Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

He did not attempt to reply, but stared at her blankly. As she turned away, more of her was seen than when she stood beside him; and a sculptor would have been interested. “Don’t forget to come down,” she called back, as she descended the stairway.

  But he did not appear at the end of the dance; nor could she find him in the gallery or in his room; so, a little anxious, she sent a maid to look for him; and presently the maid came back and said that she had found him standing alone in the dining-room, but that when she told him Mrs. Troup was looking for him, he said nothing; he had walked away in the direction of the kitchen.

  “How strange!” Mrs. Troup murmured; but as her troubled eyes happened to glance downward, both of her hands rose in a gesture of alarm. “Jennie, where’s your apron?” she cried.

  “It’s on me, ma’am,” said Jennie; then she discovered that it wasn’t. “Why, how in the world—”

  But Mrs. Troup was already fluttering to the kitchen. She found trouble there between the caterer’s people and her own: the caterer’s chef was accusing Mrs. Troup’s cook of having stolen a valuable apron.

  Uncle Charles was discovered in the coal cellar. He had upon him both of the missing aprons, several others, a fur overcoat belonging to one of the guests, and most of the coal.

  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 archaeological 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 barn-yard 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 out-buildings: the storeroom, the washhouse, 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 brick 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, 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 thoughts 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 mustn’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 unfavourable, 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 labelled, “National House, Will Wheen Propr,” and passed between two swinging green 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. “Seems 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, go
t 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-favoured, 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 favourite 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!”

  “Have you considered the band concert, Joe?” Mr. Allen inquired. “Do you realize what strange euphonies you’ll miss unless you keep sober until seven-thirty?”

  The sombre Perley relaxed his gaze, and uttered a fierce monosyllable of denunciation. “Sober!” he added, afterward. “I’m sober. That’s my trouble. I’ve been trying to get tight for three hours!”

  “I’ll say this fer you,” the bartender volunteered— “you been tryin’ good, too!”

  “Ever experiment any?” Lucius suggested. “Why don’t you go over to Doc Willis’s Painless Dental Parlours? He’s got a tank of gas there, and all you do is put a rubber thing over your nose and breathe. Without any trouble at all you’ll be completely out of business in forty-five seconds.”

  “Yeh,” said the bartender. “But it don’t last more’n about four minutes.”

  “No; that’s true,” Lucius admitted. “But maybe Joe could hire Doc to tap him behind the ear with one of those little lead mallets when he sees him coming out of the gas. Joe’d feel just about the same to-morrow as he will if he stays here running up a bill with you. Fact is, I believe he’d feel better.”

  “I tell you,” said Mr. Perley, with emphasis, “I’m drinking!” And for further emphasis he rattled his glass. “Give me the same, George,” he said.

  George held a bottle to the light. He meditated, rubbing the back of his head; then spoke: “Tell you what I’ll do. The wife’s waitin’ supper fer me now; I want to git back up-town early fer the trade before the concert, because I look fer quite a rush—”

  “Yes,” interrupted Mr. Allen musingly. “Our community is going to see a night of wine and music, George.”

  “I’ll jest open a fresh bottle fer you, Joe,” the bartender continued; “and when I git back I’ll charge you with how many drinks you take out of it. I’m goin’ on home to supper. You want any more buttermilk, Lu?”

  “Bring the pitcher,” said Mr. Allen. “I will sup upon it.”

  “All right.” And George brought to the table the pitcher of buttermilk, a dim saucer of crackers and cheese, a brown bottle, ice-water, and fresh glasses. After that he doffed his apron, put on his hat, but no coat, and went to the door, where he turned to say: “If anybody else comes in here before I git back—”

  “And calls for liquor,” Mr. Allen took up the sentence, as George paused in thought, “we shall be glad to—”

  “Tell ’em,” said George, “they don’t git it!” He departed.

  Mr. Allen helped himself to buttermilk, ate a cracker, leaned back in his chair, and began to hum “Annie Laurie.”

  “Stop that!” said Perley sharply.

  “Certainly,” said Lucius. “I’ll whistle instead.”

  “If you do,” the troubled young man warned him, apparently in good faith, “I’ll kill you!”

  “What can I do to entertain you, Joe?”

  “You might clear out,” his friend suggested darkly. “God knows I haven’t asked for your society!”

  “No,” said Lucius. “Our fairest gifts do oft arrive without petition. What an unusual thought! Have you noticed—”

  But the other burst out suddenly in a tragic fury: “Shut up! What’s the matter with you? Can’t you see I want to be alone?”

  Mr. Allen remained placid. “What difference do I make?” he asked. “I thought you said you were ‘drinking’? If you’re really in earnest about it you don’t care who’s here or anywhere else.”

  “Don’t you see I’m in misery?” cried Perley. “The ayes have it.”

  “Well, then, why in Heaven’s name can’t you—”

  “I’ll tell you,” said Lucius. “I’m in misery, too. Terrible!”

  “Well, what the devil do I care for that?”

  “Haven’t I got a right to sit here?” Lucius inquired mildly. “Haven’t I got a right to sit here and drink, and cuss inside my innards, and take on the way you’re doing? Mary Ricketts just told me that she wouldn’t go to the band concert with me.”

  “Oh, do dry up!”

  “Well, you’re responsible for Mary’s treatment of me, aren’t you?” said Lucius. “I thought probably there’d be trouble when I saw you headed this way this afternoon.”

  “You do beat any ordinary lunatic!” the distressed young man protested. “I ‘headed this way’ this afternoon because I got one of my spells. You know well enough how it is with me, and how it was with my father before me — every so often the spell come on me, and I’ve got to drink. What in the Lord’s name has that to do with Mary Ricketts? I don’t suppose I’ve even seen her for a month. Never did see anything of her, to speak of, in my life.”

  Mr. Allen replenished his glass from the pitcher of buttermilk before replying, and appeared to muse sorrowfully. “Well, maybe I was mistaken,” he said.

  “But!” He broke off a line of thought; then sighed and inquired: “When this ‘spell’ comes on you, Joe, you feel that you’ve ‘got’ to go on until—”

  “You know I do! I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But suppose,” said Lucius, “suppose something took your mind off of it.”

  “Nothing could. Nothing on earth!”

  “But just suppose something did turn up — right in the start of a spell, say — something you found you’d rather do. You know, Joe, I believe if it did and you found something else was really pleasanter, it might be you’d never start in again. You’d understand it wasn’t the fun you think it is, maybe.”

  “Fun!” Joe cried. “I don’t want to drink!” And at that his stocky companion burst into outright laughter. “I know you think so, Joe,” he said apologetically, when his hilarity was sufficiently diminished. “Of course you believe it. I’m not denying that.”

  “By George!” the unfortunate young man explained. “You do make me sick! I suppose if I had smallpox you’d s
ay you weren’t denying I believed I had it! You sit there and drink your buttermilk, and laugh at me like a ninny because you can’t understand! No man on earth can understand, unless he has the thirst come on him the way mine does on me! And yet you tell me I only ‘believe’ I have it!”

  “Yes, I ought to explain,” said Mr. Allen soothingly. “It did sound unfeeling. One of the reasons you drink, Joe, is because this is a small town; — you have an active mind, a lot of the time there’s nothing much to do, and you get bored.”

  “I told you nobody could understand such a thirst as mine — nobody except the man that’s got one like it!”

  “This hankering is something inside you, isn’t it, Joe?”

  “What of that?”

  “It comes on you about every so often?”

  “Yes.”

  “If there weren’t any liquor in the world, you’d have the thirst for it just the same, would you?”

  “Just the same,” Perley answered. “And go crazy from it.”

  “Whereas,” Mr. Allen returned, “since liquor’s obtainable you prefer to go crazy from the imbibing of it instead of from the hanker for it. You find that more ossedalious, and nobody can blame you. But suppose alcohol had never been discovered, would you have the hanker?”

  “No, because I wouldn’t have inherited it from my father. You know as well as I do, how it runs in my family.”

  “So I do, Joe; so I do!” Mr. Allen sighed reminiscently. “Both your father and your Uncle Sam went that way. I remember them very well, and how they enjoyed it. That’s different from you, Joe.”

  “Different!” Joe laughed bitterly. “Do you suppose I get any ‘enjoyment’ out of it? Three days I’ll drink now; then I’ll be in hell — and I’ve got to go on. I’ve got to!”

  “Funny about its being hereditary,” said Lucius, musing aloud. “I expect you rather looked forward to that, Joe?”

  His companion stared at him fiercely. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded.

  “You always thought it was going to be hereditary, didn’t you, Joe? From almost when you were a boy?”