The Flirt Part 15

"Oh, sometimes," was the response. "My business takes me over, now and then. I _think_ it's one of your daughters I've noticed dresses so well. Isn't one of 'em a mighty pretty girl about twenty-one or two, with a fine head of hair sort of lightish brown, beautiful figure, and carries a white parasol with a green lining sometimes?"

"Yes, that's Cora, I guess."

"Pretty name, too," said Pryor approvingly. "Yes-sir. I saw her going into a florist's, downtown, the other day, with a fine-looking young fellow--I can't think of his name. Let's see: my daughter was with me, and she'd heard his name--said his family used to be big people in this town and----"

"Oh," said Madison, "young Corliss."

"Corliss!" exclaimed Mr. Pryor, with satisfaction. "That's it, Corliss. Well, sir," he chuckled, "from the way he was looking at your Miss Cora it struck me he seemed kind of anxious for her name to be Corliss, too."

"Well, hardly I expect," said the other. "They just barely know each other: he's only been here a few weeks; they haven't had time to get much acquainted, you see."

"I suppose not," agreed Mr. Pryor, with perfect readiness. "I suppose not. I'll bet _he_ tries all he can to get acquainted though; he looked pretty smart to me. Doesn't he come about as often as the law allows?"

"I shouldn't be surprised," said Madison indifferently. "He doesn't know many people about here any more, and it's lonesome for him at the hotel. But I guess he comes to see the whole family; I left him in the library a little while ago, talking to my wife."

"That's the way! Get around the old folks first!" Mr. Pryor chuckled cordially; then in a mildly inquisitive tone he said: "Seems to be a fine, square young fellow, I expect?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Pretty name, 'Cora'," said Pryor.

"What's this little girl's name?" Mr. Madison indicated the child, who had stood with heroic patience throughout the incomprehensible dialogue.

"Lottie, for her mother. She's a good little girl."

"She is _so_! I've got a young son she ought to know," remarked Mr. Madison serenely, with an elderly father's total unconsciousness of the bridgeless gap between seven and thirteen.

"He'd like to play with her. I'll call him."

"I expect we better be getting on," said Pryor. "It's near Lottie's bedtime; we just came out for our evening walk."

"Well, he can come and shake hands with her anyway," urged Hedrick's father. "Then they'll know each other, and they can play some other time." He turned toward the house and called loudly:

"Hedrick!"

There was no response. Behind the back of his chair Hedrick could not be seen. He was still sitting immovable, his eyes torpidly fixed upon the wall.

"Hed-_rick_!"

Silence.

"Oh, _Hed_-rick!" shouted his father. "Come out here! I want you to meet a little girl! Come and see a nice little girl!"

Mr. Pryor's grandchild was denied the pleasure. At the ghastly words "_little girl_," Hedrick dropped from his chair flat upon the floor, crawled to the end of the porch, wriggled through the railing, and immersed himself in deep shadow against the side of the house.

Here he removed his shoes, noiselessly mounted to the sill of one of the library windows, then reconnoitred through a slit in the blinds before entering.

The gas burned low in the "drop-light"--almost too dimly to reveal the two people upon a sofa across the room. It was a faint murmur from one of them that caused Hedrick to pause and peer more sharply. They were Cora and Corliss; he was bending close to her; her face was lifting to his.

"Ah, kiss me! Kiss me!" she whispered.

Hedrick dropped from the sill, climbed through a window of the kitchen, hurried up the back-stairs, and reached his own apartment in time to be violently ill in seclusion.

CHAPTER NINE

Villages are scattered plentifully over the unstable b.u.t.tresses of Vesuvius, and the inhabitants sleep o' nights: Why not? Quite unaware that he was much of their condition, Mr. Madison bade his incidental gossip and the tiny Lottie good-night, and sought his early bed. He maintained in good faith that Sat.u.r.day night was "a great night to sleep," because of the later hour for rising; probably having also some fact.i.tious conviction that there prevailed a hush preparative of the Sabbath. As a matter of fact, in summer, the other members of his family always looked uncommonly haggard at the Sunday breakfast-table. Accepting without question his preposterous legend of additional matutinal slumber, they postponed retiring to a late hour, and were awakened--simultaneously with thousands of fellow-sufferers--at about half-after five on Sunday morning, by a journalistic uprising. Over the town, in these early hours, rampaged the small vendors of the manifold sheets: local papers and papers from greater cities, hawker succeeding hawker with yell upon yell and brain-piercing shrillings in unbearable cadences. No good burgher ever complained: the people bore it, as in winter they bore the smoke that injured their health, ruined their linen, spoiled their complexions, forbade all hope of beauty and comfort in their city, and destroyed the sweetness of their homes and of their wives. It is an incredibly patient citizenry and exalts its persecutors.

Of the Madison family, Cora probably suffered most; and this was the time when it was no advantage to have the front bedroom. She had not slept until close upon dawn, and the hawkers woke her irreparably; she could but rage upon her hot pillow. By and by, there came a token that another anguish kept company with hers.

She had left her door open for a better circulation of the warm and languid air, and from Hedrick's room issued an "_oof_!" of agonized disgust. Cora little suspected that the youth reeked not of newsboys: Hedrick's miseries were introspective.

The cries from the street were interminable; each howler in turn heard faintly in the distance, then in crescendo until he had pa.s.sed and another succeeded him, and all the while Cora lay tossing and whispering between clenched teeth. Having ample reason, that morning, to prefer sleep to thinking, sleep was impossible. But she fought for it: she did not easily surrender what she wanted; and she struggled on, with closed eyes, long after she had heard the others go down to breakfast.

About a hundred yards from her windows, to the rear, were the open windows of a church which fronted the next street, and stood dos-a-dos to the dwelling of the Madisons. The Sunday-school hour had been advanced for the hot weather, and, partly on this account, and partly because of the summer absence of many families, the attendants were few. But the young voices were conducted, rather than accompanied, in pious melody by a cornetist who worthily thought to amend, in his single person, what lack of volume this paucity occasioned. He was a slender young man in hot black clothes; he wore the unfacaded collar fatally and unanimously adopted by all adam's-apple men of morals; he was washed, fair, flat-skulled, clean-minded, and industrious; and the only noise of any kind he ever made in the world was on Sunday.

"Prashus joowuls, sweet joowuls, _thee_ jams off iz crowowun,"

sang the little voices feebly. They were almost unheard; but the young man helped them out: figuratively, he put them out. And the cornet was heard: it was heard for blocks and blocks; it was heard over all that part of the town--in the vicinity of the church it was the only thing that could be heard. In his daily walk this cornetist had no enemies: he was kind-hearted; he would not have shot a mad dog; he gladly nursed the sick. He sat upon the platform before the children; he swelled, perspired and blew, and felt that it was a good blowing. If other thoughts vapoured upon the borders of his mind, they were of the dinner he would eat, soon after noon, at the house of one of the frilled, white-muslin teachers. He was serene. His eyes were not blasted; his heart was not instantly withered; his thin, bluish hair did not fall from his head; his limbs were not detached from his torso--yet these misfortunes had been desired for him, with comprehension and sincerity, at the first flat blat of his bra.s.sy horn.

It is impossible to imagine the state of mind of this young cornetist, could he have known that he had caused the prettiest girl in town to jump violently out of bed with what pet.i.tions upon her lips regarding his present whereabouts and future detention!

It happened that during the course of his Sunday walk on Corliss Street, that very afternoon, he saw her--was hard-smitten by her beauty, and for weeks thereafter laid unsuccessful plans to "meet"

her. Her image was imprinted: he talked about her to his boarding-house friends and office acquaintances, his favourite description being, "the sweetest-looking lady I ever laid eyes on."

Cora, descending to the breakfast-table rather white herself, was not unpleasantly shocked by the haggard aspect of Hedrick, who, with Laura and Mrs. Madison, still lingered.

"Good-morning, Cora," he said politely, and while she stared, in suspicious surprise, he pa.s.sed her a plate of toast with ostentatious courtesy; but before she could take one of the slices, "Wait," he said; "it's very nice toast, but I'm afraid it isn't hot. I'll take it to the kitchen and have it warmed for you." And he took the plate and went out, walking softly.

Cora turned to her mother, appalled. "He'll be sick!" she said.

Mrs. Madison shook her head and smiled sadly.

"He helped to wait on all of us: he must have been doing something awful."

"More likely he wants permission to do something awful."

Laura looked out of the window.

"There, Cora," said Hedrick kindly, when he brought the toast; "you'll find that nice and hot."

She regarded him steadfastly, but with modesty he avoided her eye.

"You wouldn't make such a radical change in your nature, Hedrick,"

she said, with a puzzled frown, "just to get out of going to church, would you?"

"I don't want to get out of going to church," he said. He gulped slightly. "I like church."

And church-time found him marching decorously beside his father, the three ladies forming a rear rank; a small company in the very thin procession of fanning women and mopping men whose destination was the gray stone church at the foot of Corliss Street. The locusts railed overhead: Hedrick looked neither to the right nor to the left.

They pa.s.sed a club, of which a lower window was vacated simultaneously with their coming into view; and a small but ornate figure in pale gray crash hurried down the steps and attached itself to the second row of Madisons. "Good-morning," said Mr.

Wade Trumble. "Thought I'd take a look-in at church this morning myself."