"Political EconomyGone to rhyme with Hominy!
It's an exquisite scheme!"
"It's a rotten rhyme," attested the Political Economist, and strode over to the mantelpiece, where he began to hunt for a long piece of twine.
"Miss Gaudette," he continued, "is downstairs in the parlor now entertaining a caller—some resurrected beau, I believe. Anyway, she left her overshoes outside my door to get when she comes up again, and I'm going to tie one end of this string to them and the other end to my wrist, so that when she picks up her shoes a few hours later it will wake me from my nap, and I can make one grand rush for the hall and—"
"Propose then and there?" quizzed the Poet.
"No, not exactly. But I'm going to ask her if she'll let me fall in love with her."
The Poet sniffed palpably and left the room.
But the Political Economist lay back in his chair and went to sleep with a great, pleasant expectancy in his heart.
When he woke at last with a sharp, tugging pain at his wrist the room was utterly dark, and the little French clock had stopped aghast and clasped its hands at eleven.
For a second he rubbed his eyes in perplexity. Then he jumped to his feet, fumbled across the room and opened the door to find Noreen staring with astonishment at the tied overshoes.
"Oh, I wanted to speak to you," he began. Then his eyes focused in amazement on a perfectly huge bunch of violets which Noreen was clasping desperately in her arms.
"Good Heavens!" he cried. "Is anybody dead?"
But Noreen held the violets up like a bulwark and commenced to laugh across them.
"He did propose," she said, "and I accepted him! Does it look as though I had chosen to be engaged with violets instead of a ring?" she suggested blithely. "It's only that I asked him if he would be apt to send me violets, and when he said: 'Yes, every week,' I just asked if I please couldn't have them all at once. There must be a Billion dollars' worth here. I'm going to have a tea-party to-morrow and invite the Much-Loved Girl." The conscious, childish malice of her words twisted her lips into an elfish smile. "It's Mr. Ernest Dextwood," she rattled on: "Ernest Dextwood, the Coffee Merchant. He's a widower now—with three children. Do—you—think—that—I—will—make—a—good—stepmother?"
The violets began to quiver against her breast, but her chin went higher in rank defiance of the perplexingsomethingwhich she saw in the Political Economist's narrowing eyes. She began to quote with playful recklessness Byron's pert parody:
"There is a tide in the affairs of womenWhich taken at its flood leads—God Knows Where."
But when the Political Economist did not answer her, but only stared with brooding, troubled eyes, she caught her breath with a sudden terrifying illumination. "Ouch!" she said. "O-u-c-h!" and wilted instantly like a frost-bitten rose under heat. All the bravado, all the stamina, all the glint of her, vanished utterly.
"Mr. Political Economist," she stammered, "Life—is—too—hard—for—me. I am not Rhoda Hanlan with her sturdy German peasant stock. I am not Ruth MacLaurin with her Scotch-plaited New Englandism. Nationality doesn't count with me. My Father was a Violinist. My Mother was an Actress. In order to marry, my Father swapped his music for discordant factory noises, and my Mother shirked a dozen successful rôles to give one life-long, very poor imitation of Happiness. My Father died of too much to drink. My Mother died of too little to eat. And I was bred, I guess, of very bitter love, of conscious sacrifice—of thwarted genius—of defeated vanity. Life—is—too—hard—for—me—alone. I can not finance it. I can not safeguard it. I can not weather it.I am not seaworthy!You might be willing to risk yourownself-consciousness, but when the dead begin to come back and clamor in you—when youlaugh unexpectedly with your Father's restive voice—when you quicken unexplainably to the Lure of gilt and tinsel—" A whimper of pain went scudding across her face, and she put back her head and grinned—"You can keep my overshoes for a souvenir," she finished abruptly. "I'm not allowed any more to go out when it storms!" Then she turned like a flash and ran swiftly up the stairs.
When he heard the door slam hard behind her, the Political Economist fumbled his way back through the darkened room to his Morris chair, and threw himself down again. Ernest Dextwood? He knew him well, a prosperous, kindly, yet domestically tyrannical man, bright in the office, stupid at home. Ernest Dextwood! So much less of a girl would have done for him.
A widower with three children? The eager, unspent emotionalism of Noreen's face flaunted itself across his smoky vision. All that hunger for Life, for Love, for Beauty, for Sympathy, to be blunted once for all in a stale, misfitting, ready-made home? A widower with three children! God in Heaven, was she as tired as that!
It was a whole long week before he saw Noreen again. When he met her at last she had just come in from automobiling, all rosy-faced and out of breath, with her thin little face peering almost plumply from its heavy swathings of light-blue veiling,and her slender figure deeply wrapped in a wondrous covert coat.
Rhoda Hanlan and Ruth MacLaurin were close behind her, much more prosaically garnished in golf capes and brown-colored mufflers. The Political Economist stood by on the stairs to let them pass, and Noreen looked back at him and called out gaily:
"It's lots of fun to be engaged. We're all enjoying it very much. It's bully!"
The next time he saw her she was on her way downstairs to the parlor, in a long-tailed, soft, black evening gown that bothered her a bit about managing. Her dark hair was piled up high on her head, and she had the same mischievous, amateur-theatrical charm that the blue chiffon veil and covert coat had given her.
Quite frankly she demanded the Political Economist's appreciation of her appearance.
"Just see how nice I can look when I really try?" she challenged him, "but it took me all day to do it, and my work went to smash—and my dress cost seventy dollars," she finished wryly.
But the Political Economist was surly about his compliment.
"No, I like you better in your little business suit," he attested gruffly. And he lied, and he knew that he lied, for never before had he seen the shrewdpiquancy of her eyes so utterly swamped by just the wild, sweet lure of girlhood.
Some time in May, however, when the shop windows were gay with women's luxuries, he caught a hurried glimpse of her face gazing rather tragically at a splurge of lilac-trimmed hats.
Later in the month he passed her in the Park, cuddled up on a bench, with her shabby business suit scrunched tight around her, her elbows on her knees, her chin burrowed in her hands, and her fiercely narrowed eyes quaffing like some outlawed thing at the lusty new green grass, the splashing fountain, the pinky flush of flowering quince. But when he stopped to speak to her she jumped up quickly and pleaded the haste of an errand.
It was two weeks later in scorching June that the biggest warehouses on the river caught fire in the early part of the evening. The day had been as harsh as a shining, splintery plank. The night was like a gray silk pillow. In blissful, soothing consciousness of perfect comfort every one in the boarding-house climbed up on the roof to watch the gorgeous, fearful conflagration across the city. The Landlady's voice piped high and shrill discussing the value of insurance. The Old Maids scuttled together under their knitted shawls. The Much-Loved Girl sat amiably enthroned among the bachelors with one man's coat across her shoulders, anotherman's cap on her yellow head, and two deliciously timid hands clutched at the coat-sleeves of the two men nearest her. Whenever she bent her head she trailed the fluff of her hair across the enraptured eyelids of the Poet.
Only Noreen Gaudette was missing.
"Where is Miss Gaudette?" probed the Political Economist.
The Masseuse answered vehemently: "Why, Noreen's getting ready to go to the fire. Her paper sent for her just as we came up. There's an awful row on, you know, about the inefficiency of the Fire Department, and there's no other person in all the city who can make people look as silly as Noreen can. If this thing appeals to her to-night, and she gets good and mad enough, and keeps her nerve, there'll be the biggest overhauling of the Fire Department thatyouever saw! But I'm sorry it happened. It will be an all-night job, and Noreen is almost dead enough as it is."
"An 'all-night job'?" The Much-Loved Girl gasped out her startled sense of propriety, and snuggled back against the shoulder of the man who sat nearest to her. She was very genuinely sorry for any one who had to be improper.
The Political Economist, noting the incident in its entirety, turned abruptly on his heel, climbed down the tremulous ladder to the trunk-roomfloor and knocked peremptorily at Noreen's door.
In reply to the answer which he thought he heard, he turned the handle of the door and entered. The gas jet sizzled blatantly across the room, and a tiny blue flame toiled laboriously in a cooking lamp beneath a pot of water. The room was reeking strong with the smell of coffee, the rank brew that wafted him back in nervous terror to his college days and the ghastly eve of his final examinations. A coat, a hat, a mouse-gray sweater, a sketch-book, and a bunch of pencils were thrown together on the edge of the divan. Crouched on the floor with head and shoulders prostrate across her easel chair and thin hands straining at the woodwork was Noreen Gaudette. The startled face that lifted to his was haggard with the energy of a year rallied to the needs of an hour.
"I thought you told me to come in," said the Political Economist. "I came down to go to the fire with you."
Noreen was on her feet in an instant, hurrying into her hat and coat, and quaffing greedily at the reeking coffee.
"You ought to have some one to look after you," persisted the man. "Where's Mr. Dextwood?"
Noreen stood still in the middle of the floor and stared at him.
"Why, I've broken my engagement," she exclaimed, trying hard to speak tamely and reserve every possible fraction of her artificial energy.
"Oh, yes," she smiled wanly, "I couldn't afford to be engaged! I couldn't afford the time. I couldn't afford the money. I couldn't afford the mental distraction. I'm working again now, but it's horribly hard to get back into the mood. My drawing has all gone to smash. But I'll get the hang of it again pretty soon."
"You look in mighty poor shape to work to-night," said the Political Economist. "What makes you go?"
"What makes me go?" cried Noreen, with an extravagant burst of vehemence. "What makes me go?—Why, if I make good to-night on those Fire-Department Pictures I get a Hundred Dollars, as well as the assurance of all the Republican cartooning for the next city election. It's worth a lot of money to me!"
"Enough to kill yourself for?" probed the Man.
Noreen's mouth began to twist. "Yes—if you still owe for your automobile coat, and your black evening gown, and your room rent and a few other trifles of that sort. But come on, if you'll promise not to talk to me till it's all over." Like a pair of youngsters they scurried down the stairs, jumpedinto the waiting cab, and galloped off toward the river edge of the city.
True to his promise, the Political Economist did not speak to her, but he certainly had not promised to keep his eyes shut as well as his mouth. From the very first she sat far forward on the seat where the passing street-lights blazed upon her unconscious face. The Man, the cab, love-making, debt-paying, all were forgotten in her desperate effort to keep keyed up to the working-point. Her brain was hurriedly sketching in her backgrounds. Her suddenly narrowed eyes foretold the tingling pride in some particular imagining. The flashing twist of her smile predicted the touch of malice that was to make her pictures the sensation of—a day.
The finish of the three-mile drive found her jubilant, prescient, pulsing with power. The glow from the flames lit up the cab like a room. The engine bells clanged around them. Sparks glittered. Steam hissed. When the cabman's horse refused to scorch his nose any nearer the conflagration, Noreen turned to the Political Economist with some embarrassment. "If you really want to help me," she pleaded, "you'll stay here in the cab and wait for me."
Then, before the Political Economist could offer his angry protest, she had opened the door, jumpedfrom the step, and disappeared into the surging, rowdy throng of spectators. A tedious hour later the cab door opened abruptly, and Noreen reappeared.
Her hat was slouched down over her heat-scorched eyes. Her shoulders were limp. Her face was dull, dumb, gray, like a Japanese lantern robbed of its candle. Bluntly she thrust her sketch-book into his hands and threw herself down on the seat beside him.
"Oh, take me home," she begged. "Oh, take me homequick. It's no use," she added with a shrug, "I've seen the whole performance. I've been everywhere—inside the ropes—up on the roofs—out on the waterfront. The Fire Department Men are not 'inefficient.' They're simplybully!And I make no caricatures of heroes!"
The lurch of the cab wheel against a curbstone jerked a faint smile into her face. "Isn't it horrid," she complained, "to have a Talent and a Living that depend altogether upon yourgetting mad?" Then her eyes flooded with worry. "WhatshallI do?"
"You'll marry me," said the Political Economist.
"Oh, no!" gasped Noreen. "I shall never, never marry any one! I told you that I couldn't afford to be engaged. It takes too much time, andbesides," her color flamed piteously, "I didn't like being engaged."
"I didn't ask you to be engaged," persisted the Political Economist. "I didn't ask you to serve any underpaid, ill-fed, half-hearted apprenticeship to Happiness. I asked you to be married."
"Oh, no!" sighed Noreen. "I shall never marry any one."
The Political Economist began to laugh. "Going to be an old maid?" he teased.
The high lights flamed into Noreen's eyes. She braced herself into the corner of the carriage and fairly hurled her defiance at him. Indomitable purpose raged in her heart, unutterable pathos drooped around her lips. Every atom of blood in her body was working instantly in her brain. No single drop of it loafed in her cheeks under the flimsy guise of embarrassment.
"I am not an 'Old Maid!' I am not! No one who creates anything is an 'Old Maid'!"
The passion of her mood broke suddenly into wilful laughter. She shook her head at him threateningly.
"Don't you ever dare to call me an 'Old Maid' again.—But I'll tell you just what you can call me—Women are supposed to be the Poetry of Life, aren't they—the Sonnet, the Lyric, the Limerick? Well—I am blank verse.Thatisthe trouble with me. I simplydo not rhyme.—That is all!"
"Will you marry me?" persisted the Political Economist.
Noreen shook her head. "No!" she repeated. "You don't seem to understand. Marriage is not for me. I tell you that I am Blank Verse. I amTalent, and I do notrhymewith Love. I amTalentand I do not rhyme withMan. There is no place in my life for you. You can not come into my verse and rhyme with me!"
"Aren't you a little bit exclusive?" goaded the Political Economist.
Noreen nodded gravely. "Yes," she said, "I am brutally exclusive. But everybody isn't. Life is so easy for some women. Now, the Much-Loved Girl is nothing in the world except 'Miss.' She rhymes inevitably with almost anybody's kiss.—Iam not just 'Miss.' The Much-Loved Girl is nothing in the world except 'Girl.'—She rhymes inevitably with 'Curl.'Iam not just 'Girl.' She is 'Coy' and rhymes with 'Boy.' She is 'Simple' and rhymes with 'Dimple.'I am none of those things!I haven't the Lure of the Sonnet. I haven't the Charm of the Lyric. I haven't the Bait of the Limerick. At the very best I am 'Brain' and rhyme with 'Pain.' And I wish I wasdead!"
The Political Economist's heart was pounding like a gong smothered in velvet. But he stooped over very quietly and pushed the floor cushion under her feet and snuggled the mouse-gray sweater into a pillowed roll behind her aching neck. Then from his own remotest corner he reached out casually and rallied her limp, cold hand into the firm, warm clasp of his vibrant fingers.
"Of course, you never have rhymed," he said. "How could you possibly have rhymed when—I am the missing lines of your verse?" His clasp tightened. "Never mind about Poetry to-night, Dear, butto-morrowwe'll take your little incomplete lonesome verse and quicken it into a Love-Song that will make the Oldest Angel in Heaven sit up and carol!"
I
T was not you, yourself, who invented your Happy-day. It was your Father, long ago in little-lad time, when a Happy-Day or a Wooden Soldier or High Heaven itself lay equally tame and giftable in the cuddling, curving hollow of a Father's hand.
Your Father must have been a very great Genius. How else could he have invented any happy thing in the black-oak library?
The black-oak library was a cross-looking room, dingy, lowering, and altogether boggy. You could not stamp your boot across the threshold without joggling the heart-beats out of the gaunt old clock that loomed in the darkermost corner of the alcove. You could not tiptoe to the candy box without plunging headlong into a stratum of creakiness that puckered your spine as though an electric devil were pulling the very last basting thread out of your little soul. Oh, it must have been a very, very aged room. The darkness was abhorrent toyou. The dampness reeked with the stale, sad breath of ancient storms. Worst of all, blood-red curtains clotted at the windows; rusty swords and daggers hung most imminently from the walls, and along the smutted hearth a huge, moth-eaten tiger skin humped up its head in really terrible ferocity.
Through all the room there was no lively spot except the fireplace itself.
Usually, white birch logs flamed on the hearth with pleasant, crackling cheerfulness, but on this special day you noted with alarm that between the gleaming andirons a soft, red-leather book writhed and bubbled with little gray wisps of pain, while out of a charry, smoochy mass of nothingness a blue-flowered muslin sleeve stretched pleadingly toward you for an instant, shuddered, blazed, and was—gone.
It was there that your Father caught you, with that funny, strange sniff of havoc in your nostrils.
It was there that your Father told you his news.
When you are only a little, little boy and your Father snatches you suddenly up in his arms and tells you that he is going to be married again, it is very astonishing. You had always supposed that your Father was perfectly married! In the dazzling sunshine of the village church was there not a thrilly blue window that said quite distinctly, "Clarice Val Dere" (that was your Mother)"Lived" (Lived, it said!) "June, 1860—December, 1880"? All the other windows said "Died" on them. Why should your Father marry again?
In your Dear Father's arms you gasped, "Going to bemarried?" and your two eyes must have popped right out of your head, for your Father stooped down very suddenly and kissed them hard—whack, whack, back into place.
"N—o, not going to be married," he corrected, "but going to be married—again."
He spoke as though there were a great difference; but it was man-talk and you did not understand it.
Then he gathered you into the big, dark chair and pushed you way out on his knees and scrunched your cheeks in his hands and ate your face all up with his big eyes. When he spoke at last, his voice was way down deep like a bass drum.
"Little Boy Jack," he said, "you must never, never, never forget your Dear Mother!"
His words and the bir-r-r of them shook you like a leaf.
"But what was my Dear Mother like?" you whimpered. You had never seen your Mother.
Then your Father jumped up and walked hard on the creaky floor. When he turned round again, his eyes were all wet and shiny like a brown stained-glass window.
"What was your Dear Mother like?" he repeated. "Your Dear Mother was like—was like—the flash of a white wing across a stormy sea. And your Dear Mother's name was 'Clarice.' I give it to you for a Memorial. What better Memorial could a little boy have than his Dear Mother's name? And there is a date—" His voice grew suddenly harsh and hard like iron, and his lips puckered on his words as with a taste of rust—"there is a date—the 26th of April—No, that is too hard a date for a little boy's memory! It was a Thursday. I give you Thursday for your—Happy-Day. 'Clarice' for a Memorial, and Thursday for your Happy-Day." His words began to beat on you like blows. "As—long—as—you—live," he cried, "be very kind to any one who is named 'Clarice.' And no matter what Time brings you—weeks, months, years, centuries—keep Thursday for your Happy-Day. No cruelty must ever defame it, no malice, no gross bitterness."
Then he crushed you close to him for the millionth, billionth fraction of a second, and went away, while you stayed behind in the scary black-oak library, feeling as big and achy and responsible as you used to feel when you and your Dear Father were carrying a heavy suit-case together and your Dear Father let go his share just a momentto light his brown cigar. It gave you a beautiful feeling in your head, but way off in your stomach it tugged some.
So you crept away to bed at last, and dreamed that on a shining path leading straight from your front door to Heaven you had to carry all alone two perfectly huge suit-cases packed tight with love, and one of the suit-cases was marked "Clarice" and one was marked "Thursday." Tug, tug, tug, you went, and stumble, stumble, stumble, but your Dear Father could not help you at all because he was perfectly busy carrying a fat leather bag, some golf sticks, and a bull-terrier for a strange lady.
It was not a pleasant dream, and you screamed out so loud in the night that the Housekeeper-Woman had to come and comfort you. It was the Housekeeper-Woman who told you that on the morrow your Father was going far off across the salt seas. It was the Housekeeper-Woman who told you that you, yourself, were to be given away to a Grandmother-Lady in Massachusetts. It was also the Housekeeper-Woman who told you that your puppy dog Bruno—Bruno the big, the black, the curly, the waggy, was not to be included in the family gift to the Grandmother-Lady. Everybody reasoned, it seemed, that you would not need Bruno because there would be so many other dogs in Massachusetts. That was just the trouble. Theywouldall be "other dogs." It was Bruno that you wanted, for he was the onlydog, just asyouwere the onlyboyin the world. All the rest were only "other boys." You could have explained the matter perfectly to your Father if the Housekeeper-Woman had not made you cry so that you broke your explainer. But later in the night the most beautiful thought came to you. At first perhaps it tasted a little bit sly in your mouth, but after a second it spread like ginger, warm and sweet over your whole body except your toes, and you crept out of bed like a flannel ghost and fumbled your way down the black hall to your Dear Father's room and woke him shamelessly from his sleep. His eyes in the moonlight gleamed like two frightened dreams.
"Dear Father," you cried—you could hardly get the words fast enough out of your mouth—"Dear—Father—I—do—not—think—Bruno—is—a—very—good—name—for—a—big—black—dog—I—am—going—to—name—him—Clarice—instead!"
That was how you and Bruno-Clarice happened to celebrate together your first Happy-Day with a long, magic, joggling train journey to Massachusetts—the only originalboyand the only originaldogin all the world.
The Grandmother-Lady proved to be a verypleasant purple sort of person. Exactly whose Grandmother she was, you never found out. She was not your Father's mother. She was not your Mother's mother. With these links missing, whose Grandmother could she be? You could hardly press the matter further without subjecting her to the possible mortification of confessing that she was only adopted. Maybe, crudest of all, she was just a Paid-Grandmother.
The Grandmother-Lady lived in a perfectly brown house in a perfectly green garden on the edge of a perfectly blue ocean. That was the Sight of it. Salted mignonette was the Smell of it. And a fresh wind flapping through tall poplar trees was always and forever the Sound of it.
The brown house itself was the living image of a prim, old-fashioned bureau backed up bleakly to the street, with its piazza side yanked out boldly into the garden like a riotous bureau drawer, through which the Rising Sun rummaged every morning for some particular new shade of scarlet or yellow nasturtiums. As though quite shocked by such bizarre untidiness, the green garden ran tattling like mad down to the ocean and was most frantically shooed back again, so that its little trees and shrubs and flowers fluttered in a perpetual nervous panic of not knowing which way to blow.
The blue ocean was the most wonderful thing of allThe blue ocean was the most wonderful thing of all
But the blue ocean was the most wonderful thingof all. Never was there such an ocean! Right from the far-away edge of the sky it came, roaring, ranting, rumpling, till it broke against the beach all white and frilly like the Grandmother-Lady's best ruching. It was morning when you saw the ocean first, and its pleasant waters gleamed like a gorgeous, bright-blue looking-glass covered with paper ships all filled with Other Boys' fathers. It was not till the first night came down—black and mournful and moany—it was not till the first night came down that you saw that the ocean was Much Too Large. There in your chill linen bed, with the fear of Sea and Night and Strangers upon you, you discovered a very strange droll thing—that your Father was a Person and might therefore leave you, but that your Mother was afeelingand would never, never, never forsake you. Bruno-Clarice, slapping his fat, black tail against your bedroom floor, was something of afeelingtoo.
Most fortunately for your well-being, the Grandmother-Lady's house was not too isolated from its neighbors. To be sure, a tall, stiff hedge separated the green garden from the lavender-and-pink garden next door, but a great scraggly hole in the hedge gave a beautiful prickly zest to friendly communication.
More than this, two children lived on the otherside of the hedge. You had never had any playmates before in all your life!
One of the children was just Another Boy—a duplicate of you. But the other one was—the only original girl. Next to the big ocean, she was the surprise of your life. She wore skirts instead of clothes. She wore curls instead of hair. She wore stockings instead of legs. She cried when you laughed. She laughed when you cried. She was funny from the very first second, even when the Boy asked you if your big dog would bite. The Boy stood off and kept right on asking: "Will he bite? Will he bite?W-i-l-lhebite?" But the Girl took a great rough stick and pried open Bruno-Clarice's tusky mouthto see if he would, and when heg-r-o-w-l-e-d, she just kissed him smack on his black nose and called him "A Precious," and said, "Why, of course he'll bite."
The Boy was ten years old—a year older, and much fatter than you. His name was Sam. The Girl was only eight years old, and you could not tell at first whether she was thin or fat, she was so ruffledy. She had a horrid dressy name, "Sophia." But everybody called her Ladykin.
Oh, it is fun to make a boat that will flop sideways through the waves. It is fun to make a windmill that will whirl and whirl in the grass. It isfun to make an education. It is fun to make a fortune. But most of anything in the world it is fun to make afriend!
You had never made afriendbefore. First of all you asked, "How old are you?" "Can you do fractions?" "Can you name the capes on the west coast of Africa?" "What is your favorite color? Green? Blue? Pink? Red? Or yellow?" Sam voted for green. Ladykin chose greenandblueandpinkandredandyellow,alsopurple. Then you asked, "Which are you most afraid of, the Judgment Day or a Submarine Boat?" Sam chose the Submarine Boat right off, so you had to take the Judgment Day, which was not a very pleasant fear to have for a pet. Ladykin declared that she wasn't afraid of anything in the world except of Being Homely. Wasn't that a silly fear? Then you got a little more intimate and asked, "What is your Father's business?" Sam and Ladykin's Father kept a huge candy store. It was mortifying to have to confess that your Father was only an Artist, but you laid great stress on his large eyes and his long fingers.
Then you three went off to the sandy beach and climbed up on a great huddly gray rock to watch the huge yellow sun go down all shiny and important, like a twenty-dollar gold piece in a wad of pink cotton batting. The tide was going out,too, the mean old "injun-giver," taking back all the pretty, chuckling pebbles, the shining ropes of seaweed, the dear salt secrets it had brought so teasingly to your feet a few hours earlier. You were very lonesome. But not till the gold and pink was almost gone from the sky did you screw your courage up to its supreme point. First you threw four stones very far out into the surf, then—
"What—is—your—Mother—like?" you whispered.
Ladykin went to her answer with impetuous certainty:
"Our Mother," she announced, "is fat and short and wears skin-tight dresses, and is President of the Woman's Club, and is sometimes cross."
A great glory came upon you and you clutched for wonder at the choking neck of your little blouse.
"M-y Mother," you said, "m-y Mother is like the Flash of a White Wing across a Stormy Sea!"
You started to say more, but with a wild war-whoop of amusement, Sam lost his balance and fell sprawling into the sand. "Oh, what a funny Mother!" he shouted, but Ladykin jumped down on him furiously and began to kick him with her scarlet sandals. "Hush! hush!" she cried, "Jack's Mother is dead!" and then in an instant she had clambered back to your side again and snuggledher little soft girl-cheek close against yours, while with one tremulous hand she pointed way out beyond the surf line where a solitary, snow-white gull swooped down into the Blue. "Look!" she gasped, "L-o-o-k!" and when you turned to her with a sudden gulping sob, she kissed you warm and sweet upon your lips.
It was not a Father kiss with two tight arms and a scrunching pain. It was not a Grandmother-Lady kiss complimenting your clean face. It was not a Bruno-Clarice kiss, mute and wistful and lappy. There was no pain in it. There was no compliment. There was no doggish fealty. There was justsweetness.
Then you looked straight at Ladykin, and Ladykin looked straight at you, looked andlookedand LOOKED, and you both gasped right out loud before the first miracle of your life, the Miracle of the Mating of Thoughts. Without a word of suggestion, without a word of explanation, you and Ladykin clasped hands and tiptoed stealthily off to the very edge of the water, and knelt down slushily in the sand, and stooped way over, oh, way, way over, with the cold waves squirting up your cuffs; and kissed two perfectly round floaty kisses out to the White Sea-Gull, and after a minute the White Gull rose in the sky, swirled round and round and round, stopped for a second, and then with a wildcry swooped down again into the blue—Once! Twice! and then with a great fountainy splash of wings rose high in the air like a white silk kite and went scudding off like mad into the Grayness, then into the Blackness, then into the Nothingness of the night. And you stayed behind on that pleasant, safe, sandy edge of things with all the sweetness gone from your lips, and nothing left you in all the world but the thudding of your heart, and a queer, sad, salty pucker on your tongue that gave you a thirst not so much for water as forlife.
Oh, you learned a great deal about living in those first few days and weeks and months at the Grandmother-Lady's house.
You learned, for instance, that if you wanted todothings, Boys were best; but if you wanted tothinkthings, then Girls were infinitely superior. You, yourself, were part Thinker and part Doer.
Sam was adoerfrom start to finish, strong of limb, long of wind, sturdy of purpose. But Sam was certainly prosy in his head. Ladykin, on the contrary, had "gray matter" that jumped like a squirrel in its cage, and fled hither and yon, and turned somersaults, and leaped through hoops, and was altogether alert beyond description. But she could notdothings. She could not stay in the nice ocean five minutes without turning blue. She could not climb a tree without falling and bumpingher nose. She could not fight without getting mad. Out of these proven facts you evolved a beautiful theory that if Thinky-Girls could only be taught todothings, they would make the most perfect playmates in all the wide, wide world. Yet somehow you never made a theory to improve Sam, though Sam's inability to think invariably filled you with a very cross, unholy contempt for him, while Ladykin's inability todoonly served to thrill you with the most delicious, sweet, puffy pride inyourself.
Sam was very evidently a Person. Ladykin was a Feeling. You began almost at once to distinguish between Persons and Feelings. Anything that straightened out your head was a Person. Anything that puckered up your heart was a Feeling. Your Father, you had found out, was a Person. The Grandmother-Lady was a Person. Sam was a Person. Sunshine was a Person. A Horse was a Person. A Chrysanthemum was a Person. But your Mother was a Feeling. And Ladykin was a Feeling. And Bruno-Clarice was a Feeling. And the Ocean Blue was a Feeling. And a Church Organ was a Feeling. And the Smell of a June Rose was a Feeling. Perhaps your Happy-Day was the biggest Feeling of All.
Thursday, to be sure, came only once a week, but—such a Thursday!Even now, if you shut your eyes tight and gasp a quick breath, you can senseonce more the sweet, crisp joy of fresh, starched clothes, and the pleasant, shiny jingle of new pennies in your small white cotton pockets. White? Yes; your Father had said that always on that day you should go like a little white Flag of Truce on an embassy to Fate. And Happiness? Could anything in the world make more for happiness than to be perfectly clean in the morning and perfectly dirty at night, with something rather frisky to eat for dinner, and Sam and Ladykin invariably invited to supper? Your Happy-Day was your Sacristy, too. Nobody ever punished you on Thursday. Nobody was ever cross to you on Thursday. Even if you were very black-bad the last thing Wednesday night, you were perfectly, blissfully, lusciously safe until Friday morning.
Oh, a Happy-Day was a very simple thing to manage compared with the terrible difficulties of being kind to everybody named "Clarice." There wasnobodynamed Clarice! In all the town, in all the directory, in all the telephone books, you and Ladykin could not find a single person named Clarice. Once in a New York newspaper you read about a young Clarice-Lady of such and such a street who fell and broke her hip; and you took twenty shiny pennies of your money and bought a beautiful, hand-painted celluloid brush-holder and sent it to her; but you never, never heard that it didher any good. You did not want your Father to be mad at you, but Ladykin reasoned you out of your possible worry by showing you how if you ever saw your Father again you could at least plant your feet firmly, fold your arms, puff out your chest, and affirm distinctly: "Dear Father, I haveneverbeen cruel toany onenamed 'Clarice.'" Ladykin knew perfectly well how to manage it. Ladykin knew perfectly well how to manage everything.
Sam was the stupid one. Sam took a certain pleasure in Bruno-Clarice, but he never realized that Bruno-Clarice was a sacred dog. Sam thought that it was very fine for you to have a Happy-Day, with Clean Clothes, and Ice-Cream, and Pennies, but he never almostburstwith the wonder of the day.
Sam thought that it was pleasant enough for you to have a dead Mother who was like "the flash of a white wing across a stormy sea," but he did not see any possible connection between that fact and stoning all the white sea-gulls in sight. Ladykin, on the contrary, told Sam distinctly that she'd knock his head off if he ever hit a gull, but fortunately—or unfortunately—Ladykin's aim was not so sure as Sam's. It was you who had to stay behind on the beach and pommel more than half the life out of Sam while Ladykin, pink as a posy in her best muslin, scared to death of wet andcold, plunged out to her little neck in the chopping waves to rescue a quivering fluff of feathers that struggled broken-winged against the cruel, drowning water. "Gulls are gulls!" persisted Sam with every blubbering breath. "Gulls areMothers!" gasped Ladykin, staggering from the surf all drenched and dripping like a bursted water-pail. "Well, boy-gulls are gulls!" Sam screamed in a perfect explosion of outragedtruth. But Ladykin defied him to the last. Through chattering teeth her vehement reassertion sounded like some horrid, wicked blasphemy: "Nnnnnnnnnnnn-oo! Bbb-o-y ggggg-ggulls are MMMMMM-Mothers too!" Then with that pulsing drench of feathers cuddled close to her breast, she struggled off alone to the house to have the Croup, while you and Sam went cheerily up the beach to find some shiners and some seaweed for your new gull hospital. Not till you were quite an old boy did you ever find out what became of that gull. Sacred Bruno-Clarice ate him. Ladykin, it seems, knew always what had happened to him, but she never dreamed of telling you till you were old enough to bear it. To Ladykin, Truth out of season was sourer than strawberries at Christmas time.
Sam would have told youanythingthe very first second that he found it out. Sam was perfectly great for Truth. He could tell more Great BlackTruths in one day than there were thunder-clouds in the whole hot summer sky. This quality made Sam just a little bit dangerous in a crowd. He was always and forever shooting people with Truths that he didn't know were loaded. He was always telling the Grandmother-Lady, for instance, that her hair lookedexactlylike a wig. He was always telling Ladykin that she smelled of raspberry jam. He was always telling you that he didn't believe your Father really loved you. Oh, everything that Sam said was as straight and lank and honest as a lady's hair when it's out of crimp. Nothing in the world could be straighter than that.
But sometimes, when you had played sturdily with Sam for a good many hours, you used to coax Ladykin off all alone to the puffy, scorchy-looking smoke tree, where you could cuddle up on the rustic seat and rest your Honesty. And when you were thoroughly rested, you used to stretch your little arms behind your yawning face and beg:
"Oh, Ladykin, wouldn't you, couldn't youpleasesay something curly?"
Ladykin's mind seemed to curl perfectly naturally. The crimp of it never came out. Almost any time you could take her words that looked so little and tight, and unwind them and unwind them into yards and yards and yards of pleasant, magic meanings.
There were no magic meanings in Sam's words. Sam, for instance, could throw as many as a hundred stones into the water, yet when he got through he just lay down in the sand and groaned, "Oh, how tired I am! Oh, how tired I am!" But Ladykin, after she'd thrown only two stones—one that hit the beach, and one that hit you—would stand right up and declare that her arm was "be-witched." Tired? No, not a bit of it, but "be-witched!" Hadn't she seen, hadn't you seen, hadn't everybody seen thatperfectly awfulsea-witch's head that popped out of the wave just after she had thrown her first stone? Oh, indeed, and it wasn't the first time either that she had been so frightened! Once when she was sitting on the sand counting sea-shells, hadn't the Witch swooped right out of the water and grabbed her legs? So, now if you wanted to break the cruel spell, save Ladykin's life, marry Ladykin, and live in a solid turquoise palace—where all the walls were papered with foreign postage-stamps, and no duplicates—you, not Sam, butyou,you, chosen of all the world, must go down to the little harbor between the two highest, reariest rocks and stick a spiked stick through every wave that came in. There was no other way! Now you, yourself, might possibly have invented the witch, but you never, never would have thought of harpooning the waves and falling in and drowningyour best suit, while Ladykin rested her arms.
Yet in the enforced punishment of an early bedtime you were not bereaved, but lay in rapturous delight untangling the minutest detail of Ladykin's words, till turquoise cities blazed like a turquoise flashlight across your startled senses, wonderful little princes and princesses kowtowed perpetually to royal Mother Ladykin and royal Father Yourself, and life-sized postage-stamps loomed so lusciously large that envelopes had to be pasted to the corners of stamps instead of stamps to the corners of envelopes. And before you had half straightened out the whole thought, you were fast asleep, and then fast awake, and it was suddenly morning! Oh, it is very comforting to have a playmate who can say curly things.
Sometimes, too, when Sam's and Ladykin's Mother had been rude to them about brushing their teeth or tracking perfectly good mud into the parlor, and Sam had gone off to ease his sorrow, scating hens or stoning cats, you and Ladykin would steal down to the gray rock on the beach to watch the white, soft, pleasant sea-gulls. There were times, you think, when Ladykin wished thatherMother was a sea-gull. Then you used to wonder and wonder about your ownMother, and tell Ladykin all over again about the creaky, black-oak library, and the smoky, smelly hearth-fire with the hurt red book, and the blue-flowered muslin sleeve beckoning and beckoning to you; and Ladykin used to explain to you how, very evidently, you were the only souvenir that your Father did not burn. With that thought in mind, you used to try and guess what could possibly have happened long ago on a Thursday to make a Happy-Day forever and ever. Ladykin said that of course it was something about "Love," but when you ran off to ask the Grandmother-Lady just exactly what Love was, the Grandmother-Lady only laughed and said that Love was a fever that came along a few years after chicken-pox and measles and scarlet fever. Ladykin was saucy about it. "That may betrue," Ladykin acknowledged, "butt'aint so!" Then you went and found Sam and asked him if he knew what Love was. Sam knew at once. Sam said that Love was the feeling that one had for mathematics. Now that was allbosh, for the feeling that you and Ladykin had for Mathematics would not have made a Happy-Day for a cow.
But even if there were a great many things that you could not find out, it was a good deal of funto grow up. Apart from a few stomach-aches and two or three gnawing pains in the calves of your legs, aging was a most alluring process.
Springs, summers, autumns, winters, went hurtling over one another, till all of a sudden, without the slightest effort on your part, you were fifteen years old, Bruno-Clarice had grown to be a sober, industrious, middle-aged dog, Sam was idolatrously addicted to geometry, and Ladykin subscribed to a fashion magazine for the benefit of her paper dolls.
Most astonishing of all, however, your Father had invited you to go to Germany and visit him. It was a glorious invitation. You were all athrill with the geography and love of it. Already your nostrils crinkled to the lure of tar and oakum. Already your vision feasted on the parrot-colored crowds of Come-igrants and Go-igrants that huddled along the wharves with their eager, jabbering faces and their soggy, wadded feet.
Oh, the prospect of the journey was a most beautiful experience, but when the actual Eve of Departure came, the scissors of separation gleamed rather hard and sharp in the air, and you hunched your neck a little bit wincingly before the final crunching snip. That last evening was a dreadful evening. The Cook sat sobbing in the kitchen. The Grandmother-Lady's eyes were red with sewing. The air was all heavy withgoingawayness.To escape the strangle of it, you fled to the beach with Bruno-Clarice tagging in mournful excitement at your heels, his smutty nose all a-sniff with the foreboding leathery smell of trunks and bags. There on the beach in a scoopy hollow of sand backed up against the old gray rock were Sam and Ladykin. Sam's round, fat face was fretted like a pug-dog's, and Ladykin's eyes were blinky-wet with tears.
It was not a pleasant time to say good-by. It had been a beautiful, smooth-skied day, crisp and fresh and bright-colored as a "Sunday supplement"; but now the clouds piled gray and crumpled in the west like a poor stale, thrown-away newspaper, with just a sputtering blaze in one corner like the kindling of a half-hearted match.
"Pleasebe kind to Bruno-Clarice," you began; "I shall miss you very much—very, very much. But I will come back—"
"N—o, I do not think you will come back," said Ladykin. "You will go to Germany to live with your Father and your Play-Mother, and you will gargle all your words like a throat tonic till you don't know how to be friends in English any more; and even if you did come back Bruno-Clarice would bark at you, and I shall be married, and Sam will have a long, black beard."
Now you could have borne Ladykin's marriage;you could even have borne Bruno-Clarice's barking at you; but you could not, simply could not bear the thought of Sam's growing a long black beard without you. Even Ladykin with all her wonderfulness sat utterly helpless before the terrible, unexpected climax of her words. It was Sam who leaped into the breach. The clutch of his hand was like the grit of sand-paper. "Jack," he stammered, "Jack, I promise you—anyhow I won'tcutmy beard until you come!"
It was certainly only the thought of Sam's faithful beard that sustained you on your rough, blue voyage to Germany. It was certainly only the thought of Sam's faithful beard that rallied your smitten forces when you met your Father face to face and saw him reel back white as chalk against the silky shoulder of your Play-Mother, and hide his eyes behind the crook of his elbow.
It is not pleasant to make people turn white as chalk, even in Germany. Worse yet, every day your Father grew whiter and whiter and whiter, and every day your pretty Play-Mother wrinkled her forehead more and more in a strange, hurty sort of trouble. Never once did you dare think of Ladykin. Never once did you dare think of Bruno-Clarice. You just named all your upper teeth "Sam," and all your lower teeth "Sam," andground them into each other all day long—"Sam! Sam! Sam!" over and over and over. There were also no Happy-Days in Germany, and nobody ever spoke of Clarice.
You were pretty glad at last after a month when your Father came to you with his most beautiful face and his most loving hands, and said:
"Little Boy Jack, there is no use in it. You have got to go away again. You are a wound that will not heal. It is your Dear Mother's eyes. It is your Dear Mother's mouth. It is your Dear Mother's smile. God forgive me, but I cannot bear it! I am going to send you away to school in England."
You put your finger cautiously up to your eyes and traced their round, firm contour. Your Mother's eyes? They felt like two heaping teaspoonfuls of tears. Your Mother's mouth? Desperately you poked it into a smile. "Going to send me away to school in England?" you stammered. "Never mind. Sam will not cut his beard until I come."
"What?" cried your Father in a great voice. "W-h-a-t?"
But you pretended that you had not said anything, because it was boy-talk and your Father would not have understood it.
Never, never, never had you seen your Fatherso suffering; yet when he took you in his arms and raised your face to his and quizzed you: "Little Boy Jack, do you love me? Do you love me?" you scanned him out of your Mother's made-over eyes and answered him out of your Mother's made-over mouth:
"N—o! N—o! Idon'tlove you!"
And he jumped back as though you had knifed him, and then laughed out loud as though he were glad of the pain.
"But I ask you this," he persisted, and the shine in his eyes was like a sunset glow in the deep woods, and the touch of his hands would have lured you into the very heart of the flame. "It is not probable," he said, "that your Dear Mother's child and mine will go through Life without knowing Love. When your Love-Time comes, if you understand all Love's tragediesthen, and forgive me, will you send me a message?"
"Oh, yes," you cried out suddenly. "Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Oh, yes!" and clung to him frantically with your own boyish hands, and kissed him with your Mother's mouth. But you did not love him. It was your Mother's mouth that loved him.
So you went away to school in England and grew up and up and up some more; but somehow this latter growing up was a dull process without savor, and the years went by as briefly and inconsequentlyas a few dismissing sentences in a paragraph. There were plenty of people to work with and play with, but almost no one to think with, and your hard-wrought book knowledge faded to nothingness compared to the three paramount convictions of your youthful experience, namely, that neither coffee nor ocean nor Life tasted as good as it smelled.
And then when you were almost twenty-one you met "Clarice"!
It was a Christmas supper party in a café. Some one looked up suddenly and called the name "Clarice! Clarice!" and when your startled eyes shot to the mark and saw her there in her easy, dashing, gorgeous beauty, something in your brain curdled, and all the lonesomeness, all the mystery, all the elusiveness of Life pounded suddenly in your heart like a captured Will-o'-the-Wisp. "Clarice?" Here, then, was the end of your journey? The eternal kindness? The flash of a white wing acrossyourstormy sea? "Clarice!" And you looked across unbidden into her eyes and smiled at her a gaspy, astonished smile that brought the strangest light into her face.
Oh, but Clarice was very beautiful! Never had you seen such a type. Her hair was black and solemn as crape. Her eyes were bright and noisy as jet. Her heart was barren as a blot of ink. Andshe took your dreamy, paper-white boy life and scourged it like a tongue of flame across a field of Easter lilies!
And when the wonder of the flame was gone, you sat aghast in your room among the charred, scorched fragments of your Youth. The thirst for death was very strong upon you, and the little, long, narrow cup of your revolver gleamed very brimming full of death's elixir. Even the June-time could not save you. Your Mother's name was an agony on your lips. The frenzied reiteration of your thoughts scraped on your brain like a sledge on gravel. You would drink very deep, you thought, of your little slim cup of death. Yet the thing that was tortured within you was scarcely Love, and you had no message of understanding for your Father. Just with wrecked life, wrecked faith, wrecked courage, you huddled at your desk, catching your breath for a second before you should reach out your fretted fingers for the little cool cunning, toy hand of Death.
"Once again," you said to yourself, "once again I will listen to the children's voices in the garden. Once again I will lure the smell of June roses into my heart." The children prattled and passed. Your hand reached out and fumbled. Once more you shut your scalding eyes, hunched up your shoulders, and breathed in like an ultimate tide the ravishingsweetness of the June—one breath, another, another—longer—longer. Oh, God in Heaven, if one could only die of such an anesthetic—smothered with sweetbrier, spiced with saffron, buried in bride roses.Die?Your wild hand leaped to the task and faltered stricken before the strange, grim fact that blazed across your consciousness. It was Thursday. It was your "Happy-Day!" Your Father's words came pounding back like blows into your sore brain! Your "Happy-Day!" "No cruelty must ever defame it, no malice, no gross bitterness!" Somewhere in air or sky or sea there was a Mother-Woman who must not behurt. Your "Happy-Day?" HAPPY-DAY? Rage and sorrow broke like a fearful storm across your senses, and you put down your head and cried like a child.
Tears? Again you felt on your lips that queer, sad, salty pucker, that taste of the sea that gave you a thirst not so much for water as for Life.Life?Life?The thought thrilled through you like new nerves. Your ashy pulses burst into flame. Your dull heart jumped. Your vision woke. Your memory quickened. You saw the ocean, blue, blue, blue before you. You saw a small, rude boy lie sprawling in the sand. You saw a little girl's face, wild with wonder, tremulous with sweetness. You felt again the flutter of akiss against your cheek. The little girl who—understood. Your salt lips puckered into a smile, and the smile ran back like a fuse into the inherent happiness of your heart. Sam? Ladykin? Home? You began to laugh! Haggard, harried, wrecked, ruined, you began to laugh! Then, faltering like a hysterical girl, you staggered down the stairs, out of the house, along the streets to the cable office, and sent a message to Sam.
"How long is your beard?" the message said. "How long is your beard?" Just that silly, magic message across miles and miles and miles of waves and seaweeds. How the great cable must have simpered with the foolishness of it. How the pink coral must have chuckled. How the big, tin-foiled fishes must have wondered.
You did not wait for an answer. What answer was there? You could picture Sam standing in stupefied awkwardness before the amazing nothingness of such a message. But Ladykin would remember. Oh, yes, Ladykin would remember. You could see her peering past Sam's shoulder and snatching out suddenly for the fluttering paper. Ladykin would remember. What were six years?
Joy sang in your heart like a purr of a sea-shell. The blue blur of ocean, the dear green smell of mignonette, the rush of wind through the poplar trees were tonic memories to you. You did notwait to pack your things. You did not wait to notify your Father. You sped like a wild boy to the first wharf, to the first steamer that you could find.
The week's ocean voyage went by like a year. The silly waves dragged on the steamer like a tired child on the skirts of its mother. Haste raged in your veins like a fever. You wanted to throw all the fat, heavy passengers overboard. You wanted to swim ahead with a towing rope in your teeth. You wanted to kill the Captain when he stuttered. You wanted to flay the cook for serving an extra course for dinner. Yet all the while the huge machinery throbbed in rhythm, "Timewillpass. Italways does. Italways does. Italways does."
And then at last you stood again on your Native Land,alive, well, vital, at home!
With the sensation of an unbroken miracle, you found your way again to the little Massachusetts sea town, along the peaceful village walk to the big brown house that turned so bleakly to the street. There on the steps, wonder of wonders, you found two elderly people, Bruno-Clarice and the Grandmother-Lady, and your knees gave out very suddenly and you sank down beside Bruno-Clarice and smothered the bark right out of him.
"Good lack!" cried the Grandmother-Lady,"Goodlack!" and made so much noise that Sam himself came running like mad from the next house; and though he had no beard, you liked him very much and shook and shook his hand until he squealed.
With the Grandmother-Lady plying you with questions, and Sam feeling your muscle, and Bruno-Clarice trying to crawl into your lap like a pug-dog baby, it was almost half an hour before you had a chance to ask,
"Where is Ladykin?"
"She's down on the beach," said Sam. "I'll go and help you find her."
You looked at Sam speculatively. "I'll give you ten dollars if you won't," you said.
Sam considered the matter gravely before he began to grin. "I wouldn't think of charging you more than five," he acquiesced.
So you went off with Bruno-Clarice hobbling close at your heels to find Ladykin for yourself. When you saw her she was perched up on the very top of the huddly gray rock playing tinkle tunes on her mandolin, and you stole up so quietly behind her that she did not see you till you were close beside her.
Then she turned very suddenly and looked down upon you and pretended that she did not know you, with her color coming and going all luminousand intermittent like a pink and white flashlight. In six years you had not seen such a wonderful playmatey face.
"Who are you?" she asked. "Who are you?"
"I am 'Little Boy Jack' come back to marry you," you began, but something in the wistful, shy girl-tenderness of her face and eyes choked your bantering words right off in your throat.
"Yes, Ladykin," you said, "I have come home, and I am very tired, and I am very sad, and I am very lonesome, and I have not been a very good boy. But please be good to me! I am so lonesome I cannot wait to make love to you. Oh,please,pleaselove men-o-w. Ineedyou to love me N-O-W!"
Ladykin frowned. It was not a cross frown. It was just a sort of a cosy corner for her thoughts. Surprise cuddled there, and a sorry feeling, and a great tenderness.
"You have not been a very good boy?" she repeated after you.
The memory of a year crowded blackly upon you. "No," you said, "I have not been a very good boy, and I am very suffering-sad. Butpleaselove me, and forgive me. No one has ever loved me!"
The surprise and the sorry feeling in Ladykin's forehead crowded together to make room for somethingthat was justwomanliness. She began to smile. It was the smile of a hurt person when the opiate first begins to overtake the pain.
"Oh, I'm sure it was an accidental badness," she volunteered softly. "If I were accidentally bad, you would forgiveme, wouldn't you?"
"Oh, yes, yes, yes," you stammered, and reached up your lonesome hands to her.
"Then you don't have to make love," she whispered. "It's all made," and slipped down into your arms.
But something troubled her, and after a minute she pushed you away and tried to renounce you.
"But it is not Thursday," she sobbed; "it is Wednesday; and my name is not 'Clarice'; it is Ladykin."
Then all the boyishness died out of you—the sweet, idle reveries, the mystic responsibilities. You shook your Father's dream from your eyes, and squared your shoulders for your own realities.
"A Man must make his own Happy-Day," you cried, "and a Man must choose his own Mate!"
Before your vehemence Ladykin winced back against the rock and eyed you fearsomely.
"Oh, I will love you and cherish you," you pleaded.
But Ladykin shook her head. "That is notenough," she whispered. There was a kind of holy scorn in her eyes.
Then a White Gull flashed like an apparition before your sight. Ladykin's whole figure drooped, her cheek paled, her little mouth quivered, her vision narrowed. There with her eyes on the White Gull and your eyes fixed on hers, you saw her shy thoughts journey into the Future. You saw her eyes smile, sadden, brim with tears, smile again, and come homing back to you with a timid, glad surprise as she realized that your thoughts too had gone all the long journey with her.
She reached out one little hand to you. It was very cold.
"If I should pass like the flash of a white wing," she questioned, "would you be true to me—andmine?"
The Past, the Present, the Future rushed over you in tumult. Your lips could hardly crowd so big a vow into so small a word. "Oh, YES, YES, YES!" you cried.
In reverent mastery you raised her face to yours. "A Man must make his own Happy-Day," you repeated. "A Man must make his own Happy-Day!"
Timorously, yet assentingly, she came back to your arms. The whisper of her lips against your ear was like the flutter of a rose petal.
"It will be Wednesday, then," she said, "for us and—ours."
Clanging a strident bell across the magic stillness of the garden, Sam bore down upon you like a steam-engine out of tune.
"Oh, I say," he shouted, "for heaven's sake cut it out and come to supper."
The startled impulse of your refusal faded before the mute appeal in Ladykin's eyes.
"All right," you answered; "but first I must go and cable 'love' to my Father."
"Oh, hurry!" cried Ladykin. Her word was crumpled and shy as a kiss.
"Oh, hurry!" cried Sam. His thought was straight and frank as a knife and fork.
Joy sang in your heart like a prayer that rhymed. Your eager heart was pounding like a race horse. The clouds in the sky were scudding to sunset. The surf on the beach seemed all out of breath. The green meadow path to the village stretched like the paltriest trifle before a man's fleet running pace.
"But I can't hurry," you said, for Bruno-Clarice came poking his grizzled old nose into your hand. "Oh, wait for me," he seemed to plead. "Oh, please,pleasewait for me."