I
Although Whilomville was in no sense a summer resort, the advent of
the warm season meant much to it, for then came visitors from the
city--people of considerable confidence--alighting upon their country
cousins. Moreover, many citizens who could afford to do so escaped at
this time to the sea-side. The town, with the commercial life quite
taken out of it, drawled and drowsed through long months, during which
nothing was worse than the white dust which arose behind every vehicle
at blinding noon, and nothing was finer than the cool sheen of the
hose sprays over the cropped lawns under the many maples in the
twilight.
One summer the Trescotts had a visitation. Mrs. Trescott owned a
cousin who was a painter of high degree. I had almost said that he was
of national reputation, but, come to think of it, it is better to say
that almost everybody in the United States who knew about art and its
travail knew about him. He had picked out a wife, and naturally,
looking at him, one wondered how he had done it. She was quick,
beautiful, imperious, while he was quiet, slow, and misty. She was a
veritable queen of health, while he, apparently, was of a most brittle
constitution. When he played tennis, particularly, he looked every
minute as if he were going to break.
They lived in New York, in awesome apartments wherein Japan and
Persia, and indeed all the world, confounded the observer. At the end
was a cathedral-like studio. They had one child. Perhaps it would be
better to say that they had one CHILD. It was a girl. When she came to
Whilomville with her parents, it was patent that she had an
inexhaustible store of white frocks, and that her voice was high and
commanding. These things the town knew quickly. Other things it was
doomed to discover by a process.
Her effect upon the children of the Trescott neighborhood was
singular. They at first feared, then admired, then embraced. In two
days she was a Begum. All day long her voice could be heard directing,
drilling, and compelling those free-born children; and to say that
they felt oppression would be wrong, for they really fought for
records of loyal obedience.
All went well until one day was her birthday.
On the morning of this day she walked out into the Trescott garden and
said to her father, confidently, "Papa, give me some money, because
this is my birthday."
He looked dreamily up from his easel. "Your birthday?" he murmured.
Her envisioned father was never energetic enough to be irritable
unless some one broke through into that place where he lived with the
desires of his life. But neither wife nor child ever heeded or even
understood the temperamental values, and so some part of him had grown
hardened to their inroads. "Money?" he said. "Here." He handed her a
five-dollar bill. It was that he did not at all understand the nature
of a five-dollar bill. He was deaf to it. He had it; he gave it; that
was all.
She sallied forth to a waiting people--Jimmie Trescott, Dan Earl, Ella
Earl, the Margate twins, the three Phelps children, and others. "I've
got some pennies now," she cried, waving the bill, "and I am going to
buy some candy." They were deeply stirred by this announcement. Most
children are penniless three hundred days in the year, and to another
possessing five pennies they pay deference. To little Cora waving a
bright green note these children paid heathenish homage. In some
disorder they thronged after her to a small shop on Bridge Street
hill. First of all came ice-cream. Seated in the comic little back
parlor, they clamored shrilly over plates of various flavors, and the
shopkeeper marvelled that cream could vanish so quickly down throats
that seemed wide open, always, for the making of excited screams.
These children represented the families of most excellent people. They
were all born in whatever purple there was to be had in the vicinity
of Whilomville. The Margate twins, for example, were out-and-out
prize-winners. With their long golden curls and their countenances of
similar vacuity, they shone upon the front bench of all Sunday-school
functions, hand in hand, while their uplifted mother felt about her
the envy of a hundred other parents, and less heavenly children
scoffed from near the door.
Then there was little Dan Earl, probably the nicest boy in the world,
gentle, fine-grained, obedient to the point where he obeyed anybody.
Jimmie Trescott himself was, indeed, the only child who was at all
versed in villany, but in these particular days he was on his very
good behavior. As a matter of fact, he was in love. The beauty of his
regal little cousin had stolen his manly heart.
Yes, they were all most excellent children, but, loosened upon this
candy-shop with five dollars, they resembled, in a tiny way,
drunken revelling soldiers within the walls of a stormed city.
Upon the heels of ice-cream and cake came chocolate mice,
butter-scotch, "everlastings," chocolate cigars, taffy-on-a-stick,
taffy-on-a-slate-pencil, and many semi-transparent devices resembling
lions, tigers, elephants, horses, cats, dogs, cows, sheep, tables,
chairs, engines (both railway and for the fighting of fire), soldiers,
fine ladies, odd-looking men, clocks, watches, revolvers, rabbits, and
bedsteads. A cent was the price of a single wonder.
Some of the children, going quite daft, soon had thought to make fight
over the spoils, but their queen ruled with an iron grip. Her first
inspiration was to satisfy her own fancies, but as soon as that was
done she mingled prodigality with a fine justice, dividing,
balancing, bestowing, and sometimes taking away from somebody even
that which he had.
It was an orgy. In thirty-five minutes those respectable children
looked as if they had been dragged at the tail of a chariot. The
sacred Margate twins, blinking and grunting, wished to take seat upon
the floor, and even the most durable Jimmie Trescott found occasion to
lean against the counter, wearing at the time a solemn and abstracted
air, as if he expected something to happen to him shortly.
Of course their belief had been in an unlimited capacity, but they
found there was an end. The shopkeeper handed the queen her change.
"Two seventy-three from five leaves two twenty-seven, Miss Cora," he
said, looking upon her with admiration.
She turned swiftly to her clan. "O-oh!" she cried, in amazement. "Look
how much I have left!" They gazed at the coins in her palm. They knew
then that it was not their capacities which were endless; it was the
five dollars.
The queen led the way to the street. "We must think up some way of
spending more money," she said, frowning. They stood in silence,
awaiting her further speech.
Suddenly she clapped her hands and screamed with delight. "Come on!"
she cried. "I know what let's do." Now behold, she had discovered the
red and white pole in front of the shop of one William Neeltje, a
barber by trade.
It becomes necessary to say a few words concerning Neeltje. He was new
to the town. He had come and opened a dusty little shop on dusty
Bridge Street hill, and although the neighborhood knew from the
courier winds that his diet was mainly cabbage, they were satisfied
with that meagre data. Of course Riefsnyder came to investigate him
for the local Barbers' Union, but he found in him only sweetness and
light, with a willingness to charge any price at all for a shave or a
haircut. In fact, the advent of Neeltje would have made barely a
ripple upon the placid bosom of Whilomville if it were not that his
name was Neeltje.
At first the people looked at his sign-board out of the eye corner,
and wondered lazily why any one should bear the name of Neeltje; but
as time went on, men spoke to other men, saying, "How do you pronounce
the name of that barber up there on Bridge Street hill?" And then,
before any could prevent it, the best minds of the town were
splintering their lances against William Neeltje's sign-board. If a
man had a mental superior, he guided him seductively to this name, and
watched with glee his wrecking. The clergy of the town even entered
the lists. There was one among them who had taken a collegiate prize
in Syriac, as well as in several less opaque languages, and the other
clergymen--at one of their weekly meetings--sought to betray him into
this ambush. He pronounced the name correctly, but that mattered
little, since none of them knew whether he did or did not; and so they
took triumph according to their ignorance. Under these arduous
circumstances it was certain that the town should look for a nickname,
and at this time the nickname was in process of formation. So William
Neeltje lived on with his secret, smiling foolishly towards the world.
"Come on," cried little Cora. "Let's all get our hair cut. That's what
let's do. Let's all get our hair cut! Come on! Come on! Come on!" The
others were carried off their feet by the fury of this assault. To get
their hair cut! What joy! Little did they know if this were fun; they
only knew that their small leader said it was fun. Chocolate-stained
but confident, the band marched into William Neeltje's barber shop.
"We wish to get our hair cut," said little Cora, haughtily.
Neeltje, in his shirt-sleeves, stood looking at them with his
half-idiot smile.
"Hurry, now!" commanded the queen. A dray-horse toiled step by step,
step by step, up Bridge Street hill; a far woman's voice arose; there
could be heard the ceaseless hammers of shingling carpenters; all was
summer peace. "Come on, now. Who's goin' first? Come on, Ella; you go
first. Gettin' our hair cut! Oh what fun!"
Little Ella Earl would not, however, be first in the chair. She was
drawn towards it by a singular fascination, but at the same time she
was afraid of it, and so she hung back, saying: "No! You go first! No!
You go first!" The question was precipitated by the twins and one of
the Phelps children. They made simultaneous rush for the chair, and
screamed and kicked, each pair preventing the third child. The queen
entered this melee, and decided in favor of the Phelps boy. He
ascended the chair. Thereat an awed silence fell upon the band. And
always William Neeltje smiled fatuously.
He tucked a cloth in the neck of the Phelps boy, and taking scissors,
began to cut his hair. The group of children came closer and closer.
Even the queen was deeply moved. "Does it hurt any?" she asked, in a
wee voice.
"Naw," said the Phelps boy, with dignity. "Anyhow, I've had m' hair
cut afore."
When he appeared to them looking very soldierly with his cropped
little head, there was a tumult over the chair. The Margate twins
howled; Jimmie Trescott was kicking them on the shins. It was a fight.
But the twins could not prevail, being the smallest of all the
children. The queen herself took the chair, and ordered Neeltje as if
he were a lady's-maid. To the floor there fell proud ringlets, blazing
even there in their humiliation with a full fine bronze light. Then
Jimmie Trescott, then Ella Earl (two long ash-colored plaits), then a
Phelps girl, then another Phelps girl; and so on from head to head.
The ceremony received unexpected check when the turn came to Dan Earl.
This lad, usually docile to any rein, had suddenly grown mulishly
obstinate. No, he would not, he would not. He himself did not seem to
know why he refused to have his hair cut, but, despite the shrill
derision of the company, he remained obdurate. Anyhow, the twins, long
held in check, and now feverishly eager, were already struggling for
the chair.
[Illustration: "THE QUEEN HERSELF TOOK THE CHAIR"]
And so to the floor at last came the golden Margate curls, the heart
treasure and glory of a mother, three aunts, and some feminine
cousins.
All having been finished, the children, highly elate, thronged out
into the street. They crowed and cackled with pride and joy, anon
turning to scorn the cowardly Dan Earl.
Ella Earl was an exception. She had been pensive for some time, and
now the shorn little maiden began vaguely to weep. In the door of his
shop William Neeltje stood watching them, upon his face a grin of
almost inhuman idiocy.