Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Beasley again — and stopped again.

  Dowden’s voice sounded hysterically in my right ear. (Miss Apperthwaite had whispered in my left.) “The only speech he’s ever made in his life — and he’s stuck!”

  But Beasley wasn’t: he was only deliberating.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began— “Mr. and Mrs. Hunchberg, Colonel Hunchberg and Aunt Cooley Hunchberg, Miss Molanna, Miss Queen, and Miss Marble Hunchberg, Mr. Noble, Mr. Tom, and Mr. Grandee Hunchberg, Mr. Corley Linbridge, and Master Hammersley: — You see before you to-night, my person, merely the representative of your real host. MISTER Swift. Mister Swift has expressed a wish that there should be a speech, and has deputed me to make it. He requests that the subject he has assigned me should be treated in as dignified a manner as is possible — considering the orator. Ladies and gentlemen” — he took a sip of water— “I will now address you upon the following subject: ‘Why we Call Christmas-time the Best Time.’

  “Christmas-time is the best time because it is the kindest time. Nobody ever felt very happy without feeling very kind, and nobody ever felt very kind without feeling at least a LITTLE happy. So, of course, either way about, the happiest time is the kindest time — that’s THIS time. The most beautiful things our eyes can see are the stars; and for that reason, and in remembrance of One star, we set candles on the Tree to be stars in the house. So we make Christmas-time a time of stars indoors; and they shine warmly against the cold outdoors that is like the cold of other seasons not so kind. We set our hundred candles on the Tree and keep them bright throughout the Christmas-time, for while they shine upon us we have light to see this life, not as a battle, but as the march of a mighty Fellowship! Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you!”

  He bowed to right and left, as to an audience politely applauding, and, lifting the table and its burden, withdrew; while old Bob again set his fiddle to his chin and scraped the preliminary measures of a quadrille.

  Beasley was back in an instant, shouting as he came: “TAKE your pardners! Balance ALL!”

  And then and there, and all by himself, he danced a quadrille, performing at one and the same time for four lively couples. Never in my life have I seen such gyrations and capers as were cut by that long-legged, loose-jointed, miraculously flying figure. He was in the wildest motion without cessation, never the fraction of an instant still; calling the figures at the top of his voice and dancing them simultaneously; his expression anxious but polite (as is the habit of other dancers); his hands extended as if to swing his partner or corner, or “opposite lady”; and his feet lifting high and flapping down in an old-fashioned step. “FIRST four, forward and back!” he shouted. “Forward and SALUTE! BALANCE to corners! SWING pardners! GR-R-RAND Right-and-Left!”

  I think the combination of abandon and decorum with which he performed that “Grand Right-and-Left” was the funniest thing I have ever seen. But I didn’t laugh at it.

  Neither did Miss Apperthwaite.

  “NOW do you believe me?” Peck was arguing, fiercely, with Mr. Schulmeyer. “Is he crazy, or ain’t he?”

  “He is,” Grist agreed, hoarsely. “He is a stark, starin’, ravin’, roarin’ lunatic! And the nigger’s humorin’ him!”

  They were all staring, open-mouthed and aghast, into the lighted room.

  “Do you see where it puts US?” Simeon Peck’s rasping voice rose high.

  “I guess I do!” said Grist. “We come out to buy a barn, and got a house and lot fer the same money. It’s the greatest night’s work you ever done, Sim Peck!”

  “I guess it is!”

  “Shake on it, Sim.”

  They shook hands, exalted with triumph.

  “This’ll do the work,” giggled Peck. “It’s about two-thousand per cent. better than the story we started to git. Why, Dave Beasley’ll be in a padded cell in a month! It’ll be all over town to-morrow, and he’ll have as much chance fer governor as that nigger in there!” In his ecstasy he smote Dowden deliriously in the ribs. “What do you think of your candidate NOW?”

  “Wait,” said Dowden. “Who came in the hacks that Grist saw?”

  This staggered Mr. Peck. He rubbed his mitten over his woollen cap as if scratching his head. “Why,” he said, slowly— “who in Halifax DID come in them hacks?”

  “The Hunchbergs,” said I.

  “Who’s the Hunchbergs? Where—”

  “Listen,” said Dowden.

  “FIRST couple, FACE out!” shouted Beasley, facing out with an invisible lady on his akimboed arm, while old Bob sawed madly at A New Coon in Town.

  “SECOND couple, FALL in!” Beasley wheeled about and enacted the second couple.

  “THIRD couple!” He fell in behind himself again.

  “FOURTH couple, IF you please! BALANCE — ALL! — I beg your pardon, Miss Molanna, I’m afraid I stepped on your train. — SASHAY ALL!”

  After the “sashay” — the noblest and most dashing bit of gymnastics displayed in the whole quadrille — he bowed profoundly to his invisible partner and came to a pause, wiping his streaming face. Old Bob dexterously swung A New Coon into the stately measures of a triumphal march.

  “And now,” Beasley announced, in stentorian tones, “if the ladies will be so kind as to take the gentlemen’s arms, we will proceed to the dining-room and partake of a slight collation.”

  Thereupon came a slender piping of joy from that part of the room screened from us by the Tree.

  “Oh, Cousin David Beasley, that was the BEAUTIFULLEST quadrille ever danced in the world! And, please, won’t YOU take Mrs. Hunchberg out to supper?”

  Then into the vision of our paralyzed and dumfounded watchers came the little wagon, pulled by the old colored woman, Bob’s wife, in her best, and there, propped upon pillows, lay Hamilton Swift, Junior, his soul shining rapture out of his great eyes, a bright spot of color on each of his thin cheeks. He lifted himself on one elbow, and for an instant something seemed to be wrong with the brace under his chin.

  Beasley sprang to him and adjusted it tenderly. Then he bowed elaborately toward the mantel-piece.

  “Mrs. Hunchberg,” he said, “may I have the honor?” And offered his arm.

  “And I must have MISTER Hunchberg,” chirped Hamilton. “He must walk with me.”

  “He tells ME,” said Beasley, “he’ll be mighty glad to. And there’s a plate of bones for Simpledoria.”

  “You lead the way,” cried the child; “you and Mrs. Hunchberg.”

  “Are we all in line?” Beasley glanced back over his shoulder. “HOO-ray! Now, let us on. Ho! there!”

  “BR-R-RA-vo!” applauded Mister Swift.

  And Beasley, his head thrown back and his chest out, proudly led the way, stepping nobly and in time to the exhilarating measures. Hamilton Swift, Junior, towed by the beaming old mammy, followed in his wagon, his thin little arm uplifted and his fingers curled as if they held a trusted hand.

  When they reached the door, old Bob rose, turned in after them, and, still fiddling, played the procession and himself down the hall.

  And so they marched away, and we were left staring into the empty room....

  “My soul!” said the “Journal” reporter, gasping. “And he did all THAT — just to please a little sick kid!”

  “I can’t figure it out,” murmured Sim Peck, piteously.

  “I can,” said the “Journal” reporter. “This story WILL be all over town to-morrow.” He glanced at me, and I nodded. “It’ll be all over town,” he continued, “though not in any of the papers — and I don’t believe it’s going to hurt Dave Beasley’s chances any.”

  Mr. Peck and his companions turned toward the street; they went silently.

  The young man from the “Journal” overtook them. “Thank you for sending for me,” he said, cordially. “You’ve given me a treat. I’m FER Beasley!”

  Dowden put his hand on my shoulder. He had not observed the third figure still remaining.

  “Well, sir,” he
remarked, shaking the snow from his coat, “they were right about one thing: it certainly was mighty low down of Dave not to invite ME — and you, too — to his Christmas party. Let him go to thunder with his old invitations, I’m going in, anyway! Come on. I’m plum froze.”

  There was a side door just beyond the bay-window, and Dowden went to it and rang, loud and long. It was Beasley himself who opened it.

  “What in the name—” he began, as the ruddy light fell upon Dowden’s face and upon me, standing a little way behind. “What ARE you two — snow-banks? What on earth are you fellows doing out here?”

  “We’ve come to your Christmas party, you old horse-thief!” Thus Mr. Dowden.

  “HOO-ray!” said Beasley.

  Dowden turned to me. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “What are you waiting for, old fellow?” said Beasley.

  I waited a moment longer, and then it happened.

  She came out of the shadow and went to the foot of the steps, her cloak falling from her shoulders as she passed me. I picked it up.

  She lifted her arms pleadingly, though her head was bent with what seemed to me a beautiful sort of shame. She stood there with the snow driving against her and did not speak. Beasley drew his hand slowly across his eyes — to see if they were really there, I think.

  “David,” she said, at last. “You’ve got so many lovely people in your house to-night: isn’t there room for — for just one fool? It’s Christmas-time!”

  The Spring Concert

  The Spring Concert

  THE TOWN WAS only about eighty years old, but it loved to think of itself as a “good old place,” and it habitually spoke of the residence of its principal citizen as “that old-fashioned Ricketts property.”

  This was an under-statement: the Ricketts place was more than merely old-fashioned. So rapidly do fashions change in houses, nowadays, in small towns as well as in big, and so quickly does life become history, that the “Ricketts property” at fifty years of age was an actual archæological relic. Contemplating the place you contemplated a prevalent way of life already abandoned, and learned a bit of Midland history. The Ricketts place was a left-over from that period when every Midland townsman was his own farmer, according to his means; and if he was able, kept his cow and chickens, and raised corn and pigs at home.

  The barn was a farm barn, with a barnyard about it; here were the empty pig-pens and the chicken house, the latter still inhabited. In summer, sweet corn was still grown in the acre lot adjoining the barnyard; and, between that lot and the driveway from the barn, there was a kitchen garden, there was an asparagus bed, and there was a strawberry patch fringed with currant-bushes. Behind the house were outbuildings: the storeroom, the wash-house, the smoke-house. Here was the long grape-arbour, and here stood the two pumps: one of iron, for the cistern; the other a wooden flute that sang higher and higher to an incredible pitch before it fetched the water.

  The house was a large, pensive-looking, honest old frame thing, with a front porch all across it; and the most casual passer-by must have guessed that there was a great deal of clean oilcloth on the hall floors, and that cool mattings were laid, in summer, in all the rooms — mattings pleasant to the bare feet of children. It was a house that “smelled good”: aromas at once sweet and spicy were wont to swim down the mild breezes of Pawpaw Street, whereon the Ricketts place fronted.

  In the latter part of April the perfume of apple-blossoms was adrift on those breezes, too; for all the west side of the big yard was an apple orchard, and trees stood so close to the house that a branch of blossoms could be gathered from one of the “sitting-room” windows — and on a warm end-of-April day, when that orchard was full abloom, last year, there sat reading a book, beneath the carnival clouds of blossom, an apple-blossom of a girl.

  So she was informed by Mr. Lucius Brutus Allen. Mr. Allen came walking up Pawpaw Street from Main Street, about five o’clock in the afternoon; a broad, responsible figure with a broad, irresponsible face, and a good, solid, reddish-haired head behind the face. He was warm, it appeared; inclined to refresh his legs with a pause of leisure, his nose with the smell of the orchard, his eyes with the sight of its occupant. He halted, rested his stout forearms upon the top of the picket-fence, and in his own way made the lady acquainted with his idea of her appearance.

  “A generous soil makes a generous people, Miss Mary,” he observed; and she looked up gravely from her book at the sound of his tremulous tenor voice. “You see, most of this country in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys is fertile. We don’t have to scratch the rocks for our crops, so we have time to pronounce our r’s. We’ve even got the leisure to drawl a little. A Yankee, now, he’s too pinched for time, between his hard rocks and his hard winters, to pronounce his r’s; so he calls his mother ‘motha,’ and hurries on. But he’s conscientious, Miss Mary; he knows he’s neglected something, and so, to make up for it, he calls his sister ‘Mariar.’ Down South it’s too hot for a fellow to trouble about the whole blame alphabet, so he says, ‘Lessee, which lettuhs goin’ to be the easies’ to leave out?’ he says. ‘Well, the r’s, I reckon,’ he says. ‘An’ g,’ he says. ‘I’ll leave r out most the time, an’ g whenevuh I get the chance — an’ sometimes d an’ t. That’ll be a heap easiuh,’ he says, ‘when I’m claimin’ my little boy is the smahtis’ chile in the worl’.”

  Mr. Allen paused genially, then concluded: “You see, Miss Mary, I’ve just been leading up logically to the question: Which is you and which is the rest of the apple-blossoms?”

  Miss Ricketts made no vocal reply, but there was a slight concentration of the fine space between her eyebrows; decidedly no symptom of pleasure, though she might properly have enjoyed the loiterer’s little extravagance, which was far from being inaccurate as extravagances go. Mr. Allen was forced to remind himself that “nobody loves a fat man,” though he decided not to set his thought before the lady.

  A smile of some ruefulness became just visible upon the ample surface of his face, then withdrew to the interior, and was transmuted into a quality of his odd and pleasant voice, which was distinctly rueful as he said:

  “It’s the weather, Miss Mary. You musn’t mind what anybody says along during the first warm days in spring. People are liable to say anything at all.”

  “Yes,” Miss Ricketts returned, not mollified. “I’ve just noticed.” She gave him one dark glance, wholly unfavorable, as she spoke, and then looked down at her book again, allowing him no possible doubt that she wished to proceed with her reading.

  “I’m a hard man to discourage,” said Mr. Allen. “The band’s going to play in the Square to-night. It’s been practising ‘Annie Laurie’ and ‘Tenting Tonight’ all winter, up in the storeroom over Tom Leggett’s wall-paper and book emporium, and of course the boys are anxious to give their first concert. What I wanted to say was this: If I came by for you after supper, would you care to go?”

  “No,” said Miss Ricketts quietly, not looking up.

  Before continuing and concluding the conversation, Lucius Brutus Allen paused to contemplate the top of her pink and white hat, which was significantly presented to his view as she bent over her book; and the pause was a wistful one on his part. “Seeing as that’s the case,” he said, finally, “I may be a hard man to discourage, and I was on my way home, but I believe I’ll just turn right square around and go on back to the National House bar — and get me a drink of lemonade. I want to show people I’m as desperate as anybody, when I’m crossed.”

  Immediately, with an air of resolution, Mr. Allen set off upon the path by which he had come. He debouched upon Main Street, at the foot of Pawpaw, crossed the Square to the dismal brick pile much too plainly labeled, “National House Will Wheen Propr,” and passed between two swinging, green, knee-high doors on the ground floor. “George,” he said to the bartender, “I’m not happy. Have you any lemons?”

  The bartender rubbed the back of his neck, stooped, and poked and peered variously beneath the long bar. “See
ms like I did have some, Lu,” he said thoughtfully. “I remember seein’ them lemons last Mon—”

  “No,” Mr. Allen interrupted, sighing. “I’ve been through this before with you, George. I’ll take buttermilk.”

  “Oh, got plenty buttermilk!” the bartender said, brightening; and supplied his customer from a large, bedewed white pitcher. “Buttermilk goes good this weather, don’t it, Lu?”

  “It do,” said Lucius, gravely.

  Glass in hand, he went to a small, round table where sat the only other present patron of the bar — a young man well-favored, but obviously in a state morbid if not moribund. He did not look up at Mr. Allen’s approach; continuing to sit motionless with his faraway gaze marooned upon a stratum of amber light in his glass on the table before him.

  He was a picturesque young man, and, with his rumpled black hair, so thick and wavy about his brooding white face, the picture he most resembled was that of a provincial young lawyer stricken with the stage-disease and bound to play Hamlet. This was no more than a resemblance, however; his intentions were different, as he roused himself to make clear presently, though without altering his attitude, or even the direction of his glance.

  “What do you mean?” he inquired huskily, a moment after Mr. Allen had seated himself at the table. “What do you mean, slamming a glass of buttermilk down on my table, Lucius Brutus Allen?”

  Mr. Allen put on a pair of eye-glasses, and thoughtfully examined the morose gentleman’s countenance before replying. “I would consume this flagon of buttermilk in congenial melancholy, Joseph Pitney Perley.”

  Mr. Perley, still motionless, demanded: “Can’t you see what I’m doing?”

  “What are you doing, Joe?”

  “Drinking!”

  “Professionally?” Mr. Allen inquired. “Or only for the afternoon?”

  “I don’t want to be talked to!”

  “I do,” said Lucius. “Talk to me.”

  Here the bartender permitted himself the intervention of a giggle, and wiped his dry bar industriously — his favorite gesture. “You ain’t goin’ to git much talk out o’ Joe, Lu!” he said. “All he’s said sence he come in here was jest, ‘Gimme same, George.’ I tell him he ain’t goin’ to be in no condition to ‘tend the band concert’s evening if he keeps on another couple hours or so. Me, I don’t mind seein’ a man drink some, but I like to see him git a little fun out of it!”