IT was not you, yourself, who invented your Happy-day. It was your
Father, long ago in little-lad time, when a Happy-Day or a Wooden
Soldier or High Heaven itself lay equally tame and giftable in the
cuddling, curving hollow of a Father's hand.
Your Father must have been a very great Genius. How else could he have
invented any happy thing in the black-oak library?
The black-oak library was a cross-looking room, dingy, lowering, and
altogether boggy. You could not stamp your boot across the threshold
without joggling the heart-beats out of the gaunt old clock that loomed
in the darkermost corner of the alcove. You could not tiptoe to the
candy box without plunging headlong into a stratum of creakiness that
puckered your spine as though an electric devil were pulling the very
last basting thread out of your little soul. Oh, it must have been a
very, very aged room. The darkness was abhorrent to you. The dampness
reeked with the stale, sad breath of ancient storms. Worst of all,
blood-red curtains clotted at the windows; rusty swords and daggers hung
most imminently from the walls, and along the smutted hearth a huge,
moth-eaten tiger skin humped up its head in really terrible ferocity.
Through all the room there was no lively spot except the fireplace
itself.
Usually, white birch logs flamed on the hearth with pleasant, crackling
cheerfulness, but on this special day you noted with alarm that between
the gleaming andirons a soft, red-leather book writhed and bubbled with
little gray wisps of pain, while out of a charry, smoochy mass of
nothingness a blue-flowered muslin sleeve stretched pleadingly toward
you for an instant, shuddered, blazed, and was--gone.
It was there that your Father caught you, with that funny, strange sniff
of havoc in your nostrils.
It was there that your Father told you his news.
When you are only a little, little boy and your Father snatches you
suddenly up in his arms and tells you that he is going to be married
again, it is very astonishing. You had always supposed that your Father
was perfectly married! In the dazzling sunshine of the village church
was there not a thrilly blue window that said quite distinctly, "Clarice
Val Dere" (that was your Mother) "Lived" (_Lived_, it said!) "June,
1860--December, 1880"? All the other windows said "Died" on them. Why
should your Father marry again?
In your Dear Father's arms you gasped, "Going to be _married_?" and your
two eyes must have popped right out of your head, for your Father
stooped down very suddenly and kissed them hard--whack, whack, back into
place.
"N--o, not going to be married," he corrected, "but going to be
married--again."
He spoke as though there were a great difference; but it was man-talk
and you did not understand it.
Then he gathered you into the big, dark chair and pushed you way out on
his knees and scrunched your cheeks in his hands and ate your face all
up with his big eyes. When he spoke at last, his voice was way down deep
like a bass drum.
"Little Boy Jack," he said, "you must never, never, never forget your
Dear Mother!"
His words and the bir-r-r of them shook you like a leaf.
"But what was my Dear Mother like?" you whimpered. You had never seen
your Mother.
Then your Father jumped up and walked hard on the creaky floor. When he
turned round again, his eyes were all wet and shiny like a brown
stained-glass window.
"What was your Dear Mother like?" he repeated. "Your Dear Mother was
like--was like--the flash of a white wing across a stormy sea. And your
Dear Mother's name was 'Clarice.' I give it to you for a Memorial. What
better Memorial could a little boy have than his Dear Mother's name? And
there is a date--" His voice grew suddenly harsh and hard like iron, and
his lips puckered on his words as with a taste of rust--"there is a
date--the 26th of April--No, that is too hard a date for a little boy's
memory! It was a Thursday. I give you Thursday for your--Happy-Day.
'Clarice' for a Memorial, and Thursday for your Happy-Day." His words
began to beat on you like blows. "As--long--as--you--live," he cried,
"be very kind to any one who is named 'Clarice.' And no matter what Time
brings you--weeks, months, years, centuries--_keep Thursday for your
Happy-Day_. No cruelty must ever defame it, no malice, no gross
bitterness."
Then he crushed you close to him for the millionth, billionth fraction
of a second, and went away, while you stayed behind in the scary
black-oak library, feeling as big and achy and responsible as you used
to feel when you and your Dear Father were carrying a heavy suit-case
together and your Dear Father let go his share just a moment to light
his brown cigar. It gave you a beautiful feeling in your head, but way
off in your stomach it tugged some.
So you crept away to bed at last, and dreamed that on a shining path
leading straight from your front door to Heaven you had to carry all
alone two perfectly huge suit-cases packed tight with love, and one of
the suit-cases was marked "Clarice" and one was marked "Thursday." Tug,
tug, tug, you went, and stumble, stumble, stumble, but your Dear Father
could not help you at all because he was perfectly busy carrying a fat
leather bag, some golf sticks, and a bull-terrier for a strange lady.
It was not a pleasant dream, and you screamed out so loud in the night
that the Housekeeper-Woman had to come and comfort you. It was the
Housekeeper-Woman who told you that on the morrow your Father was going
far off across the salt seas. It was the Housekeeper-Woman who told you
that you, yourself, were to be given away to a Grandmother-Lady in
Massachusetts. It was also the Housekeeper-Woman who told you that your
puppy dog Bruno--Bruno the big, the black, the curly, the waggy, was not
to be included in the family gift to the Grandmother-Lady. Everybody
reasoned, it seemed, that you would not need Bruno because there would
be so many other dogs in Massachusetts. That was just the trouble. They
_would_ all be "other dogs." It was Bruno that you wanted, for he was
the only _dog_, just as _you_ were the only _boy_ in the world. All the
rest were only "other boys." You could have explained the matter
perfectly to your Father if the Housekeeper-Woman had not made you cry
so that you broke your explainer. But later in the night the most
beautiful thought came to you. At first perhaps it tasted a little bit
sly in your mouth, but after a second it spread like ginger, warm and
sweet over your whole body except your toes, and you crept out of bed
like a flannel ghost and fumbled your way down the black hall to your
Dear Father's room and woke him shamelessly from his sleep. His eyes in
the moonlight gleamed like two frightened dreams.
"Dear Father," you cried--you could hardly get the words fast enough out
of your mouth--"Dear--Father--I--do--not--think--Bruno--is--a--very--good
--name--for--a--big--black--dog--I--am--going--to--name--him--Clarice
--instead!"
That was how you and Bruno-Clarice happened to celebrate together your
first Happy-Day with a long, magic, joggling train journey to
Massachusetts--the only original _boy_ and the only original _dog_ in
all the world.
The Grandmother-Lady proved to be a very pleasant purple sort of
person. Exactly whose Grandmother she was, you never found out. She was
not your Father's mother. She was not your Mother's mother. With these
links missing, whose Grandmother could she be? You could hardly press
the matter further without subjecting her to the possible mortification
of confessing that she was only adopted. Maybe, crudest of all, she was
just a Paid-Grandmother.
The Grandmother-Lady lived in a perfectly brown house in a perfectly
green garden on the edge of a perfectly blue ocean. That was the Sight
of it. Salted mignonette was the Smell of it. And a fresh wind flapping
through tall poplar trees was always and forever the Sound of it.
The brown house itself was the living image of a prim, old-fashioned
bureau backed up bleakly to the street, with its piazza side yanked out
boldly into the garden like a riotous bureau drawer, through which the
Rising Sun rummaged every morning for some particular new shade of
scarlet or yellow nasturtiums. As though quite shocked by such bizarre
untidiness, the green garden ran tattling like mad down to the ocean and
was most frantically shooed back again, so that its little trees and
shrubs and flowers fluttered in a perpetual nervous panic of not knowing
which way to blow.
[Illustration: The blue ocean was the most wonderful thing of all]
But the blue ocean was the most wonderful thing of all. Never was there
such an ocean! Right from the far-away edge of the sky it came, roaring,
ranting, rumpling, till it broke against the beach all white and frilly
like the Grandmother-Lady's best ruching. It was morning when you saw
the ocean first, and its pleasant waters gleamed like a gorgeous,
bright-blue looking-glass covered with paper ships all filled with Other
Boys' fathers. It was not till the first night came down--black and
mournful and moany--it was not till the first night came down that you
saw that the ocean was Much Too Large. There in your chill linen bed,
with the fear of Sea and Night and Strangers upon you, you discovered a
very strange droll thing--that your Father was a Person and might
therefore leave you, but that your Mother was a _feeling_ and would
never, never, never forsake you. Bruno-Clarice, slapping his fat, black
tail against your bedroom floor, was something of a _feeling_ too.
Most fortunately for your well-being, the Grandmother-Lady's house was
not too isolated from its neighbors. To be sure, a tall, stiff hedge
separated the green garden from the lavender-and-pink garden next door,
but a great scraggly hole in the hedge gave a beautiful prickly zest to
friendly communication.
More than this, two children lived on the other side of the hedge.
You had never had any playmates before in all your life!
One of the children was just Another Boy--a duplicate of you. But the
other one was--_the only original girl_. Next to the big ocean, she was
the surprise of your life. She wore skirts instead of clothes. She wore
curls instead of hair. She wore stockings instead of legs. She cried
when you laughed. She laughed when you cried. She was funny from the
very first second, even when the Boy asked you if your big dog would
bite. The Boy stood off and kept right on asking: "Will he bite? Will he
bite? _W-i-l-l_ he _bite_?" But the Girl took a great rough stick and
pried open Bruno-Clarice's tusky mouth _to see if he would_, and when he
_g-r-o-w-l-e-d_, she just kissed him smack on his black nose and called
him "A Precious," and said, "Why, of course he'll bite."
The Boy was ten years old--a year older, and much fatter than you. His
name was Sam. The Girl was only eight years old, and you could not tell
at first whether she was thin or fat, she was so ruffledy. She had a
horrid dressy name, "Sophia." But everybody called her Ladykin.
Oh, it is fun to make a boat that will flop sideways through the waves.
It is fun to make a windmill that will whirl and whirl in the grass. It
is fun to make an education. It is fun to make a fortune. But most of
anything in the world it is fun to make a _friend_!
You had never made a _friend_ before. First of all you asked, "How old
are you?" "Can you do fractions?" "Can you name the capes on the west
coast of Africa?" "What is your favorite color? Green? Blue? Pink? Red?
Or yellow?" Sam voted for green. Ladykin chose green _and_ blue _and_
pink _and_ red _and_ yellow, _also_ purple. Then you asked, "Which are
you most afraid of, the Judgment Day or a Submarine Boat?" Sam chose the
Submarine Boat right off, so you had to take the Judgment Day, which was
not a very pleasant fear to have for a pet. Ladykin declared that she
wasn't afraid of anything in the world except of Being Homely. Wasn't
that a silly fear? Then you got a little more intimate and asked, "What
is your Father's business?" Sam and Ladykin's Father kept a huge candy
store. It was mortifying to have to confess that your Father was only an
Artist, but you laid great stress on his large eyes and his long
fingers.
Then you three went off to the sandy beach and climbed up on a great
huddly gray rock to watch the huge yellow sun go down all shiny and
important, like a twenty-dollar gold piece in a wad of pink cotton
batting. The tide was going out, too, the mean old "injun-giver,"
taking back all the pretty, chuckling pebbles, the shining ropes of
seaweed, the dear salt secrets it had brought so teasingly to your feet
a few hours earlier. You were very lonesome. But not till the gold and
pink was almost gone from the sky did you screw your courage up to its
supreme point. First you threw four stones very far out into the surf,
then--
"What--is--your--Mother--like?" you whispered.
Ladykin went to her answer with impetuous certainty:
"Our Mother," she announced, "is fat and short and wears skin-tight
dresses, and is President of the Woman's Club, and is sometimes cross."
A great glory came upon you and you clutched for wonder at the choking
neck of your little blouse.
"M-y Mother," you said, "m-y Mother is like the Flash of a White Wing
across a Stormy Sea!"
You started to say more, but with a wild war-whoop of amusement, Sam
lost his balance and fell sprawling into the sand. "Oh, what a funny
Mother!" he shouted, but Ladykin jumped down on him furiously and began
to kick him with her scarlet sandals. "Hush! hush!" she cried, "Jack's
Mother is dead!" and then in an instant she had clambered back to your
side again and snuggled her little soft girl-cheek close against yours,
while with one tremulous hand she pointed way out beyond the surf line
where a solitary, snow-white gull swooped down into the Blue. "Look!"
she gasped, "L-o-o-k!" and when you turned to her with a sudden gulping
sob, she kissed you warm and sweet upon your lips.
It was not a Father kiss with two tight arms and a scrunching pain. It
was not a Grandmother-Lady kiss complimenting your clean face. It was
not a Bruno-Clarice kiss, mute and wistful and lappy. There was no pain
in it. There was no compliment. There was no doggish fealty. There was
just _sweetness_.
Then you looked straight at Ladykin, and Ladykin looked straight at you,
looked and _looked_ and LOOKED, and you both gasped right out loud
before the first miracle of your life, the Miracle of the Mating of
Thoughts. Without a word of suggestion, without a word of explanation,
you and Ladykin clasped hands and tiptoed stealthily off to the very
edge of the water, and knelt down slushily in the sand, and stooped way
over, oh, way, way over, with the cold waves squirting up your cuffs;
and kissed two perfectly round floaty kisses out to the White Sea-Gull,
and after a minute the White Gull rose in the sky, swirled round and
round and round, stopped for a second, and then with a wild cry swooped
down again into the blue--Once! Twice! and then with a great fountainy
splash of wings rose high in the air like a white silk kite and went
scudding off like mad into the Grayness, then into the Blackness, then
into the Nothingness of the night. And you stayed behind on that
pleasant, safe, sandy edge of things with all the sweetness gone from
your lips, and nothing left you in all the world but the thudding of
your heart, and a queer, sad, salty pucker on your tongue that gave you
a thirst not so much for water as for _life_.
Oh, you learned a great deal about living in those first few days and
weeks and months at the Grandmother-Lady's house.
You learned, for instance, that if you wanted to _do_ things, Boys were
best; but if you wanted to _think_ things, then Girls were infinitely
superior. You, yourself, were part Thinker and part Doer.
Sam was a _doer_ from start to finish, strong of limb, long of wind,
sturdy of purpose. But Sam was certainly prosy in his head. Ladykin, on
the contrary, had "gray matter" that jumped like a squirrel in its cage,
and fled hither and yon, and turned somersaults, and leaped through
hoops, and was altogether alert beyond description. But she could not
_do_ things. She could not stay in the nice ocean five minutes without
turning blue. She could not climb a tree without falling and bumping
her nose. She could not fight without getting mad. Out of these proven
facts you evolved a beautiful theory that if Thinky-Girls could only be
taught to _do_ things, they would make the most perfect playmates in all
the wide, wide world. Yet somehow you never made a theory to improve
Sam, though Sam's inability to think invariably filled you with a very
cross, unholy contempt for him, while Ladykin's inability to _do_ only
served to thrill you with the most delicious, sweet, puffy pride in
_yourself_.
Sam was very evidently a Person. Ladykin was a Feeling. You began almost
at once to distinguish between Persons and Feelings. Anything that
straightened out your head was a Person. Anything that puckered up your
heart was a Feeling. Your Father, you had found out, was a Person. The
Grandmother-Lady was a Person. Sam was a Person. Sunshine was a Person.
A Horse was a Person. A Chrysanthemum was a Person. But your Mother was
a Feeling. And Ladykin was a Feeling. And Bruno-Clarice was a Feeling.
And the Ocean Blue was a Feeling. And a Church Organ was a Feeling. And
the Smell of a June Rose was a Feeling. Perhaps your Happy-Day was the
biggest Feeling of All.
Thursday, to be sure, came only once a week, but--_such a Thursday_!
Even now, if you shut your eyes tight and gasp a quick breath, you can
sense once more the sweet, crisp joy of fresh, starched clothes, and
the pleasant, shiny jingle of new pennies in your small white cotton
pockets. White? Yes; your Father had said that always on that day you
should go like a little white Flag of Truce on an embassy to Fate. And
Happiness? Could anything in the world make more for happiness than to
be perfectly clean in the morning and perfectly dirty at night, with
something rather frisky to eat for dinner, and Sam and Ladykin
invariably invited to supper? Your Happy-Day was your Sacristy, too.
Nobody ever punished you on Thursday. Nobody was ever cross to you on
Thursday. Even if you were very black-bad the last thing Wednesday
night, you were perfectly, blissfully, lusciously safe until Friday
morning.
Oh, a Happy-Day was a very simple thing to manage compared with the
terrible difficulties of being kind to everybody named "Clarice." There
was _nobody_ named Clarice! In all the town, in all the directory, in
all the telephone books, you and Ladykin could not find a single person
named Clarice. Once in a New York newspaper you read about a young
Clarice-Lady of such and such a street who fell and broke her hip; and
you took twenty shiny pennies of your money and bought a beautiful,
hand-painted celluloid brush-holder and sent it to her; but you never,
never heard that it did her any good. You did not want your Father to
be mad at you, but Ladykin reasoned you out of your possible worry by
showing you how if you ever saw your Father again you could at least
plant your feet firmly, fold your arms, puff out your chest, and affirm
distinctly: "Dear Father, I have _never_ been cruel to _any one_ named
'Clarice.'" Ladykin knew perfectly well how to manage it. Ladykin knew
perfectly well how to manage everything.
Sam was the stupid one. Sam took a certain pleasure in Bruno-Clarice,
but he never realized that Bruno-Clarice was a sacred dog. Sam thought
that it was very fine for you to have a Happy-Day, with Clean Clothes,
and Ice-Cream, and Pennies, but he never almost _burst_ with the wonder
of the day.
Sam thought that it was pleasant enough for you to have a dead Mother
who was like "the flash of a white wing across a stormy sea," but he did
not see any possible connection between that fact and stoning all the
white sea-gulls in sight. Ladykin, on the contrary, told Sam distinctly
that she'd knock his head off if he ever hit a gull, but fortunately--or
unfortunately--Ladykin's aim was not so sure as Sam's. It was you who
had to stay behind on the beach and pommel more than half the life out
of Sam while Ladykin, pink as a posy in her best muslin, scared to death
of wet and cold, plunged out to her little neck in the chopping waves
to rescue a quivering fluff of feathers that struggled broken-winged
against the cruel, drowning water. "Gulls are gulls!" persisted Sam with
every blubbering breath. "Gulls are _Mothers_!" gasped Ladykin,
staggering from the surf all drenched and dripping like a bursted
water-pail. "Well, boy-gulls are gulls!" Sam screamed in a perfect
explosion of outraged _truth_. But Ladykin defied him to the last.
Through chattering teeth her vehement reassertion sounded like some
horrid, wicked blasphemy: "Nnnnnnnnnnnn-oo! Bbb-o-y ggggg-ggulls are
MMMMMM-Mothers too!" Then with that pulsing drench of feathers cuddled
close to her breast, she struggled off alone to the house to have the
Croup, while you and Sam went cheerily up the beach to find some shiners
and some seaweed for your new gull hospital. Not till you were quite an
old boy did you ever find out what became of that gull. Sacred
Bruno-Clarice ate him. Ladykin, it seems, knew always what had happened
to him, but she never dreamed of telling you till you were old enough to
bear it. To Ladykin, Truth out of season was sourer than strawberries at
Christmas time.
Sam would have told you _anything_ the very first second that he found
it out. Sam was perfectly great for Truth. He could tell more Great
Black Truths in one day than there were thunder-clouds in the whole hot
summer sky. This quality made Sam just a little bit dangerous in a
crowd. He was always and forever shooting people with Truths that he
didn't know were loaded. He was always telling the Grandmother-Lady, for
instance, that her hair looked _exactly_ like a wig. He was always
telling Ladykin that she smelled of raspberry jam. He was always telling
you that he didn't believe your Father really loved you. Oh, everything
that Sam said was as straight and lank and honest as a lady's hair when
it's out of crimp. Nothing in the world could be straighter than that.
But sometimes, when you had played sturdily with Sam for a good many
hours, you used to coax Ladykin off all alone to the puffy,
scorchy-looking smoke tree, where you could cuddle up on the rustic seat
and rest your Honesty. And when you were thoroughly rested, you used to
stretch your little arms behind your yawning face and beg:
"Oh, Ladykin, wouldn't you, couldn't you _please_ say something curly?"
Ladykin's mind seemed to curl perfectly naturally. The crimp of it never
came out. Almost any time you could take her words that looked so little
and tight, and unwind them and unwind them into yards and yards and
yards of pleasant, magic meanings.
There were no magic meanings in Sam's words. Sam, for instance, could
throw as many as a hundred stones into the water, yet when he got
through he just lay down in the sand and groaned, "Oh, how tired I am!
Oh, how tired I am!" But Ladykin, after she'd thrown only two
stones--one that hit the beach, and one that hit you--would stand right
up and declare that her arm was "_be_-witched." Tired? No, not a bit of
it, but "_be_-witched!" Hadn't she seen, hadn't you seen, hadn't
everybody seen that _perfectly awful_ sea-witch's head that popped out
of the wave just after she had thrown her first stone? Oh, indeed, and
it wasn't the first time either that she had been so frightened! Once
when she was sitting on the sand counting sea-shells, hadn't the Witch
swooped right out of the water and grabbed her legs? So, now if you
wanted to break the cruel spell, save Ladykin's life, marry Ladykin, and
live in a solid turquoise palace--where all the walls were papered with
foreign postage-stamps, and no duplicates--you, not Sam, but _you_,
_you_, chosen of all the world, must go down to the little harbor
between the two highest, reariest rocks and stick a spiked stick through
every wave that came in. There was no other way! Now you, yourself,
might possibly have invented the witch, but you never, never would have
thought of harpooning the waves and falling in and drowning your best
suit, while Ladykin rested her arms.
Yet in the enforced punishment of an early bedtime you were not
bereaved, but lay in rapturous delight untangling the minutest detail of
Ladykin's words, till turquoise cities blazed like a turquoise
flashlight across your startled senses, wonderful little princes and
princesses kowtowed perpetually to royal Mother Ladykin and royal Father
Yourself, and life-sized postage-stamps loomed so lusciously large that
envelopes had to be pasted to the corners of stamps instead of stamps to
the corners of envelopes. And before you had half straightened out the
whole thought, you were fast asleep, and then fast awake, and it was
suddenly morning! Oh, it is very comforting to have a playmate who can
say curly things.
Sometimes, too, when Sam's and Ladykin's Mother had been rude to them
about brushing their teeth or tracking perfectly good mud into the
parlor, and Sam had gone off to ease his sorrow, scating hens or stoning
cats, you and Ladykin would steal down to the gray rock on the beach to
watch the white, soft, pleasant sea-gulls. There were times, you think,
when Ladykin wished that _her_ Mother was a sea-gull. Then you used to
wonder and wonder about your own Mother, and tell Ladykin all over
again about the creaky, black-oak library, and the smoky, smelly
hearth-fire with the hurt red book, and the blue-flowered muslin sleeve
beckoning and beckoning to you; and Ladykin used to explain to you how,
very evidently, you were the only souvenir that your Father did not
burn. With that thought in mind, you used to try and guess what could
possibly have happened long ago on a Thursday to make a Happy-Day
forever and ever. Ladykin said that of course it was something about
"Love," but when you ran off to ask the Grandmother-Lady just exactly
what Love was, the Grandmother-Lady only laughed and said that Love was
a fever that came along a few years after chicken-pox and measles and
scarlet fever. Ladykin was saucy about it. "That may be _true_," Ladykin
acknowledged, "but _t'aint so_!" Then you went and found Sam and asked
him if he knew what Love was. Sam knew at once. Sam said that Love was
the feeling that one had for mathematics. Now that was all _bosh_, for
the feeling that you and Ladykin had for Mathematics would not have made
a Happy-Day for a cow.
But even if there were a great many things that you could not find out,
it was a good deal of fun to grow up. Apart from a few stomach-aches
and two or three gnawing pains in the calves of your legs, aging was a
most alluring process.
Springs, summers, autumns, winters, went hurtling over one another, till
all of a sudden, without the slightest effort on your part, you were
fifteen years old, Bruno-Clarice had grown to be a sober, industrious,
middle-aged dog, Sam was idolatrously addicted to geometry, and Ladykin
subscribed to a fashion magazine for the benefit of her paper dolls.
Most astonishing of all, however, your Father had invited you to go to
Germany and visit him. It was a glorious invitation. You were all
athrill with the geography and love of it. Already your nostrils
crinkled to the lure of tar and oakum. Already your vision feasted on
the parrot-colored crowds of Come-igrants and Go-igrants that huddled
along the wharves with their eager, jabbering faces and their soggy,
wadded feet.
Oh, the prospect of the journey was a most beautiful experience, but
when the actual Eve of Departure came, the scissors of separation
gleamed rather hard and sharp in the air, and you hunched your neck a
little bit wincingly before the final crunching snip. That last evening
was a dreadful evening. The Cook sat sobbing in the kitchen. The
Grandmother-Lady's eyes were red with sewing. The air was all heavy with
_goingawayness_. To escape the strangle of it, you fled to the beach
with Bruno-Clarice tagging in mournful excitement at your heels, his
smutty nose all a-sniff with the foreboding leathery smell of trunks and
bags. There on the beach in a scoopy hollow of sand backed up against
the old gray rock were Sam and Ladykin. Sam's round, fat face was
fretted like a pug-dog's, and Ladykin's eyes were blinky-wet with tears.
It was not a pleasant time to say good-by. It had been a beautiful,
smooth-skied day, crisp and fresh and bright-colored as a "Sunday
supplement"; but now the clouds piled gray and crumpled in the west like
a poor stale, thrown-away newspaper, with just a sputtering blaze in one
corner like the kindling of a half-hearted match.
"_Please_ be kind to Bruno-Clarice," you began; "I shall miss you very
much--very, very much. But I will come back--"
"N--o, I do not think you will come back," said Ladykin. "You will go to
Germany to live with your Father and your Play-Mother, and you will
gargle all your words like a throat tonic till you don't know how to be
friends in English any more; and even if you did come back Bruno-Clarice
would bark at you, and I shall be married, and Sam will have a long,
black beard."
Now you could have borne Ladykin's marriage; you could even have borne
Bruno-Clarice's barking at you; but you could not, simply could not bear
the thought of Sam's growing a long black beard without you. Even
Ladykin with all her wonderfulness sat utterly helpless before the
terrible, unexpected climax of her words. It was Sam who leaped into the
breach. The clutch of his hand was like the grit of sand-paper. "Jack,"
he stammered, "Jack, I promise you--anyhow I won't _cut_ my beard until
you come!"
* * * * *
It was certainly only the thought of Sam's faithful beard that sustained
you on your rough, blue voyage to Germany. It was certainly only the
thought of Sam's faithful beard that rallied your smitten forces when
you met your Father face to face and saw him reel back white as chalk
against the silky shoulder of your Play-Mother, and hide his eyes behind
the crook of his elbow.
It is not pleasant to make people turn white as chalk, even in Germany.
Worse yet, every day your Father grew whiter and whiter and whiter, and
every day your pretty Play-Mother wrinkled her forehead more and more in
a strange, hurty sort of trouble. Never once did you dare think of
Ladykin. Never once did you dare think of Bruno-Clarice. You just named
all your upper teeth "Sam," and all your lower teeth "Sam," and ground
them into each other all day long--"Sam! Sam! Sam!" over and over and
over. There were also no Happy-Days in Germany, and nobody ever spoke of
Clarice.
You were pretty glad at last after a month when your Father came to you
with his most beautiful face and his most loving hands, and said:
"Little Boy Jack, there is no use in it. You have got to go away again.
You are a wound that will not heal. It is your Dear Mother's eyes. It is
your Dear Mother's mouth. It is your Dear Mother's smile. God forgive
me, but I cannot bear it! I am going to send you away to school in
England."
You put your finger cautiously up to your eyes and traced their round,
firm contour. Your Mother's eyes? They felt like two heaping
teaspoonfuls of tears. Your Mother's mouth? Desperately you poked it
into a smile. "Going to send me away to school in England?" you
stammered. "Never mind. Sam will not cut his beard until I come."
"_What?_" cried your Father in a great voice. "_W-h-a-t?_"
But you pretended that you had not said anything, because it was
boy-talk and your Father would not have understood it.
Never, never, never had you seen your Father so suffering; yet when he
took you in his arms and raised your face to his and quizzed you:
"Little Boy Jack, do you love me? Do you love me?" you scanned him out
of your Mother's made-over eyes and answered him out of your Mother's
made-over mouth:
"N--o! N--o! I _don't_ love you!"
And he jumped back as though you had knifed him, and then laughed out
loud as though he were glad of the pain.
"But I ask you this," he persisted, and the shine in his eyes was like a
sunset glow in the deep woods, and the touch of his hands would have
lured you into the very heart of the flame. "It is not probable," he
said, "that your Dear Mother's child and mine will go through Life
without knowing Love. When your Love-Time comes, if you understand all
Love's tragedies _then_, and forgive me, will you send me a message?"
"Oh, yes," you cried out suddenly. "Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Oh, yes!" and
clung to him frantically with your own boyish hands, and kissed him with
your Mother's mouth. But you did not love him. It was your Mother's
mouth that loved him.
So you went away to school in England and grew up and up and up some
more; but somehow this latter growing up was a dull process without
savor, and the years went by as briefly and inconsequently as a few
dismissing sentences in a paragraph. There were plenty of people to work
with and play with, but almost no one to think with, and your
hard-wrought book knowledge faded to nothingness compared to the three
paramount convictions of your youthful experience, namely, that neither
coffee nor ocean nor Life tasted as good as it smelled.
And then when you were almost twenty-one you met "Clarice"!
It was a Christmas supper party in a cafe. Some one looked up suddenly
and called the name "Clarice! Clarice!" and when your startled eyes shot
to the mark and saw her there in her easy, dashing, gorgeous beauty,
something in your brain curdled, and all the lonesomeness, all the
mystery, all the elusiveness of Life pounded suddenly in your heart like
a captured Will-o'-the-Wisp. "Clarice?" Here, then, was the end of your
journey? The eternal kindness? The flash of a white wing across _your_
stormy sea? "Clarice!" And you looked across unbidden into her eyes and
smiled at her a gaspy, astonished smile that brought the strangest light
into her face.
Oh, but Clarice was very beautiful! Never had you seen such a type. Her
hair was black and solemn as crape. Her eyes were bright and noisy as
jet. Her heart was barren as a blot of ink. And she took your dreamy,
paper-white boy life and scourged it like a tongue of flame across a
field of Easter lilies!
And when the wonder of the flame was gone, you sat aghast in your room
among the charred, scorched fragments of your Youth. The thirst for
death was very strong upon you, and the little, long, narrow cup of your
revolver gleamed very brimming full of death's elixir. Even the
June-time could not save you. Your Mother's name was an agony on your
lips. The frenzied reiteration of your thoughts scraped on your brain
like a sledge on gravel. You would drink very deep, you thought, of your
little slim cup of death. Yet the thing that was tortured within you was
scarcely Love, and you had no message of understanding for your Father.
Just with wrecked life, wrecked faith, wrecked courage, you huddled at
your desk, catching your breath for a second before you should reach out
your fretted fingers for the little cool cunning, toy hand of Death.
"Once again," you said to yourself, "once again I will listen to the
children's voices in the garden. Once again I will lure the smell of
June roses into my heart." The children prattled and passed. Your hand
reached out and fumbled. Once more you shut your scalding eyes, hunched
up your shoulders, and breathed in like an ultimate tide the ravishing
sweetness of the June--one breath, another, another--longer--longer. Oh,
God in Heaven, if one could only die of such an anesthetic--smothered
with sweetbrier, spiced with saffron, buried in bride roses. _Die?_ Your
wild hand leaped to the task and faltered stricken before the strange,
grim fact that blazed across your consciousness. It was Thursday. It was
your "Happy-Day!" Your Father's words came pounding back like blows into
your sore brain! Your "Happy-Day!" "No cruelty must ever defame it, no
malice, no gross bitterness!" Somewhere in air or sky or sea there was a
Mother-Woman who must not be _hurt_. Your "Happy-Day?" HAPPY-DAY? Rage
and sorrow broke like a fearful storm across your senses, and you put
down your head and cried like a child.
Tears? Again you felt on your lips that queer, sad, salty pucker, that
taste of the sea that gave you a thirst not so much for water as for
Life. _Life?_ _Life?_ The thought thrilled through you like new nerves.
Your ashy pulses burst into flame. Your dull heart jumped. Your vision
woke. Your memory quickened. You saw the ocean, blue, blue, blue before
you. You saw a small, rude boy lie sprawling in the sand. You saw a
little girl's face, wild with wonder, tremulous with sweetness. You felt
again the flutter of a kiss against your cheek. The little girl
who--understood. Your salt lips puckered into a smile, and the smile ran
back like a fuse into the inherent happiness of your heart. Sam?
Ladykin? Home? You began to laugh! Haggard, harried, wrecked, ruined,
you began to laugh! Then, faltering like a hysterical girl, you
staggered down the stairs, out of the house, along the streets to the
cable office, and sent a message to Sam.
"How long is your beard?" the message said. "How long is your beard?"
Just that silly, magic message across miles and miles and miles of waves
and seaweeds. How the great cable must have simpered with the
foolishness of it. How the pink coral must have chuckled. How the big,
tin-foiled fishes must have wondered.
You did not wait for an answer. What answer was there? You could picture
Sam standing in stupefied awkwardness before the amazing nothingness of
such a message. But Ladykin would remember. Oh, yes, Ladykin would
remember. You could see her peering past Sam's shoulder and snatching
out suddenly for the fluttering paper. Ladykin would remember. What were
six years?
Joy sang in your heart like a purr of a sea-shell. The blue blur of
ocean, the dear green smell of mignonette, the rush of wind through the
poplar trees were tonic memories to you. You did not wait to pack your
things. You did not wait to notify your Father. You sped like a wild boy
to the first wharf, to the first steamer that you could find.
The week's ocean voyage went by like a year. The silly waves dragged on
the steamer like a tired child on the skirts of its mother. Haste raged
in your veins like a fever. You wanted to throw all the fat, heavy
passengers overboard. You wanted to swim ahead with a towing rope in
your teeth. You wanted to kill the Captain when he stuttered. You wanted
to flay the cook for serving an extra course for dinner. Yet all the
while the huge machinery throbbed in rhythm, "Time _will_ pass. It
_always does_. It _always does_. It _always does_."
And then at last you stood again on your Native Land, _alive, well,
vital, at home_!
With the sensation of an unbroken miracle, you found your way again to
the little Massachusetts sea town, along the peaceful village walk to
the big brown house that turned so bleakly to the street. There on the
steps, wonder of wonders, you found two elderly people, Bruno-Clarice
and the Grandmother-Lady, and your knees gave out very suddenly and you
sank down beside Bruno-Clarice and smothered the bark right out of him.
"Good lack!" cried the Grandmother-Lady, "Good _lack_!" and made so
much noise that Sam himself came running like mad from the next house;
and though he had no beard, you liked him very much and shook and shook
his hand until he squealed.
With the Grandmother-Lady plying you with questions, and Sam feeling
your muscle, and Bruno-Clarice trying to crawl into your lap like a
pug-dog baby, it was almost half an hour before you had a chance to ask,
"Where is Ladykin?"
"She's down on the beach," said Sam. "I'll go and help you find her."
You looked at Sam speculatively. "I'll give you ten dollars if you
won't," you said.
Sam considered the matter gravely before he began to grin. "I wouldn't
think of charging you more than five," he acquiesced.
So you went off with Bruno-Clarice hobbling close at your heels to find
Ladykin for yourself. When you saw her she was perched up on the very
top of the huddly gray rock playing tinkle tunes on her mandolin, and
you stole up so quietly behind her that she did not see you till you
were close beside her.
Then she turned very suddenly and looked down upon you and pretended
that she did not know you, with her color coming and going all luminous
and intermittent like a pink and white flashlight. In six years you had
not seen such a wonderful playmatey face.
"Who are you?" she asked. "Who are you?"
"I am 'Little Boy Jack' come back to marry you," you began, but
something in the wistful, shy girl-tenderness of her face and eyes
choked your bantering words right off in your throat.
"Yes, Ladykin," you said, "I have come home, and I am very tired, and I
am very sad, and I am very lonesome, and I have not been a very good
boy. But please be good to me! I am so lonesome I cannot wait to make
love to you. Oh, _please_, _please_ love me _n-o-w_. I _need_ you to
love me N-O-W!"
Ladykin frowned. It was not a cross frown. It was just a sort of a cosy
corner for her thoughts. Surprise cuddled there, and a sorry feeling,
and a great tenderness.
"You have not been a very good boy?" she repeated after you.
The memory of a year crowded blackly upon you. "No," you said, "I have
not been a very good boy, and I am very suffering-sad. But _please_ love
me, and forgive me. No one has ever loved me!"
The surprise and the sorry feeling in Ladykin's forehead crowded
together to make room for something that was just _womanliness_. She
began to smile. It was the smile of a hurt person when the opiate first
begins to overtake the pain.
"Oh, I'm sure it was an accidental badness," she volunteered softly. "If
I were accidentally bad, you would forgive _me_, wouldn't you?"
"Oh, yes, yes, yes," you stammered, and reached up your lonesome hands
to her.
"Then you don't have to make love," she whispered. "It's all made," and
slipped down into your arms.
But something troubled her, and after a minute she pushed you away and
tried to renounce you.
"But it is not Thursday," she sobbed; "it is Wednesday; and my name is
not 'Clarice'; it is Ladykin."
Then all the boyishness died out of you--the sweet, idle reveries, the
mystic responsibilities. You shook your Father's dream from your eyes,
and squared your shoulders for your own realities.
"A Man must make his own Happy-Day," you cried, "and a Man must choose
his own Mate!"
Before your vehemence Ladykin winced back against the rock and eyed you
fearsomely.
"Oh, I will love you and cherish you," you pleaded.
But Ladykin shook her head. "That is not enough," she whispered. There
was a kind of holy scorn in her eyes.
Then a White Gull flashed like an apparition before your sight.
Ladykin's whole figure drooped, her cheek paled, her little mouth
quivered, her vision narrowed. There with her eyes on the White Gull and
your eyes fixed on hers, you saw her shy thoughts journey into the
Future. You saw her eyes smile, sadden, brim with tears, smile again,
and come homing back to you with a timid, glad surprise as she realized
that your thoughts too had gone all the long journey with her.
She reached out one little hand to you. It was very cold.
"If I should pass like the flash of a white wing," she questioned,
"would you be true to me--and _mine_?"
The Past, the Present, the Future rushed over you in tumult. Your lips
could hardly crowd so big a vow into so small a word. "Oh, YES, YES,
YES!" you cried.
In reverent mastery you raised her face to yours. "A Man must make his
own Happy-Day," you repeated. "A Man must make his own Happy-Day!"
Timorously, yet assentingly, she came back to your arms. The whisper of
her lips against your ear was like the flutter of a rose petal.
"It will be Wednesday, then," she said, "for us and--ours."
Clanging a strident bell across the magic stillness of the garden, Sam
bore down upon you like a steam-engine out of tune.
"Oh, I say," he shouted, "for heaven's sake cut it out and come to
supper."
The startled impulse of your refusal faded before the mute appeal in
Ladykin's eyes.
"All right," you answered; "but first I must go and cable 'love' to my
Father."
"Oh, hurry!" cried Ladykin. Her word was crumpled and shy as a kiss.
"Oh, hurry!" cried Sam. His thought was straight and frank as a knife
and fork.
Joy sang in your heart like a prayer that rhymed. Your eager heart was
pounding like a race horse. The clouds in the sky were scudding to
sunset. The surf on the beach seemed all out of breath. The green meadow
path to the village stretched like the paltriest trifle before a man's
fleet running pace.
"But I can't hurry," you said, for Bruno-Clarice came poking his
grizzled old nose into your hand. "Oh, wait for me," he seemed to plead.
"Oh, please, _please_ wait for me."