then," he added. "Knowin' that wot 'e gits from either
of us, he'll earn. An' your road is my road, Alfred, leastways as far as
the 'Red Cow.'"
The engineer and the stoker walked off amicably side by side. The sun
sank to a mere blot of red fire behind the elms, and crowds of
shrilly-cheering gnats rose out of the dry edges and swooped upon the
passive victim, Billy, who sat on the steps of the living van with his
knuckles in his eyes.
"Neither of 'em can't kill me, 'cos the one what did it 'ud 'ave to be
'ung," he reflected, and this thought gave consolation. He unhooked a
rusty red brazier from the back of the living van, and dumping it well
into the hedge at the spot indicated by the stoker, filled it with dry
grass, rotten sticks, coals out of the engine bunker, and lumps of oily
cotton waste. Then he struck and applied a match, saw the flame leap
and roar amongst the combustibles, filled the stoker's squat tea-kettle
with water from the green barrel, put in a generous handful of Tarawakee
tea, and, innocent of refinements in tea-making, set it on to boil.
"George is more spitefuller nor wot Alfred is," Billy Beesley murmured,
as the kettle sent forth its first faint shrill note. Then he added with
a poignant afterthought, "But Alfred is a bigger man than wot George
be."
The stimulus of this reflection aided cerebration. Possessed by an
original idea, Billy rubbed the receptacle containing it, and his mouth
widened in an astonished grin. A supplementary brazier, temporarily
invalided by reason of a hole in the bottom, hung at the back of the
living-van. The engineer possessed a kettle of his own. Active as a
monkey, the small figure in the flapping coat and the baggy trousers
sped hither and thither. Two hearths were established, two fires blazed,
two tea-kettles chirped. Close beside the stoker's brazier a bacon pie
in a brown earthen dish nestled to catch the warmth, a tin of Canadian
salmon, which Billy had neglected to open, leaned affectionately against
the other. Suddenly the engineer's kettle boiled over, and as Billy
hurried to snatch it from the coals, the salmon-tin exploded with an
awe-inspiring bang, and oily fragments of fish rained from the bounteous
skies.
"He'll say I did it a purpose, Alfred will!" the aggrieved boy wailed,
as he collected and restored to the battered tin as much of its late
contents as might be recovered. While on all fours searching for bits
which might have escaped him, and diluting the gravy which yet remained
in the tin with salt drops of foreboding, a scorching sensation in the
region of the back brought his head round. Then he yelled in earnest,
for the roaring flame from the other brazier had set the quickset hedge,
inflammable with drought, burning as fiercely as the naphtha torch of a
fair-booth, while a black patch, widening every moment, was spreading
through the dry, white grasses under the clumsy wheels of the
living-van, whose brown painted sides were beginning to blister and
char, as Billy, rendered intrepid by desperation, grabbed the broken
furnace-rake handle, usually employed as a poker, and beat frantically
at the encroaching fire. As he beat he yelled, and stamped fiercely upon
those creeping yellow tongues. There was fire from side to side of the
field pathway now, the straggling hedge on both sides was crackling
gaily. And realizing the unconquerable nature of the disaster, Billy
dropped the broken furnace-rake, uttered the short, sharp squeal of the
ferret-pressed rabbit, and took to his heels, leaving a very creditable
imitation of a prairie conflagration behind him.