VII
VII
When he came downstairs the next morning, Mrs. Brown regarded his strained and haggard face with profound interest, and she observed to one of the old ladies that she believed Mr. Anderson was “coming down with something.”
He made inquiries about Miss Selby’s health, and obtained very vague and confused replies, which he interpreted as people jaded and despondent from a bad night are apt to interpret things. He went into the dining room, but he could eat no breakfast. Who could, sitting alone at a little table, opposite an empty chair? Then he went out again.
It was a rainy day, but that was so fitting that he scarcely noticed it. He remembered having seen a greenhouse not far away, and he went there. It was not open on Sunday, but he made it be open. He banged so loud and so long on the door that at last an old man came out of a near-by cottage.
“It’s a case of pneumonia!” said the young man, fiercely. “I’ve got to have some flowers.”
So he was admitted to the greenhouse, and he bought everything there was, and then sat down at a little desk to write a card. He never forgot the writing of that card, the rain drumming down on the glass roof, the palms and rubber trees standing about him, and the hot, moist, steamy smell like a jungle. He never forgot what he wrote, or how he felt while he wrote it.
But there would be no use in repeating what he wrote, for nobody ever read that card.
He put it with the flowers, and set off home. When he got there he gave the bouquet, very sodden now, to Mrs. Brown’s servant, and said to her:
“Please give this to Miss Selby. Give it to her yourself; don’t send it.”
Then he went up to his own room and locked the door. And the room was all filled with the gray light of a rainy day.
The clang of the dinner bell startled him; he jumped up, scowling, and muttered: “Oh, shut up!” But, just the same, he had to obey it. He had to go downstairs, and had to sit at the little table.
Scarcely had he sat down when he saw Miss Selby enter the room—Miss Selby in a new dark green linen dress, looking unusually pretty, and not even pale.
He arose; he was pale enough. He couldn’t speak. She must have received that card; she must have read it. As she glanced at him, he saw the color deepen in her cheeks, and her smile was uncertain. She was so lovely.
“I thought—” he began.
She sat down, and he did, too. Again their eyes met.
“It’s a miserable day,” she observed.
He didn’t think so. He thought it was the most beautiful day that had ever dawned; and he might have said something of the sort if he had not just at that moment seen an awful thing. He stared, appalled, almost unbelieving.
The waitress was coming across the room, carrying his immense bouquet.
“No!” he cried, half rising.
But it was too late; she had come; she presented the bouquet to Miss Selby with a pleased and kindly smile.
“For you!” she announced.
Every one in the room was watching with deep interest.
“See here!” said the young man, in a low and unsteady voice. “I—I only got them because I thought—they—she told me—you had pneumonia. I thought— Give them back to her. Throw them away! I—I’m sorry—”
“Sorry I haven’t got pneumonia?” asked Miss Selby. “It’s too bad, but perhaps I can manage it some other time.”
Her tone and her smile hurt him terribly. He wished that he could snatch the flowers away from her. She was laughing at him again; every one in the room was laughing at him.
And it didn’t occur to him that Miss Selby couldn’t possibly know how he felt, but was a very young and inexperienced creature who was also hurt by his strange manner of giving bouquets. She thought he wanted her to know that, unless she were very ill, he wouldn’t dream of giving her flowers. She was even more hurt than he was.
“Will you bring a vase, please, Kate?” she asked.
Katie did bring a vase, and the hateful and offensive flowers were set up between them, like a hedge. He leaned over, and with his penknife deliberately cut off the card tied to the stems and put it into his pocket. And not one more word did they speak all through that dreadful meal.
VIII
VIII
In his pain and anger and humiliation he turned blindly to Mrs. Granger, the charming little lady who never laughed at any one. He couldn’t get to her fast enough; he strode on through the mud in the steady downpour of rain, simply longing to see her, and to hear her soft, gracious voice, and to be within the shelter of her friendly home.
That card was still in his pocket; he took it out, and as he walked along, tore it into bits and strewed them behind him. They fell into puddles, where they would lie to be trampled on, those words he had written—a suitable end for them.
He pushed open the gate of Mrs. Granger’s garden, and was very much comforted by Sandy’s ecstatic welcome. Dogsdidknow. They appreciated it when you meant well; they were not suspicious, not mocking. When you gave them something they accepted it in good faith.
He went on toward the house, walking rapidly, impatient to get in there to the gentle serenity of Mrs. Granger’s presence. He rang the bell, and directly the parlor-maid opened the door he knew he was not going to have peace and solace.
Something had gone wrong. He could hear Leroy’s voice raised in a loud, forlorn bellow, and Mrs. Granger’s voice, tearful and trembling, and Captain MacGregor’s voice, with a slightly exasperated note in it. He entered the sitting room, and there was Mrs. Granger, weeping, and Leroy sobbing. Sandy began to bark.
“Oh, Mr. Anderson!” cried Mrs. Granger. “How can you let him do that? Oh, please keep him quiet!”
Anderson put the dog outside, and then returned.
“But what’s the matter?” he asked.
“Leroy’s been bitten by a m-mad d-dog!” cried Mrs. Granger.
“Wasnota mad dog!” Leroy asserted.
“See! Here on his leg!” she went on.
“And he never told me! It happened late yesterday!”
“There’s no reason to assume that the dog was mad,” interrupted the captain.
“It was! Animals adore Leroy! Only a rabid dog would dream of biting him!”
“Wasnota rabid dog,” Leroy insisted sullenly.
“Well, see here!” said Anderson. “If you think—if you’re worried—why not have his leg cauterized?”
“Oh, I can’t!” she cried. “My child burned with red-hot irons!”
Leroy began to bellow at this inhuman suggestion, and Mrs. Granger clasped him in her arms.
“Don’t cry, darling!” she sobbed.
“Mother won’t let them hurt you!” And she looked at Captain MacGregor and Mr. Anderson with unutterable reproach.
They were silent for a time.
“Well, see here!” Anderson suggested. “If you could find the dog, and—keep it under observation for a few days—”
This idea appealed to the child.
“Sure!” he said. “I’ll find him, mom. You just let me alone, and I’ll find him for you, all right!”
“You said you couldn’t remember what the dog was like.”
“Yes, I know. But I remember the street where it was, an’ I’ll go back there tomorrow,” Leroy declared. “I could stay out o’ school jist in the mornin’ and jist—ferret it out. I got lots of clews. An’ I bet you—”
“I’ll go with you now,” said Anderson.
The agitated mother didn’t even thank him.
“Perhaps that would be a good idea,” she admitted. “You might try it, anyhow, and see.”
So Leroy was fortified against the rain in oilskins and rubbers, and he and Mr. Anderson set forth together in quest of the dog. The small boy was highly pleased with the adventure; he did not often have an opportunity to frolic in the rain, and he made the most of it, caracoling before Anderson like a sportive colt. Sandy, too, would have enjoyed it, but he was tied up.
“One dog at a time,” said Anderson.
“Now, young feller, let’s hear about it.”
“Aw, it was nothin’,” Leroy replied with admirable nonchalance. “Jist a dog ran up an’ bit me. I mean, I was runnin’, an’ I guess I stepped on his paw an’ he bit me.”
“Did you tell your mother you stepped on the dog?”
“I dunno what all I told her,” Leroy admitted. “Anyway, what’s it matter? Had to do somethin’ to keep her quiet.”
Anderson considered that it was not his place to rebuke this child, and he let the disrespect pass.
“Where did it happen?”
“Long ways from here, all right!” said the boy, triumphantly.
He spoke no more than the truth. It was a very long way. They went on and on, down long, quiet suburban streets, lined with dripping trees and houses with no signs of life. They went on and on.
At first Leroy was talkative and cheerful, and found great satisfaction in splashing in puddles, but as time went on he grew silent, and tramped through the puddles more as a matter of principle than through enjoyment.
“What was the name of the street?” asked Anderson.
“Well, I don’t know,” the boy answered, “but I guess I’d know it if I saw it. Somewheres around here, it was. Might be around the next corner.”
They went round the corner, and there was a candy store.
“That’s it!” Leroy announced. “It’s open, too.”
Mr. Anderson said nothing, but walked steadily forward, and Leroy trotted by his side.
“They sure did have good lollypops in there,” observed Leroy. “Best I ever tasted.”
Still no response from the adult, possessor of all power and wealth. Leroy sighed. And Anderson turned to look at him, and discovered a wet and not very clean face upturned to his, with brown eyes very like Sandy’s. Poor little kid, tramping along so bravely in his oilskins! He looked tired, too.
“All right!” said Anderson. “We’d better go back and get a few lollypops.”
After that Leroy went on, much encouraged in spirit.
“Here’s the street!” he cried at last. “The lil dog ran out o’ one of those houses—I don’t know which one.”
Mr. Anderson rang the bell of the first house. The occupants owned no dog, never had, and never intended so to do. In the second house he was confronted by a very disagreeable old lady. She admitted that she had a dog, and she said, with unction, that her dog could and would bite any persons unlawfully trespassing on her property, as was any dog’s right.
“I dare say Rover did bite the boy,” she suggested, “if he came in here trampling and stampling all over my flower beds. And serve him right, I say!”
“I did not!” said Leroy, indignantly. “And that’s not the dog, Mr. Anderson. I can see him out the window. He’s a police dog, and my dog was a little one.”
They proceeded to the next house. Nobody came to the door at all. There was only one more house left on the street.
“Well, I hope the right dog’s in there,” said Leroy, “but—” He paused, then he laid his hand on Anderson’s sleeve. “Most any lil dog woulddo,” he said, very low, “forher.”
Mr. Anderson was about to protest sternly against such a dishonest and immoral suggestion, but somehow he didn’t. The child’s hand looked so very small, and his manner was so trusting. He said nothing at all, simply walked up the path to this last house.
He rang the bell, and the door was opened with startling suddenness by a little man with spectacles and a neatly pointed white beard. He looked like a professor, and he was a professor—of Romance Languages—and because of his scholarly unworldliness, he had been cheated and swindled so many times that he had become fiercely suspicious. He glared.
“This boy has been bitten by a dog,” Mr. Anderson explained. “And we want to find the dog, to see—”
“Ha!” said the little man. “And what has this to do with me, pray?”
“I thought perhaps you had a dog here—”
The professor folded his arms.
“Very well!” said he. “I have. And what of it?”
“If you’ll let us see the dog—”
“Aha!” said the professor. “I see! A blackmailing scheme! You wish to see my dog. You will then cause this child to identify the dog as the one which bit him, in order that you may collect damages. A ve-ry pret-ty little scheme, I must admit!”
Anderson had had a singularly trying day, and he was very weary of this quest, anyhow.
“Nothing of the sort!” he said curtly. “If you’ll be good enough to let us see your dog—or if you’ll give me your assurance that the animal is perfectly healthy—”
“Don’t you give him a penny, Joseph!” cried a quavering female voice from the dark depths of the hall.
The professor laughed ironically.
“Ve-ry pret-ty!” he repeated. “But you may as well understand, once and for all, that I absolutely refuse to allow you to see my dog, or to give you any assurance of any kind whatsoever.”
And nothing could move him. Mr. Anderson argued with him with as much tact and politeness as he could manage just at that time, but in vain.
“See here!” he said at last. “Let me see the dog, and if it’s the right one, I’llbuyit. Now will you believe—”
But the professor would not believe until Anderson had signed a document which he drew up, solemnly promising that, if the dog were identified by Leroy as the dog which had bitten him, he, Winchell Anderson, would purchase the said dog for the sum of twenty-five dollars.
Then, and then only, was the dog brought into the room. And Leroy instantly, loudly and fervently asserted that it wasthedog. By this time Mr. Anderson was perfectly willing to believe him. He paid the money and stooped to pick up the dog, a small animal, of what might be called the spaniel type.
It snapped at him. He could not pick it up, because on the next attempt his hand was bitten. At last, upon his paying in advance for the telephone call, the professor summoned a taxi. Mr. Anderson could not get the dog into the taxi, but Leroy had no trouble at all with it. It seemed to like Leroy.
They rode home in silence, because every time Anderson uttered a word the animal growled and struggled in the boy’s arms.
They reached Mrs. Granger’s house, and while Leroy ran ahead with the dog in his arms, Anderson delayed a minute to pay the taxi with the last bill remaining in his pockets. Then he followed. It had been a costly and a wearisome quest, but Mrs. Granger’s relief and gratitude would be sufficient reward.
In the doorway of the sitting room he paused a moment, smiling to himself at the scene before him. Leroy was down on his knees, playing with this quite unexpected and delightful new dog, and Mrs. Granger knelt beside him, one arm about her son’s neck.
Captain MacGregor was there, but in a corner, so that one need not consider him in the picture—the peaceful lamp-lit room, the gentle mother and her child.
“I’m very glad—” he began, when, at the sound of his voice, the dog sprang up and rushed at him, and was caught by Leroy just in the nick of time. He growled threateningly.
“I guess I’d better tie him up,” said Leroy. “He doesn’t like Mr. Anderson.”
“Why, how very strange!” Mrs. Granger exclaimed.
Leroy did tie him up to the leg of a table.
“But why doesn’t the poor little doggie like Mr. Anderson?” pursued Mrs. Granger, and there was something in her voice that dismayed the young man.
“I don’t know,” he replied, briefly.
“It’s very strange,” she remarked. “Very! But sit down, Mr. Anderson. Perhaps you were just a little bit rough in handling him—without meaning to be.”
“No, he wasn’t!” Leroy asserted, indignantly. “He—”
At this point the dog broke loose, flew at Anderson, and would have bitten him if Anderson had not prevented him—with his foot.
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Granger. “Oh, Mr. Anderson, how could you! You kicked the poor little doggie!”
“I—I simply pushed him—with my foot,” said Anderson. “He’s a bad-tempered little brute.”
“Dogs are never bad-tempered unless they’re badly treated,” Mrs. Granger declared, with severity. “They always know a friend from a foe.”
“All right!” the young man agreed. “Then I’m afraid I’m a foe.” He turned toward the door. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I’ll be getting along. I’m—I’m tired. Good evening!”
“Good evening!” said Mrs. Granger and Captain MacGregor in unison.
She let him go! He opened the front door and stepped out into the rain again, and never in his life had he felt so bitter, so disappointed, so cruelly, intolerably depressed. After all he had done, she let him go like this! Not even a word of thanks. Poor little doggie, eh?
Halfway down the path he heard a shout; it was Leroy, rushing after him bareheaded through the rain.
“Say!” he shouted. “You’re—”
Words failed him, and he stretched out his hand, a rough, warm little hand, wet from the rain, sticky from lollypops. Yet Anderson was very glad to clasp it tight.
“Good-by, old fellow!” he said.
“Good-by, old fellow, yourself!” answered Leroy.
And he sat on the gatepost, watching, and waving his hand as Anderson went down the road in the rainy dusk.
IX
IX
Mr. Anderson had finished with women forever. And this resolve gave to his face a new and not unbecoming sternness; the old ladies noticed it directly he entered the dining room that evening. Miss Selby noticed it, too, but pretended not to; she smiled that same chilly, polite smile, and said never a word—neither did he.
Supper was set before them, and they began to eat, still silent. And then she spoke suddenly.
“What’s the matter with your hand, Mr. Anderson?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing; thanks!” he answered.
Again a silence. But she could not keep her eyes off that clumsily-tied bandage on his hand.
“I wish you’d tell me!” she said.
It was an entirely different tone, but he was no longer to be trifled with like that. He smiled, coldly.
“No doubt you’ll be very much amused,” he remarked, “to learn that I’ve been bitten by a dog!”
He waited.
“Why don’t you laugh, Miss Selby?” he inquired. “It’s funny enough, isn’t it? After I said that dogs always know. It’s what you might call ‘biting irony,’ isn’t it?”
“I—don’t want to laugh,” said she. “I’m—just sorry.”
He looked at her.
“Miss Selby!” he cried.
“I took your flowers upstairs,” she said. “I think—they’re the prettiest—the prettiest flowers—I—ever saw.”
“Miss Selby!” he exclaimed again. “See here! Please! When I thought you were ill—”
“I only had a little cold.”
“I wrote a note,” he said. “I tore it up. I—I wish I hadn’t.”
Miss Selby was looking down at her plate.
“I wish you hadn’t, too,” she agreed.
The old ladies had all finished their suppers, but not one of them left the room. They were watching Miss Selby and Mr. Anderson. Surely not a remarkable spectacle, simply a nice looking young man and a pretty young girl, sitting, quite speechless, now, at a little table.
Yet one old lady actually wiped tears from her eyes, and every one of them felt an odd and tender little stir at the heart, as if the perfume of very old memories had blown in at the opened window.
“Let’s go out on the veranda,” said Mr. Anderson to Miss Selby, and they did.
The rain was coming down steadily, and the wind sighed in the pines. But it was a June night, a summer night, a young night.
Not an old lady set foot on the veranda that evening, not another human being heard what Miss Selby from Boston, and Mr. Anderson from New York had to say to each other.
Only Mrs. Brown, opening the door for a breath of fresh air, did happen to hear him saying something about the “best sort of paper for wedding announcements.”
Transcriber’s NotesThis story appeared in the March 1926 issue ofMunsey’s MagazineThe cover image was created by the transcriber and placed in the public domain.
Transcriber’s Notes