At that Joe Perley laughed. “You are the funniest old Lucius!” he said. “Just because I’ve never been around there and the rest have, you say that proves—”
Mr. Allen waved his hand again. “I only say there’s somebody could get her to go to that concert with him. Absolutely! Why absolutely? It’s springtime; she’s twenty-three. Of course, if it is you she isn’t very liable to hear the music except along with her family — not when you’ve got such pressing engagements here, of course! I’m thinking of going up there again pretty soon myself, to see if maybe Judge and Mrs. Ricketts aren’t going to walk uptown for the concert, and maybe I can sort of push myself in among the family so that I can walk anyway in the same group with Mary! It’s going to be moonlight, and as balmy as a night in a piece of poetry! By George! you can smell apple-blossoms from one end of the town to the other. Joe!”
“How you hate talking!” Mr. Perley remarked discouragingly.
“I hear the band is going to try ‘Schubert’s Serenade,’” Lucius continued. “The boy’s aren’t so bad as we make out, after all; the truth is they play almighty well. I expect you’ll be able to hear some of it from in here, Joe; but take me now — I want to be out in the moonlight in that apple-blossom smell when they play ‘Schubert’s Serenade!’ I want to be somewhere where I can see the moonshine shadow of Mary Ricketts’s hat fall across her cheek, so I can spend my time guessing whether she’s listening to the music with her eyes shut or open. It’s a pink-and-white hat, and she’s wearing a pink-and-white dress, too, to-day, Joe. She was sitting under those apple-blossoms, and the little birds —— —— —”
Sudden, loud, and strong expressions suffered him not to continue for several moments.
“Certainly, Joe,” Mr. Allen then resumed. “I will not mention them again. I was only leading to the remark that nightingales serenading through the almond-groves, of Sicily probably have nothing particular on our enterprising little city during a night in apple-blossom time. My great trouble, Joe, is never getting used to its being springtime. Every year when it comes around again it hits me just the same way — maybe a little more so each year that I grow older. And this has been the first plumb genuine spring day we’ve had.
“At the present hour this first true blue spring day is hushing itself down into the first spring evening, and in a little while there’ll be another miracle: the first scented and silvered spring night. All over town the old folks are coming out from their suppers to sit on their front porches, and the children are beginning to play hi-spy in and out among the trees. Pretty soon they’ll all, old and young, be strolling up-town to hear the band play on the court-house steps. I expect some of the young couples already have started; they like to walk slowly and not say much, on the way to the spring concert, you know.”
Mr. Allen drank another glass of buttermilk, smiled, then murmured with repletion and the pathos of a concluding bit of enthusiasm. “Oh, Lordy, Lordy!” he said, ‘“What it is to be twenty or twenty-five in springtime!”
“Not for me, Lucius,” Mr. Perley rejoined, shaking his head.
“No, I suppose not. It does seem pretty rough,” said Lucius, sympathetically, “to think of you sitting here in this reeky hole, when pretty nearly even-other young fellow in town will be strolling through the apple-blossom smell in the moonlight with a girl on his arm, and the band playing, and all. Old soak Beeslum’ll probably be in here to join you after while, though; and four or five farm hands, and some of the regular Saturday-night town drunks, and maybe two or three Swedes. Oh, I expect you’ll have company enough, Joe!”
“‘I guess so. Anyhow, I haven’t much choice! This thing’s got me, and I’ve got to go through with it, Lucius.”
“I see. Yes, sir, it’s too bad! Too bad!” And Lucius looked sympathetically down, then cheerfully up again, as the swinging-doors parted to admit the entrance of the returned bartender. “‘Hello, George!”
“Back a’ready,” said George, self-approvingly. “Ham, fried potatoes, coffee, and griddle-cakes, all tucked inside o’ me, too! Didn’t miss any customers, did I?”
“No.”
George came to the table. “Lemme look how many drinks you owe me fer sence I went out, Joe,” he said. “I had the place where she come to in the neck of the bottle marked with my thumb.” He lifted the bottle, regarded it thoughtfully at first, then with some surprise. He set it down upon the table without comment, began to whistle “Little Annie Rooney,” went behind the bar, doffed his hat, resumed his apron, and continued to whistle.
Mr. Allen rose, dusting some crumbs of cracker from his attire. “I guess I must have won the buttermilk record, George,” he said, as he placed a silver dollar upon the bar. “If buttermilk were intoxicating there wouldn’t be a sober creature on the face of the earth. Trouble with your other stuff, George, it tastes so rotten!”
“I take buttermilk sometimes myself, Lu,” said George as he made change. “I guess there ain’t nobody seen me carryin’ much hard liquor sence my second child was born. That was the time they had to jug me, and — whoo, gosh! you’d ought to seen what I went through when I got home that night! She’s little and she was sick-abed, too, but that didn’t git in her way none! No, sir!”
“Good night,” said Lucius cheerily. “I’m going to stroll along Pawpaw Street before the band starts. Moon’ll be ‘way up in a little while now, and on such a night as this is going to be did Jessica, the Jew’s daughter — You know what I mean, George.”
“Yep,” said George blankly. “I gotcha, Lu.”
“I’m going,” said Lucius, “to go and push in with some folks to listen to the band with. Good night, Joe.”
Joe Perley did not turn his head, but sat staring fixedly at the table, his attitude being much the same as that in which Lucius had discovered him.
“Good night. Joe.” the departing gentleman paused to repeat.
“What?”
“Nothing,” said Lucius. “I only said ‘good night.’”
“All right,” said Joe, absently. “Good night.”
Mr. Allen took a musical departure. “Oh, as I strolled out one summer evening.” he sang, “for to meet Miss Nellie Green, all the birds and the flow’rs was singing sweetly, wherev — urr they was to be seen!”
Thus, singing heartily, he passed between the swinging-doors and out to the street. Here he continued his euphonic mood, but moderated his expression of it to an inconspicuous humming. Dusk had fallen, a dusk as scented and as alive with spring as he had claimed it would be; and a fair shaft of the rising moon already struck upon the white cupola of the court-house....
Alary Ricketts was leaning upon the front gate of the Ricketts place when he came there.
“Good evening, Miss Alary,” he said. “Are the judge and your mother at home?”
“They’re right there on the front porch, Mr. Allen,” she said cordially. “Won’t you come in?”
“In a minute,” he responded. “It does me good to hear you answer when I ask for your parents, Miss Alary.”
“How is that?”
“Why,” he said, “you always sound so friendly when I ask for them!”
She laughed, and explained her laughter by saying, “It’s funny you don’t always ask for them!”
“Just so,” he agreed. “I’ve been thinking about that. Are you all going up to the Square pretty soon, to hear the concert?”
“Father and mother are, I think,” she said. “I’m not.”
“Just “waiting at the gate’?”
“Not for any one!”
Lucius took off his hat and fanned himself, a conciliatory gesture. “I tell you I feel mighty sorry for one young man in this town to-night.” he said.
“Who’s that, Mr. Allen?”
“Well—” he hesitated. “I don’t know if I ought to tell you about it.”
“Why not me?” she asked, not curiously.
“Well — it’s that young Joe Perley.”
Miss Ricketts was m
ildly amused; Lucius’s tone was serious, and if she had any interest whatever in Mr. Perley it was of a quality most casual and remote. “Why should you either tell me or not tell me anything about him?” she asked.
“You know he’s such a good-looking young fellow,” said Lucius. “And he’s going to make a fine lawyer, too; I’ve had him with me in a couple of cases, and I’ve an idea he might have something like a real career if—” he paused.
“Yes?” she said, idly. “If what? And why is it you feel so sorry for him, and why did you hesitate to tell me? What’s it all about, Mr. Allen?”
“I suppose I’d better explain, now I’ve gone this far,” he said, a little embarrassed. “I was talking with Joe to-day, and — well, the fact is we got to talking about you.”
“You did?” Her tone betokened an indifference unmistakably genuine. “Well?”
Lucius laughed with increased embarrassment. “Well — the fact is we talked about you a long while.”
“Indeed?” she said coldly, but there was a slight interest now perceptible under the coldness; for Miss Ricketts was not unhuman. “Was there a verdict?”
“It — it wasn’t so much what he said, exactly — no, not so much that,” Lucius circumlocuted. “It was more the — the length of time we were talking about you. That was the thing that struck me about it, because I didn’t know — that is, I’d never heard — I”
“What are you trying to say, Mr. Allen?”
“Well, I mean,” said Lucius, “I mean I hadn’t known that he came around here at all.”
“He doesn’t.”
“That’s why I was so surprised.”
“Surprised at what?” she said impatiently. “Why,” said Lucius, “surprised at the length of time that we were talking about you!”
“What nonsense!” she cried. “What nonsense! I don’t suppose he’s said two words to me or I to him in two years!”
“Yes,” Lucius assented. “That’s what makes it all the more remarkable! I supposed the only girl he ever thought anything about was Molly Baker, but he told me the only reason he ever goes there is just because she lives next door to him.”
“Not very polite to Molly!” said Miss Ricketts, and she laughed with some indulgence for this ungallantry.
“Still, Molly’s a determined girl,” Lucius suggested; “and she might—”
“She might what?”
“Nothing,” said Lucius. “I was only remembering I’d always heard she was such a — such a grasping sort of girl.”
“Had you?”
“Yes, hadn’t you?”
She was thoughtful for a moment. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“So it seemed to me — well” He laughed hesitatingly. “Well, it certainly was curious, the length of time we were talking about you to-day!” And he paused again as if awaiting her comment; but she offered none. “Well,” he said, finally, “I expect I better go join the old folks on the porch where I belong.”
He was heartily received and made welcome in that sedate retreat, where, as he said, he belonged; but throughout the greetings and the subsequent conversation he kept a corner of his eye upon the dim white figure in the shadow of the maple-trees down by the gate.
Presently another figure, a dark one, graceful and young, came slowly along the sidewalk — slowly and rather hesitatingly. This figure paused, took a few steps onward again; then definitely halted near the gate.
“Who is that young man out there, talking to Mary?” asked Mary’s mother. “Can you make out, father?”
“It’s that young Joe Perley,” the judge answered.
“I’ve heard he drinks a: good deal sometimes,” said Mrs. Ricketts, thoughtfully. “His mother says he tries not to, but that it comes over him, and that he’s afraid he’ll turn out like his father.”
Mr. Allen laughed cheerfully. “Anybody at Joe’s age can turn out any way he wants to,” he said. “Mrs. Perley needn’t worry about Joe any more. I ‘just sat with him an hour down at the National House, and there was an open whisky bottle on the table before us, and he never once touched it all the time I was talking with him.”
“Well, I’m glad of that,” said Mrs. Ricketts. “That ought to show he has plenty of will-power, anyhow.”
“Plenty,” said Lucius.
Then Mary’s young voice called from the spaces of night. “I’m going to walk up-town to the concert with Mr. Perley, mother. You’d better wear your shawl if you come.”
And there was the click of the gate as she passed out.
“We might as well be going along then, I suppose,” said Mrs. Ricketts, rising. “You’ll come with us old folks, Lucius?”
As the three old folks sauntered along the moon-speckled sidewalk the two slim young figures in advance were faintly revealed to them, likewise sauntering. And Lucius was right: you could smell apple-blossoms from one end of the town to the other.
“I hope our boys will win the band tournament at the county fair next summer,” said Mrs. Ricketts. “Don’t you think there’s a pretty good chance of it, Lucius?”
For a moment he appeared not to have heard her, and she gently repeated her question:
“Don’t you think there’s a pretty good chance of it?”
“Yes, more than a chance,” he dreamily replied. “It only takes a hint in springtime. They’ll do practically anything you tell ’em to. It’s mostly the apple-blossoms and the little birds.”
Captain Schlotterwerz
Originally published in ‘War Stories’, 1919
Captain Schlotterwerz
MISS BERTHA HITZEL, of Cincinnati, reached the age of twenty-two upon the eleventh of May, 1915; and it was upon the afternoon of her birthday that for the first time in her life she saw her father pace the floor. Never before had she seen any agitation of his expressed so vividly; on the contrary, until the preceding year she had seldom known him to express emotion at all, and in her youthfulness she had sometimes doubted his capacity for much feeling. She could recall no hour of family stress that had caused him to weep, to become gesticulative or to lift his voice unusually. Even at the time of her mother’s death he had been quiet to the degree of apparent lethargy.
Characteristically a silent man, he was almost notorious for his silence. Everybody in Cincinnati knew old Fred Hitzel; at least there was a time when all the older business men either knew him or knew who he was. “Sleepy old Dutchman,” they said of him tolerantly, meaning that he was a sleepy old German. “Funny old cuss,” they said. “Never says anything he doesn’t just plain haf to — but he saws wood, just the same! Put away a good many dollars before he quit the wholesale-grocery business — must be worth seven or eight hundred thousand, maybe a million. Always minded his own business, and square as a dollar. You’d think he was stingy, he’s so close with his talk; but he isn’t. Any good charity can get all it wants out of old Fred, and he’s always right there with a subscription for any public movement. A mighty good-hearted old Dutchman he is; and a mighty good citizen too. Wish we had a lot more just like him!”
His daughter was his only child and they had a queer companionship. He had no children by his first wife; Bertha was by his second, whom he married when he was fifty-one; and the second Mrs. Hitzel died during the daughter’s fourteenth year, just as Bertha was beginning to develop into that kind of blond charmfulness which shows forth both delicate and robust; a high-colored damsel whose color could always become instantly still higher. Her tendency was to be lively; and her father humored her sprightliness as she grew up by keeping out of the way so artfully that to her friends who came to the house he seemed to be merely a mythical propriety of Bertha’s.
But father and daughter were nevertheless closely sympathetic and devoted, and the daughter found nothing indifferent to herself in his habitual seeming to be a man half asleep. He would sit all of an evening, his long upper eyelids drooping so far that only a diamond chip of lamplight reflection beneath them showed that his eyes were really open — for him �
� and he would puff at the cigar, protruding between his mandarin’s mustache and his shovel beard, not more than twice in a quarter of an hour, yet never letting the light go out completely; and all the while he would speak not a word, though Bertha chattered gayly to him or read the newspaper aloud. Sometimes, at long intervals, he might make a faint hissing sound for comment or, when the news of the day was stirring, as at election times, he might grunt a little, not ungenially. Bertha would be pleased then to think that her reading had brought him to such a pitch of vociferation.
The change in old Fred Hitzel began to be apparent early in August, 1914; and its first symptoms surprised his daughter rather pleasantly; next, she was astonished without the pleasure; then she became troubled and increasingly apprehensive.
He came home from his German club on the afternoon when it was known that the last of the forts at Liège had fallen and he dragged a chair to an open window, where he established himself, perspiring and breathing heavily under his fat. But Bertha came and closed the window.
“You’ll catch cold, papa,” she said. “Your face is all red in spots, and you better cool off with a fan before you sit in a draft. Here!” And she placed a palm-leaf fan in his hand. “You oughtn’t to have walked home in the sun.”
“I didn’t walked,” said Mr. Hitzel. “It was a trolley. You heert some noose?”
She nodded. “I bought an extra; there’re plenty extras these days!”
Her father put the fan down upon his lap and rubbed his hands; he was in great spirits. “Dose big guns!” he said. “By Cheemuny, dose big guns make a hole big as a couple houses! Badooml Nutting in the worlt can stop dose big guns of the Cherman Army. Badoomi She goes off. Efer’ting got to fall down! By Cheemuny, I would like to hear dose big guns once yet!”
Bertha gave a little cry of protest and pretended to stop her ears. “I wouldn’t! I don’t care to be deaf for life, thank you! I don’t think you really would, either, papa.” She laughed. “You didn’t take an extra glass of Rhine wine down at the club, did you, papa?”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 487