"Neil, I"m worried about you."
"Why? Are you afraid I"ll marry beneath me? I won"t marry without your consent. It"s not being done."
"You got three dollars from the _Clarion_ last week."
"Are you afraid I"ll try to support a wife on it?"
"It"s the most you"ve made from them. Why weren"t you proud of it? Why aren"t you proud of this prize? A year ago you"d have had me up at one to speak your piece to me. There"s no life in you, and no pride, and I know why."
"Me with so much to be proud of."
"You"re good enough for any girl, but----"
"Do you think I don"t know my place, with the whole town teaching it to me going on eighteen years? I"ve got no false hopes, and I shan"t lose my head over any girl. Let me be."
"It"s not the town that"s taught you your place, it"s----"
"Don"t you say her name."
"--empty headed and overdressed."
"Go on. Judith Randall don"t care what you think of her."
"Can"t you even get up enough spirit to stand up for her? You that thought you had your fortune all but made when you got the chickens paid for, and followed me round the house, telling me how you"d run the town?
You that could tell what was wrong with the _Record_ editorials, if you couldn"t pay for a year"s subscription to the paper? You----"
"Yes, I come from one of the five lines in Ireland what have a right to the O", but you never tell me that unless you"ve got something else to tell me that you"re afraid to tell. What is it this time?"
"You come of Irish kings."
"What did Uncle say last night?"
"Well, he"s getting to be an old man."
"What did he say?"
His mother did not reply. She avoided his eyes, and made no further criticism of him, or of a young lady who was no doubt as indifferent to her criticisms as Neil said, since she did not recognize Mrs. Donovan on the street.
"Uncle," Neil decided deliberately, "wants me to help in the store. I can"t go to Wells."
"He can"t get on alone now Maggie"s gone. We need your board money to run the house at all. Dan was wild to get away from Green River, but in two years he"s got no farther than Wells, and ten dollars a week. I know we ought to leave you free to start yourself, if we can"t give you a start, but----"
"Is that all you want to tell me?"
She put out an unaccustomed arm and pulled him awkwardly close. He came obediently, and patted her shoulder stiffly but did not kiss her. "I know what this means," she a.s.serted, and showed a rapidly forming intention of crying on his shoulder. "It hurts me like it does you."
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""_I know what this means," she a.s.serted_""]
"It don"t hurt me. I ought to have seen it myself. I ought not to have planned to go. It"s all right, mother. Is that all?"
"All? It"s enough. I was awake half the night planning to break it to you."
"You broke it all right. I"ll be going." He shook out his crushed cap, and adjusted it with dignity, looking at her calmly out of impenetrable eyes, like a young prince ending an audience, with more power behind him than he knew, kissed her gravely on the cheek with cool young lips, and opened the door, and walked off into the sunshine.
"It"s the girl," said his mother, but not until the door had closed behind him. "No girl is good enough to do what she"s done to you." Then she selected the frilliest of Maggie"s blouses, which had dried while she talked, and spread it on the ironing table to sprinkle again.
Neil did not look like a young man crossed in love, or a young man with his future wrecked by a word. He did not give a backward glance to the little brown house with the sun on its many-paned windows, or seem to hear the children"s voices from the old barn behind the house--the favourite refuge of the little Bradys when they were banished from the kitchen--that echoed after him in the clear morning air, shrill and then fainter as he left the place behind.
He had settled into his usual pace for this familiar walk--a steady stride that you could fit the unmanageable parts of a Latin verb to the rhythm of, or the refractory words of a song; but it was not a usual day. It was the first warm day of that April, warmer already, with the goading urge of spring in the softening air that frets and troubles with new desires and a sense of unfitness for them at once, and will not let you be. The road, fringed with scattering trees, and wind-swept and bleak on winter days, was golden with new sunlight, spongy underfoot, but drying under your eyes in the morning sun. The boy"s brooding face did not change as he walked, but his shoulders straightened themselves, and lost their patient look, and his lean young body gave itself more gayly to the swing of his pace and looked strong and free, alive with the unconscious strength of youth that must be caught and harnessed to make the wheels of the world go round before it can be taught what its purpose is.
Whether it troubled him or not--his face did not tell--all that his mother had hinted was wrong with his world, and more. No outsider had ever won a place like Neil"s in Green River High School society so far as the unwritten history of it recorded. Charlie Brady in his time, and Dan after him, had been extra men at big dances, hard worked and patronized in school entertainments, more intimate with the boys than the girls. Charlie, deep in a secret love affair with Lil Gaynor, had still called her Miss in public, and treated her as respectfully as he did now that the affair was forgotten and she was Mrs. Burr and one of the Everard circle. Charlie and Dan had only looked over impa.s.sable barriers. Neil had been really inside--included in small, intimate parties, like week-ends at Camp Hiawatha, openly favoured by Natalie, if not Judith--inside and he would soon be shut out.
There were new signs of it every day. The long, friendly winter, when he had been safe in that intimate fellowship, was over. The girls were planning their gowns for college commencement dances. Willard came back from a week-end at the state university pledged to a fraternity there and refusing to discuss minor subjects. G.o.d-like creatures in amazing neckties condescended to visit him, and Natalie was beginning to collect fraternity pins. Rena and Ed were engaged, and under the impression that it was a secret, and a place was being made for Ed in the bank. In one way or another, the world was opening to all of them, and closing to Neil.
And with the spring, the Everards had come back to Green River. The big, over-decorated house had not been open a week, but already they pervaded the town. Their cars whirled through the splashing spring streets, and ladies not upon Mrs. Everard"s calling list peered at the pa.s.sengers to see who was in her favour. The Colonel was turning the Hiawatha Club into a private camp, and closing it to the town, but n.o.body protested much. He was ordering a complete set of slip covers from the furniture department of Ward"s Emporium, and the daring group of prominent business men who ventured to a.s.sail the Colonel"s political views and private morals sometimes in the little room at the rear of the store lacked support from Ward. Neil had the run of the store and hung about and listened, but never contributed. Whether these criticisms were justified or not, the Everards were back again.
Judith had given up the Lyceum dance for the first of the Everard dinners the night before. It was three days since Neil had seen her, and he was to see her to-day, but he was showing no impatience for the meeting. The end of the world, not the beginning of it, that was what spring would mean to him, and that is a graver catastrophe at eighteen than at eighty. The boy who was facing it had pa.s.sed the outlying straggle of houses, and had come to the edge of the town, and to the end of the long, hilly street that led down past the court-house, straight into Post Office Square, the heart of the town. It was still empty of traffic at ten, and looked sunny and empty and clean, wide-awake for the day. He took his hands out of his pockets, stopped whistling "Amos Moss," and hurried down Court-house Hill, stepping in time to the tune of it.
A mud-splashed Ford clattered down Main Street, and drew up in front of the post-office as Neil reached it with a flourish that would have done credit to a more elegant equipage than this second-hand one of the Nashes. Two elegant young gentlemen, week-end guests of Willard"s and duly presented to Neil the night before, ignored his existence, perusing a gaudily covered series of topical songs with exaggerated attention on the rear seat of the car, but Willard greeted him exuberantly:
"Ah, there, Murph. You don"t look like the morning after. Sorry I haven"t got room for you. We"ve got other plans. We love the ladies."
"I"m tied up, anyway. So long."
Willard"s tone was too patronizing, but he was not to blame, for the days when they would exchange intimate greetings at all were numbered.
As Neil left them one of the elegant guests demanded audibly:
"Who"s your friend?"
Neil flushed but did not look back. He had an errand to do in the few minutes before his appointment with Judge Saxon. He crossed the street to Ward"s store.
Ward"s Dry Goods Emporium, three stores in one, and literally three stores bought out one by one, and joined by connecting doors, though they could never be united in their style of architecture, was rather dark and chaotic inside, though a brave showing of plate gla.s.s across the front advertised its prosperity. Luther Ward himself, in his shirt sleeves, was looking over a tray of soiled, pale-coloured spats, a.s.sisted by a tall, full-bodied girl with a sweet, sulky mouth, and a towering ma.s.s of blue-black hair.
"h.e.l.lo, Donovan, what"s new?" he said, with only a shade more condescension than Willard, and distinctly more friendliness.
"Nothing, sir," said Neil with conviction.
"You want to talk to Maggie, here. I won"t intrude on a family quarrel,"
said Mr. Ward, and chuckling heartily at his own mild joke, as he generally did, and few others did, disappeared into the furniture department, the central one of the three stores, and his favourite. The two cousins regarded each other across the tray of spats as if the family quarrel were not a joke, but an unpleasant reality.
"You can"t come here and take up my time," stated Miss Brady.
"Your time is pretty full--evenings, too. Do you know where Charlie was last night?"
"I don"t care."
"You ought. He"s your second cousin, and goes by the same name as you, if you"re not in love with him. He was in Halloran"s billiard hall."