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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beasley's Christmas Party, by Booth Tarkington
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Beasley's Christmas Party
+
+Author: Booth Tarkington
+
+
+Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5949]
+This file was first posted on September 23, 2002
+Last Updated: March 3, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEASLEY'S CHRISTMAS PARTY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BEASLEY'S CHRISTMAS PARTY
+
+By Booth Tarkington
+
+Illustrated By Ruth Sypherd Clements
+
+
+October, 1909.
+
+
+
+TO
+
+JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The maple-bordered street was as still as a country Sunday; so quiet
+that there seemed an echo to my footsteps. It was four o'clock in the
+morning; clear October moonlight misted through the thinning foliage to
+the shadowy sidewalk and lay like a transparent silver fog upon the
+house of my admiration, as I strode along, returning from my first
+night's work on the “Wainwright Morning Despatch.”
+
+I had already marked that house as the finest (to my taste) in
+Wainwright, though hitherto, on my excursions to this metropolis, the
+state capital, I was not without a certain native jealousy that
+Spencerville, the county-seat where I lived, had nothing so good. Now,
+however, I approached its purlieus with a pleasure in it quite
+unalloyed, for I was at last myself a resident (albeit of only one day's
+standing) of Wainwright, and the house--though I had not even an idea
+who lived there--part of my possessions as a citizen. Moreover, I might
+enjoy the warmer pride of a next-door-neighbor, for Mrs. Apperthwaite's,
+where I had taken a room, was just beyond.
+
+This was the quietest part of Wainwright; business stopped short of it,
+and the “fashionable residence section” had overleaped this “forgotten
+backwater,” leaving it undisturbed and unchanging, with that look about
+it which is the quality of few urban quarters, and eventually of none,
+as a town grows to be a city--the look of still being a neighborhood.
+This friendliness of appearance was largely the emanation of the homely
+and beautiful house which so greatly pleased my fancy.
+
+It might be difficult to say why I thought it the “finest” house in
+Wainwright, for a simpler structure would be hard to imagine; it was
+merely a big, old-fashioned brick house, painted brown and very plain,
+set well away from the street among some splendid forest trees, with a
+fair spread of flat lawn. But it gave back a great deal for your glance,
+just as some people do. It was a large house, as I say, yet it looked
+not like a mansion but like a home; and made you wish that you lived in
+it. Or, driving by, of an evening, you would have liked to hitch your
+horse and go in; it spoke so surely of hearty, old-fashioned people
+living there, who would welcome you merrily.
+
+It looked like a house where there were a grandfather and a grandmother;
+where holidays were warmly kept; where there were boisterous family
+reunions to which uncles and aunts, who had been born there, would
+return from no matter what distances; a house where big turkeys would be
+on the table often; where one called “the hired man” (and named either
+Abner or Ole) would crack walnuts upon a flat-iron clutched between his
+knees on the back porch; it looked like a house where they played
+charades; where there would be long streamers of evergreen and dozens of
+wreaths of holly at Christmas-time; where there were tearful, happy
+weddings and great throwings of rice after little brides, from the broad
+front steps: in a word, it was the sort of a house to make the hearts of
+spinsters and bachelors very lonely and wistful--and that is about as
+near as I can come to my reason for thinking it the finest house in
+Wainwright.
+
+The moon hung kindly above its level roof in the silence of that October
+morning, as I checked my gait to loiter along the picket fence; but
+suddenly the house showed a light of its own. The spurt of a match took
+my eye to one of the upper windows, then a steadier glow of orange told
+me that a lamp was lighted. The window was opened, and a man looked out
+and whistled loudly.
+
+I stopped, thinking that he meant to attract my attention; that
+something might be wrong; that perhaps some one was needed to go for a
+doctor. My mistake was immediately evident, however; I stood in the
+shadow of the trees bordering the sidewalk, and the man at the window
+had not seen me.
+
+“Boy! Boy!” he called, softly. “Where are you, Simpledoria?”
+
+He leaned from the window, looking downward. “Why, THERE you are!” he
+exclaimed, and turned to address some invisible person within the room.
+“He's right there, underneath the window. I'll bring him up.” He leaned
+out again. “Wait there, Simpledoria!” he called. “I'll be down in a
+jiffy and let you in.”
+
+Puzzled, I stared at the vacant lawn before me. The clear moonlight
+revealed it brightly, and it was empty of any living presence; there
+were no bushes nor shrubberies--nor even shadows--that could have been
+mistaken for a boy, if “Simpledoria” WAS a boy. There was no dog in
+sight; there was no cat; there was nothing beneath the window except
+thick, close-cropped grass.
+
+A light shone in the hallway behind the broad front doors; one of these
+was opened, and revealed in silhouette the tall, thin figure of a man in
+a long, old-fashioned dressing-gown.
+
+“Simpledoria,” he said, addressing the night air with considerable
+severity, “I don't know what to make of you. You might have caught your
+death of cold, roving out at such an hour. But there,” he continued,
+more indulgently; “wipe your feet on the mat and come in. You're safe
+NOW!”
+
+He closed the door, and I heard him call to some one up-stairs, as he
+rearranged the fastenings:
+
+“Simpledoria is all right--only a little chilled. I'll bring him up to
+your fire.”
+
+I went on my way in a condition of astonishment that engendered, almost,
+a doubt of my eyes; for if my sight was unimpaired and myself not
+subject to optical or mental delusion, neither boy nor dog nor bird nor
+cat, nor any other object of this visible world, had entered that opened
+door. Was my “finest” house, then, a place of call for wandering ghosts,
+who came home to roost at four in the morning?
+
+It was only a step to Mrs. Apperthwaite's; I let myself in with the key
+that good lady had given me, stole up to my room, went to my window, and
+stared across the yard at the house next door. The front window in the
+second story, I decided, necessarily belonged to that room in which the
+lamp had been lighted; but all was dark there now. I went to bed, and
+dreamed that I was out at sea in a fog, having embarked on a transparent
+vessel whose preposterous name, inscribed upon glass life-belts,
+depending here and there from an invisible rail, was SIMPLEDORIA.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Mrs. Apperthwaite's was a commodious old house, the greater part of it
+of about the same age, I judged, as its neighbor; but the late Mr.
+Apperthwaite had caught the Mansard fever of the late 'Seventies, and
+the building-disease, once fastened upon him, had never known a
+convalescence, but, rather, a series of relapses, the tokens of which,
+in the nature of a cupola and a couple of frame turrets, were
+terrifyingly apparent. These romantic misplacements seemed to me not
+inharmonious with the library, a cheerful and pleasantly shabby
+apartment down-stairs, where I found (over a substratum of history,
+encyclopaedia, and family Bible) some worn old volumes of Godey's Lady's
+Book, an early edition of Cooper's works; Scott, Bulwer, Macaulay,
+Byron, and Tennyson, complete; some odd volumes of Victor Hugo, of the
+elder Dumas, of Flaubert, of Gautier, and of Balzac; Clarissa, Lalla
+Rookh, The Alhambra, Beulah, Uarda, Lucile, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ben-Hur,
+Trilby, She, Little Lord Fauntleroy; and of a later decade, there were
+novels about those delicately tangled emotions experienced by the
+supreme few; and stories of adventurous royalty; tales of “clean-limbed
+young American manhood;” and some thin volumes of rather precious verse.
+
+'Twas amid these romantic scenes that I awaited the sound of the
+lunch-bell (which for me was the announcement of breakfast), when I
+arose from my first night's slumbers under Mrs. Apperthwaite's roof; and
+I wondered if the books were a fair mirror of Miss Apperthwaite's mind
+(I had been told that Mrs. Apperthwaite had a daughter). Mrs.
+Apperthwaite herself, in her youth, might have sat to an illustrator of
+Scott or Bulwer. Even now you could see she had come as near being
+romantically beautiful as was consistently proper for such a timid,
+gentle little gentlewoman as she was. Reduced, by her husband's
+insolvency (coincident with his demise) to “keeping boarders,” she did
+it gracefully, as if the urgency thereto were only a spirit of quiet
+hospitality. It should be added in haste that she set an excellent
+table.
+
+Moreover, the guests who gathered at her board were of a very attractive
+description, as I decided the instant my eye fell upon the lady who sat
+opposite me at lunch. I knew at once that she was Miss Apperthwaite, she
+“went so,” as they say, with her mother; nothing could have been more
+suitable. Mrs. Apperthwaite was the kind of woman whom you would expect
+to have a beautiful daughter, and Miss Apperthwaite more than fulfilled
+her mother's promise.
+
+I guessed her to be more than Juliet Capulet's age, indeed, yet still
+between that and the perfect age of woman. She was of a larger, fuller,
+more striking type than Mrs. Apperthwaite, a bolder type, one might put
+it--though she might have been a great deal bolder than Mrs.
+Apperthwaite without being bold. Certainly she was handsome enough to
+make it difficult for a young fellow to keep from staring at her. She
+had an abundance of very soft, dark hair, worn almost severely, as if
+its profusion necessitated repression; and I am compelled to admit that
+her fine eyes expressed a distant contemplation--obviously of habit not
+of mood--so pronounced that one of her enemies (if she had any) might
+have described them as “dreamy.”
+
+Only one other of my own sex was present at the lunch-table, a Mr.
+Dowden, an elderly lawyer and politician of whom I had heard, and to
+whom Mrs. Apperthwaite, coming in after the rest of us were seated,
+introduced me. She made the presentation general; and I had the
+experience of receiving a nod and a slow glance, in which there was a
+sort of dusky, estimating brilliance, from the beautiful lady opposite
+me.
+
+It might have been better mannered for me to address myself to Mr.
+Dowden, or one of the very nice elderly women, who were my
+fellow-guests, than to open a conversation with Miss Apperthwaite; but I
+did not stop to think of that.
+
+“You have a splendid old house next door to you here, Miss
+Apperthwaite,” I said. “It's a privilege to find it in view from my
+window.”
+
+There was a faint stir as of some consternation in the little company.
+The elderly ladies stopped talking abruptly and exchanged glances,
+though this was not of my observation at the moment, I think, but
+recurred to my consciousness later, when I had perceived my blunder.
+
+“May I ask who lives there?” I pursued.
+
+Miss Apperthwaite allowed her noticeable lashes to cover her eyes for an
+instant, then looked up again.
+
+“A Mr. Beasley,” she said.
+
+“Not the Honorable David Beasley!” I exclaimed.
+
+“Yes,” she returned, with a certain gravity which I afterward wished had
+checked me. “Do you know him?”
+
+“Not in person,” I explained. “You see, I've written a good deal about
+him. I was with the “Spencerville Journal” until a few days ago, and
+even in the country we know who's who in politics over the state.
+Beasley's the man that went to Congress and never made a speech--never
+made even a motion to adjourn--but got everything his district wanted.
+There's talk of him now for Governor.”
+
+“Indeed?”
+
+“And so it's the Honorable David Beasley who lives in that splendid
+place. How curious that is!”
+
+“Why?” asked Miss Apperthwaite.
+
+“It seems too big for one man,” I answered; “and I've always had the
+impression Mr. Beasley was a bachelor.”
+
+“Yes,” she said, rather slowly, “he is.”
+
+“But of course he doesn't live there all alone,” I supposed, aloud,
+“probably he has--”
+
+“No. There's no one else--except a couple of colored servants.”
+
+“What a crime!” I exclaimed. “If there ever was a house meant for a
+large family, that one is. Can't you almost hear it crying out for heaps
+and heaps of romping children? I should think--”
+
+I was interrupted by a loud cough from Mr. Dowden, so abrupt and
+artificial that his intention to check the flow of my innocent prattle
+was embarrassingly obvious--even to me!
+
+“Can you tell me,” he said, leaning forward and following up the
+interruption as hastily as possible, “what the farmers were getting for
+their wheat when you left Spencerville?”
+
+“Ninety-four cents,” I answered, and felt my ears growing red with
+mortification. Too late, I remembered that the new-comer in a community
+should guard his tongue among the natives until he has unravelled the
+skein of their relationships, alliances, feuds, and private wars--a
+precept not unlike the classic injunction:
+
+    “Yes, my darling daughter.
+     Hang your clothes on a hickory limb,
+     But don't go near the water.”
+
+However, in my confusion I warmly regretted my failure to follow it, and
+resolved not to blunder again.
+
+Mr. Dowden thanked me for the information for which he had no real
+desire, and, the elderly ladies again taking up (with all too evident
+relief) their various mild debates, he inquired if I played bridge. “But
+I forget,” he added. “Of course you'll be at the 'Despatch' office in
+the evenings, and can't be here.” After which he immediately began to
+question me about my work, making his determination to give me no
+opportunity again to mention the Honorable David Beasley unnecessarily
+conspicuous, as I thought.
+
+I could only conclude that some unpleasantness had arisen between
+himself and Beasley, probably of political origin, since they were both
+in politics, and of personal (and consequently bitter) development; and
+that Mr. Dowden found the mention of Beasley not only unpleasant to
+himself but a possible embarrassment to the ladies (who, I supposed,
+were aware of the quarrel) on his account.
+
+After lunch, not having to report at the office immediately, I took unto
+myself the solace of a cigar, which kept me company during a stroll
+about Mrs. Apperthwaite's capacious yard. In the rear I found an
+old-fashioned rose-garden--the bushes long since bloomless and now
+brown with autumn--and I paced its gravelled paths up and down, at the
+same time favoring Mr. Beasley's house with a covert study that would
+have done credit to a porch-climber, for the sting of my blunder at the
+table was quiescent, or at least neutralized, under the itch of a
+curiosity far from satisfied concerning the interesting premises next
+door. The gentleman in the dressing-gown, I was sure, could have been no
+other than the Honorable David Beasley himself. He came not in eyeshot
+now, neither he nor any other; there was no sign of life about the
+place. That portion of his yard which lay behind the house was not
+within my vision, it is true, his property being here separated from
+Mrs. Apperthwaite's by a board fence higher than a tall man could reach;
+but there was no sound from the other side of this partition, save that
+caused by the quiet movement of rusty leaves in the breeze.
+
+My cigar was at half-length when the green lattice door of Mrs.
+Apperthwaite's back porch was opened and Miss Apperthwaite, bearing a
+saucer of milk, issued therefrom, followed, hastily, by a very white,
+fat cat, with a pink ribbon round its neck, a vibrant nose, and fixed,
+voracious eyes uplifted to the saucer. The lady and her cat offered to
+view a group as pretty as a popular painting; it was even improved when,
+stooping, Miss Apperthwaite set the saucer upon the ground, and,
+continuing in that posture, stroked the cat. To bend so far is a test of
+a woman's grace, I have observed.
+
+She turned her face toward me and smiled. “I'm almost at the age, you
+see.”
+
+“What age?” I asked, stupidly enough.
+
+“When we take to cats,” she said, rising. “Spinsterhood” we like to call
+it. 'Single-blessedness!'”
+
+“That is your kind heart. You decline to make one of us happy to the
+despair of all the rest.”
+
+She laughed at this, though with no very genuine mirth, I marked, and
+let my 1830 attempt at gallantry pass without other retort.
+
+“You seemed interested in the old place yonder.” She indicated Mr.
+Beasley's house with a nod.
+
+“Oh, I understood my blunder,” I said, quickly. “I wish I had known the
+subject was embarrassing or unpleasant to Mr. Dowden.”
+
+“What made you think that?”
+
+“Surely,” I said, “you saw how pointedly he cut me off.”
+
+“Yes,” she returned, thoughtfully. “He rather did; it's true. At least,
+I see how you got that impression.” She seemed to muse upon this,
+letting her eyes fall; then, raising them, allowed her far-away gaze to
+rest upon the house beyond the fence, and said, “It IS an interesting
+old place.”
+
+“And Mr. Beasley himself--” I began.
+
+“Oh,” she said, “HE isn't interesting. That's his trouble!”
+
+“You mean his trouble not to--”
+
+She interrupted me, speaking with sudden, surprising energy, “I mean
+he's a man of no imagination.”
+
+“No imagination!” I exclaimed.
+
+“None in the world! Not one ounce of imagination! Not one grain!”
+
+“Then who,” I cried--“or what--is Simpledoria?”
+
+“Simple--what?” she said, plainly mystified.
+
+“Simpledoria.”
+
+“Simpledoria?” she repeated, and laughed. “What in the world is that?”
+
+“You never heard of it before?”
+
+“Never in my life.”
+
+“You've lived next door to Mr. Beasley a long time, haven't you?”
+
+“All my life.”
+
+“And I suppose you must know him pretty well.”
+
+“What next?” she said, smiling.
+
+“You said he lived there all alone,” I went on, tentatively.
+
+“Except for an old colored couple, his servants.”
+
+“Can you tell me--” I hesitated. “Has he ever been thought--well,
+'queer'?”
+
+“Never!” she answered, emphatically. “Never anything so exciting! Merely
+deadly and hopelessly commonplace.” She picked up the saucer, now
+exceedingly empty, and set it upon a shelf by the lattice door. “What
+was it about--what was that name?--'Simpledoria'?”
+
+“I will tell you,” I said. And I related in detail the singular
+performance of which I had been a witness in the late moonlight before
+that morning's dawn. As I talked, we half unconsciously moved across the
+lawn together, finally seating ourselves upon a bench beyond the
+rose-beds and near the high fence. The interest my companion exhibited
+in the narration might have surprised me had my nocturnal experience
+itself been less surprising. She interrupted me now and then with
+little, half-checked ejaculations of acute wonder, but sat for the most
+part with her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, her face
+turned eagerly to mine and her lips parted in half-breathless attention.
+There was nothing “far away” about her eyes now; they were widely and
+intently alert.
+
+When I finished, she shook her head slowly, as if quite dumfounded, and
+altered her position, leaning against the back of the bench and gazing
+straight before her without speaking. It was plain that her neighbor's
+extraordinary behavior had revealed a phase of his character novel
+enough to be startling.
+
+“One explanation might be just barely possible,” I said. “If it is, it
+is the most remarkable case of somnambulism on record. Did you ever hear
+of Mr. Beasley's walking in his--”
+
+She touched me lightly but peremptorily on the arm in warning, and I
+stopped. On the other side of the board fence a door opened creakily,
+and there sounded a loud and cheerful voice--that of the gentleman in
+the dressing-gown.
+
+“HERE we come!” it said; “me and big Bill Hammersley. I want to show
+Bill I can jump ANYWAYS three times as far as he can! Come on, Bill.”
+
+“Is that Mr. Beasley's voice?” I asked, under my breath.
+
+Miss Apperthwaite nodded in affirmation.
+
+“Could he have heard me?”
+
+“No,” she whispered. “He's just come out of the house.” And then to
+herself, “Who under heaven is Bill Hammersley? I never heard of HIM!”
+
+“Of course, Bill,” said the voice beyond the fence, “if you're afraid
+I'll beat you TOO badly, you've still got time to back out. I did
+understand you to kind of hint that you were considerable of a jumper,
+but if--What? What'd you say, Bill?” There ensued a moment's complete
+silence. “Oh, all right,” the voice then continued. “You say you're in
+this to win, do you? Well, so'm I, Bill Hammersley; so'm I. Who'll go
+first? Me? All right--from the edge of the walk here. Now then!
+One--two--three! HA!”
+
+A sound came to our ears of some one landing heavily--and at full
+length, it seemed--on the turf, followed by a slight, rusty groan in the
+same voice. “Ugh! Don't you laugh, Bill Hammersley! I haven't jumped as
+much as I OUGHT to, these last twenty years; I reckon I've kind of lost
+the hang of it. Aha!” There were indications that Mr. Beasley was
+picking himself up, and brushing his trousers with his hands. “Now, it's
+your turn, Bill. What say?” Silence again, followed by, “Yes, I'll make
+Simpledoria get out of the way. Come here, Simpledoria. Now, Bill, put
+your heels together on the edge of the walk. That's right. All ready?
+Now then! One for the money--two for the show--three to make ready--and
+four for to GO!” Another silence. “By jingo, Bill Hammersley, you've
+beat me! Ha, ha! That WAS a jump! What say?” Silence once more. “You say
+you can do even better than that? Now, Bill, don't brag. Oh! you say
+you've often jumped farther? Oh! you say that was up in Scotland, where
+you had a spring-board? Oho! All right; let's see how far you can jump
+when you really try. There! Heels on the walk again. That's right; swing
+your arms. One--two--three! THERE you go!” Another silence. “ZING! Well,
+sir, I'll be e-tarnally snitched to flinders if you didn't do it THAT
+time, Bill Hammersley! I see I never really saw any jumping before in
+all my born days. It's eleven feet if it's an inch. What? You say you--”
+
+I heard no more, for Miss Apperthwaite, her face flushed and her eyes
+shining, beckoned me imperiously to follow her, and departed so
+hurriedly that it might be said she ran.
+
+“I don't know,” said I, keeping at her elbow, “whether it's more like
+Alice or the interlocutor's conversation at a minstrel show.”
+
+“Hush!” she warned me, though we were already at a safe distance, and
+did not speak again until we had reached the front walk. There she
+paused, and I noted that she was trembling--and, no doubt correctly,
+judged her emotion to be that of consternation.
+
+“There was no one THERE!” she exclaimed. “He was all by himself! It was
+just the same as what you saw last night!”
+
+“Evidently.”
+
+“Did it sound to you”--there was a little awed tremor in her voice that
+I found very appealing--“did it sound to you like a person who'd lost
+his MIND?”
+
+“I don't know,” I said. “I don't know at all what to make of it.”
+
+“He couldn't have been”--her eyes grew very wide--“intoxicated!”
+
+“No. I'm sure it wasn't that.”
+
+“Then _I_ don't know what to make of it, either. All that wild talk
+about 'Bill Hammersley' and 'Simpledoria' and spring-boards in Scotland
+and--”
+
+“And an eleven-foot jump,” I suggested.
+
+“Why, there's no more a 'Bill Hammersley,'” she cried, with a gesture of
+excited emphasis, “than there is a 'Simpledoria'!”
+
+“So it appears,” I agreed.
+
+“He's lived there all alone,” she said, solemnly, “in that big house, so
+long, just sitting there evening after evening all by himself, never
+going out, never reading anything, not even thinking; but just sitting
+and sitting and sitting and SITTING--Well,” she broke off, suddenly,
+shook the frown from her forehead, and made me the offer of a dazzling
+smile, “there's no use bothering one's own head about it.”
+
+“I'm glad to have a fellow-witness,” I said. “It's so eerie I might have
+concluded there was something the matter with ME.”
+
+“You're going to your work?” she asked, as I turned toward the gate.
+“I'm very glad I don't have to go to mine.”
+
+“Yours?” I inquired, rather blankly.
+
+“I teach algebra and plain geometry at the High School,” said this
+surprising young woman. “Thank Heaven, it's Saturday! I'm reading Les
+Miserables for the seventh time, and I'm going to have a real ORGY over
+Gervaise and the barricade this afternoon!”
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+I do not know why it should have astonished me to find that Miss
+Apperthwaite was a teacher of mathematics except that (to my
+inexperienced eye) she didn't look it. She looked more like Charlotte
+Corday!
+
+I had the pleasure of seeing her opposite me at lunch the next day (when
+Mr. Dowden kept me occupied with Spencerville politics, obviously from
+fear that I would break out again), but no stroll in the yard with her
+rewarded me afterward, as I dimly hoped, for she disappeared before I
+left the table, and I did not see her again for a fortnight. On
+week-days she did not return to the house for lunch, my only meal at
+Mrs. Apperthwaite's (I dined at a restaurant near the “Despatch”
+ office), and she was out of town for a little visit, her mother informed
+us, over the following Saturday and Sunday. She was not altogether out
+of my thoughts, however--indeed, she almost divided them with the
+Honorable David Beasley.
+
+A better view which I was afforded of this gentleman did not lessen my
+interest in him; increased it rather; it also served to make the
+extraordinary didoes of which he had been the virtuoso and I the
+audience more than ever profoundly inexplicable. My glimpse of him in
+the lighted doorway had given me the vaguest impression of his
+appearance, but one afternoon--a few days after my interview with Miss
+Apperthwaite--I was starting for the office and met him full-face-on as
+he was turning in at his gate. I took as careful invoice of him as I
+could without conspicuously glaring.
+
+There was something remarkably “taking,” as we say, about this
+man--something easy and genial and quizzical and careless. He was the
+kind of person you LIKE to meet on the street; whose cheerful passing
+sends you on feeling indefinably a little gayer than you did. He was
+tall, thin--even gaunt, perhaps--and his face was long, rather pale, and
+shrewd and gentle; something in its oddity not unremindful of the late
+Sol Smith Russell. His hat was tilted back a little, the slightest bit
+to one side, and the sparse, brownish hair above his high forehead was
+going to be gray before long. He looked about forty.
+
+The truth is, I had expected to see a cousin german to Don Quixote; I
+had thought to detect signs and gleams of wildness, however
+slight--something a little “off.” One glance of that kindly and humorous
+eye told me such expectation had been nonsense. Odd he might have
+been--Gadzooks! he looked it--but “queer”? Never. The fact that Miss
+Apperthwaite could picture such a man as this “sitting and sitting and
+sitting” himself into any form of mania or madness whatever spoke loudly
+of her own imagination, indeed! The key to “Simpledoria” was to be
+sought under some other mat.
+
+... As I began to know some of my co-laborers on the “Despatch,” and to
+pick up acquaintances, here and there, about town, I sometimes made Mr.
+Beasley the subject of inquiry. Everybody knew him. “Oh yes, I know Dave
+BEASLEY!” would come the reply, nearly always with a chuckling sort of
+laugh. I gathered that he had a name for “easy-going” which amounted to
+eccentricity. It was said that what the ward-heelers and camp-followers
+got out of him in campaign times made the political managers cry. He was
+the first and readiest prey for every fraud and swindler that came to
+Wainwright, I heard, and yet, in spite of this and of his hatred of
+“speech-making” (“He's as silent as Grant!” said one informant), he had
+a large practice, and was one of the most successful lawyers in the
+state.
+
+One story they told of him (or, as they were more apt to put it, “on”
+ him) was repeated so often that I saw it had become one of the town's
+traditions. One bitter evening in February, they related, he was
+approached upon the street by a ragged, whining, and shivering old
+reprobate, notorious for the various ingenuities by which he had worn
+out the patience of the charity organizations. He asked Beasley for a
+dime. Beasley had no money in his pockets, but gave the man his
+overcoat, went home without any himself, and spent six weeks in bed with
+a bad case of pneumonia as the direct result. His beneficiary sold the
+overcoat, and invested the proceeds in a five-day's spree, in the
+closing scenes of which a couple of brickbats were featured to high,
+spectacular effect. One he sent through a jeweller's show-window in an
+attempt to intimidate some wholly imaginary pursuers, the other he
+projected at a perfectly actual policeman who was endeavoring to soothe
+him. The victim of Beasley's charity and the officer were then borne to
+the hospital in company.
+
+It was due in part to recollections of this legend and others of a
+similar character that people laughed when they said, “Oh yes, I know
+Dave BEASLEY!”
+
+Altogether, I should say, Beasley was about the most popular man in
+Wainwright. I could discover nowhere anything, however, to shed the
+faintest light upon the mystery of Bill Hammersley and Simpledoria. It
+was not until the Sunday of Miss Apperthwaite's absence that the
+revelation came.
+
+That afternoon I went to call upon the widow of a second-cousin of mine;
+she lived in a cottage not far from Mrs. Apperthwaite's, upon the same
+street. I found her sitting on a pleasant veranda, with boxes of
+flowering plants along the railing, though Indian summer was now close
+upon departure. She was rocking meditatively, and held a finger in a
+morocco volume, apparently of verse, though I suspected she had been
+better entertained in the observation of the people and vehicles
+decorously passing along the sunlit thoroughfare within her view.
+
+We exchanged inevitable questions and news of mutual relatives; I had
+told her how I liked my work and what I thought of Wainwright, and she
+was congratulating me upon having found so pleasant a place to live as
+Mrs. Apperthwaite's, when she interrupted herself to smile and nod a
+cordial greeting to two gentlemen driving by in a phaeton. They waved
+their hats to her gayly, then leaned back comfortably against the
+cushions--and if ever two men were obviously and incontestably on the
+best of terms with each other, THESE two were. They were David Beasley
+and Mr. Dowden. “I do wish,” said my cousin, resuming her rocking--“I
+do wish dear David Beasley would get a new trap of some kind; that old
+phaeton of his is a disgrace! I suppose you haven't met him? Of course,
+living at Mrs. Apperthwaite's, you wouldn't be apt to.”
+
+“But what is he doing with Mr. Dowden?” I asked.
+
+She lifted her eyebrows. “Why--taking him for a drive, I suppose.”
+
+“No. I mean--how do they happen to be together?”
+
+“Why shouldn't they be? They're old friends--”
+
+“They ARE!” And, in answer to her look of surprise, I explained that I
+had begun to speak of Beasley at Mrs. Apperthwaite's, and described the
+abruptness with which Dowden had changed the subject.
+
+“I see,” my cousin nodded, comprehendingly. “That's simple enough.
+George Dowden didn't want you to talk of Beasley THERE. I suppose it may
+have been a little embarrassing for everybody--especially if Ann
+Apperthwaite heard you.”
+
+“Ann? That's Miss Apperthwaite? Yes; I was speaking directly to her. Why
+SHOULDN'T she have heard me? She talked of him herself a little
+later--and at some length, too.”
+
+“She DID!” My cousin stopped rocking, and fixed me with her glittering
+eye. “Well, of all!”
+
+“Is it so surprising?”
+
+The lady gave her boat to the waves again. “Ann Apperthwaite thinks
+about him still!” she said, with something like vindictiveness. “I've
+always suspected it. She thought you were new to the place and didn't
+know anything about it all, or anybody to mention it to. That's it!”
+
+“I'm still new to the place,” I urged, “and still don't know anything
+about it all.”
+
+“They used to be engaged,” was her succinct and emphatic answer.
+
+I found it but too illuminating. “Oh, oh!” I cried. “I WAS an innocent,
+wasn't I?”
+
+“I'm glad she DOES think of him,” said my cousin. “It serves her right.
+I only hope HE won't find it out, because he's a poor, faithful
+creature; he'd jump at the chance to take her back--and she doesn't
+deserve him.”
+
+“How long has it been,” I asked, “since they used to be engaged?”
+
+“Oh, a good while--five or six years ago, I think--maybe more; time
+skips along. Ann Apperthwaite's no chicken, you know.” (Such was the
+lady's expression.) “They got engaged just after she came home from
+college, and of all the idiotically romantic girls--”
+
+“But she's a teacher,” I interrupted, “of mathematics.”
+
+“Yes.” She nodded wisely. “I always thought that explained it: the
+romance is a reaction from the algebra. I never knew a person connected
+with mathematics or astronomy or statistics, or any of those exact
+things, who didn't have a crazy streak in 'em SOMEwhere. They've got to
+blow off steam and be foolish to make up for putting in so much of their
+time at hard sense. But don't you think that I dislike Ann Apperthwaite.
+She's always been one of my best friends; that's why I feel at liberty
+to abuse her--and I always will abuse her when I think how she treated
+poor David Beasley.”
+
+“How did she treat him?”
+
+“Threw him over out of a clear sky one night, that's all. Just sent him
+home and broke his heart; that is, it would have been broken if he'd had
+any kind of disposition except the one the Lord blessed him with--just
+all optimism and cheerfulness and make-the-best-of-it-ness! He's never
+cared for anybody else, and I guess he never will.”
+
+“What did she do it for?”
+
+“NOTHING!” My cousin shot the indignant word from her lips. “Nothing in
+the wide WORLD!”
+
+“But there must have been--”
+
+“Listen to me,” she interrupted, “and tell me if you ever heard anything
+queerer in your life. They'd been engaged--Heaven knows how long--over
+two years; probably nearer three--and always she kept putting it off;
+wouldn't begin to get ready, wouldn't set a day for the wedding. Then
+Mr. Apperthwaite died, and left her and her mother stranded high and dry
+with nothing to live on. David had everything in the world to give
+her--and STILL she wouldn't! And then, one day, she came up here and
+told me she'd broken it off. Said she couldn't stand it to be engaged to
+David Beasley another minute!”
+
+“But why?”
+
+“Because”--my cousin's tone was shrill with her despair of expressing
+the satire she would have put into it--“because, she said he was a man
+of no imagination!”
+
+“She still says so,” I remarked, thoughtfully.
+
+“Then it's time she got a little imagination herself!” snapped my
+companion. “David Beasley's the quietest man God has made, but everybody
+knows what he IS! There are some rare people in this world that aren't
+all TALK; there are some still rarer ones that scarcely ever talk at
+all--and David Beasley's one of them. I don't know whether it's because
+he can't talk, or if he can and hates to; I only know he doesn't. And
+I'm glad of it, and thank the Lord he's put a few like that into this
+talky world! David Beasley's smile is better than acres of other
+people's talk. My Providence! Wouldn't anybody, just to look at him,
+know that he does better than talk? He THINKS! The trouble with Ann
+Apperthwaite was that she was too young to see it. She was so full of
+novels and poetry and dreaminess and highfalutin nonsense she couldn't
+see ANYTHING as it really was. She'd study her mirror, and see such a
+heroine of romance there that she just couldn't bear to have a fiance
+who hadn't any chance of turning out to be the crown-prince of Kenosha
+in disguise! At the very least, to suit HER he'd have had to wear a
+'well-trimmed Vandyke' and coo sonnets in the gloaming, or read On a
+Balcony to her by a red lamp.
+
+“Poor David! Outside of his law-books, I don't believe he's ever read
+anything but Robinson Crusoe and the Bible and Mark Twain. Oh, you
+should have heard her talk about it!--'I couldn't bear it another day,'
+she said, 'I couldn't STAND it! In all the time I've known him I don't
+believe he's ever asked me a single question--except when he asked if
+I'd marry him. He never says ANYTHING--never speaks at ALL!' she said.
+'You don't know a blessing when you see it,' I told her. 'Blessing!' she
+said. 'There's nothing IN the man! He has no DEPTHS! He hasn't any more
+imagination than the chair he sits and sits and sits in! Half the time
+he answers what I say to him by nodding and saying 'um-hum,' with that
+same old foolish, contented smile of his. I'd have gone MAD if it had
+lasted any longer!' I asked her if she thought married life consisted
+very largely of conversations between husband and wife; and she answered
+that even married life ought to have some POETRY in it. 'Some romance,'
+she said, 'some soul! And he just comes and sits,' she said, 'and sits
+and sits and sits and sits! And I can't bear it any longer, and I've
+told him so.'”
+
+“Poor Mr. Beasley,” I said.
+
+“_I_ think, 'Poor Ann Apperthwaite!'” retorted my cousin. “I'd like to
+know if there's anything NICER than just to sit and sit and sit and sit
+with as lovely a man as that--a man who understands things, and thinks
+and listens and smiles--instead of everlastingly talking!”
+
+“As it happens,” I remarked, “I've heard Mr. Beasley talk.”
+
+“Why, of course he talks,” she returned, “when there's any real use in
+it. And he talks to children; he's THAT kind of man.”
+
+“I meant a particular instance,” I began; meaning to see if she could
+give me any clew to Bill Hammersley and Simpledoria, but at that moment
+the gate clicked under the hand of another caller. My cousin rose to
+greet him; and presently I took my leave without having been able to get
+back upon the subject of Beasley.
+
+Thus, once more baffled, I returned to Mrs. Apperthwaite's--and within
+the hour came into full possession of the very heart of that dark and
+subtle mystery which overhung the house next door and so perplexed my
+soul.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Finding that I had still some leisure before me, I got a book from my
+room and repaired to the bench in the garden. But I did not read; I had
+but opened the book when my attention was arrested by sounds from the
+other side of the high fence--low and tremulous croonings of distinctly
+African derivation:
+
+    “Ah met mah sistuh in a-mawnin',
+     She 'uz a-waggin' up de hill SO slow!
+     'Sistuh, you mus' git a rastle in doo time,
+     B'fo de hevumly do's cloze--iz!'”
+
+It was the voice of an aged negro; and the simultaneous slight creaking
+of a small hub and axle seemed to indicate that he was pushing or
+pulling a child's wagon or perambulator up and down the walk from the
+kitchen door to the stable. Whiles, he proffered soothing music: over
+and over he repeated the chant, though with variations; encountering in
+turn his brother, his daughter, each of his parents, his uncle, his
+cousin, and his second-cousin, one after the other ascending the same
+slope with the same perilous leisure.
+
+“Lay still, honey.” He interrupted his injunctions to the second-cousin.
+“Des keep on a-nappin' an' a-breavin' de f'esh air. Dass wha's go' mek
+you good an' well agin.”
+
+Then there spoke the strangest voice that ever fell upon my ear; it was
+not like a child's, neither was it like a very old person's voice; it
+might have been a grasshopper's, it was so thin and little, and made of
+such tiny wavers and quavers and creakings.
+
+“I--want--” said this elfin voice, “I--want--Bill--Hammersley!”
+
+The shabby phaeton which had passed my cousin's house was drawing up to
+the curb near Beasley's gate. Evidently the old negro saw it.
+
+“Hi dar!” he exclaimed. “Look at dat! Hain' Bill a comin' yonnah des
+edzacly on de dot an' to de vey spot an' instink when you 'quiah fo'
+'im, honey? Dar come Mist' Dave, right on de minute, an' you kin bet yo'
+las hunnud dollahs he got dat Bill Hammersley wif 'im! Come along,
+honey-chile! Ah's go' to pull you 'roun in de side yod fo' to meet 'em.”
+
+The small wagon creaked away, the chant resuming as it went.
+
+Mr. Dowden jumped out of the phaeton with a wave of his hand to the
+driver, Beasley himself, who clucked to the horse and drove through his
+open carriage-gates and down the drive on the other side of the house,
+where he was lost to my view.
+
+Dowden, entering our own gate, nodded in a friendly fashion to me, and I
+advanced to meet him.
+
+“Some day I want to take you over next door,” he said, cordially, as I
+came up. “You ought to know Beasley, especially as I hear you're doing
+some political reporting. Dave Beasley's going to be the next governor
+of this state, you know.” He laughed, offered me a cigar, and we sat
+down together on the front steps.
+
+“From all I hear,” I rejoined, “YOU ought to know who'll get it.” (It
+was said in town that Dowden would “come pretty near having the
+nomination in his pocket.”)
+
+“I expect you thought I shifted the subject pretty briskly the other
+day?” He glanced at me quizzically from under the brim of his black felt
+hat. “I meant to tell you about that, but the opportunity didn't occur.
+You see--”
+
+“I understand,” I interrupted. “I've heard the story. You thought it
+might be embarrassing to Miss Apperthwaite.”
+
+“I expect I was pretty clumsy about it,” said Dowden, cheerfully. “Well,
+well--” he flicked his cigar with a smothered ejaculation that was half
+a sigh and half a laugh; “it's a mighty strange case. Here they keep on
+living next door to each other, year after year, each going on alone
+when they might just as well--” He left the sentence unfinished, save
+for a vocal click of compassion. “They bow when they happen to meet, but
+they haven't exchanged a word since the night she sent him away, long
+ago.” He shook his head, then his countenance cleared and he chuckled.
+“Well, sir, Dave's got something at home to keep him busy enough, these
+days, I expect!”
+
+“Do you mind telling me?” I inquired. “Is its name 'Simpledoria'?”
+
+Mr. Dowden threw back his head and laughed loudly. “Lord, no! What on
+earth made you think that?”
+
+I told him. It was my second success with this narrative; however, there
+was a difference: my former auditor listened with flushed and breathless
+excitement, whereas the present one laughed consumedly throughout.
+Especially he laughed with a great laughter at the picture of Beasley's
+coming down at four in the morning to open the door for nothing on sea
+or land or in the waters under the earth. I gave account, also, of the
+miraculous jumping contest (though I did not mention Miss Apperthwaite's
+having been with me), and of the elfin voice I had just now overheard
+demanding “Bill Hammersley.”
+
+“So I expect you must have decided,” he chuckled, when I concluded,
+“that David Beasley has gone just plain, plum insane.”
+
+“Not a bit of it. Nobody could look at him and not know better than
+that.”
+
+“You're right THERE!” said Dowden, heartily. “And now I'll tell you all
+there is TO it. You see, Dave grew up with a cousin of his named
+Hamilton Swift; they were boys together; went to the same school, and
+then to college. I don't believe there was ever a high word spoken
+between them. Nobody in this life ever got a quarrel out of Dave
+Beasley, and Hamilton Swift was a mighty good sort of a fellow, too. He
+went East to live, after they got out of college, yet they always
+managed to get together once a year, generally about Christmas-time; you
+couldn't pass them on the street without hearing their laughter ringing
+out louder than the sleigh-bells, maybe over some old joke between them,
+or some fool thing they did, perhaps, when they were boys. But finally
+Hamilton Swift's business took him over to the other side of the water
+to live; and he married an English girl, an orphan without any kin. That
+was about seven years ago. Well, sir, this last summer he and his wife
+were taking a trip down in Switzerland, and they were both
+drowned--tipped over out of a rowboat in Lake Lucerne--and word came
+that Hamilton Swift's will appointed Dave guardian of the one child they
+had, a little boy--Hamilton Swift, Junior's his name. He was sent across
+the ocean in charge of a doctor, and Dave went on to New York to meet
+him. He brought him home here the very day before you passed the house
+and saw poor Dave getting up at four in the morning to let that ghost
+in. And a mighty funny ghost Simpledoria is!”
+
+“I begin to understand,” I said, “and to feel pretty silly, too.”
+
+“Not at all,” he rejoined, heartily. “That little chap's freaks would
+mystify anybody, especially with Dave humoring 'em the ridiculous way he
+does. Hamilton Swift, Junior, is the curiousest child I ever saw--and
+the good Lord knows He made all children powerful mysterious! This poor
+little cuss has a complication of infirmities that have kept him on his
+back most of his life, never knowing other children, never playing, or
+anything; and he's got ideas and ways that I never saw the beat of! He
+was born sick, as I understand it--his bones and nerves and insides are
+all wrong, somehow--but it's supposed he gets a little better from year
+to year. He wears a pretty elaborate set of braces, and he's subject to
+attacks, too--I don't know the name for 'em--and loses what little voice
+he has sometimes, all but a whisper. He had one, I know, the day after
+Beasley brought him home, and that was probably the reason you thought
+Dave was carrying on all to himself about that jumping-match out in the
+back-yard. The boy must have been lying there in the little wagon they
+have for him, while Dave cut up shines with 'Bill Hammersley.' Of
+course, most children have make-believe friends and companions,
+especially if they haven't any brothers or sisters, but this lonely
+little feller's got HIS people worked out in his mind and materialized
+beyond any I ever heard of. Dave got well acquainted with 'em on the
+train on the way home, and they certainly are giving him a lively time.
+Ho, ho! Getting him up at four in the morning--”
+
+Mr. Dowden's mirth overcame him for a moment; when he had mastered it,
+he continued: “Simpledoria--now where do you suppose he got that
+name?--well, anyway, Simpledoria is supposed to be Hamilton Swift,
+Junior's St. Bernard dog. Beasley had to BATHE him the other day, he
+told me! And Bill Hammersley is supposed to be a boy of Hamilton Swift,
+Junior's own age, but very big and strong; he has rosy cheeks, and he
+can do more in athletics than a whole college track-team. That's the
+reason he outjumped Dave so far, you see.”
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Miss Apperthwaite was at home the following Saturday. I found her in the
+library with Les Miserables on her knee when I came down from my room a
+little before lunch-time; and she looked up and gave me a smile that
+made me feel sorry for any one she had ceased to smile upon.
+
+“I wanted to tell you,” I said, with a little awkwardness but plenty of
+truth, “I've found out that I'm an awful fool.”
+
+“But that's something,” she returned, encouragingly--“at least the
+beginning of wisdom.”
+
+“I mean about Mr. Beasley--the mystery I was absurd enough to find in
+'Simpledoria.' I want to tell you--”
+
+“Oh, _I_ know,” she said; and although she laughed with an effect of
+carelessness, that look which I had thought “far away” returned to her
+eyes as she spoke. There was a certain inscrutability about Miss
+Apperthwaite sometimes, it should be added, as if she did not like to be
+too easily read. “I've heard all about it. Mr. Beasley's been appointed
+trustee or something for poor Hamilton Swift's son, a pitiful little
+invalid boy who invents all sorts of characters. The old darky from over
+there told our cook about Bill Hammersley and Simpledoria. So, you see,
+I understand.”
+
+“I'm glad you do,” I said.
+
+A little hardness--one might even have thought it bitterness--became
+apparent in her expression. “And I'm glad there's SOMEbody in that
+house, at last, with a little imagination!”
+
+“From everything I have heard,” I returned, summoning sufficient
+boldness, “it would be difficult to say which has more--Mr. Beasley or
+the child.”
+
+Her glance fell from mine at this, but not quickly enough to conceal a
+sudden, half-startled look of trouble (I can think of no other way to
+express it) that leaped into it; and she rose, for the lunch-bell was
+ringing.
+
+“I'm just finishing the death of Jean Valjean, you know, in Les
+Miserables,” she said, as we moved to the door. “I'm always afraid I'll
+cry over that. I try not to, because it makes my eyes red.”
+
+And, in truth, there was a vague rumor of tears about her eyes--not as
+if she had shed them, but more as if she were going to--though I had not
+noticed it when I came in.
+
+... That afternoon, when I reached the “Despatch” office, I was
+commissioned to obtain certain political information from the Honorable
+David Beasley, an assignment I accepted with eagerness, notwithstanding
+the commiseration it brought me from one or two of my fellows in the
+reporter's room. “You won't get anything out of HIM!” they said. And
+they were true prophets.
+
+I found him looking over some documents in his office; a reflective,
+unlighted cigar in the corner of his mouth; his chair tilted back and
+his feet on a window-sill. He nodded, upon my statement of the affair
+that brought me, and, without shifting his position, gave me a look of
+slow but wholly friendly scrutiny over his shoulder, and bade me sit
+down. I began at once to put the questions I was told to ask
+him--interrogations (he seemed to believe) satisfactorily answered by
+slowly and ruminatively stroking the left side of his chin with two long
+fingers of his right hand, the while he smiled in genial contemplation
+of a tarred roof beyond the window. Now and then he would give me a mild
+and drawling word or two, not brilliantly illuminative, it may be
+remarked. “Well--about that--” he began once, and came immediately to a
+full stop.
+
+“Yes?” I said, hopefully, my pencil poised.
+
+“About that--I guess--”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Beasley?” I encouraged him, for he seemed to have dried up
+permanently.
+
+“Well, sir--I guess--Hadn't you better see some one else about THAT?”
+
+This with the air of a man who would be but too fluent and copious upon
+any subject in the world except the one particular point.
+
+I never met anybody else who looked so pleasantly communicative and
+managed to say so little. In fact, he didn't say anything at all; and I
+guessed that this faculty was not without its value in his political
+career, disastrous as it had proved to his private happiness. His habit
+of silence, moreover, was not cultivated: you could see that “the secret
+of it” was just that he was BORN quiet.
+
+My note-book remained noteless, and finally, at some odd evasion of his,
+accomplished by a monosyllable, I laughed outright--and he did, too! He
+joined cachinnations with me heartily, and with a twinkling
+quizzicalness that somehow gave me the idea that he might be thinking
+(rather apologetically) to himself: “Yes, sir, that old Beasley man is
+certainly a mighty funny critter!”
+
+When I went away, a few moments later, and left him still intermittently
+chuckling, the impression remained with me that he had had some such
+deprecatory and surreptitious thought.
+
+Two or three days after that, as I started down-town from Mrs.
+Apperthwaite's, Beasley came out of his gate, bound in the same
+direction. He gave me a look of gay recognition and offered his hand,
+saying, “WELL! Up in THIS neighborhood!” as if that were a matter of
+considerable astonishment.
+
+I mentioned that I was a neighbor, and we walked on together. I don't
+think he spoke again, except for a “Well, sir!” or two of genial
+surprise at something I said, and, now and then, “You don't tell me!”
+ which he had a most eloquent way of exclaiming; but he listened visibly
+to my own talk, and laughed at everything that I meant for funny.
+
+I never knew anybody who gave one a greater responsiveness; he seemed to
+be WITH you every instant; and HOW he made you feel it was the true
+mystery of Beasley, this silent man who never talked, except (as my
+cousin said) to children.
+
+It happened that I thus met him, as we were both starting down-town, and
+walked on with him, several days in succession; in a word, it became a
+habit. Then, one afternoon, as I turned to leave him at the “Despatch”
+ office, he asked me if I wouldn't drop in at his house the next day for
+a cigar before we started. I did; and he asked me if I wouldn't come
+again the day after that. So this became a habit, too.
+
+A fortnight elapsed before I met Hamilton Swift, Junior; for he, poor
+little father of dream-children, could be no spectator of track events
+upon the lawn, but lay in his bed up-stairs. However, he grew better at
+last, and my presentation took place.
+
+We had just finished our cigars in Beasley's airy, old-fashioned
+“sitting-room,” and were rising to go, when there came the faint
+creaking of small wheels from the hall. Beasley turned to me with the
+apologetic and monosyllabic chuckle that was distinctly his alone.
+
+“I've got a little chap here--” he said; then went to the door. “Bob!”
+
+The old darky appeared in the doorway pushing a little wagon like a
+reclining-chair on wheels, and in it sat Hamilton Swift, Junior.
+
+My first impression of him was that he was all eyes: I couldn't look at
+anything else for a time, and was hardly conscious of the rest of that
+weazened, peaked little face and the under-sized wisp of a body with its
+pathetic adjuncts of metal and leather. I think they were the brightest
+eyes I ever saw--as keen and intelligent as a wicked old woman's, withal
+as trustful and cheery as the eyes of a setter pup.
+
+“HOO-ray!”
+
+Thus the Honorable Mr. Beasley, waving a handkerchief thrice around his
+head and thrice cheering.
+
+And the child, in that cricket's voice of his, replied:
+
+“Br-r-ra-vo!”
+
+This was the form of salutation familiarly in use between them. Beasley
+followed it by inquiring, “Who's with us to-day?”
+
+“I'm MISTER Swift,” chirped the little fellow. “MIS-TER Swift, if you
+please, Cousin David Beasley.”
+
+Beasley executed a formal bow. “There is a gentleman here who'd like to
+meet you.” And he presented me with some grave phrases commendatory of
+my general character, addressing the child as “Mister Swift”; whereupon
+Mister Swift gave me a ghostly little hand and professed himself glad to
+meet me.
+
+“And besides me,” he added, to Beasley, “there's Bill Hammersley and Mr.
+Corley Linbridge.”
+
+A faint perplexity manifested itself upon Beasley's face at this, a
+shadow which cleared at once when I asked if I might not be permitted to
+meet these personages, remarking that I had heard from Dowden of Bill
+Hammersley, though until now a stranger to the fame of Mr. Corley
+Linbridge.
+
+Beasley performed the ceremony with intentional elegance, while the
+boy's great eyes swept glowingly from his cousin's face to mine and back
+again. I bowed and shook hands with the air, once to my left and once to
+my right. “And Simpledoria!” cried Mister Swift. “You'll enjoy
+Simpledoria.”
+
+“Above all things,” I said. “Can he shake hands? Some dogs can.”
+
+“Watch him!”
+
+Mister Swift lifted a commanding finger. “Simpledoria, shake hands!”
+
+I knelt beside the wagon and shook an imaginary big paw. At this Mister
+Swift again shook hands with me and allowed me to perceive, in his
+luminous regard, a solemn commendation and approval.
+
+In this wise was my initiation into the beautiful old house and the
+cordiality of its inmates completed; and I became a familiar of David
+Beasley and his ward, with the privilege to go and come as I pleased;
+there was always gay and friendly welcome. I always came for the cigar
+after lunch, sometimes for lunch itself; sometimes I dined there instead
+of down-town; and now and then when it happened that an errand or
+assignment took me that way in the afternoon, I would run in and “visit”
+ awhile with Hamilton Swift, Junior, and his circle of friends.
+
+There were days, of course, when his attacks were upon him, and only
+Beasley and the doctor and old Bob saw him; I do not know what the boy's
+mental condition was at such times; but when he was better, and could be
+wheeled about the house and again receive callers, he displayed an
+almost dismaying activity of mind--it was active enough, certainly, to
+keep far ahead of my own. And he was masterful: still, Beasley and
+Dowden and I were never directly chidden for insubordination, though
+made to wince painfully by the look of troubled surprise that met us
+when we were not quick enough to catch his meaning.
+
+The order of the day with him always began with the “HOO-ray” and
+“BR-R-RA-vo” of greeting; after which we were to inquire, “Who's with us
+to-day?” Whereupon he would make known the character in which he elected
+to be received for the occasion. If he announced himself as “Mister
+Swift,” everything was to be very grown-up and decorous indeed.
+Formalities and distances were observed; and Mr. Corley Linbridge (an
+elderly personage of great dignity and distinction as a
+mountain-climber) was much oftener included in the conversation than
+Bill Hammersley. If, however, he declared himself to be “Hamilton Swift,
+Junior,” which was his happiest mood, Bill Hammersley and Simpledoria
+were in the ascendant, and there were games and contests. (Dowden,
+Beasley, and I all slid down the banisters on one of the Hamilton Swift,
+Junior, days, at which really picturesque spectacle the boy almost cried
+with laughter--and old Bob and his wife, who came running from the
+kitchen, DID cry.) He had a third appellation for himself--“Just little
+Hamilton”; but this was only when the creaky voice could hardly chirp at
+all and the weazened face was drawn to one side with suffering. When he
+told us he was “Just little Hamilton” we were very quiet.
+
+Once, for ten days, his Invisibles all went away on a visit: Hamilton
+Swift, Junior, had become interested in bears. While this lasted, all of
+Beasley's trousers were, as Dowden said, “a sight.” For that matter,
+Dowden himself was quite hoarse in court from growling so much. The
+bears were dismissed abruptly: Bill Hammersley and Mr. Corley Linbridge
+and Simpledoria came trooping back, and with them they brought that
+wonderful family, the Hunchbergs.
+
+Beasley had just opened the front door, returning at noon from his
+office, when Hamilton Swift, Junior's voice came piping from the
+library, where he was reclining in his wagon by the window.
+
+“Cousin David Beasley! Cousin David, come a-running!” he cried. “Come
+a-running! The Hunchbergs are here!”
+
+Of course Cousin David Beasley came a-running, and was immediately
+introduced to the whole Hunchberg family, a ceremony which old Bob, who
+was with the boy, had previously undergone with courtly grace.
+
+“They like Bob,” explained Hamilton. “Don't you, Mr. Hunchberg? Yes, he
+says they do extremely!” (He used such words as “extremely” often;
+indeed, as Dowden said, he talked “like a child in a book,” which was
+due, I dare say, to his English mother.) “And I'm sure,” the boy went
+on, “that all the family will admire Cousin David. Yes, Mr. Hunchberg
+says, he thinks they will.”
+
+And then (as Bob told me) he went almost out of his head with joy when
+Beasley offered Mr. Hunchberg a cigar and struck a match for him to
+light it.
+
+“But WHAR,” exclaimed the old darky, “whar in de name o' de good Gawd do
+de chile git dem NAMES? Hit lak to SKEER me!”
+
+That was a subject often debated between Dowden and me: there was
+nothing in Wainwright that could have suggested them, and it did not
+seem probable he could have remembered them from over the water. In my
+opinion they were the inventions of that busy and lonely little brain.
+
+I met the Hunchberg family, myself, the day after their arrival, and
+Beasley, by that time, had become so well acquainted with them that he
+could remember all their names, and helped in the introductions. There
+was Mr. Hunchberg--evidently the child's favorite, for he was described
+as the possessor of every engaging virtue--and there was that lively
+matron, Mrs. Hunchberg; there were the Hunchberg young gentlemen, Tom,
+Noble, and Grandee; and the young ladies, Miss Queen, Miss Marble, and
+Miss Molanna--all exceedingly gay and pretty. There was also Colonel
+Hunchberg, an uncle; finally there was Aunt Cooley Hunchberg, a somewhat
+decrepit but very amiable old lady. Mr. Corley Linbridge happened to be
+calling at the same time; and, as it appeared to be Beasley's duty to
+keep the conversation going and constantly to include all of the party
+in its general flow, it struck me that he had truly (as Dowden said)
+“enough to keep him busy.”
+
+The Hunchbergs had lately moved to Wainwright from Constantinople, I
+learned; they had decided not to live in town, however, having purchased
+a fine farm out in the country, and, on account of the distance, were
+able to call at Beasley's only about eight times a day, and seldom more
+than twice in the evening. Whenever a mystic telephone announced that
+they were on the way, the child would have himself wheeled to a window;
+and when they came in sight he would cry out in wild delight, while
+Beasley hastened to open the front door and admit them.
+
+They were so real to the child, and Beasley treated them with such
+consistent seriousness, that between the two of them I sometimes began
+to feel that there actually were such people, and to have moments of
+half-surprise that I couldn't see them; particularly as each of the
+Hunchberg's developed a character entirely his own to the last
+peculiarity, such as the aged Aunt Cooley Hunchberg's deafness, on which
+account Beasley never once forgot to raise his voice when he addressed
+her. Indeed, the details of actuality in all this appeared to bring as
+great a delight to the man as to the child. Certainly he built them up
+with infinite care. On one occasion when Mr. Hunchberg and I happened to
+be calling, Hamilton remarked with surprise that Simpledoria had come
+into the room without licking his hand as he usually did, and had crept
+under the table. Mr. Hunchberg volunteered the information (through
+Beasley) that upon his approach to the house he had seen Simpledoria
+chasing a cat. It was then debated whether chastisement was in order,
+but finally decided that Simpledoria's surreptitious manner of entrance
+and his hiding under the table were sufficient indication that he well
+understood his baseness, and would never let it happen again. And so,
+Beasley having coaxed him out from under the table, the offender “sat
+up,” begged, and was forgiven. I could almost feel the splendid shaggy
+head under my hand when, in turn, I patted Simpledoria to show that the
+reconciliation was unanimous.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Autumn trailed the last leaves behind her flying brown robes one night;
+we woke to a skurry of snow next morning; and it was winter. Down-town,
+along the sidewalks, the merchants set lines of poles, covered them with
+evergreen, and ran streamers of green overhead to encourage the festal
+shopping. Salvation Army Santa Clauses stamped their feet and rang bells
+on the corners, and pink-faced children fixed their noses immovably to
+display-windows. For them, the season of seasons, the time of times, was
+at hand.
+
+To a certain new reporter on the “Despatch” the stir and gayety of the
+streets meant little more than that the days had come when it was night
+in the afternoon, and that he was given fewer political assignments.
+This was annoying, because Beasley's candidacy for the governorship had
+given me a personal interest in the political situation. The nominating
+convention of his party would meet in the spring; the nomination was
+certain to carry the election also, and thus far Beasley showed more
+strength than any other man in the field. “Things are looking his way,”
+ said Dowden. “He's always worked hard for the party; not on the stump,
+of course,” he laughed; “but the boys understand there are more
+important things than speech-making. His record in Congress gave him the
+confidence of everybody in the state, and, besides that, people always
+trust a quiet man. I tell you if nothing happens he'll get it.”
+
+“I'm FER Beasley,” another politician explained, in an interview,
+“because he's Dave Beasley! Yes, sir, I'm FER him. You know the boys say
+if a man is only FOR you, in this state, there isn't much in it and he
+may go back on it; but if he's FER you, he means it. Well, I'm FER
+Beasley!”
+
+There were other candidates, of course; none of them formidable; but I
+was surprised to learn of the existence of a small but energetic faction
+opposing our friend in Wainwright, his own town. (“What are you
+surprised about?” inquired Dowden. “Don't you know what our folks are
+like, YET? If St. Paul lived in Wainwright, do you suppose he could run
+for constable without some of his near neighbors getting out to try and
+down him?”)
+
+The head and front (and backbone, too) of the opposition to Beasley was
+a close-fisted, hard-knuckled, risen-from-the-soil sort of man, one
+named Simeon Peck. He possessed no inconsiderable influence, I heard;
+was a hard worker, and vigorously seconded by an energetic lieutenant, a
+young man named Grist. These, and others they had been able to draw to
+their faction, were bitterly and eagerly opposed to Beasley's
+nomination, and worked without ceasing to prevent it.
+
+I quote the invaluable Mr. Dowden again: “Grist's against us because he
+had a quarrel with a clerk in Beasley's office, and wanted Beasley to
+discharge him, and Beasley wouldn't; Sim Peck's against us out of just
+plain wrong-headedness, and because he never was for ANYTHING nor FER
+anybody in his life. I had a talk with the old mutton-head the other
+day; he said our candidate ought to be a farmer, a 'man of the common
+people,' and when I asked him where he'd find anybody more a 'man of the
+common people' than Beasley, he said Beasley was 'too much of a society
+man' to suit him! The idea of Dave as a 'society man' was too much for
+me, and I laughed in Sim Peck's face, but that didn't stop Sim Peck!
+'Jest look at the style he lives in,' he yelped. 'Ain't he fairly LAPPED
+in luxury? Look at that big house he lives in! Look at the way he goes
+around in that phaeton of his--and a nigger to drive him half the time!'
+I had to holler again, and, of course, that made Sim twice as mad as he
+started out to be; and he went off swearing he'd show ME, before the
+campaign was over. The only trouble he and Grist and that crowd could
+give us would be by finding out something against Dave, and they can't
+do that because there isn't anything to find out.”
+
+I shared his confidence on this latter score, but was somewhat less
+sanguine on some others. There were only two newspapers of any political
+influence in Wainwright, the “Despatch” and the “Journal,” both operated
+in the interest of Beasley's party, and neither had “come out” for him.
+The gossip I heard about our office led me to think that each was
+waiting to see what headway Sim Peck and his faction would make; the
+“Journal” especially, I knew, had some inclination to coquette with
+Peck, Grist, and Company. Altogether, their faction was not entirely to
+be despised.
+
+Thus, my thoughts were a great deal more occupied with Beasley's chances
+than with the holiday spirit that now, with furs and bells and wreathing
+mists of snow, breathed good cheer over the town. So little, indeed, had
+this spirit touched me that, one evening when one of my colleagues,
+standing before the grate-fire in the reporters' room, yawned and said
+he'd be glad when to-morrow was over, I asked him what was the
+particular trouble with to-morrow.
+
+“Christmas,” he explained, languidly. “Always so tedious. Like Sunday.”
+
+“It makes me homesick,” said another, a melancholy little man who was
+forever bragging of his native Duluth.
+
+“Christmas,” I repeated--“to-morrow!”
+
+It was Christmas Eve, and I had not known it! I leaned back in my chair
+in sudden loneliness, what pictures coming before me of long-ago
+Christmas Eves at home!--old Christmas Eves when there was a Tree....
+
+My name was called; the night City Editor had an assignment for me. “Go
+up to Sim Peck's, on Madison Street,” he said. “He thinks he's got
+something on David Beasley, but won't say any more over the telephone.
+See what there is in it.”
+
+I picked up my hat and coat, and left the office at a speed which must
+have given my superior the highest conception of my journalistic zeal.
+At a telephone station on the next corner I called up Mrs.
+Apperthwaite's house and asked for Dowden.
+
+“What are you doing?” I demanded, when his voice had responded.
+
+“Playing bridge,” he answered.
+
+“Are you going out anywhere?”
+
+“No. What's the trouble?”
+
+“I'll tell you later. I may want to see you before I go back to the
+office.”
+
+“All right. I'll be here all evening.”
+
+I hung up the receiver and made off on my errand.
+
+Down-town the streets were crowded with the package-laden people,
+bending heads and shoulders to the bitter wind, which swept a blinding,
+sleet-like snow horizontally against them. At corners it struck so
+tumultuous a blow upon the chest of the pedestrians that for a moment it
+would halt them, and you could hear them gasping half-smothered “AHS”
+ like bathers in a heavy surf. Yet there was a gayety in this eager gale;
+the crowds pressed anxiously, yet happily, up and down the street in
+their generous search for things to give away. It was not the rich who
+struggled through the storm to-night; these were people who carried
+their own bundles home. You saw them: toilers and savers, tired mothers
+and fathers, worn with the grinding thrift of all the year, but now for
+this one night careless of how hard-saved the money, reckless of
+everything but the joy of giving it to bring the children joy on the one
+great to-morrow. So they bent their heads to the freezing wind, their
+arms laden with daring bundles and their hearts uplifted with the
+tremulous happiness of giving more than they could afford. Meanwhile,
+Mr. Simeon Peck, honest man, had chosen this season to work harm if he
+might to the gentlest of his fellow-men.
+
+I found Mr. Peck waiting for me at his house. There were four other men
+with him, one of whom I recognized as Grist, a squat young man with
+slippery-looking black hair and a lambrequin mustache. They were donning
+their coats and hats in the hall when I arrived.
+
+“From the 'Despatch,' hay?” Mr. Peck gave me greeting, as he wound a
+knit comforter about his neck. “That's good. We'd most give you up. This
+here's Mr. Grist, and Mr. Henry P. Cullop, and Mr. Gus Schulmeyer--three
+men that feel the same way about Dave Beasley that I do. That other
+young feller,” he waved a mittened hand to the fourth man--“he's from
+the 'Journal.' Likely you're acquainted.”
+
+The young man from the 'Journal' was unknown to me; moreover, I was far
+from overjoyed at his presence.
+
+“I've got you newspaper men here,” continued Mr. Peck, “because I'm
+goin' to show you somep'n' about Dave Beasley that'll open a good many
+folk's eyes when it's in print.”
+
+“Well, what is it?” I asked, rather sharply.
+
+“Jest hold your horses a little bit,” he retorted. “Grist and me knows,
+and so do Mr. Cullop and Mr. Schulmeyer. And I'm goin' to take them and
+you two reporters to LOOK at it. All ready? Then come on.”
+
+He threw open the door, stooped to the gust that took him by the throat,
+and led the way out into the storm.
+
+“What IS he up to?” I gasped to the “Journal” man as we followed in a
+straggling line.
+
+“I don't know any more than you do,” he returned. “He thinks he's got
+something that'll queer Beasley. Peck's an old fool, but it's just
+possible he's got hold of something. Nearly everybody has ONE thing, at
+least, that they don't want found out. It may be a good story. Lord,
+what a night!”
+
+I pushed ahead to the leader's side. “See here, Mr. Peck--” I began, but
+he cut me off.
+
+“You listen to ME, young man! I'm givin' you some news for your paper,
+and I'm gittin' at it my own way, but I'll git AT it, don't you worry!
+I'm goin' to let some folks around here know what kind of a feller Dave
+Beasley really is; yes, and I'm goin' to show George Dowden he can't
+laugh at ME!”
+
+“You're going to show Mr. Dowden?” I said. “You mean you're going to
+take him on this expedition, too?”
+
+“TAKE him!” Mr. Peck emitted an acrid bark of laughter. “I guess HE'S at
+Beasley's, all right.”
+
+“No, he isn't; he's at home--at Mrs. Apperthwaite's--playing cards.”
+
+“What!”
+
+“I happen to know that he'll be there all evening.”
+
+Mr. Peck smote his palms together. “Grist!” he called, over his
+shoulder, and his colleague struggled forward. “Listen to this: even
+Dowden ain't at Beasley's. Ain't the Lord workin' fer us to-night!”
+
+“Why don't you take Dowden with you,” I urged, “if there's anything you
+want to show him?”
+
+“By George, I WILL!” shouted Peck. “I've got him where the hair's short
+NOW!”
+
+“That's right,” said Grist.
+
+“Gentlemen”--Peck turned to the others--“when we git to Mrs.
+Apperthwaite's, jest stop outside along the fence a minute. I recken
+we'll pick up a recruit.”
+
+Shivering, we took up our way again in single file, stumbling through
+drifts that had deepened incredibly within the hour. The wind was
+straight against us, and so stingingly sharp and so laden with the
+driving snow that when we reached Mrs. Apperthwaite's gate (which we
+approached from the north, not passing Beasley's) my eyes were so full
+of smarting tears I could see only blurred planes of light dancing
+vaguely in the darkness, instead of brightly lit windows.
+
+“Now,” said Peck, panting and turning his back to the wind; “the rest of
+you gentlemen wait out here. You two newspaper men, you come with me.”
+
+He opened the gate and went in, the “Journal” reporter and I
+following--all three of us wiping our half-blinded eyes. When we reached
+the shelter of the front porch, I took the key from my pocket and opened
+the door.
+
+“I live here,” I explained to Mr. Peck.
+
+“All right,” he said. “Jest step in and tell George Dowden that Sim
+Peck's out here and wants to see him at the door a minute. Be quick.”
+
+I went into the library, and there sat Dowden contemplatively playing
+bridge with two of the elderly ladies and Miss Apperthwaite. The
+last-mentioned person quite took my breath away.
+
+In honor of the Christmas Eve (I supposed) she wore an evening dress of
+black lace, and the only word for what she looked has suffered such
+misuse that one hesitates over it: yet that is what she was--regal--and
+no less! There was a sort of splendor about her. It detracted nothing
+from this that her expression was a little sad: something not uncommon
+with her lately; a certain melancholy, faint but detectable, like breath
+on a mirror. I had attributed it to Jean Valjean, though perhaps
+to-night it might have been due merely to bridge.
+
+“What is it?” asked Dowden, when, after an apology for disturbing the
+game, I had drawn him out in the hall.
+
+I motioned toward the front door. “Simeon Peck. He thinks he's got
+something on Mr. Beasley. He's waiting to see you.”
+
+Dowden uttered a sharp, half-coherent exclamation and stepped quickly to
+the door. “Peck!” he said, as he jerked it open.
+
+“Oh, I'm here!” declared that gentleman, stepping into view. “I've come
+around to let you know that you couldn't laugh like a horse at ME no
+more, George Dowden! So YOU weren't invited, either.”
+
+“Invited?” said Dowden, “Where?”
+
+“Over to the BALL your friend is givin'.”
+
+“What friend?”
+
+“Dave Beasley. So you ain't quite good enough to dance with his
+high-society friends!”
+
+“What are you talking about?” Dowden demanded, impatiently.
+
+“I reckon you won't be quite so strong fer Beasley,” responded Peck,
+with a vindictive little giggle, “when you find he can use you in his
+BUSINESS, but when it comes to ENTERTAININ'--oh no, you ain't quite the
+boy!”
+
+“I'd appreciate your explaining,” said Dowden. “It's kind of cold
+standing here.”
+
+Peck laughed shrilly. “Then I reckon you better git your hat and coat
+and come along. Can't do US no harm, and might be an eye-opener fer YOU.
+Grist and Gus Schulmeyer and Hank Cullop's waitin' out yonder at the
+gate. We be'n havin' kind of a consultation at my house over somep'n'
+Grist seen at Beasley's a little earlier in the evening.”
+
+“What did Grist see?”
+
+“HACKS! Hacks drivin' up to Beasley's house--a whole lot of 'em. Grist
+was down the street a piece, and it was pretty dark, but he could see
+the lamps and hear the doors slam as the people got out. Besides, the
+whole place is lit up from cellar to attic. Grist come on to my house
+and told me about it, and I begun usin' the telephone; called up all the
+men that COUNT in the party--found most of 'em at home, too. I ast 'em
+if they was invited to this ball to-night; and not a one of 'em was.
+THEY'RE only in politics; they ain't high SOCIETY enough to be ast to
+Mr. Beasley's dancin'-parties! But I WOULD 'a' thought he'd let YOU
+in--ANYWAYS fer the second table!” Mr. Peck shrilled out his acrid and
+exultant laugh again. “I got these fellers from the newspapers, and all
+I want is to git this here ball in print to-morrow, and see what the
+boys that do the work at the primaries have to say about it--and what
+their WIVES'll say about the man that's too high-toned to have 'em in
+his house. I'll bet Beasley thought he was goin' to keep these doin's
+quiet; afraid the farmers might not believe he's jest the plain man he
+sets up to be--afraid that folks like you that ain't invited might turn
+against him. I'LL fool him! We're goin' to see what there is to see, and
+I'm goin' to have these boys from the newspapers write a full account of
+it. If you want to come along, I expect it'll do you a power o' good.”
+
+“I'll go,” said Dowden, quickly. He got his coat and hat from a table in
+the hall, and we rejoined the huddled and shivering group at the gate.
+
+“Got my recruit, gents!” shrilled Peck, slapping Dowden boisterously on
+the shoulders. “I reckon he'll git a change of heart to-night!”
+
+And now, sheltering my eyes from the stinging wind, I saw what I had
+been too blind to see as we approached Mrs. Apperthwaite's. Beasley's
+house WAS illuminated; every window, up stairs and down, was aglow with
+rosy light. That was luminously evident, although the shades were
+lowered.
+
+“Look at that!” Peck turned to Dowden, giggling triumphantly. “Wha'd I
+tell you! How do you feel about it NOW?”
+
+“But where are the hacks?” asked Dowden, gravely.
+
+“Folks all come,” answered Mr. Peck, with complete assurance. “Won't be
+no more hacks till they begin to go home.”
+
+We plunged ahead as far as the corner of Beasley's fence, where Peck
+stopped us again, and we drew together, slapping our hands and stamping
+our feet. Peck was delighted--a thoroughly happy man; his sour giggle of
+exultation had become continuous, and the same jovial break was audible
+in Grist's voice as he said to the “Journal” reporter and me:
+
+“Go ahead, boys. Git your story. We'll wait here fer you.”
+
+The “Journal” reporter started toward the gate; he had gone, perhaps,
+twenty feet when Simeon Peck whistled in sharp warning. The reporter
+stopped short in his tracks.
+
+Beasley's front door was thrown open, and there stood Beasley himself in
+evening dress, bowing and smiling, but not at us, for he did not see us.
+The bright hall behind him was beautiful with evergreen streamers and
+wreaths, and great flowering plants in jars. A strain of dance-music
+wandered out to us as the door opened, but there was nobody except David
+Beasley in sight, which certainly seemed peculiar--for a ball!
+
+“Rest of 'em inside, dancin',” explained Mr. Peck, crouching behind the
+picket-fence. “I'll bet the house is more'n half full o' low-necked
+wimmin!”
+
+“Sh!” said Grist. “Listen.”
+
+Beasley had begun to speak, and his voice, loud and clear, sounded over
+the wind. “Come right in, Colonel!” he said. “I'd have sent a carriage
+for you if you hadn't telephoned me this afternoon that your rheumatism
+was so bad you didn't expect to be able to come. I'm glad you're well
+again. Yes, they're all here, and the ladies are getting up a quadrille
+in the sitting-room.”
+
+(It was at this moment that I received upon the calf of the right leg a
+kick, the ecstatic violence of which led me to attribute it to Mr.
+Dowden.)
+
+“Gentlemen's dressing-room up-stairs to the right, Colonel,” called
+Beasley, as he closed the door.
+
+There was a pause of awed silence among us.
+
+(I improved it by returning the kick to Mr. Dowden. He made no
+acknowledgment of its reception other than to sink his chin a little
+deeper into the collar of his ulster.)
+
+“By the Almighty!” said Simeon Peck, hoarsely. “Who--WHAT was Dave
+Beasley talkin' to? There wasn't nobody THERE!”
+
+“Git out,” Grist bade him; but his tone was perturbed. “He seen that
+reporter. He was givin' us the laugh.”
+
+“He's crazy!” exclaimed Peck, vehemently.
+
+Immediately all four members of his party began to talk at the same
+time: Mr. Schulmeyer agreeing with Grist, and Mr. Cullop holding with
+Peck that Beasley had surely become insane; while the “Journal” man,
+returning, was certain that he had not been seen. Argument became a
+wrangle; excitement over the remarkable scene we had witnessed, and,
+perhaps, a certain sharpness partially engendered by the risk of
+freezing, led to some bitterness. High words were flung upon the wind.
+Eventually, Simeon Peck got the floor to himself for a moment.
+
+“See here, boys, there's no use gittin' mad amongs' ourselves,” he
+vociferated. “One thing we're all agreed on: nobody here never seen no
+such a dam peculiar performance as WE jest seen in their whole lives
+before. THURfore, ball or NO ball, there's somep'n' mighty wrong about
+this business. Ain't that so?”
+
+They said it was.
+
+“Well, then, there's only one thing to do--let's find out what it is.”
+
+“You bet we will.”
+
+“I wouldn't send no one in there alone,” Peck went on, excitedly, “with
+a crazy man. Besides, I want to see what's goin' on, myself.”--“So do
+we!” This was unanimous.
+
+“Then let's see if there ain't some way to do it. Perhaps he ain't
+pulled all the shades down on the other side the house. Lots o' people
+fergit to do that.”
+
+There was but one mind in the party regarding this proposal. The next
+minute saw us all cautiously sneaking into the side yard, a ragged line
+of bent and flapping figures, black against the snow.
+
+Simeon Peck's expectations were fulfilled--more than fulfilled. Not only
+were all the shades of the big, three-faced bay-window of the
+“sitting-room” lifted, but (evidently on account of the too great
+generosity of a huge log-fire that blazed in the old-fashioned
+chimney-place) one of the windows was half-raised as well. Here, in the
+shadow just beyond the rosy oblongs of light that fell upon the snow, we
+gathered and looked freely within.
+
+Part of the room was clear to our view, though about half of it was shut
+off from us by the very king of all Christmas-trees, glittering with
+dozens and dozens of candles, sumptuous in silver, sparkling in gold,
+and laden with Heaven alone knows how many and what delectable
+enticements. Opposite the Tree, his back against the wall, sat old Bob,
+clad in a dress of state, part of which consisted of a swallow-tail coat
+(with an overgrown chrysanthemum in the buttonhole), a red necktie, and
+a pink-and-silver liberty cap of tissue-paper. He was scraping a fiddle
+“like old times come again,” and the tune he played was, “Oh, my Liza,
+po' gal!” My feet shuffled to it in the snow.
+
+No one except old Bob was to be seen in the room, but we watched him and
+listened breathlessly. When he finished “Liza,” he laid the fiddle
+across his knee, wiped his face with a new and brilliant blue silk
+handkerchief, and said:
+
+“Now come de big speech.”
+
+The Honorable David Beasley, carrying a small mahogany table, stepped
+out from beyond the Christmas-tree, advanced to the centre of the room;
+set the table down; disappeared for a moment and returned with a white
+water-pitcher and a glass. He placed these upon the table, bowed
+gracefully several times, then spoke:
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen--” There he paused.
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Simeon Peck, slowly, “don't this beat hell!”
+
+“Look out!” The “Journal” reporter twitched his sleeve. “Ladies
+present.”
+
+“Where?” said I.
+
+He leaned nearer me and spoke in a low tone. “Just behind us. She
+followed us over from your boarding-house. She's been standing around
+near us all along. I supposed she was Dowden's daughter, probably.”
+
+“He hasn't any daughter,” I said, and stepped back to the hooded figure
+I had been too absorbed in our quest to notice.
+
+It was Miss Apperthwaite.
+
+She had thrown a loose cloak over her head and shoulders; but enveloped
+in it as she was, and crested and epauletted with white, I knew her at
+once. There was no mistaking her, even in a blizzard.
+
+She caught my hand with a strong, quick pressure, and, bending her head
+to mine, said, close to my ear:
+
+“I heard everything that man said in our hallway. You left the library
+door open when you called Mr. Dowden out.”
+
+“So,” I returned, maliciously, “you--you couldn't HELP following!”
+
+She released my hand--gently, to my surprise.
+
+“Hush,” she whispered. “He's saying something.”
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Beasley again--and stopped again.
+
+Dowden's voice sounded hysterically in my right ear. (Miss Apperthwaite
+had whispered in my left.) “The only speech he's ever made in his
+life--and he's stuck!”
+
+But Beasley wasn't: he was only deliberating.
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began--“Mr. and Mrs. Hunchberg, Colonel
+Hunchberg and Aunt Cooley Hunchberg, Miss Molanna, Miss Queen, and Miss
+Marble Hunchberg, Mr. Noble, Mr. Tom, and Mr. Grandee Hunchberg, Mr.
+Corley Linbridge, and Master Hammersley:--You see before you to-night,
+my person, merely the representative of your real host. MISTER Swift.
+Mister Swift has expressed a wish that there should be a speech, and has
+deputed me to make it. He requests that the subject he has assigned me
+should be treated in as dignified a manner as is possible--considering
+the orator. Ladies and gentlemen”--he took a sip of water--“I will now
+address you upon the following subject: 'Why we Call Christmas-time the
+Best Time.'
+
+“Christmas-time is the best time because it is the kindest time. Nobody
+ever felt very happy without feeling very kind, and nobody ever felt
+very kind without feeling at least a LITTLE happy. So, of course, either
+way about, the happiest time is the kindest time--that's THIS time. The
+most beautiful things our eyes can see are the stars; and for that
+reason, and in remembrance of One star, we set candles on the Tree to be
+stars in the house. So we make Christmas-time a time of stars indoors;
+and they shine warmly against the cold outdoors that is like the cold of
+other seasons not so kind. We set our hundred candles on the Tree and
+keep them bright throughout the Christmas-time, for while they shine
+upon us we have light to see this life, not as a battle, but as the
+march of a mighty Fellowship! Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you!”
+
+He bowed to right and left, as to an audience politely applauding, and,
+lifting the table and its burden, withdrew; while old Bob again set his
+fiddle to his chin and scraped the preliminary measures of a quadrille.
+
+Beasley was back in an instant, shouting as he came: “TAKE your
+pardners! Balance ALL!”
+
+And then and there, and all by himself, he danced a quadrille,
+performing at one and the same time for four lively couples. Never in my
+life have I seen such gyrations and capers as were cut by that
+long-legged, loose-jointed, miraculously flying figure. He was in the
+wildest motion without cessation, never the fraction of an instant
+still; calling the figures at the top of his voice and dancing them
+simultaneously; his expression anxious but polite (as is the habit of
+other dancers); his hands extended as if to swing his partner or corner,
+or “opposite lady”; and his feet lifting high and flapping down in an
+old-fashioned step. “FIRST four, forward and back!” he shouted. “Forward
+and SALUTE! BALANCE to corners! SWING pardners! GR-R-RAND
+Right-and-Left!”
+
+I think the combination of abandon and decorum with which he performed
+that “Grand Right-and-Left” was the funniest thing I have ever seen. But
+I didn't laugh at it.
+
+Neither did Miss Apperthwaite.
+
+“NOW do you believe me?” Peck was arguing, fiercely, with Mr.
+Schulmeyer. “Is he crazy, or ain't he?”
+
+“He is,” Grist agreed, hoarsely. “He is a stark, starin', ravin',
+roarin' lunatic! And the nigger's humorin' him!”
+
+They were all staring, open-mouthed and aghast, into the lighted room.
+
+“Do you see where it puts US?” Simeon Peck's rasping voice rose high.
+
+“I guess I do!” said Grist. “We come out to buy a barn, and got a house
+and lot fer the same money. It's the greatest night's work you ever
+done, Sim Peck!”
+
+“I guess it is!”
+
+“Shake on it, Sim.”
+
+They shook hands, exalted with triumph.
+
+“This'll do the work,” giggled Peck. “It's about two-thousand per cent.
+better than the story we started to git. Why, Dave Beasley'll be in a
+padded cell in a month! It'll be all over town to-morrow, and he'll have
+as much chance fer governor as that nigger in there!” In his ecstasy he
+smote Dowden deliriously in the ribs. “What do you think of your
+candidate NOW?”
+
+“Wait,” said Dowden. “Who came in the hacks that Grist saw?”
+
+This staggered Mr. Peck. He rubbed his mitten over his woollen cap as if
+scratching his head. “Why,” he said, slowly--“who in Halifax DID come in
+them hacks?”
+
+“The Hunchbergs,” said I.
+
+“Who's the Hunchbergs? Where--”
+
+“Listen,” said Dowden.
+
+“FIRST couple, FACE out!” shouted Beasley, facing out with an invisible
+lady on his akimboed arm, while old Bob sawed madly at A New Coon in
+Town.
+
+“SECOND couple, FALL in!” Beasley wheeled about and enacted the second
+couple.
+
+“THIRD couple!” He fell in behind himself again.
+
+“FOURTH couple, IF you please! BALANCE--ALL!--I beg your pardon, Miss
+Molanna, I'm afraid I stepped on your train.--SASHAY ALL!”
+
+After the “sashay”--the noblest and most dashing bit of gymnastics
+displayed in the whole quadrille--he bowed profoundly to his invisible
+partner and came to a pause, wiping his streaming face. Old Bob
+dexterously swung A New Coon into the stately measures of a triumphal
+march.
+
+“And now,” Beasley announced, in stentorian tones, “if the ladies will
+be so kind as to take the gentlemen's arms, we will proceed to the
+dining-room and partake of a slight collation.”
+
+Thereupon came a slender piping of joy from that part of the room
+screened from us by the Tree.
+
+“Oh, Cousin David Beasley, that was the BEAUTIFULLEST quadrille ever
+danced in the world! And, please, won't YOU take Mrs. Hunchberg out to
+supper?”
+
+Then into the vision of our paralyzed and dumfounded watchers came the
+little wagon, pulled by the old colored woman, Bob's wife, in her best,
+and there, propped upon pillows, lay Hamilton Swift, Junior, his soul
+shining rapture out of his great eyes, a bright spot of color on each of
+his thin cheeks. He lifted himself on one elbow, and for an instant
+something seemed to be wrong with the brace under his chin.
+
+Beasley sprang to him and adjusted it tenderly. Then he bowed
+elaborately toward the mantel-piece.
+
+“Mrs. Hunchberg,” he said, “may I have the honor?” And offered his arm.
+
+“And I must have MISTER Hunchberg,” chirped Hamilton. “He must walk with
+me.”
+
+“He tells ME,” said Beasley, “he'll be mighty glad to. And there's a
+plate of bones for Simpledoria.”
+
+“You lead the way,” cried the child; “you and Mrs. Hunchberg.”
+
+“Are we all in line?” Beasley glanced back over his shoulder. “HOO-ray!
+Now, let us on. Ho! there!”
+
+“BR-R-RA-vo!” applauded Mister Swift.
+
+And Beasley, his head thrown back and his chest out, proudly led the
+way, stepping nobly and in time to the exhilarating measures. Hamilton
+Swift, Junior, towed by the beaming old mammy, followed in his wagon,
+his thin little arm uplifted and his fingers curled as if they held a
+trusted hand.
+
+When they reached the door, old Bob rose, turned in after them, and,
+still fiddling, played the procession and himself down the hall.
+
+And so they marched away, and we were left staring into the empty
+room....
+
+“My soul!” said the “Journal” reporter, gasping. “And he did all
+THAT--just to please a little sick kid!”
+
+“I can't figure it out,” murmured Sim Peck, piteously.
+
+“_I_ can,” said the “Journal” reporter. “This story WILL be all over
+town to-morrow.” He glanced at me, and I nodded. “It'll be all over
+town,” he continued, “though not in any of the papers--and I don't
+believe it's going to hurt Dave Beasley's chances any.”
+
+Mr. Peck and his companions turned toward the street; they went
+silently.
+
+The young man from the “Journal” overtook them. “Thank you for sending
+for me,” he said, cordially. “You've given me a treat. I'm FER Beasley!”
+
+Dowden put his hand on my shoulder. He had not observed the third figure
+still remaining.
+
+“Well, sir,” he remarked, shaking the snow from his coat, “they were
+right about one thing: it certainly was mighty low down of Dave not to
+invite ME--and you, too--to his Christmas party. Let him go to thunder
+with his old invitations, I'm going in, anyway! Come on. I'm plum
+froze.”
+
+There was a side door just beyond the bay-window, and Dowden went to it
+and rang, loud and long. It was Beasley himself who opened it.
+
+“What in the name--” he began, as the ruddy light fell upon Dowden's
+face and upon me, standing a little way behind. “What ARE you
+two--snow-banks? What on earth are you fellows doing out here?”
+
+“We've come to your Christmas party, you old horse-thief!” Thus Mr.
+Dowden.
+
+“HOO-ray!” said Beasley.
+
+Dowden turned to me. “Aren't you coming?”
+
+“What are you waiting for, old fellow?” said Beasley.
+
+I waited a moment longer, and then it happened.
+
+She came out of the shadow and went to the foot of the steps, her cloak
+falling from her shoulders as she passed me. I picked it up.
+
+She lifted her arms pleadingly, though her head was bent with what
+seemed to me a beautiful sort of shame. She stood there with the snow
+driving against her and did not speak. Beasley drew his hand slowly
+across his eyes--to see if they were really there, I think.
+
+“David,” she said, at last. “You've got so many lovely people in your
+house to-night: isn't there room for--for just one fool? It's
+Christmas-time!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Beasley's Christmas Party, by Booth Tarkington
+
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