OUR HERO RENEWS HIS YOUTH IN THE WARMTH OF AN OLD FRIENDSHIP
As Mr. Waddy was glancing over his paper at breakfast next morning, he
caught sight of a name once familiar.
“Perhaps I did wrong,” thought he, not for the first time, “to close
all intercourse with people here when I went away. ‘Perkins & Tootler’
advertising everywhere. There can’t be two men named Tootler. It must
be my old schoolfellow. I’ll go down and see if he remembers me.”
Large letters in the directory informed him of the firm’s
address--Perkins & Tootler, wool merchants, Throgmorton Perkins,
Thomas Tootler. Ira easily found the store. Everything looked busy and
prosperous. The air around was filled with a fine flocculent haze which
caused Mr. Waddy to rub his nose.
“Tommy doesn’t need to advertise that he’s in wool,” thought he. “In
clover, too, I should think.”
All within the store of P. & T. was bustle. Wool-gathering there meant
quite the opposite of witlessness. In reply to Mr. Waddy’s inquiry for
Mr. Tootler, a busy clerk pointed to the inner office. The door was
shut, and as Mr. Waddy knocked, he heard a queer, suppressed sound,
half musical, half melancholy, like the wheeze of a country church
organ when Bellows, immersed in his apple, has forgotten his duty of
blast.
“Come in,” said a voice.
As Ira entered, the person within was engaged in hurrying something
into the pocket of his grey morning coat. The person was a short, bald,
jolly fatling, all abloom with pink freshness. He looked a compound
of _père de famille_ and jolly dog. His abiding rosiness was rosier
now with a blush as of one detected; it grew ruddier as the stranger
addressed him.
“Mr. Tootler, I believe?”
“Yes, sir; will you take a seat?” returned Tootler politely; then, as
he saw his visitor in clearer light, he sprang to his feet, with hands
outstretched. “Is it possible? Why, Waddy, is it you? _Folly ol tolly
ol tilly ol ta!_” and he grasped Ira’s hands and hopped before him in a
polka step. As he hopped, his coat flew about and a hard object in the
pocket struck Mr. Waddy’s leg.
“Yes, it’s I, Tommy, my boy,” said Waddy, almost ready to dance himself
and feeling, suddenly, quite a boy again. “I would bet cash that I can
tell what you have in your right-hand pocket.”
“Well, you’re right,” admitted Tootler, smiling blandly; and diving
into his pocket, he produced the joints of a flute. He put it rapidly
together and after one howl, such as Ira had heard from without, he
played in a masterly way a few bars of a sweet Spanish air.
“Our last serenade--eh, Ira? I don’t forget, you see.”
The two friends shook hands again on this souvenir--but more gravely.
Mr. Waddy’s face, indeed, was again very grave.
“Fifteen years ago this very month,” continued Tootler, a little
rapidly, perhaps noticing the change. “But, Ira, you’ve not altered a
hair, except your moustache, and you’re as brown as a chowder party.
Splendid! All right! Welcome home! as the boy said to the bumble-bee.
If I could see your lips, I don’t know but I would----” A chirping
smack went off in the air, and Tommy, the gay, spun about his office,
and as he spun he flirted no less than three tears to lay the dust;
then, giving himself a little thwack in the eyes, he fronted Waddy
again.
“Well, Tommy,” said his friend, “you are the same--only younger. I see
the hair hasn’t grown yet on your infantile poll.”
“Never will, sir,” replied the merry man, who had plenty of pleasant
light hair below his tonsure; “never would. I’m taken for a priest,
a nunshow. Sometimes for the Pope. Isn’t that worth being bald for?
‘The Pope that Pagan full of pride’--I’d like to be him for one day to
excommunicate the Irish nation. But come! tell me about yourself. I
obeyed orders and didn’t write. I heard, of course, through your house
here that you were alive and making money, but nothing more. We’ve
talked very often of you--Cissy and I.”
“Oh!” said Waddy, “of course there’s a Cissy. No man ever looked so
young and happy without.”
“Of course,” assented Tootler positively, “there’s more than one.
There’s Mrs. Cecilia Tootler, who knows you very well by hearsay, and
Miss Cecilia Tootler, who will know you this afternoon, if my brown
mare Cecilia doesn’t break our necks.”
“Where are we going so fast?” asked Waddy, “with these gay young men
who drive brown mares?”
“We are going to my house in the country,” explained Tootler. “We are
going to drive and drive and talk over old times, and have some iced
punch after the old fashion, and a pipe after punch. For your part, you
are going to be made love to by Mrs. Tootler; she shall sing to you,
with her divinest voice, everything that you have loved in old times,
and a thousand new things that you will love when you hear them; she
shall play to you on the dulcinea, sackbut, psaltery, spinnet, harp,
lute, and every kind of instrument, including a piano. Her name was a
prophecy--there’s something in a name. Now yours--I don’t believe you
would have been bolting off to India as you did, forgetting all your
friends, if your name had not been Ira.”
“No more o’ that, Tommy,” protested Ira, “now that one of my friends
has proved that he has not forgotten me. But tell me, is it usual for
merchants of Boston, in wool or out of it, to carry pocket flutes or
bassoons, and while away the noontide hour with dulcet strains, such as
you gave me? Do they all play solos in solitude?”
“They might do worse, and some of ’em do. The fact is, Ira, I meet such
a set of inharmonious knaves that I must soothe me with a little blow
now and then. I have had the doors felted. Not much sound goes through.
Generally, I can wait till I get to the Shrine--so I call my box--St.
Cecilia’s Shrine--for my music, but sometimes these confounded beggars
rasp me so with their mean tricks and tempting swindles that I have to
pipe up. The clerks wait till I’ve done and then ask for half-holidays.
I have to deal with a pretty shabby crew. These manufacturers are
always hard up and keep sending a lot of daggered scallawags here
to get contributions to put little bills through Congress about the
tariff. They don’t get much out of Tommy Tootler--nor much ahead of
him--the loafers!” and Tommy, to tranquillise his soul, took his flute
and gave “Il segreto” with thrilling trills.
As he closed, a small knock smote the door and the youngest clerk,
aged fifteen, peered in. His pantaloons were hitched up by his hasty
descent from a high stool.
“Mr. Tootler,” he began timidly, but gathering courage at every word,
“my sisters are going to have a raspberry party this evening and--and
my mother’s not very well. Can I go home at three?”
“Go along, my boy!” said the merchant, “and don’t take too many
raspberries or you may be more ill than your mother.”
Clerkling disappeared and a suppressed cheer came through the felted
door.
Mr. Waddy laughed heartily. Tootler also smiled in length and breadth;
in breadth over his rosy cheeks of indigenous cheerfulness, and in
greater length from where his chin showed the cloven dimple up to the
apex of his tonsure. It was doing Mr. Waddy vast good--this intercourse
with his old comrade. It seems to me quite possible that if he had
found his friend transmuted from the old nimble sixpence to a slow
shilling--corrupted into a man of the two-and-sixpenny type, slim,
prim, close, pious to the point of usury--that the returning man would
have been disgusted away from all his possibilities of content and
hopes of home; would have scampered back to the lounges of Europe and
there withered away. Then, certes, never would this tale of his Return
have been written.
But Mr. Waddy found his old friend now even more a friend. The meeting
carried each back to the dear days of youth, jolly and joyous, ardent,
generous, unsuspecting. How many were left who could call either
by prenomen? These were two who, together, had done all the boyish
mischiefs--all for which boyhood is walloped and riper years remember
with delight. Had they not together lugged away the furtive watermelon?
What Boston bell-pulls were not familiar with their runaway rings? Who,
as time went on, were the best skaters but they? Who went farthest for
water lilies for boyish sweethearts; who, into stickiest mud for the
second joints of that amphibious kangaroo, the frog? To enumerate their
joint adventures and triumphs demands a folio. Were this written, the
old types of friendship would be forgotten, and even now, as I think of
Waddy and Tootler, those other duos of history, Orestes and Pythias,
Damon and Jonathan, Pylades and David, mingle themselves like uncoupled
hounds--their conjunctions seem only casual and temporary.
There must have been good reason for their reciprocal silence during
so many years, for their meeting was not as of two who have wished to
forget each other, and such a meeting, with so unchanged a comrade,
was, as I have said, to Mr. Waddy a wondrous good. It seems impossible
that a man of his many noble traits should not have had other friends,
all in their way as sincere as this one. But whether this prove to be
so or not, here we have the first fact a favourable fact. The first
hand he grasps returns the pressure warmly, and not with traitorous
warmth. The first face he recognises even precedes his in recognition.
Pleasant omens these! If not ominous, pleasant enough as facts.
The two friends parted for their morning business. At three, to a tick,
Mr. Tootler was at the Tremont House, in a knowing buggy with hickory
wheels, fresh-varnished. Mr. Waddy, also to a tick, ready with his
carpet-bag, squinted at Cecilia and saw that she was a “good un.” Mr.
Tootler, with his tonsure covered by a straw hat, was a very young,
almost boyish-looking man, as vivacious and sparkling as a lively boy.
Mr. Waddy was browner and graver, and his long moustache gave a stern
character to his face, even when he smiled.
Cecilia lounged along over the stones down Beacon Street, with that
easy fling which reminds one of the indolence of an able man. The air
was cool and fragrant, and parasol clouds hung overhead, suggesting
future need of umbrellas. The same need was foreshadowed by gleaming
fires in horizontal blackness--they were evidently heating up those
dark reservoirs that later a diluvial boiling-over might come.
Cecilia probably snuffed the approaching shower, or was a little wild
with thoughts of her oats, for while Tootler was still pointing out to
his friend the new houses of new men, the railroad causeways and the
extension of the Common, the mare was imperceptibly and still lazily
stretching into her speed. She was not one of those great awkward
brutes that require a crowbar between the teeth and a capstan with its
crew at either rein. This refined, ladylike animal had nothing of the
wrong-headed vixen about her. Her lively ears showed caution without
timidity. She was indeed a “good un,” with a pedigree brought down by
the Ark from Paradise.
Mr. Tootler hardly felt the reins, the mare was minding herself. They
were descending an easy slope, when a man driving fast, alone in a
buggy, appeared over the opposite rise of ground. Just as he came
within recognisable distance, he struck his horse violently with the
whip; the horse winced and bolted and then turned toward his own side a
little, but not enough to save the collision.
“We’re in,” said Tootler calmly, as the crash came.
He had the advantage of down-hill impetus and a large fore-wheel of the
new style. His wheel struck the other’s hinder wheel just in front of
the box. It swept the axle and both wheels clear. Cecilia pulled up in
an instant--no damage. They left her standing and both sprang to the
rescue of the stranger. He had been thrown out behind and was picking
himself up from a spot where there was just mud enough for general
defilement. Ira made after the horse, who only ran a hundred yards,
and brought him back with the wreck of the wagon at his heels. Tootler
was talking rather angrily to the stranger, who stood sulkily beating
off the mud.
“Hang it, Belden, you know it was your own fault,” said Tommy. “Why
the deuce did you hit that bolter of yours just at the wrong time? You
might have broken all our necks.”
“Well!” said Belden, and the word expressed many things.
He was, or rather had been, dressed in white, with blue cravat, and
wore a straw hat covered with fresh white muslin in the Oriental style.
He was now bedaubed like Salius in the Virgilian foot-race. It was
quite certain that his afternoon projects were at an end. He was an
“object.”
“After all,” continued the good-natured Tootler, “you have the worst of
it and I won’t abuse you. Here comes Waddy with your horse--he seems
all right. Don’t you remember Waddy? Ira, this is Horace Belden. He
used to be one of us--old friends.”
Waddy was holding the horse with his right hand; he held out the other
with an apology.
“I’m glad to see you again and very sorry that we were the
unintentional cause of your accident,” he said.
Belden took the hand with a bad grace, and stooping down to wipe off
some of his stains, was muttering something that may have been a reply,
when Cecilia made a little start. Tootler jumped to her head.
“Come, Waddy,” he called; “we shall be caught in the shower. Sorry to
leave you, Belden, but don’t see that we can do anything. A little
rain-water won’t do you any harm.”
Belden’s manner was so very ungracious that Waddy’s cordiality, if he
felt any, was repressed. It was a case for indulgence, however, and he
paused an instant as he was mounting into the buggy.
“I’m at the Tremont House, Mr. Belden,” he said, “and shall be glad to
see you.”
“Tremont House--ah,” replied the other. “Hold your head up, you damn
beast!”
As the pair drove off, Belden looked after them with a black expression
and a curse.
“What the hell has that damned Waddy come back for?” he asked of the
ambient air. “He’d better keep away from me. I knew him as soon as I
saw him from the top of the hill. You infernal brute, why didn’t you
go by?” and picking up his whip, Mr. Horace Belden beat his horse
villainously.
Meantime Cecilia was tossing herself gracefully along, covering ground
to make up for delay.
“Does Belden owe you any money?” asked Tommy. “I thought there seemed
something to pay between you.”
“He certainly didn’t seem inclined to pay even common civility,”
replied Ira, “but I suppose he was savage at being spilt. It _was_
rather hard, particularly with that gay and gorgeous raiment. He should
learn how to drive.”
“I think he knew us and meant to go by without notice,” said Tommy
shrewdly. “Did you ever quarrel with him before you went away?”
“Never any positive quarrel. I had begun to distrust him somewhat; but
he aided me so readily in my efforts to be off that I forgot my doubts.
We parted good friends. Why do you ask?”
“I can hardly say,--something in his look, and manner of speaking of
you, as of course we did often. I noticed the same look to-day, when
he used the whip, and when you came back with the horse. Depend on it,
he wishes you no good. I don’t like to speak ill of any man, but I
believe him to be a scamp. My wife would never know him. I ask her why,
and she says she has an instinctive aversion to him. I am sure she has
had something to verify her intuitions. She is not a person for idle
fancies, except in my personal case, and then I had trouble enough to
change fancy into fact.”
“What has Belden been doing all these years?” asked Waddy. “The only
time I ever heard of him personally was a year or so after I went, when
a youth who came to China to forget some jilting miss, told me that he
was to marry a lady at whose house we used to meet--you know,” and he
turned away so that his companion might not see his face.
“There was nothing in that,” said Tommy. “Soon after you went, he
ceased to be received there--reasons unknown. He was a pretty hard
customer then, and played high. Then he got some reputation of a
certain kind in an amatory way. By-and-by the house failed--total
smash--not a dollar to be found; still his connections and power of
making himself agreeable, particularly to women of the class who
haven’t intuitions, or don’t consult them, kept him up. He’s rather
accomplished--sings, you know, and writes what half-educated people
call clever things.”
“He must have a large audience,” observed Ira, a little bitterly, even
for him.
“He has,” agreed Tootler; “among knaves as well as fools. It’s my
belief the fellow would steal. In fact, where he got his money to go
and live in Europe, as he did for several years, no one knows, unless
he hid it from the firm’s creditors. Then he went to California and
pretended to have made his fortune. He has lately been to Europe again.
I believe he is now on the matrimonial lay, the beggar! But you don’t
ask me about the other friends with whom we used to be so intimate.”
“No,” said Mr. Waddy, with the tone of one definitely putting aside
the subject. “I do not. How that mare of yours travels! Can you put me
in the way of getting a horse?”
“For what work? My next neighbour has a five-year-old, Cecilia’s
half-brother, for sale. He’s a beauty, black as the devil. The only
thing against him is, he’s not broke to harness. They ask a loud price,
too. It will make you stare.”
“Not very easy to make me stare,” said Waddy easily. “A saddle horse is
just my affair. We’ll look at him in the morning, and if he suits, ‘Ho
for cavaliers!’”
During all this talk, Mr. Waddy had not failed to observe the exquisite
beauty of the country they were whizzing through. There is nothing so
charming, suburbanly, as the region about Boston, and to him all was
garden, for these were spots where his rosy-houred youth had taken its
truant pleasures. Fifteen years had built fences of exclusion round
many lovely groves, where he had chestnutted; the old orchards were cut
down or neglected; many things had changed, for the city was steadily
growing countrywards. He had only time to make hasty observations as
they passed. Tootler would have been glad to pull up for larger view
of fine house or finished grounds or lovely rural landscape, but that
imperious shower said no. Presently they turned off the highroad into
a sylvan lane, between tall hedges. A desultory avenue of elms shaded
it. On one side was a gravel walk, along which a little girl was
driving a hoop towards them.
“Jump in, Cissy,” called Tootler, pulling in the mare.
A charming bright-eyed damsel clambered in and began to fondle her
father. Her smile had the same bright, cheerful, magical charm as his.
“This is my friend, Mr. Waddy,” said he. “Give him a kiss--or, better
still, one for every year he has been away from his friends.”
And again Mr. Waddy felt his heart glow with a warmth almost youthful
as the fresh red lips touched his.