Checkers Part 7

"Where's Sadie, Pert? Oh, here she comes," said Arthur. "That you, Sadie? How are you?"

"Pretty well, thank you. How's yourself?"

"Sadie, let me introduce you to a friend of mine. Miss Martin, Mr.

Campbell."

Miss Martin straightway offered her hand, and Checkers shook it cordially.

"Let's go and sit where we can see the moon--it's perfectly beautiful to-night," said Pert. "Arthur, get two chairs from the porch, and bring them over by the hammock."

Arthur went to fulfill his mission while Checkers walked between the young ladies.

Suddenly he skipped nimbly forward. "Excuse me while I climb a tree,"

he exclaimed, with a comical intonation. "There comes Lion and Tige, and I 'm afraid it's another horrible case of 'They're After Me.'"

"Oh, they won't touch you while you 're with us," laughed Sadie. "Here Lion, here Tige, good dogs."

"Well then, I think I 'd better establish my popularity with them both right now," said Checkers; and with an air of confidence he kindly patted and rubbed their heads in a way that dogs love, and made them his friends.

Meanwhile Arthur arrived with the chairs. Sadie seated herself in one of them, and motioning Checkers to place the other beside her, left the hammock to Pert and Arthur.

"Did you have a good time in St. Louis, girls?" asked Arthur.

"Oh lovely!" they both exclaimed.

"We hated dreadfully to come home," continued Sadie, "but we simply had to. Our clothes were in tatters. All the men were so sweet to us.

They kept something going on every minute."

Then followed an enthusiastic account of their good time, which was tiresome to Checkers, and torture to Kendall.

"Pert, get your banjo," said Arthur, suddenly. "It seems like years since I 've heard you play."

"It has n't but one string on it, Arthur," laughed Pert, "but I 'll fix it up to-morrow, sure."

"I think it would sound very smooth out here in the moonlight, Miss Barlow," suggested Checkers. "If you have some new strings I 'd be glad to fix it up for you. I used to play a bit myself."

Sadie jumped up. "Come, let's go and get it," she said; and she and Checkers went into the house.

She ushered Checkers into a room where Mr. Barlow, in shirt sleeves and stocking feet, sat dozing in a rocking chair, while his wife, a sweet-faced, grey-haired woman, worked b.u.t.ton-holes in his new gingham shirts.

Checkers felt drawn towards Mrs. Barlow. She reminded him strangely of his mother. She had a smile like a benediction; but in her weary eyes he could read a tragedy.

The banjo was one of Arthur's many gifts to Pert in days gone by, and Checkers to his great relief found it a very excellent instrument.

Checkers was not a conversationalist, where conversation had to be made; but he was a very good amateur banjoist, and he sang an excellent comic song; and he was glad of the opportunity offered to show himself in perhaps his best role.

While, with the banjo on his knee, he deftly adjusted the strings, Miss Martin sat beside him, an interested spectator, and talked to him in an undertone.

"I thought we had better come in here and give Arthur a little chance,"

she said--"poor fellow." This with a long drawn sigh, which seemed to demand an explanation.

Checkers looked up, inquiringly. This was his first legitimate opportunity of taking a comprehensive look at her. The casual glance had proclaimed her plain, but now in the bright light of a hanging-lamp she seemed to him hopelessly unattractive. He felt chagrined and disappointed. He was angry with Arthur for not having prepared him for such a cruel disillusion. For somehow since his jesting words of the previous Sabbath morning, he had allowed his fancy to run the gamut of many glittering possibilities.

He had started forth that evening, feeling a pleasurable excitement in the vague presentiment that he was going to meet his destiny. But now it simply "would n't do." He decided quickly and became resigned.

"It was n't that she was really so ugly," he afterwards explained to me, "but there was n't anything about her that you could tie to, and sort of forget the rest"--except her "stuff," and he wasn't sure but that was one of Arthur's "pipe-dreams." She had no style, no face, no figure. Nothing at all for a little starter. She was just a girl, that was all--just a girl. A fact which put her beyond the pale.

"Why do you say 'poor fellow?'" said Checkers, after several moments silence. "It seems to me he's mighty lucky to have such a tidy little friend."

"Yes, but I fear she is only a friend, and that's why I 'm so sorry for him. I like Arthur; I think he is simply a dear. He has always been perfectly lovely to me. But Pert--well, Pert is very peculiar, and Arthur, you know, is awfully fast."

Checkers put on an incredulous look. "Arthur fast!" he exclaimed with a laugh. "Why, if he was in a city, I 'd expect him to get run over by a hea.r.s.e inside of a week."

"Oh, you men always stand up for each other; but I know all about it.

You can't fool me."

Mrs. Barlow looked up from her sewing. "You and Arthur are very old friends, I suppose," she said, interrogatively.

This was just the question that Checkers had feared. "We went to school at about the same time," he replied, and immediately struck up an air, which, for the time, precluded further questioning. "At least, I suppose we did," he thought to himself, "as we are about the same age."

Meanwhile Pert and Arthur sat in the hammock outside in the radiant moonlight. It seemed to Arthur Pert had never looked so beautiful before. Her large, dark eyes were l.u.s.trous; and a silvery halo played about her soft, brown hair, while the pale light gave the clear skin of her oval face the pallor of marble, save for her lips, which were the redder by contrast.

"Such a nice little fellow!" she had exclaimed, as Sadie and Checkers went into the house. "Who is he, Arthur? Where did he come from?"

Arthur hesitated awkwardly. It had been his intention to confess to Pert all the circ.u.mstances of his last misadventure; but her few words in praise of Checkers now suddenly emphasized in his mind the thought that everything he had to tell was as clearly discreditable to himself as it was favorable to Checkers, and he had n't the generosity of nature to put the matter upon that footing.

Still, when upon several former occasions, he had confessed to Pert his weaknesses and sins, there had been a kindness in her ready sympathy, her gentle chiding and disapproval, which seemed to bring her nearer to him than she ever was during good behavior. He had found a certain desperate pleasure at times in telling her of his misdoings. It roused her, at least temporarily, out of her usual placid indifference toward him--an att.i.tude to which he sometimes felt that her hatred would have been preferable.

As a school-girl of sixteen, with romantic tendencies, Pert had entered upon the task of reforming Arthur, with a childish belief that the love he professed for her, and which she, in a measure, returned, might be made a means to an earnest and successful endeavor upon his part to become worthy of her. But lapse after lapse had shaken this faith, and three years of experience found her with simply a sisterly pity for this weak young man, whose devotion was so abject that he ceased to interest her, and whose spasmodic vices were not of the kind which make some men so darkly fascinating.

And so Arthur hesitated, debating rapidly in his mind what to say, what to leave unsaid. "Well, it's a rather peculiar story, Pert, although it all happened naturally enough," he answered, after a little time.

"I went up to Little Rock a few weeks ago to see a party on business.

I found when I got there that he had gone to Hot Springs, and so I followed him over there. I wound up the business in a couple of days, but, as long as I was there, I thought I 'd stay a week or so and take a few baths.

"Well, one day in the cooling-room I struck up a conversation with the man lying next to me, and I 'll pledge you my word I never laughed so much in all my life as I did that morning at our little friend here, who told me a lot of his hard-luck stories.

"We dressed, and went and had lunch together, and he told me that he was dead, flat broke. He had been 'bucking the tiger,' and was waiting to hear from his uncle, to whom he had written for money. I met him again a few days later, and he told me he had n't heard a word as yet; that his trunk was in hock at the hotel, and altogether he was in the deuce of a fix. But he seemed so cheerful about it all that I could n't help taking a liking to him, and I proposed that he come to Clarksville with me, and take a job in the store, till he heard from his uncle, or had saved enough money to get straightened out again. He jumped at the chance, and I brought him along. He 's a first-cla.s.s salesman, and jolly good company; but I 'm afraid he won 't stay with me much longer; he's getting tired of the place already. I shall be dreadfully lonesome when he 's gone.

"But heavens, Pert; how lonesome I 've been without you, away at your school all these months. It seems so good to see you here that I can scarcely believe my eyes."

"I 'm glad to be back on some accounts, although it grows horribly stupid here."

"Stupid, Pert! It wouldn't seem stupid to me on a desert island, if you were there."

"I should n't care to try it."

"Pert, dear," Arthur's voice grew tender, "I want to say a few words to you seriously, and I beg of you to listen seriously. We are children no longer, little girl. You have finished with school, and I have practically a.s.sumed control of father's business. I have no new story to tell you, but you know that I love you and long for you now as I have loved and longed for you for years.

"You have been my good angel, Pert. It has been my love for you and your influence over me alone that has kept me steadfast during hours of terrible temptation. You know I 'm not naturally vicious, Pert; I must have inherited this appet.i.te I have had to fight so hard against. But I am overcoming it--I 'll conquer it, Pert; and with you to be with me to love me and help me, I 'll make a good man. I 'll make a place and a name in the world. But I need you, darling--I love you, and I 'd rather die than live without you. We 'll sell out this business, leave this place, and go back to the East and civilization to live, where there 's something to see and to do. You shall have everything, anything, dear, that your heart desires--only say that you love me."