The Flirt

by Booth Tarkington

  She referred to the gallant defender of our seas, it appeared, and while Laura undressed and got into a wrapper, Cora recounted in detail the history of the impetuous sailor’s enthrallment;—a resume predicted three hours earlier by a gleeful whisper hissed across the maritime shoulder as the sisters swung near each other during a waltz: “PROPOSED!”

  “I’ve always heard they’re horribly inconstant,” she said, regretfully. “But, oh, Laura, wasn’t he beautiful to look at! Do you think he’s more beautiful than Val? No—don’t tell me if you do. I don’t want to hear it! Val was so provoking: he didn’t seem to mind it at all. He’s nothing but a big brute sometimes: he wouldn’t even admit that he minded, when I asked him. I was idiot enough to ask; I couldn’t help it; he was so tantalizing” and exasperating—laughing at me. I never knew anybody like him; he’s so sure of himself and he can be so cold. Sometimes I wonder if he really cares about anything, deep down in his heart—anything except himself. He seems so selfish: there are times when he almost makes me hate him; but just when I get to thinking I do, I find I don’t—he’s so deliciously strong, and there’s such a BIG luxury in being understood: I always feel he KNOWS me clear to the bone, somehow! But, oh,” she sighed regretfully,” doesn’t a uniform become a man? They ought to all wear ‘em. It would look silly on such a little goat as that Wade Trumble, though: nothing could make him look like a whole man. Did you see him glaring at me? Beast! I was going to be so nice and kittenish and do all my prettiest tricks for him, to help Val with his oil company. Val thinks Wade would come in yet, if I’D only get him in the mood to have another talk with Val about it; but the spiteful little rat wouldn’t come near me. I believe that was one of the reasons Val laughed at me and pretended not to mind my getting proposed to. He MUST have minded; he couldn’t have helped minding it, really. That’s his way; he’s so MEAN—he won’t show things. He knows ME. I can’t keep anything from him; he reads ME like a signboard; and then about himself he keeps me guessing, and I can’t tell when I’ve guessed right. Ray Vilas behaved disgustingly, of course; he was horrid and awful. I might have expected it. I suppose Richard was wailing HIS tiresome sorrows on your poor shoulder–-“

  “No,” said Laura. “He was very cheerful. He seemed glad you were having a good time.”

  “He didn’t look particularly cheerful at me. I never saw so slow a man: I wonder when he’s going to find out about that pendant. Val would have seen it the instant I put it on. And, oh, Laura! isn’t George Wattling funny? He’s just SOFT! He’s good-looking though,” she continued pensively, adding, “I promised to motor out to the Country Club with him tomorrow for tea.”

  “Oh, Cora,“protested Laura, “no! Please don’t!”

  “I’ve promised; so I’ll have to, now.” Cora laughed. “It’ll do Mary Kane good. Oh, I’m not going to bother much with HIM—he makes me tired. I never saw anything so complacent as that girl when she came in tonight, as if her little Georgie was the greatest capture the world had ever seen… .”

  She chattered on. Laura, passive, listened with a thoughtful expression, somewhat preoccupied. The talker yawned at last.

  “It must be after three,” she said, listlessly, having gone over her evening so often that the colours were beginning to fade. She yawned again. “Laura,” she remarked absently, “I don’t see how you can sleep in this bed; it sags so.”

  “I’ve never noticed it,” said her sister. “It’s a very comfortable old bed.”

  Cora went to her to be unfastened, reverting to the lieutenant during the operation, and kissing the tire-woman warmly at its conclusion. “You’re always so sweet to me, Laura,” she said affectionately. “I don’t know how you manage it. You’re so good”—she laughed—“sometimes I wonder how you stand me. If I were you, I’m positive I couldn’t stand me at all!” Another kiss and a hearty embrace, and she picked up her wrap and skurried silently through the hall to her own room.

  It was very late, but Laura wrote for almost an hour in her book (which was undisturbed) before she felt drowsy. Then she extinguished the lamp, put the book away and got into bed.

  It was almost as if she had attempted to lie upon the empty air: the mattress sagged under her weight as if it had been a hammock; and something tore with a ripping sound. There was a crash, and a choked yell from a muffled voice somewhere, as the bed gave way. For an instant, Laura fought wildly in an entanglement of what she insufficiently perceived to be springs, slats and bedclothes with something alive squirming underneath. She cleared herself and sprang free, screaming, but even in her fright she remembered her father and clapped her hand over her mouth that she might keep from screaming again. She dove at the door, opened it, and fled through the hall to Cora’s room, still holding her hand over her mouth.

  “Cora! Oh, Cora!” she panted, and flung herself upon her sister’s bed.

  Cora was up instantly; and had lit the gas in a trice. “There’s a burglar!” Laura contrived to gasp. “In my room! Under the bed!”

  “What! ”

  “I fell on him! Something’s the matter with the bed. It broke. I fell on him!”

  Cora stared at her wide-eyed. “Why, it can’t be. Think how long I was in there. Your bed broke, and you just thought there was some one there. You imagined it.”

  “No, no, no!” wailed Laura. I HEARD him: he gave a kind of dreadful grunt.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “SURE? He wriggled—oh! I could FEEL him!”

  Cora seized a box of matches again. “I’m going to find out.” “Oh, no, no!” protested Laura, cowering.”

  “Yes, I am. If there’s a burglar in the house I’m going to find him!”

  “We mustn’t wake papa.”

  “No, nor mamma either. You stay here if you want to–-“

  “Let’s call Hedrick,” suggested the pallid Laura; “or put our heads out of the window and scream for–-“

  Cora laughed; she was not in the least frightened. “That wouldn’t wake papa, of course! If we had a telephone I’d send for the police; but we haven’t. I’m going to see if there’s any one there. A burglar’s a man, I guess, and I can’t imagine myself being afraid of any MAN!”

  Laura clung to her, but Cora shook her off and went through the hall undaunted, Laura faltering behind her. Cora lighted matches with a perfectly steady hand; she hesitated on the threshold of Laura’s room no more than a moment, then lit the lamp.

  Laura stifled a shriek at sight of the bed. “Look, look!” she gasped.

  “There’s no one under it now, that’s certain,” said Cora, and boldly lifted a corner of it. “Why, it’s been cut all to pieces from underneath! You’re right; there was some one here. It’s practically dismembered. Don’t you remember my telling you how it sagged? And I was only sitting on the edge of it! The slats have all been moved out of place, and as for the mattress, it’s just a mess of springs and that stuffing stuff. He must have thought the silver was hidden there.”

  “Oh, oh, oh!” moaned Laura. “He WRIGGLED–-ugh!”

  Cora picked up the lamp. “Well, we’ve got to go over the house–-“

  “No, no!”

  “Hush! I’ll go alone then.”

  “You CAN’T.”

  “I will, though!”

  The two girls had changed places in this emergency. In her fright Laura was dependent, clinging: actual contact with the intruder had unnerved her. It took all her will to accompany her sister upon the tour of inspection, and throughout she cowered behind the dauntless Cora. It was the first time in their lives that their positions had been reversed. From the days of Cora’s babyhood, Laura had formed the habit of petting and shielding the little sister, but now that the possibility became imminent of confronting an unknown and dangerous man, Laura was so shaken that, overcome by fear, she let Cora go first. Cora had not boasted in vain of her bravery; in truth, she was not afraid of any man.

  They found the fastenings of the doors secure and likewise those of all the windows,
until they came to the kitchen. There, the cook had left a window up, which plausibly explained the marauder’s mode of ingress. Then, at Cora’s insistence, and to Laura’s shivering horror, they searched both cellar and garret, and concluded that he had escaped by the same means. Except Laura’s bed, nothing in the house had been disturbed; but this eccentricity on the part of a burglar, though it indeed struck the two girls as peculiar, was not so pointedly mysterious to them as it might have been had they possessed a somewhat greater familiarity with the habits of criminals whose crimes are professional.

  They finally retired, Laura sleeping with her sister, and Cora had begun to talk of the lieutenant again, instead of the burglar, before Laura fell asleep.

  In spite of the short hours for sleep, both girls appeared at the breakfast-table before the meal was over, and were naturally pleased with the staccato of excitement evoked by their news. Mrs. Madison and Miss Peirce were warm in admiration of their bravery, but in the same breath condemned it as foolhardy.

  “I never knew such wonderful girls!” exclaimed the mother, almost tearfully. “You crazy little lions! To think of your not even waking Hedrick! And you didn’t have even a poker and were in your bare feet—and went down in the CELLAR–-“

  “It was all Cora,” protested Laura. “I’m a hopeless, disgusting coward. I never knew what a coward I was before. Cora carried the lamp and went ahead like a drum-major. I just trailed along behind her, ready to shriek and run—or faint!”

  “Could you tell anything about him when you fell on him?” inquired Miss Peirce. “What was his voice like when he shouted?”

  “Choked. It was a horrible, jolted kind of cry. It hardly sounded human.”

  “Could you tell anything about whether he was a large man, or small, or–-“

  “Only that he seemed very active. He seemed to be kicking. He WRIGGLED–-ugh!”

  They evolved a plausible theory of the burglar’s motives and line of reasoning. “You see,” said Miss Peirce, much stirred, in summing up the adventure, “he either jimmies the window, or finds it open already, and Sarah’s mistaken and she DID leave it open! Then he searched the downstairs first, and didn’t find anything. Then he came upstairs, and was afraid to come into any of the rooms where we were. He could tell which rooms had people in them by hearing us breathing through the keyholes. He finds two rooms empty, and probably he made a thorough search of Miss Cora’s first. But he isn’t after silver toilet articles and pretty little things like that. He wants really big booty or none, so he decides that an out-of-the-way, unimportant room like Miss Laura’s is where the family would be most apt to hide valuables, jewellery and silver, and he knows that mattresses have often been selected as hiding-places; so he gets under the bed and goes to work. Then Miss Cora and Miss Laura come in so quietly—not wanting to wake anybody—that he doesn’t hear them, and he gets caught there. That’s the way it must have been.”

  “But why,” Mrs. Madison inquired of this authority, “why do you suppose he lit the lamp?”

  “To see by,” answered the ready Miss Peirce. It was accepted as final.

  Further discussion was temporarily interrupted by the discovery that Hedrick had fallen asleep in his chair.

  “Don’t bother him, Cora,” said his mother. “He’s finished eating—let him sleep a few minutes, if he wants to, before he goes to school. He’s not at all well. He played too hard, yesterday afternoon, and hurt his knee, he said. He came down limping this morning and looking very badly. He oughtn’t to run and climb about the stable so much after school. See how utterly exhausted he looks!—Not even this excitement can keep him awake.”

  “I think we must be careful not to let Mr. Madison suspect anything about the burglar,” said Miss Peirce. “It would be bad for him.”

  Laura began: “But we ought to notify the police–-“

  “Police!” Hedrick woke so abruptly, and uttered the word with such passionate and vehement protest, that everybody started. “I suppose you want to KILL your father, Laura Madison!”

  “How?”

  “Do you suppose he wouldn’t know something had happened with a squad of big, heavy policemen tromping all over the house? The first thing they’d do would be to search the whole place–-“

  “Oh, no,” said Mrs. Madison quickly. “It wouldn’t do at all.”

  “I should think not! I’m glad,” continued Hedrick, truthfully, “THAT idea’s out of your head! I believe Laura imagined the whole thing anyway.”

  “Have you looked at her mattress,” inquired Cora, “darling little boy?”

  He gave her a concentrated look, and rose to leave. “Nothin’ on earth but imagina–-” He stopped with a grunt as he forgetfully put his weight on his left leg. He rubbed his knee, swallowed painfully, and, leaving the word unfinished, limped haughtily from the room.

  He left the house, gloomily swinging his books from a spare length of strap, and walking with care to ease his strains and bruises as much as possible. He was very low in his mind, that boy. His fortunes had reached the ebb-tide, but he had no hope of a rise. He had no hope of anything. It was not even a consolation that, through his talent for surprise in waylayings, it had lately been thought necessary, by the Villard family, to have Egerton accompanied to and from school by a man-servant. Nor was Hedrick more deeply depressed by the certainty that both public and domestic scandal must soon arise from the inevitable revelation of his discontinuing his attendance at school without mentioning this important change of career at home. He had been truant a full fortnight, under brighter circumstances a matter for a lawless pride—now he had neither fear nor vainglory. There was no room in him for anything but dejection.

  He walked two blocks in the direction of his school; turned a corner; walked half a block; turned north in the alley which ran parallel to Corliss Street, and a few moments later had cautiously climbed into an old, disused refuse box which stood against the rear wall of the empty stable at his own home. He pried up some loose boards at the bottom of the box, and entered a tunnel which had often and often served in happier days—when he had friends—for the escape of Union officers from Libby Prison and Andersonville. Emerging, wholly soiled, into a box-stall, he crossed the musty carriage house and ascended some rickety steps to a long vacant coachman’s-room, next to the hayloft. He closed the door, bolted it, and sank moodily upon a broken, old horsehair sofa.

  This apartment was his studio. In addition to the sofa, it contained an ex-bureau, three chair-like shapes, a once marble-topped table, now covered with a sheet of zinc, two empty bird cages, and a condemned whatnot. The walls were rather over-decorated in coloured chalks, the man-headed-snake motive predominating; they were also loopholed for firing into the hayloft. Upon the table lay a battered spy-glass, minus lenses, and, nearby, two boxes, one containing dried corn-silk, the other hayseed, convenient for the making of amateur cigarettes; the smoker’s outfit being completed by a neat pile of rectangular clippings from newspapers. On the shelves of the whatnot were some fragments of a dead pie, the relics of a “Fifteen-Puzzle,” a pink Easter-egg, four seashells, a tambourine with part of a girl’s face still visible in aged colours, about two thirds of a hot-water bag, a tintype of Hedrick, and a number of books: several by Henty, “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” “100 Practical Jokes, Easy to Perform,” “The Jungle Book,” “My Lady Rotha,” a “Family Atlas,” “Three Weeks,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “A Boy’s Life in Camp,” and “The Mystery of the Count’s Bedroom.”

  The gloomy eye of Hedrick wandered to “The Mystery of the Count’s Bedroom,” and remained fixed upon it moodily and contemptuously. His own mystery made that one seem tame and easy: Laura’s bedroom laid it all over the Count’s, in his conviction; and with a soul too weary of pain to shudder, he reviewed the bafflements and final catastrophe of the preceding night.

  He had not essayed the attempt upon the mattress until assured that the house was wrapped in slumber. Then, with hope in his heart, he had
stolen to Laura’s room, lit the lamp, feeling safe from intrusion, and set to work. His implement at first was a long hatpin of Cora’s. Lying on his back beneath the bed, and, moving the slats as it became necessary, he sounded every cubic inch of the mysterious mattress without encountering any obstruction which could reasonably be supposed to be the ledger. This was not more puzzling than it was infuriating, since by all processes of induction, deduction, and pure logic, the thing was necessarily there. It was nowhere else. Therefore it was there. It HAD to be there! With the great blade of his Boy Scout’s knife he began to disembowel the mattress

  For a time he had worked furiously and effectively, but the position was awkward, the search laborious, and he was obliged to rest frequently. Besides, he had waited to a later hour than he knew, for his mother to go to bed, and during one of his rests he incautiously permitted his eyes to close. When he woke, his sisters were in the room, and he thought it advisable to remain where he was, though he little realized how he had weakened his shelter. When Cora left the room, he heard Laura open the window, sigh, and presently a tiny clinking and a click set him a-tingle from head to foot: she was opening the padlocked book. The scratching sound of a pen followed. And yet she had not come near the bed. The mattress, then, was a living lie.

  With infinite caution he had moved so that he could see her, arriving at a coign of vantage just as she closed the book. She locked it, wrapped it in an oilskin cover which lay beside it on the table, hung the key-chain round her neck, rose, yawned, and, to his violent chagrin, put out the light. He heard her moving but could not tell where, except that it was not in his part of the room. Then a faint shuffling warned him that she was approaching the bed, and he withdrew his head to avoid being stepped upon. The next moment the world seemed to cave in upon him.

  Laura’s flight had given him opportunity to escape to his own room unobserved; there to examine, bathe and bind his wounds, and to rectify his first hasty impression that he had been fatally mangled.