The piazzas of the Diamond Spring Hotel were empty; the guests came
trooping through the great square hall and into the big dining-room to be
fed.
Young Edgeworth arrived late and silently took his seat, bowing civilly
to his neighbours.
There were fifteen people at his table, including the Reverend Dr.
Beezeley, who presided, flanked by his wife, his progeny, and a bottle of
Diamond Spring water. Near to the Reverend Orlando Beezeley sat another
minister, a little pink gentleman with bulging eyes. His name was Meeke
and he looked it. But he wasn’t.
Now the Reverend Orlando Beezeley and Dr. Samuel Meeke were both of a
stripe, differing on one or two obscure questions. One reverend gentleman
was a pillar of the “Pure People’s League;” the other wore the badge of
the “Charity Band.” And they squabbled.
For their leagues, their bands, and their squabbles, Edgeworth cared
nothing. He believed that all people should be allowed to worship God
in their own fashion,—even by squabbling if they chose. He was disposed
to be courteous to the two ministers and their wives and young. It was
difficult, however, partly because they were inquisitive, partly on
account of the Reverend Orlando’s personal habits, which were maddening.
He put his fingers into everything, including his mouth; they were
always sticky, and this, combined with cuffs that came too far over
his knuckles, oppressed Edgeworth. The Reverend Orlando’s fingers were
obtrusive. When he walked they spread out, perhaps to stem the downward
avalanche of cuff. He also twiddled them when he had no other use for
them, and Heaven knows he put them to uses for which they were never
intended.
All this interfered with Edgeworth’s appetite and he shunned the Reverend
Orlando Beezeley. Once, at the table, the minister asked him why he
didn’t go to the Sunday services which he, Dr. Beezeley, held in the
hotel parlours, and when Edgeworth said it was because he didn’t want to,
the Reverend Orlando sniffed offensively. For a week the atmosphere was
surcharged with unpleasantness; but one day Dr. Beezeley asked Edgeworth
what he did for a living, and Edgeworth pleasantly told him that it was
none of his business. The atmosphere at once cleared up and the Reverend
Orlando became irksomely affable. This was because he was afraid of
Edgeworth and disliked him.
Therefore, when Edgeworth entered the dining-room and slipped quietly
into his chair, Dr. Beezeley said: “Hey! been a-fishin?”
“No,” said Edgeworth.
“Where’ve you been then?” urged Mrs. Beezeley, devoured by curiosity. She
had contracted this disease in the little Boston suburb where she lived,
and she had infected her whole family.
“I have been out,” said Edgeworth pleasantly.
Dr. Samuel Meeke, who had pricked up his ears, relapsed into a dull
contemplation of Mrs. Dill again.
But Mrs. Beezeley was not defeated. She turned to the pallid lady beside
her, Mrs. Dill, and said in a thin high voice: “Pass the trout to Mr.
Edgeworth; he can’t seem to catch any—even off the old foot-bridge.”
Edgeworth was intensely annoyed, for it was plain that some of the
Beezeley brood had been spying. He looked at Master Ballington Beezeley
who grinned at him impertinently.
His father was busy feeding himself with mashed potato, but he observed
his heir’s impudence and was not displeased.
“I seen you,” cried the youthful Beezeley, writhing with the pressure of
untold secrets,—“you was mashin’ a country-girl, Mister Edgeworth,—I seen
you!”
“Te-he!” tittered Mrs. Dill.
“‘I _saw_ you,’ would perhaps be more correct,” said Edgeworth; “unless
perhaps your parents have instructed you to the contrary—”
“Ballington!” cried Mrs. Beezeley, turning red, “how dare you use such
grammar?”
Edgeworth surveyed the defeat of the Beezeleys without any particular
emotion.
Mrs. Dill attempted to save the day but choked on an olive and was
assisted from the room by Dr. Samuel Meeke. Then the Beezeleys made Mrs.
Meeke wretched with significant looks and smiles and half-suppressed
coughs, until she rose to find out why Mrs. Dill and her husband did not
return. Poor little woman! her bosom friend, Mrs. Beezeley, had long ago
quenched for her what little comfort in life she ever knew.
When the Reverend Orlando Beezeley had fed to repletion, he removed the
napkin from his chin, cleared his throat, picked his teeth, and finally
took himself off to the piazza.
“I can’t stand this table full much longer,” muttered Edgeworth to
himself, and he called to the head waiter, a majestic personage of
colour, and also a Baptist deacon.
“Deacon,” said he, “give me a place at another table to-night, can you?”
“Sho’ly, Sho’ly, Mistuh Edgewurf,” said the majestic one; “might you
prefer to be seated at Mis’ Weldon’s table, Mistuh Edgewurf?”
Edgeworth looked across at Mrs. Weldon and then at her pretty daughter,
Claire.
“Go over and ask Mrs. Weldon whether she objects,” he said.
Mrs. Weldon did not object and neither did Claire, so Edgeworth walked
over and said some polite things which he forgot a minute afterward. So
did Mrs. Weldon. I am not sure about Claire.
When Edgeworth went out on the veranda to smoke his pipe, a young fellow
in tweeds and scarlet golf-jacket, who was sitting astride the railing
said: “Hello, Jim, it’s all over the hotel that you’re sweet on some
country-girl.”
“Tommy,” said Edgeworth, in a low pleasant voice, “go to the devil!”
O’Hara smiled serenely.
“I suppose it’s that Beezeley whelp, eh, Jim?”
“I fancy it is. A fellow can’t brush his hair but it’s reported in
Diamond Springs.”
“Oh, there’s truth in it then,” laughed O’Hara.
“That,” said Edgeworth, “is none of your confounded business;” and they
strolled off together, arm in arm, smoking placidly.
“These Beezeleys,” said O’Hara, “are blights on the landscape. They ought
to be exterminated with Paris-green.”
“Or drowned in tubs,” said Edgeworth.
“Like unpleasant kittens,” added O’Hara.
“Come,” said Jim Edgeworth, “what was that yarn you wanted to spin for me
this morning?”
“Yarn? ’Tis no yarn,” said O’Hara; “it’s the truth and it troubles me.
Sit down here on the grass till I tell you. Look at the veranda, Jim;
it’s like a circus with the band playing.”
“The girls’ frocks are very pretty; I like lots of colour,” said
Edgeworth.
“There’s plenty in Claire Weldon’s cheeks,” observed O’Hara, gloomily.
“It’s natural,” said Jim.
“It was before you came. Now she puts more on in your honour;—confound
it, man, can’t you see the lass is forever making eyes at you?—and, Jim,
it’s death to me!”
Edgeworth stared at him.
“Oh, you’re blinder than the white bat of Drumgilt!” said O’Hara; “you’ve
eyes in your head, but they’re only there for ornament. Didn’t you know I
am in love with Claire Weldon now?”
“Why no,” said Edgeworth, “are you really, Tommy?”
“Am I really, Tommy? Faith, I thought even the fish in Gay Brook knew it.”
“Well,” laughed Edgeworth, “go in and win, then!”
“Do you mean it?” said Tommy gravely.
“Mean it? My dear fellow, why shouldn’t I?”
O’Hara beamed upon him and grasped his hand.
“There!” he cried, “I knew it! I’ve told her ye didn’t care tuppence
for any lass, and if she didn’t take me she’d be doin’ herself but ill
service.”
Edgeworth burst into fits of laughter. “Is that the way you woo a girl,
Tom O’Hara?”
“There are ways and ways,” said O’Hara doggedly.
“How about Sir Brian?” asked Jim, checking his mirth.
Sir Brian was Tommy’s father. The several thousand miles that separated
father and son did not lessen Tommy’s uneasiness concerning his father’s
approval.
“I can’t help it,” said Tom; “if he disowns me I’ll go to work, that I
will! and Claire knows it.”
“They say,” said Edgeworth, “that the O’Haras always get what they want.”
“They do. My grandfather loved a lass who died, so he blew out his brains
and caught her in heaven.”
“Hm!” coughed Edgeworth.
“Do you know to the contrary?” demanded O’Hara.
“No,” said Jim, “I’ll have to wait a bit to verify this story. Have you
any tobacco? Thanks, my pipe’s out. Look at the sky, Tom; it’s pretty,
isn’t it?”
They sprawled on their backs and kicked up their heels; two bronzed young
athletes,—as trim a pair as one might see anywhere betwixt the poles of
this planet.
“Hark,” said Edgeworth, “hear Beezeley and Meeke squabbling over their
Maker. Do you suppose He hears them? He is so very far away. Hark how
they wrangle over their future blessedness. I should think they would be
ashamed to have God hear them.”
“Beezeley says he believes in hell, but doesn’t want to go there,” said
O’Hara, lazily.
“There’s no hell,” said Edgeworth. He hadn’t lived long enough to know;
he was nineteen.
O’Hara raised himself on one elbow and looked at him.
“No hell?” he asked.
“No.”
If he had seen the lines in O’Hara’s young face,—the faint marks about
the eyes and mouth, he might have answered differently.
The afternoon sunlight lay warm across the level meadow. The locust-trees
were in full bloom, deep laden with heavy, drooping clusters of white
blossoms. Every wandering breeze bore the penetrating sweetness of
the locusts and the delicate odour of hemlock and pine. Great scarlet
trumpet-flowers swayed in the May wind; from the nearer forest came the
scent of dogwood and azalea. Over the greensward butterflies fluttered,
little white ones, chasing each other among the dandelions, great
swallow-tailed butterflies, yellow and black, flopping around the phlox,
or pursuing a capricious course along the river bank. There were others
too, gay comma-butterflies, delicate violet or blue swallow-tailed
butterflies, and now and then a rare shy comrade of theirs, pale sulphur
and grey, striped like a zebra, that darted across the flower-beds and
flitted away to its dusky haunts among the shrub-oak and holly of the
mountain sides. An oriole, gorgeous in orange and black, uttered a sweet
call from the lower branches of an oak. A bluebird dropped into the lower
grass under the bushes. Then a catbird began to sing and trill and warble
until the whole air rippled with melody.
“’Tis a nightingale or I’m in Drumgilt!” said O’Hara, sitting up.
“It’s a male catbird,” said Edgeworth, rising; “come on, Tom!”
O’Hara picked himself up from the grass, scraped out his pipe, ran a
grass-stem through it, and looked at the sun.
“We have loafed the whole afternoon away,” he said.
“I was anxious to kill time,” said Edgeworth. He was thinking of the girl
at the bridge.
“Kill time! kill time!” said O’Hara impatiently,—“why, man, ’tis time
that kills us! I’m going to find Miss Weldon, and I’d be obliged to ye to
stay away.”
“Bosh!” said Edgeworth, “you’re worth twenty like me.”
“That I am!” said Tom, “but I’ll be saying good night, lad! And for the
love of me, stay away from Claire Weldon. You don’t want my curse?”
“Oh, no,” laughed Edgeworth; “but I’m going to dine at their table. I
asked the Deacon to fix it. I can’t stand the holy alliance any longer.”
“All right,” said O’Hara, “when a girl has to see a man eat three times a
day, she loses her illusions concerning him.”
“What’s that?” demanded Edgeworth.
But O’Hara swung off across the clover, whistling “Terry Bowen”
and buttoning his scarlet golf-jacket with an irritating air of
self-satisfaction.
“The mischief take Tom and his girls!” said Edgeworth to himself, but
he looked after Tom and smiled, for he thought the world revolved about
O’Hara. Still he began to be lonely again, now that O’Hara was gone.
“Why the deuce can’t he spend a half hour now and then with me?” he
muttered to himself; “what can he find to talk about all day to that one
girl?”