SKIPPY woke with a blood curdling shriek and landed sprawling in the middle of the floor, his legs caught in the sheets, his head smothered in the comforter, a convulsive grip on the bolster, which he was desperately trying to stifle when Snorky flung himself out of bed and rushed to the rescue.
"Hold him back. Help Snorky! Hold him!"
"Hold what, who?" said Snorky, pursuing the smothered figure of Skippy, who was still wrestling with the bolster. "Wake up. It's me! It's Snorky."
Skippy's grip relaxed and presently his terror-stricken eyes emerged from the comforter.
"Holy Maria! In another minute he'd have had me in the electric chair," he said, wiping the clammy perspiration from his forehead.
"Nightmare eh?"
"Ugh! Gee! Moses!"
"Too much cigarette."
"Golly, what a life I've been leading!" said Skippy, referring to the dream. "Bar rooms and gambling dens, dark lanterns, hold-ups, racetracks and—"
"Wake up, wake up!"
"It's all in the dream," said Skippy sulkily. Then he remembered that all through the hideous phantasmagoria, in the smoky mists of low gambling dens, in the drizzle of midnight conclaves, across the sepulchral silences of leaden prisons, there had flitted the beatific vision of an angel with velvety eyes and the softest of lisps.
"Well, go on," said Snorky.
"Can't remember any more," said Skippy. Her name must be shielded at every cost.
He had determined to be a lost character, a wayward son, a gentleman sport, with nerves of steel. The sentimental values appealed to his imagination. It gave a deep romantic tinge to the too matter-of-fact freckled nose and hungry mouth. Besides the end was noble and the end was Miss Jennie Tupper.
The new rôle of course had certain exigencies. To be an interesting reprobate and engage Miss Jenny Tupper's sentimental proclivities for redemption, it was necessary to present some concrete evidence of a sinful life. He was shockingly deficient in all the habits that lead to the gallows. Desperate characters he remembered (recalling the Doctor's terrific sermons on the Demon Cigarettes which are the nails in the coffins of mothers) usually had their fingers stained with telltale traces of the nicotine which was gnawing at their lungs.
He ensconced himself by the fireplace (out ofdeference to Snorky's estimate of the governor) and taking care not to inhale, smoked a cigarette to the end. But the result was unsatisfactory. He burned his fingers over the distasteful performance but acquired nothing in the way of a stain. He smoked a second and a third and then seized by an inspiration carefully rubbed in the moist ends.
When they walked back from the beach that morning Miss Jennie Tupper lost no time in opening up the fascinating subject of the sinful one's reclamation. Skippy had just brought forth a cigarette, tapped it professionally on his wrist and said:
"Don't mind, do you?"
"I do mind," said Miss Tupper severely. "Juth look at your hand. It ith thaking."
Skippy extended a palsied hand with the second and third fingers yellowed like a Chinaman's.
"It's worse this morning," he said carelessly with the sigh of one who contemplates stoically the approaching end.
"It's tewible, tewible to let a habit make a slave of you like that! At your age too! How did it ever get such a dweadful hold on you?"
"I began as a boy," said Skippy slowly, for he had still to work out the story. "You know how it is. Fast company, money in your pockets, no one caring. That's it, that's how it was."
He raised the cigarette to his lips.
"Don't smoke it, pleath."
"Just one, just half a one," said Skippy with a haunted look. "My Lord, it's been an hour—"
"Pleath for my thake, Jack."
He hesitated, swallowed hard, made one or two false gestures, and flung away the cigarette.
"If you ask it like that," he said huskily.
"I'm going to athk more," said Miss Tupper with shining eyes. "I'm going to athk you to pwomith never to touch another thigawette or another card."
"I can't," said Skippy. "It's gone too far, it's beyond me."
"But it'll kill you, Jack," said Miss Tupper, alarm in the beautiful eyes.
"I couldn't promise. I couldn't keep it," said Skippy, who had no intention of relinquishing his dramatic advantage, "but I'll make a fight for it. If you want me to—Jennie. If you really care?"
The moon ripple and the fragrance of the honeysuckle were no longer about them. Miss Tupper in the calmer light of the day considered her words with due regard to precept and standard.
"I'll be vewy glad, indeed, to help you if I can," she said properly. "We should alwayth help ath much ath we can, shouldn't we?"
"How coldly you say it!" said Skippy indignantly.
"But Jack," said Miss Tupper, alarmed at the tragic look on his face. "Juth think how little I know you."
"You're quite right," said Skippy with magnificent generosity. "I don't deserve more and I had no right to say that. Well it was white of you even to care this much." He took off his hat and extended his hand.
"What are you doing?"
"The only square thing by you," said Skippy with a perfect Bret Harte manner. "It's been bully to know you and I'll never forget about that stud. Good-bye."
"Do you want to make me vewy vewy unhappy?" said Miss Jennie with a reproachful look in the velvety eyes. Skippy returned the hat at once to his head.
"I'll do anything, anything for you," he said huskily.
Now there are two stages in the process of returning the wandering sheep to the fold and not the least interesting is the period of investigation. Miss Tupper had worked in missions with enthusiasm but there was something in the present case which staggered her imagination. How could a boy of sixteen, brought up with all the advantages of a home and good influences, have sunk so deeply into the mire of evil? How could one be so depraved and yetlook at you with such an open, winning smile? Was he inherently bad or just weak, just reaching out blindly for some good influence to set him right?
"If I can help you," she said, leading the way to a little summer house on the parsonage and shuddering as she glanced down at the nicotine stained fingers, "and I do want to help you—I'm several years older than you are—you muth tell me evewything."
"I will, I want to," said Skippy, summoning up all the powers of his imagination.
"You know," said Miss Tupper, a little embarrassed, "I heard, I couldn't help hearing all you thaid that night on the boat."
"You did. . . . Good heavens!"
"Perhaps you don't want to tell me."
"I might as well make a clean breast of it," said Skippy, wondering where the exigencies of the situation would lead him.
"I'm afwaid Jack," said Miss Tupper sympathetically, "that your fwiend Arthur Gween ith not a vewy good influenth for you."
"Snorky?" said Skippy momentarily surprised.
"He theems to have vewy low athothiations," said Miss Tupper earnestly.
"You mean racing and jockeys and all that sort of stuff?" said Skippy, willing to follow the line of least resistance for a while. "Oh, Arthur isn't half bad."
"I don't think you thee him ath he weally ith," said Miss Tupper firmly. "No I don't think he ith at all the pwoper perthon for you to be with."
"Couldn't I help him?" said Skippy craftily. "We should always try to help, shouldn't we?"
"You would have to be vewy vewy stwong for that, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, of course," said Skippy, with his mind on the delicate arch of Miss Tupper's little foot.
Miss Tupper, who was expectantly set for an interesting confession, was somewhat disappointed at the lengthy delay.
"I'm afwaid your pawenth gave you too much money," she said finally. "It ith tho often that, ithn't it?"
There were some things that were too much even for Skippy's imagination. In the present case it absolutely refused to follow such a lead.
"No, it wasn't that," he said slowly. After all it is only the first one hundred thousand lies that are difficult. Skippy's hesitation was brief. He remembered the episode of the fictitious Tina Tanner that had so often served him in delicate moments.
"I almost made a wreck of my life," he began, frowning terrifically.
"Tell me," said Miss Tupper eagerly.
"She wasn't a bad sort; only,—well stage life is different."
"Stage life! You mean—"
"She was an actress," said Skippy nodding.
"But how—"
"I ran away from home. They never understood me. Family fight. Swore I'd never set foot in the old house again. Cut for the West. You get to see a rough side of life like that you know, mining camps, mule drivers, lumber men. Good sorts," he added reflectively, "but wild, very wild. You couldn't understand."
"But your father and mother?" said Miss Tupper, wide-eyed and thoroughly thrilled.
"I'd rather not say anything against them," said Skippy magnanimously.
"Poor boy!"
"I've kept pretty straight considering," said Skippy, who did not wish to paint the picture too black.
"And the girl?" said Miss Tupper, who could not restrain a perfectly feminine curiosity.
"Tina? She wanted me to go on the stage with her," said Skippy, who had now told the story a sufficient number of times to begin to believe in it. "It was touch and go. Well, I didn't. That's all."
"What a dweadful thide of life you've theen," said Miss Tupper, appalled. "At your age, too!"
"I say, I never expected to tell any one this."
"But aren't you glad you did? Don't youfeel better now that you've told the twuth!" said Miss Tupper enthusiastically.
Skippy thought this over and acknowledged finally that confession was a relief.
"Now pwomise never, never to gamble, smoke, or dwink. Pwomise, Jack. You don't know how much better you'll feel."
"I'm not strong on signing pledges and that sort of thing," said Skippy cautiously.
"Oh no, juth pwomise."
"For how long?"
"Until you're twenty-one."
"I think it's better to promise what you're sure you can carry out, don't you? It has a better effect," said Skippy craftily. "Tell you what I'll do. I'll make a promise for a year. Only there's one thing."
"What's that?"
"I'll promise to try and cut out the smoking, but it will have to be little by little."
"Jack!"
"My nerves won't stand it," said Skippy, bringing forth the nicotine-splotched hand. "I'll do my best. I will, I'll do it for you. I'll cut down to a box a day."
"A box?"
"Ten cigarettes, only ten, but I must have ten," said Skippy hungrily. "But Jennie, you'll have to help a lot."
"You'll pwomise then?"
"I pwomise," said Skippy, falling into the lisp.
He extended his hand and profiting by the solemnity of the moment held it with the softest and gentlest of thrills, while he said slowly:
"Ten cigarettes a day. No more. That's my solemn promise."
"But the gambling?" said Miss Jennie, disengaging her hand.
"That's another promise," said Skippy, taking her hand again. "I promise for the space of one year, never to sit in a game of poker for money, never to shoot craps with Tacks Brooker or Happy Mather. . . ."
"Ith thith nethethawy?" said Miss Tupper blushing and seeking to free her hand from the not too painful embrace.
"I want to be sure of everything," said Skippy retaining tight hold. "Never to frequent race tracks, that's a promise too, or to bet on the ponies, or to go into pool rooms."
"That's quite enough," said Miss Tupper, glancing nervously up towards the veranda.
"But I haven't promised to give up drinking and all that sort of thing," said Skippy enthusiastically.
Miss Tupper, in whom a slight suspicion was beginning to grow as to the exact motives back of the sudden conversion, hesitated, but finally put forth her hand a third time.
"I promise," said Skippy, drawing a deep breath and sailing away on perfumed clouds to an invisible choir. "I want to make this somethingterrific; it's the most important you know. I promise for the space of one year,—so long as you care enough to answer my letters, that's only fair you know—I promise never to touch a drop of beer or ale, or whiskey, or rum, or brandy, or sherry, or port, or. . ."
"Alcohol in any form," said Miss Tupper, the color of the rambler.
"In any form. So help me God," said Skippy slowly.
"There," said Miss Tupper, somewhat thrilled herself. "And now don't you feel better, much, much better for having done it?"
And Skippy answered truthfully,
"You bet I feel better."
Skippy, indeed, would have sworn to anything just for the look that lighted up the velvety eyes in the joy of salvation. It is doubtful if he even heard half of the program of his future existence. There was something irresistible in the softness of her eyes and the fascinating lisp. He was face to face at last with a good influence. He had met, not the type of girl that men play with lightly or madly for a month or a day, but a woman, the kind rough coarse men look up to as to a polar star, the kind of woman you think of winning after years of struggle, that keeps men straight and their thoughts on higher things, the kind of woman that pulls a drunkard out of the gutter, reclaimshim and makes a genius out of the wreck. He would be saved by her, he was bound he would—no matter what sacrifices he would have to make to keep in proper sinful condition.
SNORKY GREEN had experienced so many shocks in his intimate contact with his chum's imagination that he had come to believe the future could hold no surprises for him. But that evening Skippy after a long searching through bookcases said with a worried air:
"I say, Snorky, where do you keep the Bible?"
"The—the Bible?" said Snorky faintly.
"Sure, the Bible."
Snorky's first thought was that Skippy must be the victim of a secret malady and ready to make his will. His next was even more alarming.
"You're not thinking of anything rash, are you, old horse?"
"What the deuce?"
"You and Jennie?"
"What the Sam Blazes are you driving at?"
"Thought you were looking up the marriage service," said Snorky facetiously.
"Shucks, no. Nothing of the sort. I just, I just want to look up a reference."
"What reference?"
"It's of a personal nature, very personal," said Skippy.
At the end of an hour's search Snorky finally produced a Bible from the cook and watched Skippy turn through the pages in a perplexed manner.
"I've watched that coot do some queer things," he thought, scratching his ear, "but I'll be jiggswiggered if I can figure out what he's up to now."
At the end of half an hour Skippy looked up nonplussed.
"What do you know about the Bible, anyhow?"
"I know a lot," said Snorky astutely.
"Where do you get the ten commandments, anyhow?"
Snorky repeated the question, more and more perplexed.
"Why it's in Genesis isn't it?"
"Naw, I looked all through that."
"How about Solomon? He was wise to everything."
"Who was the guy who went up to Heaven? Perhaps he got 'em."
"Let's ask the cook."
Which was done.
"Now what in the Sam Hill has Skippy to do with the ten commandments or the ten commandments with Skippy?" said Snorky, observing the extraordinary concentration on hischum's face as he considered them carefully one by one. "Perhaps the heat has hit him and he's going in for religion."
The explanation of Skippy's eccentric taste was a perfectly simple one. No sooner had he departed from the lovely presence of Miss Jennie Tupper with only the vaguest idea of what he had pledged himself not to do, but with the liveliest and most disturbing memory of the softest of hands, than he had bitterly repented the prodigal manner in which he had thrown away his opportunities.
"Why the deuce didn't I save something out," he said to himself angrily, with a sudden recollection of moonlight nights to come. "My aunt's cat's pants, but I certainly went to sleep."
From the parsonage to the Greens', from the soup to the watermelon, but one idea obsessed him: how was he to find something else to swear off? For instinct, which supplants reason in such sentimental voyages, warned him that to such a professional reformer as Miss Jennie Tupper his sole fascination lay in a lively display of original sin.
The more he thought it over the more depressed he had become. The truth was that he had outrageously neglected his opportunities and had little to offer. All he could do was to fall back on his imagination and such knowledge of the world as returned to him from anextensive preparation in modern fiction. The trouble with his imagination was it worked too spontaneously. How much better he could have done with a little more preparation!
"Gee, I never knew a hand could give you such a fuzzy feeling," he said with a heavy sigh.
It was then that he had thought of the Bible and the ten commandments with much resulting perplexity to Snorky.
"Well, I'll be eternally dog-switched," he said all at once. "I never would have believed it!"
"Believed what?" said Snorky, who was waiting patiently.
"Say, these are the ten commandments,aren'tthey?"
"Sure they are!"
"Genuine, bona-fide, patent applied for, no imitations, only original ten commandments?"
"Keerect."
"Well do you know there isn't a thing in them about cigarettes, or booze or penny-ante. Not a word!"
"Honest?"
"Read 'em yourself," said Skippy indignantly. "It's all about being nice to your neighbor and sitting still on Sunday."
"No!"
"Fact!" said Skippy, whose real irritation was caused by the fact that the ten commandmentsdid not afford him any suggestion in his new predicament.
Suddenly Snorky slapped his shoulder with a resounding whack.
"I'm on."
"Ouch! On to what?"
"Own up! I'm in the same box too," said Snorky with a smirk.
"You mean?"
"Sure, Margarita's trying the reform racket on me too!"
"Oh, she is?" said Skippy, who did not like sharing the honors of a stellar rôle.
"Yep, and you must have been laying it on strong for Margarita's been asking all sorts of questions about you."
"Snorky, go the limit—make it strong and stronger," said Skippy, brightening up.
"Honest?"
"The limit!"
"I get you."
Skippy took a few steps towards the door and reflected.
"When I say the limit—" he said doubtfully.
"Leave it to me."
"There are some things though."
"Don't worry—trust me."
"Well, however, I say,—don't get rash."
"Keep on trusting me," said Snorky with an airy wave of his hand.
Something in the repetition struck Skippywhere he was the weakest, in that wholesouled faith which should sanctify the friendship of a lifetime. The more he considered it the less he liked it.
"I have made a mistake," he said frowning. "Snorky has no sense of discretion."
MISS JENNIE TUPPER at the end of a week acknowledged to herself with an uneasy sense of her own shortcomings that the task of keeping Mr. Skippy Bedelle in the straight and narrow path was one beyond her limited experience. It was not that she had lost confidence in her own efficiency, but that she anxiously asked herself if she could afford the time and the effort. Skippy was all for the better life and yielded at once to her suggestions. The trouble was in his staying put, as it is colloquially expressed. Each evening the cure was complete, but each morning the conversation had to begin all over. The hold that his past life had taken upon him was simply staggering and the hankering for the excitement of the gambling table or the struggle against the narcotic tyranny of the demon cigarette was such that at times she had to sit long moments holding his storm-racked and shaking hand while he fought bravely against the maddening appetite! And after a week of the closest personal attention he had only cut down the allowance of cigarettes to seven a day!
Now Miss Tupper was upright and God-fearingand self-respecting, and though there was a difference of three years all in her favor, she, unlike some of her sex, scorned the use of her personal attractions, simply for the sake of a personal vanity, nor was she a collector of male scalps. She was in a moral quandary of the most metaphysical complexity. What should she do: shirk her evident moral responsibility and allow a bravely battling human soul to sink into iniquity or continue and permit a most susceptible youngster to immerse himself deeper and deeper into a hopeless passion?
Each day she came to the task of regenerating Mr. Skippy Bedelle resolved to conduct the proceedings on the grounds of the strictest formality, and each evening she admitted to herself the failure. Yet could she honestly blame herself? She gave him her female sewing-society pin to wear not as a personal token but solely as a daily reminder of the promises he had made to himself. She gave him a tie, a colored handkerchief and the sweater she had just finished for another destination. But each was given as a reward and marked a triumphant progress in his fight to acquire a final mastery over himself. When, however, Skippy brought up the question of a photograph, a crisis was reached.
"I have never never given my picture to any man," she said firmly, and the absence of sibilants made it doubly impressive. "And I nevernever will. Bethideth, you know I would have to tell my mother."
They were sitting in the summer house at that romantic hour when the first day stars arrive with the mosquitoes. It was always at such moments that the craving was strongest. She had begun by holding his wrist in a strong encircling clasp but the sight of his twitching contorted fingers had been too much for her sensibilities and her hand had slipped into a more intimate clasp.
"After all he's only a boy," she had said to herself.
"Jennie! how can you—don't you—do you realize all I'm doing—just for you?" said Skippy, whose voice at such moments was not under control.
"No, no, you ought to do it for yourself, becauth it ith the right thing to do, becauth it will make you feel stwonger and finer."
"Nope, it's you or nothing."
"Jack, you muthn't thay thuch thingth. I muthn't let you!"
"It is the first time I've ever cared what became of me," said Skippy lugubriously. "You don't know what that pin means to me."
"But—"
"Do you realize what I'm going back to? Old associations, old habits and a long, long, fight! And then there's Snorky. I've got to save him too."
"But Jack—"
"I'm not asking for anything more than just your picture, nothing more,—nothing that commits you to anything! But I do want that, I must have that! I want to rise up every morning and remember and, and I want to come back every night and know that I can face your eyes," said Skippy warming up. "I say it must be a full face, not a profile, you know."
"I haven't thaid I would," said Miss Jennie in dreadful perplexity.
"But you will."
There was a long silence.
"You will, won't you!"
"I—I will think it over," said Miss Tupper finally, remembering the terrific report which her sister had brought her via Snorky Green. "I will give you my dethition after thupper."
That evening, Skippy, excusing himself from Snorky, who was taking Margarita to a lecture on the fauna and flora of Yucatan, set out for the parsonage with a thumping heart. If the truth be told he was not altogether convinced of the durability of his attraction for Miss Jennie, but he was quite certain of one thing, if there was even a sporting chance of Snorky's adding the blonde sister to his photographic gallery in the communal room in the Kennedy House, he could never confess failure! The state of his own emotion perplexed him. When he was away, he could look on with a certainamused calm as though the whole thing were but a fascinating game. Indeed, at times he felt gorgeously, terrifically guilty, the gayest and blackest of black Lotharios. Yet no sooner had he looked into the soft velvety eyes and felt the touch of her warm fingers than he was certain, absolutely certain that his life's decision had been made, that he wanted to stand forth as a man of the strongest character, and slowly and patiently struggle upward to those heights where serenely she would wait for him.
He consumed three cigarettes—rapidly and faithfully, to make up the seven of the daily quota, mutually agreed upon; flicked the dust off his shoes with his handkerchief, tightened his belt and his tie, and, having fanned himself with his hat, found at last the courage to tread the noisy gravel and ring the bell. On his way he had built up a dozen eloquent conversations, but all memory of things tender and convincing were forgotten as he ventured over the slippery floor of the parlor and beheld at the side of Jennie a large blown-up, thin-haired male visitor in ecclesiastical black, who was introduced to him as the Rev. Percy Tuptale.
Intuition is a strange thing that fortunately returns to lovers, drunkards and children in their hour of need. From the first touch of her hand and the first look into her face Skippy knew that a crisis had arrived. Mr. Tuptale was so placidly and professionally at ease andMiss Tupper so nervously and unsibilantly conversational that the conversation bubbled on like a kettle steaming in a distant room. He nodded once or twice, Mr. Tuptale fingered a magazine while Jennie ran on softening the s's.
"Something awful is going to happen," thought Skippy, staring at the biblical engravings on the wall. "They're going to try to make me give back that pin."
Miss Tupper stood up. Skippy stood up. Mr. Tuptale stood up.
"Jack, I have taken a therious, a vewy therious thep," said Miss Tupper flushing. "I do want to help you tho much but, but I have thought, that ith, I am afwaid I know tho little how. You may think it dweadful of me—"
She paused and Skippy frozen to the marrow said icily,
"Yes, what is it?"
"I have gone to Mr. Tuptale—to Perthy for advithe. I, I had to."
"Excuse me," said Skippy loftily. "Is Mr. Tuptale, are you,—is he?"
"Well, yeth," said Jennie, blushing, while a smile spread enormously over Mr. Tuptale's features.
"Oh!"
"You thee that ith why," said Jennie hastily, "and, oh Jack, I do want you to talk to him, juth ath you talked to me. Tell him evwything. He ith tho helpful and tho underthanding."
She swayed from one foot to another and glanced from the boy to the man, undecided.
"Jennie, dear," said Mr. Tuptale with surgical ease, "I think ahem—suppose you let us talk this over together. It would be easier, wouldn't it?"
"Oh yeth, indeed!"
The next moment they were alone.
"And now my boy," said Mr. Tuptale blandly. "Come, sit down. Let's have it out like man to man."
Skippy did not at once comply. He walked slowly around the red plush rocker and then back to the bamboo fire-screen and rested his elbows lightly upon it and glowered at the all-unconscious curate, murder in his heart.
"Jennie is very fond of you, Jack," said Mr. Tuptale, caging his fingers. "She has a warm and sympathetic nature, a big heart, and I can quite understand how deeply concerned she is in the brave fight you are making. I want you to accept me as a friend, a real friend. I know men and I know what temptations are, early associations, acquired habits. Jack, my boy, there is nothing really wrong in you. I saw that the moment you came into the room."
"Who said there was—pray?" said Skippy, whose hands were trembling with rage.
Mr. Tuptale looked up quickly, frowned and said:
"Jennie has told me all—naturally."
"She told you I gambled."
"She did."
"She told you I drank, and she told you I smoked."
"She did, of course, and I consider it was her duty to do so."
"Well is there anything wrong in that, I ask you?"
"Anything wrong in gambling, drunkenness, steeping oneself with tobacco until your hand shakes like a leaf?" said Mr. Tuptale, rising.
"Exactly. Do you know your ten commandments, sir?"
"Are you insulting me, sir?" said the curate, yielding to a perfectly natural irritation.
"Kindly point out to me in the ten commandments where any habit of mine is forbidden," said Skippy with the most impressive of declamatory attitudes.
Mr. Tuptale's jaw dropped, twice he tried to answer and twice remained inarticulate.
Skippy possessed himself of his hat and bowed in scorn.
"You will kindly restore to Miss Tupper this pin," he said, producing it after a struggle with his tie. "Also inform her that I shall immediately send back to her other articles I need not now specify. Thank you for your interest in my case but it is quite unnecessary—quite. I can stand by the ten commandments. Good night."
He went down the scrunching gravel and slammed the gate.
"And there is more, sir," he exclaimed aloud, forgetting that he was now alone. "One thing more. You can tell Miss Tupper that even among the lowest of my associates, gamblers and drunkards and race-track sharks though they be, a promise given is sacred, sacred, sir, and the man who breaks it is, is, is—"
But here rage quite overtook him and he picked up a stone and flung it at an inoffensive tree.
"It's all Snorky!" he said in the swift progress of moods. "I knew he'd overdo it! Holy Mike, what in Sam Hill did he tell Margarita! He must have—he—" But again imagination failed him and he proceeded on his way, fists sunk in his pockets, sliding along gloomy lanes.
"And I believed I had met a good woman!" he said bitterly. "Faugh, they're all alike. Well, I don't care what does become of me. Serve her right if I went plump to the bad. And by jingo, I'll do it too!"
Whereupon, having resolved upon a life of crime, he plunged his hand into his pocket and cast from him the now unnecessary cigarettes!
SKIPPY in his sentimental progress had now reached the point where if he could not control the impulses of his sentiments he could at least review the past with some instructive profit.
"Girls are queer things, aren't they?" he said ruminatively to Snorky Green, for the mood of confidence was on him.
"Queerer and queerier," said Snorky, considering the bosom of last night's dress shirt with a view to future service.
"They get you before you know it and as soon as they get you they worry the life out of you. One way or the other they start to making you miserable just as soon as you show them you've fallen for them. Now why?"
"Woman has no sense of gratitude," said Snorky, who had heard the phrase from a brother who had suffered.
"And you can't be friends with them—well you know, just friends."
"I know," said Snorky heavily.
"What gets me," said Skippy, "is why we fall and fall and fall."
"Habit."
"Well, perhaps."
"Sure, habit, that's all."
"But this is the queerest of all," said Skippy, yawning and stretching his arms deliciously. "How darned fine you feel when it's all over. You go to bed thinking the bottom's been kicked out of things and you wake up feeling so Jim dandy rip-roarin' chuck full of happiness that you wonder what's happened, and then you remember that you're cured! Your time's your own. You can wear, do and say what you like, spend your money on yourself. You're free! Now it is queer, isn't it?"
"Like having a tooth out?" said Snorky.
"Exactly."
"Say, what story did you cook up about me to Margarita Tupper?" said Skippy, tying the white cravat for the sixth time.
"Bygones is bygones," said Snorky evasively.
"You must have had me robbin' a coach or skinning a cat," said Skippy encouragingly.
"You were throwing yourself away there, old top," said Snorky, avoiding the direct answer. "Why in another week you'd a been reading little Rollo and taking to crocheting—a girl who lisps like that, too! Whatever was eating you, anyhow?"
"She talked like a shower bath," said Skippy unfeelingly, "but her eyes were lovely. Well, that's over."
"What's the use? You'll fall again."
"Never," said Skippy firmly. Then he qualified it. "That is, not in the same way."
"There ain't no two ways."
"Sure there is. It's like swimming. You can dive in or you can sit on the bank and splash with your toes—Savvy?"
"Ha! ha!"
"Wait and see. I know a thing or two."
Twenty minutes later, having assumed the full glories of evening dress (with studs of the good old-fashioned style that remained anchored), they departed for dinner at the Balous across the way.
"Say, put me on," said Skippy, who like all artists of the imagination was seized with an uncontrollable nervousness before facing an audience. "Who's in the party?"
"Only Charlie and Vivi."
"Vivi?"
"Real name's Violet but she's dressed it up."
"What's she like? What's her line?"
"Stiff as a ramrod—prim as an old maid, conversation strictly educational."
"Well, what does she look like?"
"Flabby as a cart-horse."
"Say, what the devil—"
"Grub's o.k. and there'll be fun after," said Snorky by way of justification.
"How's the old folks?"
"Mr. Balou? He's a terror, gives you thewillies. If he doesn't freeze you the old girl will."
Skippy's traditional scepticism of any statement with the Snorky stamp would have warned him at any other time. But this being in a way a new experience in strange waters, his nervousness got the better of him. Halfway up the driveway he plucked Snorky's sleeve.
"Listen."
"Let go me arm you chump."
"What do you say to them?"
"Say to whom?"
"Mr. and Mrs."
"Talk about the weather, you ignoramus."
"Sure I know that, but afterwards, at dinner, what do you talk about there?"
"Don't worry, that's what girls are for."
Despite which advice, Skippy nervously ran over his conversational ammunition. There was of course Maude Adams to begin with. He tried hard to think of some book he had read—some work of sufficient dullness to serve up to this blue stocking atmosphere.
"Stop shootin' your cuff," said Snorky, applying his finger to the bell. "Don't you know anything about society?"
"Who's nervous?" said Skippy indignantly.
His backbone stiffened to the consistency of the white manacle that imprisoned his throat, he brushed the slight powder of the dust from the shining patent leathers, which in the fashionof the day extended in long pointed toes, shot back his cuffs for the twentieth time, felt surreptitiously to assure himself that his part was functioning properly and slid behind Snorky Green as he entered the parlor.
Something that was neither prim nor stiff nor in the least resembled a cart-horse bore down on them with a swish of ruffled skirts.
"Hello, Arthur, how nice of you to come. Dad and Mumsy are out so we're all to ourselves," said Miss Vivi Balou. "Mr. Bedelle? Oh I've heard a lot aboutyou!"
"Really now, what do you mean?" said Skippy, with a long breath of relief.
Miss Balou held his hand just an extra minute as she said this, looking up into his face with an expression of the greatest interest. She was just over five feet, of the dreaded species of brunettes, with a thin, upward pointing little nose and the brightest of eyes.
"Oh I know a terrible lot," she said, giving to her mischievous glance just the slightest, most complimentary shade of apprehension.
Mr. Skippy Bedelle grew two inches toward the ceiling and looked for a mirror.
Two strictly plain young ladies, roommates of Miss Balou's from Farmington, with large black sash bows in their hair, were introduced as Miss Barrons and Miss Cantillon.
"Elsa Barrons is perfectly wonderful with the dumb-bells, look at her forearm, and Fannyisn't good looking but awfully clever," said Miss Balou in a whisper which was already confidential.
Brother Charles now sauntered in and shook hands with the magnificent condescension of a sophomore.
"Have a cigarette before dinner?"
He flashed a silver case and tendered it to Snorky, who being unprepared, hesitated, and took one.
"Cigarette?"
"Love to but I'm in training," said Skippy.
Charles, having arrived at the age when everything should weigh heavily upon a sophisticated appetite, bored with his sister, bored with sister's plain looking friends and bored with sister's beaux, retired to the fireplace, where he draped himself on the mantelpiece and looked properly bored with himself, an illusion of greatness which was peculiarly impressive to tadpole imaginations.
The arduities of the opening conversation were fortunately interrupted by the announcement of dinner and Skippy, with Maude Adams in reserve, found himself at table between Miss Balou and the swinger of dumb-bells.
"You're a Princeton man?" said Miss Barrons after several long breaths.
Skippy apportioned the compliment to his manly air and the magnificent lines of the dress suit.
"No, I'm Yale. That is I'm preparing," he said carelessly, and hoping that Snorky wasn't listening he added: "Family didn't want me to go in too young, you know."
"Oh yes, I know," said Miss Barrons with an appreciative glance at his precocious brow. "I think that's much better too. You don't have half as good a time if you go to college too young."
"Eighteen's about right," said Skippy in a more mature manner.
The subject being exhausted Skippy counted up the forks while his companion, to appear at ease, asked for the salt to put in her soup.
"Do you know Jim Fisher?" she said suddenly. "He's going to Yale next year."
Skippy did not know Jim Fisher.
"I wonder if you know a perfectly dandy girl?"
"Who's that?"
"Alice Parks."
Skippy did not know Alice Parks, though she lived in New York City. Likewise with a growing feeling of his profound social ignorance, he successively admitted that he did not know Cornelia Baxter, Frances Bowen or Harry Fall. Whereupon Miss Barrons abandoned him to converse with Charles who did know Alice Parks who was so attractive and Harry Fall who had such a strong character.
"What the devil is there to talk about," saidSkippy to himself as he fidgeted with the soup. "What an awful bore society is."
There was Maude Adams, but how was he to get to her?
"I'm just crazy about harps," said Miss Cantillon, who was clever. "I think they're wonderful."
"Harps—oh yes," said Charles Balou.
Miss Cantillon appealed to the table.
"Do you like them better than violins?" said Miss Barrons doubtfully.
"Oh much better!"
"They're too big," said Snorky wisely.
"Yes, that is the trouble. It's a perfect shame too. They are too big to carry round but they are so melodious. I don't like the piano—it's so cold—"
While the conversation raged on the proper classification of musical instruments, Miss Balou turned from Snorky to Skippy and looked him once more in the eyes with her interested glance.
"Yes, I've heard a lot about you," she said with a knowing look.
"Really now?"
"You're a perfectly ghastly flirt," she said, lowering her voice. "You give a girl a terrific rush for a week or two and then pop off without even saying good-bye. Never mind though. I'm warned."
Again the look, the interested look of tryingto discover the secret of his fascination. It was quite unlike the way any other girl had ever looked at him. Other girls looked at you side-wise or averted their eyes when they met yours. But this was different. It was mocking, impertinent, insinuating, but it did not displease him. He saw that he had made an impression, an instantaneous impression. He mystified her perhaps but he interested her intensely. For the first time he had conquered with a look.
"Who told you?"
"That's telling."
"I'll bet I know."
"Bet you don't."
"Bet I do."
"What'll you bet?"
"Two pounds of chocolates against a necktie."
"Done, who is it?"
"Some one here."
"Nope. You've lost."
"Who then?"
"Some one who knows Dolly Travers," said Vivi with a mocking smile.
"Oh!"
"Brute," said Vivi in the greatest admiration.
"Really I—"
"Now don't be modest—I hate modest men. It makes it twice as bad. She's very attractive, isn't she?"
"Very," said Skippy, feeling every inch a man.
"But she's rather young—for you, isn't she?" said Vivi artfully.
"They put glasses on cows in Russia," said Miss Cantillon importantly. She had a reputation as a brilliant conversationalist to uphold.
This assertion woke up the table.
"Cows?"
"Glasses?"
"Fanny dear, how excruciating!"
Even the sophomore was surprised into expressing his incredulity.
"Colored glasses on account of the glare of the snow," said Miss Cantillon.
"Fanny!"
"Fact, in Siberia. I read it in the papers."
"Cows can't live in the snow."
"But Siberia isn't all snow."
"Most of it is."
"Isn't it wonderful the things she knows?" said Vivi admiringly. "Do you like brainy women?"
"That depends," said Skippy while he stopped to consider. "I don't know any."
"Oh what a dreadful cynical remark!" said Vivi with another admiring look. "Heavens, I shall be frightened to death what I say to you. I'm sure you're awfully clever yourself. Perhaps I'll have a chance. Clever men hate clever women, don't they?"
"There is certainly something about my particular style of beauty that's bowled her over," thought Skippy to himself.
"Oh I don't know," he said, fatuously unconscious of the virtues he conceded to himself. "Dolly Travers was quite clever, you know."
"Brute!" said Miss Balou for the second time.
"Oh come now—"
"Do you know what I think about you?"
"What do you think?"
"I think you'd be lots of excitement at a house party," said Miss Vivi, shaking her head. "Just for a few days. I think you'd give a girl the grandest sort of a rush, but as for believing a word you said—never!"
"What do you mean?" said Skippy, immensely puffed up.
"It shows in your eyes," said Vivi with a look of having at last deciphered the mystery. "Besides, girls have spoiled you. You have had things too easily. No wonder you're conceited."
Miss Cantillon was discoursing brilliantly on a crow that had been struck by lightning in Oklahoma and had fallen into a wheat field and set fire to the grain, which had precipitated a conflagration which had necessitated calling out the fire departments of two counties.
"You're offended now," said Vivi in a contrite whisper.
"Some one's given you an awfully bad opinion of me," said Skippy stiffly, frowning to show the displeasure he did not feel.
"Well it's true, isn't it?"
"It is not!"
"How about Jennie Tupper?"
"Oh that!" said Skippy burying the memory with a wave of his hand.
"You see youarea brute! Well I don't mind. I like your hands."
Skippy took a precautionary glance at the ends of his baseball fingers and then allowed them to come to rest on the tablecloth.
"Now you're trying to jolly me," he said astutely.
"No. I always notice hands the first thing. They tell so much about your character. I saw yours at once."
"You can read hands?" said Skippy, who knew this much of the etiquette of the game.
"Yes, but not now," said Vivi in a promissory tone.
Skippy's attitude towards social functions underwent a change of front. He began to feel confidently, vaingloriously at ease. He joined in the general conversation determined to rout the brilliant Miss Cantillon, who knew so many things. Now the rule for such preëminence is simple and some acquire it by cunning and others by instinct. Deny the obvious. Reputations have fattened on nothing else. When inevitablythe moment arrived to discuss Maude Adams, and her latest play, Skippy announced that he did not like Maude Adams.
"Not like Maude Adams!"
There was a sudden silence and all eyes were turned expectantly toward him as to a manifestly superior intelligence. Finally the swinger of dumb-bells voiced the question.
"But why?"
Skippy considered.
"Too much like Maude Adams," he said cryptically.
Vivi looked at him in admiration.
"How clever, I never thought of that."
"Well, I'm just frantic about Maude Adams!" said the athletic Miss Barrons stubbornly.
"Because you like Maude Adams," said Skippy as a clincher.
By one bold stroke he had become a personage and what is more perceived that he had become one. Different topics were served up for his judgment. He pronounced flatly against colleges for women, woman suffrage and bobbed hair, predicted the election of Mr. Bryan and the probable division of the United States into four separate republics. Even Snorky Green, who was floundering along on the subject of blazersvs.sweaters, was impressed, and as for Miss Cantillon, she tried to stir up a little commotion by introducing the subject of The Ladyfrom Narragansett who had removed freckles by watermelon rinds, but the effect was tepid and she relapsed into a listener.
"Say, where did you get it?" said Snorky in a whisper as they passed out to the veranda.
"Get what?"
"All this bright boy stuff! Why you're the little boy orator yourself."
"I'll tell you how it's done sometime," said Skippy magnificently.
"Do you like views?" said Vivi, coming to him as a moth to the brightest flame.
"That depends," said Skippy, who being still in a mood of negation was unwilling to concede anything.
Miss Vivi accepted this as acquiescence and, it being early moonlight and dangerous underfoot, took his hand to lead him safely around the flower beds. Skippy having just discovered the secret to success encased himself in indifference and waited developments.
"Isn't it romantic! Don't youloveit?" she said, arrived at a little summer house that jutted out over the darkling waters.
"It's rather nice," said Skippy, sternly repressing his emotional tendencies.
Vivi now ostentatiously disengaged her hand.
"Please."
"Is it safe now?" said Skippy anxiously.
"How perfectly horrid of you," said the young lady in pretended indignation. "Youmake fun of everything, even the most sacred things."
The relevancy of this was lost on Skippy who condescended to say,
"View isn't half bad if the moon weren't so dreadfully lopsided."
"Unsentimental wretch! I suppose you want to go back?" said Vivi reproachfully.
"Are there mosquitoes?"
"Just for that I'll keep you here until you're eaten up," said Vivi, plucking a spray of honeysuckle and inhaling it with a sigh. "Isn't it wonderful, don't you adore honeysuckle in the moonlight?" she added, transferring it to his inspection.
Skippy inhaled it loudly and announced that it was all right.
"Jelly fish," said Vivi throwing it away indignantly.
Skippy resented "jelly fish."
"Well you are! I never saw such a cold calculating unemotional brute. You're nothing but a great big icy brain."
Skippy thought of the Roman and a hundred flunkings.
"Better pull in on the infant phenom—Snorky might hear of it," he thought.
"Oh, I like it here," he said in a more romantic tone.
"Really?"
"Yep."
A long silence and Vivi inhaled another sprig of honeysuckle and devoured the moon.
"How long you going to stay?"
"About a week."
"Oh!"
Another silence.
"You're so different."
"How?"
"Don't know but you are—quite, quite different. You seem so much older than Arthur."
"Well that all depends," said Skippy, ready to draw on his imagination.
"You've seen a lot of life, haven't you?"
"Yes I suppose so."
"I saw that—in your hands."
"I say, how about reading my character now?"
"No, not now, sometime later, perhaps."
"Perhaps?"
"Well I don't know if I'd dare. What are you doing to-morrow?"
"Nothing particular."
"Suppose we get up a hay ride and a picnic. The moon will be glorious."
"Bacon and roast corn? Hurray!" said Skippy, most unromantically.
Vivi got up suddenly.
"Let's go back."
"All right, but it's awfully dark."
"Follow me."
Skippy walked purposely into the first flower bed.
"Help, I'm lost!"
Vivi stood considering.
"Are you sorry?"
"Dreadfully. Ouch, I'm in a rose bush!"
"And you promise not to be cynical and aloof?"
"Cross my heart and hope to die," said Skippy, very well pleased with himself.
Immediately the hand was offered and retained. To be magnanimous he gave it a little extra squeeze.
"That's not fair," said Vivi.
"All's fair in love and war," said Skippy who, under the influence of outward conditions, momentarily forgot his rôle.
"My aunt's cat's pants," said Snorky enviously, when they had departed. "You're getting to be a rapid worker, old top, you certainly are!"
"Oh I've learned a thing or two," said Skippy pompously.
"Splash with your toes, old horse," said Snorky, shaking his head. "Look out, Vivi's an old stager. She collects them."
"What?"
"Scalps," said Snorky with a significant gesture.
"Just watch me."
"You don't say so."
"I've got her feeding out of my hand, gentle as a lamb," said Skippy, remembering with a pleasant tickling sensation the mystified fascination of her way of looking at him.
"Cheese it," said Snorky shaking his head.
"This is different."
"Whoa, old horse, whoa!"
"Snorky, old gal," said Skippy, who had now settled down into the predatory vision Miss Vivi had artfully evoked, "it's easy when you know the game."
"And what's the game?"
"Don't get tagged."
"Elucidate."
"Keep 'em running after you. It's the first one who runs away who wins every time."
"Oh, simple as that?"
"Sure, that's all there is to it."
"Let 'em love you, eh?"
"Oh well," said Skippy modestly, but as he sought his bed he stole a satisfied glance into the mirror.