“Ya-a-ay, Laurence!” the other children shouted. “Gettin’ spanked by a girl! Ya-ay, Laur-runce!” They uproariously capered between Renfrew and the writhing group; but’ it struck him that the two mallets, which were both moving rather wildly, might do damage; and he moved toward the mêlée.
“Here!” he called. “What’s all this nonsense? Put down those mallets.”
He spoke too late. The maddened Laurence’s feelings differed little from those of a warrior manhandled by a squaw in the midst of the taunting tribe; and in his anguish his strength waxed exceedingly. His mallet described a brief arc in the air, and not Daisy’s nose, but the more evident nose of fat Robert Eliot, was the recipient. Contact was established audibly.
Robert squawked. He dropped his mallet, clasped his nose, and lay upon the good earth. Then when he looked at his ensanguined fingers, he seemed to feel that his end was hard upon him. He shrieked indeed.
Daisy also complained, an accident having befallen her, though she took it for no accident. “Ooh!” she said. “You made your elbow hit me in the stummick, Laurence Coy!” She stood as a semicircle, and clasped herself, while the noise of the other children was hushed — except the extreme noise of Robert — and the discomfort of sudden calamity fell upon them. Their silent mouths were all open, particularly that of Laurence Coy, whom Daisy did little to reassure.
“I bet I haf to have the doctor,” she prophesied ominously; and then, pointing to the fallen, she added: “An’ I bet Robert’s goin’ to die.”
“Nonsense!” her brother said, bending over Robert. “Nonsense!”
But Laurence Coy did not hear this optimistic word. Laurence had no familiarity with mortal wounds; — to his quaking eye, Robert bore a fatal appearance, and Daisy’s chill prophecy seemed horribly plausible. Laurence departed. One moment he stood there, pallid and dumfounded, but present; and the next, no one could have defined his whereabouts with certainty. All that could be known was that he had gone, and from the manner of his going, it might well be thought that he was shocked to find himself forgetting a rendezvous appointed for this very moment at some distant spot; — he had a hurried air.
Others were almost as deeply affected by Daisy’s gloomy prophecy. As soon as she put the thought in their minds, Thomas Kimball, Freddie Mears and the remarkable Elsie were all convinced that Robert was near his passing, and with natural solicitude they had but the one thought in common: to establish an alibi.
“Well, I never went anywhere near him,” Elsie said. “I never even touched a mallet!”
“Neither’d I!” said Thomas Kimball. “I wasn’t in ten feet of him.”
“I wasn’t in a hunderd!” said Freddie.
“It wasn’t me!” Thomas protested. “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“It was Laurence Coy,” said Freddie. “That’s who it was.”
“It was every hit Laurence Coy,” said Elsie. “I told them not to play such rough games.”
Thus protesting, the three moved shyly toward various exits from the yard, and protesting still, went forth toward their several dwelling-places — and went unnoticed, for Robert was the centre of attention. The volume of sound he produced was undiminished, though the tone had elevated somewhat in pitch, and he seemed to intend words, probably of a reproachful nature; but as his excess of emotion enabled him to produce only vowels, the effect was confused, and what he wished to say could be little more than guessed.
“Hush, hush!” said Renfrew, trying to get him to stand up. “You’ll bring the whole town here!”
Robert became more coherent. “He him me om my mose!”
“I know,” said Renfrew. “But you’re not much hurt.”
Appearing to resent this, Robert cried the louder. “I am, too!” he wailed. “I bet I do die!”
“Nonsense!”
“I bet he does,” said the gloomy Daisy. “He is goin’ to die, Renfrew.”
Pessimism is useful sometimes, but this was not one of the times. When Robert heard Daisy thus again express her conviction, he gave forth an increased bellowing; and it was with difficulty that Renfrew got him to a hydrant in the side yard. Here, plaintively lowing, with his head down, Robert incarnadined Renfrew’s trousers at intervals, while the young man made a cold compress of a handkerchief and applied it to the swelling nose.
“If -I— ‘f I— ‘f I die,” the patient blubbered, during this process, “they got to ketch that lull-little Lull-Laurence Coy and huh-hang him!”
“Nonsense!” said Renfrew. “Stand still; your nose isn’t even broken.”
“Well, my stummick is,” Daisy said, attending upon them and still in the semicircular attitude she had assumed for greater comfort. “I guess he broke that, if he never broke anything else, and whether he gets hung or not, I bet my mother’ll tell his mother she’s got to whip him, when she finds out.”
“When she finds out what?” Renfrew asked.
“When she finds out what he did to my stummick!”
“Pooh,” said Renfrew. “Both of you were teasing Laurence, and worrying him till he hardly knew what he was doing. Besides, there isn’t really anything to speak of the matter with either of you.”
Both resented his making light of injuries so sensational as theirs; and Robert released his voice in an intolerable howl. “There is, too! An’ if I got to die—”
“Stop that!” Renfrew commanded. “How many times must I tell you? You’re not any more likely to die than I am!”
With that he was aware of a furious maiden entering the gate and running toward them across the lawn, and even as she sped, completing a hasty “putting up” of her hair.
“If he isn’t ‘likely to die,”’ she cried, “I’d be glad to know whose fault it is! Not yours, I think, Renfrew Mears!”
At sight of his sister, Master Eliot bellowed anew; he wanted to tell his troubles all over again; but emotion in the presence of sympathy was too much for him; and once more he became all vowels, so that nothing definite could be gathered. Muriel clasped him to her. “Poor darling Bobby!” she said. “Don’t cry, darling! Sister’ll take care of you!”
“Here,” said Renfrew, proffering a fresh handkerchief. “Be careful. His nose isn’t quite—”
She took the handkerchief and applied it, but gave the donor no thanks. “I never in all my life saw anything like it!” she exclaimed. “I never saw anything to compare with it!”
“Why, it didn’t amount to so very much,” Renfrew said mildly, though he was surprised at her vehemence. “The children were playing, and they got to teasing, and Robert got tapped on the—”
“‘Tapped!’” she cried. “He might have been killed! But what I meant was you!”
“Me?”
“Certainly! You! I never saw anything like your behaviour, and I saw it all from the sofa in my room. If I hadn’t had to dress, I’d have been over here in time to stop it long before you did, Renfrew Mears!”
“Why, I don’t understand at all,” he protested feebly. “You seem angry with me! But all I’ve done was to put cold water on Robert’s nose.”
“That’s it!” she cried. “You stood there — I saw you. You stood there, and never lifted a finger while those children were having the most dreadful fight with croquet mallets, not forty feet from you! They might all have been killed; and my poor darling little brother almost was killed—”
At this, Robert interrupted her with fresh outcries, and clung to her pitifully. She soothed him, and turned her flashing and indignant eyes upon Renfrew.
“You stood there, not like a man but like a block of wood,” she said. “You didn’t even look at them!”
“Why, no,” said Renfrew. “I was looking at your window.”
Apparently he felt that this was an explanation that explained everything. He seemed to imply that any man would naturally demean himself like a block of wood while engaged in the act of observation he mentioned, even though surrounded by circumstances of murder.
; It routed Muriel. She had no words to express her feeling about a person who talked like that; and giving him but one instant to take in the full meaning of her compressed lips, her irate colour and indignant breathing, she turned pointedly away. Then, with Robert clinging to her, she went across the lawn and forth from the gate, while Mr. Mears and his small sister watched in an impressed silence.
Some one else watched Muriel as she supported the feeble steps of the weeping fat boy across the street; and this was the self-styled woman-hater and celebrated malleteer, Master Laurence Coy. He was at a far distance down the street, and in the thorny middle of a hedge where no sheriff might behold him; but he could see, and he was relieved (though solely on his own account) to discover that Robert was still breathing. He was about to come out from the hedge when the disquieting afterthought struck him: Robert might have expressed a wish to be taken to die in his own home. Therefore Laurence remained yet a while where he was.
By the hydrant, Daisy was so interested in the departure of the injured brother and raging sister that she had forgotten her broken stummick and the semicircular position she had assumed to assuage it, or possibly to keep the broken parts together. She stood upright, watching the two emotional Eliots till they had disappeared round their own house in the direction of their own hydrant. Then she turned and looked up brightly at her brother.
“She’s fearful mad, isn’t she?” Daisy said, laughing. “She treats you awful, don’t she?”
“Never mind,” Renfrew said, and then he remembered something that had puzzled him not so painfully; and he wondered if Daisy might shed a light on this. “Daisy, what in the world made you pick on poor little Laurence the way you did?”
“Me?” she asked, surprised. “Why, it was Elsie told us to.”
“That’s it,” Renfrew said. “That’s what I want to know. Laurence was just as nice to her as he could be; he did everything he could think of to please her, and the first chance she got, she set the whole pack of you on him. What did she do a thing like that for?”
Daisy picked a dandelion from the grass and began to eat it. “What?” she inquired.
“What makes Elsie so mean to poor little Laurence Coy?”
“Oh, well,” said Daisy casually, “she likes him best. She likes him best of all the boys in town.” And then, swallowing some petals of the dandelion, she added: “She treats him awful.”
Renfrew looked at her thoughtfully; then his wondering eyes moved slowly upward till they rested once more upon the maple-embowered window over the way, and into his expression there came a hint of something almost hopeful.
“So she does!” he said.
MAYTIME IN MARLOWE
IN MAY, WHEN the maple leaves are growing large, the Midland county seat and market town called Marlow so disappears into the foliage that travellers; gazing from Pullman windows, wonder why a railroad train should stop to look at four or five preoccupied chickens in a back yard. On the other hand, this neighbourly place is said to have a population numbering more than three thousand. At least, that is what a man from Marlow will begin to claim as soon as he has journeyed fifteen or twenty miles from home; but to display the daring of Midland patriotism in a word, there have been Saturdays (with the farmers in town) when strangers of open-minded appearance have been told, right down on the Square itself, that Marlow consisted of upwards of four thousand mighty enterprising inhabitants.
After statistics so dashing, it seems fairly conservative to declare that upon the third Saturday of last May one idea possessed the minds and governed the actions of all the better bachelors of Marlow who were at that time between the ages of seventeen and ninety, and that the same idea likewise possessed and governed all the widowers, better and worse, age unlimited.
She was first seen on the Main Street side of the Square at about nine o’clock in the morning. To people familiar with Marlow this will mean that all the most influential business men obtained a fair view of her at an early hour, so that the news had time to spread to the manufacturers and professional men before noon.
Mr. Rolfo Williams, whose hardware establishment occupies a corner, was the first of the business men to see her. He was engaged within a cool alcove of cutlery when he caught a glimpse of her through a window; but in spite of his weight he managed to get near the wide-spread front doors of his store in time to see her framed by the doorway as a passing silhouette of blue against the sunshine of the Square. His clerk, a young married man, was only a little ahead of him in reaching the sidewalk.
“My goodness, George!” Mr. Williams murmured. “Who is that?”
“Couldn’t be from a bit more’n half a mile this side o’ New York!” said George, marvelling. “Look at the clo’es!”
“No, George,” his employer corrected him gently. “To me it’s more the figger.”
The lady was but thirty or forty feet away, and though she did not catch their words, the murmur of the two voices attracted her attention. Not pausing in her light stride forward, she looked back over her shoulder, and her remarkable eyes twinkled with recognition. She smiled charmingly, then nodded twice — first, unmistakably to Mr. Williams, and then, with equal distinctness, to George.
These dumfounded men, staring in almost an agony of blankness, were unable to return the salutation immediately. The attractive back of her head was once more turned to them by the time they recovered sufficiently to bow, but both of them did bow, in spite of that, being ultimately conscientious no matter how taken aback. Even so, they were no more flustered than was old Mr. Newton Truscom (Clothier, Hatter, and Gents’ Furnisher), just emerging from his place of business next door; for Mr. Truscom was likewise sunnily greeted.
“My goodness!” Mr. Williams gasped. “I never saw her from Adam!”
Mr. Truscom, walking backward, joined the hardware men. “Seems like fine-lookin’ girls liable to take considerable of a fancy to us three fellers,” he said; “whether they know us or not!”
“Shame on you, Newt!” George returned. “Didn’t you see her give me the eye? Of course, after that, she wanted to be polite to you and Mr. Williams. Thought him and you were prob’ly my pappy and gran’daddy!”
“Look!” said Mr. Truscom. “She’s goin’ in Milo Carter’s drug-store. Sody-water, I shouldn’t wonder!”
“It just this minute occurred to me how a nectar and pineapple was what I needed,” said George. “Mr. Williams, I’ll be back at the store in a few min — —”
“No, George,” his employer interrupted. “I don’t mind your lollin’ around on the sidewalk till she comes out again, because that’s about what I’m liable to do myself, but if you don’t contain yourself from no nectar and pineapple, I’m goin’ to tell your little bride about it — and you know what Birdie will say!”
“Rolfo, did you notice them shoes?” Mr. Truscom asked, with sudden intensity. “If Baker and Smith had the enterprise to introduce a pattern like that in our community—”
“No, Newt, I didn’t take so much notice of her shoes. To me,” said Mr. Williams dreamily, “to me it was more the whole figger, as it were.”
The three continued to stare at the pleasing glass front of Milo Carter’s drug-store; and presently they were joined by two other men of business who had perceived from their own doorways that something unusual was afoot; while that portion of Main Street lying beyond Milo Carter’s also showed signs of being up with the times. Emerging from this section, P. Borodino Thompson and Calvin Burns, partners in Insurance, Real Estate, Mortgages and Loans, appeared before the drug-store, hovered a moment in a non-committal manner that was really brazen, then walked straight into the store and bought a two-cent stamp for the firm.
Half an hour later, Mortimer Foie was as busy as he could be. That is to say, Mortimer woke from his first slumber in a chair in front of the National House, heard the news, manoeuvred until he obtained a view of its origin, and then drifted about the Square exchanging comment with other shirt-sleeved gossips. (Mortimer was usually
unemployed; but there was a Mexican War pension in the family.)
“Heard about it?” he inquired, dropping into E. J. Fuller’s (E. J. Fuller & Co., Furniture, Carpets and Wall-Paper).
“Yes, Mortimore,” E. J. Fuller replied. “Anybody know anything?”
“Some of ’em claim they do,” said Mortimer. “Couple fellers I heard says she must belong with some new picture theatre they claim an out-o’-town firm’s goin’ to git goin’ here, compete with the Vertabena. Howk, he says thinks not; claims it’s a lady he heard was comin’ to settle here from Wilkes-Barry, Pennsylvania, and give embroidery lessons and card-playin’. Cousin of the Ferrises and Wheelers, so Howk claims. I says, ‘She is, is she?’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘that’s the way I look at it.’
‘Oh, you do, do you?’ I says. ‘Then what about her speakin’ to everybody?’ I ast him, right to his face; and you’d ought to seen him! Him and all of ’em are wrong.”
“How do you know, Mortimore?” asked Mr. Fuller. “What makes you think so?”
“Listen here, Ed,” said Mortimer. “What’d she do when she went into Charlie Murdock’s and bought a paper o’ pins? You heard about that, yet?”
“No.”
“She went in there,” said Mr. Foie, “and spoke right to Charlie. ‘How are you, Mister Murdock?’ she says. Charlie like to fell over backwards! And then, when he got the pins wrapped up and handed ’em to her she says, ‘How’s your wife, Mr. Murdock?’ Well, sir, Charlie says his wife was just about the last woman in the world he had in his mind right then!”
“Where’s she supposed to be now?” Mr. Fuller inquired, not referring to Mrs. Murdock. “Over at the hotel?”
“Nope,” Mortimer replied. “She ain’t puttin’ up there. Right now she’s went upstairs in the Garfield Block to Lu Allen’s office. Haven’t heard what Lu’s got to say or whether she’s come out. You git to see her yet?”
“No, sir,” Mr. Fuller returned, rather indifferently. “What’s she look like, Mortimore?”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 509