The Log of the Jolly Polly Part 2

Hatchardson's proved to be a place of great delight. As you entered there were counters for magazines and post-cards, popular music, and best-selling novels, while in the rear of the shop tables and shelves were stocked with ancient volumes, and on the wall surrounding them hung engravings, prints and woodcuts of even the eighteenth century. Just as the drugstore on the corner seemed to be a waiting station for those of New Bedford who used the trolley-cars, so for those who moved in automobiles, or still clung to the family carriage, Hatchardson's appeared to be less a shop than a public meeting-place. I noticed that the clerks, most of whom were women, were with the customers on a most friendly footing, addressing them, and by them being addressed by name.

Finding I was free to wander where I pleased, I walked to the rear of the shop and from one of the tables picked up a much-worn volume. It was ent.i.tled "The Log of the JOLLY POLLY", and was ill.u.s.trated with wood cuts showing square-rigged s.h.i.+ps and whales Spouting. For five minutes, lost to my Surroundings, I turned the pages; and then became conscious that across the table some one was watching me. I raised my eyes and beheld a face of most surprising charm, intelligence and beauty. It was so lovely that it made me wince. The face was the fortune, and judging from the fact that in her hand she held a salesbook, the sole fortune, of a tall young girl who apparently had approached to wait on me. She was looking toward the street, so that, with the book-shelves for a back-ground, her face was in profile, and I determined swiftly that if she were to wait on me she would be kept waiting as long as my money lasted. I did not want "The Log of the JOLLY POLLY," but I did want to hear the lovely lady speak, and especially I desired that the one to whom she spoke should be myself.

"What is the price of this?" I asked. With magnificent self-control I kept my eyes on the book, but the lovely lady was so long silent that I raised them. To my surprise, I found on her face an expression of alarm and distress. With reluctance, and yet within her voice a certain hopefulness, she said, "Fifty dollars."

Fifty dollars was a death blow. I had planned to keep the young lady selling books throughout the entire morning, but at fifty dollars a book, I would soon be owing her money. I attempted to gain time.

"It must be very rare!" I said. I was afraid to look at her lest my admiration should give offense, so I pretended to admire the book.

"It is the only one in existence," said the young lady. "At least, it is the only one for sale!"

We were interrupted by the approach of a tall man who, from his playing the polite host and from his not wearing a hat, I guessed was Mr.

Hatchardson himself. He looked from the book in my hand to the lovely lady and said smiling, "Have you lost it?"

The girl did not smile. To her, apparently, it was no laughing matter.

"I don't know--yet," she said. Her voice was charming, and genuinely troubled.

Mr. Hatchardson, for later I learned it was he, took the book and showed me the t.i.tle-page.

"This was privately printed in 1830," he said, "by Captain Noah Briggs.

He distributed a hundred presentation copies among his family and friends here in New Bedford. It is a most interesting volume."

I did not find it so. For even as he spoke the young girl, still with a troubled countenance, glided away. Inwardly I cursed Captain Briggs and a.s.sociated with him in my curse the polite Mr. Hatchardson. But, at his next words my interest returned. Still smiling, he lowered his voice.

"Miss Briggs, the young lady who just left us," he said, "is the granddaughter of Captain Briggs, and she does not want the book to go out of the family; she wants it for herself." I interrupted eagerly.

"But it is for sale?" Mr. Hatchardson reluctantly a.s.sented.

"Then I will take it," I said.

Fifty dollars is a great deal of money, but the face of the young lady had been very sad. Besides being sad, had it been aged, plain, and ill-tempered, that I still would have bought the book, is a question I have never determined.

To Mr. Hatchardson, of my purpose to give the book to Miss Briggs, I said nothing. Instead I planned to send it to her anonymously by mail.

She would receive it the next morning when I was arriving in New York, and, as she did not know my name, she could not possibly return it.

At the post-office I addressed the "Log" to "Miss Briggs, care of Hatchardson's Bookstore," and then I returned to the store. I felt I had earned that pleasure. This time, Miss Briggs was in charge of the post-card counter, and as now a post-card was the only thing I could afford to buy, at seeing her there I was doubly pleased. But she was not pleased to see me. Evidently Mr. Hatchardson had told her I had purchased the "Log" and at her loss her very lovely face still showed disappointment. Toward me her manner was distinctly aggrieved.

But of the "Log" I said nothing, and began recklessly purchasing post-cards that pictured the show places of New Bedford. Almost the first one I picked up was labelled "Harbor Castle. Residence of Fletcher Farrell." I need not say that I studied it intently. According to the post-card, Harbor Castle stood on a rocky point with water on both sides. It was an enormous, wide-spreading structure, as large as a fort. It exuded prosperity, opulence, extravagance, great wealth. I felt suddenly a filial impulse to visit the home of my would-be forefathers.

"Is this place near here?" I asked.

Miss Briggs told me that in order to reach it I should take the ferry to Fairharbor, and then cross that town to the Buzzards Bay side.

"You can't miss it," she said. "It's a big stone house, with red and white awnings. If you see anything like a jail in ruffles, that's it."

It was evident that with the home I had rejected Miss Briggs was unimpressed; but seeing me add the post-card to my collection, she offered me another.

"This," she explained, "is Harbor Castle from the bay. That is their yacht in the foreground."

The post-card showed a very beautiful yacht of not less than two thousand tons. Beneath it was printed "HARBOR LIGHTS; steam yacht owned by Fletcher Farrell." I always had dreamed of owning a steam yacht, and seeing it stated in cold type that one was owned by "Fletcher Farrell,"

even though I was not that Fletcher Farrell, gave me a thrill of guilty pleasure. I gazed upon the post-card with envy.

"HARBOR LIGHTS is a strange name for a yacht," I ventured. Miss Briggs smiled.

"Not for that yacht," she said. "She never leaves it."

I wished to learn more of my would-be parents, and I wished to keep on talking with the lovely Miss Briggs, so, as an excuse for both, I pretended I was interested in the Farrells because I had something I wanted to sell them.

"This Fletcher Farrell must be very rich," I said. "I wonder," I asked, "if I could sell him an automobile?" The moment I spoke I noticed that the manner of Miss Briggs toward Me perceptibly softened. Perhaps, from my buying offhand a fifty-dollar book she had thought me one of the rich, and had begun to suspect I was keeping her waiting on me only because I found her extremely easy to look at. Many times before, in a similar manner, other youths must have imposed upon her, and perhaps, also, in concealing my admiration, I had not entirely succeeded.

But, when she believed that, like herself, I was working for my living, she became more human.

"What car are you selling?" she asked. "I am TRYING to sell," I corrected her, "the Blue Bird, six cylinder."

"I never heard of it," said Miss Briggs.

"Nor has any one else," I answered, with truth. "That is one reason why I can't sell it. I arrived here this morning, and," I added with pathos, "I haven't sold a car yet!"

Miss Briggs raised her beautiful eyebrows skeptically. "Have you tried?"

she said.

A brilliant idea came to me. In a side street I had pa.s.sed a garage where Photaix cars were advertised for hire. I owned a Phoenix, and I thought I saw a way by which, for a happy hour, I might secure the society of Miss Briggs.

"I am an agent and demonstrator for the Phoenix also," I said glibly; "maybe I could show you one?"

"Show me one?" exclaimed Miss Briggs. "One sees them everywhere! They are always under your feet!"

"I mean," I explained, "might I take you for a drive in one?"

It was as though I had completely vanished. So far as the lovely Miss Briggs was concerned I had ceased to exist. She turned toward a nice old lady.

"What can I show you, Mrs. Scudder?" she asked cheerily; "and how is that wonderful baby?"

I felt as though I had been lifted by the collar, thrown out upon a hard sidewalk, and my hat tossed after me. Greatly shaken, and mentally brus.h.i.+ng the dust from my hands and knees, I hastened to the ferry and crossed to Fairharbor. I was extremely angry. By an utter stranger I had been misjudged, snubbed and cast into outer darkness. For myself I readily found excuses. If a young woman was so attractive that at the first sight of her men could not resist buying her fifty-dollar books and hiring automobiles in which to take her driving, the fault was hers.

I a.s.sured myself that girls as lovely as Miss Briggs were a menace to the public. They should not be at large. An ordinance should require them to go masked. For Miss Briggs also I was able to make excuses. Why should she not protect herself from the advances of strange young men?

If a popular novelist, and especially an ex-popular one, chose to go about disguised as a drummer for the Blue Bird automobile and behaved as such, and was treated as such, what right had he to complain? So I persuaded myself I had been punished as I deserved. But to salve my injured pride I a.s.sured myself also that any one who read my novels ought to know my att.i.tude toward any lovely lady could be only respectful, protecting, and chivalrous. But with this consoling thought the trouble was that n.o.body read my novels.

In finding Harbor Castle I had no difficulty. It stood upon a rocky point that jutted into Buzzards Bay. Five acres of artificial lawn and flower-beds of the cemetery and railroad-station school of horticulture surrounded it, and from the highroad it was protected by a stone wall so low that to the pa.s.serby, of the beauties of Harbor Castle nothing was left to the imagination. Over this wall roses under conflicting banners of pink and red fought fiercely. One could almost hear the shrieks of the wounded. Upon the least th.o.r.n.y of these I seated myself and in tender melancholy gazed upon the home of my childhood. That is, upon the home that might-have-been.

When surveying a completed country home, to make the owner thoroughly incensed the correct thing to say is, "This place has great possibilities!"

Harbor Castle had more possibilities than any other castle I ever visited. But in five minutes I had altered it to suit myself. I had ploughed up the flower-beds, dug a sunken garden, planted a wind screen of fir, spruce, and Pine, and with a huge brick wall secured warmth and privacy. So pleased was I with my changes, that when I departed I was sad and downcast. The boat-house of which Mrs. Farrell had spoken was certainly an ideal work-shop, the tennis-courts made those at the Newport Casino look like a ploughed field, and the swimming-pool, guarded by white pillars and overhung with grape-vines, was a cool and refres.h.i.+ng picture. As, hot and perspiring, I trudged back through Fairharbor, the memory of these haunted me. That they also tempted me, it is impossible to deny. But not for long. For, after pa.s.sing through the elm-shaded streets to that side of the village that faced the harbor, I came upon the cottages I had seen from the New Bedford sh.o.r.e.

At close range they appeared even more attractive than when pointed out to me by the mate of the steamboat. They were very old, very weather-stained and covered with honeysuckle. Flat stones in a setting of gra.s.s led from the gates to the arched doorways, hollyhocks rose above hedges of box, and from the verandas one could look out upon the busy harbor and the houses of New Bedford rising in steps up the sloping hills to a sky-line of tree-tops and church spires. The mate had told me that for what he had rented a flat in New York he had secured one of these charming old world homes. And as I pa.s.sed them I began to pick out the one in which when I retired from the world I would settle down. This time I made no alterations. How much the near presence of Miss Briggs had to do with my determination to settle down in Fairharbor, I cannot now remember. But, certainly as I crossed the bridge toward New Bedford, thoughts of her entirely filled my mind. I a.s.sured my self this was so only because she was beautiful. I was sure her outward loveliness advertised a nature equally lovely, but for my sudden and extreme interest I had other excuses. Her in dependence in earning her living, her choice in earning it among books and pictures, her pride of family as shown by her efforts to buy the family heirloom, all these justified my admiration. And her refusing to go joy-riding with an impertinent stranger, even though the impertinent stranger was myself, was an act I applauded. The more I thought of Miss Briggs the more was I disinclined to go away leaving with her an impression of myself so unpleasant as the one she then held. I determined to remove it. At least, until I had redeemed myself, I would remain in New Bedford. The determination gave me the greatest satisfaction. With a light heart I returned to the office of the steamboat line and retrieving my suit-case started with it toward the Parker House. It was now past five o'clock, the stores were closed, and all the people who had not gone to the baseball game with Fall River were in the streets. In consequence, as I was pa.s.sing the post-office, Miss Briggs came down the steps, and we were face to face.

In her lovely eyes was an expression of mingled doubt and indignation and in her hand freshly torn from the papers in which I had wrapped it, was "The Log of the JOLLY POLLY." In action Miss Briggs was as direct as a submarine. At sight of me she attacked. "Did you send me this?" she asked.

I lowered my bag to the sidewalk and prepared for battle. "I didn't think of your going to the post-office," I said. "I planned you'd get it to-morrow after I'd left. When I sent it, I thought I would never see you again."

"Then you did send it!" exclaimed Miss Briggs. As though the book were a hot plate she dropped it into my hand. She looked straight at me, but her expression suggested she was removing a caterpillar from her pet rosebush.