Success and Artie Cherry-3
1436 Words
"You bet," said he.
But now Lulu was infinitely removed, laughed a great deal, avoided Artie's awkward efforts at personality. He made few. He seemed to be thinking.
At nine o'clock the Cherry's door-bell rang, and there stood Wooden Kiefer. He was clothed in his best and wore a shining expectancy. And when he had been ushered into the parlor, and Mis' Cherry was lighting the lamp and holding up all conversation while she told them that this was the twenty-seventh chimney that she had had for it, Lulu Merrit waited her time, and then surprisingly said:
"Ready in just a minute, Wood. I had an engagement for the second show to the Gem," she explained. "I thought it 'd be time to leave by now ..."
She ceased awkwardly. Wooden Kiefer covered the moment with a rumble of convenient laughter. Lulu went for her gloves—outspread on the spare-room bed. And before she had returned, in came Cousin Hazleton, and when he had heard Wooden's name:
"Not Wedge Kiefer's boy?" he cried. "Say, you are! Well, if you're anything like your dad, you may be just the hair-pin I'm looking for. What's your business?"
Wooden, modest and red, stood toying with a door-knob. "I'm—that is, I'm clerking in a grocery-store," said he.
"Good enough," averred Cousin Hazleton. "Looking for an opening, like enough?"
"Oh, sure!" Wooden laughed heartily at the mere idea of his having an opening.
"Well, now," said Cousin Hazleton, "I may have just the thing for you. I'll have a man round looking you up, one of these days, mebbe. Wedge Kiefer's son—well, well!"
Lulu stood before Artie Cherry. "Good night, Artie," she said. "I've enjoyed it ever so much."
Artie thirsted to be eloquent. "Same here," he said, with ardent eye.
"You?" cried Lulu, with her wide look. "What? Such a quiet evening after all your city excitement? Wooden, imagine that!" (She said, "Ee-magine.")
On which she left him.
Alone, Artie drove the resigned horse back to the barn. He had meant to drive Lulu through the dusky streets. He felt abandoned. He looked on all the little houses, tucked in their fifty feet of green, at the lights flashing out from upper windows, beneath sloping roofs and wide eaves, and he felt a little sick. From the stable he came home by the back way. Showing off seemed to have lost its savor.
As he entered the sitting-room, Cousin Hazleton was yawning aloud.
"Well, now," he said, his yawn trembling all through his syllables, "I'll get along to bed for a few hours. Then I'll just slip out about one o'clock—got to catch that one-twenty. Got a deal on in the morning—" He pondered, contemplated Artie leaning his smooth gray length in a doorway, and Cousin Hazleton said: "Fact is, I've stopped off here to look at a piece of prop'ity I'm going to buy. We're goin' to open up a retail branch business here—yes, retail knit goods—introduce the stuff to the country trade better. And," he added, engagingly, "I was after Artie's city address. Thought of sending a man down to work you into the business, m' boy, and shove you on up if you was any good. But with the gilt edges you've worked up for yourself in the city—say, you couldn't afford to leave there for nothin' in the world. I can see that, half an eye."
Artie Cherry's neck seemed to lose something of its substance. His head drooped forward a bit, but his eyes were immovably fixed upon his cousin. Artie made two efforts to speak, his chin doing all that was required of it, the words themselves halting. When he did speak his cousin had already turned away.
"How—how much would this here pay?" Artie Cherry asked, low.
"It wouldn't work up to more 'n twelve hunderd," Cousin Hazleton said. "Not—not more 'n enough to buy your clothes. And taxicabs. And the-ayter tickets. Well, sir, now I guess I'll get m' forty winks."
He went away, but in the doorway he paused.
"I donno but Wedge Kiefer's boy may be the man I'm looking for," said he. "Good, sensible chap. I got my eye peeled in his di-rection. What d'ye think?"
"Wood's—all—right," said Artie Cherry, and was left standing alone in the parlor. Even Mis' Cherry, as she removed the ruffled pillow-shams in the ground-floor spare-room, was abnormally silent and did not give the history of the pillow-sham pattern.
Artie went to his room. He sat down by his window—in the dark, for he did not like to light his lamp and disturb the mother robin. The scent of the mint and rose geranium and petunias in the garden filled the little room, and the warm darkness brooded on the maples.
After a long time the robin made a low, frightened note, and Artie Cherry drew back from the window. He had been whispering to himself, and his breath broke in something like a sob.
When the clock-that-lived-in-the-passage yapped out eleven Artie Cherry stole across to his mother's room. He had taken off the magnificent shoes and the gray spats, the immaculate coat, the white waistcoat, the brilliant cravat, the turquoise pin. And as he passed beneath the kerosene-lamp turned low at the head of the stair he looked like a little boy, with hair rumpled at the back and loose, parted lips.
"Ma," he said, at her door.
She was awake, or on the instant woke—in the manner of mothers. He went and sat on the edge of her bed.
"Ma," said he, "you know what I told about bein' in charge—to Duckbury's?"
"Yes, son."
"Well, I'm—I'm—I'm the night watchman there."
There was silence. In the darkness Artie Cherry closed his eyes and waited, breathing through parted lips, like a little boy who has been running fast.
His mother reached up from her bed and caught him. "Artie!" she said. "Artie! Oh, ain't I glad!"
He thought that he couldn't have got her word. "Glad?" he said over, stupidly.
"Now you can take Cousin Hazleton's. I was laying here crying because you couldn't. Because you was too grand to come home and work for him."
"Ma!" he cried. "Ma!"
They sat there together until they heard Cousin Hazleton stirring. Then his mother gently pushed Artie from her, and he crept down, stocking-footed, and lit the lamp in the sitting-room. When Cousin Hazleton came in, drawing on his coat, Artie stood there waiting.
Then Artie told.
Cousin Hazleton was no easy father-confessor. In that smoky light his look was terrible.
"Then you lied about the brownstone-front life, too," he observed.
No, no! Artie's lodging-house was of brownstone. There was a little colored boy who swept and shoveled and tended door. There was a bath-room—he had to go two floors down to it from his fourth-floor back on account of the third floor being shut off private by the fortune-teller. Breakfast would be sent up—for five times what he paid for it on the avenoo. And down on the first floor was a victrola. He often heard it when he was passing.
"Lied about the taxicabs," Cousin Hazleton pursued, categorically.
No, no! For Artie had a friend who was a taxicab-driver.
"Lied about the the-ay-ter, though."
No again! For a part of his first season in town, fifteen years before, Artie had ushered.
"M—m—m!" said Cousin Hazleton, and looked out from under his crumpled brows.
Mercifully, the flame of the lamp streaked up in a cat's-ear to the top of the chimney. Artie was still diligently attending to this when his cousin spoke again.
"I don't know whether I can ever teach you to run my store or not," he said. "But if you're man enough for this, there must be somethin' to you."
"I hate my job like p-p-poison," said Artie Cherry. "If you take me on, I'll work like a d-d-dog." Then the passion of the confessional seized him. "These clothes are everything I own in the world," he cried, "only my two thousand."
"Two thousand what?" Cousin Hazleton demanded.
"Why, dollars!" said Artie Cherry. "I 'ain't ever touched that, of course! I've saved that."
Cousin Hazleton laughed aloud. "I guess," he said, "you're good enough for my cousin—when you get the edges off. And for my store, too, mebbe," he added, and left for the one-twenty.
When Ball's d**g-store was opened next morning, Artie Cherry was waiting on the steps. He wore neither coat nor waistcoat, but looked like all the other boys getting down to work in the hot summer morning. Resolutely he sat down before the toilet goods, and there he was when she entered.
'Well, what can I do for you?" asked Lulu—and here she was, in a white waist none too clean, and she told herself that she cared not an atom.
"You can marry me," said Artie Cherry. "If I get a job in my cousin's new store here in town, will you?"
She made him savor the last drop. "What? And leave all the big-bug times in the city?"
Artie Cherry looked in her eyes gravely, miserably, passionately. "I lied about a good deal of that," said he.
"Honestly?" she cried, gladly.
- Writer
