THE town was only about eighty years old, but it loved to think of
itself as a “good old place,” and it habitually spoke of the residence
of its principal citizen as “that old-fashioned Ricketts property.”
This was an under-statement: the Ricketts place was more than merely
old-fashioned. So rapidly do fashions change in houses, nowadays, in
small towns as well as in big, and so quickly does life become history,
that the “Ricketts property” at fifty years of age was an actual
archæological relic. Contemplating the place you contemplated a
prevalent way of life already abandoned, and learned a bit of Midland
history. The Ricketts place was a left-over from that period when every
Midland townsman was his own farmer, according to his means; and if he
was able, kept his cow and chickens, and raised corn and pigs at home.
The barn was a farm barn, with a barnyard about it; here were the empty
pig-pens and the chicken house, the latter still inhabited. In summer,
sweet corn was still grown in the acre lot adjoining the barnyard; and,
between that lot and the driveway from the barn, there was a kitchen
garden, there was an asparagus bed, and there was a strawberry patch
fringed with currant-bushes. Behind the house were out-buildings: the
storeroom, the washhouse, the smoke-house. Here was the long
grape-arbour, and here stood the two pumps: one of iron, for the
cistern; the other a wooden flute that sang higher and higher to an
incredible pitch before it fetched the water.
The house was a large, pensive-looking, honest old brick thing, with a
“front porch” all across it; and the most casual passer-by must have
guessed that there was a great deal of clean oilcloth on the hall
floors, and that cool mattings were laid, in summer, in all the
rooms—mattings pleasant to the bare feet of children. It was a house
that “smelled good”: aromas at once sweet and spicy were wont to swim
down the mild breezes of Pawpaw Street, whereon the Ricketts place
fronted.
In the latter part of April the perfume of apple-blossoms was adrift on
those breezes, too; for all the west side of the big yard was an apple
orchard, and trees stood so close to the house that a branch of blossoms
could be gathered from one of the “sitting-room” windows—and on a warm
end-of-April day, when that orchard was full abloom, there sat reading a
book, beneath the carnival clouds of blossom, an apple-blossom of a
girl.
So she was informed by Mr. Lucius Brutus Allen. Mr. Allen came walking
up Pawpaw Street from Main Street, about five o’clock in the afternoon;
a broad, responsible figure with a broad, irresponsible face, and a
good, solid, reddish-haired head behind the face. He was warm, it
appeared; inclined to refresh his legs with a pause of leisure, his nose
with the smell of the orchard, his eyes with the sight of its occupant.
He halted, rested his stout forearms upon the top of the picket fence,
and in his own way made the lady acquainted with his idea of her
appearance.
“A generous soil makes a generous people, Miss Mary,” he observed; and
she looked up gravely from her book at the sound of his tremulous tenor
voice. “You see, most of this country in the Ohio and Mississippi
valleys is fertile. We don’t have to scratch the rocks for our crops, so
we have time to pronounce our _r_’s. We’ve even got the leisure to drawl
a little. A Yankee, now, he’s too pinched for time, between his hard
rocks and his hard winters, to pronounce his _r_’s; so he calls his
mother ‘motha’, and hurries on. But he’s conscientious, Miss Mary; he
knows he’s neglected something, and so, to make up for it, he calls his
sister ‘Mariar.’ Down South it’s too hot for a fellow to trouble about
the whole blame alphabet, so he says, ‘Lessee, which lettuhs goin’ to be
the easies’ to leave out?’ he says. ‘Well, the _r_’s, I reckon,’ he
says. ‘An’ _g_,’ he says. ‘I’ll leave _r_ out most the time, an’ _g_
whenevuh I get the chance—an’ sometimes _d_ an’ _t_. That’ll be a heap
easiuh,’ he says, ‘when I’m claimin’ my little boy is the smahtis’ chile
in the worl’.”
Mr. Allen paused genially, then concluded: “You see, Miss Mary, I’ve
just been leading up logically to the question: Which is you and which
is the rest of the apple-blossoms?”
Miss Ricketts made no vocal reply, but there was a slight concentration
of the fine space between her eyebrows; decidedly no symptom of
pleasure, though she might properly have enjoyed the loiterer’s little
extravagance, which was far from being inaccurate as extravagances go.
Mr. Allen was forced to remind himself that “nobody loves a fat man,”
though he decided not to set his thoughts before the lady.
A smile of some ruefulness became just visible upon the ample surface of
his face, then withdrew to the interior, and was transmuted into a
quality of his odd and pleasant voice, which was distinctly rueful, as
he said:
“It’s the weather, Miss Mary. You mustn’t mind what anybody says along
during the first warm days in spring. People are liable to say anything
at all.”
“Yes,” Miss Ricketts returned, not mollified. “I’ve just noticed.” She
gave him one dark glance, wholly unfavourable, as she spoke, and then
looked down at her book again, allowing him no possible doubt that she
wished to proceed with her reading.
“I’m a hard man to discourage,” said Mr. Allen. “The band’s going to
play in the Square to-night. It’s been practising ‘Annie Laurie’ and
‘Tenting To-night’ all winter, up in the storeroom over Tom Leggett’s
wall-paper and book emporium, and of course the boys are anxious to give
their first concert. What I wanted to say was this: If I came by for you
after supper, would you care to go?”
“No,” said Miss Ricketts quietly, not looking up.
Before continuing and concluding the conversation, Lucius Brutus Allen
paused to contemplate the top of her pink-and-white hat, which was
significantly presented to his view as she bent over her book; and the
pause was a wistful one on his part. “Seeing as that’s the case,” he
said, finally, “I may be a hard man to discourage, and I _was_ on my way
home, but I believe I’ll just turn right square around and go on back to
the National House bar—and get me a drink of lemonade. I want to show
people I’m as desperate as anybody, when I’m crossed.”
Immediately, with an air of resolution, Mr. Allen set off upon the path
by which he had come. He debouched upon Main Street, at the foot of
Pawpaw, crossed the Square to the dismal brick pile much too plainly
labelled, “National House, Will Wheen Propr,” and passed between two
swinging green doors on the ground floor. “George,” he said to the
bartender, “I’m not happy. Have you any lemons?”
The bartender rubbed the back of his neck, stooped, and poked and peered
variously beneath the long bar. “Seems like I _did_ have some, Lu,” he
said thoughtfully. “I remember seein’ them lemons last Mon——”
“No,” Mr. Allen interrupted, sighing. “I’ve been through this before
with you, George. I’ll take buttermilk.”
“Oh, got plenty _buttermilk_!” the bartender said, brightening; and
supplied his customer from a large, bedewed white pitcher. “Buttermilk
goes good this weather, don’t it, Lu?”
“It do,” said Lucius gravely.
Glass in hand, he went to a small round table where sat the only other
present patron of the bar—a young man well-favoured, but obviously in a
state morbid if not moribund. He did not look up at Mr. Allen’s
approach; continuing to sit motionless with his far-away gaze marooned
upon a stratum of amber light in his glass on the table before him.
He was a picturesque young man, and, with his rumpled black hair, so
thick and wavy about his brooding white face, the picture he most
resembled was that of a provincial young lawyer stricken with the
stage-disease and bound to play _Hamlet_. This was no more than a
resemblance, however; his intentions were different, as he roused
himself to make clear presently, though without altering his attitude,
or even the direction of his glance.
“What do you mean?” he inquired huskily, a moment after Mr. Allen had
seated himself at the table. “What do you mean, slamming a glass of
buttermilk down on my table, Lucius Brutus Allen?”
Mr. Allen put on a pair of eye-glasses, and thoughtfully examined the
morose gentleman’s countenance before replying, “I would consume this
flagon of buttermilk in congenial melancholy, Joseph Pitney Perley.”
Mr. Perley, still motionless, demanded: “Can’t you see what I’m doing?”
“What are you doing, Joe?”
“Drinking!”
“Professionally?” Mr. Allen inquired. “Or only for the afternoon?”
“I don’t want to be talked to!”
“I do,” said Lucius. “Talk to me.”
Here the bartender permitted himself the intervention of a giggle, and
wiped his dry bar industriously—his favourite gesture. “You ain’t goin’
to git much talk out o’ _Joe_, Lu!” he said. “All he’s said sence he
come in here was jest, ‘Gimme same, George.’ _I_ tell him he ain’t goin’
to be in no condition to ’tend the band concert ’s evening if he keeps
on another couple hours or so. Me, I don’t mind seein’ a man drink some,
but I like to see him git a little fun out of it!”
“Have you considered the band concert, Joe?” Mr. Allen inquired. “Do you
realize what strange euphonies you’ll miss unless you keep sober until
seven-thirty?”
The sombre Perley relaxed his gaze, and uttered a fierce monosyllable of
denunciation. “Sober!” he added, afterward. “I’m sober. That’s my
trouble. I’ve been trying to get tight for three hours!”
“I’ll say this fer you,” the bartender volunteered—“you been tryin’
_good_, too!”
“Ever experiment any?” Lucius suggested. “Why don’t you go over to Doc
Willis’s Painless Dental Parlours? He’s got a tank of gas there, and all
you do is put a rubber thing over your nose and breathe. Without any
trouble at all you’ll be completely out of business in forty-five
seconds.”
“Yeh,” said the bartender. “But it don’t last more’n about four
minutes.”
“No; that’s true,” Lucius admitted. “But maybe Joe could hire Doc to tap
him behind the ear with one of those little lead mallets when he sees
him coming out of the gas. Joe’d feel just about the same to-morrow as
he will if he stays here running up a bill with you. Fact is, I believe
he’d feel better.”
“I tell you,” said Mr. Perley, with emphasis, “I’m drinking!” And for
further emphasis he rattled his glass. “Give me the same, George,” he
said.
George held a bottle to the light. He meditated, rubbing the back of his
head; then spoke: “Tell you what I’ll do. The wife’s waitin’ supper fer
me now; I want to git back up-town early fer the trade before the
concert, because I look fer quite a rush——”
“Yes,” interrupted Mr. Allen musingly. “Our community is going to see a
night of wine and music, George.”
“I’ll jest open a fresh bottle fer you, Joe,” the bartender continued;
“and when I git back I’ll charge you with how many drinks you take out
of it. I’m goin’ on home to supper. You want any more buttermilk, Lu?”
“Bring the pitcher,” said Mr. Allen. “I will sup upon it.”
“All right.” And George brought to the table the pitcher of buttermilk,
a dim saucer of crackers and cheese, a brown bottle, ice-water, and
fresh glasses. After that he doffed his apron, put on his hat, but no
coat, and went to the door, where he turned to say: “If anybody else
comes in here before I git back——”
“And calls for liquor,” Mr. Allen took up the sentence, as George paused
in thought, “we shall be glad to——”
“Tell ’em,” said George, “they don’t git it!” He departed.
Mr. Allen helped himself to buttermilk, ate a cracker, leaned back in
his chair, and began to hum “Annie Laurie.”
“Stop that!” said Perley sharply.
“Certainly,” said Lucius. “I’ll whistle instead.”
“If you do,” the troubled young man warned him, apparently in good
faith, “I’ll kill you!”
“What can I do to entertain you, Joe?”
“You might clear out,” his friend suggested darkly. “God knows I haven’t
asked for your society!”
“No,” said Lucius. “Our fairest gifts do oft arrive without petition.
What an unusual thought! Have you noticed——”
But the other burst out suddenly in a tragic fury: “Shut up! What’s the
matter with you? Can’t you see I want to be alone?”
Mr. Allen remained placid. “What difference do I make?” he asked. “I
thought you said you were ‘drinking’? If you’re really in earnest about
it you don’t care who’s here or anywhere else.”
“Don’t you see I’m in _misery_?” cried Perley.
“The ayes have it.”
“Well, then, why in Heaven’s name can’t you——”
“I’ll tell you,” said Lucius. “I’m in misery, too. Terrible!”
“Well, what the devil do _I_ care for that?”
“Haven’t I got a right to sit here?” Lucius inquired mildly. “Haven’t I
got a right to sit here and drink, and cuss inside my innards, and take
on the way you’re doing? Mary Ricketts just told me that she wouldn’t go
to the band concert with me.”
“Oh, do dry up!”
“Well, you’re responsible for Mary’s treatment of me, aren’t you?” said
Lucius. “I thought probably there’d be trouble when I saw you headed
this way this afternoon.”
“You do beat any ordinary lunatic!” the distressed young man protested.
“I ‘headed this way’ this afternoon because I got one of my spells. You
know well enough how it is with me, and how it was with my father before
me—every so often the spell come on me, and I’ve _got_ to drink. What
in the Lord’s name has that to do with Mary Ricketts? I don’t suppose
I’ve even seen her for a month. Never did see anything of her, to speak
of, in my life.”
Mr. Allen replenished his glass from the pitcher of buttermilk before
replying, and appeared to muse sorrowfully. “Well, maybe I was
mistaken,” he said. “But I——” He broke off a line of thought; then
sighed and inquired: “When this ‘spell’ comes on you, Joe, you feel that
you’ve ‘_got_’ to go on until——”
“You know I do! I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But suppose,” said Lucius, “suppose something took your mind off of
it.”
“Nothing could. Nothing on earth!”
“But just suppose something did turn up—right in the start of a spell,
say—something you found you’d rather do. You know, Joe, I believe if it
did and you found something else was _really_ pleasanter, it might be
you’d never start in again. You’d understand it wasn’t the fun you think
it is, maybe.”
“Fun!” Joe cried. “I don’t _want_ to drink!”
And at that his stocky companion burst into outright laughter. “I know
you think so, Joe,” he said apologetically, when his hilarity was
sufficiently diminished. “Of course you believe it. I’m not denying
that.”
“By George!” the unfortunate young man explained. “You _do_ make me
sick! I suppose if I had smallpox you’d say you weren’t denying I
believed I had it! You sit there and drink your buttermilk, and laugh at
me like a ninny because you can’t understand! No man on earth can
understand, unless he has the thirst come on him the way mine does on
me! And yet you tell me I only ‘believe’ I have it!”
“Yes, I ought to explain,” said Mr. Allen soothingly. “It did sound
unfeeling. One of the reasons you drink, Joe, is because this is a small
town;—you have an active mind, a lot of the time there’s nothing much
to do, and you get bored.”
“I told you nobody could understand such a thirst as mine—nobody except
the man that’s got one like it!”
“This hankering is something inside you, isn’t it, Joe?”
“What of that?”
“It comes on you about every so often?”
“Yes.”
“If there weren’t any liquor in the world, you’d have the thirst for it
just the same, would you?”
“Just the same,” Perley answered. “And go crazy from it.”
“Whereas,” Mr. Allen returned, “since liquor’s obtainable you prefer to
go crazy from the imbibing of it instead of from the hanker for it. You
find that more ossedalious, and nobody can blame you. But suppose
alcohol had never been discovered, would you have the hanker?”
“No, because I wouldn’t have inherited it from my father. You know as
well as I do, how it runs in my family.”
“So I do, Joe; so I do!” Mr. Allen sighed reminiscently. “Both your
father and your Uncle Sam went that way. I remember them very well, and
how they enjoyed it. That’s different from you, Joe.”
“Different!” Joe laughed bitterly. “Do you suppose I get any ‘enjoyment’
out of it? Three days I’ll drink now; then I’ll be in hell—and I’ve got
to go on. I’ve _got_ to!”
“Funny about its being hereditary,” said Lucius, musing aloud. “I expect
you rather looked forward to that, Joe?”
His companion stared at him fiercely. “What do you mean by that?” he
demanded.
“You always thought it was _going_ to be hereditary, didn’t you, Joe?
From almost when you were a boy?”
“Yes, I did. What of it?”
“And maybe—” Lucius suggested, with the utmost mildness—“just
possibly, say about the time you began to use liquor a little at first,
you decided that this hereditary thing was inevitable, and the idea made
you melancholy about yourself, of course; but after all, you felt that
the hereditary thing made a pretty fair excuse to yourself, didn’t you?”
“See here,” Joe said angrily, “I’m not in any mood to stand——”
“Pshaw!” Lucius interrupted. “I was only going on to say that it’s more
and more curious to me about this hereditary notion. I’m thirty-five,
and you’re only twenty-six. I remember well when your father began to
drink especially. I was seventeen years old, and you were about eight.
You see you were already born then, and so I can’t understand about the
thirst being heredi——”
“Damn it all!” Joe Perley shouted; and he struck the table with his
fist. “I told you I don’t want to talk, didn’t I? Didn’t you hear me say
I was _drinking_!”
The amiable man across the table produced two cigars from his coat
pocket. “We’ll change the subject,” he said. “Smoke, Joe?”
“No, thank you.”
“We’ll change the subject,” Lucius repeated. “I gather that this one is
painful to you. You don’t mind my staying here if we talk about
something else?”
“No—not much.”
“I mentioned that I asked Mary Ricketts to go with me to the band
concert to-night, didn’t I?” Mr. Allen inquired, as he lit his cigar. “I
was telling you about that, wasn’t I, Joe?”
“You said something about it,” Mr. Perley replied with evident ennui.
“You know, Joe,” said Lucius, his tone becoming confidential, “I walk
past the old Ricketts property every afternoon on my way home. It’s
quite considerable out of my way, but I always do. Fact is,” he chuckled
ruefully, “I can’t help it.”
“I suppose you want me to ask you why,” said his gloomy companion, with
sincere indifference.
“Yes, Joe, will you?”
“All right. Why can’t you help it?”
“Well, there’s something about that old place so kind of pleasant and
healthy and reliable. This is a funny world: there’s a lot of things a
fellow’s got to be afraid of in it, and the older he gets the more he
sees to scare him. I think what I like best about that old Ricketts
property is the kind of _safe_ look it has. It looks as if anybody that
belonged in there was safe from ’most any kind of disaster—bankruptcy,
lunacy, ‘social ambition,’ money ambition, evil thoughts, or turning
into a darn fool of any kind. You don’t happen to walk by there much, do
you, Joe?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, sir, you ought to!” said Lucius genially. “The orchard’s in
bloom, and you ought to see it. The Ricketts orchard is the show of this
county. The good old judge has surely looked after those old apple-trees
of his; they’re every one just solid blossom. Yes, sir, every last one!
Why, it made me feel like a dryad!”
“Like a who?”
“You mean that I’m thirty-five”—so Mr. Allen thought fit to interpret
this question—“and that I’m getting a little fat, some baldish and a
whole lot reddish. So I am; but I’ll tell you something, young Joseph:
romance is a thing inside a person, just the same as your thirst. It
doesn’t matter what his outside is like. My trousers always bag at the
knees, even when they’re new, but my knees themselves are pure Grecian.
It’s the skinny seamstress of forty that dreams the most of marquises in
silver armour; and darky boys in school forget the lesson in reveries
about themselves—they think of themselves on horseback as generals with
white faces and straight blond hair. And everybody knows that the best
poets are almost always outrageously ordinary to look at. This is
springtime, Joseph; and the wren lays an egg no bigger than a fairy’s.
The little birds——”
“By George!” Mr. Perley exclaimed, in real astonishment. “See here!” he
said. “Had you been drinking, yourself, before you came in? If not, it’s
the first time I knew a person could get a talking jag on buttermilk.”
“No,” said Lucius, correcting him. “It’s on apple-blossoms. She was
sitting under ’em pretending to read a book, but I suppose she was
thinking about you, Joe.”
“Who was?”
“Mary,” Mr. Allen replied quietly. “Mary Ricketts.”
“You say she was thinking about _me_?”
“Probably she was, Joe. She was sitting there, and the little birds——”
“I know you’re a good lawyer,” Joe interrupted, shaking his head in
gloomy wonder, “but everybody in town thinks you’re a nut, except when
you’re on a law case, and I guess they’re about right. You certainly
talk like one!”
Mr. Allen nodded. “A reputation like that is mighty helpful sometimes.”
“Well, if you like it you’re free to refer all inquirers to me,” said
Joe heartily. “You’re trying to tell me Mary Ricketts was ‘thinking’
about me, and I don’t suppose I’ve seen her as much as five times this
year; and I haven’t known her—not to speak of—since we were children.
I don’t suppose I’ve had twenty minutes’ talk with her, all told, since
I got back from college. The only girl I ever see anything of at all is
Molly Baker, and that’s only because she happens to live next door. I
don’t see even Molly to speak to more than once or twice a month. I
don’t have anything to do with _any_ of the girls. I keep _away_ from
’em, because a man with the curse I’ve got hanging over me——”
“Thought you didn’t want to talk about that, Joe.”
“I don’t,” the young man said angrily. “But I want to know what you mean
by this nonsense about Mary Ricketts and me.”
“I don’t know if I ought to tell you—exactly.” Here Lucius frowned as
with a pressure of conscience. “I’m not sure I ought to. Do you insist
on it, Joe?”
“Not if you’ve got to talk any more about ‘the little birds!’” Joe
returned with sour promptness. “But if you can leave them out and talk
in a regular way, I’d like to hear you.”
“Have you ever noticed,” Mr. Allen began, “that Mary Ricketts is a
beautiful girl?”
“She’s not,” said Joe. “She’s not anything like ‘beautiful.’ Everybody
in town knows and always has known that Mary Ricketts is an ordinarily
good-looking girl. You can call her pretty if you want to stretch it a
little, but that’s all.”
“That all, you think?”
“Certainly!”
“You ought to see her in the orchard, Joe!”
“Well, I’m not very likely to.”
“Well, just why not, now?”
“Well, why should I?”
“You mean you’ve never given much thought to her?”
“Certainly I haven’t,” said Joe. “Why should I?”
“Isn’t it strange now!” Mr. Allen shook his head wistfully. “I mentioned
that I asked her to go to the band concert with me, didn’t I, Joe?”
“You did.”
“And did I tell you that she refused?”
“Lord, yes!”
“Well, that was it,” said Mr. Allen gently. “She just said, ‘No!’ She
didn’t say ‘No, thank you.’ No, sir, nothing like that; just plain ‘No!’
‘Well,’ I thought to myself, ‘now why is that? Naturally, she’d _want_
to go to the concert, wouldn’t she? Why, of course she would; it’s the
first public event that’s happened since the lecture on “Liquid Air” at
Masonic Hall, along back in February. Certainly she’d want to go. Well,
then, what’s the matter? It must be simply she doesn’t want to go with
_you_, Lucius Brutus Allen!’ That’s what I said to myself, Joe. ‘You’re
practically a fat old man from _her_ point of view,’ I said to myself.
‘She wants to go, but you aren’t the fellow she wants to go _with_.
Well, who is it? Evidently,’ I reasoned, ‘evidently he hasn’t turned up,
because she’s just the least bit snappish the way she tells me she isn’t
pining for _my_ escort.’ Well, sir, I began to cast around in my mind to
think who on earth it could be. ‘It isn’t Henry Wheen,’ I thought,
‘because she discouraged Henry so hard, more than a year ago, that Henry
went and married that waitress here at his father’s hotel. And it isn’t
Bax Lewis,’ I thought, ‘because she showed Bax _he_ didn’t stand any
chance from the first. And it isn’t Charlie McGregor or Cal Veedis,’ I
thought, ‘because she just _wouldn’t_ have anything to do with either of
them, though they both tried to make her till the judge pretty near had
to tell ’em right out that they’d better stay away. Well, it isn’t Doc
Willis, and it isn’t Carlos Bollingbroke Thompson, nor Whit Connor,’ I
thought, ‘because they’re _old_ bachelors like me—and that just about
finishes the list.’ Well, sir, there’s where I had to scratch my head.
‘It must be somebody,’ I thought, ‘somebody that hasn’t been coming
around the Ricketts property at all, so far, because she’s never gone
any place she could help with those that _have_ been coming around
there.’ Then I thought of you, Joe. ‘By George!’ I thought. ‘By George,
it might be Joe Perley! He’s the only young man in town not married,
engaged, or feeble-minded, that hasn’t ever showed any interest in Miss
Mary. There’s no two ways about it: likely as not it’s liable to be Joe
Perley!’”
“I never heard anything crazier in my life!” Joe said. “I don’t suppose
Mary Ricketts has given me two thoughts in the last five years.”
Mr. Allen tilted back in his chair, his feet upon a rung of the table.
He placed his cigar at the left extremity of his mouth, gazed at the
ceiling, and waved his right hand in a take-it-or-leave-it gesture.
“Well, _why_ would she?” Joe demanded. “There’s nothing about _me_
that——”
“No,” said his friend. “Nothing except she doesn’t know you very well.”
At that Joe Perley laughed. “You are the funniest old Lucius!” he said.
“Just because I’ve never been around there and the rest have, you say
that proves——”
Mr. Allen waved his hand again. “I only say there’s _somebody_ could get
her to go to that concert with him. Absolutely! Why absolutely? It’s
springtime; she’s twenty-three. Of course, if it _is_ you, she isn’t
very liable to hear the music except along with her family—not when
you’ve got such pressing engagements _here_, of course! I’m thinking of
going up there again pretty soon myself, to see if maybe Judge and Mrs.
Ricketts aren’t going to walk up-town for the concert, and maybe I can
sort of push myself in among the family so that I can walk anyway in the
same _group_ with Mary! It’s going to be moonlight, and as balmy as a
night in a piece of poetry! By George! you can smell apple-blossoms from
one end of the town to the other, Joe!”
“How you hate talking!” Mr. Perley remarked discouragingly.
“I hear the band is going to try ‘Schubert’s Serenade,’” Lucius
continued. “The boys aren’t so bad as we make out, after all; the truth
is, they play almighty well. I expect you’ll be able to hear some of it
from in here, Joe; but take _me_ now—I want to be out in the moonlight
in that apple-blossom smell when they play ‘Schubert’s Serenade!’ I want
to be somewhere where I can see the moonshine shadow of Mary Ricketts’s
hat fall across her cheek, so I can spend my time guessing whether she’s
listening to the music with her eyes shut or open. It’s a pink-and-white
hat, and she’s wearing a pink-and-white dress, too, to-day, Joe. She was
sitting under those apple-blossoms, and the little bir——”
Sudden, loud and strong expressions suffered him not to continue for
several moments.
“Certainly, Joe,” Mr. Allen then resumed. “I will not mention them
again. I was only leading to the remark that nightingales serenading
through the almond-groves of Sicily probably have nothing particular on
our enterprising little city during a night in apple-blossom time. My
great trouble, Joe, is never getting _used_ to its being springtime.
Every year when it comes around again it hits me just the same
way—maybe a little more so each year that I grow older. And this has
been the first plumb genuine spring day we’ve had. At the present hour
this first true blue spring day is hushing itself down into the first
spring evening, and in a little while there’ll be another miracle: the
first scented and silvered spring night. All over town the old folks are
coming out from their suppers to sit on their front porches, and the
children are beginning to play hi-spy in and out among the trees. Pretty
soon they’ll all, old and young, be strolling up-town to hear the band
play on the courthouse steps. I expect some of the young couples already
_have_ started; they like to walk slowly and not say much, on the way to
the spring concert, you know.”
Mr. Allen drank another glass of buttermilk, smiled, then murmured with
repletion and the pathos of a concluding bit of enthusiasm. “Oh, Lordy,
Lordy!” he said, “What it is to be twenty or twenty-five in springtime!”
“Not for me,” Mr. Perley rejoined, shaking his head.
“No, I suppose not. It does seem pretty rough,” said Lucius,
sympathetically, “to think of you sitting here in this reeky hole, when
pretty nearly every other young fellow in town will be strolling through
the apple-blossom smell in the moonlight with a girl on his arm, and the
band playing, and all. Old soak Beeslum’ll probably be in here to join
you after while, though; and four or five farm hands, and some of the
regular Saturday-night town drunks, and maybe two or three Swedes. Oh, I
expect you’ll have _company_ enough, Joe!”
“I guess so. Anyhow, I haven’t much choice! This thing’s got me, and
I’ve got to go through with it, Lucius.”
“I see. Yes, sir, it’s too bad! Too bad!” And Lucius looked
sympathetically down, then cheerfully up again, as the swinging-doors
parted to admit the entrance of the returned bartender. “Hello, George!”
“Back a’ready,” said George self-approvingly. “Ham, fried potatoes,
coffee, and griddle-cakes, all tucked inside o’ me, too! Didn’t miss any
customers, did I?”
“No.”
George came to the table. “Lemme look how many drinks you owe me fer
sence I went out, Joe,” he said. “I had the place where she come to in
the neck of the bottle marked with my thumb.” He lifted the bottle,
regarded it thoughtfully at first, then with some surprise. He set it
down upon the table without comment, began to whistle “Little Annie
Rooney,” went behind the bar, doffed his hat, resumed his apron, and
continued to whistle.
Mr. Allen rose, dusting some crumbs of cracker from his attire. “I guess
I must have won the buttermilk record, George,” he said, as he placed a
silver dollar upon the bar. “If buttermilk were intoxicating there
wouldn’t be a sober creature on the face of the earth. Trouble with your
other stuff, George, it _tastes_ so rotten!”
“I take buttermilk sometimes myself, Lu,” said George as he made change.
“I guess there ain’t nobody seen me carryin’ much hard liquor sence my
second child was born. That was the time they had to jug me, and—whoo,
_gosh!_ you’d ought to seen what I went through when I got home that
night! She’s little and she was sick-abed, too, but that didn’t git in
_her_ way none! No, sir!”
“Good night,” said Lucius cheerily. “I’m going to stroll along Pawpaw
Street before the band starts. Moon’ll be ’way up in a little while now,
and on such a night as this is going to be did Jessica, the Jew’s
daughter—— _You_ know what I mean, George.”
“Yep,” said George blankly. “I gotcha, Lu.”
“I’m going,” said Lucius, “to go and push in with some folks to listen
to the band with. Good night, Joe.”
Joe Perley did not turn his head, but sat staring fixedly at the table,
his attitude being much the same as that in which Lucius had discovered
him.
“Good night, Joe,” the departing gentleman paused to repeat.
“What?”
“Nothing,” said Lucius. “I only said ‘good night.’”
“All right,” said Joe absently. “Good night.”
Mr. Allen took a musical departure. “Oh, as I strolled out one summer
evening,” he sang, “for to meet Miss Nellie Green, all the birds and the
flow’rs was singing sweetly, wherev-urr they was to be seen!”
Thus, singing heartily, he passed between the swinging-doors and out to
the street. Here he continued his euphonic mood, but moderated his
expression of it to an inconspicuous humming. Dusk had fallen, a dusk as
scented and as alive with spring as he had claimed it would be; and a
fair shaft of the rising moon already struck upon the white cupola of
the courthouse.
* * * * *
. . . Mary Ricketts was leaning upon the front gate of the Ricketts
place when he came there.
“Good evening, Miss Mary,” he said. “Are the Judge and your mother at
home?”
“They’re right there on the front porch, Mr. Allen,” she said cordially.
“Won’t you come in?”
“In a minute,” he responded. “It does me good to hear you answer when I
ask for your parents, Miss Mary.”
“How is that?”
“Why,” he said, “you always sound so friendly when I ask for _them_!”
She laughed, and explained her laughter by saying, “It’s funny you don’t
always ask for them!”
“Just so,” he agreed. “I’ve been thinking about that. Are you all going
up to the Square pretty soon, to hear the concert?”
“Father and mother are, I think,” she said. “I’m not.”
“Just ‘waiting at the gate’?”
“Not _for_ any one!”
Lucius took off his hat and fanned himself, a conciliatory gesture. “I
tell you I feel mighty sorry for one young man in this town to-night,”
he said.
“Who’s that, Mr. Allen?”
“Well——” he hesitated. “I don’t know if I ought to tell _you_ about
it.”
“Why not me?” she asked, not curiously.
“Well—it’s that young Joe Perley.”
Miss Ricketts was mildly amused; Lucius’s tone was serious, and if she
had any interest whatever in Mr. Perley it was of a quality most casual
and remote. “Why should you either tell me or not tell me anything about
him?” she asked.
“You know he’s such a good-looking young fellow,” said Lucius. “And he’s
going to make a fine lawyer, too; I’ve had him with me in a couple of
cases, and I’ve an idea he might have something like a real career,
if——” He paused.
“Yes?” she said idly. “If what? And why is it you feel so sorry for him,
and why did you hesitate to tell _me_? What’s it all about, Mr. Allen?”
“I suppose I’d better explain, now I’ve gone this far,” he said, a
little embarrassed. “I was talking with Joe to-day, and—well, the fact
is we got to talking about you.”
“You did?” Her tone betokened an indifference unmistakably genuine.
“Well?”
Lucius laughed with increased embarrassment. “Well—the fact is we
talked about you a long while.”
“Indeed?” she said coldly, but there was a slight interest now
perceptible under the coldness; for Miss Mary Ricketts was not unhuman.
“Was there a verdict?”
“It—it wasn’t so much what he said, exactly—no, not so much that,”
Lucius circumlocuted. “It was more the—the length of time we were
talking about you. That was the thing that struck _me_ about it, because
I didn’t know—that is, I’d never heard—I——”
“What _are_ you trying to say, Mr. Allen?”
“Well, I mean,” said Lucius, “I mean I hadn’t known that he came around
here at all.”
“He doesn’t.”
“That’s why I was so surprised.”
“Surprised at what?” she said impatiently.
“Why,” said Lucius, “surprised at the length of time that we were
talking about you!”
“What nonsense!” she cried. “_What_ nonsense! I don’t suppose he’s said
two words to me or I to him in two years!”
“Yes,” Lucius assented. “That’s what makes it all the more remarkable! I
supposed the only girl he ever thought _anything_ about was Molly Baker,
but he told me the only reason he ever goes there is just because she
lives next door to him.”
“Not very polite to Molly!” said Miss Ricketts, and she laughed with
some indulgence for this ungallantry.
“Still, Molly’s a determined girl,” Lucius suggested; “and she
might——”
“She might what?”
“Nothing,” said Lucius. “I was only remembering I’d always heard she was
such a—such a _grasping_ sort of girl.”
“Had you?”
“Yes, hadn’t you?”
She was thoughtful for a moment. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“So it seemed to me—well——” He laughed hesitatingly. “Well, it
certainly was curious, the length of time we were talking about you
to-day!” And he paused again as if awaiting her comment; but she offered
none. “Well,” he said, finally, “I expect I better go join the old folks
on the porch where I belong.”
He was heartily received and made welcome in that sedate retreat, where,
as he said, he belonged; but throughout the greetings and the subsequent
conversation he kept a corner of his eye upon the dim white figure in
the shadow of the maple trees down by the gate.
Presently another figure, a dark one, graceful and young, came slowly
along the sidewalk—slowly, and rather hesitatingly. This figure paused,
took a few steps onward again; then definitely halted near the gate.
“Who is that young man out there, talking to Mary?” asked Mary’s mother.
“Can you make out, father?”
“It’s that young Joe Perley.”
“I’ve heard he drinks a good deal sometimes,” said Mrs. Ricketts
thoughtfully. “His mother says he tries not to, but that it comes over
him, and that he’s afraid he’ll turn out like his father.”
Mr. Allen laughed cheerfully. “Anybody at Joe’s age can turn out any way
he wants to,” he said. “Mrs. Perley needn’t worry about Joe any more. I
just sat with him an hour down at the National House, and there was an
open whisky bottle on the table before us, and he never once touched it
all the time I was talking with him.”
“Well, I’m glad of that,” said Mrs. Ricketts. “That ought to show he has
plenty of will-power, anyhow.”
“Plenty,” said Lucius.
Then Mary’s young voice called from the spaces of night. “I’m going to
walk up-town to the concert with Mr. Perley, mother. You’d better wear
your shawl if _you_ come.”
And there was the click of the gate as she passed out.
“We might as well be going along then, I suppose,” said Mrs. Ricketts,
rising. “You’ll come with us old folks, Lucius?”
* * * * *
As the three old folks sauntered along the moon-speckled sidewalk the
two slim young figures in advance were faintly revealed to them,
likewise sauntering. And Lucius was right: you could smell
apple-blossoms from one end of the town to the other.
“I hope our boys will win the band tournament at the county fair next
summer,” said Mrs. Ricketts. “Don’t you think there’s a pretty good
chance of it, Lucius?”
For a moment he appeared not to have heard her, and she gently repeated
her question:
“Don’t you think there’s a pretty good chance of it?”
“Yes, more than a chance,” he dreamily replied. “It only takes a hint in
springtime. They’ll do practically anything you tell ’em to. It’s mostly
the apple-blossoms and the little birds.”