TWO young people, just out of college and pleasing to the eye, ought to
appreciate the advantage of living across the street from each other:
but Miss Muriel Eliot’s mood, that summer, was so advanced and
intellectual that she found all round about her only a cultural desert,
utterly savourless. This was her own definition of her surroundings, and
when she expressed herself thus impressively to Mr. Renfrew Mears, the
young gentleman who lived directly opposite her, he was granted little
choice but to suppose himself included among the unspiced vacancies she
mentioned. “The whole deadly environment crushes me,” she told him, as
they paused at her gate on returning from a walk. “This town is really a
base thing.”
“Do you think so, Muriel?” he said. “Well, I don’t know; around here
it’s a right pleasant place to live—nice big yards and trees and all.
And you know the population is increasing by fifteen to twenty thousand
every year. The papers say——”
“Listen, Renfrew,” she interrupted, and then said deliberately: “It is a
cultural desert, utterly savourless!”
When she had spoken in this way, the first feeling of young Mr. Mears
appeared to be one of admiration, and perhaps she understood, or even
expected, that some such sensation on his part would be inevitable, for
she allowed her eyes to remain uplifted gloomily toward the summer sky
above them, so that he might look at her a little while without her
seeming to know it. Then she repeated slowly, with a slight shake of the
head: “Yes—a cultural desert, utterly savourless!”
But Renfrew now became uneasy. “You mean the _looks_ of the place and
the——”
“I mean the whole environment,” she said. “These Victorian houses with
their Victorian interiors and the Victorian thoughts of the people that
live in ’em. It’s all, _all_ Victorian!”
“‘Victorian?’” said Renfrew doubtfully, for he was far from certain of
her meaning. His vague impression was that the word might in some remote
way bear upon an issue of bonds with which he had some recent
familiarity through an inheritance from his grandfather. “You think
it’s—Victorian—do you, Muriel?” he thought best to inquire.
“Absolutely!” she said. “Culturally it’s a Victorian desert and utterly
savourless.”
“But you don’t mean all of it?” he ventured, being now certain that
“Victorian” meant something unfavourable. “That is, not the people?”
“It’s the people I’m talking about,” explained Muriel coldly.
“Well—but not _all_ of ’em?”
“Yes, everybody!”
“You don’t mean every last one of ’em, though, do you, Muriel?” he asked
plaintively.
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, but look here,” he said. “You couldn’t mean _that_. It would
include your own family, and all your old family neighbours. Why, it
might include some of your very best friends!”
She sighed. “Since I’ve come home, I’ve felt that really I had nothing
in common with a single soul in the place. I don’t live on the same
plane. I don’t think the same thoughts. I don’t speak the same
language.”
He appeared to swallow a little air and to find some difficulty in doing
so. “I know,” he said, “you do talk a lot more intellectually than the
rest of us dubs around here. It’s because you’ve got a more intellectual
nature, and everything like that; and that’s one of the reasons I look
up to you the way I do. I always used to think that a girl that usually
had an intellectual nature had to wear horn spectacles and have her
dress higher on one side than it was on the other, and wear these
sensible-looking shoes, and everything like that. But you’ve showed me I
was mistaken, Muriel. You made me see that a girl could have an
intellectual nature and be prettier and dress niftilier than all the
brainless ones put together. But what worries _me_ is——” He paused
uncomfortably, and repeated, “What worries _me_ is——” then paused
again, and, with his head on one side, moved his forefinger to and fro
between his collar and his neck as if he felt a serious tightness there.
“Well?” Muriel said, after waiting for some time. “Do you wish me to
understand it’s your neckwear that worries you, Renfrew?”
“No,” he said absently, and frowning in his pained earnestness, again
repeated: “What worries _me_ is——” Once more he stopped.
“Well, well!”
“It’s simply this,” he said. “What worries me is simply this. It’s like
this. For instance, do you think it’s absolutely necessary for them
_both_ to have an intellectual nature?”
“‘Both?’” she inquired. “What do you mean—‘both?’”
“I mean the man and the woman,” he said. “Do you think they _both_ have
to have——”
“_What_ man and woman?”
“I mean,” said Renfrew, “I mean the husband and the wife.”
“Why, what in the world——”
“Would they _both_ have to have one?” he asked hopefully. “They wouldn’t
_both_ have to have an intellectual nature, would they?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” she said with
emphasis, though a delicate colour had risen in her cheeks, and people
seldom blush on account of being puzzled. “I don’t believe you know what
you mean, yourself.”
“Yes, I do,” he insisted, his earnestness constantly increasing. “I
mean, for instance, wouldn’t it be all right for the woman to go on
following her intellectual nature in her own way, if the man provided
the house and the food and everything like that? Even if he didn’t have
an intellectual nature himself, don’t you think they could get along
together all right, especially if he respected hers and looked up to it
and was glad she had one, and so—well, and so they could go on and on
together—and on and on——”
“Renfrew!” she cried. “How long are _you_ going ‘on and on’ about
nothing?”
He looked depressed. “I only meant—did you—did you really mean
_everybody_, Muriel?”
“When?”
“When you said that about—about the savage desert that didn’t have any
culture or anything.”
“That wasn’t what I said, Renfrew,” she reminded him, and her expression
became one of cold disapproval. “I said, ‘A cultural!——’”
“Well, anyway,” he urged, “you didn’t really mean _everybody_, did you?”
“Seriously, Renfrew,” she said; “—seriously, I don’t understand how you
can live the life you do.”
“Why, I’m not living any life,” he said reproachfully. “I never did do
anything very dissipated.”
“I don’t mean that,” she returned impatiently. “I mean what are you
doing with your mind, your soul, your spirit? You never have a thought
that the common herd around us doesn’t have. You never read a book that
the common herd doesn’t read, and you don’t even read many of _them_!
What do you do with your time? I’m asking you!”
“Well, the truth is,” he said meekly, “if you come right down _to_ it:
why, most of the time I loaf around in our front yard waiting to see if
you’re not coming out or anything.”
His truthfulness did little to appease her. “Yes!” she said. “You sit
hours and hours under that walnut tree over there in a perfect vacuum!”
“Well, it _is_ like that,” he agreed, “when you don’t come out, Muriel.”
“I’m not talking about anything of that sort!” she said quickly. “I
mean, how can you bear to stay on such a plane? You don’t have to just
sit down and live on what your grandfather left you, do you?”
“Well, _but_,” he protested, “I told you I was thinking of trying to run
for the legislature!”
She stared at him. “Good heavens!” she said. “Do you think _that_ would
be rising to a higher plane?”
“A person has to begin,” he ventured to remind her. “Even at that, they
tell me I probably couldn’t get nominated till I tried for it two or
three times. They tell me I have to keep on going around till I get well
known.”
“Renfrew!”
“Well, I haven’t made up my mind about it,” he said. “I see you don’t
think much of it, and I’m not sure I do, myself. What do you think I
ought to do?”
“What do I think you ought to do?” she cried. “Why, do
anything—_anything_ rather than be one of the commonplace herd on the
commonplace plane!”
“Well, what do I have to do to get off of it?”
“What?”
“I mean, what’s the best way for me to get on some other plane, the kind
you mean? If you think it’s no good my trying for the legislature, what
do you think I _had_ better do?”
He asked for information; in all honesty he simply wanted to be told. “I
just don’t know how to go about it,” he added; “I don’t know how to even
start; that’s the trouble. What had I better do first?”
Muriel stared at him; for in truth, she found herself at a loss. Faced
with a request for grovelling details of the lofty but somewhat
indefinite processes she had sketched, she was as completely a vacancy
as could be found in all the cultural desert about her.
“Really!” she said. “If you don’t know such things for yourself, I don’t
believe you could ever find out from anybody else!”
In this almost epigrammatic manner she concealed from him—and almost
from herself—that she had no instructions to give him; nor was she
aware that she had employed an instinctive device of no great novelty.
Self-protection inspires it wherever superiority must be preserved; it
has high official and military usages, but is most frequently in
operation upon the icier intellectual summits. Yet, like a sword with a
poisonous hilt, it always avenges its victim, and he who employs it will
be irritable for some time afterward—he is really irritated with
himself, but naturally prefers to think the irritation is with the
stupidity that stumped him.
Thus Muriel departed abruptly, clashing the gate for all her expression
of farewell, and left startled young Mr. Mears standing there, a figure
of obvious pathos. She went indoors, and, having ascended to her own
room, presently sat down and engaged herself with writing materials.
Little shadows of despondency played upon her charming forehead as she
wrote:
“Life is so terrible!
Far off—far, far—oh, infinitely distant—oh,
Where far-flung fleets and argosies
Of nobler thoughts abound
Than those I find around me
In this crass, provincial town,
I must go!
For I am lonely here,
One lonely, lonely little figure
Upbearing still one white, white light invisible.
How could those see whose thoughts are all
Of marts and churches, dancing, and the links?”
She paused to apply the blotter upon a tiny area of ink, oozed from the
pen to her forefinger, which had pressed too ardently, being tense with
creative art; and having thus broken the spell of composition, she
glanced frowningly out of the window beside her desk. Across the way,
she could see Renfrew Mears sitting under the walnut tree in his own
yard. He was not looking toward her, but leaned back in a wicker chair,
and to a sympathetic observation his attitude and absent skyward gaze
might have expressed a contemplative bafflement. However, this was not
Muriel’s interpretation, for she wrote:
“Across the street, ignoble in content,
Under a dusty walnut tree,
A young man flanneled sits,
And dreams his petty burgher dreams
Of burghers’ petty offices.
He’s nothing.
So, lonely in the savourless place, I find
No comrade for my white, white light,
No single soul that understands,
Or glimpses just, my meanings.”
Again the lonely girl looked out of the window, but this time with the
sharpest annoyance, and wished herself even lonelier and more remote
than her poem declared. Half a dozen lively children, including her own
fat little brother Robert, had begun to play in the yard across the
street, where the young man flanneled sat; and sometimes one of them
came to hide behind his chair, though Renfrew was so immersed in his
petty burgher dreams that he did not appear to know it. The shouting of
the children interfered with composition, however, and while the poetess
struggled on, the interference grew so poignant that it became actually
a part of the texture of her poem:
“Oh, I am lonely in this world of noises,
This world of piercing senseless outcries,
I hate it so! I hear the shrill,
Malignant yowls of children,
Growing up like all the rest
Without the power of thinking.
Oh, noises how accursed——”
Here her poem came to an end forever—that is to say, it had no end, was
never completed, remained a fragment. Muriel jumped up, and the
expressions she employed were appropriate for a maddened poet’s use,
though they befitted not a maiden’s. The accursed noises across the
street had become unbearable; they roused Renfrew from his petty dreams,
and he straightened up in his chair to see what was going on.
“Here, here!” he said. “This isn’t the Fourth of July. Quiet down a
little, will you?”
Four boys, Masters Robert Eliot, Laurence Coy, Thomas Kimball and
Freddie Mears, an eight-year-old cousin of Renfrew’s, were advancing
upon him, each evidently operating an imaginary machine-gun. “Bang!
Bang! Bang! Bangity, Bangity, Bang! _Bang!_” they shouted with the
utmost violence of their lungs.
“Stop it!” Renfrew commanded, and as the machine-guns seemed to be
levelled straight at himself, he added: “Let me alone. I haven’t done
anything to you. What do you want to kill _me_ for?”
He mistook their meaning, as he discovered immediately. “_Ping! Ping!
Ping!_” a shrill voice cried out from the ground just behind his
chair—another machine-gun, or else an “ottomatick.”
“_Pingity, pingity, ping. Ur-r-r-r-r-ping!_”
The voice was that of Renfrew’s nine-year-old sister Daisy; and looking
round and down, he discovered her crouching low behind his chair, firing
continuously. Renfrew perceived that he was a fortification of some
sort; for although the presence of a grown person has naturally a
stultifying effect upon children, they readily forget him if he remains
in his own sphere; then he becomes but part of their landscape; they
will use him as a castle, or perhaps as a distant Indian. Renfrew was
now a log cabin.
“_Ping! Ping! Pingety ur-r-r-r-r-ping!_” Daisy shrieked from behind him.
“You’re all dead! Lay down!”
“You’re dead yourself,” Robert Eliot retorted. “I guess all us four
filled you fuller o’ wounds than you did us, didn’t we? Lay down
yourself!”
“I won’t!” And Daisy, rising, began to argue the question vehemently. “I
saw you all the time when you came around the house. I shot you first,
didn’t I? Wasn’t I sayin’ ‘_Ping_,’ before ever any one of you said
‘Bang?’”
“No, you wasn’t,” Laurence Coy hotly replied. “Why, if we’d of had real
guns, they wouldn’t be enough left o’ you to bury in a hen’s nest.”
“They would, too!” Daisy shouted. “If I’d had a real gun, they wouldn’t
be enough left of you to bury in _half_ a hen’s nest!”
“They would, too!” Laurence retorted, and his comrades in arms loudly
echoed him. “They would, too!” they shouted.
“You’re _dead_!” Daisy insisted. “You got to all four lay down. You got
to!”
But upon this they raised such a chorus of jeering that she stamped her
foot. “You _got_ to!” she cried.
“Listen!” said Laurence. “Listen here! I killed you myself, first thing
when we came around the house. I leave it to Elsie Threamer.”
He referred to the one other little girl who was present, though she
took no part in these military encounters and seemed, in fact, to
disapprove of them. Fastidiously remaining at a distance from the
belligerents, she sat alone upon the steps of the large front porch—a
dainty little figure in strong contrast to the strident Daisy. Elsie was
in smooth and unspotted white linen; and Daisy, too, had been in smooth
and unspotted white linen—for a few minutes—but this one point of
resemblance was now lost. Elsie was a beautiful child, whereas even the
fonder of Daisy’s two grandmothers had never gone so far as to say that
Daisy was a beauty. Elsie was known for her sweet disposition, though
some people thought that living next door to Daisy was injuring it. When
Elsie came into a room where grown people were, they looked pleased;
when Daisy came into a room where grown people were, they looked at
their watches.
“Yes,” said Robert Eliot, confirming Master Coy’s choice of an umpire.
“_I_ leave it to Elsie. Whoever Elsie says is dead, why, they got to
_be_ dead.”
“Leave it to Elsie,” the other boys agreed. “Daisy’s dead, isn’t she,
Elsie?”
“I am _not_!” Daisy cried. “I don’t care what Elsie says. I killed every
last one of you, and if you don’t lay down, I’ll make you.”
“You will?” the bulky Robert inquired. “How you goin’ to make us?”
“I’ll _frow_ you down,” said the determined Daisy; and she added
vindictively: “Then I’ll walk all over you!”
The enemy received this with unanimous hootings. “Yes, you will!”
Laurence Coy boasted satirically. “Come on and try it if you don’t know
any better!” And he concluded darkly: “Why, you wouldn’t live a minute!”
“Anyway,” Daisy insisted, “I won’t leave it to Elsie, whether I’m dead
or not.”
“You got to,” said Laurence, and walking toward Elsie, he pointed to
Daisy, and spoke with some deference. “Tell her she’s dead, Elsie.”
Elsie shook her head. “I doe’ care ’nything about it,” she said coldly.
“I doe’ care whether she’s dead or whether she isn’t.”
“But she didn’t kill _us_, did she, Elsie?” Laurence urged her. “Our
side’s alive, isn’t it, Elsie?”
“I doe’ care whether you are or whether you’re not,” the cold and
impartial Miss Threamer returned. “I doe’ care ’nything about it which
you are.”
“I am _not_ dead!” Daisy shouted, jumping up and down as she pranced
toward the steps where sat the indifferent judge. “I doe’ care if Elsie
says I’m dead a thousan’ times, I guess I got my rights, haven’t I?”
“No, you haven’t,” Robert Eliot informed her harshly.
“I have, too!” she cried. “I have, too, got my rights.”
“You haven’t, either,” Laurence said. “You haven’t got any rights.
Whatever Elsie says is goin’ to be the rights.”
Daisy strained her voice to its utmost limits: “I got my RIGHTS!” she
bawled.
They crowded about Elsie, arguing, jeering, gesticulating, a shrill and
active little mob; meanwhile Elsie, seated somewhat above them, rested
her chin on her clean little hand, and looked out over their heads with
large, far-away eyes that seemed to take no account of them and their
sordid bickerings. And Renfrew, marking how aloof from them she seemed,
was conscious of a vague resemblance; Elsie, like Muriel, seemed to
dwell above the common herd.
Then, as she watched the clamorous group, he noticed that whenever
Laurence Coy appealed to Elsie, his voice, though loud, betrayed a
certain breathlessness, while frequently after speaking to her he opened
his mouth and took in a little air, which he then swallowed with some
difficulty, his neck becoming obviously uneasy. Indeed, this symptom was
so pronounced that Renfrew, observing it with great interest, felt that
there was something reminiscent about it—that is, it reminded him of
something; he could not think just what. But he began to feel that
Laurence perceived that Elsie was on a higher plane.
Elsie seemed to think so herself. “I doe’ care ’nything about it,”
remained her unaltered verdict. “I doe’ care a thing which is dead or
which isn’t.”
“Well, then,” said Laurence Coy, “we might as well play somep’m else.”
“All right,” Daisy agreed. “Le’s play I’m a grea’ big Injun woyer, an’
all the rest of you are children I got to come an’ scalp.”
Her proposal met with no general favour—with no favour at all, in fact.
“For heaven’s sakes!” Thomas Kimball said. “I’d like to know what you
take us for!” And in this scornful view he was warmly seconded by all
his fellows.
“Well, this is my yard,” Daisy reminded them severely. “I guess as long
as you’re in my yard, you’ll please be p’lite enough to play what I say.
I guess I got _some_ rights in my own yard, haven’t I?”
“I guess you better remember you ast us over here to play with you,”
Laurence Coy retorted, and his severity was more than equal to hers. “We
never came an’ ast you if we _could_, did we? You better learn sense
enough to know that long as you ast _us_, we got a right to play what we
want to, because we’re company, an’ we aren’t goin’ to play have you
scalp us!”
“You _haf_ to,” Daisy insisted. “I got a perfect right to play what I
want to in my own yard.”
“You go on play it, an’ scalp yourself, then,” Laurence returned
ungallantly. “Elsie, what _you_ want to play?”
“I doe’ want to play rough games,” Elsie said. “I doe’ like those
fighting games.”
“Well, what do you like?”
“Well, nice quiet games,” she replied. “I’d be willing to play school.”
“How do you play it?”
“Well, I’d be willing to be the teacher,” she said. “You all sit down in
a row, an’ I’ll say what punishments you haf to have.”
Daisy instantly objected. “No, _I’ll_ be the teacher!”
“You won’t!” Laurence said. “Elsie’s got to be the teacher because she’s
company, an’ anyway she said so first.” And the majority agreeing to
this, it was so ordered; whereupon Daisy, after some further futile
objections, took her place with the boys. They sat in a row upon the
grass, facing Elsie, who stood on the steps confronting them.
“Now, the first thing to do,” she said, “I better find out who’s the
worst; because you every one been very, very naughty an’ deserve the
terrablest punishments I can think of. I haf to think what I’m goin’ to
do to you.” She paused, then pointed at Laurence. “Laurence Coy, you’re
the very worst one of this whole school.”
“What did I do?” Laurence inquired.
“You said you hated girls.”
“Well, I did say that,” he admitted; and then, lest his comrades suspect
him of weakening, he added: “I hate every last thing about ’em!”
“I bet you don’t,” said Daisy Mears, giggling.
Laurence blushed. “I _do_!” he shouted. “I hate every last——”
“Hush!” said the teacher. “That’s very, very, very naughty, and you haf
to be punished. You haf to be—well, I guess you haf to be spanked.”
“I doe’ care!” Laurence said, seeming to forget that this was only a
game. “I hate girls and every last thing about ’em!”
“Hush!” Elsie said again. “I ’point Robert Eliot and Freddie Mears
monitors. Robert must hold you while Freddie spanks you.”
But Daisy jumped up, uncontrollably vociferous. “No, no!” she shouted.
“_I’m_ goin’ to be a monitor! This is my yard, an’ I guess I got _some_
rights around here! Robert can hold him, but I got to spank him.”
“Very well,” said Elsie primly. “I ’point Daisy in Freddie’s place.”
Master Coy did not take this well; he rose and moved backward from the
enthusiastic Daisy. “I won’t do it,” he said. “I won’t let her spank
me.”
“You _haf_ to,” Daisy told him, clapping her hands. “You haf to do
whatever Elsie says. You said so yourself; you said she had to be the
teacher, an’ we haf to do whatever she tells us.”
“I won’t!” he responded doggedly, for now he felt that his honour was
concerned. “I won’t do it!”
“Robert Eliot!” Elsie said reprovingly. “Did you hear me ’point you a
monitor to hold Laurence while he’s punished?”
“You better keep away from me,” Laurence warned Robert, as the latter
approached, nothing loth. “I won’t do it!”
“_I’m_ goin’ to do it,” said Daisy. “All you haf to do is hold still.”
“I won’t!” said Laurence.
“I guess I better do it with this,” Daisy remarked, and, removing her
left slipper as she and Robert continued their advance upon Laurence,
she waved it merrily in the air. “What you so ’fraid of, Laurence?” she
inquired boastingly. “This isn’t goin’ to hurt you—_much_!”
“No, it isn’t,” he agreed. “And you better put it back where it was if
you ever want to see it again. I’ll take that ole slipper, an’ I’ll——”
“Teacher!” Daisy called, looking back to where Elsie stood. “Didn’t you
say this naughty boy had to be spanked?”
“Yes, I did,” Elsie replied. “You hurry up and do it!”
Her voice was sweet; yet she spoke with sharpness, even with a hint of
acidity, which the grown-up observer, forgotten by the children, noted
with some surprise. Renfrew had been sure that he detected in Master Coy
the symptoms of a tender feeling for Elsie. Laurence had deferred to
her, had been the first to appeal to her when she sat aloof, had
insisted that she should choose the game to play, and when she had
chosen, hotly championed her claim to be the “teacher.” Above all was
the difference in his voice when he spoke to her, and that swallowing of
air, that uneasiness of the neck. Renfrew was sure, too, that Elsie
herself must be at least dimly aware of these things, must have some
appreciation of the preference for her that they portended—and yet when
she was given authority, her very first use of it was to place Master
Coy in a position unspeakably distasteful to himself. Sometimes children
were impossible to understand, Renfrew thought—and so were some grown
people, he added, in his mind, with a despondent glance across the
street.
Having glanced that way, his eyes came to rest upon the open window of a
room upstairs, where the corner of a little satinwood writing-table was
revealed—Muriel’s, he knew. Branches of a tall maple tree gave half the
window a rococo frame, and beyond this bordering verdure sometimes he
had caught glimpses of a graceful movement, shadowy within the room—a
white hand would appear for an instant moving something on the desk, or
adjusting the window-shade for a better light; or at the best, it might
be half revealed, half guessed, that Muriel was putting on her hat at a
mirror. But this befell only on days when she was in a gentle mood with
him, and so it was seldom. Certainly it was not to-day, though she might
be there; for when she was gloomiest about her environment (of which he
was so undeniably a part) she might indeed sit at that charming little
satinwood table to write, but sat invisible to him, the curtains veiling
her. Of course, at such times, there was only one thing left for Renfrew
to do, and legend offers the parallel of the niggardly mother who locked
up the butter in the pantry, but let her children rub their dry bread on
the knob of the pantry door. Renfrew could look at the window.
The trouble was that when he looked at it, he was apt to continue to
look at it for an indefinite period of time, during which his faculties
lost their usefulness; people whom he knew might pass along the
sidewalk, nod graciously to him, and then, not realizing his condition,
vow never to speak again to so wooden a young snob. And into such a
revery—if revery it were that held no thoughts, no visions, but only
the one glamorous portrait of an empty window—he fell to-day. The
voices of the children, sharp with purpose, shrill with protest, but
died in his tranced ear as if they came from far away. The whole summer
day, the glancing amber of the sunshine, the white clouds ballooning
overhead between the tree-tops, the warm touch and smell of the
air—these fell away from his consciousness. “He’s nothing,” the lonely
poetess brusquely wrote of him; and now, for the time, it was almost
true, since he was little more than a thought of a vacant window.
When Renfrew was in this jellied state, something rather unusual was
needed to rouse him—though a fire-department ladder-truck going by,
with the gong palavering, had done it. What roused him to-day were
sounds less metallic, but comparable in volume and in certain ways more
sensational. As he stood, fixed upon the window, he slowly and vaguely
became aware that the children seemed to be excited about something.
Like some woodland dreamer who discovers that a crow commune overhead
has been in hot commotion for some time without his noticing it, he was
not perturbed, but gradually wakened enough to wonder what the matter
was. Then he turned and looked mildly about him.
His sister Daisy still held her slipper, but it was now in her left
hand; in her right she had a shingle. Accompanied by Robert Eliot, she
was advancing in a taunting manner upon Laurence Coy; and all three, as
well as the rest of the children, may be described as continuously
active and poignantly vociferous. Master Coy had armed himself with a
croquet mallet, and his face expressed nothing short of red desperation;
he was making a last stand. He warned the world that he would not be
responsible for what he did with this mallet.
Master Eliot also had a mallet; he and Daisy moved toward Laurence,
feinting, charging and retreating, while the other children whooped,
squealed, danced and gave shrill advice how the outlaw might best be
taken.
Daisy was the noisiest of all. “_I’ll_ show you, Mister Laurence Coy!”
she cried. “You went an’ tore my collar, an’ you hit me with your elbow
on my nose, an’——”
“I’m glad I did!” Laurence returned.
“It _hurts_ me, too!” Daisy proclaimed.
“I’m glad it does! You had no business to grab me, an’ I’m glad I——”
“_We’ll_ show you!” she promised him. “Soon as we get hold of you I’m
goin’ to spank you till this shingle’s all wore out, an’ then I’m goin’
to keep on till my slipper’s all wore out, an’ then I’m goin’ to take
off my _other_ slipper an’——”
“_Look_, Daisy!” Elsie Threamer cried. “While Robert keeps in front of
him, why don’t you go round behind him? Then you could grab his mallet,
and Robert could throw him down.”
At this the dreamy Renfrew looked at Elsie in a moderate surprise.
Elsie, earlier so aloof upon her higher plane, was the lady who had
objected to roughness; it was she who said she didn’t like “those
fighting games.” Yet here she was now, dancing and cheering on the
attack, as wolfish as the rest, as intent as any upon violence to the
unfortunate Laurence. Nay, it was she who had devised and set in motion
the very engine for his undoing.
“Get behind him, Daisy,” she squealed. “That’ll fix him!”
“She better _not_ get behind me!” the grim Laurence warned them. “Her
ole nose got _one_ crack already to-day, an’ if it gets another——”
“I’ll take care o’ that, Mister Laurence Coy!” Daisy assured him. “I’ll
look after my own nose, I kinely thank you.”
“Yes, you will!” he retorted bitterly. “It ain’t hardly big enough to
see it, an’ I bet if it comes off on this mallet, nobody could tell it
was gone.”
“I’ll—I’ll show you!” Daisy returned, finding no better repartee,
though she evidently strove. “I’ll pay you with this paddle for every
one of your ole insulks!”
“Run _behind_ him!” Elsie urged her. “Why didn’t you run behind and grab
him?”
“You watch!” Daisy cried. “You keep pokin’ at him in front, Robert.” And
she darted behind Laurence, striking at the swinging mallet with her
shingle.
But Laurence turned too, pivoting; and as he did, Robert Eliot, swinging
his own weapon, rushed forward. The two mallets clattered together;
there was a struggle—a confused one, for there were three parties to
it, Daisy seeming to be at once the most involved and the most vigorous
of the three. Her left arm clung about Laurence’s neck, with the sole of
her slipper pressed against his face, which he strove hard to disengage
from this undesirable juxtaposition; her right arm rose and fell
repeatedly, producing a series of muffled sounds.
“I’ll show you!” she said. “I’ll show you whose nose you better talk
about so much!”
“Ya-a-ay, Laurence!” the other children shouted. “Gettin’ spanked by a
_girl_! Ya-ay, Laur-_runce_!”
They uproariously capered between Renfrew and the writhing group; but it
struck him that the two mallets, which were both moving rather wildly,
might do damage; and he moved toward the mêlée.
“Here!” he called. “What’s all this nonsense? Put down those mallets.”
He spoke too late. The maddened Laurence’s feelings differed little from
those of a warrior manhandled by a squaw in the midst of the taunting
tribe; and in his anguish his strength waxed exceedingly. His mallet
described a brief arc in the air, and not Daisy’s nose, but the more
evident nose of fat Robert Eliot, was the recipient. Contact was
established audibly.
Robert squawked. He dropped his mallet, clasped his nose, and lay upon
the good earth. Then when he looked at his ensanguined fingers, he
seemed to feel that his end was hard upon him. He shrieked indeed.
Daisy also complained, an accident having befallen her, though she took
it for no accident. “_Ooh!_” she said. “You made your elbow hit me in
the stummick, Laurence Coy!” She stood as a semicircle, and clasped
herself, while the noise of the other children was hushed—except the
extreme noise of Robert—and the discomfort of sudden calamity fell upon
them. Their silent mouths were all open, particularly that of Laurence
Coy, whom Daisy did little to reassure.
“I bet I haf to have the doctor,” she prophesied ominously; and then,
pointing to the fallen, she added: “An’ I bet Robert’s goin’ to _die_.”
“Nonsense!” her brother said, bending over Robert. “Nonsense!”
But Laurence Coy did not hear this optimistic word. Laurence had no
familiarity with mortal wounds;—to his quaking eye, Robert bore a fatal
appearance, and Daisy’s chill prophecy seemed horribly plausible.
Laurence departed. One moment he stood there, pallid and dumfounded, but
present; and the next, no one could have defined his whereabouts with
certainty. All that could be known was that he had gone, and from the
manner of his going, it might well be thought that he was shocked to
find himself forgetting a rendezvous appointed for this very moment at
some distant spot;—he had a hurried air.
Others were almost as deeply affected by Daisy’s gloomy prophecy. As
soon as she put the thought in their minds, Thomas Kimball, Freddie
Mears and the remarkable Elsie were all convinced that Robert was near
his passing, and with natural solicitude they had but the one thought in
common: to establish an alibi.
“Well, _I_ never went anywhere near him,” Elsie said. “I never even
_touched_ a mallet!”
“Neither’d I!” said Thomas Kimball. “I wasn’t in ten feet of him.”
“_I_ wasn’t in a hunderd!” said Freddie.
“It wasn’t _me_!” Thomas protested. “_I_ didn’t have anything to do with
it.”
“It was Laurence Coy,” said Freddie. “_That’s_ who it was.”
“It was every _bit_ Laurence Coy,” said Elsie. “I _told_ them not to
play such rough games.”
Thus protesting, the three moved shyly toward various exits from the
yard, and protesting still, went forth toward their several
dwelling-places—and went unnoticed, for Robert was the centre of
attention. The volume of sound he produced was undiminished, though the
tone had elevated somewhat in pitch, and he seemed to intend words,
probably of a reproachful nature; but as his excess of emotion enabled
him to produce only vowels, the effect was confused, and what he wished
to say could be little more than guessed.
“Hush, hush!” said Renfrew, trying to get him to stand up. “You’ll bring
the whole town here!”
Robert became more coherent. “He _him_ me om my _mose_!”
“I know,” said Renfrew. “But you’re not much hurt.”
Appearing to resent this, Robert cried the louder. “I am, too!” he
wailed. “I bet I _do_ die!”
“Nonsense!”
“_I_ bet he does,” said the gloomy Daisy. “He _is_ goin’ to die,
Renfrew.”
Pessimism is useful sometimes, but this was not one of the times. When
Robert heard Daisy thus again express her conviction, he gave forth an
increased bellowing; and it was with difficulty that Renfrew got him to
a hydrant in the side yard. Here, plaintively lowing, with his head
down, Robert incarnadined Renfrew’s trousers at intervals, while the
young man made a cold compress of a handkerchief and applied it to the
swelling nose.
“If I—’f I—’f I die,” the patient blubbered, during this process,
“they got to ketch that lull-little Lull-Laurence Coy and huh-hang him!”
“Nonsense!” said Renfrew. “Stand still; your nose isn’t even broken.”
“Well, my stummick is,” Daisy said, attending upon them and still in the
semicircular attitude she had assumed for greater comfort. “I guess he
broke _that_, if he never broke anything else, and whether he gets hung
or not, I bet my mother’ll tell his mother she’s got to whip him, when
she finds out.”
“When she finds out what?” Renfrew asked.
“When she finds out what he did to my stummick!”
“Pooh,” said Renfrew. “Both of you were teasing Laurence, and worrying
him till he hardly knew what he was doing. Besides, there isn’t really
anything to speak of the matter with either of you.”
Both resented his making light of injuries so sensational as theirs; and
Robert released his voice in an intolerable howl. “There is, _too_! An’
if I got to _die_——”
“Stop that!” Renfrew commanded. “How many times must I tell you? You’re
not any more likely to die than I am!”
With that he was aware of a furious maiden entering the gate and running
toward them across the lawn, and even as she sped, completing a hasty
“putting up” of her hair.
“If he isn’t ‘likely to die,’” she cried, “I’d be glad to know whose
fault it is! Not yours, I think, Renfrew Mears!”
At sight of his sister, Master Eliot bellowed anew; he wanted to tell
his troubles all over again; but emotion in the presence of sympathy was
too much for him; and once more he became all vowels, so that nothing
definite could be gathered. Muriel clasped him to her. “Poor darling
Bobby!” she said. “Don’t cry, darling! _Sister’ll_ take care of you!”
“Here,” said Renfrew, proffering a fresh handkerchief. “Be careful. His
nose isn’t _quite_——”
She took the handkerchief and applied it, but gave the donor no thanks.
“I never in all my life saw anything like it!” she exclaimed. “I never
saw anything to compare with it!”
“Why, it didn’t amount to so very much,” Renfrew said mildly, though he
was surprised at her vehemence. “The children were playing, and they got
to teasing, and Robert got tapped on the——”
“‘Tapped!’” she cried. “He might have been killed! But what I meant was
_you_!”
“Me?”
“Certainly! You! I never saw anything like your behaviour, and I saw it
all from the sofa in my room. If I hadn’t had to dress, I’d have been
over here in time to stop it long before you did, Renfrew Mears!”
“Why, I don’t understand at all,” he protested feebly. “You seem angry
with _me_! But all I’ve done was to put cold water on Robert’s nose.”
“That’s it!” she cried. “You stood there—I _saw_ you. You stood there,
and never lifted a finger while those children were having the most
dreadful fight _with croquet mallets_, not forty feet from you! They
might _all_ have been killed; and my poor darling little brother almost
_was_ killed——”
At this, Robert interrupted her with fresh outcries, and clung to her
pitifully. She soothed him, and turned her flashing and indignant eyes
upon Renfrew.
“You stood there, not like a man but like a block of wood,” she said.
“You didn’t even _look_ at them!”
“Why, no,” said Renfrew. “I was looking at your window.”
Apparently he felt that this was an explanation that explained
everything. He seemed to imply that any man would naturally demean
himself like a block of wood while engaged in the act of observation he
mentioned, even though surrounded by circumstances of murder.
It routed Muriel. She had no words to express her feeling about a person
who talked like that; and giving him but one instant to take in the full
meaning of her compressed lips, her irate colour and indignant
breathing, she turned pointedly away. Then, with Robert clinging to her,
she went across the lawn and forth from the gate, while Mr. Mears and
his small sister watched in an impressed silence.
Some one else watched Muriel as she supported the feeble steps of the
weeping fat boy across the street; and this was the self-styled
woman-hater and celebrated malleteer, Master Laurence Coy. He was at a
far distance down the street, and in the thorny middle of a hedge where
no sheriff might behold him; but he could see, and he was relieved
(though solely on his own account) to discover that Robert was still
breathing. He was about to come out from the hedge when the disquieting
afterthought struck him: Robert might have expressed a wish to be taken
to die in his own home. Therefore Laurence remained yet a while where he
was.
By the hydrant, Daisy was so interested in the departure of the injured
brother and raging sister that she had forgotten her broken stummick and
the semicircular position she had assumed to assuage it, or possibly to
keep the broken parts together. She stood upright, watching the two
emotional Eliots till they had disappeared round their own house in the
direction of their own hydrant. Then she turned and looked up brightly
at her brother.
“She’s fearful mad, isn’t she?” Daisy said, laughing. “She treats you
awful, don’t she?”
“Never mind,” Renfrew said, and then he remembered something that had
puzzled him not so painfully; and he wondered if Daisy might shed a
light on this. “Daisy, what in the world made you pick on poor little
Laurence the way you did?”
“Me?” she asked, surprised. “Why, it was Elsie told us to.”
“That’s it,” Renfrew said. “That’s what I want to know. Laurence was
just as nice to her as he could be; he did everything he could think of
to please her, and the first chance she got, she set the whole pack of
you on him. What did she do a thing like that for?”
Daisy picked a dandelion from the grass and began to eat it. “What?” she
inquired.
“What makes Elsie so mean to poor little Laurence Coy?”
“Oh, well,” said Daisy casually, “she likes him best. She likes him best
of all the boys in town.” And then, swallowing some petals of the
dandelion, she added: “She treats him awful.”
Renfrew looked at her thoughtfully; then his wondering eyes moved slowly
upward till they rested once more upon the maple-embowered window over
the way, and into his expression there came a hint of something almost
hopeful.
“So she does!” he said.