Those Dale Girls Part 12

"I'm sorry, old fellow."

"Sorry for what, Mr. Landor?"

"To have driven your little friends away. They evidently had some good news to tell you."

"Oh! that's all right," said Jack cheerily, "it will keep, you know, and they were in a hurry-they said they could only stop a moment." Jack was puzzling his young brain over their abrupt departure, but his loyalty to all three friends made him wish to hide from Landor the fact that he was apparently the cause. "I'm so sorry they _were_ in a hurry," he continued, "for I'm always wis.h.i.+ng you knew one another-you'd get on like a house afire."

"Should we, Jack? I don't know. Recent events don't seem to prove it, do they?" laughing good-naturedly.

"Oh! that doesn't count. You just wait until some day when they have more time-I don't know when that'll be, though, for they're regular hustlers. What do you suppose?" confidentially. "They call their flat 'The Hustle'-isn't that great?"

"I should say so-it sounds enterprising."

"They named it after the private car they used to live in-they've told me all about it. Gee! wouldn't I like to get aboard of her once! She must have been a beauty!"

"What became of the car? Did you ever happen to hear, Jack?"

"It's out west somewhere-some railroad's got it, I think, but I'm not sure. They never spoke of it but once-I could see it went kind of hard talking about it, though Miss Hester laughed and joked about its being they who did the hustling now, instead of the car. It must be fine to be rich and travel all around," exclaimed the boy, "but I'd hate to have had it and then have to give it all up the way they have. Say, Mr.

Landor, shall I tell you something?" He clasped the arms of the reclining chair with his thin hands and drew himself up to a sitting posture.

Landor nodded and drew his seat closer. He encouraged the boy in his confidences.

"I slumped the other night-clean went all to pieces. I'm fourteen, you know, but if I'd been four I couldn't have acted more kiddish. Mother was out and I'd been thinking how I wanted to go to college and couldn't, because mother can't afford it, and how I wanted to travel around and couldn't, and how I even wanted to walk and couldn't-not for a long time yet-and I just lay here and thought there wasn't much sense in getting any better anyway-I'd just have to go back and be nothing better than an office boy where I was before I got hurt and-"

"And you succeeded in working yourself up into a fine frenzy of discontent, didn't you, Jack? I understand, my boy. We all have our rebellious moments."

"I was crying like a baby when Miss Julie came in."

"Poor old Jack," patting his hand sympathetically.

"Poor nothing!" exclaimed the boy in a tone of infinite disgust, "it makes me hot all over to think about it and that wasn't the worst! I _kept on_ crying." Jack's honest nature was abasing itself before his friend. "I kept on crying till she shamed me out of it."

Landor did not speak, feeling silence at that moment would better harmonize with the boy's mood. Jack and he understood each other, and the boy feeling his sympathetic interest drew a long breath and went on again.

"She made me tell her all about it and I felt so cut up and blue that I said a lot of things I didn't mean and I told her it was easy enough for her to be brave-she didn't know what it was to lie still and perhaps be crippled all your life-the doctor can't tell. _Think of my telling her that!_" The boy shuddered. "I believe if I'd struck her, Mr. Landor, I couldn't have hurt her more, for there's her father, you see, a million times worse off than I am, and I'd forgotten all about him."

Landor pushed back his chair and as if he found action of some kind necessary paced the room quietly while the boy talked on.

"Her face got so white and her eyes got so dark that it frightened me, but do you know what she did? I was lying on the couch and she came over and knelt down beside me and talked to me a long time about her father."

Jack's voice was awed and Landor's hands went deeper down into his pockets-a way he had when he was moved.

"She called him 'Daddy' and you could see just the way she said it that she wors.h.i.+ped him, and she told me that when you loved a person very much it was harder to see him stricken down than if you were ill and helpless yourself. I hadn't thought of that, but it must be so, mustn't it, Mr. Landor?"

"Yes, Jack, it must be so." No cloud had ever darkened Kenneth Landor's pleasure-loving, pleasure-giving life.

"Then she told me that she wasn't brave really. That many a night she cried herself to sleep because she was heart-broken about her father and discouraged about their work and tired. I think she just told me that so I wouldn't feel as if I were a coward because I cried too. I'd stopped by that time, I can tell you! And then she said she wanted me to help her and her sister be bright and jolly by being bright and jolly, too.

That made me laugh-to think I could help them! We both laughed and I felt better. After that she talked a long time about trouble and how it came to some people very young and how it was a sort of test-did you ever think of that, Mr. Landor?" gazing earnestly into the man's face.

"No, Jack, there are many things I have never thought of!"

"You would if you knew them, you couldn't help it. She wasn't a bit preachy-I hate that-but she said the way we took things showed the kind of characters we had and when we got discouraged we must just remember we were soldiers-Christ's soldiers-that's what she said." The boy's voice sank to a whisper. "And that no soldier amounted to shucks till he was knocked about and disciplined and taught to obey his superiors."

"That is the truth, my boy." In his heart Landor was marveling at what he heard.

"And do you know what, Mr. Landor? I'm going to march in the ranks too-a double-quick step to try to catch up with them and if ever I do catch up and can march alongside of them, won't I be proud, just!"

Julie's little sermon had sunk deep into his receptive mind and kindled his imagination to deeds of valor like some knight of old. He leaned back on his cus.h.i.+ons exhausted by this unusual talk, his frail body in pitiful contrast to the strength of the spirit that had awakened within him and glowed in his face with a transfiguring light.

Landor came over to his chair and took his hand in a grip that hurt. "I am going to enter the ranks too, old fellow," said he, carrying out the illusion partly to please the boy's fancy and partly because he had never before been so in earnest in his life.

"You!" said the boy, to whom Landor was a hero, "you don't have to fight-why you can kill buffaloes and Indians and everything!"

Landor smiled. "Perhaps I have more dangerous foes nearer at hand, Jack.

Who knows? Well, I must be going. Shall I lift you onto the couch first?"

Jack always enjoyed the feeling of Landor's strong arms about him and gave the man a grateful look as he was laid gently down. The couch was in reality Jack's bed and the change to the reclining chair had been brought about by Landor, who sent the chair to him in the early days of their acquaintance, but laughingly denied any previous knowledge of it when Jack endeavored to thank him.

"You seem to have a lot of paper about," commented Landor, picking up some sheets from the floor. "What are you up to these days?"

Jack blushed.

"Out with it, old fellow; you look guilty."

"I'm-I'm trying to write out the stories I make about the people I see out of my window. You know I like to imagine things about them. _She_ said if I'd write them down the way I tell them they'd entertain her father very much, but I've gotten sort of disgusted-it seems such awful rot when it's down on paper."

Landor ran his eye over the sheets Jack indicated.

"They are not rot, Jack, they are pretty good. I am not much of a literary chap, but I know when a thing is interesting. When you have taken this way of introducing the neighborhood to Mr. Dale why don't you send him a weekly bulletin-a regularly gotten up paper with all the neighborhood news? When there isn't news you can invent it, you know,"

smiling; "that is allowable in the newspaper trade."

"Say, that's great!" cried Jack. "I'll call it the-'In the Ranks' and make a great big heading for my first column 'News from the Front' (that means front window) and I know, that'll please Mr. Dale, for mother told me he was a distinguished officer in the Civil War and Miss Julie says they were brought up on military principles." Jack s.n.a.t.c.hed paper and pencil eager to begin.

"Keep on with your stories first, Jack. Why, we shall be setting up a printing-press here next," and with this delightfully suggestive remark Landor departed.

He did not go on to the club, as was his wont at that hour, but lighted a cigar and walked out of the little court and down through Crana Street to the river, where on the bridge he paused and gazed across to the city with a rapt, preoccupied air. Then, as if the noise of the ever-whirring electric cars disturbed him, he retraced his steps and took a road in the opposite direction which brought him into the quiet and seclusion of the park. The air was keen and crisp and blew in his face in gusty whiffs as he strode on, while all about him in their winter nakedness the trees cast spectral shadows. Usually, from long training and a.s.sociation with western plains and mountain trails, he took note of everything as he pa.s.sed, but to-night he gazed far on ahead, engrossed in thought. To his annoyance, twice his cigar went out-which was in itself significant. Finally he threw it away and lighted a little bull-dog pipe, his solace and companion in many a solitary stroll.

So those were the Dale girls, he was thinking, of whom Dr. Ware had said so much but of whom, all unconsciously, Jack had revealed more than years of intercourse with them might tell. He thought of Julie as he had seen her, quiet and fair-haired, with that gracious little plea that he should not let them drive him away, to prevent which they had themselves made a hasty exit from the room. And then there was another Julie as Jack had pictured her, turning her heart out for a boy that he might be comforted! He thought of her with reverence. A profound solemnity possessed him, giving him a strangely subdued sensation as of a man emerging from a sanctuary. What was he to whom life was an idle pastime, that he should draw the same breath with her!

Then from out this solemn train of thought danced another picture-two baffling eyes mocking him. Who was she, this will-o'-the-wisp, that she should hold him at arm's length in that imperious fas.h.i.+on! He stopped and half closed his lids as if the better to conjure up a vision of her, then shook himself and went on-were not those eyes enough and that light ironical voice in his ears? Why had she snubbed him so-him, who was surely unoffending? And she was a soldier too, marching in the ranks. That pretty, piquant, fascinating sprite had shouldered her knapsack and was fighting a battle royal. Dr. Ware had told him so long ago, but somehow he only now began to realize it since Jack had expressed it in Julie's simple way. Jove! the very simplicity of it was impressive! Thoughts like these carried Landor out into the country and brought him back to the club two hours later in an unusually quiet frame of mind. The men with whom he habitually fraternized found him dull and unresponsive and to his inexpressible relief they left him to finish the evening alone.

CHAPTER XI

Mrs. Lennox was giving one of those little dinners for which she was justly famous. To-night it was in honor of Monsieur Jules Gremond, the young African explorer who was paying a flying visit to the States. To meet him were Miss Davis, a debutante whose prettiness could always be counted on to make a picture; Miss Marston, whose cleverness it was thought would interest him; and Kenneth Landor, whose attentions to Miss Davis had been rather p.r.o.nounced during the season. Opposite his wife across the round table sat Mr. Lennox, than whom there was no more delightful host.

They had not been long gathered about the table before Mrs. Lennox was conscious that her guests were lacking in that subtle attraction toward one another which is absolutely indispensable to the success of a small dinner. Monsieur Gremond, between her and Miss Marston, appeared to be listening in a most politely conventional manner to the girl who was making commonplace conversation with frequent pauses during which he turned to Mrs. Lennox, with whom he immediately fell into interesting talk. Kenneth Landor was singularly distrait. At first he had appropriated Miss Davis with his usual devoted air, but after a bit this languished and he, too, turned so often to Mrs. Lennox, next whom he sat, that Miss Davis first pouted and then in a fit of pique plunged into a violent flirtation with Mr. Lennox, much to that person's amus.e.m.e.nt. Mrs. Lennox found it necessary to throw herself into the breach here, there and everywhere, but under her skillful manipulation the talk at last became general and animated.