DICK HASELRIDGE
On this Christmas Eve Dick Haselridge was picking her way swiftly
through the holiday crowd, but her glance roved alertly over the
scene, and everything she saw seemed to please her. The cries of the
shivering toy venders on the sidewalk, and the clashing of gongs on
the overcrowded cable cars that passed, came to her ears with a note
of merriment that must have been assumed especially for Christmastide.
To walk rapidly was no easy matter, for the motion of the crowd was
irregular; now fast, across some gusty, ill-lighted spot, now slowing
to a mere stroll, and now ceasing altogether before a particularly
attractive shop window. The wind, too, had acquired a mischievous trick
of pouncing upon you from an always unexpected direction. Dick scorned
to wear a veil in any weather, and her hair blew all about and into
her eyes, and as one of her hands was occupied with her muff and her
purse, and the other with keeping her skirts out of the slush, she
would pause and wait for the wind to blow the refractory lock out of
the way again. Then she would laugh, for it was all part of the lark to
Dick, and start on.
In one of these pauses she saw a little imp-faced newsboy looking up at
her with a grin so infectious that she smiled back at him. The effect
of that smile upon the boy was immediate; he sprang forward, collided
with one passer-by, then with another, and seemed to carrom from him to
a position directly in front of Dick.
“Did ye want a piper, miss?” he gasped. He was still grinning.
“Yes,” laughed Dick, and heedless of the slush she let go her skirt and
drew the purse from her muff.
“This is jolly, isn’t it?” she said, fishing a dime from her purse and
handing it to him. “Oh, I haven’t any place to carry a paper. Never
mind. I’ll get it from you some other time. Merry Christmas,” and with
a bright nod she was gone.
They had stood--Dick and the newsboy--in the strong light from a shop
window, and the little scene may have been noted by a dozen persons
in the crowd that had flowed by them. But one man who had come up
from the direction in which Dick was going, a big man, muffled to the
eye-glasses in an ulster, had seemed particularly interested. Dick’s
back was toward him as he passed,--she had turned to the window in
order to see into her purse,--but there was something familiar about
the graceful line of her slight figure, and he looked at her closely,
as one who thinks he recognizes but cannot be sure, and when he was a
few yards by he looked again. This time he saw her face just as she
nodded farewell to the newsboy, and in an instant he had turned about
and was off in pursuit; but when he came up to where the little urchin
was still standing, he stopped, fumbled in his outer pockets, drew out
a quarter of a dollar, and held it out to him. “Here you are, boy,” he
said, and hurried after Dick, who was now half a square away.
When only a few steps behind he called:--
“Dick! Dick! What a pace you’ve got! Wait a bit.”
She turned, recognizing his voice; as he came alongside, he added:--
“You never were easy to catch, but you seem to be getting worse in that
respect. Beast of a night, isn’t it?”
It was dark, and in the additional protection of her high fur collar
Dick permitted herself to smile; but she commented only on the last
part of his remark. The wrestle with the gale had put her out of
breath, and she spoke in gasps.
“Oh, yes--but it’s a good beast. Like a big overgrown--Newfoundland
puppy.”
He fell in step with her, and they walked on more slowly in silence;
for they were good enough friends for that. At length she said,--
“I thought you were going home to spend Christmas.”
“I did expect to, but I couldn’t.”
Her tone was colder when she spoke. “It’s too bad that you were
detained.”
“Detained!” he exclaimed. “You know what I meant, Dick. When mother
invited you to spend the holidays with us, and I thought from what you
said that you would, why I expected to go, too. But as long as you stay
here, why I shall, that’s all: you don’t play fair, Dick.”
“That spoils everything,” she said quietly. Then after a moment, “No,
it doesn’t either. You shan’t make me cross on Christmas Eve, whatever
you say. Only, sometimes you make it rather hard to play fair.”
He answered quickly: “You’re quite right about that. I suppose I do,
and pretty often. How do you put up with me at all, Dick?”
She laughed. “Oh, I manage it rather easily. You’re nearly always good.
Just now, for instance, walking away out here with me. You’ll come in
to dinner with us, won’t you?”
“I think I’d better not. Mr. Bagsbury and I have had about all we can
stand of each other for one week. We’re getting used to each other
by degrees. I wonder if I irritate him as much as he does me. Do you
really like him, Dick?”
“Yes,” she said reflectively, “I really like him very much. But I don’t
wonder that you don’t get on together. The only thing either of you
sees in the other is the thing he particularly hates.” She laughed
softly. “But rolled together you’d be simply immense.”
“Call it three hundred and sixty pounds,” he said. “Yes, that’s big; as
big as Melville Sponley.”
“As big as Mr. Sponley thinks he is,” she rejoined. “And that’s a very
different thing. I hate that man. I wouldn’t trust him behind a--a
ladder!”
They had reached the Bagsburys’ house, and Dick held out her hand to
him. “Good night,” she said. “I wish you were coming in. Thank you for
walking home with me.”
But Jack Dorlin hesitated. “I wish you would tell me, Dick, whether you
mean to settle down here to live with the Bagsburys, or whether this
is just a visit. If I camp down here near by, and get my piano and my
books, and the rest of my truck comfortably set up just before you pack
your things and flit away, it’ll leave me feeling rather silly.”
She laughed, “Why, they want me to stay, and I think I will. I think
I’ll try rolling you and Uncle John together. Good night.” She let
herself into the house with a latch-key and hurried upstairs to her
room; but before she could reach it, she was intercepted in the upper
hall by her aunt.
“Dick!” she exclaimed, “where have you been? I was beginning to be
dreadfully worried about you.”
For reply, Dick turned so that the light from the chandelier
shone full in her face. “Look at me,” she commanded. “Look at me
closely, and see if you think there is any good in worrying over a
great--healthy--animal--like me.”
She shook her head at every pause, and the little drops of melted snow
that beaded her tumbled hair came rolling down her face; and then,
slowly, she smiled.
When Dick smiled, even on others of her sex, that put an end
to argument. Alice Bagsbury laughed a little, patted her arm
affectionately, and said: “Well, you’re awfully wet, anyway, so run
along and put on some dry things. And John is home, and we’re going to
have dinner right away, so you’ll have to hurry.”
“I’ll be down,” said Dick, pausing as if for an exact calculation,
“in--eight minutes. Will that do?”
Her aunt nodded and laughed again, and went downstairs, while Dick,
laying her watch on her dressing table, prepared to justify her
arithmetic.
It was a sort of miracle that Dick Haselridge was not spoiled. Her
mother, John Bagsbury’s sister Martha, remembering her own dismal
childhood, had gone far in the other direction, and Dick had never
known enough repression or discipline at home to be worth mentioning.
Dick’s real name, let it be said, was her mother’s, Martha, but as her
two first boon companions had borne the names Thomas and Henry, her
father, so Dick said, had declared that it was too bad to spoil the
combination just because she happened to be a girl, so almost from her
babyhood she was known as Dick. It was not wonderful that Dick’s father
and mother allowed her to do about as she pleased, for her manner
made it hard to deny her anything. Long before she was ten years old,
she had made the discovery that anybody, friend or stranger, was very
likely to do what she wanted him to.
That was a dangerous bit of knowledge for a child to have, and it might
have been disastrous to Dick had there not been strong counteracting
influences at work. Her father died when she was but twelve years
old, and thereby it came about that for the first time in her merry
little life Dick tasted the sorrows and the joys of responsibility. Her
mother, in the few years of life that were left her, never entirely
recovered, so Dick stayed at home to keep her cheerful, and avert the
little worries that came to disturb her.
Dick was just seventeen when her mother died, and she found herself
without a home and without a single intimate friend. For a time she was
bewildered by her grief, but her courage and her indomitable buoyancy
asserted themselves, and she took the tiller of her life in hand, to
steer as good a course as she could without the advice or assistance of
anybody.
Ever since the death of Victor Haselridge, John Bagsbury had kept
a sort of track of his sister, and when she died, he wrote Dick a
letter, asking her to come and live with him and Alice; but Dick
had determined, first of all, to go to college, so she declined the
invitation. She had not been what one would call a studious child,
but she was keenly interested in things, and she learned easily, and
she had contrived in one way or another to pick up enough information
to satisfy the entrance requirement of the college she had chosen. It
was a wise decision, for in college she was busy, she was popular, and
that, as it did not turn her head, was good for her, and best of all,
she found a few intimate friends.
The first of these was Edith Dorlin: they were fast friends before the
fall term was well begun, and as a result Dick went home with her to
spend the Thanksgiving recess. In those few days Mrs. Dorlin fell quite
in love with her, as did also Edith’s brother Jack, who was four years
older than his sister and in his junior year at college. The Dorlins
made what was almost a home for her during her four college years,
and as the time for graduation grew near, Edith and her mother both
besought Dick to make her home with them permanently. Jack also asked
her to come, but his invitation included marrying him, and Dick, though
she was really very fond of him, did not love him in the least, so in
spite of their combined entreaties she had announced her intention of
going abroad for a year or two; whereupon Jack, averring that he was
not cut out for a lawyer, and that he was tired of getting his essays
on things in general back from the magazines, decided that he ought to
do something with his music and began planning to go to Berlin to study.
But the Bagsburys had not entirely lost sight of Dick, and on her
commencement day John appeared and repeated his invitation that she
come and live with them, or at least make them a long visit. Somewhat
to Dick’s surprise she accepted; partly because the idea of having
any sort of a home appealed to her, and partly because, in spite of
her prejudice against him, she liked John, with his strong, alert
way, and his bluntness, and his cautious keeping within the fact; and
then--this was the strongest reason of all--his mouth and something in
the inflection of his voice reminded her of her mother.
Jack Dorlin’s disgust when he heard of Dick’s decision quite outran his
power of expression.
“Don’t you think yourself that it’s mildly insane?” he asked her.
“I’m not going there to live,” said Dick; “at least, I don’t know that
I am. Not unless they like me awfully well.”
“But just try to think a minute,” he went on, trying hard to preserve
an argumentative manner; “here are we who have known you all your
life--”
She smiled, and he exclaimed impatiently.
“Oh, don’t be so literal! I have known you--always, and can’t you--”
He broke off short. Then without giving her time to say the words that
were on her lips, he added quickly:--
“I know, Dick. I know. Don’t tell me again. I didn’t mean to speak that
way; it got away from me. But I can’t see the sense of your going away
off to live with some people you’ve never seen. Mother and Edith and I
have known you four years, and we do like you awfully well; there’s no
‘unless’ about it.”
“Don’t try to argue any more, Jack,” she said. “I’m going to visit the
Bagsburys. I don’t know how long I’ll stay; it may be a month, and it
may be a year, and I may find a home there. But I shall miss you all
dreadfully, and you must write me lots of letters. Tell me all about
your life in Berlin, and how your music is going--and everything.”
“I rather doubt my getting to Berlin this year,” he said cautiously.
He would tell her nothing more definite, but she was not really
surprised when, before she had been a week with the Bagsburys, he came
to call on her. He was as unconcerned about it as though he had lived
all his life just around the corner.
He was so jolly and companionable, so much the old comrade and so
little the despairing lover that, try as she might, Dick could not be
sorry that he was there. He would tell her nothing about his plans
save that he meant to stay around for a while. He said he found he
could think better when he was within a mile of where she lived, and no
entreaties could drive him away.
That was in July, and now, at Christmas, the situation was unchanged.
With any other man it would have been intolerable, but he was
different. Save on rare occasions, he was always just as on that first
evening, the same lazy, amused, round-faced, good-hearted Jack. And she
was forced to admit to herself that she was glad he had persisted in
disobeying her.
He was easily the best friend she had. To no one else could she show
her thoughts just as they came, without stopping first to look at them
and see if they held together. With no one else did she feel beyond the
possibility of misunderstanding. He was--oh, he was the best of good
comrades.
* * * * *
Ah, Dick! your eight minutes have slipped away and another eight, and
still you are not dressed for dinner.