Concerning Sally Part 29

Charlie wanted to go with Cousin Patty; he didn't want to be talked to. He said so with much petulance.

"Let me take the poor child, Sarah," Patty began.

"After I have talked with him, Patty," said Mrs. Ladue patiently.

n.o.body should know how she dreaded this talk. "Come, Charlie."

She made Charlie mount the stairs ahead of her and she succeeded in steering him into her room. He washed his face with furious haste.

"Charlie, dear boy," she said at last, "I was watching you for a long time this afternoon. You know that I can see very well what goes on in the lot from this window."

He was wiping his face and he exposed his eyes for a moment, gazing at his mother over the edge of the towel. They were handsome eyes and they were filled now with a calculating thoughtfulness, which his mother noted. It did not make her feel any easier.

Charlie considered it worth risking. "Then you saw," he said, still with that petulant note in his voice, "how the boys picked on me. Why, they--"

"I saw, Charlie," Mrs. Ladue interrupted, smiling wearily, "not how the boys picked on you, but how you bothered them. I thought Ollie was very patient and I didn't blame him a bit."

"But he _hurt_ me," Charlie cried in astonishment. It was the most heinous sin that he knew of. Patty would think so.

"You deserved to be hurt. You are eleven, Charlie, and I'm surprised that you don't see that your actions will leave you without friends, absolutely without friends within a few years. Where should we be now, Charlie," continued Mrs. Ladue gently, "if we had had no friends?"

"Guess Cousin Patty'd be my friend," Charlie grumbled. "Guess she would."

"You will wear out even her doting affection if you keep on," replied his mother almost sharply. It was difficult to imagine her speaking with real sharpness. She regretted it instantly. "My dear little son, why won't you do differently? Why do you prefer to make the boys all dislike you? It's for your own good that I have talked to you, and I haven't said so very much. You don't please Uncle John, Charlie. You would be _so_ much happier if you would only do as Sally does and--"

"Huh!" said Charlie, throwing down the towel. "Cousin Patty wants me, mother." And he bolted out of the door.

Tears came to Mrs. Ladue's eyes. Her eyes were still wet when Doctor Beatty came in. He could not help seeing.

"Not crying?" he asked. "That will never do."

Mrs. Ladue smiled. "I have been talking to Charlie," she said, as if that were a sufficient explanation.

Indeed, it seemed to be. That, in itself, was cause for grief. "Ah!"

said the doctor. "Charlie didn't receive it with meekness, I judge."

She did not answer directly. "It seems hopeless," she returned at last. "I have been away from him so long that I am virtually a stranger. And Patty--" She did not finish.

Doctor Beatty laughed. "I know Patty. I think I may say that I know her very well. Why, there was one period--" He remembered in time and his tone changed. "Yes, there was one period when I thought I knew her very well. Ancient history," he went on with a wave of his hand,--"ancient history."

Mrs. Ladue said nothing, but she looked sympathetic and she smiled.

Doctor Beatty sat down conveniently near her, but yet far enough away to be able to watch her closely.

Meanwhile the doctor talked. It was of little consequence what he talked about, and he rambled along from one subject to another, talking of anything that came into his head; of anything but Mrs.

Ladue's health. And the strange thing about it was that she had no inkling as to what the doctor was about. She had no idea that she was under observation. She only thought it queer that he had so much time to devote to talking to her. He couldn't be very busy; but she liked it and would have been sorry to have him give up his visits.

Presently, in his rambling talk, the doctor was once more speaking of the period of ancient history to which he had already thoughtlessly alluded.

"There was a time," he said, regarding Mrs. Ladue thoughtfully, "when I thought I knew Patty pretty well. I used to be here pretty often, you know. She has spoken of it, perhaps?" Mrs. Ladue smiled and shook her head. "Ah, what a blow to vanity! I used to think--but my thoughts were of scarcely more value then than they are now, so it's no matter what I thought. It's a great while--fifteen or twenty years--struggling young doctor in the first flush of youth and a growing practice. Practice like an incubator baby; very, very frail. I suppose I must have been a sentimental young chap; but not so young either. Must have been nearly thirty, both of us. Then the baby got out of the incubator and I couldn't come so often."

He was speaking reminiscently. Then, suddenly, he realized what he was saying and roused himself with a start.

"Patty was charming, of course, charming," he went on, smiling across at Mrs. Ladue. "Yes, much as she is now, with the same charm; the same charm, in moderation."

His eyes were very merry as he finished, and Mrs. Ladue laughed gently.

"Oh, Doctor," she said, "I ought not to laugh--at Patty. It's your fault."

Doctor Beatty looked horror-struck. "Laugh at Patty!" he exclaimed.

"Never! Nothing further from my intention. I only run on, like a babbling brook. I'm really not responsible for what I say. No significance to be attached to any observations I may make. You won't mind, will you?"

"I won't mind," Mrs. Ladue agreed. "I don't."

"Thank you. I knew you wouldn't." Doctor Beatty rose and stood for a moment with his hand on the k.n.o.b of the door. "You're all right for a couple of weeks anyway, or I'd warn you to keep your liver on the job.

I always give that advice to Patty, partly because she needs it and partly because it is amusing to witness the starting of a certain train of emotions. Good-bye."

And the doctor went out, leaving Mrs. Ladue smiling to herself. She had forgotten about Charlie.

CHAPTER VII

Sally graduated from her school in the following June. Of all the persons immediately concerned in that affair, even including Sally herself, I am inclined to believe that Mr. Hazen was the most acutely interested. He was not excited over it. A man of his age does not easily get excited, even if he is of an excitable disposition, which Mr. Hazen was not; but there is reason to think that he had all the hopes and fears which Sally ought to have had, but of which she gave no sign. She had confidence in herself and had no doubts to speak of.

At any rate, she did not speak of any, but took the whole thing as a matter of course and one to be gone through with in its due season.

For that matter, n.o.body suspected Mr. Hazen of harboring fears, although it was taken for granted that he had hopes. He gave no outward sign of perturbation, and his fondness for Sally was no secret.

There was never, at that school, any long period without its little diversions. Jane Spencer, to be sure, was in the graduating cla.s.s and his behavior had been most exemplary for some months; but there was no such inhibition on the behavior of Ollie Pilcher and the Carlings. The Carlings appeared one morning with grotesquely high collars, at the sight of which a t.i.tter ran about the schoolroom. The Carlings preserved an admirable gravity. Mr. MacDalie looked up, eyed the twins with marked displeasure, but said nothing, and the t.i.tter gradually faded out. The Carlings were aggrieved and felt that they had been guilty of a failure. So they had, in a measure, and Sally could not help feeling sorry for them. She reflected that Jane would never have done anything of that kind. Jane would never have made a failure of anything that he undertook, either. Jane would not have done what Ollie Pilcher did, later, although that effort of Ollie's was a conspicuous success, after its kind.

It was the fashion, among certain of the boys, to have their hair clipped when the warm weather came on. Everett Morton had never had it done, nor had d.i.c.k Torrington, nor did Jane Spencer. They were not in the clipped-hair caste. But Ollie Pilcher was; and it was no surprise to the other boys when, a week before school closed, Ollie came with clipped hair showing below his cap. He was just in time, and he went at once and in haste to the schoolroom, removing his cap as he entered the door. The bell in Mr. MacDalie's hand rang as he took his seat.

Mr. MacDalie was not looking at Ollie, as it happened, but those behind Ollie could not help seeing him. A ripple of laughter started; it grew as more of those present caught sight of him. Mr. MacDalie saw him. He chuckled wildly and the laughter swelled into a roar. Rising from the top of Ollie's head of clipped hair was a diminutive braided lock about three inches long, tied with a bow of narrow red ribbon.

And Ollie did not even smile while Mr. MacDalie was wiping his eyes before him. His self-control was most admirable.

The laughter finally subsided, for the time being, sufficiently to permit King Ahasuerus and Queen Esther and Mordecai and Haman to hold their audience spellbound for five minutes. That same audience had been held spellbound by that same story throughout the whole of the year just past and through other years; for Mr. MacDalie, for some reason known only to himself and which Sally had tried in vain to guess, had confined his reading so completely to the Book of Esther that his hearers knew the book pretty nearly by heart.

Although an unnatural solemnity prevailed through the reading, the laughter would break out afresh at intervals during the morning. Mr.

MacDalie himself resolutely avoided looking in Ollie's direction as long as he remembered. But he would forget, becoming absorbed in his teaching, and his eye would light upon Ollie; and forthwith he would fall to chuckling wildly and to wiping his eyes, and be unable to continue for some minutes. He said nothing to Ollie, however, although that youngster expected a severe reprimand, at least. It is not unlikely that that was the very reason why he did not get it. The next day the braided lock was gone.

These were mere frivolities, perhaps unworthy of being recorded; and there may seem to be an undue prominence given to mental comparisons with Jane. But just at this time there was a good deal of Jane in everything, and whatever was done by anybody naturally suggested to Sally a comparison with what Jane would do. Sally was not without her share of romance, which was, perhaps, more in evidence at this age than at any other. She was just past sixteen, and she happened to be devoted, at this period, to her English history. She is to be excused for her flights of imagination, in which she saw Jane's ancestry traced back, without a break, to the beginning of the fourteenth century; and if the two Spencers of that time were not very creditable ancestors, why, history sometimes distorts things, and if Edward II had chanced to prevail over his wife and son, its verdict might have been different. Jane was not responsible for his ancestors anyway.

Everybody was present at the graduation exercises; everybody, that is, of consequence in Whitby who was not prevented from being present by illness. I allude more especially to the older generation, to the generation of parents. All the mothers, not only of the members of the graduating cla.s.s, but of any members of any cla.s.s and even of prospective members, were there because they liked to be; the fathers were there because they thought they ought to be. And there were many besides, of a different generation, who were there for one reason or another. Mr. Hazen was one of these and Everett Morton was another.

It was easy to account for Mr. Hazen's presence, but not so easy to account for Everett's, except that he was not doing much of anything and thought the exercises might prove to be a diversion. Everett spent his time, for the most part, in the pursuit of diversion. He was through college. That does not mean that he had graduated, but, as he said, it meant that he had left it in his soph.o.m.ore year, upon the breaking-out of the Spanish War, to volunteer; and after a hollow and bloodless campaign in Porto Rico, he had returned, well smeared with glory. Fortunately--or unfortunately, as you look at it--he had escaped the camps. He did not think it worth while to go back to college, and between ourselves, the faculty agreed with him completely. It was the only instance of such agreement in the history of their connection. Then he had got a place in a broker's office which he held for a year and a half, but he had found it not to his liking and he had given it up. Then came a long interval when his only occupation seemed to be the pursuit of diversion. This was in the interval. No doubt he managed to capture, occasionally, the elusive diversion which he pursued so persistently, and no doubt, too, it was of much the kind that is usual in such cases; but, one would think, he found the pursuit of it an occupation more strenuous than that of the broker's office.

d.i.c.k could not come, for he was to have a graduation of his own in a short time; in fact, it was hardly more than a few days. But he sent Sally a little note, regretting that he could not be present and wishing her luck; and further and more important, he asked if she and her mother or Miss Patty or all of them would not come up to Cambridge for his Cla.s.s Day.

Sally had got d.i.c.k's note just as they were starting. She handed it to her mother, her gray eyes soft with pleasure--as they had got into the habit of being, these last few years.