Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories Part 15

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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sume 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 s.h.i.+ne to an old pair of shoes.

"Well, I'm right glad you ain't. Berney and d.i.c.k 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 subst.i.tuting 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 tarnas.h.i.+ous 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 coa.r.s.e 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 st.i.tches 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 pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 embarra.s.sed 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!"