FACE TO THE SKY
THE next evening Billy was busy with preparations for starting at six
o’clock in the morning on the scout for which he was patrol leader.
Although it would last only two days he had been a little uncertain
about going, since the end of the school year with its many duties and
activities was so near; but the day before he had learned that he would
have to take but one examination, his high standing excusing him from
the other “exams.” And now that he would not be able to take any of the
long, summer scouts, he could not resist this last chance for the tramps
he loved.
A little before nine over the telephone came Bess’s voice.
“Hello, Queen of Sheba! That was a great gift you brought us last night
from your domain in the south.”
“I only planned it; and like the queen of old, I didn’t do it for
nothing; I crave a boon.”
“Say on. I’m no Solomon, but you shall have your desire if I can grant
it.” Billy laughed and waved an imaginary sceptre, forgetting that Bess
could not see him.
“It’s not so difficult. May Nell has just telephoned that two of her
classmates arrived before dinner time on their way East, and she wants
you and me to come over.”
“Gee whiz! It’s late to spring your command.”
“Not five seconds since I received mine. They’ve been motoring all the
evening.”
“And I’m—not—dressed to meet—”
“Billy To-morrow! When did you begin to cogitate about apparel?”
“It’s different—”
“No more. The Queen commands. Come over right away, and father will set
us down,—the machine is at the door. I won’t be a minute.”
Bess’s home was only a block away, and her “minute” only five, yet in
that short time Dr. Carter had a call in another direction, and the two
young people had to take a trolley car. This was an opportunity Bess had
desired, and she improved it at once.
“Billy, I want you to tell me why you didn’t ask May Nell to go with you
to the picnic instead of Erminie.”
“May Nell isn’t a pupil of Fifth Avenue High.”
“That makes no difference. A lot of the Juniors brought friends. For
that matter what was Mumps doing there? If I had known you wouldn’t ask
her, I should have taken her.”
Billy did not reply. For once Bess could not understand him, and was
distressed. He was the playmate of her lifetime, the one boy comrade she
had treated as frankly as a brother. But now she realized he had
interests apart from hers, cared no longer for things she could share;
and the knowledge hurt her.
“And then that Erminie Fisher! She’s no more to be compared with May
Nell than—”
“Go easy, Bess. You saw that Miss Fisher went with me, didn’t you?”
There was a look in his eye, a tone in his voice that chilled her, that
added to her feeling of distance from him.
She glanced up almost shyly. “Then do you wish it to be ‘Mr. Bennett’
and ‘Miss Carter’ after this?”
“Oh, piffles, Bess! You’re always to the good. The reason I said that is
because it makes me mad to hear every one say mean things of Erminie.
She’s a lot better than—” He did not finish. An uncomfortable memory of
her self-revelation during the night on the island told him why girls
like Bess shunned her. But what she had said of her mother also came to
him, and what he knew of her father. How could she be the sort of girl
Bess was, whose parents were not only loving, but wise?
“Well, there must be something good about her, Billy, when you like her.
But I can’t see how you can neglect May Nell for her.”
“I don’t neglect May Nell. But I am no J. Pierpont; I’ve got my living
to earn. Do you suppose May Nell will want me ringing her door-bell
after I don overalls and grease?”
“Will Erminie?”
“Yes.”
“Then she’s different from what I think. But anyway you won’t do that.
You’ll do something splendid; something with your brains; or you’ll go
out into the mountains or desert and juggle old lady Nature, and—”
“And she’ll beat me to it—juggling. Bess, you’ll soon be going by shy of
a nod to me yourself. I’m going to work, just plain digging with no
frills on it.”
“Billy!”
They were at their destination with no chance for pursuing the subject.
Billy was not usually self-conscious. Before his experience with Erminie
he would have entered Mr. Smith’s elegant parlor as easily, would have
met the strange girls who were larger and older than May Nell, as
unabashed as if he had been reared in luxury. But now he felt out of
place. He was beginning to note social differences; to realize that
daughters of very rich men are reared to a luxurious scale of life; that
they cannot understand poverty, or even simple comfort. He was seeing
that no matter how willing they may think themselves to endure poverty
with the loved man, they are totally unfit; and their failure is not
their blame.
Something of this made him awkward and silent, while the four girls
together with Reginald Steele, Redtop, and Sis Jones, chattered and
laughed and joked, till Billy began to wish he had not come.
May Nell did not know of the changes coming to him. She attributed his
different attitude toward her entirely to the fact that she was too
small and young to interest him. But he was her guest, and courtesy as
well as pride determined her to compel him to unbend. She left the
others, and on a quickly invented pretext drew him to the farther end of
the large room.
“Billy, is it true, as Bess says, that you have given up your part in
the Fifth Avenue High play?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Billy, why? When you wrote it, too.”
“No, no! Who told you that? Three of us wrote it; that is, we thought
out the stuff, and Mr. Streeter helped us put it in shape.”
“But he told father the ideas were all yours, and that you were very
clever.”
“I guess I’ll have to hand ‘Pop’ Streeter a nickel.”
The half cynical note in Billy’s laugh did not escape her keen ear; and
though she could not have told why, it hurt her. “You bad boy! He meant
every word of it. Tell me about it.”
“It isn’t much. Just a picture of Washington life as I thought it would
be if we did all the things with Nature we might do. Just imagination.”
“_Just_ imagination makes the whole world, Billy.”
“That’s what we think when we’re children, but I guess when we get out
with the cold facts we’ll find imagination doesn’t fill the dinner
pail.”
“Billy, imagination makes everything! It builds the world. Why, when God
himself looked into the void didn’t He have to imagine a world before He
could speak the fiery word that created it?”
“That’s—that’s a pretty big thought, isn’t it?” Billy answered slowly,
overmastered by her eagerness.
“And, Billy, you used to believe in it so thoroughly. Don’t you any
more?”
“Do you?”
“Yes, yes! I’ll have to die when I don’t believe in it.”
“Don’t say that.”
“But it’s true, Billy Boy!” She had not called him so since the days in
Vina when she was a waif and the Bennett home her refuge. The
affectionate child-name touched him, bridged the distance between them.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he hesitated, “imagination may be a divine
privilege; but for mere man,—too much dreaming makes him discontented. I
think when one must earn one’s bread and butter the straight fact is
better.”
“Boy, boy! Nothing but slavery and plodding comes of such a feeling.
You’re holding your head down when you should look up, face to the sky.”
“I guess if one were making chairs for a living, he’d have to look
down.”
“I guess if he hadn’t looked up he’d never have had the idea of a chair
for a pattern. Oh, you’re no sheep, Billy. You couldn’t hold your nose
to the ground! You’ve got to look up, or you’ll die.”
The others interrupted, calling for songs, little French songs that May
Nell sang captivatingly. And after that they had college songs, and a
rollicking time. Billy joined, yet with his voice only; his thoughts
were lifted to the realm his soul always reached when with May Nell.
Mr. Smith came in, bringing with him a gust of the big out-of-doors; as
if his swift flight in his great motor did not stop at the door. He was
a man who drew all to him. Children and dogs, men and women, rich and
poor. He seemed to have a wealth of power and substance that sufficed
for a cityful. And he was a providence to more of the needy than any but
himself knew.
He greeted the young people breezily, unconsciously giving the feeling
for the moment that their presence was the one thing needful to make him
happy, and left the room taking Billy with him.
“Sorry to interrupt pleasure, my boy; but since you’re determined to
become a business man, you will find that pleasure has no rights that
business is bound to respect. I want to speak to you.”
After preliminary explanations Mr. Smith took Billy into his confidence
in a remarkable way. “I have a piece of work that you may be able to do
for me, that’s beyond your years. If you fail I shall not blame
you,—others have failed before you. Here is the situation: That
interurban line I’m building, the Washington Railway line between the
city front and Tum-wah, is a small matter in itself, but it is the key
to a big situation.
“We have pushed our bill through the Legislature, allowing the canal
between the two big lakes, and we are going to change that little
Tum-wah Valley into a great city with a payroll of thousands of men.
We’ll dredge the small river right to the falls, make our own power, and
load our own ships,—while they clean off the barnacles in fresh
water,—load them for the world’s ports. In a few years the plant will be
worth ten or fifteen millions.”
Billy gasped in astonishment. The narrow little valley along the Tum-wah
Creek was within the city limits, yet it showed nothing now but the
vegetable gardens of the Italian colony, sordid little huts, dirty
children, and the rickety old electric line where dirty cars went
bumping along on an elastic schedule that got people to town along in
the forenoon, and home some time in the evening. This seemed as distant
from Mr. Smith’s fifteen-million dollar dream as is heaven from a very
dirty earth.
Something of this Billy ventured to express.
“The only heaven we have is right here. If it isn’t clean, it’s up to us
to make it so. And one thing sure: it will never be any bigger or any
cleaner than we imagine it to be.”
The boy thought of May Nell. This was off the same pattern of life as
hers. As if in answer to his thought, Mr. Smith went on.
“Business is merely realized dreams; preferred stock in imagination. But
it takes sweat to realize on them. And it’s your sweat, boy, that I am
asking. The people who own that old teetering string they call the
Tum-wah Railroad are down on me because I’m paralleling them. They will
give me all the trouble they can,—they’ve served one injunction, but it
didn’t stick. I have men watching them, but they suspect these men. You
see they are stirring up those Italians to believe that as soon as I get
my business started I will take their lands from them.”
“You’ll have to have them, won’t you?” Billy questioned as the other
paused; Billy’s vision had run forward to the teeming city Mr. Smith had
prophesied.
“Surely. And those Italians will get more for their land than they can
make in raising vegetables all their lives. But of course I’m not
advertising that now; and the other concern is, I have reason to
believe, making the Dagos think I shall steal them out of their homes.
What I want of you is to keep on the lookout, let me know things before
they happen. Go to work with the other laborers, run errands, keep your
ears open, your mouth shut, and look as stupid as you can. Will you do
it?”
“I’ll try, sir. It won’t be very hard, that last.”
“Say! Stop that! And that ‘sir’ business. Who taught you that?”
“That’s the way we address the Scoutmaster; and—and my father was a
soldier of the Civil War.”
Mr. Smith softened. “And made a record to be proud of; I’ve heard it
from your mother. But here’s the situation, Billy: You’re beginning at
the bottom; but if you are to be useful to me you must have a definite
power of your own; you must compel. It’s in you; and while you must
adopt a stolid exterior in this first job, when you come in contact with
my men, when you are delivering my orders, you must charge them with
enough powder of your own to make them carry. See?”
Billy thrilled with the prescience of future force. “I think I see what
you mean, Mr. Smith. I shall try not to disappoint you; though—” A
sudden thought of Erminie intruded itself,—what would this man of great
affairs say if he knew that a wife, and the support of a home, would
soon be the burden that he, a mere boy, would have to add to the
difficult service Mr. Smith was asking.
“Out with it! Better thrash out all the ‘ifs,’ and ‘thoughs’ right now.
But I don’t allow those words a place in my vocabulary.”
“Then I won’t!” Billy brought out the words with a snap.
“Well said, my boy! That’s the soldier’s way. But remember this: While I
get my business done, done at any cost,—if one man can’t do it another
must; yet I know when a thing proves impossible. I don’t expect the
impossible.”
He gave Billy a reassuring clasp of the hand, and a look that determined
the boy to “make good if any chap going could,” and bade him good-night.
Billy did not know how long he had been away from the drawing-room till
he went in and found the others going, and Bess already hatted.
“I began to think it all a dream that one Billy To-morrow brought me
here this evening,” she chaffed.
“No dream; he’s arrived.”
“Yes? So has to-morrow—almost.”
Billy glanced at the clock. The chimes for eleven-thirty had already
rung.
They laughed and “jollied,” delaying their departure with joyous
nothings. Both Bess and May Nell felt a subtle change in Billy; he was
not the same boy that had entered there so shortly before.
Thus did Mr. Smith galvanize to unsuspected power all who came into his
presence. Billy went home lifted, ready to meet any future.
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