Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

Success and Artie Cherry-2

"Don't you know me, Cousin Hazleton?" asked Artie—oh, so modest.

"Ain't Artie?" inquired this cousin, still arrested. "What? Why, you look like a dove! A dove!"

Artie laughed pleasantly, more and more indulgent as his cousin's mottled, wrinkled array became manifest. As they went down the platform one would have said that Artie Cherry was the prospering man of the world, with Cousin Hazleton attendant.

Below the baggage-room there waited an ancient victoria and a resigned horse.

"Keep a carriage, do you?" inquired Cousin Hazleton, before he consented to enter.

"Livery's less trouble, some thinks," said Artie, gathering up the lines with an air magnificently casual. He had not driven for years, but the resigned horse was proof, miscellaneously proof.

"Good golly!" said Cousin Hazleton, aloud. He was an honest relative.

Cousin Hazleton's idea of conversation was to collect facts about a town's population, tax-rate, assessed valuation, and bonded indebtedness. He would have acquired these things rapidly, concerning the village, only that Artie knew none of them. Nor, the topic shifting to the city of the Duckbury plant, was Artie better informed.

"Say," he said, after a fourth or fifth negation, "ask me about the theatrical season's offerings, up in the city, and I can put you wise enough!"

"More fool you," said Cousin Hazleton, and would say nothing else. He lowered his eyes and appeared to be contemplating Artie Cherry's gray spats. As they reached Mis' Cherry's gate he lifted his eyes from this absorbed regard. "I thought," said Cousin Hazleton, "your ma wrote to me you was with some bicycle-factory."

"That's it," said Artie. "Big concern, Duckbury's. Yearly output—"

Cousin Hazleton's eyes rested upon Artie's waistcoat. "Do you run the factory?" he inquired. His eye traveled on up to Artie's cravat and turquoise pin. "Do you own the factory, maybe?" he mounted warmly.

"I'm only in charge of it, Cousin Hazleton," said Artie, carelessly.

Cousin Hazleton's class and generation let fall the chin to express astonishment. Of this sign of the effect which he had produced Artie was thrillingly conscious, elaborately unaware.

"I'll just run in with your valise," said Artie, masterfully, "and then I've got to call for the rest of the company. Careful, cousin."

"Careful yourself," said Cousin Hazleton, and turned, crumpily, to meet Mis' Cherry. "Screw loose somewheres," he said, aloud, instead of greeting her.

As Artie drove down the street on his way to call for Lulu, his lilt of the lines, his flash of the whip, expressed his sense of triumph, long overdue.

Lulu Merrit was waiting at the gate. When she was a young girl they always waited at the gate; and who shall say what starved impulse sent her steps between the c**k's-combs and the balsam of the borders, to wait under the locusts? She was in white, still, as it were, hot from the iron, and she wore no hat; but she did wear her white silk gloves and she carried her mother's little white wedding-fan. When she saw Artie come driving over the wooden blocks in the maple shade, something lonely lifted up its voice within her in a kind of wailing silence, and then ceased. As if life "at the toilet goods," at Ball's, were not life at all.

Driving at Artie's side, in the maple shade, she was as dumb as a little girl. Where was all that she had planned all day to say, as she set out the bottles, a red, a pink, a purple ...?

"Here must seem awful slow to you," she contrived, at length.

"Oh, well," Artie commented, indulgently, "you do get kind of tied to the city rush," he informed her.

"I s'pose you do," said Lulu. These years "at the toilet goods" had rather leveled the conversational powers of Lulu. If she was asked if she had read a book, she was likely to reply, "No, but I've heard of it." Or, if some one named a title to her, she would say, "That ought to be interesting." She was becoming automatic in all her ways, was Lulu, clerking "in at Ball's." "I s'pose you do," was her contribution now.

Artie, brows drawn, nodded. "Say yes," he emphasized it. "Somepin doin' all the whole time. You no sooner get one thing over than, say, there's another. That's the way it goes."

"And with your responsible place and all," said Lulu.

"It is a good deal to put onto a man," he assented.

"Artie," she said, and flushed, "I'm glad you made a success of it."

"You are?"

"Yes. I couldn't say it very well the other night, with Wooden there, and all." She remembered that she had said "and all" once before, and she blushed. What would Artie think?

" 'Fraid of making Wooden jealous?" he said, daringly. "It's awful easy to see how old Wooden feels about you."

She looked down. She was willing that Artie should return to find her with an adorer.

For no reason Artie sighed. He looked up the street, between the horse's ears. He could not have told what he was feeling. Sitting hunched on the buggy seat, his clothes wrinkled 'round him, his head sunk on his shoulders, he looked less like the cosmopolite whose rôle he essayed. His eyes were honest and blue, and there was a crude yearning in his face as of one who seeks to no sure end. One cuff showed its full length below his sleeve. It was almost certain that under the fine hat his hair was rumpled at the back.

"This town's good enough for me," said Lulu Merrit, somehow managing to implicate Wooden in her choice; and she laughed heartily to cover she knew not what.

"Sometimes," said Artie, dreamily, "I think so, too."

"You don't mean that!" cried Lulu.

He turned and looked at her. He had no idea what he meant, but he turned and looked at her. She did, she did look like a trim robin!

"I do, too, mean that," he said.

It was true. Weighing the deference of the home town against the brute rush of the city, he had questioned that brute rush. The only point was, if he left it, how was he to retain the deference of the little town?

At Mis' Cherry's gate he handed her down in silence. She caught the odor of the barber shop, just touched with a cigar. (Why had she not bought one of the red or pink or purple bottles for her own, instead of rinsing out the one that she had cherished long and had emptied weeks ago?) She waited on the bricks while Artie tied the horse. The sun struck the low maple boughs and shone red through Artie's ears. How manly his gray shoulders showed! With a quick look along the street (there behind Artie's back), she rubbed her cheeks in such a fashion that—

It was a witching moment.

At supper Cousin Hazleton deliberately elected to question Artie Cherry regarding his occupation and his duties. He plied his inquiries as well as he could—among the agitated suggestions of Mis' Cherry. Mis' Cherry was one who never could hand a dish without finding herself perfectly articulate. No murmurings for her, no gestures, nothing taken for granted. It was, "Won't you have some of the bread?" enunciated four-square to a waiting guest. In spite of a running fire of this, uttered to every guest for every dish, Cousin Hazleton persisted:

"You say that you're in charge of the Duckbury bicycle works, my boy—if I understand it. Of what do your duties consist?"

His journey done, his face washed, and food before him, some of Cousin Hazleton's crumple was uncreasing. He was nearly benign.

"Overseeing—general overseeing," said Artie.

"Of the men?"

"Of everything. Seeing that everything is all right," said Artie.

"Well-a, of the work?"

"Of the works," said Artie. "Yes, mother, I believe I will try a little speck. There's nothing like mother's spiced plums, is there, Lulie?"

Feeling that the other guest was being omitted, Cousin Hazleton subsided, bided time, came to the top shortly with, "How many men under you?"

"Make 'em hot if you was to tell 'em they're under me," said Artie, laughing. "No sir-ee, that 'd never do! My job, you understand, is sort of walking round on the q t—seein' how everything goes."

Cousin Hazleton pricked his ears. "Assistant to the general manager? Confidential overseer?" he comprehended.

"Oh," said Artie, "you couldn't say that! That sounds too grand. Just in gener'l charge—that's me."

Mis' Cherry was vibrating her wings—she was in her best black net, and her white apron was etched in red in a pattern of well-filled nests, and cobwebs.

"Oh, if you knew," said she, "how a mother's heart rejoices when one of her own makes a success of it!" She spoke as if she had dozens.

Lulu ate, eyes lowered. "It is nice," she assented, and in her gentle way she cursed herself. She was in a high tide of such feeling as it was hers to know—emotion of pride, emotion of homage, emotion of regret, of hungry longing for she knew not what, and all that she was able to say was, "It is nice." What would Artie think?

"Tell us about how you live in the city!" she burst out at Artie, and crimsoned.

Arthur Othello Cherry leaned back in his chair and began to expand.

Here was the girl who had once refused his proposal of marriage because he had insisted on going off to seek the large unknown instead of accepting the small certainty.

Here was the cousin who had once offered him a job at fifty cents a day and had scorned him because he went "wildcating off to the city." Artie was "too harum-scarum for him," and a bad end had been abundantly prophesied.

Here was his mother beaming at him so happily that any invention seemed well bestowed.

And Artie cut loose.

He told them how he lived. Nice, brownstone front. Colored boy to open the door. White bath-room. Breakfast sent up to his room whenever he wanted it. Victrola.

"Take it after dinner," said Artie, "and you whirlin' outside in a taxicab, down the bullyvard—tell you what, it's life."

It was life. Lulu knew it.

"Goin' to the theater—seeing all the big folks come in—makes you know what you miss, little town," Artie said.

"Must," Lulu breathed.

But Cousin Hazleton studied Artie. Artie Cherry was no fool, he could see that. Artie had turned out to be far better than he had ever dreamed—Cousin Hazleton, admitted that within himself. Yet by infallible signs Cousin Hazleton, employer of men, judged his relative. He would have classed him as fair material for a small-town business, by all means requiring lead and direction, though capable and faithful. But he would not have thought of his relative as the man in charge of a great activity. After a time of Artie's talk Cousin Hazleton fell silent. At length a smile touched his mouth.

Mis' Cherry, again vibrating, now led the way to the parlor. She wanted to show the gilt clock, the pink fan, the beads, and the pickle-dish containing the beads.

Cousin Hazleton, however, went off down-town to look at a piece of property—"prop'ity"—which, he said, he was thinking of buying. He refused to be accompanied. Mis' Cherry craftily underwent an eclipse and busied herself in the kitchen. Lulu and Artie sat in the parlor alone.

And now no sooner were they alone together, Artie of the gay life and Lulu of the gray life at the toilet-goods counter at Ball's, than Lulu, who had scorned this man for his venturesome bent and had repented ever since—Lulu began to burn with resentment. She discerned that Artie was glorying in the minute, and no love is proof against that. Should he, after all, come back here and triumph over her so gloriously?

Gradually Lulu's frank eyes grew languid, their brows lifted, their lids drooped. She waited her chance, and at a pause she gave an airy laugh and descended flat-footed among Artie's idols.

"Well, ma and I," she said, "we live on the old place. We got loads of room all on the ground floor, and two full lots. We got a garden, and apple-trees, and currant-bushes, and seven Plymouth Rocks, and I have Saturday half-holiday. We take in the movies a couple o' nights a week. And—and—and I guess that's good enough for anybody," she ended, defiantly.

Artie Cherry looked at her, sitting in his mother's parlor. It was curious that a girl "at the toilet goods," "in at Ball's," should have fostered that domestic look of hers (so like a home-keeping robin) . Into Artie's eyes came something which was neither pride nor triumph.