THE SHADOW ON THE CURTAIN
The two boys parted at Main and B Streets, Fudge to loiter thoughtfully
southward under the budding maples and Perry to continue briskly
on along the wider thoroughfare to where, almost at the corner of
G Street, a small yellow house stood in a diminutive yard behind a
decaying picket fence. Over the gate, which had stood open ever since
Perry had grown too old to enjoy swinging on it, was a square lantern
supported on an iron arch. At night a dim light burned in it, calling
the passer’s attention to the lettering on the front:
NO. 7――DR. HULL――OFFICE.
Beside the front door a second sign proclaimed the house to be the
abode of Matthew P. Hull, M. D.
Nearby was an old-fashioned bell-pull and, just below it, a more modern
button. Above the latter were the words “Night Bell.” The house looked
homelike and scrupulously clean, but evidences of disrepair were
abundant. The bases of the four round pillars supporting the roof of
the porch which ran across the front were rotting, the steps creaked
ominously under Perry’s feet and the faded yellow paint was blistered
and cracked.
Dr. Hull only rented the house, and the owner, since the retail
business district had almost surrounded it and he expected to soon
sell, was extremely chary of repairs. Perry’s father had lived there so
long that he hated the thought of moving. He had grown very fond of the
place, a fondness shared to a lesser extent by Mrs. Hull and scarcely
at all by Perry. But Dr. Hull’s motives in remaining there were not
wholly sentimental. He had slowly and arduously accumulated a fair
practice and, now that the town was over-supplied with physicians, he
feared that a change of location would lose him his clients. Dr. Hull
was not an old man, but he was forty-odd and rather of the old-style,
and shook his head over the pushing methods of the newcomers. Perry
assured him that it would be a good thing if he did lose some of his
present practice, since half of it brought him little or no money, and
that in a better location he could secure a better class of patients.
But Perry wasn’t very certain of this, while his mother, who sighed
secretly for a home where the plaster didn’t crumble nor the floors
creak, had even less faith in the Doctor’s ability to begin over again.
Perry glanced through the open door of the tiny waiting room on the
left as he hung up his cap and, finding it empty and the further door
ajar, knew that his father was out. He went on up the stairs, which
complained at almost every footfall, and stole noiselessly down the
narrow hall to his own room. His mother’s door was closed and this was
the hour when, on Sundays, she enjoyed what she termed “forty winks.”
Perry’s room was small and lighted by three narrow windows set close
together. While they admitted light they afforded but little view, for
beyond the shallow back-yard loomed the side wall of a five-storied
brick building which fronted on G Street. Directly on a level with
Perry’s windows was Curry’s Glove factory, occupying the second floor
of the building. Below was a bakery. Above were offices; a dentist’s, a
lawyer’s, and several that were empty or changed tenants so frequently
that Perry couldn’t keep track of them. In winter the light that came
through the three windows was faint and brief, but at other seasons the
sunlight managed somehow to find its way there. This afternoon a golden
ray still lingered on the table, falling athwart the strapped pile of
school books and spilling over to the stained green felt.
Perry seated himself at the table, put an elbow beside the pile of
books and, cupping chin in hand, gazed thoughtfully down into the yard.
There was a lean and struggling lilac bush against one high fence and
its green leaves were already unfolding. That, reflected the boy, meant
that spring was really here again at last. It was already nearly the
middle of April. Then came May and June, and then the end of school.
He sighed contentedly at the thought. Not that he didn’t get as much
pleasure out of school as most fellows, but there comes a time, when
buds are swelling and robins are hopping and breezes blow warmly, when
the idea of spending six hours of the finest part of the day indoors
becomes extremely distasteful. And that time had arrived.
Perry turned to glance with sudden hostility at the piled-up books.
What good did it do a fellow, anyway, to learn a lot of Latin and
algebra and physics and――and all the rest of the stuff? If he only
knew what he was going to be when he grew up it might save a lot of
useless trouble! Until a year ago he had intended to follow in his
father’s footsteps, but of late the profession of medicine had failed
to hold his enthusiasm. It seemed to him that doctors had to work very
hard and long for terribly scant returns in the way of either money
or fame. No, he wouldn’t be a doctor. Lawyers had a far better time
of it; so did bankers and――and almost everyone. Sometimes he thought
that engineering was the profession for him. He would go to Boston
or New York and enter a technical school and learn civil or mining
engineering. Mining engineers especially had a fine, adventurous life
of it. And he wouldn’t have to spend all the rest of his life in
Clearfield then.
Clearfield was all right, of course; Perry had been born in it and
was loyal to it; but there was a whole big lot of the world that he’d
like to see! He got up and pulled an atlas from the lower shelf of his
book-case and spread it open. Colorado! Arizona! Nevada! Those were
names for you! And look at all the territory out there that didn’t have
a mark on it! Prairies and deserts and plateaus! Miles and miles and
miles of them without a town or a railroad or anything! Gee, it would
be great to live in that part of the world, he told himself. Adventures
would be thick as blueberries out there. Back here nothing ever
happened to a fellow. He wondered if it would be possible to persuade
his father to move West, to some one of those fascinating towns with
the highly romantic names; like Manzanola or Cotopaxi or Painted Rock.
His thoughts were far afield now and, while his gaze was fixed on the
lilac bush below, his eyes saw wonderful scenes that were very, very
foreign to Clearfield. The sunlight stole away from the windows and the
shadows gathered in the little yard. The room grew dark.
Just how long Perry would have sat there and dreamed of far-spread
prairies and dawn-flushed deserts and awesome cañons had not an
interruption occurred, there’s no saying. Probably, though, until his
mother summoned him to the Sunday night supper. And that, since it was
a frugal repast of cold dishes and awaited the Doctor’s presence, might
not have been announced until seven o’clock. What did rouse him from
his dreaming was the sudden appearance of a light in one of the third
floor windows of the brick building. It shone for a moment only, for a
hand almost immediately pulled down a shade, but its rays were bright
enough to interrupt the boy’s visions and bring his thoughts confusedly
back.
When you’ve been picturing yourself a cowboy on the Western plains,
a cowboy with a picturesque broad-brimmed sombrero, leather chaps,
a flannel shirt and a handkerchief knotted about your neck, it is
naturally a bit surprising to suddenly see just such a vision before
your eyes. And that’s what happened to Perry. No sooner was the shade
drawn at the opposite window than upon it appeared the silhouette
of as cowboyish a cowboy as ever rode through sage-brush! Evidently
the light was in the center of the room and the occupant was standing
between light and window, standing so that for a brief moment his
figure was thrown in sharp relief against the shade, and Perry, staring
unbelievingly, saw the black shadow of a broad felt hat whose crown
was dented to a pyramid shape, a face with clean-cut features and a
generous mustache and, behind the neck, the knot of a handkerchief!
Doubtless the flannel shirt was there, too, and, perhaps, the leather
cuffs properly decorated with porcupine quills, but Perry couldn’t be
sure of this, for before he had time to look below the knotted bandana
the silhouette wavered, lengthened oddly and faded from sight, leaving
Perry for an instant doubtful of his vision!
“Now what do you know about that?” he murmured. “A regular cowboy, by
ginger! What’s he doing over there, I wonder. And here I was thinking
about him! Anyway, about cowboys! Gee, that’s certainly funny! I wish
I could have seen if he wore a revolver on his hip! Maybe he’ll come
back.”
But he didn’t show himself again, although Perry sat on in the darkness
of his little room for the better part of a half-hour, staring eagerly
and fascinatedly at the lighted window across the twilight. The shade
still made a yellowish oblong in the surrounding gloom of the otherwise
blank wall when his mother’s voice came to him from below summoning him
to supper and he left his vigil unwillingly and went downstairs.
Dr. Hull had returned and supper was waiting on the red cloth that
always adorned the table on Sunday nights. Perry was so full of
his strange coincidence that he hardly waited for the Doctor to
finish saying grace before he told about the vision. Rather to his
disappointment, neither his father nor mother showed much interest, but
perhaps that was because he neglected to tell them that he had been
thinking of cowboys at the time. There was no special reason why he
should have told them other than that he suspected his mother of a lack
of sympathy on the subject of cowboys and the Wild West.
“I guess,” said the Doctor, helping to the cold roast lamb and having
quite an exciting chase along the back of the platter in pursuit of a
runaway sprig of parsley, “I guess your cowboy would have looked like
most anyone else if you’d had a look at him. Shadows play queer tricks,
Perry.”
Dr. Hull was tall and thin, and he stooped quite perceptibly. Perhaps
the stoop came from carrying his black bag about day after day, for
the Doctor had never attained to the dignity of a carriage. When
he had to have one he hired it from Stewart, the liveryman. He had
a kindly face, but he usually looked tired and had a disconcerting
habit of dropping off to sleep in the middle of a conversation or,
not infrequently, half-way through a meal. Perry was not unlike his
father as to features. He had the same rather short and very straight
nose and the same nice mouth, but he had obtained his brown eyes from
his mother. Dr. Hull’s eyes were pale blue-gray and he had a fashion
of keeping them only a little more than half open, which added to his
appearance of weariness. He always dressed in a suit of dark clothes
which looked black without actually being black. For years he had had
his suits made for him by the same unstylish little tailor who dwelt,
like a spider in a hole, under the Union Restaurant on Common Street.
Whether the suits, one of which was made every spring, all came off the
same bolt of cloth, I can’t say, but it’s a fact that Mrs. Hull had to
study long to make out which was this year’s suit and which last’s. On
Sunday evenings, however, the Doctor donned a faded and dearly-loved
house-jacket of black velveteen with frayed silk frogs, for on Sunday
evenings he kept no consultation hours and made no calls if he could
possibly help it.
In spite of Perry’s efforts, the cowboy was soon abandoned as a subject
for conversation. The Doctor was satisfied that Perry had imagined the
likeness and Mrs. Hull couldn’t see why a cowboy hadn’t as much right
in the neighboring building as anyone. Perry’s explanations failed
to convince her of the incongruity of a cowboy in Clearfield, for
she replied mildly that she quite distinctly remembered having seen
at least a half-dozen cowboys going along Main Street a year or two
before, the time the circus was in town!
“Maybe,” chuckled the Doctor, “this cowboy got left behind then!”
Perry refused to accept the explanation, and as soon as supper was over
he hurried upstairs again. But the light across the back-yard was out
and he returned disappointedly to the sitting-room, convinced that the
mystery would never be explained. His father had settled himself in the
green rep easy chair, with his feet on a foot-rest, and was smoking
his big meerschaum pipe that had a bowl shaped like a skull. The
Doctor had had that pipe since his student days, and Perry suspected
that, next to his mother and himself, it was the most prized of the
Doctor’s possessions. The Sunday papers lay spread across his knees,
but he wasn’t reading, and Perry seized on the opportunity presented
to broach the matter of going in for the Track Team. There had been
some difficulty in the fall in persuading his parents to consent to his
participation in football, and he wasn’t sure that they would look any
more kindly on other athletic endeavors. His mother was still busy in
the kitchen, for he could hear the dishes rattling, and he was glad of
it; it was his mother who looked with most disfavor on such things.
“Dad, I’m going to join the Track Team and try sprinting,” announced
Perry carelessly.
The Doctor brought his thoughts back with a visible effort.
“Eh?” he asked. “Join what?”
“The Track Team, sir. At school. I think I can sprint a little and I’d
like to try it. Maybe I won’t be good enough, but Fudge Shaw says I am,
and――――”
“Sprinting, eh?” The Doctor removed his pipe and rubbed the bowl
carefully with the purple silk handkerchief that reposed in an inner
pocket of his house-jacket. “Think you’re strong enough for that, do
you?”
“Why, yes, sir! I tried it to-day and didn’t have any trouble. And the
track was awfully wet, too.”
“To-day?” The Doctor’s brows went up. “Sunday?”
Perry hastened to explain and was cheered by a slight smile which
hovered under his father’s drooping mustache when he pictured Fudge
trying to be at both ends of the hundred-yards at once. “You see, dad,
I can’t play baseball well enough, and I’d like to do something. I
ought to anyway, just to keep in training for football next autumn. I
wouldn’t wonder if I got to be regular quarter-back next season.”
“Sprinting,” observed the Doctor, tucking his handkerchief out of sight
again, “makes big demands on the heart muscles, Perry. I’ve no reason
for supposing that your heart isn’t as strong as the average, but I
recall in my college days a case where a boy over-worked himself in a
race, the quarter-mile, I think it was, and never was good for much
afterwards. He was in my class, and his name was――dear, dear, now what
was it? Well, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, that’s what you’ll have to
guard against, Perry.”
“But if I began mighty easy, the way you do, and worked up to it,
sir――――”
“Oh, I dare say it won’t hurt you. Exercise in moderation is always
beneficial. It’s putting sudden demands on yourself that does the
damage. With proper training, going at it slowly, day by day, you
know――well, we’ll see what your mother says.”
Perry frowned and moved impatiently on the couch. “Yes, sir, but you
know mother always finds objections to my doing things like that. You’d
think I was a regular invalid! Other fellows run and jump and play
football and their folks don’t think anything of it. But mother――――”
“Come, come, Perry! That’ll do, son. Your mother is naturally anxious
about you. You see, there’s only one of you, and we――well, we don’t
want any harm to come to you.”
“Yes, sir,” said Perry, more meekly. “Only I thought if you’d say it
was all right, before she comes in――――”
The Doctor chuckled. “Oh, that’s your little game, is it? No, no, we’ll
talk it over with your mother. She’s sensible, Perry, and I dare say
she won’t make any objections; that is, if you promise to be careful.”
“Yes, sir. Why, there’s a regular trainer, you know, and the fellows
have to do just as he tells them to.”
“Who is the trainer?”
“‘Skeet’ Presser, sir. He’s――――”
“Skeet?”
“That’s what they call him. He’s small and skinny, sort of like a
mosquito. I guess that’s why. I don’t know what his real name is. He
used to be a runner; a jim-dandy, too, they say. He’s trainer at the Y.
M. C. A. I guess he’s considered pretty good. And very careful, sir.”
Perry added that as a happy afterthought.
The Doctor smiled. “I guess we ought to make a diplomat out of you,
son, instead of a doctor.”
“I don’t think I’ll be a doctor, dad.”
“You don’t? I thought you did.”
“I used to, but I――I’ve sort of changed my mind.”
“Diplomats do that, too, I believe. Well, I dare say you’re right about
it. It doesn’t look as if I’d have much of a practice to hand over
to you, anyway. It’s getting so nowadays about every second case is
a charity case. About all you get is gratitude, and not always that.
Here’s your mother now. Mother, this boy wants to go in for athletics,
he tells me. Wants to run races and capture silver mugs. Or maybe
they’re pewter. What do you say to it?”
“Gracious, what for?” ejaculated Mrs. Hull.
Perry stated his case again while his mother took the green tobacco
jar from the mantel and placed it within the Doctor’s reach, plumped
up a pillow on the couch, picked a thread from the worn red carpet and
finally, with a little sigh, seated herself in the small walnut rocker
that was her especial property. When Perry had finished, his mother
looked across at the Doctor.
“What does your father think?” she asked.
“Oh, I think it won’t do him any harm,” was the reply from the Doctor.
“Might be good for him, in fact. I tell him he must be careful not to
attempt too much at first, that’s all. Running is good exercise if it
isn’t overdone.”
“Well, it seems to me,” observed Mrs. Hull, “that if he can play
football and not get maimed for life, a little running can’t hurt him.
How far would it be, Perry?”
“Oh, only about from here to the corner and back.”
“Well, I don’t see much sense in it, but if you want to do it I haven’t
any objection. It doesn’t seem as if much could happen to you just
running to G Street and back!”
The Doctor chuckled. “It might be good practice when it comes to
running errands, mother. Maybe he’ll be able to get to the grocery and
back the same afternoon!”
“Well,” laughed Perry, “you see, dad, when you’re running on the track
you don’t meet fellows who want you to stop and play marbles with
them!”