Mr. Will woke up when the door of the store opened: it was his signal to get up. He came downstairs, said hello to Edgar, who was dusting the stock, and wheeled his bicycle out to the street. Mounting it, he rode to the Hopper family residence, a little beyond the town. He would return, after breakfast, with his brother Harry, who was his partner.
Their father had left them the store, and it was their father to whom Edgar was indebted for his job. Mr. Hopper had sent him his Bible, by way of his father, and had refused payment for it. When Edgar asked Mr. Will for a job he told him this. Mr. Will looked worried. He was a tall, slender, dark-eyed man, with a pleasant voice and a quiet, shy manner.
“But we don’t need anybody,” he told Edgar. “We don’t need anybody at all.”
“I’ve been to all the stores in town,” Edgar said, “but this is the one I like best, so I want to work here.”
Mr. Will was embarrassed by the praise. He told the boy to come back the next day. Then Edgar met Mr. Harry, who was shorter than Mr. Will, blond, with a handlebar mustache. He said the store didn’t need a clerk.
“But I want to work here,” Edgar said. “This is the nicest store in town.”
Mr. Will was sympathetic, and sentimental about his father. Mr. Harry was susceptible to flattery. They told him he could come in and work, but they couldn’t pay him.
“That’s all right,” Edgar said. “I’ll make myself so useful that you’ll want to pay me.”
He went to work, and at the end of a month the brothers, a little awkwardly, said they would like to reward him by buying him a suit of clothes. Would he accept? He was delighted. So were they. His appearance was more a reflection on them than on him. At the end of the second month they gave him fifteen dollars. They would give him the same amount every month, they said.
He had worked hard to win such approval, even climbing to the tops of the wall bookcases, where the statuary was kept, in search of dust. He was up there, one morning, when the brothers returned from breakfast. Passing him on their way to the rear of the store, Mr. Harry said:
“Be careful. Don’t break anything up there!”
Mr. Will said:
“That’s been needing attention for a long time. Be careful. Don’t fall and hurt yourself.”
It was the difference between the two men, though each was kind to him and both were satisfied with his work.
He was standing behind the counter with Mr. Harry on one of the hot, blistering days of late summer when a carriage drove up to the door and stopped. The girl who was driving looked in at them and beckoned.
“Know her?” Mr. Harry said. “Don’t know as I do, offhand.”
“Yes, sir. It’s Miss Ethel Duke. She teaches school down in the country. Reckon she wants me for something.”
He went out to speak to her, squinting in the bright light. The carriage looked cool, with its fringed top and leather seat. Ethel Duke leaned forward to shake hands with him.
“Hello, Old Man,” she said. “How are you? Haven’t seen you since you recited Jim MacKenzie’s speech and nearly killed us all. How are all the family?”
“Fine,” he said, shaking her hand.
She straightened and sat back in the carriage. The face of the girl who was sitting beside her came into view.
“I want you to meet my cousin, Gertrude Evans,” Ethel said.
She was a slip of a girl, barely fifteen, but pretty, with brown eyes and a pale, oval face, like a cameo.
“Gertrude, this is . . . Old Man, what’s your first name?”
“Edgar.” He said it proudly now, remembering how Mr. Moody had addressed him.
“Edgar Cayce. He’s from down in the country, where they have nothing but Cayces. He’s working in the bookstore now.”
“How do you do,” Edgar said.
Gertrude looked at him. Her eyes passed over him like a shower of rain, cooling and drenching him at the same time. She did not smile.
“How do you do,” she said.
“Old Man, how do you find life in town?” Ethel asked. “How do you like the parties?”
“Oh, I haven’t been to any parties yet. I’ve only been here a few months.” He started to tell her that he didn’t even know any young people, but he caught Gertrude watching him from the corner of her eye and stopped.
“Then you shall,” Ethel said. “We’re having a lawn party at Gertrude’s home Friday night. Will you come? We’d love to have you, wouldn’t we, Gertrude?”
Gertrude looked across the street. “Why, of course,” she said.
“It’s the Salter place,” Ethel said. “It’s east of town, about a mile and a half, right at the bend in the road before the Western State Hospital. You can’t miss it. It’s up on a hill to the right. Be there at eight o’clock and see the moon rise. It’s going to be full.”
She drove off, waving good-bye. In the store Mr. Harry was talking to Mary Greene, his girl, who had come in while Edgar was at the curb. Mary was one of the teachers at South Kentucky College.
“The little one’s pretty, Edgar,” Mr. Harry said. “Who is she?”
“Her name is Gertrude Evans,” Edgar said. He turned to watch the carriage round the corner.
“Was that Gertrude Evans?” Mary Greene said. “I’ve seen her at school. She’s Sam Evans’s girl, Harry.”
Harry nodded.
“Mother’s Elizabeth Salter,” he said. “Didn’t know she was so grown up. Has a couple of brothers, I believe.”
“Do you know where the Salter place is?” Edgar asked.
Harry leaned on the counter and explained.
“About a mile and a half outside of town, on the bend just before the hospital. Sam Salter came here to put in the staircase in the hospital—the circular one. He was an architect, from Cincinnati, I believe.
“That was during the war, or thereabouts. I believe they shelled the place while it was being built. Ball went through the main wing.
“Well, Salter stayed to build the college here, so he just settled. Nice place out there. About ten acres. Fine orchard.
“This girl’s father’s dead—the one you just met. She lives out there with the old folks, she and her two brothers.”
“Hugh and Lynn are the boys,” Mary Greene said.
“Believe you’re right,” Mr. Harry said. “Then there’s Kate. She’s the next Salter girl, after Elizabeth. She’d be this girl’s aunt. She married Porter Smith and went to Alabama, but he died and she came back home with her children. Her two boys are Porter and Raymond, and she has a stepchild, her husband’s daughter by his first wife. Her name’s Estella . . . Stella, I believe she’s called.
“Then come the boys. They’d be this girl’s uncles. Will and Hiram are the boys’ names. Will works at the hospital and Hiram’s in the railroad game.”
“But the prettiest one of the whole family is Carrie,” Mary Greene said. “She’s the youngest Salter girl. She’s Gertrude’s aunt, but I don’t believe she’s more than a few years older. She’s learning to be a milliner, though I don’t see why.”
“Why not?” Mr. Harry said.
“She should get married,” Mary said, staring straight at him.
“Well,” Mr. Harry said to Edgar, “now that you know all about the family, what’s up? Having a date with Gertrude?”
“I’m invited to a party at her house Friday night,” Edgar said. “A lawn party.”
“Nice people,” Mr. Harry said. “You’ll like them.”
Mary Greene looked at Edgar with new interest.
“There’ll be lots of pretty girls there for you,” she said. “Or have you chosen the one you want already?”
“No,” Edgar said. “Oh, no!”
He went off to dust some books, feeling uneasy. The Salters sounded like important people. Perhaps they were like the fashionable families in
the novels the lady customers were always buying. But Ethel Duke wasn’t like that, and she was going to be there. Perhaps they were just nice people who were well-to-do, like the families in the Alger books who always helped the hero. Perhaps he was going to be like one of the Alger boys. He would meet the girl, have some adventures, win out in the end, and then his benefactor, who might be old Mr. Salter, would allow him to be engaged to his granddaughter, and supply him with money with which to go to school and become a minister. He would pay back the money, of course, and in the end he would have a fine church and a house for his family, and drive a pair of horses. He would be one of the most respected men in the town.
But it might be the other way round. They might not have anything to do with him because he was a poor boy without any education.
Anyhow, he had a new suit, and he would look as well as any of the rich boys who might be there.
When Friday came he left home right after supper. Darkness overtook him on the road, but the moon was rising as he approached the Hill, and he saw its silhouette above the trees that ran toward it up the slope. Behind it the lights of Japanese lanterns bobbed and flickered. The twilight wind brought him sounds of laughter and talk.
It seemed to him like an enchanted castle, too far away ever to be reached, though he kept saying to himself over and over again—to give himself courage—that it was a house much smaller than his grandmother’s, on a good deal less land. But he knew that there was a difference. Grandmother’s was a farmhouse. This was a residence. To live in such a house and not farm; to own the land and just live on it; that was the way gentlemen did.
There was a wire fence at the road. Two lanes led to the house, one a carriage walk, the other a footpath. He opened the gate at the footpath and walked up it, under great oak trees, towering maples, and finally to some locusts that were nearly a hundred feet high and moved their tops in the breeze like giants moving in another world.
He walked around the house and to the place where the lanterns were shining. It was a lawn that stretched from the back of the house to the orchard. Tables had been set out; on them were cut-glass bowls filled with lemonade and platters of cookies, cakes, sandwiches, and fruit. There were benches and chairs, but most of the young people were just sitting on the ground, using handkerchiefs or jackets or shawls to protect their skirts and trousers from grass stain.
Ethel Duke spied him and took his arm. She introduced him to the old folks—nice-looking, gray-haired people—and then to the others in the family: Mrs. Evans, Gertrude’s mother, a dark-haired, quick, smiling woman; Mrs. Smith, Gertrude’s Aunt Kate, a fat-cheeked, amiable lady with small hands and a small, pretty mouth; Carrie Salter, also Gertrude’s aunt, a beautiful girl with great, shining brown eyes that dazzled him. He didn’t remember what the others looked like after Carrie; she carried him away from Ethel and introduced him to her nephews, Porter and Raymond, and her brothers, Will and Hiram. She got him some lemonade, plied him with cookies, sat down with him on one of the benches, and had him talking about himself before he knew what was happening.
Later she introduced him to Stella Smith, her niece by marriage, and then she somehow guided him to Gertrude and got them talking to each other. Then she disappeared.
Gertrude was lovelier than he had dared to allow himself to remember. She was dressed in a white gown that swept to her ankles and drifted out from the skirt like a snowpile. She had a red rose in her hair. It was just the touch needed to complete the picture. He found himself thinking of sample frame moldings.
While he was debating which frame best suited her she took his arm and said, “Let’s go down near the gate, where we can see the moon better. I love to watch it from there when it goes over the house!”
She led him around front and down the footpath. “Listen to the trees!” she said.
They were whispering, the locusts far above, the oaks down close.
“Do you know what they’re saying?” she asked. He said no, he didn’t. Did she?
She said, “No, but they’re supposed to be the souls of lovers who were cruelly parted on earth, and now they meet in the trees on nights when the moon is full, and tell each other of their love.”
“Oh,” he said.
When they got to the fence she had him boost her up to the post, where she could sit comfortably.
“I could get up here by myself,” she said, “but not with this dress on.”
He took his pipe from a pocket and asked her if she objected to smoking.
“No,” she said. “I think a man ought to smoke, and I like a pipe better than cigars.”
When the pipe was lighted they looked at the moon. It was drifting upward, leaving the house behind.
“Tell me about yourself,” Gertrude said. “What are you going to be? I’ll bet you’ll be the owner of the bookstore someday. Then you can have all the books you want to read. Oh, I think that would be the grandest thing! I love books more than anything else in the whole world!”
He had opened his mouth to speak when she said, “Tell me about yourself.” Had she stopped there he would have said, “Someday I want to be a minister.” His mouth closed quickly, his teeth bit into the pipe when she talked about the store, and owning it.
When he didn’t answer she laughed and said, “I reckon you think I’m silly, talking like that. But I always wonder what people are going to do.
“I think it’s so fascinating to see a lot of girls and boys when they’re young, and then when they grow up and begin to take their places in the world. You never can figure out what even your best friend is going to become.
“And now all the boys and girls I know are beginning to think about jobs and what they want to be.”
“I reckon it’s just about whatever job a fellow can get, some of the time,” he said. He felt calm enough to answer her now, although inside of him something had upset and splashed him with a feeling that acted as if he were going to be sick later on.
“Only I wanted to work in the bookstore,” he went on, “and I kept after Mr. Will and Mr. Harry until they took me in.”
He laughed and knocked his pipe out on the fence post. He was afraid to keep on smoking, the way he felt.
“They said they didn’t need anyone in the store, but I promised them they’d agree I was useful if they’d let me try. So now they can’t get rid of me because they’re used to having me around.”
She laughed, too. It was nice to be able to laugh. It made the job of getting to know people easy. You just laughed with them over a few things, and you were friends.
“I knew that’s the way you were,” Gertrude said. “I’ll bet if I buy a book from you, you’ll make it a habit with me, and take all my money away.”
They both laughed then, and he told her about all the new books at the store. She exclaimed at the mention of each one and pretended it was just what she wanted. They talked like that until she held out her arms to be helped down.
“We’ve got to go back,” she said. “It’s almost time for the party to break up.”
Hurrying up the path she said, “I’ll have to be saying goodbye to everyone, so I’ll say it to you now. I hope you’ll come again. Don’t be a stranger.”
“I won’t,” he said. He was afraid to take her hand. Then he realized that she had taken his.
“It was nice meeting you,” she said.
She left him when they got back to the party, and after he had thanked the members of her family he slipped away and hurried down the carriage drive, which opened on the road a few yards nearer town than the footpath.
He wanted to walk home alone. The sickness was breaking out all over him, and he knew what it was. It had been there all the time, but Gertrude had made him face it. She had said what it was natural for other people to think. He had been going along pretending that what he wanted to happen really could happen, though he had known within himself th
at every day that passed made it more faraway and improbable. Now the limit had been reached. It was impossible for him to become a minister. He knew it.
Probably it had been impossible all along; he alone had believed it could be done. His mother had pretended to believe: when he talked about it she kissed him and hugged him and said, “I hope all your dreams will come true.” But he could see now that her prayers were for a miracle, not for something that could happen naturally, even if everyone concerned tried his best.
If his grandmother had lived, or his grandfather, it would have been accomplished. They would have mortgaged the farm to pay for the necessary schooling. His uncles were not that much interested, either in him or in preaching. They had families of their own, and his ambitions would have seemed to them—if he had approached them seriously—as a lot of foolishness. His father was extremely amiable about the idea, since he admired ministers and men of learning almost as much as he did businessmen and politicians. But this amiability produced nothing specific in the way of money. There were four daughters in the family, and although business was sometimes good, business was also sometimes bad.
He was eighteen and a half. Suppose the miracle happened and he was able to begin school in the fall? He might get through high school in three years. He could sleep on some of the books; others concerned matters which he had to conquer while conscious—mathematics and grammar, for instance. They had to do with problems that had to be solved, not answers that had to be given. He would be entering college at twenty-one-and-a-half. He would be almost twenty-six before he entered a seminary. That was too old. By that time he ought to be married and have a family. He remembered now how Mr. Moody had said, “You may have to begin late,” and then had said, “Keep the faith,” and told him about the apostles being humble fishermen. Mr. Moody had seen that it was impossible. Everyone had seen it but himself.
He had stopped growing up, in his own mind, when he determined to be a minister. Time from then on had ceased to affect him; he remained always a boy who wanted to go to school and study to be a preacher. Meanwhile his legs had stretched, his voice had changed, manhood had arrived and taken possession of his body. Now, suddenly, it had taken possession of the rest of him. He felt woefully old and discouraged.
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