From a Bench in Our Square Part 30

"No!" growled Phil, his face falling.

"Bad news; eh? It occurred to me that she might want some decorations, and that you might be the one to do them." In his leisure hours, my young friend, who is an expert accountant by trade (the term "expert"

appears to be rather an empty compliment, since his stipend is only twenty-five dollars a week), perpetrates impressionistic decorations and scenery for such minor theaters as will endure them.

"You're a grand old man, Dominie!" said he. "Let's go."

We went. We found Barbran. We conversed. Half an hour later when I left them--without any strenuous protests on the part of either--they were deeply engrossed in a mutual discussion upon decorations, religion, the high cost of living, free verse, two-cent transfers, Charley Chaplin, aviation, ouija, and other equally safe topics. Did I say safe?

Dangerous is what I mean. For when a youth who is as homely as young Phil Stacey and in that particular style of homeliness, and a girl who is as far from homely as Barbran begin, at first sight, to explore each other's opinions, they are venturing into a dim and haunted region, lighted by will-o'-the-wisps and beset with perils and pitfalls. Usually they smile as they go. Phil was smiling as I left them. So was Barbran.

I may have smiled myself.

Anything but a smile was on Phil Stacey's normally cheerful face when, some three days thereafter, he came to my rooms.

"Dominie," said he, "I want to tap your library. Have you got any of the works of Harvey Wheelwright?"

"G.o.d forbid!" said I.

Phil looked surprised. "Is it as bad as that? I didn't suppose there was anything wrong with the stuff."

"Don't you imperil your decent young soul with it," I advised earnestly.

"It reeks of poisonous piety. The world he paints is so full of nauseating virtues that any self-respecting man would rather live in h.e.l.l. His characters all talk like a Sunday-school picnic out of the Rollo books. No such people ever lived or ever could live, because a righteously enraged populace would have killed 'em in early childhood.

He's the smuggest fraud and best seller in the United States.

Wheelwright? The crudest, shrewdest, most preposterous panderer to weak-minded--"

"Whew! Help! I didn't know what I was starting," protested my visitor.

"As a literary critic you're some Big Bertha, Dominie. I begin to suspect that you don't care an awful lot about Mr. Wheelwright's style of composition. Just the same, I've got to read him. All of him. Do you think I'll find his stuff in the Penny Circulator?"

"My poor, lost boy! Probably not. It is doubtless all out in the hands of eager readers."

However, Phil contrived to round it up somewhere. The awful and unsuspected results I beheld on my first visit of patronage to Barbran's cellar, the occasion being the formal opening. A large and curious crowd of five persons, including myself and Phil Stacey, were there. Outside, an old English design of a signboard with a wheel on it creaked despairingly in the wind. Below was a legend: "_At the Sign of the Wheel_--_The Wrightery_." The interior of the cellar was decorated with scenes from the novels of Harvey Wheelwright, triumphant virtue, discomfited villains, benignant blessings, chaste embraces, edifying death-beds, and orange-blossoms. They were unsigned; but well I knew whose was the shame. Over the fireplace hung a framed letter from the Great Soul. It began, "Dear Young Friend and Admirer," and ended, "Yours for the Light. Harvey Wheelwright."

The guests did as well as could be expected. They ate and drank everything in sight. They then left; that is to say, four of them did.

Finally Phil departed, glowering at me. I am a patient soul. No sooner had the door slammed behind him than I turned to Barbran, who was looking discouraged.

"Well, what have you to say in your defense?"

The way Barbran's eyebrows went up const.i.tuted in itself a defense fit to move any jury to acquittal.

"For what?" she asked.

"For corrupting my young friend Stacey. You made him paint those pictures."

"They're very nice," returned Barbran demurely. "Quite true to the subject."

"They're awful. They're an offense to civilization. They're an insult to Our Square. Of all subjects in the world, Harvey Wheelwright! Why, Barbran? Why? Why? Why?"

"Business," said Barbran.

"Explain, please," said I.

"I got the idea from a friend of mine in Washington Square. She got up a little cellar cafe built around Alice. Alice in Wonderland, you know, and the Looking Gla.s.s. Though I don't suppose a learned and serious person like you would ever have read such nonsense."

"It happened to be Friday and there wasn't a hippopotamus in the house,"

I murmured.

"Oh," said Barbran, brightening. "Well, I thought if she could do it with Alice, I could do it with Harvey Wheelwright."

"In the name of Hatta and the March Hare, _why_?"

"Because, for every one person who reads Alice nowadays, ten read the author of 'Reborn Through Righteousness' and 'Called by the Cause.'

Isn't it so?"

"Mathematically unimpeachable."

"Therefore I ought to get ten times as many people as the other place.

Don't you think so?" she inquired wistfully.

Who am I to withhold a comforting fallacy from a hopeful soul.

"Undoubtedly," I agreed. "But do you love him?"

"Who?" said Barbran, with a start. The faint pink color ran up her cheeks.

"Harvey Wheelwright, of course. Whom did you think I meant?"

"He is a very estimable writer," returned Barbran primly, quite ignoring my other query.

"Good-night, Barbran," said I sadly. "I'm going out to mourn your lost soul."

One might reasonably expect to find peace and quiet in the vicinity of one's own particular bench at 11.45 P.M. in Our Square. But not at all on this occasion. There sat Phil Stacey. I challenged him at once.

"What did you do it for?"

To do him justice he did not dodge or pretend to misunderstand. "Pay,"

said he.

"Phil! Did you take money for that stuff?"

"Not exactly. I'm taking it out in trade. I'm going to eat there."

"You'll starve to death."

"I haven't got much of an appet.i.te."

"The inevitable effect of overfeeding on sweets. An uninterrupted diet of Harvey Wheelwright--"

"Don't speak the swine's name," implored Phil, "or I'll be sick."

"You've sold your artistic birthright for a mess of pottage, probably indigestible at that."

"I don't care," he averred stoutly. "I don't care for anything except--Dominie, who told you her father was a millionaire?"