Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, he could have emptied Dalton Street of its children. In the first place, there was the irresistible inducement to any boy to ride several miles on a trolley without having this right challenged by the irate guardian of the vehicle, without being summarily requested to alight at twenty-five miles an hour: in the second place, there was the soda water and sweet biscuit partaken of after the baseball game in that pavilion, more imposing in one"s eyes than the Taj Mahal. Mr. Bentley would willingly have taken all Dalton Street. He had his own "welt-schmerz", though he did not go to a sanitarium to cure it; he was forced to set an age limit of ten, and then establish a high court of appeal; for there were boys whose biographies, if they are ever written, will be as hazy as those of certain world-wide celebrities who might be mentioned concerning the date and exact spot of the entrance of their heroes into the light. The solemn protestations, the tears, the recrimination even, brought pangs to the old gentleman"s heart, for with all the will in the world he had been forced in the nature of things, to set a limit.
This limit had recently been increased by the unlooked-for appearance on these excursions of the tall man in the blue serge suit, whose knowledge of the national game and of other matters of vital import to youth was gratifying if sometimes disconcerting; who towered, an unruffled Gulliver, over their Lilliputian controversies, in which bats were waved and fists brought into play and language used on the meaning of which the Century dictionary is silent. On one former occasion, indeed, Mr.
Bentley had found moral suasion, affection, and veneration of no avail, and had had to invoke the friendly aid of a park policeman to quell one of these incipient riots. To Mr. Bentley baseball was as a sealed book.
The tall man"s justice, not always worthy of the traditions of Solomon, had in it an element of force. To be lifted off the ground by strong arms at the moment you are about to dust the home plate with your adversary is humiliating, but effective. It gradually became apparent that a decision was a decision. And one Sat.u.r.day this inexplicable person carried in his hand a mysterious package which, when opened, revealed two pairs of diminutive boxing gloves. They instantly became popular.
By the time they had made the accidental and somewhat astounding discovery that he was a parson, they were willing to overlook it; in view, perhaps, of his compensating accomplishments. Instead of advising them to turn the other cheek, he taught them uppercuts, feints, and jabs, and on the proof of this unexpected acquaintance with a profession all of them openly admired, the last vestige of reserve disappeared. He was accepted without qualifications.
II
Although the field to which they resorted was not in the most frequented section of the park, pedestrians often pa.s.sed that way, and sometimes lingered. Thus, towards the close of a certain Sat.u.r.day in July, a young woman walked out of the wood path and stood awhile gazing intently at the active figure striding among the diminutive, darting forms.
Presently, with an amused expression, she turned her head to discover Mr. Bentley, who sat on a green bench under a tree, his hat and stick on the gra.s.s beside him. She was unaware that he had been looking at her.
"Aren"t they having a good time!" she said, and the genuine thrill in her voice betrayed a rare and unmistakable pleasure.
"Ah," replied Mr. Bentley, smiling back at her, "you like to see them, too. Most persons do. Children are not meant for the city, my dear young lady, their natural home is in the woods and fields, and these little fellows are a proof of it. When they come out here, they run wild. You perceive," he added with a twinkle, as an expletive of unquestionable vigour was hurled across the diamond, "they are not always so polite as they might be."
The young woman smiled again, but the look she gave him was a puzzled one. And then, quite naturally, she sank, down on the gra.s.s, on the other side of Mr. Bentley"s hat, watching the game for a while in silence.
"What a tyrant!" she exclaimed. Another uproar had been quelled, and two vigorously protesting runners sent back to their former bases.
"Oh, a benevolent tyrant," Mr. Bentley corrected her. "Mr. Hodder has the gift of managing boys,--he understands them. And they require a strong hand. His generation has had the training which mine lacked. In my day, at college, we worked off our surplus energy on the unfortunate professors, and we carried away chapel bells and fought with the townspeople."
It required some effort, she found, to imagine this benevolent looking old gentleman a.s.saulting professors.
"Nowadays they play baseball and football, and box!" He pointed to the boxing gloves on the gra.s.s. "Mr. Hodder has taught them to settle their differences in that way; it is much more sensible."
She picked off the white clover-tops.
"So that is Mr. Hodder, of St. John"s," she said.
"Ah, you know him, then?"
"I"ve met him," she answered quietly. "Are these children connected with his church?"
"They are little waifs from Dalton Street and that vicinity," said Mr.
Bentley. "Very few of them, I should imagine, have ever been inside of a church."
She seemed surprised.
"But--is it his habit to bring them out here?" The old gentleman beamed on her, perhaps with the hint of a smile at her curiosity.
"He has found time for it, this summer. It is very good of him."
She refrained from comment on this remark, falling into reflection, leaning back, with one hand outstretched, on the gra.s.s. The game went on vociferously, the shrill lithe voices piercing the silence of the summer afternoon. Mr. Bentley"s eyes continued to rest on her.
"Tell me," he inquired, after a while, "are you not Alison Parr?"
She glanced up at him, startled. "Yes."
"I thought so, although I have not seen you since you were a little girl. I knew your mother very well indeed, but it is too much to expect you to remember me, after all this time. No doubt you have forgotten my name. I am Mr. Bentley."
"Mr. Bentley!" she cried, sitting upright and gazing at him. "How stupid of me not to have known you! You couldn"t have been any one else."
It was the old gentleman"s turn to start. She rose impulsively and sat down on the bench beside him, and his hand trembled as he laid it in hers.
"Yes, my dear, I am still alive. But surely you cannot remember me, Alison?"
The old look of almost stubborn honesty he recalled in the child came into her eyes.
"I do--and I don"t," she said, perplexed. "It seemed to me as if I ought to have recognized you when I came up, and yet I hadn"t the slightest notion who you were. I knew you were somebody."
He shook his head, but did not speak.
"But you have always been a fact in my existence--that is what I want to say," she went on. "It must be possible to remember a person and not recognize him, that is what I feel. I can remember you coming to our house in Ransome Street, and how I looked forward to your visits. And you used to have little candy beans in your pockets," she cried. "Have you now?"
His eyes were a little dimmed as he reached, smilingly, into the skirts of a somewhat shiny but scrupulously brushed coat and produced a brightly colored handful. She took one, and put it in her mouth:
"Oh," she said, "how good they were--Isn"t it strange how a taste brings back events? I can remember it all as if it were yesterday, and how I used to sit on your knee, and mother would tell me not to bother you."
"And now--you are grown," he said.
"Something more than grown," she smiled. "I was thirty-one in May. Tell me," she asked, choosing another of the beans which he still absently held, "do you get them for these?" And she nodded toward the Dalton Street waifs.
"Yes," he said, "they are children, too."
"I can remember," she said, after a pause, "I can remember my mother speaking of you to me the year she died. I was almost grown, then. It was after we had moved up to Park Street, and her health had already begun to fail. That made an impression on me, but I have forgotten what she said--it was apropos of some recollection. No--it was a photograph--she was going over some old things." Alison ceased speaking abruptly, for the pain in Mr. Bentley"s remarkable grey eyes had not escaped her. What was it about him? Why could she not recall?
Long-forgotten, shadowy episodes of the past tormented her, flitted provokingly through her mind--ungrasped: words dropped in her presence which had made their impression, but the gist of which was gone. Why had Mr. Bentley ceased coming to the house? So strongly did she feel his presence now that the thought occurred to her,--perhaps her mother had not wished her to forget him!
"I did not suspect," she heard him saying, "that you would go out into the world and create the beautiful gardens of which I have heard. But you had no lack of spirit in those days, too."
"I was a most disagreeable child, perverse,--cantankerous--I can hear my mother saying it! As for the gardens--they have given me something to do, they have kept me out of mischief. I suppose I ought to be thankful, but I still have the rebellious streak when I see what others have done, what others are doing, and I sometimes wonder what right I ever had to think that I might create something worth while."
He glanced at her quickly as she sat with bent head.
"Others put a higher value on what you have done."
"Oh, they don"t know--" she exclaimed.
If something were revealed to him by her tone, he did not betray it, but went on cheerfully.
"You have been away a long time, Alison. It must interest you to come back, and see the changes in our Western civilization. We are moving very rapidly--in certain directions," he corrected himself.
She appraised his qualification.
"In certain directions,--yes. But they are little better in the East. I have scarcely been back," she added, "since I went to Paris to study.
I have often thought I should like to return and stay awhile, only--I never seemed to get time. Now I am going over a garden for my father which was one of my first efforts, and which has always reproached me."