The Boss of Little Arcady Part 4

Now came the lesson in geography. I had known it, had studied it faithfully that morning. It treated of the state from which she had so lately come. But, now, all knowledge of it fled me, save that on the map it was a large, clumsy state, though yellow, the color of her hair. Was it to be bounded like any cheaper state? Did it have princ.i.p.al products, like Maine, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Vermont, and other ordinary states? Its color was rightly golden; had it not produced her? But other products,--iron, coal, wheat,--these were stuffs too base to fellow in the same mind with her. Had it princ.i.p.al industries, like any red, or green, or blue state on that pedantic map? I could no longer recall them. Formally confronted with this problem, I muttered shamefully again that day in the valley of Humiliation. There was, I knew, a picture at the top of the page in which strong, rugged men toiled at various tasks; but the natures of these had escaped me. Were they mining coal or building s.h.i.+ps, catching fish or ploughing furrows in G.o.d's green earth? Out of my darkness I stammered, "Princ.i.p.al industries, agriculture and fish-building--"

"That will _do_, Calvin! You may remain after school to-night." I had never less liked the way she said this, as if it were a boon at which I would s.n.a.t.c.h, instead of a penalty imposed.

Solon Denney followed me, glibly enumerating the industries of a great and busy state. But I could not listen. Phantom-like in my poor mind floated a wordless conviction that, however it might once have been, the state would immediately abandon its industries now that she had come away from it. I beheld its considerable area desolated, the forges cold, the hammers stilled, the fields overgrown, the s.h.i.+ps rotting at their docks, the stalwart mechanics drooping idly above their unfinished tasks. It was not possible to suppose that any one could feel, in a state which she had left, that interest which good work demands.

My disgrace brought me respite for fresh adventure. I was let alone. The world could still be peopled; even Solon Denney might survive a little time, for another picture in the same geography now reproduced itself in my inflamed mind--the picture of a South Sea island, a sandy beach with a few indolent natives lolling, negligent of tasks, in the shade of cocoanut palms. Here, on the outer reef, I wrecked an excellent steams.h.i.+p. Over the rail sprang a stalwart lad, not out of his teens, with a lovely golden-haired girl in his arms. With strong, swift strokes, he struck out for the beach, notwithstanding his burden. The other pa.s.sengers, a hazy and quite uninteresting lot, quickly went down; all save one, a coa.r.s.e, swaggering youth with too much self-possession whom I need not name. He, too, sprang over the rail, but, nearing the beach, a justly enraged providence intervened and he was bitten neatly in two by a famished and adroit shark.

With some interest I watched his blood stain the lucid green waters, but it was soon over. Then I bore my fainting burden to the dry sands and revived her with cocoanut milk and breadfruit, while the natives crowded respectfully about and made us their king and queen on the spot. We lived there forever. How flat of sound were it to say that we lived happily!

And yet I doubt if Solon Denney ever suspected me of aspiring to be his rival. She, I think, knew it full well, in the way her s.e.x knows matters not communicated by act or word of mouth. And once, on the afternoon of that day, a Friday, when we spoke pieces, I feared that Solon had found me out. He was a fiery orator, and I felt on this occasion that he delivered himself straight at me, with a very poorly veiled malignance.

Surely, it must be I that he meant, literally, when he thundered out, "Sir, you are much mistaken if you think your talents have been as great as your life has been reprehensible!" Fall upon me and upon me alone seemed to flash his gaze.

"After a rank and clamorous opposition you became--all of a sudden--silent; you were silent for seven years; you were silent on the greatest questions--and you were silent _for money!_"

There could be no doubt, I thought, that he singled me from the mult.i.tude of his auditors. It was I who had supported the unparalleled profusion and jobbing of Lord Harcourt's scandalous ministry; I who had manufactured stage thunder against Mr. Eden for his anti-American principles--"You, sir, whom it pleases to chant a hymn to the immortal Hampden--you, sir, approved of the tyranny exercised against America, and you, sir, voted four thousand Irish troops to cut the throats of the Americans."

Under the burden of this imputed ignominy, was it remarkable that I faltered in my own piece immediately following?

"The Warrior bowed his crested head, and tamed his heart of fire, And sued the haughty King to free his long imprisoned sire."

Not more foully was the blameless Don Sancho done to death than I upon this Friday murdered the ballad that recounts his fate. And she, who had hung breathless on Solon's denunciations of me, whispered chattily with Eva McIntyre during my rendition of "Bernardo del Carpio."

Later events, however, convinced me that I swam never in Solon's ken as a rival for her smiles. His own triumph was too easy, too widely heralded. In the second week of her coming, was there not a rhyme shouted on the playground, full in the hearing of both?

"First the post and then the gate, Solon Denney and Lucy Tait."

Was not this followed by one more subtle, more pointed, more ribald?

"Solon's mad and I'm glad, and I know what will please him; a bottle of wine to make him s.h.i.+ne and Lucy Tait to tease him!"

I thought there was an inhuman, devilish deftness in the rhymes. The mighty mechanism of English verse had been employed to proclaim my remoteness from my love.

And yet the G.o.ds were once graciously good to me. One wondrous evening before hope died utterly I survived the ordeal of walking home with her from church.

She came with her aunt, uncle, and I present by the G.o.d's permission, surmised that she might leave them and go to her own home alone when church was out. Through that service I wors.h.i.+pped her golden braids and the pink roses on her leghorn hat. And when they sang, "Praise G.o.d from whom all blessings flow!" my voice soared fervently in the words, for I had satisfied myself by much craning of the neck that Solon Denney was not present. Even now the Doxology revives within me that mixed emotion of relief at his absence and apprehension for the approaching encounter with her.

She pa.s.sed me at the portals of the house of a double wors.h.i.+p, said good night to aunt and uncle--and I was at her side.

"May I have the pleasure of seeing you home?"

She managed a timid "Certainly." her hand fluttered within my arm, and my heart bounded forward like a freed race-horse. We walked!

Now it had been my occupation at quiet moments to devise conversation against the time of this precise miracle. I had dreamt that it might come to pa.s.s, even as it did, and I knew that talk for it should be stored safely away. This talk had been the coinage of my leisure. As we walked I would say, lightly,--"Do you like it here as well as you did back East?"--or, still better, as sounding more chatty,--"How do you like it here?"--an easy, masterful pause--"as well as you did back East?" A thousand times had I rehea.r.s.ed the inflections until they were perfect. And now the time was come.

Whether I spoke at all or not until we reached her gate I have never known. Dimly in my memory is a suggestion that when we pa.s.sed Uncle Jerry Honeycutt, I confided to her that he sent to Chicago for his ear-trumpet and that it cost twelve dollars. If I did this, she must have made a suitable response, though I retain nothing of it.

I only know that the sky was full of flaming meteors, that golden star dust rained upon us from an applauding heaven, that the earth rocked gently as we trod upon it.

Down the wonderful street we went, a strange street s.h.i.+mmering in mystic light--and then I was opening her gate. I, afterward, decided that surely at this moment, with the gate between us, I would have remembered--superbly would I have said, "How do you like it here?--as well as you did back East?"

But, two staring boys pa.s.sed us, and one of them spoke thus:--

"There's Horsehead Blake--h.e.l.lo, Horsehead!"

"That ain't old Horsehead," said the other.

"'Tis, too--ain't that _you_, Horsehead?"

"How do you do, boys!" I answered loftily, and they pa.s.sed on appeased.

"Do they call you Horsehead?" she asked.

"Oh, yes!" I replied brightly. "It's a funny name, isn't it?" and I laughed murderously.

"Yes, it's very funny."

"Well, I'll have to be going now. Good night!"

"Good night!"

And she left me staring after her, the whole big world and its starry heavens crying madly within me to be said to her.

CHAPTER IV

DREAMS AND WAKINGS

The incomparable Lucy Tait was still but a star to be adored in her distant heaven when I went away from Little Arcady to learn some things not taught in the faded brick schoolhouse. It was six years before I came back; six years that I lived in a crowded place where people had no easy ways nor front yards with geranium beds, nor knew enough of their neighbors either to love or to hate them.

I came back to the Little Country a mannish being, learned in the law, and with the right sort of laugh in my heart for the old school days, for the simplicity of my boy's love.

But, there and then, with her old sweet want of pity, did she smite me again. Through and through she smote the man as she had smitten the boy.

Treacherously it was, within my own citadel, at the very moment of my coming. Gayly up the remembered path I went, under the flowering horse-chestnut, to the little house standing back from the street, only to find that, as of old, she blocked my way. She stood where the pink-blossomed climber streamed up the columns of the little porch, and her arm was twined among the strands to draw them to her face. She was leaving,--but she had stayed too long; not the child with yellow braids, humorously preserved in my memory, but a blossomed, a fruiting Eve, with whilom braids ma.s.sed high in a coronet, their gold a little tarnished.

Later it came to me to think that she was Spring, and had filched a crown from Autumn. In that first glance, however, I could only wonder instinctively if the ta.s.sels yet danced from her boot tops. I saw at once that this might not any longer be known. One could only surmise pleasantly. But straightway was I Atlas, stooping a little, rounding my shoulders under the earth she deigned to walk upon.

And the disconcerting strangeness of it was in this: that though she was no longer the woman child, yet with one flash of her gold-curtained eyes had she reduced me to my ancient schoolboy clumsiness. She was a woman, but, I was again an awkward, stammering boy, rebelliously declining to believe that a state she had come away from could retain any significance, industrial or otherwise. Nor, in the little time left to us, did I ever achieve a condition higher than this.

Consciously I was a prince of lofty origin in her presence, but ever unable to make known my excellencies of rank. It was as in a dream when we must see evil approach without power to raise an averting hand.

She was Spring with a stolen crown of Autumn; and again, she was a sherbet--sweet, fragrant, cold, and about to melt--but not for me. I knew that.

I heard presently that she spoke well of me. She spoke of my having a kind face--even the kindest face in the world.

"The _kindest, plainest_ face in the world," was her fas.h.i.+on of putting it. And of course that made it hopeless, since, surely, no woman has ever loved the kindest face she knew.