A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill Part 24

"So sad!" murmured Mrs. Ivy. "I hope young Mr. Dillingham won't do anything desperate. To think of his cup of happiness being dashed from his lips--"

The two young men looked at each other and laughed.

"Don't worry about Dill, Mater. He has more than one cup to fall back on. It is old man Sequin that may do something desperate. I hear they have made no end of a row, but Margery holds her own."

"They say on the street," said Decker, "that Mr. Sequin has been counting on the Dillinghams' money to reinforce the bank. He's been going it pretty heavy the last two years."

"One cannot live by bread alone," quoted Mrs. Ivy; "our friends have been living the material life, they have forgotten that they are but stewards, and as stewards will be held accountable for the way they use their wealth. Mrs. Sequin makes absolutely no effort to advance the progress of the world. She has refused from the first to join the A.T.L.A. and she is not even a member of the Woman's Club."

"Well, I hope Mr. Sequin hasn't been playing with Don Morley's money,"

said Decker, resuming the subject from which Mrs. Ivy had flown off at a tangent. "Donald has always left everything to him, and doesn't know anything more about his investments than I do. All he is concerned with is spending his income, and that keeps him busy."

At this moment Norah appeared with fresh tea and cakes, making her way with some difficulty through the labyrinth of red lamps, small tables, foot-stools and marble-crowned pedestals that crowded the room.

"Ah!" cried Mrs. Ivy, "here are some of the little cakes, Gerald, that you love. You will try one, won't you? We have the greatest time tempting his appet.i.te, Mr. Decker. He can only eat what he likes. I have always contended with his father that there was some physical cause for his craving sweets. I never refused them to him when he was a child.

But from the time he was born he has never really lived on food, he has lived on music."

Gerald, at the moment regaling himself with his second cake, gave evidence that he did not rely solely on the sustaining power of music.

"And now, will you excuse me, dear Mr. Decker?" asked Mrs. Ivy, gathering her lavender skirts about her. "I am a very, very busy woman, and my desk claims much of my time. You will come to us again, won't you? Gerald's friends, you know, are my friends. _Good_-by." And with a tender pressure of the hand, and a lingering look she was gone.

Gerald waited until the door was closed, then produced cigarettes which he proffered to Decker.

"Mater's last hobby is tobacco," he smiled indulgently. "She is going to abolish it from the universe. Do you remember how Doctor Queerington used to hold forth on the subject at the university?"

"By the way, your mother tells me he has married again. I don't know why, but that tickles me. Was she a widow?"

Gerald with his elbows on the arms of his chair and holding his teacup with both hands just below the level of his eyes, looked suddenly gloomy.

"No," he said. "I wish to Heaven she was one!"

"What's the matter with Old Syllogism? I always thought he was a rather good sort."

"I'm not thinking about him!" Gerald said impatiently. "I am thinking of the girl. She can't be much older than I am and the most exquisite thing you ever beheld. Her coloring is absolutely luminous. She ought to be painted by Besnard or La Touche or some of those French chaps that make a specialty of light. She positively radiates!"

"How did she ever happen to marry the Doctor?"

"Heaven knows! He captured her in the woods somewhere. I don't suppose she had ever seen a man before. Jove! You ought to see her play tennis, and to hear her laugh. She's a perfect wonder, as free and easy as one of the boys, but straight as a die. Doesn't give a flip for money or clothes, or society. Did you ever hear of a really pretty girl being like that?"

"I hope Doctor Queerington likes her as well as you do."

"Heavens, man! everybody likes her; you can't help it. But n.o.body understands her. You see they look on her as a child; they haven't the faintest conception of what she is going through."

"And you think you have?"

"I know it. She's trying to adjust herself, and she can't. She's finding out her mistake and making a game fight to hide it. When she first came she went in for everything. She had never played tennis or golf, and she got more fun out of learning than anybody I ever saw. Then suddenly she stopped. Some old desiccated relative told the Doctor it didn't look well for his wife to be running around with the young people, and that settled it. She gave up like an angel, and she's not the kind that likes to give up either. Now her days are devoted to the heavy domestic, and her evenings to improving her mind in the Doctor's stuffy old study."

"Talking to the Doctor," confessed Decker, "always affected me like looking at Niagara Falls; grand, and imposing and awe-inspiring, but a little goes a long way. How is she standing it?"

"Getting thinner and paler and prettier every day. She's a country girl, you know, used to horses, and outdoor exercise. She must have been beastly homesick, but she's game through and through. It was awfully hard for her to bluff at first. That's because she is so honest. But she has had to learn. No woman, good or bad, can get through life without learning to bluff, only it comes harder for the good ones. What's that confounded racket in the street?"

They rose and went to the window, Gerald looking over the shoulder of his shorter companion.

A superannuated gray mule hitched to a heavy cart had come to a standstill in the middle of the street, and a group of excited negroes were vainly trying to induce him to move on. With one ear c.o.c.ked forward, and his forefeet firmly planted, the decrepit animal dumbly made his declaration of independence, taking the blows that rained upon his back with the dogged heroism of one who has resolved to die rather than surrender.

"By Jupiter, if those c.o.o.ns aren't fixing to build a fire under him!"

exclaimed Decker. "They'd rather fool with a balking mule than eat watermelon! Let's go out to see the sport."

When Decker reached the porch, having left Gerald at the hall mirror, inspecting his face with minute solicitude, a new figure had appeared on the scene. It was a girl dressed in white, standing in the Queeringtons'

yard, and as he looked he saw her suddenly dart out of the gate and into the street as if she had been shot from a cannon.

"Stop pulling his head like that!" she demanded. "Don't you dare to strike him again. Take that fire away!"

The negroes fell back somewhat astonished, and the driver arrested his whip in the air.

"I'll show you how to make him go," she went on; "put mud in his mouth.

Yes, mud, a big lump of mud. There, that'll do; make it into a ball, and put it in. Yes, you can! Oh, dear! Give it to me!"

She seized the mule's lower jaw with her thumb and forefinger, and with a deft movement succeeded in getting the unwelcome substance between the animal's teeth.

The mule evinced surprise, then curiosity. His fore feet relaxed, his eye lost its fire, and when a gentle pressure fell upon his halter, he was too engrossed in the new sensation to resist it.

"Bravo, Miss Lady!" called Gerald, sauntering forward to meet her. "I told you you were irresistible. What did you whisper in his ear?"

"Lots of things!" she said, accepting his immaculate handkerchief to wipe the mud from her hands, "but of course the mud helped. Uncle Jimpson taught me that trick. He says a mule has room in his head for only one thought at a time, and all you have to do is to change his balking thought for some other and he'll go."

"I hope you will never have to put mud in my mouth," said Gerald, looking at her with no attempt to conceal his admiration. "Can't you come over and see mother for a bit? She'd love to give you a cup of tea."

"I don't like tea in the afternoon; it spoils my supper."

"Well, then, come over to see me. There's a friend of mine I want you to meet. I've been telling him about you."

"I can't. I'm drawing pictures for Bertie. He'll be disappointed."

"So will I. So will Decker."

"Decker?" Miss Lady flashed a glance at him. "You don't mean Cropsie Decker?"

"Yes, I do; the special correspondent for the _Herald-Post_. Is that sufficient inducement?"

Miss Lady looked at him rather strangely. "I'll come," she said after a moment's hesitation.

They did not return to the parlor but to the music-room, a large room on the opposite side of the hall, which Mrs. Ivy, a firm believer in the psychological effect of color, had fitted out in blue to induce a contemplative mood in the occupants. On the mantel and tables were the same miscellaneous collection of bric-a-brac that characterized the parlor. Several pictures of Gerald adorned the walls, the most imposing of which presented him seated at the piano, with his mother standing beside him, a rapt expression on her elevated profile.

Miss Lady flitted about from object to object, asking questions, not waiting for answers, seeing everything, commenting on everything while the two young men stood side by side on the hearth rug and watched her.

She was like a humming-bird afraid to light.

"Please, Mrs. Queerington," Gerald begged at last. "You know you don't care for those old kodaks. I'll show them to you another time. I want you to talk to Decker. Sit down here in this big chair and I'll sit at your feet, where I belong, and Cropsie'll sit anywhere he likes and tell us about his adventures."