"You'll find the coffee pot on the back of the stove. I'm washing out a
few things," said Mrs. Donovan.
Though she kept her five little nephews and nieces in dark-patterned
dresses or shirts, as the case might be, and encouraged her brother
Michael to wear flannel shirts, and even limited her eldest niece,
Maggie Brady, clerking in the Green River Dry Goods Emporium now,
instead of helping her father in his little store at the Falls, to three
white waists a week, she was usually washing out a few things.
The contending odours of damp clothes and rank coffee were as much a
part of the Brady kitchen as the dishes stacked in the sink for Neil to
wash, or the broken-legged, beautifully grained mahogany card table in
the warm corner near the stove, where his school books were piled, a
relic of his dead father's prosperous saloon-keeping days, or the view
of Larribee's Marsh through the curtainless windows with their torn
green shades.
The swampy field was the most improvident part of an improvident
purchase--a brown, tumbledown house, wind swept and cold,
inconveniently far from the settlement at the Falls and the larger town,
heavily mortgaged, and not paid for yet, but early on sunny spring
mornings like this the field was beautiful; level and empty and green,
the only monotonous thing in that restless stretch of New England
country, billowy with little hills, and rugged with clumps of trees. A
boy could people the sunlit emptiness of the field with airy creatures
of folk-lore, eagerly gleaned in a busy mother's rare story-telling
moments, or with Caesar's cohorts marching across it, splendid in the
sun, if he had eyes for them. The only boy who ever had regarded the
familiar, glinting green of the field with unkindled eyes to-day as he
sat finishing his lukewarm breakfast. Yet it was Saturday morning, that
magic time, the last Saturday of his last spring vacation, and he had
only one more term of school before him.
On this Saturday morning he had an unpleasant errand to do, and he was
carefully dressed for it, just as he had been dressed for the Lyceum
declamation contest and ball the night before, but not so effectively,
for his best black suit showed threadbare in the morning sun, and the
shine on his shoes was painstakingly applied, and a heavy, even, blue
black, but they needed tapping. His brown eyes had a big, rather hungry
look that was unquestionably picturesque, and Miss Natalie Ward would
have approved of it, if his mother did not, watching him as she trailed
in and out of the room.
"Making out all right? Don't hurry," she said.
"I'm in no hurry to get there," agreed her son.
"He won't say no to you. He never has yet, and he likes you."
"Oh, he won't say no. Nothing new will happen to me in this town; not
even that."
Neil's mother paused, balancing her clothes basket against one hip, and
deftly favouring the string-mended handle, then put it heavily down, and
leaned on the table and looked at him--a small, tired, pretty woman,
with gray, far-away eyes that were like no other eyes in Green River,
and a smile like Neil's.
"Tired?" she said.
"Dog tired."
"Well, you were out till three."
"One. That was Maggie you heard at three. Where was she?"
"That's her business."
"It's Charlie's, if he's going to marry her."
"It's not yours, then. Never mind Maggie. Your uncle and I had a talk
about you last night."
"Why don't you ask to see my dance order?" He made a defensive clutch
at his pocket as if she had, and quick colour swept into his cheeks. She
watched it, and watched it fade, leaving his face tired and sullen, and
too old for its years. "Uncle!"
"He's been like a father to you."
"I've been two sons to him, then. He's worked me like two. If he grudges
the time I take off, I can make it up to him. There's been little enough
of it, and there'll be little more, and there's been little enough
enjoyment in it, and I'm not ashamed of it. Why don't he spy on his own
daughter, if he's curious? Why----" This outburst ended as suddenly as
it began, in a short, sullen laugh as he pushed his empty cup away. "Dan
thinks he can land something for me with the telephone company. I
couldn't send money home at first, but I'd be off your hands. Tell that
to Uncle."
"Would you be with Dan, in Wells?"
"Somewhere outside Wells. It won't be too gay. You needn't be afraid
I'll go to too many dances."
"Don't glare at me. I'm not your uncle."
"Sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me."
"Don't you?"
He flushed, laughed, and ignored the question, producing a small box and
offering it. "I got that last night. Don't wipe your hands. They're good
enough to handle it wet." A gold medal glittered in her hand. He
observed it without enthusiasm, and noticing that, his mother shut the
box abruptly.
"Neil, that's the first prize."
"Looks like it. I spoke the Gettysburg address, and they always fall for
that. Good-bye, I'm off."
"Neil, come back here."
He swung round with his cap doubled under his arm, and stood before her,
helpless and sullen, hedged about with that sudden dignity which no
woman creature can break through, but seeming to derive no comfort from
it. Painful colour mounted to her cheeks, as if the effort of keeping
him there was all she could manage without the effort of opening
delicate subjects.
"Neil, I'm worried about you."
"Why? Are you afraid I'll marry beneath me? I won't marry without your
consent. It's not being done."
"You got three dollars from the _Clarion_ last week."
"Are you afraid I'll try to support a wife on it?"
"It's the most you've made from them. Why weren't you proud of it? Why
aren't you proud of this prize? A year ago you'd have had me up at one
to speak your piece to me. There's no life in you, and no pride, and I
know why."
"Me with so much to be proud of."
"You're good enough for any girl, but----"
"Do you think I don't know my place, with the whole town teaching it to
me going on eighteen years? I've got no false hopes, and I shan't lose
my head over any girl. Let me be."
"It's not the town that's taught you your place, it's----"
"Don't you say her name."
"--empty headed and overdressed."
"Go on. Judith Randall don't care what you think of her."
"Can't you even get up enough spirit to stand up for her? You that
thought you had your fortune all but made when you got the chickens paid
for, and followed me round the house, telling me how you'd run the town?
You that could tell what was wrong with the _Record_ editorials, if you
couldn't pay for a year's subscription to the paper? You----"
"Yes, I come from one of the five lines in Ireland what have a right to
the O', but you never tell me that unless you've got something else to
tell me that you're afraid to tell. What is it this time?"
"You come of Irish kings."
"What did Uncle say last night?"
"Well, he's getting to be an old man."
"What did he say?"
His mother did not reply. She avoided his eyes, and made no further
criticism of him, or of a young lady who was no doubt as indifferent to
her criticisms as Neil said, since she did not recognize Mrs. Donovan on
the street.
"Uncle," Neil decided deliberately, "wants me to help in the store. I
can't go to Wells."
"He can't get on alone now Maggie's gone. We need your board money to
run the house at all. Dan was wild to get away from Green River, but in
two years he's got no farther than Wells, and ten dollars a week. I know
we ought to leave you free to start yourself, if we can't give you a
start, but----"
"Is that all you want to tell me?"
She put out an unaccustomed arm and pulled him awkwardly close. He came
obediently, and patted her shoulder stiffly but did not kiss her. "I
know what this means," she asserted, and showed a rapidly forming
intention of crying on his shoulder. "It hurts me like it does you."
[Illustration: "'_I know what this means,' she asserted_'"]
"It don't hurt me. I ought to have seen it myself. I ought not to have
planned to go. It's all right, mother. Is that all?"
"All? It's enough. I was awake half the night planning to break it to
you."
"You broke it all right. I'll be going." He shook out his crushed
cap, and adjusted it with dignity, looking at her calmly out of
impenetrable eyes, like a young prince ending an audience, with more
power behind him than he knew, kissed her gravely on the cheek with cool
young lips, and opened the door, and walked off into the sunshine.
"It's the girl," said his mother, but not until the door had closed
behind him. "No girl is good enough to do what she's done to you." Then
she selected the frilliest of Maggie's blouses, which had dried while
she talked, and spread it on the ironing table to sprinkle again.
Neil did not look like a young man crossed in love, or a young man with
his future wrecked by a word. He did not give a backward glance to the
little brown house with the sun on its many-paned windows, or seem to
hear the children's voices from the old barn behind the house--the
favourite refuge of the little Bradys when they were banished from the
kitchen--that echoed after him in the clear morning air, shrill and then
fainter as he left the place behind.
He had settled into his usual pace for this familiar walk--a steady
stride that you could fit the unmanageable parts of a Latin verb to the
rhythm of, or the refractory words of a song; but it was not a usual
day. It was the first warm day of that April, warmer already, with the
goading urge of spring in the softening air that frets and troubles with
new desires and a sense of unfitness for them at once, and will not let
you be. The road, fringed with scattering trees, and wind-swept and
bleak on winter days, was golden with new sunlight, spongy underfoot,
but drying under your eyes in the morning sun. The boy's brooding face
did not change as he walked, but his shoulders straightened themselves,
and lost their patient look, and his lean young body gave itself more
gayly to the swing of his pace and looked strong and free, alive with
the unconscious strength of youth that must be caught and harnessed to
make the wheels of the world go round before it can be taught what its
purpose is.
Whether it troubled him or not--his face did not tell--all that his
mother had hinted was wrong with his world, and more. No outsider had
ever won a place like Neil's in Green River High School society so far
as the unwritten history of it recorded. Charlie Brady in his time, and
Dan after him, had been extra men at big dances, hard worked and
patronized in school entertainments, more intimate with the boys than
the girls. Charlie, deep in a secret love affair with Lil Gaynor, had
still called her Miss in public, and treated her as respectfully as he
did now that the affair was forgotten and she was Mrs. Burr and one of
the Everard circle. Charlie and Dan had only looked over impassable
barriers. Neil had been really inside--included in small, intimate
parties, like week-ends at Camp Hiawatha, openly favoured by Natalie, if
not Judith--inside and he would soon be shut out.
There were new signs of it every day. The long, friendly winter, when he
had been safe in that intimate fellowship, was over. The girls were
planning their gowns for college commencement dances. Willard came back
from a week-end at the state university pledged to a fraternity there
and refusing to discuss minor subjects. God-like creatures in amazing
neckties condescended to visit him, and Natalie was beginning to collect
fraternity pins. Rena and Ed were engaged, and under the impression that
it was a secret, and a place was being made for Ed in the bank. In one
way or another, the world was opening to all of them, and closing to
Neil.
And with the spring, the Everards had come back to Green River. The big,
over-decorated house had not been open a week, but already they pervaded
the town. Their cars whirled through the splashing spring streets, and
ladies not upon Mrs. Everard's calling list peered at the passengers to
see who was in her favour. The Colonel was turning the Hiawatha Club
into a private camp, and closing it to the town, but nobody protested
much. He was ordering a complete set of slip covers from the furniture
department of Ward's Emporium, and the daring group of prominent
business men who ventured to assail the Colonel's political views and
private morals sometimes in the little room at the rear of the store
lacked support from Ward. Neil had the run of the store and hung about
and listened, but never contributed. Whether these criticisms were
justified or not, the Everards were back again.
Judith had given up the Lyceum dance for the first of the Everard
dinners the night before. It was three days since Neil had seen her, and
he was to see her to-day, but he was showing no impatience for the
meeting. The end of the world, not the beginning of it, that was what
spring would mean to him, and that is a graver catastrophe at eighteen
than at eighty. The boy who was facing it had passed the outlying
straggle of houses, and had come to the edge of the town, and to the end
of the long, hilly street that led down past the court-house, straight
into Post Office Square, the heart of the town. It was still empty of
traffic at ten, and looked sunny and empty and clean, wide-awake for the
day. He took his hands out of his pockets, stopped whistling "Amos
Moss," and hurried down Court-house Hill, stepping in time to the tune
of it.
A mud-splashed Ford clattered down Main Street, and drew up in front of
the post-office as Neil reached it with a flourish that would have done
credit to a more elegant equipage than this second-hand one of the
Nashes. Two elegant young gentlemen, week-end guests of Willard's and
duly presented to Neil the night before, ignored his existence, perusing
a gaudily covered series of topical songs with exaggerated attention on
the rear seat of the car, but Willard greeted him exuberantly:
"Ah, there, Murph. You don't look like the morning after. Sorry I
haven't got room for you. We've got other plans. We love the ladies."
"I'm tied up, anyway. So long."
Willard's tone was too patronizing, but he was not to blame, for the
days when they would exchange intimate greetings at all were numbered.
As Neil left them one of the elegant guests demanded audibly:
"Who's your friend?"
Neil flushed but did not look back. He had an errand to do in the few
minutes before his appointment with Judge Saxon. He crossed the street
to Ward's store.
Ward's Dry Goods Emporium, three stores in one, and literally three
stores bought out one by one, and joined by connecting doors, though
they could never be united in their style of architecture, was rather
dark and chaotic inside, though a brave showing of plate glass across
the front advertised its prosperity. Luther Ward himself, in his shirt
sleeves, was looking over a tray of soiled, pale-coloured spats,
assisted by a tall, full-bodied girl with a sweet, sulky mouth, and a
towering mass of blue-black hair.
"Hello, Donovan, what's new?" he said, with only a shade more
condescension than Willard, and distinctly more friendliness.
"Nothing, sir," said Neil with conviction.
"You want to talk to Maggie, here. I won't intrude on a family quarrel,"
said Mr. Ward, and chuckling heartily at his own mild joke, as he
generally did, and few others did, disappeared into the furniture
department, the central one of the three stores, and his favourite. The
two cousins regarded each other across the tray of spats as if the
family quarrel were not a joke, but an unpleasant reality.
"You can't come here and take up my time," stated Miss Brady.
"Your time is pretty full--evenings, too. Do you know where Charlie was
last night?"
"I don't care."
"You ought. He's your second cousin, and goes by the same name as you,
if you're not in love with him. He was in Halloran's billiard hall."
"If he can't keep himself out of the gutter, I can't keep him out,"
stated Miss Brady logically.
"Well, don't push him in," her cousin advised, but the light of battle
had died out of his eyes, leaving them listless. "It's nothing to me. I
only came to bring you this."
He produced something from an inner pocket and tossed it on the counter,
something wrapped in a twist of newspaper, which parted as the girl bent
eagerly over it, something which shone and twinkled alluringly, as she
straightened it out with caressing fingers and held it up to the
light--a little necklace of rather ornate design and startling colours,
crimson stones and green and blue, the gayest of toys.
"Seems to be yours all right."
His cousin, who seemed to have forgotten his existence for one rapt
moment, remembered it with a start. "Did you show this to your mother?"
she asked sharply.
"Why?"
"Well, she don't like to have me spend my money on imitation jewellery."
Miss Brady delivered this very natural explanation haltingly.
"Do you?"
One of the sudden, vivid blushes which had helped to establish her
reputation as a beauty overspread Miss Brady's cheek. "I missed it this
morning and didn't have time to hunt for it, and I was worried. I don't
want to show it to her. It cost a good deal."
"It must have. They say a ruby's the only stone you can't imitate."
"What do you mean?" Miss Brady's cheeks grew still redder. "Why don't
you save your big talk for Saxon? You may need it. Why don't you mind
your own affairs, and leave mine alone?"
"Leave that on the kitchen floor for mother to find and sweep up in a
broken dust-pan, or one of the kids to show to your father?"
"Why not? Haven't I got a right to do what I want with my own money?
Haven't I got a right to do what I want with myself? Who are you to
dictate to me, with the Randall girl making a fool of you? Why----"
"That will be all." Though Miss Brady's voice had been threatening to
make itself heard throughout all the three stores in one, she stopped
obediently, looking defiant but frightened, but when her cousin spoke
again the ring of authority which had shocked her was gone from his
voice.
"Don't be scared. It's nothing to me what you do, and I shan't talk too
much. You know me, Mag."
"No, I don't, not lately. You act doped, not half there. I can't make
you out. If you think--if you suspect----"
"I don't. It's nothing to me. I'm due at Saxon's. Put your glass beads
away before Ward sees them. Good luck to you."
Miss Brady, standing quite still in one of her carefully cultivated,
statuesque poses, watched her cousin cross the street and disappear into
a narrow and shabbily painted doorway there. Then she took his advice,
and producing a red morocco wrist bag from under the counter, shut the
necklace into it with a vicious snap, as if she did not derive so much
pleasure as before from handling it now.
Her cousin climbed the three flights of stairs to Judge Saxon's office.
The stairs were dingy and looked unswept, and a pane of glass in the
door of the untenanted suite across the landing from the Judge's was
broken. Nothing about the Judge's quarters indicated that he was Colonel
Everard's attorney, a big man in the town before the Everard regime, and
under it--an unusual combination. His office was shabby outside and in.
The lettering on the door, Saxon and Burr, Attorneys-at-Law, looked
newer than it was by contrast, and it was still only six months old.
Theodore Burr had his delayed junior partnership at last.
The Judge's young client did not pause to collect himself on the worn
door-mat, as he had done when he first came here on errands like this.
They were an old story to him now, and so were scenes like the one with
Maggie, which he had just come through so creditably. He looked quite
unruffled by it, calm as people are when they have no troubles to
bear--or when they have borne all they can, and are about to find relief
in establishing the fact. He knocked and stepped inside.