From a Bench in Our Square Part 27

In the correspondence from Sergeant Berthelin there came a long hiatus followed by a curt bit of official information: "Seriously wounded." The Little Red Doctor brought the news to me, with a queer expression on his face.

"It doesn't look good, Dominie," he said. "You know, my old friend, Death, is a shrewd picker. He's got an eye for men." He mused, rubbing his tousled, brickish locks with a nervous hand. "I was getting to kind of like that young pup," he muttered moodily.

The saying that no news is good news was surely concocted by some one who never chafed through day after lengthening day for that which does not come. But in the end it did come, in the form of a scrawl from the Weeping Scion himself. He was mending, but very slowly, and they said it would be a long time--months, perhaps--before he could get back to the front. Meantime, they were still picking odds and ends, chiefly metallic, out of various parts of his system.

"I'm one of the guys you read about that came over here to collect souvenirs," he commented. "Well, I've got all I need of 'em. They can have the rest. All I want now is to get back and present a few to Fritzie before the show is over."

Thereafter the Little Red Doctor exhibited, but read to us only in small parts, quite bulky communications from overseas. Some of them, it became known, he was forwarding to our little Mary, out in the Far West. With her answer came the solution.

"Some of the 'Gra.s.s and Asphalt' sketches are wonders; some not so good.

I am going to try out 'Doggy' if I can find a poodle with enough intelligence to support me. But you need not have been so mysterious, Doc, about your 'young amateur writer who seems to have some talent.'

Did you think I would not know it was David? Why, bless your dear, silly heart, I told him some of those stories myself. But how does he get a chance to write them? Is he back on this side? Or is he invalided? Or what? Tell me. I want to know about him. You do not have to worry about my--well, my infatuation for him, any more. He was a pretty boy, though, wasn't he? But I have seen too many of that kind in the picture game.

I'm spoiled for them. How I would love to smear some of their pretty, smirky faces! They give me a queer feeling in my breakfast. Excuse me: I forgot I was a lady. But don't say 'pretty' to me any more. I'm through.

At that, you were all wrong about Buddy. He was a lot decenter than you thought: only he was brought up wrong. Give him my love as one pal to another. I hope he don't come back a He-ro. I'm offen he-roes, too.

Excuse again!"

Wars and exiles alike come to an end in time. And in time our two wanderers returned, but Mary first, David having been sent into Germany with the Army of Occupation. Modest announcements in the theatrical columns informed an indifferent theater-going world that Miss Marie Courtenay, an actress new to Broadway, was to play the ingenue part in the latest comedy by a highly popular dramatist. Immediately upon the production, the theater-going world ceased to be indifferent to the new actress; in fact, it went into one of its occasional furores about her.

Not that she was in any way a great genius, but she had a certain indefinable and winningly individual quality. The critics discussed it gravely and at length, differing argumentatively as to its nature and const.i.tution. I could have given them a hint. My predictions regarding the ancestral potencies of the monkey-face were being abundantly justified.

No announcements, even of the most modest description, heralded the arrival of Sergeant Major (if you please!) David Berthelin upon his native sh.o.r.es. He came at once to Our Square and tackled the Little Red Doctor.

"Where is she?" he asked.

The Little Red Doctor a.s.sumed an air of incredulous surprise. "Have you still got _that_ bee in your bonnet?" said he.

"Where is she?" repeated the Weeping Scion.

Maneuvering for time and counsel, the Little Red Doctor took him to see the Bonnie La.s.sie and they sent for me. We beheld a new and reconst.i.tuted David. He was no longer pretty. The soft brown eyes were less soft and more alert, and there were little wrinkles at their corners. He had broadened a foot or so. That pinky-delicate complexion by which he had, in earlier and easier days, set obvious store, was brownish and looked hardened. The Cupid's-bow of his mouth had straightened out. High on one cheekbone was a not unsightly scar. His manner was una.s.sertive, but eminently self-respecting, and me, whom aforetime he had stigmatized as a "white-whiskered old goat," he now addressed as "Sir."

"Perhaps _you'll_ tell me where she is, sir," said he patiently.

"Leave it to me," said the Bonnie La.s.sie, who has an unquenchable thirst for the dramatic in real life. "And keep next Sunday night open."

She arranged with Mary McCartney to give a reading on that evening, at her studio, of David's "Doggy" from the "Gra.s.s and Asphalt" sketches which he had written in hospital. It was a quaint, pathetic little conceit, the bewildered philosophy of a waif of the streets, as expressed to his waif of a dog. For the supporting part we borrowed w.i.l.l.y Woolly from the House of Silvery Voices, and admirably he played it, barking accurately and with true histrionic fervor in the right places (besides promptly falling in love with the star at the first and only rehearsal). After the try-out, Mary came over to my bench with a check for a rather dazzling sum in her hand, and said that now was the time to settle accounts, but she never could repay--and so forth and so on; all put so sweetly and genuinely that I heartily wished I might accept the thanks if not the check. Instead of which I blurted out the truth.

"Oh, _Dominie_!" said the girl, with such reproach that my heart sank within me. "Do you think that was fair? Don't you know that I never could have taken the money?"

"Precisely. And we had to find a way to make you take it. We couldn't have you dying on the premises," I argued with a feeble attempt at jocularity.

"But from _him_!" she said. "After what had happened--And his mother.

How could you let me do it!"

"I thought you would have gotten over that feeling by this time," I ventured.

"Oh, there's none of the old feeling left," she answered, so simply that I knew she believed her own statement. "But to have lived on his money--Where is he?" she asked abruptly.

I told her that also and about Sunday night; the whole thing. The Bonnie La.s.sie would have slain me. But I couldn't help it. I was feeling rather abject.

Sunday night came, and with it Miss Marie Courtenay, escorted by an "ace" covered with decorations, whose name is a household word and who was only too obviously her adoring slave. Already there had been hints of their engagement. Had I been that ace, I should have felt no small discomposure at the sight of the girl's face when she first saw the changed and matured Weeping Scion of three years before. After the first flash of recognition she had developed on that expressive face of hers a look of wonder and almost pathetic questioning, and, I thought, who knew and loved the child, already something deeper and sweeter. Young David, after greeting the star of the evening, took a modest rear seat as befitted his rank. But when the Bonnie La.s.sie announced "Doggy," it was his face that was the study.

Of that performance I shall say nothing. It is now famous and familiar to thousands of theater-goers. But if ever mortal man spent twenty minutes in fairyland, it was David, while Mary was playing the work of his fancy. At the close, he disappeared. I suppose he did not dare trust himself to join in the congratulations with which she was overwhelmed. I found him, as I rather expected, on the bench where he had sat when Mayme McCartney first found him. And when the crowd had departed from the studio, I told the girl. Without even stopping to put on her hat she went out to him.

He was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his fists supporting his cheekbones. But this time he was not weeping. He was thinking. Just as of old she put a hand on his humped shoulder. Startled, he looked up, and jumped to his feet. She was holding something out to him.

"What's that?" he said.

"A check. For what I owe you."

"Who told you? The Little Red Doctor promised--"

"He's kept his promise. The Dominie told me."

"Oh! I suppose," he said slowly, "I've got to take this. You wouldn't--no, of course you wouldn't," he sighed.

"I've tried to keep strict account," she said.

David adopted a matter-of-fact tone. "I can't deny that it'll come in handy, just now," he remarked. "At the present price of clothing, and with my personal exchequer in its depleted state--"

"Why," she broke in, "has anything happened? Your mother--?"

"Cut off," said David briefly.

"She's cut you off? On my account? Oh--"

"No. I've cut her off. Temporarily. She doesn't want me to work. I'm working. On a newspaper."

"That's good," said the girl warmly. "Let's sit down."

They sat down. Each, however, found it curiously hard to begin again.

Mary was aching to thank him, but had a dreadful fear that if she tried to, she would cry. She didn't want to cry. She had a feeling that crying would be a highly unstrategic procedure leading to possible alarming developments. Why didn't David say something? Finally he did make a beginning.

"Mayme."

"No: not 'Mayme' any more."

He flushed to his temples. "I beg your pardon, Miss Courtenay."

"Nonsense!" she said softly. "Mary. I've discarded the 'Mayme' long ago."

"Mary," he repeated in a tone of musing content.

"Buddy."

He caught his breath. "A few thousand of the best guys in the world," he said, "call a fellow that. And every time they said it, it made my heart ache with longing to hear it in your voice."

"You're a queer Buddy," returned the girl, not quite steadily. "Did you bring me home a German helmet for a souvenir?"

He shook his head. "I didn't bring home much of anything, except some experience and the discovery of the fact that when I had to stand on my own feet, I wasn't much."