Billy To-morrow Stands the Test

“BILLY! My son!” Mrs. Bennett started forward as he opened her door, and threw her arms around his neck.

“Did she—did a girl telephone you that I was all right, mother?”

“Yes. This morning. She said you were detained, but did not tell me where or why.”

“What else did she say?”

“Nothing, but hung up the receiver before I could ask any questions. Very odd, I thought; certainly not courteous.”

“Mother, don’t judge her too quickly. A girl who has to stay all night out in the woods with a chap like me, is not likely to be very proud of telling it around.”

“Why, William Bennett!”

Billy was as much astonished to see his mother turn pale as he was to hear in that stern tone his full name. “Sit down, marms. It’s all right for me, but pretty rocky for her.”

Then he told her the whole story, except that he did not divulge Erminie’s name, nor their relation to each other.

For a long time they were silent, his mother strangely serious and sad, it seemed to Billy. At length she turned to him, took both his hands in hers, and looked steadily in his eyes, but still did not speak.

He bore the scrutiny well though it made him uncomfortable. “Don’t look like that, mother. What could we have done different or better than we did?”

She kissed him on the cheek and he felt her closer clasp. “Nothing, my boy. It was one of those trying situations one cannot foresee. But it is serious. Do you realize what it will entail upon this girl if evil-speaking people learn the story?”

“Gee! That’s what I’ve been thinking of all night. But I don’t see how any one is to know about it.”

“If she is questioned she will have to tell more than one falsehood to keep people from knowing some one was with her; and lies always defeat themselves.”

“Well, mother, if it comes to the worst I shall stand by her.”

“Of course, if you can; but whatever you say will only harm her. Your silence is the best thing you can give her.”

“I can marry her.”

If Billy had shot at his mother he could have astonished her hardly more.

“Billy! You’re only a little boy!” she gasped with her first recovered breath.

“Oh, not to-day, but after a while. And meantime, while I’m growing old enough and earning something, I can lick any fool that speaks against her.”

In a long life of many trials Mrs. Bennett had learned self-control; also that many worries are best left alone for a time before attacking them. She rose and stood behind Billy’s chair, stroking his soft, abundant hair. “Boy, put such thoughts out of your mind. They are unsuited to you. Whatever is just and right, whatever is manly and needed by this girl from you, that of course you must do. But time will show what that may be. In the meantime you must go on as usual, doing the duty of each day. Just now that means a bath, supper, your lessons, and bed.”

Again she kissed him, drew her hand caressingly across his forehead, and left the room. And to Billy’s keen ear it seemed as if her step in a moment had become the slow, shuffling tread of an old woman.

As the evening passed, his depression grew. He found it difficult to study. The pages were meaningless. Or if he roused himself to some attention suddenly the print blurred, and he heard again the quick tempest of the night before surging through the trees, or Erminie’s pitiful, “I’m so afraid, Billy!”

And his mother’s step, as she left the room, haunted him. What had made her walk like that? He began to suspect the case was worse than he had thought if it could hurt her so. “Betsey, Betsey! Why didn’t you get a move on?” he whispered whimsically. It was years since he had thought of his boyish name for his conscience. Yet reviewing the night’s experience he could find little blame for himself.

His large attic room, usually so cheery and so much to his wish, was full of sounds that to his overwrought mind seemed to come from unseen beings. He listened for a time, then switched on the light; and seeing only the familiar scene, turned it off again, impatient with himself, ashamed. He need not have been so. He was neither a coward nor a hyper-sensitive; it was his own high-strung imagination that peopled the darkness with jeering shapes.

But finally he slept. And with the morning youth asserted itself, and he went off to school with new courage to meet whatever might come.

That proved to be nothing unusual. Erminie was there, pale and quiet, but otherwise quite herself. By a subtle understanding that needed no explaining they kept apart. No one seemed to notice them except Jim; at noon he watched Erminie’s every move. At first Billy thought himself over-suspicious; but once when he caught a gleam in Jim’s eye, saw the covert smile on his lips, Billy knew something malicious was brewing; believed that the Kid possessed their secret and only waited his own time to use it—no one could foretell how.

Billy was not very light of heart when he went around after school to Mr. Smith’s town office, and found Dr. Carter there. He wished to talk with Mr. Smith alone, to ask him for employment, for something to do that would be worth good wages at once. He was not skilled of course, but he was strong and quick, able to do a man’s work at hard labor; and with a boy’s optimism he knew he could learn, “Make good from the start.”

Dr. Carter’s genial face and excellent stories, even though Billy knew he had no better friend anywhere, were not welcome to him now. He did not know just how to proceed. He wondered if the two were considering business; though it must be so, since Mr. Smith was a very busy man, and it was still in business hours. And yet they were laughing heartily and had admitted Billy at once.

“Well, what can I do for you, Billy?” Mr. Smith asked cordially. “Jove! It’s time we called you ‘Mr. Bennett,’ you’re such a giant.” Mr. Smith was a short, stout man, and when he stood beside Billy he had to lift his face to look into the boy’s eyes.

The doctor greeted Billy in his quiet, friendly way; and with his firm hand-clasp a quick memory came to Billy of the day, so long ago, when he had found the counterfeiters, and raced to town on his wheel with his secret, not knowing how to tell it till he met the doctor. Again he saw himself, coatless, torn, dusty, freckled, his hair wet and “plastered,” following the immaculate doctor into the grand dining room of the new hotel. After that came the memory of telling his story to the sheriff, and of that awful trip when he led the sheriff and posse up the mountain, through the edge of the forest fire to the counterfeiters’ den. And after that, the rescue of May Nell—

These pictures flashed through his mind during the instant he was returning the doctor’s greeting; and on recalling himself he felt as if he were coming back from a long journey, felt unpardonably abrupt when he tried to state his business to Mr. Smith.

“I came to—I’d like—”

“You’d like a private interview? Is that it?” Mr. Smith prompted.

“The boy’s after a job. Don’t give it to him, Mr. Smith. He’d better play through his vacation; he works hard enough at school to deserve it.” The doctor smiled and rose to go; and Billy wondered how it was that the doctor could “beat a chap’s own thinker to it.” He did not know that the keen, trained sense that enables a skilled physician to read the hidden meaning of every line and tint and pulse of the body, could also reveal to him the meanings the mind writes into voice and eye.

As soon as he had gone Mr. Smith motioned Billy to a seat and listened with no interruption, while the boy told his errand. For a time after he had finished, the man of affairs continued to draw meaningless designs on the blotter, till Billy grew first hot, then cold, and wished himself away.

“What can you do?”

“I—I don’t know. Isn’t there a lot of just common work to do on your railroad that you’re building over to Tum-wah? I surely can do digging; I am strong.”

“Yes, there is plenty of digging,” Mr. Smith said absently, and again lapsed into silence.

“Does your mother know you’re doing this?” he questioned so suddenly at last that Billy jumped.

“She doesn’t know I’m here to-day, but she knows that I intend to work this summer,—perhaps right along.”

“Do you intend to dig in the dirt for a living?”

The stern words stung Billy as a whiplash. “No, sir. I hope to do something better—I shall do something better after a while,” he added with an energy that pleased Mr. Smith.

“Have you decided what you will make your life work?”

“I’ve thought of—” He was about to say journalism but something about this fearless, successful man made the boy feel young and very ignorant. “I had thought of trying to get on a newspaper.”

“Nothing in it! You’ll smell of a grindstone all your life, and be a slave besides.”

“Slave?” Billy repeated anxiously.

“Yes. The newspaper business is no longer an outlet for individual character. It’s just a machine where each man is a cog, and writes what he is told, no matter what he believes. If his stuff is good the paper gets the credit; if it isn’t he is fired.”

Billy made no reply to this, but after a moment asked, “Would not that be the way with anything I tried at first?”

“Yes, boy, it would.” There was an unexpected kindness in his tone. He rose and walked once or twice across the richly furnished office, when he stopped and looked down upon Billy, who sat with every muscle tense, his hands unconsciously gripping the chair arms.

“Billy, ever since the day you prevented that devil from kidnapping May Nell, I’ve had you in mind. I’ve no son of my own; but if I had, I’d be glad if he was as much of a man as you’ve always shown yourself.”

Again he walked the length of the room and back. “You know I wanted to educate you; but your mother was right, wiser than I. Now I’m not so sure I’m going to do this thing you’ve asked of me. If you need money to tide you through your school, Billy, I shall be more than glad to advance it. No amount of money will square what your family has done for mine. But—I’m blamed if I’m going to help you ruin your future. What you need now is school, and the university; a year or two of running about the country to see what sort of a nation you belong to; and then you’ll be fit to settle in some business where you’ll have men digging for you. That’s what I want you to do, Billy.”

The boy could not speak. This was what he had looked forward to, had planned to do, even if he had to earn his way and take years in doing it. But Erminie’s coming into his life had changed everything. Such dreams must be abandoned for a different and harder future.

At last he stood, and looked into Mr. Smith’s face steadily, but with a disappointment in his determined eyes that touched the man. “There are reasons,—reasons that I am not at liberty to mention, Mr. Smith, why I must go to work as soon as school closes; and probably I shall not be able to go back. If you had anything I could do I would rather work for you than for any one else. I’d try very hard, sir.” He hesitated an instant, but not long enough for the other to speak. “But since you don’t approve I must look farther.” He stepped toward the door.

“Here! Sit down! If you’re bound to make a fool of yourself about work it might as well be where I can hold you down to it till you’re sick of it, and come to your senses.” Mr. Smith’s eyes twinkled, and his voice was softer than his words. “You needn’t hunt any other boss. I’ll have a job for you when you come for it. How soon will that be?”

“School closes on the twenty-third of June; I’ll be ready the morning of the twenty-fourth.”

“That’s Saturday. I won’t take any fellow from school till he’s had a vacation; come Monday, the twenty-sixth.” He laughed at his own joke, and opened the door, and Billy knew the interview was ended, yet he tried to stammer his thanks.

“I’m very—I’m—”

“Get out with you! I won’t be thanked for helping you to ruin yourself!” Mr. Smith blustered, and shut the door on Billy.

Ruin himself! The words roused a sudden anger. He’d show them! This course that he was taking was not his own choice; circumstances forced it on him. It was the right thing to do, and right never ruined any one. Or if it did—He looked up as he walked and saw a lineman high among the deadly light wires, held only by belt and spurs, busily splicing wires and whistling at his work.

“That’s it,” Billy thought. “Do what I have to do as well and carefully as I can, and then—whistle.”