“By George, I will! You’ve got the stuff for a real man in you. Suppose we call it square at a dollar?”
“That’s not enough.”
“It is if you gave away most of the food. I won’t take pay for what the other fellow ate.”
Max saw that it was best to yield though he was not easy as to the sum; but he handed over the dollar and turned to go. The man rose and went to the door with him, shaking hands cordially.
“You’ve done a plucky thing, young man; and before you are in the way of having to steal again for lack of work, come to me at my office.”
He gave street and number as he walked down the hall to open the outer door, and probably did not hear, as Max did, a faint footstep and a rustling of the portieres as they passed along.
All the way home Max speculated on that furtive noise; but quite forgot it in the joy of the sense of freedom that came when he met Sydney and Mrs. Schmitz, and knew he had the right to look them fairly in the eyes.
That furtive, rustling noise in Mr. Buckman’s dimly lighted hall haunted Max for days, filling him with a vague uneasiness he called foolish, but could not forget. Yet after a time youth and returning health relegated the memory to some niche in the mind’s storehouse; and life became full of interest and wholesome occupation, driving out apprehension.
A little more than a week after his engagement at the “show house” had terminated, and he had made the senior class at the “Fifth Avenue High,” Billy Bennett’s ringing voice came over the wire.
“Is Mumps there?” it asked, and Sydney heard it across the room.
“Tell your friend a better name to call you; that is a sick one. I smell the drug store now!”Mrs. Schmitz laughed as she put down the receiver and started out.
“Billy To-morrow can call me any old name; he’s all right!” Sydney shouted after her; and into the telephone he cried, “Hello, Billy To-morrow! What’s up today?”
“The Queen says you’ve turned her down. She’s all fussed up because you refuse to come to her party. She can’t think what she’s done to disquiet you.”
The Queen, otherwise Bess Carter! The one girl of all girls for Sydney. Yet he could never hold up his head when she spoke to him; and if he saw her coming he always edged away.
“She’s done nothing but all right, Billy. She’s always to the good; but I—I—oh, hang it! You know, Billy, I’m no girl’s guy.”
“Rats! You don’t have to be a girl’s guy to go to her party. Haven’t we all played together as kids? Roughed it together at camp, and worked together at the school rallies? It’s justa chin-fest along the same old lines with a little music and dancing thrown in; a lot rather. And she wants the quartette.”
“Gee!” Sydney said no more, but his inflection carried assent.
“All right. I thought you’d see it that way.”
“I haven’t said I’d go,” Sydney broke in.
“Oh, yes, you have. You’re not the laddie to spoil the Queen’s evening by breaking up the quartette, the feature she’s most counting on, she says.”
“If I go will you help me to ask a question of Bess?”
“Sure, what is it?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you.”
Billy did not misjudge his friend, though he could have no conception of the agony of bashfulness Sydney endured at merely the thought of meeting a lot of girls in their evening frocks.
“You know I’ve no glad rags for evening, Billy.”
“No matter. You have good enough. None of us are going in for opera hats and patent leathers; that is, only the Fussers. Will you come to dinner with me tonight and stay for rehearsal?”
“All right. Thank you. Say, Billy! Hello, Billy!”
“Hi, there! Thought you had finished,” Billy returned after a slight wait. “Hello!” he called again as Sydney did not answer.
In that hesitant moment Sydney decided to abandon his intention of asking an invitation for Max. With his airy, sophisticated manner, his good looks, his playing, Max would be sure to win the heart of every one present. And then his cough—really he was not well enough.
Thus jealousy argued; but in that flashing instant between Billy’s first and second “Hello,” Sydney caught himself up; called himself a selfish, “pin-minded brute!”
“Jealous! That’s what I am. Because I’mshort and thick instead of slender and elegant as Max is; have mud-colored hair and no-colored eyes instead of a face clear and dark, with eyes that can talk without help from lips or tongue, as his can, I’ll cut him out of a good time! Mumps, you’re a last season’s egg!”
“What’s that you’re rumbling. Is your tongue weak today?”
“Nothing, Billy. I was giving myself a dose of mental ipecac, had something N. G. in my system, but it’s out now.”
“Well, in your state of good health what’s next?”
“We’ve got a—I mean I’ve got a friend here, you met him, Max Ball. He’s a violinist, a regular high C, Mrs. Schmitz says, a good looker and actor. May I bring him along?”
There was a word in reply, a short wait, and Billy’s voice came again. “It’s all right. Marms says bring him along, and sister says tell him to bring his violin.”
Max received his invitation in silence; a silence that piqued Sydney. “If you don’t care to meet my friends, say so. I’ll tell Billy to count your plate off,” he said roughly.
“Don’t take it that way. I appreciate the courtesy, believe me. Yet—ought I to accept? Suppose they knew—all about me, would they ask me just the same? Is it fair to them for you to take me?”
“Gee! I never thought about that,” Sydney mused, glancing at Max with new respect.
“Does Mrs. Schmitz know your friends?”
“Yes. She thinks they’re fine folks.”
“Then we’ll ask her.”
Questioned, she too, thought a moment before replying, her eyes fixed on the doubting one. “Max,” she began seriously, “I have belief in you. I feel sure you will make goot. Sydney shall tell his friends that you are one dear friend of me. I stand for you.”
Max gazed steadily back at her a second, thenlaid his hand on hers. “Thank you. I shall not shame you.” The words were simple but Sydney felt the earnestness in them; saw the moisture in the dark eyes, and turned aside to hide his own. He, too, was won, and promised himself to believe in Max always.
This was Max’s introduction to the delightful home where Billy Bennett and his mother lived with his married sister Edith and her husband, Mr. Wright.
Through the dinner, which was perfectly served, Sydney watched Max with an envy he despised but could not conquer. Every word and move of the stranger lad proved that he had found his own. The way he spoke to the ladies, the confident, unconscious but correct use of the silver, a matter that made Sydney turn red with anxiety; Max’s low and different yet kind tone to the maid; his easy yet modest attitude toward Mr. Wright—everything was just right, Sydney acknowledged to himself.
How did he come by it? Sydney felt he could not in a thousand years acquire such a manner; and at the same time it seemed just then the one thing on earth worth having. Poor Sydney did not know that many boys, even some reared in comfortable homes, are harassed in their years of development by a similar diffidence. He thought it was caused entirely by his lack of training.
He could see that Max won them all, especially Mr. Wright, with whom he talked intelligently on current topics; and Mrs. Wright when they touched upon music, as well as Billy’s mother when she asked of Max’s own, and he replied that she was dead. Sydney could remember his own mother only dimly. He had not such a passionate love for her as he detected in Max’s low reply that was in no different tone from his other words; yet its indefinable intensity told volumes about his heart feeling.
After dinner Billy’s sister carried Max off to the piano and they had what Billy called an orgyof music, neither paying much attention to the rest in the room.
Mr. Wright went to his den, and Mrs. Bennett disappeared, leaving Sydney alone with Billy. They settled among the cushions on a window seat where twinkling lights on the Sound below, as well as sharp little whistles, revealed the coming and going of many small steamers, part of the Mosquito Fleet that connects a thousand miles of Sound shore with the metropolis, the City of Green Hills.
The moon sent a silver track across the dark water, and the distant, fir-fringed shores outlined dimly against the starlit west seemed the shadowy ramparts of fairyland.
Probably Billy appreciated the scene more deeply than Sydney, yet he saw it often, and consequently was the first to speak.
“What’s the trick you want me to turn for you with Bess?”
At the telephone asking this favor from Billyhad seemed a little thing; now that the moment had come it was all but impossible. Yet he had delayed too long. It was nearly a month since the night of Max’s coming, the night when Sydney had determined to “do something for Ida”; but he had let the days pass in inaction. This moment he was in for it.
“It’s about Ida Jones. Do you know her?”
“Just to bow; she isn’t in any of my classes.”
“She was in mine last year; when I moved up a grade at the beginning of this semester I left her back there in the juniors.”
“What about her? Evidently you have her beaten in the highbrow race.”
“It wouldn’t have been so if I had been obliged to work all summer as she did. You know the good old Pop fixed it for me. That’s how I was able to study in vacation and make a class ahead.”
“Yes. But return to Miss Jones. And to Bess; what’s the relation?”
“I wish you’d ask the Queen to invite Ida to her party. It would put her easy with her class if a senior, and such a senior as Miss Bess Carter, asked her to a party.”
Billy laughed. “Is that all? Ask her yourself. You carry good weight with her.”
“Billy! Billy To-morrow! I’ll never turn the trick in the world! You know I’m tongue-tied when a girl shows up.”
“Surely not so in the case of Miss Jones,” Billy chaffed. “How did you learn her troubles? You must have chinned some with her.”
“She never told me her troubles. I haven’t spoken ten minutes with her altogether. But I can see—and hear.”
“What?”
“That all the girls nod coldly when she passes; that none of them run up and make love to her, or—”
“Make love? Girls? What do you mean?”
“Don’t you see it all the time? Almost every girl in school is either on her knees in adoration of some other one, or is herself the adored one.”
“Mumps! You’re getting classy! Both in language and in the matter of observation.” Billy clapped his friend on the shoulder in true, young-mannish fashion, a caress that would have floored one less sturdy. “What do you hear?”
“Oh, scraps of conversation spoken between chums, yet to the world in general. You know how it is with a certain kind of rich girl, she talks loud, as if she owned the earth and wanted all to know it.”
“Not all the rich ones though. May Nell Smith is the richest girl in school, but you can’t call her loud.”
“Surely not. And there are others of course. Perhaps I should have said the girl who wishes to be thought rich, or those who haven’t been so very long.”
“That’s it. You can spot ’em. Father worthhalf a million, half a pound of extra hair. Father worth—by report—twenty thousand, two pounds of the most startling hair.”
Sydney took up the comparison. “Father worth many millions and mother a lady, just her own hair worn—worn—Well, that’s where I fall down. Billy, how does Miss Smith wear her hair?”
Billy laughed. “And how does Miss Jones?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It looks awfully easy. It’s not bandaged like a broken head, and it’s nicer than all those buns and cart wheels and things. It’s curly.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because often she wears no hat, and the more it rains the curlier it gets. That’s the way with Max’s.”
Billy sent a glance to the other visitor. “There’s surely some class to him.” He stared at Max a moment but came abruptly back to the question. “Who is Miss Jones’ father?”
“She has neither father nor mother. She just takes care of herself; works right along for her board.”
Billy whistled. “That’s the little joker that turns up the other girls’ noses.”
“But why? I work for my board. Everybody knows I was a stowaway on the San Francisco steamship, or can know it; I never tried to hide it. Did it make any difference with you fellows? With you or Reg Steele and your cousin Hec Price, who belong to the best people in the city, and the richest? No. You took me in the same as you took in Redtop and Sis Jones; and there’s more class to any of the fellows in your set than to me. Don’t I know that?”
“That’s where you’re off the boulevard, old chap. You’re in the class that has pluck and honesty and the capacity for friendship. That’s a class by itself. You notice Walter Buckman doesn’t figure large in high jinks engineered by Bess Carter or May Nell.”
“But why don’t the girls take in a friendless girl as you fellows took me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Girls are different.” Billy could not answer that question. It was too large for him. It is too large for most people. We see a sweet young thing making herself ridiculous over the sufferings of a pampered cat, who yet will calmly stab to the heart with a cold stare some struggling girl who wears a last year’s frock and earns the bread she eats.
“I give it up,” Billy said after awhile. “But I’ll tell you one thing; if Miss Jones is O. K. otherwise, working for her board won’t make any difference to Bess Carter, nor to May Nell.”
“I know that. It’s why I am so anxious for Bess to invite her. Will you do it—get Bess to ask her?”
“Yes. That is, I’ll tell Bess about her, and May Nell too.”
“Thank you.”
“Gee! What a lever money is.”
“Yes, for good or bad.”
“There’s May Nell Smith. As soon as she grew strong enough to stand the strain of public school her father put her there because he wanted her to come in touch with all sorts of children; and see what she can do. She’s just as sweet as ever, and her nod is law to the girls.”
“You’d never know she was a rich man’s daughter by the way she dresses, Ida says.”
“You’d know she was the daughter of a sensible woman though.”
Sydney agreed, his heart quite at rest about Ida; and both sat quietly listening to the music. Neither realized the secrets of the great social fabric they had grazed, though Sydney continued in thought to follow the puzzle that provoked his question to Billy; why do girls—young women—treat each other as they do?
This led back to the day many months earlier when a couple of squabbling boys, turning the high school corner, ran against a girl, almostknocking her over, and sending her books flying on the wet walk. They were too occupied to notice their rudeness; but Sydney was in time to prevent her from falling and to restore her books.
This was Ida Jones. Bashful as Sydney was, her gratitude unlocked his speech; and walking home with her he learned a little of her loneliness and struggle for an education. She probably told Sydney more of her life than she would have told another, because his own life was so similar. And ever since there had been this bond of sympathy between them, though they rarely were together.
Mrs. Wright’s enthusiastic voice recalled Sydney from his reveries. “Mr. Ball plays! Makes real music! Sydney, you should be glad to live in the same house with him.”
Sydney wondered if he was grateful. Again the mean little yellow fiend of envy stuck up its head, and he had his fight all over.
“I have persuaded him to play with the quartette;it will be a splendid addition,” Mrs. Wright continued.
Billy rose and shook hands with him, boy fashion, for Billy was still a boy at heart in all he did, yet a very lovable boy. “That’s all to the good. Welcome to the jolly six—jolly seven it will be, now you have joined.”
“You must bring Mrs. Schmitz over to some of the rehearsals. I shall call on her very soon. Do you think she’d have time for me, Sydney?”
He was sure of it.
“And we shall drop the Mister and call you just plain Max, may we?” Billy questioned. “No one is allowed a handle to his name but her, my sister here. We have to permit that because she’s married.” Billy nudged his sister, mischief in his eyes.
Max bowed gravely. “I shall be honored by your kindness.”
Billy, a trifle awed by Max’s seriousness, could not know that the newcomer was feelingthe weight of his responsibility; was wondering if they would accept him so cordially if they knew all.
The other boys came, Charles Harper called Redtop because of his “smiling” hair, a fine fellow, well grown and with eyes that looked straight at his listener; and “Sis” Jones, Cicero really, but “Sis” in his set since the day he had been caught embroidering a pattern on the sail of the “Miss Snow,” Hector Price’s sailboat. Young Jones was as old as any of them and as plucky; but he was slender, blond, not very tall, and gave the impression of effeminacy. Yet certain ones who knew said those small hands could grip like iron.
His voice was the sweet, haunting tenor, while Sydney was second tenor. Charles sang a deep, rich bass, and Billy second bass. All-round utility man Billy called himself, since his voice was adaptable, and if his sister was prevented it was Billy who accompanied on the piano. Hewas also librarian, sent out meeting notices, and otherwise, “bossed the job,” to use his own words.
The other member was Hugh Price, “Squab,” Billy’s short fat cousin. He had grown since the happy camping days at Lallula, but it seemed all laterally. His anxiety to gain height was well known, and the most acceptable compliment one could pay him was to say, “You’re taller.” He played the flute—played it well.
All welcomed Max cordially, and still more enthusiastically when they had heard him play. And rapidly the two hours of practice passed; as a breath to Sydney, who not only loved to sing, but lived his happiest hours, in this household.
On the way home when the two boys, Max and Sydney, changed cars at a busy junction, they found the second car crowded at the rear end with high school students. They had evidently been somewhere in a body, and were noisy and restless, obstructing the passage way, playingrough pranks, and acting as if they owned the car.
“Move up forward!” the conductor repeated with no effect.
The two edged slowly through, hindered by the wedged mass, and slyly tripped by a hidden foot. All knew Sydney and greeted him by his nickname; but only one spoke to Max.
“Hello, young feller! What are you out of quod for?” sneered that one in his ear.
Max knew him. It was Walter Buckman, who had opened the door to him the night he went to pay for his stolen supper. As Max, trying to obey the conductor, pressed forward, one, instigated by Walter, pushed Sydney aside and jerked Max against a lady so adroitly that it seemed entirely Max’s fault.
He righted himself, apologizing earnestly. But he had torn her dress and she was not very gracious.
“Aw, you have to excuse a drunken man,lady,” a noisy one called out, and again began the pushing and scuffling.
“Move up front there or I’ll put you off!” the conductor ordered more sternly.
“I’d like to see you do it!” one of the bolder threatened.
Sydney saw Walter secretly urge the big fellow on.
The conductor was not afraid. He stopped the car right there, opened the gates, and collared the aggressor.
But the students stood by their mate, and it would have gone hard with the conductor if one or two men had not risen quickly and faced them.
“You get off the car or we’ll help him put you off!” said one, a well known banker, a man of power in the city.
The big fellow, seeing opposition was useless, stepped down, calling to the others to follow; but the conductor shut the gates, rang two bells, and again ordered the young men forward.
“Buckman, you get forward there,” the same authoritative passenger ordered. “You’re the ringleader.” And to the lady of the torn dress he said, indicating Max, “This young man is not at fault; it was those behind him. I saw them.”
“Stop at the next corner,” ordered Walter.
The conductor was about to ring when the same man of authority said, “Conductor, go on.” And to the boys, “You young ruffians, get up forward there as ordered!”
“You can’t do that,” Walter began; “we’ll have an action against the company. You can’t prevent a passenger getting off at any street he wants.”
“Very well. Bring your action. I’m president of the company, and I think, Walter Buckman, that your father will not care to sue for you, not with these witnesses.” He whipped out a notebook and took the names and addresses of some of the passengers, the lady’s whose dress had been torn, and of one or two well-known men.
Sullenly the squad of trouble makers moved up the aisle. And as they passed Max, Walter leaned over and whispered in his ear, “I’ll get even with you for this.”
Sydney heard the words. “Don’t get fussed up,” he said to Max. “There’s a few coming to him. That bunch isn’t out for any good, and Walt Buckman ought to be headed the other way this time of night. He lives the second door from Billy.”
Max made no reply. Through the rest of the ride and while the two walked the block between the car line and the nursery, he was wondering what form Walter’s threat would take. And while he prepared for bed, and still more in troubled dreams, his imagination conjured gruesome pictures.
For many days Max observed Walter Buckman closely but saw nothing suspicious except that he avoided meeting either Max or Sydney whenever possible.
Weeks passed. The trees were budding and the garden borders were yellow with crocuses and daffodils. And with the spring came to Mrs. Schmitz, as to most women, the fervor of house-cleaning. She did this as everything else, with vigor and dispatch.
“Come mit me, Seedney; you have to move,” she said breezily as she pushed back from the early breakfast table one Saturday morning.
Sydney looked up apprehensively.
“Have no fear,” she began smilingly, yet her face saddened a little. “Poor boy! You have so often to move in your life you are afraid ofthe word,nicht wahr? I send you not away. Think not so.”
Sydney’s face cleared and he followed her upstairs.
“It iss here you will stay.” She stopped at the open door of a well furnished chamber, the second finest of the six sleeping rooms.
“Why? I am perfectly satisfied with my own place.”
“This iss your own place now.”
“But it is even finer than Max’s.”
She looked at him keenly for a moment and dropped into a chair. “Here by me sit; I speak mit you of something important.” For a little she was silent, and he knew she was striving to find words in the troublesome English that would correctly voice her thought.
“I wonder if you shall understand what I am now to say? When you came to me you had not much luxury seen; nicht wahr? Iss it not so?” she translated quickly.
Sydney smiled. “Oh, surely! A warm dry-goods box to sleep in sometimes, a cheap boarding house here in this city, and—” he passed his hand across his eyes—“and the time I spent with Billy Bennett at his cousin’s camp; that was real luxury.”
Mrs. Schmitz nodded understandingly. “But you have one time a home, a house, a mother?”
“Yes; but I hardly remember my mother. After she died pa wasn’t much on the housekeeping, and we generally slept in a room somewheres and ate round.”
“Not square?” Her eyes twinkled, for she had no intention, as Sydney could see, that the conversation should be a sad one.
“Yes, round the square—at restaurants,” he bandied.
“So? I think that. Now when you came here by me I gave you my poorest room. I say to myself, this is for three times because. One because, he iss not used to good things; he will feelnot so strange in a poor but comfortable room. Second because, I will see first how he treats mine furniture. If he iss mitout care for it when it iss old, he will not be goot to it when it iss new. Ant third because, I will see if—if first he likes me.” She hesitated and averted her face. When she resumed her tone was apologetic, almost diffident. “An old woman who all alone lives gets pretty lonesome, seeing only people mit business. I think a goot boy will be company.”
Sydney could never have told what made him do it; he was crushed with shame the moment it was over. With a quick gesture he reached out, caught up her fat, work-worn hand, and kissed her bare arm.
Except Mrs. Bennett’s one motherly welcome, he had not given or received a kiss since his mother’s death; but in that illuminating instant he knew it was the shadowy memory of her caresses that made him understand Mrs. Schmitz’s loneliness; and a great hunger foraffection that had been growing all his forlorn life broke forth in that mute kiss.
“Seedney!” She drew his head to her and kissed him softly on the cheek. “We’ll be friends—always friends.Nicht wahr?”
There was no excess of sentiment in her quiet tone; and in the kiss even less of the passion of the mother than his had held of the passion of a son. The words were rather the pledge of a great friendliness; a friendliness that would outlast every trial. It was a solemn moment to Sydney; he felt as if an angel had been near.
“So now my three times because comes right, ant you take this room,” she declared.
“But it is too fine for me.”
“No. Nothing I have iss too fine for you. I want you to feel all the time that the whole world cannot give you too fine a thing. You are a man. God makes you. In his image he makes you. The best cannot be too good if—ifyou feel always you are a child of the Divine.”
A new light came into Sydney’s mind; the light that breaks in any soul when first it realizes its divinity, its infinity. She had awakened Sydney.
“Where does it tell that? In the Bible?”
“Yes. Ant your own soul tells you if you listen right. I will show you also where to read. But not now—to-morrow. Today we work.”
More she said as they moved Sydney’s possessions, partly in answer to his wondering questions, but more directly from her store of wisdom.
“Du sollst deinen Naechsten lieben als dich selbst,” she said musingly after a pause and did not know she was speaking in German till she saw Sydney’s look of perplexity. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” she translated; “but if you think yourself a poor, mean creature, it iss not much goot to love somebody like yourself.”
“I never thought of it in that way,” Sydney observed.
“One thing I tell you—watch Max. Copyhim in manner; he iss a gentleman. Also his father, though he iss a hard man.”
“Ant also he loves Max but he shows it not right. The mutter—Ach, he has no mother!” She sighed and hurried off to the next room.
In a moment she was back again, a little excitement in her manner. “Not one word shall you say to Max about this. He knows not that I know.”
“You have seen—written to his father then?” Sydney hazarded.
Her smile was inscrutable. “Not any of those things. Max tells it all to me himself; not mit words—he never knows that he tells. I know. But you ant I speak not.Nicht wahr?”
Sydney assented and she continued.
“I wish you should speak German mit Max ant me. I shall not make the mistakes in German. I speak good Court German. It will later make—what you say? credit for you in the university.”
“Does Max speak it correctly?”
“Surely. Beautiful German. Also you shall spend more time at the music. You shall learn the piano. I will teach you.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Schmitz,” he objected; “it takes too much time. I shall never be a pianist. I care only to sing.”
“Of course you will not be a pianist. For that you begin as soon as you can walk. But there be times when you must play your own accompaniment mebbe, or refuse to sing. To refuse iss not goot. Also playing a little helps to appear better in company.”
“But you have too much to do. You are tired—”
“Listen, goot boy! You help me more than you know. You make four eyes to watch mine business. Things this year go goot. I shall soon keep one cook. Then I have much time.”
Sydney was truly glad, and showed his feeling; though he could not express it as Max didwhen told of the impending change for the benefit of the household.
“Good! That’s right. It’s distressing to see her hands so stiffened with hard work, when they should be kept soft and supple for the piano. Such a woman drudging at man’s work, too! I hate it for her!”
Sydney recognized that Max’s understanding of Mrs. Schmitz was far more discriminating than his own, and the fact made him feel young and ignorant. But he did not let this increase his jealousy. He believed he had pretty well downed that meanness.
Max, never dreaming of the sentiment he had aroused, unconsciously made it harder for Sydney by his boyish chaffing, or by his excursions with Mrs. Schmitz into the world of books and music where Sydney could not go.
Yet this was the best thing that could have happened to Sydney. He began to read as never before, spurred by his envy. Not tasks setby a teacher nor for amusement; but for the sake of what he should find locked in books. He tried hard to see the charm in the classics from which Max with shining eyes quoted glibly. Many times he read things Max recommended, read doggedly till at last the stately rhythm caught his ear, and the meaningless words thrilled him.
The day before Bess’s party Mrs. Schmitz surprised the boys with new suits, shoes, ties, and gloves, everything complete.
Max drew the soft handkerchief through his fingers caressingly. “What a satisfaction! Real linen once more.”
Sydney was pleased with his clothes but he did not know linen from cotton, nor the value of knowing. Yet when both boys were dressed and parading in front of their delighted house-mother, Sydney was fully as grateful, as much filled with a comfortable sense of being well dressed as was Max. And neither of themenjoyed their finery so much as the one who gave it to them.
The party was a success. Bess was a cordial, unaffected hostess; and her father and mother doubled her welcome because they were able to be young with young people.
Ida Jones was there. Any girl or woman would have known that her simple gown of rich creamy color cost little; a dressmaker would have known it was homemade, yet to Sydney it looked gorgeous; and the rose she wore in her hair, one that Bess begged to pin on after Ida arrived, held in its deep heart all the rich reddish yellows and yellow browns of her hair.
She looked so “dressed up,” so young lady-like, that Sydney was afraid of her; and with a hurried nod, passed her and stood aloof with one or two other young chaps, wearing their first evening clothes, cold with nervousness, thinking every eye upon them.
Bess spied them and came over, speaking toSydney first. “Miss Jones will be your partner for the evening. You must see that she has a good time. May I depend on you, Mr. Bremmer?”
She was more than ever the Queen of Sheba tonight, a large, richly colored brunette with the mystery of the East looking from her dark eyes, but the strength and fearless generosity of the West heartening through all her cheery speech. Her dress of some soft, oriental stuff, simply made and worn with no ornament save a strand of curiously wrought eastern beads, emphasized and distinguished her from the over-dressed girls who were in the majority.
She, too, gave Sydney a shiver of strangeness. He did not notice that the young men also looked “different,” wore their “company” manners; and the “Mr. Bremmer” frightened him.
“I—I’ll try. What—how—you know—Say! This is awfully—”
“Awfully sudden? Why Mumps! I thoughtyou could say something more original; excruciatingly precipitant, or something like that. Go on, and talk to her. Talk shop if you can’t think of anything else. Or tell her how dandy she looks. She made that little frock herself. Isn’t she a—a peach?”
That bit of slang with the familiar name helped Sydney to “break through,” as he knew she intended; for none better than Bess understood the sort of good breeding that fits the rule to the situation.
As he turned back he met May Nell Smith. She was almost grown, tall and lady-like; yet she had the same sun-touched waving hair, the same blue eyes and mystic, ethereal spirit looking out from them, that he remembered when he first met her, a delicate little girl in the big car, taking him and Billy on their first drive over the City of Green Hills.
She greeted him warmly, a greeting that carried assurance of good will, faith; a silent pledgeof her trust that all felt who came near her. No one met May Nell without determining to be at least a little different. Not dreaming that she did it, she aroused everyone to his best. And Sydney left her determined to bear his part for the evening so well that Bess should be pleased with him.
When he found Ida it was with an added respect for capability, as he looked with more discriminating eyes at the pretty gown. He admired her quiet good manners as she modestly, yet without shyness, met the many strangers of the senior class, a formidable ordeal for an under-class girl.
Still under all her sedateness Ida was shy too. A fellow feeling drew the two together, and they entertained each other with the exchanges of personal experience inevitable when young people meet, each looking eagerly out upon life to squeeze it dry of its fascinating mysteries.
When dancing was called, Sydney, who didnot dance, started to find her partners. But she detained him, saying she would rather talk. However, Sydney was suddenly brave, and, proud to be considered of consequence by so attractive a girl, manlike, insisted. He must show her off. At least she must dance with his very best friend, Billy; and Max was “awfully pat on dancing”; she must give him one.
She acquiesced; but sat out other dances with Sydney; and when dancing was halted for singing, and Sydney had to go to the piano, he was astonished and sorry to find the evening two-thirds gone.
The quartette, accompanied by the three instruments, did well. The audience voted the violin an “immense” addition. After the prepared numbers they sang college songs, all joining; and when Max introduced two or three songs new to them, playing odd, catchy little accompaniments, sometimes whistling, sometimes singing in a funny high voice, half tenor,half soprano in quality, they cheered him boisterously.
Then they asked for something more ambitious from the violin.
“I haven’t any music,” Max demurred.
“The Queen has all the music ever printed,” Billy exaggerated gayly, adding as he caught her scowl, “Miss Carter, alias Queen of Sheba.”
“I’m sure you’ll find something, Mr. Ball,” she urged.
“Here! Look it over!” Billy called, and with the familiarity of long tried friendship threw open the door of the cabinet.
“Here’s something I know,” Max said presently. “Who will play the accompaniment?” He looked around expectantly, trying to keep doubt out of his eyes; he was fastidious about that.
“Bess can play for you,” Billy volunteered.
“I’m afraid I can’t please you, but I’ll try if you wish.”
Bess and Max, belonging to the small clan of the really courteous, made no more excuses, but began at once a familiar number from one of the operas, Max standing so that he faced Bess partly and could watch her in the violin pauses.
At first he played tamely, a little hesitatingly; but he soon saw that Bess followed with fine discretion and sympathy, and he threw himself into the work with entire forgetfulness of everything else.
Sydney, relieved from the duty of entertaining, watched Bess’s flying fingers; saw her intent look while the violin took up the theme alone; and Max’s eager, rapt gaze upon her during his rests—the look of an artist when he has discovered another.
Without demur they responded to an encore, and after that supper was announced. Later there was a little more dancing and a closing song. Sydney, standing near, heard Bess invite Max to come often with his violin and let herhave the honor of learning his accompaniments in a way that might exactly please him.
“It’s what I’ve been hoping for every minute since you first touched the keys this evening,” Max returned with an ardent look. Sydney could not understand that it was the look of the musician rather than of the man.
Bess blushed at the look and still more at Max’s polished manner, so different from the bluff, frank ways of her comrades. It was more grown-up, with an almost foreign air of reserve, yet conveying a subtle flattery; and Sydney looking on felt anger rising in his heart.
Here was one, scarcely his senior, dropped into their circle by a sinister incident, coming from no one knew where, destined no one knew where, handsome, gallant, gifted, aided by the gods themselves it seemed to tongue-tied Sydney, in one evening walking into an intimacy with Bess that he, Sydney, might wish for till doomsday and never dream of achieving.
Like some country booby, his mouth frozen open in astonishment, he sulked by the newel till Ida, coming in her wraps, reminded him of duty and courtesy. With difficulty he roused himself to a proper good-by to Doctor and Mrs. Carter; but when he came to Bess he could trust himself for no more than the words, “Thank you. Good night.”
He was so silent that Ida wondered if she had said anything to offend him. But her own small triumph, the brilliant scene, the comfort of knowing herself appropriately gowned, the pleasure of meeting on an equal footing those who had passed her indifferently each day, and best of all, the knowledge unwittingly accorded by admiring eyes that she was at least not unbeautiful—all this thrilled her, loosed her reticent tongue, and kept her talking gayly till they arrived at her home.
“Walter Buckman is dreadfully chagrined at receiving no invitation,” she said at her door.“Did you know some of the Fussers were going to boycott Miss Carter on account of it?”
“Boycott Miss Carter!” Sydney echoed angrily. “Boycott! That means cutting out Miss Smith, Reg Steele, Hec Price, and the quartette. What will there be left of the senior class to boycott after that?”
“Nothing,” Ida laughed happily. “They are the cream; after that only riffraff like—like me; and I’m only a girl junior.” Again her soft laugh rippled out: “I’ve had the best time I ever had in my life, and I thank you for it.”
“Thank Miss Carter.”
“I do. But she would never have heard of me except for you. Good-by.”
It was a mile further to the nursery but Sydney walked. He would not take a car—face people. He wanted to arrive after Max, creep to his room, and have it out with himself.
But Max, too, had walked, wishing to be aloneunder the stars. And they arrived in their street at the same time.
Max was elated. His every step betrayed it. He strode along as if shod with springs, and his voice thrilled with a new note. “Isn’t she great?”
“Who? Miss Smith?” Sydney knew Max did not mean May Nell.
“No, no. She’s lovely to look at and I guess lovely to know; I didn’t notice her much. It’s Miss Carter I mean. There’s a real musician.”
“Is that all you think she is? She’s much more than that,” Sydney defended.
“All! All? To be a real musician is to have tasted divine fire.”
“All the same, I think it’s no compliment to a girl to think only of what she can do,” Sydney persisted with some temper.
“Sydney, you don’t understand. A musician, a real one, doesn’tdothings musical; heisthem. Hundreds of girls strumonthe piano.The rare one puts her soul into it and draws forth the angel of harmony that civilizes us.”
Sydney knew this was a high tribute, but with narrow, snap judgment decided it was selfish.
Max talked on, and on, more to himself than to his unwilling listener, but roused at last to Sydney’s silence. “I guess you don’t wish me to play with Miss Carter. Is that it? Do you care so much?”
How could Sydney know that it was the intuition belonging to his temperament that enabled Max to read his heart? Angry, hurt, jealous, he did what the awkward, blundering boy so often does, denied himself, belied himself. “I? I have nothing to say about it. Miss Carter is nothing to me. I’ve known her some time, that’s all. Her folks are kind to me, too.”
“Then it’s all right?”
“Of course it is.”
“Good!” Max responded; and they entered the house.
On the hall table lay a fat-looking, pretentious letter for Max.
It was an invitation to him to join the Fussers Club. Reed Hathaway begged the honor of presenting Mr. Ball’s name, and hoped for prompt permission to do so.
Max read it twice and handed it to Sydney with no comment.
“Well, wouldn’t that flitter you!” he exclaimed, holding the big sheet out far and up near, as if thus shifting it might cause some hidden meaning to leap from the few words.
“I’ve been in school only a few weeks; isn’t it pretty early to invite me into that club of exclusives?”
“No. They want to be styled good dressers and successful haughties. You could wear rags better than some of them can wear the glad goods; and your face, manner, and violin have done the rest.”
“Yet—Reed Hathaway—he’s Buckman’sbest friend; he must know of that street-car incident. What does it mean?”
“I pass it up. What do you think?”
“It’s the riddle of the Sphinx to me.”
“Sleep on it,” Sydney sagely advised; and they separated.
Max did sleep on it but morning brought no solution for the riddle. While he dressed he pondered it, stopping to study the stately constitution and by-laws submitted with the invitation. From them he gathered a greater respect for the organization than its frivolous name had given him. But he got no further toward discovering the reason for his invitation, and ran downstairs, a little late, to find Mrs. Schmitz unusually excited.
She had been drawn on jury duty, her first experience, for she had not lived in Washington in the earlier territorial days when women were citizens.
“That cook comes not before next week, and now they call me on jury already. That marmalade will spoil surely.”
“Get excused,” advised Max.
“To make marmalade?” Mrs. Schmitz turned swiftly to him, speaking sternly. “In Germany one man does everything—one man and a few nobility. In America all men of the nation have each work to do; and here in Washington also women. I do not shirk.”
“I see.”
“We’ll take good care of things,” Sydney assured her; “it’s fine that it’s vacation. Tell us what to do.”
“Goot boy, Seedney! What to do you ever ask. You also so ask, Max?”
“Surely.”
Sydney noticed that Max’s face had no cloud on it. He did not show resentment of her trust in Sydney, nor of his superior knowledge of commonplace duties.
“There iss not so much to do in the house—enough to eat—anyways Seedney, you are a goot cook. Ant the nursery—you know alreadywhat goes on there. Look a leetle out for Blitzen, ant—that iss all I guess.”
“The marmalade?” Sydney inquired.
“Oh, that spoils anyhow I guess. No matter. Mebbe the trials will be over pretty quick; then I’ll make it.”
She was as brisk and prompt about civic duty as about her own; and when the boys insisted she should do no housework that morning, she was ready before starting time, looking quite imposing in her “going out” clothes.
While she sat waiting, Sydney ran out on some errand to the nursery, and Max, still puzzling over the invitation he had received, seized this opportunity to talk it over with her.
She inquired the object of the club. The elaborate constitution couched in flowing, dignified English was quite impressive. Max began to read it to her, but she stopped him.
“I cannot understand that language. What kind of boys belong?”
“Some of the most influential boys in school, Sydney says.”
“Influential?” She paused a moment as if studying the word. “That may be goot or bad. Not bad I guess, or teachers would stop it.”
It was time to start and they walked across to the car line, passing on the way a row of splendid maples growing from the ground about three feet above the sidewalk. The bank had recently been cut down sheer and many roots were exposed.
“Look here already!” Mrs. Schmitz indicated a slender root of uniform size running laterally, entirely in view. “What do you see?”
“Jolly! It runs from a down-bearing root of this tree right to a similar root of that other tree. And here’s another!” he called, walking rapidly ahead of her. “I didn’t know things like that happened.”
“Look close. You see many more leetle roots all going same way.”
“How strange!”
“Not so. You have not studied; that’s all. Under ground are many strange things. From air, water, ground, and sun comes all life; but first everything begins in the ground—in the dark.”
Max was awed by her seriousness. “Everything?” he said.
“Yes.” She picked up a little twig and began to stir the loose earth absent-mindedly. “Now—this time of year are great things going on down there—in the dark. A great fight for life. All the leetle seeds hear the spring birds sing ant they feel the warm sun coming; ant something tells them, ‘Come up! Come up! Come quick before it iss too late.’”
“Too late?” Max repeated when she dropped into silence.
“There iss so much for seeds to do in one summer, to feed themself with air, sun, water, that makes them to grow; to make flower antseed; ant to put in every leetle seed also enough to last it through the long winter.”
It seemed strange to Max that she should speak of a mere seed as if it were sentient.
“So many seeds, so many new leetle roots growing, sometimes so leetle rain ant so hard the ground—it iss all one big fight, pushings, pullings, to see who first gets to the top, to the light.”
“I don’t see how they know when to start—the little seeds shut up in the dark down there.”
“Their soul tells them.”
“Soul?” Max asked, startled.
“Yes. In all things, behind everything living iss soul.”
“That seems queer. I never thought a plant could have a soul.”
“Mebbe you call it intelligence. Names make leetle difference. What do you think? Look at mine lily. It iss in November just a dry brown thing like onions. I put it in the ground. Itgrows, blooms with a beautiful flower; then its leafs die, its flower, all you see. In August it iss again one dry brown thing like onions. But inside iss all the bloom, all the green leafs, all the lovely color, sweet fragrance, wrapped in those leetle silk folds. It has drawn all back again into itself. I throw it in mine cellar. It has no water, no light, nothing; but next year if I put it once again into the ground it blooms. What do you call that?”
“I—I don’t know. It’s wonderful!”
“Also grass thinks.”
“Thinks! Grass?”
They were passing a lawn that needed mowing. “See that clover? In May it blooms. Every week after that this man mows his lawn, ant every week he cuts off leetle clover blossoms mebbe two inches high. But there on the vacant lot just beside you see other clover growing?”
“Yes.”
“That also gets plenty water from the sprinkler;but that clover takes its time. That clover grows mebbe one foot high before it blooms. What do you call that? That grass thinks mebbe?Nicht wahr?”
Max looked his astonishment. “Why is it so?”
“Why? It iss the law of life. All things before they die give back to the world children. If the clover in the lawn hurries not it never blooms; never puts out its flower. The clover on the side needs not to hurry.”
“I shall never look at clover again without thinking of all this.”
“Soul, law, intelligence, God—I think all those names mean pretty near the same, and Heavenly Father iss best of all. Plant, bird, man,—all are in God’s hant. All are brothers. One plant likes one thing. Another plant likes it not, but something else. Each helps all.”
“Yes, I begin to see,” Max said, his face shining with understanding.
“Those maple trees mit big tops—alone mit a big wind they fall mebbe; tied together mit many roots they stand.”
“And for such needs are clubs, societies, and——”
“That iss right! How quick you see, Max!”
The car interrupted them, and she left him, waving her smart umbrella in good-by. From her face beamed a love for him, for all humanity, that as yet he could but half appreciate; yet her words had made a deep impression.
When he returned to the house he found Sydney washing the dishes. “Here! Let me bear a hand.” He caught the towel and began to dry the plates.
Sydney was silent, for a scheme was growing, the making of the marmalade.
“Why not?” he asked when Max objected that they might spoil it. “The stuff will spoil anyway; if we can save it, won’t it be so much to the good?”
“Yes. But can we do it right?”
“No matter. She makes the best marmalade in town, the neighbors say. They know, for she gives away a lot. She’s started this right; if we finish it up half right it will do for us boobs to eat on bread and butter, won’t it?”
“Surely, and be much better than we deserve probably.”
The dishes finished, Sydney found Mrs. Schmitz’s recipe book and the two studied the complicated directions. It was a three days’ process, and they could not make up their minds whether this was the second or third day, so little idea had they of the “looks of the mess.” But they acted on the latter inference.
“Let’s do it today and get it over with,” Sydney, the prompt, suggested.
“Very well. Tell me what to do.”
Not without a little show of importance Sydney bustled about, giving orders, looking up the great preserving kettle, and searching for suchmaterials as he judged were not already put together.
Max minded this not in the least. He had the soul of the true artist, who is always too deeply engrossed in his work to notice what others are doing, or saying of him. Over and over he read the recipe, thinking closely, and once or twice correcting Sydney himself in his interpretation.
It was great fun till the long process of boiling and simmering came, and the kitchen grew hot, as, boy fashion, they stuffed the range with kindling and coal, and in consequence had to cook their sweet stuff on the very rear edge of the range.
But Sydney found Max a good partner in distress. He did even more than his share of the watching and stirring, declaring it was the proper work of the second cook.
“How is it, Max, that whatever you take up, you do it so perfectly, so successfully at thevery first? I must always try and try again.”
“I don’t know. I like to undertake new things. I put my whole mind on what I do.”
“So do I. But it’s something more than that. Look at the way you have taken to the work in the hothouses. Only yesterday Mrs. Schmitz said you learned wonderfully fast; as if you knew long ago, and had only to ‘remember it as from sleep waking.’”
“How could I help learning about plants with her to teach me? She makes them so interesting. She loves them as if they were children, and while I’m with her I feel the same. If it wasn’t for music I could be willing to work always with them.”
“Yet you couldn’t get work last winter. That seems strange.”
Max thought a moment before replying. “I don’t understand it myself. The first work I had after I arrived in the City of Green Hills was collecting for a doctor. I was too careless—no,I didn’t know enough to hide the money; and the third day a big fellow caught me in a lonely place and robbed me. The doctor wouldn’t believe me, and so I lost that job.”
“Gee! That was rough.”
“The next thing was being bell boy at a hotel. That lasted two months, but——say, Sydney, I just hated that work. At first it made me feel mean to take tips; then I got to looking for ’em, and I—left.”
Sydney scanned the noncommittal face during the pause that followed.
“When I remembered my mother I—I couldn’t go on there. I was out of work a long time after that, and on the street two days and nights before I went—where I had declared I would not go—to the brewery to wash bottles.” He turned away with a motion of disgust. “Gee! The odor of that stale beer! I smell it yet.”
“But why didn’t you try for a chance in an orchestra?”
Max smiled. “With no proper clothes, no violin, and not a friend among people that care for music? There was no Mrs. Schmitz standing round, ready to hand me an old Cremona.”
Both were silent a moment. “But even bottle washers get too plenty in the winter when work is slack; and after I began to cough so hard the men were afraid of tuberculosis and wouldn’t work with me and I had to go. I couldn’t seem to impress any one with my superior skill as bottle washer enough to command a promotion.” He gave Sydney a crooked smile that was not all mirth.
“That’s because it was work that needed no thought.”
“That isn’t all. There was no one to take an interest in me, to show me what to do, and how, as Mrs. Schmitz does. And more than that, no one had the kind of work suited to me.”
“I reckon that has the most to do with it,” Sydney acquiesced.
“Now this playing at the moving picture houses—that’s work I ought to do well. My father paid for my lessons for years—he hated to do it, for he didn’t want me to be a musician, but mother insisted. Mrs. Schmitz has helped me to make something from all that training.”
“A good friend does help a lot, doesn’t he?”
“Wonderfully. A little more than six weeks altogether I’ve played, most of the time evenings only, and I’ve made enough to buy all the clothes I need, to pay Mrs. Schmitz a little for my first month’s board and nursing, all she’ll let me pay. I’m in school, I’m learning a business—no matter if it is slowly—I have good health, am invited to join the Fussers, and—have a chance to play with Miss Carter. Gee! If any one had shown me all those pictures the night before I broke in here I’d have thought he was dippy.” There was a happy, boyish lilt in his tones, and he began to whistle as he stirred the steaming fruit.
Carefully into the glasses, as Sydney had seen Mrs. Schmitz put away her jellies, they dipped the marmalade, and afterward washed up the dishes and put the kitchen in order, rather proud of their morning’s work. Then they went to the nursery to help in the potting, the making of new beds, the “slipping,” or whatever work was most pressing.
That day and night they did little cooking. Anyone could live well more than one day on warmed-up things at Mrs. Schmitz’s home. Early in the evening Max wrote and posted his acceptance of the invitation to have his name proposed for the Fussers.
They went to bed early. Neither would acknowledge how lonely he was without Mrs. Schmitz; though each knew the other felt it.
The next afternoon a cheery voice came over the line.
“Have you all been well efer since I left you?” Mrs. Schmitz inquired. “It seems oneyear already. I come tonight; in about two hours now.”
“Let’s surprise her!” Max proposed. “Have a bang-up dinner. You boss, and I’ll help.”
Sydney agreed readily and both went at it.
“We’ll serve it in courses. I’ll wait on you two, and we’ll make her think of old days, when she had servants at every turn.”
“How do you know she had them? Did she tell you?” Sydney speculated upon her confidences to Max, thinking they must have been much greater than any she had given him. But Max’s laughing reply disarmed him.
“She’s scarcely mentioned her past life to me; but can’t you see? She betrays at every turn the fact of her gentle breeding and familiarity with luxury.”
Sydney saw that it was because like knows like that Max understood these things.
He set the table with great ceremony, puttingon all the silver he could find, meanwhile suggesting many unusual dishes from which they selected those they knew how to prepare or those that “sounded easy.” Max brought the nicest linen, and from the greenhouses fragrant flowers, arranging a center piece that Sydney admired, secretly envying Max his skill.
Mrs. Schmitz came like a joyous, fragrant summer wind. She seemed to bring life to a dead house; sweetness, goodness; in short, motherhood.
She laughed, exclaimed, kissed each boy on the cheek—and Sydney blushed with bashfulness. She took off her hat and ran to the dining room, saying she must start dinner. Max caught her back and himself took off her coat. Then she started toward the side door that led to the nursery, and Sydney interrupted her there.
“Dinner’s most ready,” he announced with importance.