“Have you considered the band concert, Joe?” Mr. Allen inquired. “Do you realize what strange euphonies you’ll miss unless you keep sober until seven-thirty?”
The somber Perley relaxed his gaze, and uttered a fierce monosyllable of denunciation. “Sober!” he added, afterward. “I’m sober. That’s my trouble. I’ve been trying to get tight for three hours!”
“I’ll say this fer you,” the bartender volunteered— “you been tryin’ good, too!”
“Ever experiment any?” Lucius suggested. “Why don’t you go over to Doc Willis’s Painless Dental Parlors? He’s got a tank of gas there, and all you do is put a rubber thing over your nose and breathe. Without any trouble at all you’ll be completely out of business in forty-five seconds.”
“Yeh,” said the bartender. “But it don’t last more’n about four minutes.”
“No; that’s true,” Lucius admitted. “But maybe Joe could hire Doc to tap him behind the ear with one of those little lead mallets when he sees him coming out of the gas. Joe’d feel just about the same tomorrow as he will if he stays here running up a bill with you. Fact is, I believe he’d feel better.”
“I tell you,” said Mr. Perley, with emphasis, “I’m drinking!” And for further emphasis he rattled his glass. “Give me the same, George,” he said.
George held a bottle to the light. He meditated, rubbing the back of his head; then spoke: “Tell you what I’ll do. The wife’s waitin’ supper fer me now; I want to git back up-town early fer the trade before the concert, because I look fer quite a rush—”
“Yes,” interrupted Mr. Allen musingly. “Our community is going to see a night of wine and music, George.”
“I’ll jest open a fresh bottle fer you, Joe,” the bartender continued; “and when I git back I’ll charge you with how many drinks you take out of it; I got the place marked with my thumb. I’m goin’ on home to supper. You want any more buttermilk, Lu?”
“Bring the pitcher,” said Mr. Allen. “I will sup upon it.”
“All right.” And George brought to the table the pitcher of buttermilk, a dim saucer of crackers and cheese, a brown bottle, ice-water, and fresh glasses. After that he doffed his apron, put on his hat, but no coat, and went to the door, where he turned to say: “If anybody else comes in here before I git back—”
“And calls for liquor,” Mr. Allen took up the sentence, as George paused in thought, “we shall be glad to—”
“Tell ’em,” said George, “they don’t git it!” He departed.
Mr. Allen helped himself to buttermilk, ate a cracker, leaned back in his chair, and began to hum “Annie Laurie.”
“Stop that!” said Perley sharply.
“Certainly,” said Lucius. “I’ll whistle instead.”
“If you do,” the troubled young man warned him, in good faith, “I’ll kill you!”
“What can I do to entertain you, Joe?”
“You might clear out,” his friend suggested darkly. “God knows I haven’t asked for your society!”
“No,” said Lucius. “Our fairest gifts do oft arrive without petition. What an unusual thought! Have you noticed—”
But the other burst out suddenly in a tragic fury: “Shut up! What’s the matter with you? Can’t you see I want to be alone?”
Mr. Allen remained placid. “What difference do I make?” he asked. “I thought you said you were ‘drinking’? If you’re really in earnest about it you don’t care who’s here or anywhere else.”
“Don’t you see I’m in misery?” cried Perley.
“The ayes have it.”
“Well, then, why in Heaven’s name can’t you—”
“I’ll tell you,” said Lucius. “I’m in misery, too. Terrible!”
“Well, what the devil do I care for that?”
“Haven’t I got a right to sit here?” Lucius inquired mildly. “Haven’t I got a right to sit here and drink, and cuss inside my innards, and take on the way you’re doing? Mary Ricketts just told me that she wouldn’t go to the band concert with me.”
“Oh, do dry up!”
“Well, you’re responsible for Mary’s treatment of me, aren’t you?” said Lucius. “I thought probably there’d be trouble when I saw you headed this way this afternoon.”
“You do beat any ordinary lunatic!” the distressed young man protested. “I ‘headed this way this afternoon because I got one of my spells. You know well enough how it is with me and how it was with my father before me — every so often the spell comes on me, and I’ve got to drink. What in the Lord’s name has that to do with Mary Ricketts? I don’t suppose I’ve even seen her for a month. Never did see anything of her, to speak of, in my life.”
Mr. Allen replenished his glass from the pitcher of buttermilk before replying, and appeared to muse sorrowfully. “Well, maybe I was mistaken,” he said.
“But!” He broke off a line of thought; then sighed and inquired: “When this ‘spell’ comes on you, Joe, you feel that you’ve ‘got’ to go on until—”
“You know I do! I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But suppose,” said Lucius, “suppose something took your mind off of it.”
“Nothing could. Nothing on earth!”
“But just suppose something did turn up — right in the start of a spell, say — something you found you’d rather do. You know, Joe, I believe if it did and you found something else was really pleasanter, it might he you’d never start in again. You’d understand it wasn’t the fun you think it is, maybe.”
“Fun!” Joe cried. “I don’t want to drink!”
And at that his stocky companion burst into outright laughter. “I know you think so, Joe,” he said apologetically, when his hilarity was sufficiently, diminished. “Of course you believe it. I’m not denying that.”
“By George!” the unfortunate young man exclaimed. “You do make me sick! I suppose if I had smallpox you’d say you weren’t denying I believed I had it! You sit there and drink your buttermilk, and laugh at me like a ninny because you can’t understand! No man on earth can understand, unless he has the thirst come on him the way mine does on me! And yet you tell me I only ‘believe’ I have it!”
“Yes, I ought to explain,” said Mr. Allen soothingly. “It did sound unfeeling. One of the reasons you drink, Joe, is because this is a small town; — you have an active mind, a lot of the time there’s nothing much to do, and you get bored.”
“I told you nobody could understand such a thirst as mine — nobody except the man that’s got one like it!”
“This hankering is something inside you, isn’t it. Joe?”
“What of that?”
“It comes on you about every so often?”
“Yes.”
“If there weren’t any liquor in the world, you’d have the thirst for it just the same, would you?”
“Just the same.” Perley answered. “And go crazy from it.”
“Whereas,” Mr. Allen returned, “since liquor’s obtainable you prefer to go crazy from the imbibing of it instead of from the hanker for it. You find that more ossedalious, and nobody can blame you. But suppose alcohol had never been discovered, would you have the hanker?”
“No, because I wouldn’t have inherited it from my father. You know as well as I do, how it runs in my family.”
“So I do, Joe; so I do!” Mr. Allen sighed reminiscently. “Both your father and your Uncle Sam went that way. I remember them very well, and how they enjoyed it — the earlier stages, I mean. That’s different from you, Joe.”
“‘Different!’” Joe laughed bitterly. “Do you suppose I get any ‘enjoyment’ out of it? Three days I’ll drink now; then I’ll be in hell — and I’ve got to go on. I’ve got to!”
“Funny about its being hereditary,” said Lucius. musing aloud. “I expect you rather looked forward to that, Joe?”
His companion stared at him fiercely. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded.
“You always thought it was going to
be hereditary, didn’t you, Joe? From almost when you were a boy?”
“Yes, I did. What of it?”
“And maybe—” Lucius suggested, with the utmost mildness— “just possibly, say about the time you began to use liquor a little at first, you decided that this hereditary thing was inevitable, and the idea made you melancholy about yourself, of course; but after all, you felt that the hereditary thing made a pretty fair excuse to vourself, didn’t you?”
“See here,” Joe said angrily, “I’m not in any mood to stand—”
“Pshaw!” Lucius interrupted. “I was only going on to say that it’s more and more curious to me about this hereditary notion. I’m thirty-five, and you’re only twenty-six. I remember well when your father began to drink especially. I was seventeen years old, and you were about eight. You see you were already born then, and so I can’t understand about the thirst being heredi—”
“Damn it all!” Joe Perley shouted; and he struck the table with his fist. “I told you I don’t want to talk, didn’t I?” Didn’t you hear me say I was drinking The amiable man across the table produced two cigars from his coat pocket. ‘‘We’ll change the subject,” he said. “Smoke, Joe?”
“No, thank you.”
“We’ll change the subject,” Lucius repeated. “I gather that this one is painful to you. You don’t mind my staying here if we talk about something else?”
“No — not much.”
“I mentioned that I asked Mary Ricketts to go with me to the band concert to-night, didn’t I?” Mr. Allen inquired, as he lit his cigar. “I was telling you about that, wasn’t I, Joe?”
“You said something about it,” Mr. Perley replied with evident ennui.
“You know, Joe,” said Lucius, his tone becoming confidential, “I walk past the old Ricketts property every afternoon on my way home. It’s quite considerable out of my way, but I always do. Fact is,” he chuckled ruefully, “I can’t help it.”
“I suppose you want me to ask you why,” said his gloomy companion, with sincere indifference.
“Yes, Joe, will you?”
“All right. Why can’t you help it?”
“Well, there’s something about that old place so kind of pleasant and healthy and reliable. This is a funny world: there’s a lot of things a fellow’s got to be afraid of in it, and the older he gets the more he sees to scare him. I think what I like best about that old Ricketts property is the kind of safe look it has. It looks as if anybody that belonged in there was safe from ‘most any kind of disaster — bankruptcy, lunacy, ‘social ambition,’ money ambition, evil thoughts, or turning into a darn fool of any kind. You don’t happen to walk by there much, do you, Joe?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, sir, you ought to!” said Lucius genially. “The orchard’s in bloom, and you ought to see it. The Ricketts orchard is the show of this county. The good old judge has surely looked after those old apple-trees of his; they’re every one just solid blossom. Yes, sir, every last one! Why, it made me feel like a dryad!”
“Like a who?”
“You mean that I’m thirty-five” — so Mr. Allen thought fit to interpret this question— “and that I’m getting a little fat, some baldish, and a whole lot reddish. So I am; but I’ll tell you something, young Joseph: romance is a thing inside a person, just the same as your thirst. It doesn’t matter what his outside is like. My trousers always bag at the knees, even when they’re new, but my knees themselves are pure Grecian. It’s the skinny seamstress of forty that dreams the most of marquises in silver armor; and darky boys in school forget the lesson in reveries about themselves — they think of themselves on horseback as generals with white faces and straight blond hair. And everybody knows that the best poets are always outrageously ordinary to look at. This is springtime, Joseph; and the wren lays an egg no bigger than a fairy’s. The little birds—”
“By George!” Mr. Perley exclaimed, in real astonishment. “See here!” he said. “Had you been drinking a little yourself before you came in? If not, it’s the first time I knew a person could get a talking jag on buttermilk.”
“No.” said Lucius, correcting him. “It’s on apple-blossoms. She was sitting under ’em pretending to read a book, but I suppose she was thinking about you, Joe.”
“Who was?”
“Mary,” Mir. Allen replied quietly. “Mary Ricketts.”
“You say she was thinking about me?’’
“Probably she was. Joe. She was sitting there, and the little birds—”
“I know you’re a good lawyer,” Joe interrupted, shaking his head in gloomy wonder, “but everybody in town thinks you’re a nut, except when you’re on a law case, and I guess they’re about right. You certainly talk like one!”
Mr. Allen nodded. “A reputation like that is mighty helpful sometimes.”
“Well, if you like it you’re free to refer all inquirers to me,” said Joe heartily. “You’re trying to tell me Alary Ricketts was ‘thinking’ about me, and I don’t suppose I’ve seen her as much as five times this year; and I haven’t known her — not to speak of — since we were children. I don’t suppose I’ve had twenty minutes’ talk with her, all told, since I got back from college. The only girl I ever see anything of at all is Molly Baker, and that’s only because she happens to live next door. I don’t see even Molly to speak to more than once or twice a month. I don’t have anything to do with any of the girls. I keep away from ’em, because a man with the curse I’ve got hanging oven me—”
“Thought you didn’t want to talk about that, Joe.”
“I don’t,” the young man said angrily. “But I want to know what you mean by this nonsense about Mary Ricketts and me.”
“I don’t know if I ought to tell you — exactly.” Here Lucius frowned as with a pressure of conscience. “I’m not sure I ought to. Do you insist on it, Joe?”
“Not if you’ve got to talk any more about the little birds!’” Joe returned with sour promptness. “But if you can leave them out and talk in a regular way, I’d like to hear you.”
“Have you ever noticed,” Mr. Allen began, “that Mary Ricketts is a beautiful girl?”
“She’s not,” said Joe. “She’s not anything like ‘beautiful.’ Everybody in town knows and always has known that Mary Ricketts is an ordinarily goodlooking girl. You can call her pretty if you want to stretch it a little, but that’s all.”
“That all, you think?”
“Certainly!”
“You ought to see her in the orchard, Joe!”
“Well, I’m not very likely to.”
“Well, just why not, now?”
“Well, why should I?”
“You mean you’ve never given much thought to her?”
“Certainly I haven’t,” said Joe. “Why should I?”
“Isn’t it strange now!” Mr. Allen shook his head wistfully. “I mentioned that I asked her to go to the band concert with me, didn’t I, Joe?”
“You did.”
“And did I tell you that she refused?”
“Lord, yes!”
“Well, that was it,” said Mr. Allen, gently. “She just said, ‘No!’ She didn’t say ‘No, thank you.’ No, sir, nothing like that; just plain ‘No!’
‘Well,’ I thought to myself, ‘now why is that? Naturally, she’d want to go to the concert, wouldn’t she? Why, of course she would; it’s the first public event that’s happened since the lecture on ‘Liquid Air’ at Masonic Hall, along back in February. Certainly she’d want to go. Well, then, what’s the matter? It must be simply she doesn’t want to go with you, Lucius Brutus Allen!’
“That’s what I said to myself, Joe. ‘You’re practically a fat old man from her point of view,’ I said to myself. ‘She wants to go but you aren’t the fellow she wants to go with. Well, who is it? Evidently,’ I reasoned, ‘evidently he hasn’t turned up, because she’s just the least bit snappish the way she tells me she isn’t pining for my escort.’
“Well, sir, I
began to cast around in my mind to think who on earth it could be. ‘It isn’t Henry Wheen,’ I thought, ‘because she discouraged Henry so hard, more than a year ago, that Henry went and married that waitress here at his father’s hotel. And it isn’t Bax Lewis,’ I thought, ‘because she showed Bax he didn’t stand any chance from the first. And it isn’t Charlie McGregor or Cal Veedis,’ I thought, ‘because she just wouldn’t have anything to do with either of them, though they both tried to make her till the judge pretty near had to tell ’em right out that they’d better stay away. Well, it isn’t Doc Willis, and it isn’t Carlos Bollingbroke Thompson, nor Whit Connor,’ I thought, ‘because they’re old bachelors like me — and that just about finishes the list.’ Well, sir, there’s where I had to scratch my head. ‘It must be somebody,’ I thought, ‘somebody that hasn’t been coming around the Ricketts property at all, so far, because she’s never gone any place she could help with those that have been coining around there.’ Then I thought of you, Joe. ‘By George!’ I thought. ‘By George, it might be Joe Perley! He’s the only young man in town not married, engaged, or feeble-minded, that hasn’t ever showed any interest in Miss Mary. There’s no two ways about it: likely as not it’s liable to be Joe Perley!’”
“I never heard anything crazier in my life!” Joe said. “I don’t suppose Alary Ricketts has given me two thoughts in the last five years.”
Mr. Allen tilted back in his chair, his feet upon a rung of the table. He placed his cigar at the left extremity of his mouth, gazed at the ceiling, and waved his right hand in a take-it-or-leave-it gesture.
“Well, why would she?” Joe demanded. “There’s nothing about me that—”
“No,” said his friend. “Nothing except she doesn’t know you very well.”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 486