Jimmy Gollop, like most commercial travelers of the first flight, not
only knew how to wear clothes but what clothes to wear. And on this day
of days paid particular care to his appearance. He rather anticipated
that the candy girl would appear in some plain, tailormade gown. Her
hair, one of her chief charms of personal appearance, was heavy and
beautiful, and of a most baffling shade of color that shone brown in
darker shadows and yet in full light glinted as if subtly suggesting
gold. Jimmy, who had a natural sense for color, pondered over this and
decided that the tailormade would be of navy blue and that therefore
violets would be the correct thing in the flower line to show his
appreciation.
"But how in the deuce am I to send them up to her hotel when I don't
even know her name!" he thought.
However, he was sufficiently independent to buy the finest violets he
could find and to appear at the hotel entrance with them in his hand.
The young lady was not there. Jimmy tried to appear unconcerned, and for
a time stood like a rather modern statue of "Cupid bearing flowers." Now
and then he peered into the hotel lobby and it seemed to him that
whenever he did so the human icicle behind the desk was glaring in his
direction as if contemplating a call for the police, or sending a
message to the Ladies' Protective Association for Attractive Young
Females.
At last when he was becoming fidgety and consulting his watch at
intervals of not longer than three minutes, the girl appeared.
"Well, in the name of common sense," she demanded, "why didn't you send
your card up, or have the desk call me? I hope you're not in the habit
of expecting young ladies to meet you on the corner. I waited and
waited, and then was just about to----" She stopped at sight of his
lugubrious face, relented, and laughed. "Never mind! Don't take it to
heart, and--are those violets for me? You are a dear, after all! I love
them." She took them from his outstretched hand and buried her face in
them, whilst he, usually so nimble of tongue and ready of word, was
striving to overcome this alarming confusion and embarrassment that
rendered him about as quick of wit as a soft-shelled clam. In fact, he
felt like a jelly fish save that he was twice as incompetent.
"You see," he began lamely, "I didn't quite know what to do. I was
afraid that maybe your mother had objected to your going to the horse
show, and----"
"Why, you're not afraid of her, are you? You never seemed so before. I
thought--I thought you and she were rather good friends." There was a
vague tinge of sarcasm in her words and tone but like a wobbly legged
pup trying to catch a butterfly he mentally leaped at this offering and
began cudgeling his memory in quest of women who ran chocolate shops.
Could it be that she was the daughter of the widow Haynes who owned the
Bon-Ton in Detroit? Impossible! The widow was not more than thirty.
Maybe Mrs. Harris of Miami? No, if Mrs. Harris had a daughter she would
have that unmistakable Southern peculiarity of speech. This girl was
from somewhere farther north. It couldn't be that she was the daughter
of Mrs. Schumann of Milwaukee? Heaven forbid! For Mrs. Schumann was so
fat she shook like an unsupported pyramid of blanc-mange whenever she
moved.
"I had hopes for you yesterday," a voice aroused him from his lapse.
"You acted as if you could talk when you turned loose; but now you're
back in your old hopeless form. Come on! Wake up! Oh, I forgot to tell
you the great news. Like to hear it?"
"I like to hear you say anything," said Jimmy, hopelessly at her mercy
and speaking the truth, and nothing but the truth so help him Bob! and
glancing at her with that unmistakable sick-calf expression that seems
to be the inevitable accomplishment of all lovers, and that the original
Eve must have noticed in the eyes of Adam as he stood lolling around
Eden in his red flannel underwear.
"Mamma got an invitation to spend the winter down in St. Augustine with
the Charles K. Wilmarths, and she knows I hate them. She wanted to go
because, as you know, she thinks she's not at all well, and also because
the Charles K. Wilmarths are rather swagger. Either because she wished
to get rid of me, or because I raised such a fuss, she compromised. I'm
to be allowed to stay here for the next four months and take painting
lessons from Jorgensen. I intend to have a studio of my own. I'm to live
at the Martha Putnam hotel, which, as you know, never, never allows a
man farther through its doors than the waiting room. Happy? I'm so happy
I could shout!"
"Then you've no longer any interest in the business?" inquired Jimmy,
for the want of something better to say.
She looked out of the taxi-window for an instant, as if recalling
something and then said, slowly, "Yes, to tell the truth I have. It
means so much. I'll admit that I'm more or less a business person. I
like to see things grow bigger and bigger, and sell more and more, and
get to mean something. Not that the dollars and cents count so much,
after a time, but because a name somehow becomes a standard. Yes, I
shall miss what you call the business; but, after all, it will not stop
because I'm not there to enthuse over it, and----" She interrupted
herself with a half-suppressed laugh--"Mother doesn't look at things
exactly as I do. She detests it and is ashamed of it, I have an ideal!"
Jimmy never quite idealized the chocolate trade before; but there was
something rather fine in what she said, he thought. After all, maybe it
was one form of Americanism that she had voiced, and it became a trifle
nobler when he considered that it meant industry, energy, and honesty.
To do something and do it well. To be proud of doing something well. To
be proud that one wasn't a loafer or a drone, or a parasite on the body
economic. He was striving to correlate all this when made aware that the
taxi had stopped and that they were at their destination. He actually
submitted to an overcharge of a half-dollar inflicted by the
hatchet-faced brigand who had jerked his taxi-meter over with a bang
before his fares had time to inspect it. And then, resolving to forget
everything save the fact that they were entering the Horse Show, and
that he was somehow treading in ether because he had found a girl who
was different from all others, he became himself again.
"We're not so very late after all," he exclaimed as he glanced up at the
big tower clock. "I thought I waited an hour for you. But, anyhow, here
we are, and now for it!"
They sauntered in and he was proud to observe that many eyes were
turned in the direction of his companion. It made him feel rather
egotistical, for there were many girls there well worth looking at, and
people don't always go to horse shows to look at horses. Jimmy forgot
all about chocolates. Unconsciously he relapsed to his habitual self,
and, inasmuch as most any one who is unassuming and entirely natural is
entertaining, seemed to keep his companion happy.
"I like it all," she said, in an interval. "I like to look at those in
the boxes who came here for nothing else than to be looked at. It makes
them happy to see others looking at them. I suppose they must feel for
the moment that they are as good as the horses. Some people will make
mistakes of that sort, you know, and never learn the truth. And I like
the horses for themselves. They are so unlike. So like people. Some of
them are shy, some of them nervous, some of them conceited, and others
are as self-satisfied as if already they had won the blue ribbons.
Funny, isn't it, that I never suspected that you had any interest at all
in them?"
"Well, you see," said Jimmy. "We never had much of a chance to
understand really what either of us enjoys or dislikes before we met
here. It makes a lot of difference when, how and where people meet. I
suppose you'll laugh if I tell you when I first fell in love, because it
was with a horse. Honestly, it was! I'm in earnest about it. Things
didn't come any too easy around our house--I mean Maw's and mine--after
my father died. Somehow his death sort of changed me from a boy into a
man, and,--well, I just couldn't think of enough ways to keep her from
wanting anything. I felt as if I'd have to be a man big enough to fill
my father's place and to take care of her. There wasn't a way to make a
penny that I didn't consider just on her account. And I got a job after
school hours delivering stuff for a grocery store, down in our town. I
had to care for and drive a poor old feller with the string halt, and
spavins, and I used to wonder why I couldn't get his tail to grow
longer. Honestly, I thought all horses' tails were about eight inches
long until an old horse trader looked my friend over one day and said,
'Hello! That nag's been docked sometime! He didn't always pull a grocery
cart. Shouldn't wonder if there'd been some class and pedigree to him
sometime.' Then he had the impertinence to stick his dirty fingers into
my friend's mouth and hoist his upper lip and say, 'Methusalem was old,
but this plug could make him look like a suckling,' I remember that I
was angry, and that I wished that my friend had bitten him. I'd have
done it myself if I had been big enough, or a horse. You see, I was
proud of that horse, and liked him, and he loved me. As a joke the
hostlers down at the boarding stable where we kept him called him
Bovolarapus; but I called him Bo for short, because it didn't seem fair
that we shouldn't be familiar with each other. I'm sure he thought of me
as Jim for short; so I called him Bo. He used to take a kick at anybody
else who came near him, but I could put a hot iron on his poor old heels
without a single vicious jerk from him. He bit nearly everyone who got
too close or too curious, but he'd put his lips up to my cheek and kiss
me when something had hurt my feelings, and I'd get into some quiet lane
and tell him all about it--sometimes with my arms around his tired old
neck! I tell you he was mighty comforting to me when everything went
wrong. You won't believe it, but I used to fancy that sometimes he tried
to whisper into my ear and that he said, 'Take it quietly, boy! Just do
the best you can. I know that sometimes the hill is terribly hard to
climb, and bitterly long, but somewhere there is always a top. Don't
think of the load, the whip, or the hill, but keep thinking, always, of
what it's like on top. Many times they'll hurt you when you're doing
your best, because they're cruel, or don't understand. But most of those
who drive you--and someone or something must drive you as long as you
live,--don't really mean to be hard. It's merely because they don't
understand. Sometimes you'll be very tired, and out of breath, and the
sweat of hard work will drip and trickle from your ears down over your
eyes, and you'll think that another yard is beyond all you can do. But
keep on! Stick it! You can always do a little more than you think you
can if you've the courage to try. And there's always a top to every
hill, lad! It's only up there that you can breathe, and that the load is
light, and that there is rest!'"
A band that had been playing off up in the balcony at the far end
stopped, as if waiting for the next event, and abruptly aware that he
had said so much, and surprised by his own unmeasured loquacity, he,
too, stopped, abashed, and for the first time in his speech looked at
her and met her eyes. They were soft, filled with wonder, absorbed. He
could not have defined why he was so swiftly ashamed of thus openly
flouting that boyhood heart of his upon his sleeve. He could not have
explained what strange lapse had overpowered him to thus unbosom long
forgotten things. He looked away from her toward the entrance. Men were
bringing tall hurdles outward to place them in the arena. The jumpers
were coming for exhibit.
"But," she insisted breathlessly, leaning toward him, and her hushed
voice sounding distinct from all the murmur surrounding them, "Tell me
the rest of it!"
"Tell you the rest of it? There's nothing more to tell! Nothing
except--except----" He hesitated, then laughed as if in self-derision.
"My friend fell down one day, half way up a hill. The top was there,
just above him. The top for which he had so valiantly tried. I, a boy,
his only friend, got his tired old head up on my knees and cried. A
policeman came and shook his head and went away and phoned. A vet came
and said, 'The best thing to do is to shoot him,' and then the
policeman pulled out a gun, and went toward Bo's head and bent over the
brave and tired old eyes of my friend, and--I fought! Fought so hard
that they had to give us a chance, Bo and me. They laughed, but the vet
phoned my employers and what they said, I never knew; but I do know that
they gave me my friend, and that about midnight I got him home, weak and
tottering, and put him out in our back garden, and told Maw all about
it. I thought she would understand and she did. She understands
everything. Everything! No one else ever could. And so--um-m-mh!
Bovolarapus was the first horse I ever owned and the last. We had to go
without some few things, Maw and I, to pay pasturage for a year or two
until he died, but it doesn't at all matter now. You see he was a sort
of inspiration to me because he told me so many things, and--that
somewhere, a long way I fear from where I've ever reached, there's a top
to the hill. He taught me that be we driver or driven there's a heart of
things that has to be learned. That the driver may learn from the driven
and that there is always the promise that the driven may drive. And so
may God pity the man who thinks that he can drive his world alone,
because, as far as I can dope it out, everything in life is made up of
give if you would take, and take only when you give. I may be wrong. One
never knows. That's the pity of it all. But that's the way it looks to
me, and--that's the way communing with a poor old horse taught me, the
only game I try to play. It's only when we've lost the true sense of
things that we say 'Life's nothing but a horse show--after all!'"
Staring at the arena, and bringing his thoughts back to their
surroundings, he waited for her to speak; but for the moment they seemed
fixed in a little oasis of silence, embodying but them alone. It was the
girl who broke the peculiar stillness.
"I--I--never thought you were like that," she said, almost as if
soliloquizing. "I thought you were out for yourself and nothing else! I
didn't in the least think you could ever feel anything beyond yourself.
You humiliate me--in a way--my stupidity! And I feel like apologizing
for my past unkindness, because I didn't; as you say--because I didn't
at all understand!"
He couldn't quite grasp it all, although her every word had been audible
and distinct. To what did she refer? "Past unkindness?" He strove to
think when she had been unkind to him and where. The baffling sense of
having forgotten something he should have remembered, again disturbed
him and drove him to jest.
"Don't say that!" he cried in pretended alarm. "You make me feel like
the coon who was sentenced for stealing chickens when the judge said,
'You are incorrigible. This is the twenty-seventh time we've had you up
for this heinous, fearsome crime. But now you have gone the limit! You
stole two black hens on the night of April seventh.' Then he stopped and
glared at the nigger who leaned over the dock rail, hopefully, yet
frightened, and said, 'I think you should be sentenced to ninety-nine
years in the penitentiary!' And the nigger thought it over and looked at
the judge, then around the court and gasped, and said, 'Jedge, sah! I
thank my Gawd them chickens was black. It must have been the color, sah,
that made you so kind, because I reckon if they'd been white you'd have
sure had me hanged!'"
But she did not seem to accept it as a joke.
"I have been unkind," she said, with a shake of her head. "I had no idea
you could be like--well--like you are. So there! And besides, I don't
like to be made fun of."
"I'm not making fun of you," he declared. "I'm making fun of myself. I
can't help it. I've a sense of proportion. I know what a mut I am better
than anyone else does. It does me good to admit it whenever I get a
proper chance."
For another interval she studied him, curiously, looked away, and again
turned toward him as if still unconvinced of something, and then said,
"Well, if you were wise, you would keep on being just yourself. You've
something to learn from horses yet. I believe they are always natural,
and unassuming, and sincere. That's a beautiful animal there now, isn't
it? Well done! What a jump! Seven bars! That's pretty good for a
practice take-off, I should say. What do you think?"
"I'd jump higher than that to remember something I've forgotten," Jim
murmured; but his remark went unchallenged, due to a second splendid
leap in the arena that was so swift and graceful that it resembled
nothing so much as a glistening bay flash, a compound of splendidly
correlated muscle, nerve and sinew, and the spectators burst into a
storm of applause as the horse, proudly and daintily stepping on
springing hocks, lifted a beautiful head, pricked sensitive ears, and
stared through big, intelligent eyes at the boxes.
Even the perplexed and infatuated Jimmy forgot his secret questionings
and gave himself up to the joys of the display. Event followed event in
such rapid succession that he was astonished when the military band
struck up its dispersing air, and he and his companion "The Candy Girl"
as he had come to think of her, were caught into the leisurely maelstrom
that surged slowly toward the exits. He had even forgotten the fact that
he had as yet failed to learn his companion's name; but at the hotel
entrance maneuvered for another chance.
"Isn't it possible to induce you and your mother to see a show, or hear
a concert, or something of that sort to-night?" he asked wistfully.
"I wish we could," she said; "but I'm afraid it's quite impossible. We
are dining with some friends."
"What about to-morrow, then?" he insisted, somewhat crestfallen.
"To-morrow we are going to visit some relatives in Connecticut where we
shall spend the week-end."
His face, usually so cheerful and optimistic, might have competently
served for an artist's study of "Gloom." He felt as if the props had
been kicked from beneath a line on which swung all his best linen.
"I've got to get back to my work not later than day after to-morrow," he
lamented. "In fact I ought to take the five o'clock flyer west to-morrow
afternoon to keep up with my dates. I've sent out my cards that I am
coming."
"Then for goodness sake, go!" she insisted. "I'll see you at home--no--I
forgot I shall not be there for weeks, or perhaps months. I mustn't let
this Jorgensen opportunity go to waste. I'm very keen on it. But you
will be in town again and must come and call for me at the Martha
Putnam. I shall--I shall look forward to it!"
She suddenly flushed as if she had somehow committed herself, and before
he could reply had almost run from him into the hotel lobby. But he had
caught a look in her eyes that caused his heart to lose a beat, then to
thump like a bass drum in martial band. He was made suddenly aware that
he was gawking after her with his mouth hanging open and his eyes
bulging, by the delighted snickers of a pair of impertinent door boys
and the suppressed comment of one, "Betchu a nickel she's thrown him
down! Gee! Ain't he got it bad!"
And Jimmy, turning away with a heavy-villain air of dignity, was ashamed
of himself because he had blushed profusely in sight of two mere urchins
in brass buttons.