The Wild Oats Of A Spinster
Judging from appearances Miss Lucinda Perkins was justifying her reason for being by conforming absolutely to her environment. She apparently fitted as perfectly into her little niche in the Locustwood Seminary for young ladies as Miss Joe Hill fitted into hers. The only difference was that Miss Joe Hill did not confine herself to a niche; she filled the seminary, as a plump hand does a tight glove.
It was the year after Miss Lucinda had come to the seminary to teach elocution that Miss Joe Hill discovered in her an affinity. As principal, Miss Joe Hill's word was never questioned, and Miss Lucinda, with pleased obedience, accepted the honor that was thrust upon her, and meekly moved her few belongings into Miss Joe Hill's apartment.
For four years they had lived in the rarified atmosphere of celestial friendship. They clothed their bodies in the same raiment, and their minds in the same thoughts, and when one was cold the other shivered.
If Miss Lucinda, in those early days found it difficult to live up to Miss Joe Hill's transcendental code she gave no sign of it. She laid aside her mildly adorned garments and enveloped her small angular person in a garb of sombre severity. Even the modest bird that adorned her hat was replaced by an uncompromising band. She foreswore meat and became a vegetarian. She stopped reading novels and devoted her spare time to essays and biography. In fact she and Miss Joe Hill became one and that one was Miss Joe Hill.
It was not until Floss Speckert entered the senior class at Locustwood Seminary that this sublimated friendship suffered a jar.
Floss's father lived in Chicago, and it was due to his unerring discernment in the buying and selling of live stock that Floss was being "finished" in all branches without regard to the cost.
"Learn her all you want to," he said magnanimously to Miss Lucinda, who negotiated the arrangement. "I ain't got but two children, her and Tom. He's just like me—don't know a blame thing but business; but Floss—" his bosom swelled under his checked vest—"she's on to it all. I pay for everything you get into her head. Dancin', singin', French—all them extries goes."
Miss Lucinda had consequently undertaken the management of Floss Speckert, and the result had been far-reaching in its consequences.
Floss was a person whose thoughts did not dwell upon the highest development of the spiritual life. Her mind was given over to the pursuit of worldly amusements, her only serious thought being a burning ambition to win histrionic honors. The road to this led naturally through the elocution classes, and Floss accepted Miss Lucinda as the only means toward the desired end.
A drop of water in a bottle of ink produces no visible result, but a drop of ink in a glass of water contaminates it at once. Miss Lucinda took increasing interest in her frivolous young pupil; she listened with half-suppressed eagerness to unlimited gossip about stage-land, and even sank to the regular perusal of certain bold theatrical papers. She was unmistakably becoming contaminated.
Meanwhile Miss Joe Hill, quite blind to the situation, condoned the friendship. "You are developing your own character," she told Miss Lucinda. "You are exercising self-control and forbearance in dealing with that crude, undisciplined girl. Florence is the natural outcome of common stock and newly acquired riches. It is your noble aspiration to take this vulgar clay and mold it into something higher. Your motive is laudable, Lucinda; your self-sacrifice in giving up our evening hour together is heroic. I read you like an open book, dear."
And Miss Lucinda listened and trembled. They were standing together before the window of their rigid little sitting room, the chastened severity of which banished all ideas of comfort. "What purpose do you serve?" Miss Joe Hill demanded of every article that went into her apartment, and many of the comforts of life failed to pass the examination.
After Miss Joe Hill had gone out, Miss Lucinda remained at the window and restlessly tapped her knuckles against the sill. The insidious spring sunshine, the laughter of the girls in the court below, the foolish happy birds telling their secrets under the new, green leaves, all worked together to disturb her peace of mind.
She resolutely turned her back to the window and took breathing exercises. That was one of Miss Joe Hill's sternest requirements—fifteen minutes three times a day and two pints of water between meals. Then she sat down in a straight-back chair and tried to read "The Power Through Poise." Her body was doing its duty, but it did not deceive her mind. She knew that she was living a life of black deception; evidences of her guilt were on every hand. Behind the books on her little shelf was a paper of chocolate creams; in the music rack, back to back with Grieg and Brahms, was an impertinent sheet of ragtime which Floss had persuaded her to learn as an accompaniment. And deeper and darker and falser than all was a plan which had been fermenting in her mind for days.
In a fortnight the school term would be over. Following the usual custom, Miss Lucinda was to go to her brother in the country and Miss Joe Hill to her sister for a week. This obligation to their respective families being discharged, they would repair to the seclusion of a Catskill farmhouse, there to hang upon each other's souls for the rest of the summer.
Miss Lucinda's visits to her brother were reminiscent of a multiplicity of children and a scarcity of room. To her the Inferno presented no more disquieting prospect than the necessity of sharing her bedroom. She always returned from these sojourns in the country with impaired digestion, and shattered nerves. She looked forward to them with dread and looked back on them with horror. Was it any wonder that when a brilliant alternative presented itself she was eager to accept it?
Floss Speckert had gained her father's consent to spend her first week out of school in New York provided she could find a suitable chaperon. She had fallen upon the first and most harmless person in sight and besieged her with entreaties.
Miss Lucinda would have flared to the project had not a forbidding presence loomed between her and the alluring invitation. She knew only too well that Miss Joe Hill would never countenance the proposition.
As she sat trying vainly to concentrate on her "Power Through Poise," she was startled by a noise at the window, followed immediately by a dishevelled figure that scrambled laughingly over the sill.
"I came down the fire escape!" whispered the invader breathlessly, "Miss Joe Hill caught us making fudge in the linen closet, and I gave her the slip."
"But Florence!" Miss Lucinda began reproachfully, but Floss interrupted her:
"Don't 'Florence' me, Miss Lucy! You're just pretending to be mad anyhow. You are a perfect darling and Miss Joe Hill is an old bear!"
Miss Lucinda was aghast at this irreverence but her halting protests had no effect on the torrent of Floss's eloquence.
"I am going to take you to New York," the girl declared "and I am going to give you the time of your life! Dad's got to put us up in style—a room and a bath apiece and maybe a sitting room. He likes me to splurge around a bit, says he'd hate to have a daughter that acted like she wasn't used to money."
Miss Lucinda glanced apprehensively at the door and then back at the sparkling face before her.
"I can't go," she insisted miserably, trying to free her hand from Floss's plump grasp. "My brother is expecting me and Miss Hill—"
"Oh, bother Miss Joe Hill! You don't have to tell her anything about it! You can pretend you are going to your brother's and meet me some place on the road instead."
Miss Lucinda looked horrified, but she listened. A material kept plastic by years of manipulation does not harden to a new hand. Her objections to Floss's plan grew fainter and fainter.
"Think of the theaters," went on the temptress, putting an arm around her neck, and ignoring the fact that caresses embarrassed Miss Lucinda almost to the point of tears; "think of it! A new show every night, and operas and pictures. There will be three Shakspere plays that week, 'Merchant of Venice,' 'Twelfth Night,' and 'Hamlet.'"
Miss Lucinda's heart fluttered in her bosom. Although she had spent a great part of her life interpreting the Bard of Avon, she had never seen one of his plays produced. In her secret soul she believed that her own rendition of "The quality of mercy," was not to be excelled.
"I—I haven't any clothes," she urged feebly, putting up her last defense.
"I have," declared Floss in triumph—"two trunks full, and we are almost the same size. It's just for a week, Miss Lucy; won't you come?"
Miss Lucinda, sitting rigid, felt a warm cheek pressed against her own, and a stray curl touched her lips. She sat for a moment with her eyes closed. It was more than disconcerting to be so close to youth and joy and life; it was infectious. The blood surged suddenly through her veins, and an exultation seized her.
"I'm going to do it," she cried recklessly; "I never had a real good time in my life."
Floss threw her arms about her and waltzed her across the room, but a step in the hall brought them to a halt.
"It's Miss Joe Hill," whispered Floss, with trepidation; "I am going out the way I came. Don't you forget; you have promised."
When Miss Joe Hill entered, she smiled complacently at finding Miss Lucinda in the straight-back chair, absorbed in the second volume of the "Power Through Poise."
At the Union Depot in Chicago, two weeks later, a small, nervous lady fluttered uncertainly from one door to another. She wore a short, brown coat suit of classic severity, and a felt hat which was fastened under her smoothly braided hair by a narrow elastic band.
On her fourth trip to the main entrance she stopped a train-boy. "Can you tell me where I can get a drink?" she asked, fanning her flushed face. He looked surprised. "Third door to the left," he answered. Miss Lucinda, carrying a hand-bag, a suit-case, and an umbrella, followed directions. When she pushed open the heavy door she was confronted by a long counter with shining glasses and a smiling bartender. Beating a confused retreat, she fled back to the main entrance, and stood there trembling. For the hundredth time that day she wished she had not come.
The arrangements, so glibly planned by Floss, had not been adhered to in any particular. At the last moment that mercurial young person had decided to go on two days in advance and visit a friend in Philadelphia. She wrote Miss Lucinda to come on to Chicago, where Tom would meet her and give her her ticket, and that she would meet her in New York.
With many misgivings and grievous twinges of conscience, Miss Lucinda had bade Miss Joe Hill a guilty farewell, and started ostensibly for her brother's home. At the Junction she changed cars for Chicago, missed two connections, and lost her lunch-box. Now that she had arrived In Chicago, three hours late, nervous and excited over her experiences, there was no one to meet her.
A sense of homesickness rushed over her, and she decided to return to Locustwood. It was the same motive that might prompt a newly hatched chicken, embarrassed by its sudden liberty, to return to its shell. Just as she was going in search of a time-table, a round-faced young man came up.
"Miss Perkins?" he asked, and when she nodded, he went on: "Been looking for you for half an hour. Sis told me what you looked like, but I couldn't find you." He failed to observe that Floss's comparison had been a squirrel.
"Isn't it nearly time to start?" asked Miss Lucinda, nervously.
"Just five minutes; but I want to explain something to you first." He looked through the papers in his pocket and selected one. "This is a pass," he explained; "the governor can get them over this road. I got there late, so I could only get one that had been made out for somebody else and not been used. It's all right, you know; you won't have a bit of trouble."
Miss Lucinda took the bit of paper, put on her glasses, and read, "Mrs. Lura Doring."
"Yes," said Tom; "that's the lady it was made out for. Nine chances out of ten they won't mention it; but if anything comes up, you just say yes, you are Mrs. Doring, and it will be all right."
"But," protested Miss Lucinda, ready to weep, "I cannot tell a falsehood."
"I don't think you'll have to," said Tom, somewhat impatiently; "but if you deny it, you'll get us both into no end of a scrape. Hello! there's the call for your train. I'll bring your bag."
In the confusion of getting settled in her section, and of expressing her gratitude to Tom, Miss Lucinda forgot for the time the deadly weight of guilt that rested upon her. It was not until the conductor called for her ticket that her heart grew cold, and a look of consternation swept over her face. It seemed to her that he eyed the pass suspiciously and when he did not return it a terror seized her. She knew he was coming back to ask her name, and what was her name? Mrs. Dora Luring, or Mrs. Dura Loring, or Mrs. Lura Doring?
In despair she fled to the dressing room and stood there concealed by the curtains. In a few moments the conductor passed, and she peeped at his retreating figure. He stopped in the narrow passage by the window and studied her pass, then he compared it with a telegram which he held in his hand. Just then the porter joined him, and she flattened herself against the wall and held her breath.
"It's the same name," she heard the conductor say in an undertone. "I'll wire back to headquarters at the next stop."
If ever retribution followed an erring soul, it followed Miss Lucinda on that trip. No one spoke to her, and nothing happened, but she sat in terrified suspense, looking neither to right nor left, her heart beating frantically at every approach, and the whirring wheels repeating the questioning refrain, "Dora Luring? Dura Loring? Lura Doring?"
In New York, Floss met her as she stepped off the train, fairly enveloping her in her enthusiasm.
"Here you are, you old darling! I have been having a fit a minute for fear you wouldn't come. This is my Cousin May. She is going to stay with us the whole week. New York is simply heavenly, Miss Lucy. We have made four engagements already. Matinée this afternoon, a dinner to-night—What's the matter? Did you leave anything on the train?"
"No, no," stammered Miss Lucinda, still casting furtive glances backward at the conductor. "Was he talking to a policeman?" she asked suspiciously.
"Who?"
"The conductor."
The girls laughed.
"I don't wonder you were scared," said Floss; "a policeman always does remind me of Miss Joe Hill."
They called a cab and, to Miss Lucinda's vast relief, were soon rolling away from the scene of danger.
It needed only one glance into a handsome suite of an up-town hotel one week later to prove the rapid moral deterioration of the prodigal.
Arrayed in a shell-pink kimono, she was having her nails manicured. Her gaily figured garment was sufficient in itself to give her an unusual appearance; but there was a more startling reason.
Miss Lucinda's hair, hitherto a pale drab smoothly drawn into a braided coil at the back, had undergone a startling metamorphosis. It was Floss's suggestion that Miss Lucinda wash it in "Golden Glow," a preparation guaranteed to restore luster and beauty to faded locks. Miss Lucinda had been over-zealous, and the result was that of copper in sunshine.
These outward manifestations, however, were insignificant compared with the evidences of Miss Lucinda's inner guilt. She was taking the keenest interest in the manicure's progress, only lifting her eyes occasionally to survey herself with satisfaction in the mirror opposite.
At first her sense of propriety had been deeply offended by her changed appearance. She wept so bitterly that the girls, seeking to console her, had overdone the matter.
"I never thought you could look so pretty," Floss had declared; "you look ten years younger. It makes your eyes brighter and your skin clearer. Of course this awfully bright color will wear off, and then it will be just dear."
Miss Lucinda began to feel better; she even allowed May to arrange her changed locks in a modest pompadour.
The week she had spent in New York was a riotous round of dissipation. May's fiancé had prepared a whirlwind of pleasures, and Miss Lucinda was caught up and revolved at a pace that made her dizzy. Dances, dinners, plays, roof-gardens, coaching parties, were all held together by a line of candy, telegrams, and roses.
There was only one time in the day when Miss Lucinda came down to earth. Every evening, no matter how exhausted she might he from the frivolities of the day, she conscientiously penned an affectionate letter to her celestial affinity, expressing her undying devotion, and incidentally mentioning the health and doings of her brother's family. These she sent under separate cover to her brother to be mailed.
Her conscience assured her that the reckoning would come, that sooner or later she would face the bar of justice and receive the verdict of guilty; but while one day of grace remained, she would still "in the fire of spring, her winter garments of repentance fling."
As the manicure put the finishing touch to her nails, Floss came rushing in:
"Hurry up, Miss Lucy dear! Dick Benson has just 'phoned that he is going to take us for a farewell frolic. We leave here at five, have dinner somewhere, then do all sorts of stunts. You are going to wear my tan coat-suit and light blue waist. Yes, you are, too! That's all foolishness; everybody wears elbow-sleeves. Blue's your color, and I've got the hat to match. May says she'll fix your hair, and you can wear her French-heel Oxfords again. They pitch you over? Oh, nonsense! you just tripped along the other day like a nice little jay-bird. Hurry, hurry!"
Even Miss Lucinda's week of strenuous living had not prepared her for what followed. First, there was a short trip on the train, during which she conscientiously studied a map. Then followed a dinner at a large and ostentatious hotel. The decorations were more brilliant, the music louder, and the dresses gayer, than at any place Miss Lucinda had yet been. She viewed the passing show through her glasses, and experienced a pleasant thrill of sophistication. This, she assured herself, was society; henceforth she was in a position to rail at its follies as one having authority.
In the midst of these complacent reflections she choked on a crumb, and, after groping with closed eyes for her tumbler, gulped down the contents. A strange, delicious tingle filled her mouth; she forgot she was choking, and opened her eyes. To her horror, she found that she had emptied her glass of champagne.
"Spirituous liquor!" she thought in dismay, as the shade of Miss Joe Hill rose before her.
Total abstinence was such a firm plank in the platform of the celestial affinity that, even in the chafing-dish, alcohol had been tabooed. The utter iniquity of having deliberately swallowed a glass of champagne was appalling to Miss Lucinda. She sat silent during the rest of the dinner, eating little, and plucking nervously at the ruffles about her elbows. The fear of rheumatism in her wrists which had assailed her earlier in the evening gave way to a deeper and more disturbing discomfort.
When the dinner was over, the party started forth on a hilarious round of sight-seeing. Miss Lucinda limped after them, vaguely aware that she was in a giant electric cage filled with swarming humanity, that bands were playing, drums beating, and that at every turn disagreeable men with loud voices were imploring her to "step this way."
"Come on!" cried Dick. "We are going on the scenic railway."
But the worm turned. "I—I'm not going," she protested. "I will wait here. All of you go; I will wait right here."
With a sigh of relief she slipped into a vacant corner, and gave herself up to the luxury of being miserable. She longed for solitude in which to face the full enormity of her misdeed, and to plan an immediate reformation. She would throw herself bodily upon the mercy of Miss Joe Hill, she would spare herself nothing; penance of any kind would be welcome, bodily pain even—
She shifted her weight to the slender support of one high-heeled shoe while she rested the other foot. Her hair, unused to its new arrangement, pulled cruelly upon every restraining hair-pin, and her head was beginning to ache.
"I deny the slavery of sense. I repudiate the bondage of matter. I affirm spirit and freedom," she quoted to herself, but the thought failed to have any effect.
A two-ringed circus was in progress at her right while at her left a procession of camels and Egyptians was followed by a noisy crowd of urchins. People were thronging in every direction, and she realized that she was occasionally the recipient of a curious glance. She began to watch rather anxiously for the return of her party. Ten minutes passed, and still they did not come.
Suddenly the awful possibility presented itself that they might have lost her. She had no money, and even with it, she knew she could not find her way back to the hotel alone. Anxiety gained upon her in leaps. In bitter remorse she upbraided herself for ever having strayed from the blessed protection of Miss Joe Hill's authority. Gulfs of hideous possibility yawned at her feet; imagination faltered at the things that might befall a lone and unprotected lady in this bedlam of frivolity.
Just as her fear was turning to terror the party returned.
"Oh, here you are!" cried Floss. "We thought we had lost you. It was just dandy, Miss Lucy; you ought to have gone. It makes you feel like your feet are growing right out of the top of your head. Come on; we are going to have our tintypes taken."
Strengthened by the fear of being left alone again, Miss Lucinda rallied her courage, and once more followed in their wake. She was faint and exhausted, but the one grain of comfort she extracted from the situation was that through her present suffering she was atoning for her sins.
At midnight Dick said: "There's only one other thing to do. It's more fun than all the rest put together. Come this way."
Miss Lucinda followed blindly. She had ceased to think; there were only two realities left in the world, French-heels and hair-pins.
At the foot of a flight of steps the party paused to buy tickets.
"You can wait for us here, Miss Lucy," said Floss.
Miss Lucinda protested eagerly that she was not too tired to go with them. The prospect of being left alone again nerved her to climb to any height.
"But," cried Floss, "if you get up there, there's only one way to come down. You have to—"
"Let her come!" interrupted the others in laughing chorus, and, to Miss Lucinda's great relief, she was allowed to pass through the little gate.
When she reached the top of the long stairs, she looked about for the attraction. A wide inclined plane slanted down to the ground floor, and on it were bumps of various sizes and shapes, all of a shining smoothness. She had a vague idea that it was a mammoth map for the blind, until she saw Dick and Floss sit down at the top and go sliding to the bottom.
"Come on, Miss Lucinda!" cried May. "You can't get down any other way, you know. Look out! Here I go!"
One by one the others followed, and Miss Lucinda could not distinguish them as they merged in the laughing crowd at the base.
Delay was fatal; they would lose her again if she hesitated. In desperation she gathered her skirts about her, and let herself cautiously down on the floor. For one awful moment terror paralyzed her, then, grasping her skirts with one hand and her hat with the other and closing her eyes, she slid.
Miss Lucinda did not "hump the bumps"; she slid gracefully around them, describing fanciful curves and loops in her airy flight. When she arrived in a confused bunch on the cushioned platform below, she was greeted with a burst of applause.
"Ain't it great?" cried Floss, straightening Miss Lucinda's hat and trying to get her to open her eyes. "Dick says you are the gamest chaperon he ever saw. Sit up and let me pin your collar straight."
But Miss Lucinda's sense of direction had evidently been disturbed, for she did not yet know which was up, and which was down. She leaned limply against Floss and tried to get her breath.
"Excuse me," said a man's voice above her, "but are either of you ladies Mrs. Lura Doring?"
The effect was electrical. Miss Lucinda sat bolt upright and stared madly about. Tom Speckert had told her to be sure to answer to that name. It would get him into trouble if she failed to do so.
"Yes, yes," she gasped; "I am Mrs. Lura Doring."
The members of her little party looked at her anxiously and ceased to laugh. The slide had evidently unsettled her mind.
"Why, this is Miss Perkins—Miss Lucinda Perkins of Locustwood, Ohio," explained Dick Benson to the officer, "She's rather upset by her tobogganing, and didn't understand you."
"I did," declared Miss Lucinda, making mysterious signs to Dick to be silent. "It's all right; I am Mrs. Doring."
The officer looked suspiciously from one to the other, then consulted his memorandum: "Small, slender woman, yellow hair, gray eyes, answers to name of Mrs. Lura Doring. Left Chicago on June 10."
"When did she get to New York?" asked the officer.
"A week ago to-morrow, on the eleventh," said Floss.
"Then I guess I'll have to take her up," said the officer; "she answers all the requirements. I've got a warrant for her arrest."
"Arrest!" gasped Benson. "What for?"
"For forging her husband's name, and defrauding two hotels in Chicago."
"My husband—" Miss Lucinda staggered to her feet, then, catching sight of the crowd that had collected, she gave a fluttering cry and fainted away in the arms of the law.
When Miss Joe Hill arrived in New York, in answer to an urgent telegram, she went directly to work with her usual executive ability to unravel the mystery. After obtaining the full facts in the case, she was able to make a satisfactory explanation to the officers at headquarters. Then she sent the girls to their respective homes, and turned her full attention upon Miss Lucinda.
"The barber will be here in half an hour to cut your hair," she announced on the eve of their departure for the Catskills.
"You ought not to be so good to me!" sobbed Miss Lucinda, who was lying limply on a couch.
Miss Joe Hill took her hand firmly and said: "Lucinda, error and illness and disorder are man-made perversions. Let the past week be wiped from our memories. Once we are in the mountains we will turn the formative power of our thoughts upon things invisible, and yield ourselves to the higher harmonies."
The next morning, Miss Lucinda, shorn and penitent, was led forth from the scene of her recent profligacy. It was her final exit from a world which for a little space she had loved not wisely but too well.
Cupid Goes Slumming
It is a debatable question whether love is a cause or an effect, whether Adam discovered a heart in the recesses of his anatomy before or after the appearance of Eve. In the case of Joe Ridder it was distinctly the former.
At nineteen his knowledge of the tender passion consisted of dynamic impressions received across the footlights at an angle of forty-five degrees. Love was something that hovered with the calcium light about beauty in distress, something that brought the hero from the uttermost parts of the earth to hurl defiance at the villain and clasp the swooning maiden in his arms; it was something that sent a fellow down from his perch in the peanut gallery with his head hot and his hands cold, and a sort of blissful misery rioting in his soul.
Joe lived in what was known by courtesy as Rear Ninth Street. "Rear Ninth Street" has a sound of exclusive aristocracy, and the name was a matter of some pride to the dwellers in the narrow, unpaved alley that writhed its watery way between two rows of tumble-down cottages, Joe's family consisted of his father, whose vocation was plumbing, and whose avocation was driving either in the ambulance or the patrol wagon; his mother, who had discharged her entire debt to society when she bestowed nine healthy young citizens upon it; eight young Ridders, and Joe himself, who had stopped school at twelve to assume the financial responsibilities of a rapidly increasing family.
Lack of time and the limited opportunities of Rear Ninth Street, together with an uncontrollable shyness, had brought Joe to his nineteenth year of broad-shouldered, muscular manhood, with no acquaintance whatever among the girls. But where a shrine is built for Cupid and the tapers are kept burning, the devotee is seldom disappointed.
One morning in October, as Joe was guiding his rickety wheel around the mud puddles on his way to the cooper shops, he saw a new sign on the first cottage after he left the alley—"Mrs. R. Beaver, Modiste & Dress Maker." In the yard and on the steps were a confusion of household effects, and in their midst a girl with a pink shawl over her head.
So absorbed was Joe in open-mouthed wonder over the "Modiste," that he failed to see the girl, until a laughing exclamation made him look up.
"Watch out!"
"What's the matter?" asked Joe, coming to a halt.
"I thought maybe you didn't know your wheels was going 'round!" the girl said audaciously, then fled into the house and slammed the door.
All day at the shops Joe worked as in a trance. Every iron rivet that he drove into a wooden hoop was duly informed of the romantic occurrence of the morning, and as some four thousand rivets are fastened into four thousand hoops in the course of one day, it will be seen that the matter was duly considered. The stray spark from a feminine eye had kindled such a fierce fire in his heart that by the time the six o'clock whistle blew the conflagration threw a rosy glow over the entire landscape.
As he rode home, the girl was sitting on the steps, but she would not look at him. Joe had formulated a definite course of action, and though the utter boldness of it nearly cost him his balance, he adhered to it strictly. When just opposite her gate, without turning his head or his eyes, he lifted his hat, then rode at a furious pace around the corner.
"What you tidying up so fer, Joe?" asked his mother that night; "you goin' out?"
"No," said Joe evasively, as he endeavoured in vain to coax back the shine to an old pair of shoes.
"Well, I'm right glad you ain't. Berney and Dick ain't got up the coal, and there's all them dishes to wash, and the baby she's got a misery in her year."
"Has paw turned up?" asked Joe.
"Yes," answered Mrs. Ridder indifferently. "He looked in 'bout three o'clock. He was tolerable full then, and I 'spec he's been took up by now. He said he was goin' to buy me a bird-cage with a bird in it, but I surely hope he won't. Them white mice he brought me on his last spree chewed a hole in Berney's stocking; besides, I never did care much for birds. Good lands! what are you goin' to wash yer head for?"
Joe was substituting a basin of water for a small girl in the nearest kitchen chair, and a howl ensued.
"Shut up, Lottie!" admonished Mrs. Ridder, "you ain't any too good to set on the floor. It's a good thing this is pay-day, Joe, for the rent's due and four of the children's got their feet on the ground. You paid up the grocery last week, didn't you!"
Joe nodded a dripping head.
"Well, I'll jes' git yer money out of yer coat while I think about it," she went on as she rummaged in his pocket and brought out nine dollars.
"Leave me a quarter," demanded Joe, gasping beneath his soap-suds.
"All right," said Mrs. Ridder accommodatingly; "now that Bob and Ike are gitting fifty cents a day, it ain't so hard to make out. I'll be gittin' a new dress first thing, you know."
"I seen one up at the corner!" said Joe.
"A new dress?"
"Naw, a dressmaker. She's got out her sign."
"What's her name?" asked Mrs. Ridder, keen with interest.
"Mrs. R. Beaver, Modiste," repeated Joe from the sign that floated in letters of gold in his memory.
"I knowed a Mrs. Beaver wunst, up on Eleventh Street—a big, fat woman that got in a fuss with the preacher and smacked his jaws."
"Did she have any children?" asked Joe.
"Seems like there was one, a pretty little tow-headed girl."
"That's her," announced Joe conclusively. "What was her name?"
"Lawsee, I don't know. I never would 'a' ricollected Mrs. Beaver 'cepten she was such a tarnashious woman, always a-tearin' up stumps, and never happy unless she was rippitin' 'bout somethin'. What you want? A needle and thread to mend your coat? Why, what struck you? You been wearin' it that a-way for a month. You better leave it be 'til I git time to fix it."
But Joe had determined to work out the salvation of his own wardrobe. Late in the evening after the family had retired, he sat before the stove with back humped and knees drawn up trying to coax a coarse thread through a small needle. Surely no rich man need have any fear about entering the kingdom of heaven since Joe Ridder managed to get that particular thread through the eye of that particular needle!
But when a boy is put at a work-bench at twelve years of age and does the same thing day in and day out for seven long years, he may have lost all of the things that youth holds dear, but one thing he is apt to have learned, a dogged, plodding, unquestioning patience that shoves silently along at the appointed task until the work is done.
By midnight all the rents were mended and a large new patch adorned each elbow. The patches, to be sure, were blue, and the coat was black, but the stitches were set with mechanical regularity. Joe straightened his aching shoulders and held the garment at arm's length with a smile. It was his first votive offering at the shrine of love.
The effect of Joe's efforts were prompt and satisfactory. The next day being Sunday, he spent the major part of it in passing and repassing the house on the corner, only going home between times to remove the mud from his shoes and give an extra brush to his hair. The girl, meanwhile, was devoting her day to sweeping off the front pavement, a scant three feet of pathway from her steps to the wooden gate. Every time Joe passed she looked up and smiled, and every time she smiled Joe suffered all the symptoms of locomotor ataxia!
By afternoon his emotional nature had reached the saturation point. Without any conscious volition on his part, his feet carried him to the gate and refused to carry him farther. His voice then decided to speak for itself, and in strange, hollow tones he heard himself saying—
"Say, do you wanter go to the show with me?"
"Sure," said the pink fascinator. "When?"
"I don't care," said Joe, too much embarrassed to remember the days of the week.
"To-morrer night?" prompted the girl.
"I don't care," said Joe, and the conversation seeming to lauguish, he moved on.
After countless eons of time the next night arrived. It found Joe and his girl cosily squeezed in between two fat women in the gallery of the People's Theatre. Joe had to sit sideways and double his feet up, but he would willingly have endured a rack of torture for the privilege of looking down on that fluffy, blond pompadour under its large bow, and of receiving the sparkling glances that were flashed up at him from time to time.
"I ain't ever gone with a feller that I didn't know his name before!" she confided before the curtain rose.
"It's Joe," he said, "Joe Ridder, What's your front name?"
"Miss Beaver," she said mischievously. "What do you think it is?"
Joe could not guess.
"Say," she went on, "I knew who you was all right even if I didn't know yer name. I seen you over to the hall when they had the boxin' match."
"The last one?"
"Yes, when you and Ben Schenk was fightin'. Say, you didn't do a thing to him!"
The surest of all antidotes to masculine shyness was not without its immediate effect. Joe straightened his shoulders and smiled complacently.
"Didn't I massacre him?" he said. "That there was a half-Nelson holt I give him. It put him out of business all right, all right. Say, I never knowed you was there!"
"You bet I was," said his companion in honest admiration; "that was when I got stuck on you!"
Before he could fully comprehend the significance of this confession, the curtain rose, and love itself had to make way for the tragic and absorbing career of "The Widowed Bride." By the end of the third act Joe's emotions were so wrought upon by the unhappy fate of the heroine, that he rose abruptly and, muttering something about "gittin' some gum," fled to the rear. When he returned and squeezed his way back to his seat he found "Miss Beaver" with red eyes and a dejected mien.
"What's the matter with you?" he asked banteringly.
"My shoe hurts me," said Miss Beaver evasively.
"What you givin' me?" asked Joe, with fine superiority. "These here kinds of play never hurts my feelin's none. Catch me cryin' at a show!"
But Miss Beaver was too much moved to recover herself at once. She sat in limp dejection and surreptitiously dabbed her eyes with her moist ball of a handkerchief.
Joe was at a loss to know how to meet the situation until his hand, quite by chance, touched hers as it lay on the arm of her chair. He withdrew it as quickly as if he had received an electric shock, but the next moment, like a lodestone following a magnet, it traveled slowly back to hers.
From that time on Joe sat staring straight ahead of him in embarrassed ecstasy, while Miss Beaver, thus comforted, was able to pass through the tragic finale of the last act with remarkable composure.
When the time came to say "Good night" at the Beavers' door, all Joe's reticence and awkwardness returned. He watched her let herself in and waited until she lit a candle. Then he found himself out on the pavement in the dark feeling as if the curtain had gone down on the best show be had ever seen. Suddenly a side window was raised cautiously and he heard his name called softly. He had turned the corner, but he went back to the fence.
"Say!" whispered the voice at the window, "I forgot to tell you—It's Mittie."
The course of true love thus auspiciously started might have flowed on to blissful fulfilment had it not encountered the inevitable barrier in the formidable person of Mrs. Beaver. Not that she disapproved of Mittie receiving attention; on the contrary, it was her oft-repeated boast that "Mittie had been keepin' company with the boys ever since she was six, and she 'spected she'd keep right on till she was sixty." It was not attention in the abstract that she objected to, it was rather the threatening of "a steady," and that steady, the big, awkward, shy Joe Ridder. With serpentine wisdom she instituted a counter-attraction.
Under her skilful manipulation, Ben Schenk, the son of the saloon-keeper, soon developed into a rival suitor. Ben was engaged at a down-town pool-room, and wore collars on a weekday without any apparent discomfort. The style of his garments, together with his easy air of sophistication, entirely captivated Mrs. Beaver, while Ben on his part found it increasingly pleasant to lounge in the Beavers' best parlour chair and recount to a credulous audience the prominent part which he was taking in all the affairs of the day.
Matters reached a climax one night when, after some close financing, Joe Ridder took Mittie to the Skating Rink. An unexpected run on the tin savings bank at the Ridders' had caused a temporary embarrassment, and by the closest calculation Joe could do no better than pay for two entrance-tickets and hire one pair of skates. He therefore found it necessary to develop a sprained ankle, which grew rapidly worse as they neared the rink.
"I don't think you orter skate on it, Joe!" said Mittie sympathetically.
"Oh, I reckon I kin manage it all O.K.," said Joe.
"But I ain't agoin' to let you!" she declared with divine authority. "We can just set down and rubber at the rest of them."
"Naw, you don't," said Joe; "you kin go on an' skate, and I'll watch you."
The arrangement proved entirely satisfactory so long as Mittie paused on every other round to rest or to get him to adjust a strap, or to hold her hat, but when Ben Schenk arrived on the scene, the situation was materially changed.
It was sufficiently irritating to see Ben go through an exhaustive exhibition of his accomplishments under the admiring glances of Mittie, but when he condescended to ask her to skate, and even offered to teach her some new figures, Joe's irritation rose to ire. In vain he tried to catch her eye; she was laughing and clinging to Ben and giving all her attention to his instructions.
Joe sat sullen and indignant, savagely biting his nails. He would have parted with everything he had in the world at that moment for three paltry nickels!
On and on went the skaters, and on and on went the music, and Joe turned his face to the wall and doggedly waited. When at last Mittie came to him flushed and radiant, he had no word of greeting for her.
"Did you see all the new steps Mr. Ben learnt me?" she asked.
"Naw," said Joe.
"Does yer foot hurt you, Joe?"
"Naw," said Joe.
Mittie was too versed in masculine moods to press the subject. She waited until they were out under the starlight in the clear stretch of common near home. Then she slipped her hand through his arm and said coaxingly—
"Say now, Joe, what you kickin' 'bout?"
"Him," said Joe comprehensively.
"Mr. Ben? Why, he's one of our best friends. Maw likes him better'n anybody I ever kept company with. What have all you fellers got against him?"
"He was black marveled at the hall all right," said Joe grimly.
"What for?"
"It ain't none of my business to tell what for," said Joe, though his lips ached to tell what he knew.
"Maw says all you fellows are jealous 'cause he talks so pretty and wears such stylish clothes."
"We might, too, if we got 'em like he done," Joe began, then checked himself. "Say, Mittie, why don't yer maw like me?"
"She says you haven't got any school education and don't talk good grammar."
"Don't I talk good grammar?" asked Joe anxiously.
"I don't know," said Mittie; "that's what she says. How long did you go to school?"
"Me? Oh, off and on 'bout two year. The old man was always poorly, and Maw, she had to work out, till me an' the boys done got big enough to work. 'Fore that I had to stay home and mind the kids. Don't I talk like other fellers, Mittie?"
"You talk better than some," said Mittie loyally.
After he left her, Joe reviewed the matter carefully. He thought of the few educated people he knew—the boss at the shops, the preacher up on Twelfth Street, the doctor who sewed up his head after he stopped a runaway team, even Ben Schenk, who had gone through the eighth grade. Yes, there was a difference. Being clean and wearing good clothes were not the only things.
When he got home, he tiptoed into the front room, and picking his way around the various beds and pallets, took Berney's school satchel from the top of the wardrobe. Retracing his steps, he returned to the kitchen, and with his hat still on and his coat collar turned up, he began to take an inventory of his mental stock.
One after another of the dog-eared, grimy books he pondered over, and one after another he laid aside, with a puzzled, distressed look deepening in his face.
"Berney she ain't but fourteen an' she gits on to 'em," he said to himself; "looks like I orter."
Once more he seized the nearest book, and with the courage of despair repeated the sentences again and again to himself.
"That you, Joe?" asked Mrs. Ridder from the next room an hour later. "I didn't know you'd come. Yer paw sent word by old man Jackson that he was at Hank's Exchange way down on Market Street, and fer you to come git him."
"It's twelve o'clock," remonstrated Joe.
"I know it," said Mrs. Ridder, yawning, "but I reckon you better go. The old man always gits the rheumatiz when he lays out all night, and that there rheumatiz medicine cost sixty-five cents a bottle!"
"All right," said Joe with a resignation born of experience, "but don't you go and put no more of the kids in my bed. Jack and Gus kick the stuffin' out of me now."
And with this parting injunction he went wearily out into the night, giving up his struggle with Minerva, only to begin the next round with Bacchus.
The seeds of ambition, though sown late, grew steadily, and Joe became so desirous of proving worthy of the consideration of Mrs. Beaver that he took the boss of the shops partially into his confidence.
"It's a first-rate idea, Joe," said the boss, a big, capable fellow who had worked his way up from the bottom. "I could move you right along the line if you had a better education. I have a good offer up in Chicago next year; if you can get more book sense in your head, I will take you along."
"Where can I get it at?" asked Joe, somewhat dubious of his own power of achievement.
"Night school," said the boss. "I know a man that teaches in the Settlement over on Burk Street. I'll put you in there if you like."
Now, the prospect of going to school to a man who had been head of a family for seven years, who had been the champion scrapper of the South End, who was in the midst of a critical love affair, was trebly humiliating. But Joe was game, and while he determined to keep the matter as secret as possible, he agreed to the boss's proposition.
"You're mighty stingy with yourself these days!" said Mittie Beaver one night a month later, when he stopped on his way to school.
Joe grinned somewhat foolishly. "I come every evenin'," he said.
"For 'bout ten minutes," said Mittie, with a toss of her voluminous pompadour; "there's some wants more'n ten minutes."
"Ben Schenk?" asked Joe, alert with jealousy.
"I ain't sayin'," went on Mittie. "What do you do of nights, hang around the hall?"
"Naw," said Joe indignantly. "There ain't nobody can say they've sawn me around the hall sence I've went with you!"
"Well, where do you go?"
"I'm trainin'," said Joe evasively.
"I don't believe you like me as much as you used to," said Mittie plaintively.
Joe looked at her dumbly. His one thought from the time he cooked his own early breakfast, down to the moment when he undressed in the cold and dropped into his place in bed between Gussie and Dick, was of her. The love of her made his back stop aching as he bent hour after hour over the machine; it made all the problems and hard words and new ideas at night school come straight at last; it made the whole sordid, ugly day swing round the glorious ten minutes that they spent together in the twilight.
"Yes, I like you all right," he said, twisting his big, grease-stained hands in embarrassment. "You're the onliest girl I ever could care about. Besides, I couldn't go with no other girl if I wanted to, 'cause I don't know none."
Is it small wonder that Ben Schenk's glib protestations, reinforced by Mrs. Beaver's own zealous approval, should have in time outclassed the humble Joe? The blow fell just when the second term of night school was over, and Joe was looking forward to long summer evenings of unlimited joy.
He had bought two tickets for a river excursion, and was hurrying into the Beavers' when he encountered a stolid bulwark in the form of Mrs. Beaver, whose portly person seemed permanently wedged into the narrow aperture of the front door. She sat in silent majesty, her hands just succeeding in clasping each other around her ample waist. Had she closed her eyes, she might have passed for a placid, amiable person, whose angles of disposition had also become curves. But Mrs. Beaver did not close her eyes. She opened them as widely as the geography of her face would permit, and coldly surveyed Joe Ridder.
Mrs. Beaver was a born manager; she had managed her husband into an untimely grave, she had managed her daughter from the hour she was born, she had dismissed three preachers, induced two women to leave their husbands, and now dogmatically announced herself arbiter of fashions and conduct in Rear Ninth Street.
"No, she can't see you," she said firmly in reply to Joe's question. "She's going out to a dance party with Mr. Schenk."
"Where at?" demanded Joe, who still trembled in her presence.
"Somewheres down town," said Mrs. Beaver, "to a real swell party."
"He oughtn't to take her to no down-town dance," said Joe, his indignation getting the better of his shyness. "I don't want her to go, and I'm going to tell her so."
"In-deed!" said Mrs. Beaver in scorn. "And what have you got to say about it? I guess Mr. Schenk's got the right to take her anywhere he wants to!"
"What right?" demanded Joe, getting suddenly a bit dizzy.
"'Cause he's got engaged to her. He's going to give her a real handsome turquoise ring, fourteen-carat gold."
"Didn't Mittie send me no word?" faltered Joe.
"No," said Mrs. Beaver unhesitatingly, though she had in her pocket a note for him from the unhappy Mittie.
Joe fumbled for his hat. "I guess I better be goin'," he said, a lump rising ominously in his throat. He got the gate open and made his way half dazed around the corner. As he did so, he saw a procession of small Ridders bearing joyously down upon him.
"Joe!" shrieked Lottie, arriving first, "Maw says hurry on home; we got another new baby to our house."
During the weeks that followed, Rear Ninth Street was greatly thrilled over the unusual event of a home wedding. The reticence of the groom was more than made up for by the bulletins of news issued daily by Mrs. Beaver. To use that worthy lady's own words, "she was in her elements!" She organised various committees—on decoration, on refreshment, and even on the bride's trousseau, tactfully permitting each assistant to contribute in some way to the general grandeur of the occasion.
"I am going to have this a real showy wedding," she said from her point of vantage by the parlour window, where she sat like a field-marshal and issued her orders. "Those paper fringes want to go clean across every one of the shelves, and you all must make enough paper roses to pin 'round the edges of all the curtains. Ever'thing's got to look gay and festive."
"Mittie don't look very gay," ventured one of the assistants. "I seen her in the kitchen cryin' a minute ago."
"Mittie's a fool!" announced Mrs. Beaver calmly. "She don't know a good thing when she sees it! Get them draperies up a little higher in the middle; I'm going to hang a silver horseshoe on to the loop."
The wedding night arrived, and the Beaver cottage was filled to suffocation with the élite of Rear Ninth Street. The guests found it difficult to circulate freely in the room on account of the elaborate and aggressive decorations, so they stood in silent rows awaiting the approaching ceremony. As the appointed hour drew near, and none of the groom's family arrived, a few whispered comments were exchanged.
"It's 'most time to begin," whispered the preacher to Mrs. Beaver, whose keen black eyes had been watching the door with growing impatience.
"Well, we won't wait on nobody," she said positively, as she rose and left the room to give the signal.
In the kitchen she found great consternation: the bride, pale and dejected in all her finery, sat on the table, all the chairs being in the parlour.
"What's the matter?" demanded Mrs. Beaver.
"He ain't come!" announced one of the women in tragic tones.
"Ben Schenk ain't here?" asked Mrs. Beaver in accents so awful that her listeners quaked. "Well, I'll see the reason why!"
Out into the night she sallied, picking her way around the puddles until she reached the saloon at the corner.
"Where's Ben Schenk?" she demanded sternly of the men around the bar.
There was an ominous silence, broken only by the embarrassed shuffling of feet.
Drawing herself up, Mrs. Beaver thumped the counter.
"Where's he at?" she repeated, glaring at the most embarrassed of the lot.
"He don't know where he's at," said the man. "I rickon he cilebrated a little too much fer the weddin'."
"Can he stand up?" demanded Mrs. Beaver.
"Not without starchin'," said the man, and amid the titter that followed, Mrs. Beaver made her exit.
On the corner she paused to reconnoitre. Across the street was her gaily lighted cottage, where all the guests were waiting. She thought of the ignominy that would follow their abrupt dismissal, she thought of the refreshments that must be used to-night or never, she thought of the little bride sitting disconsolate on the kitchen table.
With a sudden determination she decided to lead a forlorn hope. Facing about, she marched weightily around to the rear of the saloon and began laboriously to climb the steps that lead to the hall. At the door she paused and made a rapid survey of the room until she found what she was looking for.
"Joe Ridder!" she called peremptorily.
Joe, haggard and listless, put down his billiard-cue and came to the door.
Five minutes later a breathless figure presented himself at the Beaver kitchen. He had on a clean shirt and his Sunday clothes, and while he wore no collar, a clean handkerchief was neatly pinned about his neck.
"Everybody but the bride and groom come into the parlour," commanded Mrs. Beaver. "I'm a-going to make a speech, and tell 'em that the bride has done changed her mind."
Joe and Mittie, left alone, looked at each other in dazed rapture. She was the first to recover.
"Joe!" she cried, moving timidly towards him, "ain't you mad? Do you still want me?"
Joe, with both hands entangled in her veil and his feet lost in her train, looked down at her through swimming eyes.
"Want yer?" he repeated, and his lips trembled, "gee whiz! I feel like I done ribbeted a hoop round the hull world!"
The signal was given for them to enter the parlour, and without further interruption the ceremony proceeded, if not in exact accordance with the plans of Mrs. Beaver, at least in obedience to the mandate of a certain little autocrat who sometimes takes a hand in the affairs of man even in Rear Ninth Street.