CHAPTER VITHE ODD STICK
My mother’s savings were exhausted in the spring of 1900. The payments on her pension were delayed. The good woman was almost alone in the world with a seam-ripping, button-bursting, small boy who demanded to be clothed, fed, educated. Rather than submit to the slavery of keeping house for some widowed farmer, she decided to move to Paris also and try to find work in a store.
Thus I ultimately rejoined Nathan.
He did not greet me as effusively as I had expected. His indifference hurt. But I soon made allowance. Nathan was in love. The object of his affections was Bernie Gridley.
“Come over to my house and tell me all about her,” I invited that first noontime.
“After school? I can’t. I work.”
“You work! Where?”
“I peddle papers every night—Telegraphs.”
“You mean you make real money? Gee, that’s swell.”
Nat shut his lips.
“Aw, I don’t get nothin’. Pa makes me do it. He takes it and uses it to help out at home.”
“But you do the work and so the money belongs to you!”
“Yeah! But pa figgers he’s supportin’ me and he had to work when he was a boy—and turn over the money to his father. So he makes me do the same.”
“I’d like to seemyself——”
“Aw, you’re talkin’ through your hat! Whatter you know about havin’ a father? Your father died! Hang it all, some guys have all the luck!”
II
Nathan was “goin’ on fourteen” now. He had grown older, somehow, older than the twenty months which had intervened since I had last seen him warranted.
These three—Nathan, the Dresden Doll and a shocky-headed young troglodyte who had just arrived from the wilds of Foxboro Center—were seated near one another during that year in the seventh grade of the old Academy on the hill.
The American public school being the great common denominator for juvenile humanity, it had developed after several months’ scholastic propinquity between Nathan and Bernie that he was not quite so impossible as the Dresden Doll had at first assumed. And Bernie’s teachers had rather caustic ideas about the Gridley “blood.” The Dresden Doll became a little more human.
“What are you going to give me for my birthday, boy?” she demanded of Nathan one day, accosting him on the edge of the school yard. “I’m going to have a party, you know. Everybody’s coming and must bring me something.”
The abruptness of meeting and question left Nathan speechless. With his temperament and home training—or lack of it—it was only natural he should have been awkward in her presence.
But he finally rallied.
“Well, I’ll try to give you something bigger ’n better than you’ll get from anybody else. You can bet on that!”
His declaration implied a promise. Moreover, after the nature of such youthful indiscretions, it grew plain he would have to make that promise good or be forever discredited and go through the rest of life a celibant.
What could he give her that would be greater and finer and better than any other person—chiefly boy—might offer? It became an awful quandary. Though only “goin’ on fourteen”, it came to him he had thrust a foot into one of life’s traps. In his little cot-bed up under the eaves of the cottage John Forge had taken for his family in Spring Street, he pondered feverishly far into each night. And with sickening speed the date of the affair approached and found him still debating.
The underlying cause of his predicament was financial. He hadn’t a cent, was never allowed money and would have to steal and lie to get any. If he had millions he could of course present her with a diamond ring or a Maltese cat or something like that. But not a cent! It was humiliating.
The solution finally came via the unwitting agency of the Duchess. She called on Mrs. Forge to purchase some geranium slips and remained to discuss the precocity of Bernice-Theresa.
“I am convinced she will be literary,” the Duchess declared. “She has already finished the Bible, ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ and ‘Rollo’s Travels in Switzerland.’ I think I shall start her next on the poets.”
Nathan’s mother asked which poets. And the Duchess answered: “I understand ‘Dauntless Inferno’ by John Milton is being read these days by all the best people. After that I shall try Shakespeare. He’s so romantic!”
Nathan lay in bed that night, turning this sudden literary proclivity of the Gridley girl over in his mind. Then, by the strange and wonderful convolutions of a boy’s brain, he had it! He could scarcely wait until morning to get to Weathersbee & Hawkins’ Second-hand Furniture Store. There, after much mysterious maneuvering, he contracted for the article he sought, agreeing to saw wood for Mr. Hawkins Saturdays to pay for it. He carried it home the night before the memorable birthday party and hid it in the loft of the Forge woodshed.
The affair began at two-thirty the next day. Twenty-seven boys and girls, painfully starched and ironed, gathered awkwardly upon the Gridley lawn. A table had been placed beside the veranda steps and upon it the birthday gifts were deposited. Article by article the pile grew, some of them pathetically inexpensive, a few indicating want of taste far more than worldly goods.
When the Forge boy looked upon the daintiness and delicacy of most of the gifts, an awful qualm smote him. He wondered if he might not have overdone the present business in his anxiety to make an impression? But Bernice was demanding impatiently to know how he had fulfilled his promise. There was no time to reconsider now—certainly not to go back and buy another present. He went toa secret place in the hedge and brought his gift from its hiding.
Across the lawn he carried it with difficulty, for it was nearly as large as himself. To the gift-altar he brought it, small heart palpitating painfully.
“My goodness!” exclaimed the little patrician. “Whatever can it be?”
The children, patronized by a few mothers, gathered around to learn what the Forge boy had brought his dainty little hostess which should leave all present speechless by its cleverness and elegance. Nathan, badly scared, unwound copious quantities of newspaper and cast them aside. Then, using all his thirteen-year strength, up onto the table amid the lesser gifts, its weight causing that table to rock rather groggily for a moment, Nathan added—a life-sized bust of Julius Cæsar. Cæsar. In chalk!
The Duchess raised her lorgnette. She and Cæsar exchanged mutual glances of stupefaction for an instant.
“But who is it?” she demanded.
“It must be a new kind of a big doll!” exclaimed a little girl with violent pigtails.
“Why—why—it’s a—it’s a——” Nathan wanted all present to understand that it was sculpture of most poetic motif having to do with the literary ramifications of one W. Shakespeare. But he could not recall the words “sculpture”, “statue” or “bust.”
“It’s a monument!” he choked. “For Julius Cæsar—I meanofJulius Cæsar. He divided Gaul into three parts and they stabbed him!”
“A monument!” cried the Duchess. “Stabbed him! And do you think he’s buried hereabouts, that Bernice-Theresa should be edified with his tombstone for a plaything?”
“You told Ma that Bernie was goin’ to read the best poets. I thought o’ this mon-mon-monument I s-s-seen in Weatherbee’s store. He’s got an ear gone and his nose is bunged and maybe he needs washin’. But as far’s the missin’ ear goes, you could stand it in a corner somewheres so’s his head would be against the wall——”
“My God!” choked the Duchess. “William! William! Where’s William?”
William Chew, the elderly person of color, came forward.
“William,” cried the Duchess, “remove this nightmare.God love us! It looks as if this unspeakable boy had brought Bernice-Theresa the upper half of somebody’s whitewashed corpse!”
“Yes, ma’am!” assented William. “What yo’ want ah should do with it, ma’am?”
“Do with it?” gasped the Duchess. “Take it home to your family! Set it up on your front lawn! Hand it down to your children! Only get the hideous thing off these premises and never bring it back!”
William obediently toted off the bust. Then the Duchess looked about for the giver of this good and perfect gift. But Nathan had reached the gate and was fleeing down the walk. For him there was no party.
William took the “monument” home. The last seen of it was atop a post in the center of the Chew cornfield. The colored man had draped a coat around the classic bust, hung trousers beneath it, put an old straw hat on the brow that produced the Commentaries, and relegated it to the job of scaring off the crows. Its end came when old Webster Nelson wandered into the field one night under the influence of liquor, beheld the chalky features beneath the hat, and reduced it to fragments under the crazed obsession that he was being confronted by the supernatural.
A little girl makes love to a boy in school by the simple expedient of allowing him to discover her eyes upon him steadily when he raises his head from his studies and looks in her direction. Nathan dragged himself to school next day. But the topaz eyes of Bernice-Theresa were not upon him,—once! Thereupon did life become a delusion and a snare and sorrow sit heavily upon him.
The Dresden Doll came out of the Academy at four o’clock and started homeward. By some mysterious levitation, she had not progressed three blocks before the street held a party of the opposite sex employed in touching every other picket in the fence, withal moving in her own direction.
“Say!” this person demanded plaintively, having somehow crossed the thoroughfare by the time she reached the Baptist Church. “Are you mad at me, Bernie?”
“Of course I’m mad! Why shouldn’t I be mad? You tried to spoil my party.”
“I didn’t mean to spoil your party.”
“Perhaps you didn’t. But you’re such a fool at times!”
“A fool!”
“Why do you do such perfectly silly things?”
“I—I—only tried to give you somethin’ different, Bernie. I—only—tried—to make you like me.”
“Then you don’t know much about girls! For instance—your clothes! Why, you came to my party looking like a—a—tramp!”
“They were my best clothes, Bernie—the best I got.”
“Then why on earth doesn’t your father buy you some new?”
“He says it’s puttin’ on style—and foolish.”
“But you look so! Can’t he see it?”
“I guess, Bernie, he don’t much care—or understand.”
“Then I’d work—and buy my own.”
“I do work. But he makes me give him all I earn.”
“Then I’d run away—or shoot him!”
She tossed her long mass of straw-colored curls haughtily and walked from sight.
John Forge had not been able to hold his job in the newspaper office. He “didn’t get along with people.” He had opened a small shop on Main Street and gone back to cobbling shoes. Next day Ben Williams, the clothier, looked in at the Forge door and with half a laugh demanded:
“Can’t you dress that young one of yours so he won’t go around makin’ a nuisance of himself, John Forge? He was in my place this noon with a crazy plea for me to save all my bundles for Saturdays so he could deliver ’em and earn himself a suit to look respectable.”
John Forge went home with his weak jaw set grimly.
“I’ll break that boy’s foolish pride—or I’ll break his back!” he promised himself dourly.
Nathan lay back in the hammock in the summer-evening depths of the front piazza and dreamed dreams with his eyes open. Down the street old man Bailey’s phonographwas grinding out a squeaky program of popular ballads. The moths were clustering around the sputtering arc lamps. On the near-by corner the Allen girl was shamelessly “flirting with a feller” who sat on his bicycle alongside the curb, one foot upon it to steady himself. Occasionally the girl tested the bell on the handle bars, and it ding-donged a high and low musical note interspersed with low laughter. The flirtation hurt Nathan. He was jealous of the older fellow’s freedom from “careful” parents.
“On’y seven years more—just seven years!—then I can marry her,” the poor young colt told himself. “Marry her whether Pa’ll let me or not. Oh, Bernie, Bernie, I love you. I love you more than anything else in the world! You’ll never understand!”
It was only half-past seven o’clock and yet his father appeared and ordered him in to bed.
“Look here, you young pup,” the man intercepted as Nat drearily obeyed, “—what’s this nonsense I’m hearing about you traipsin’ around behind some girl? Do you?”
“N-N-No, sir!”
“I don’t believe you!—Else folks around town wouldn’t be talking. If you lie to me I’ll lay on the strap. Now who is the girl and what about her? Answer me quick, or it’ll be worse for you!”
“I don’t know what you mean!”
A shrill cry of pain followed as the man twisted the boy’s ear.
“Answer me!” he thundered.
“B-B-Bernice Gridley,” Nat confessed.
“Well—you let me lay down a law right here and now! No son of mine is going to make a young jackass of himself—or ruin his life—by getting mixed up with any girl before he’s old enough to know his own mind! You put girls out of your mind once and for all, the same as when we lived over in Foxboro you were told to put the baby business out of your mind! You hear me? Don’t you ever be seen on the street with a girl. Don’t you ever speak to one excepting when you’re absolutely obliged to—on strictly business! Don’t you ever let me hear of you goin’ to any party where there’s girls—while as for loving or kissing ’em—my God, I’ll skin you alive if I find you up to any such looseness and wickedness. You promise thathere and now—before me and before God—and may God damn your disobedient young soul if you go back on your promise.”
Nathan was aghast. Johnathan tortured the boy until he got his promise out.
This was a Thursday evening. The church bells were droning idly in the soft summer dusk. Having heard young Nathan climb sobbing into his creaking bed (while other boys were still playing “Duck on the Rock” out under the Adams Street arc light) Johnathan Forge went to prayer meeting. There he made his ten-minute weekly testimony about how precious Jesus had been to his soul since the previous Thursday and how he—Johnathan—prayed in all things to be guided by the Father’s loving care.