Billy got up early. As he plunged into his cold bath he envied his room-mate, who could remain at rest indefinitely, while his own hard lot was hurrying him to prayers and breakfast and Oscar’s inexorable notes. He sighed once more as he looked at the beauty of the new morning and felt its air upon his cheeks. He and Bertie belonged to the same club-table, and they met there mournfully over the oatmeal. This very hour to-morrow would see them eating their last before the examination in Philosophy 4. And nothing pleasant was going to happen between,—nothing that they could dwell upon with the slightest satisfaction. Nor had their sleep entirely refreshed them. Their eyes were not quite right, and their hair, though it was brushed, showed fatigue of the nerves in a certain inclination to limpness and disorder.
“Epicharmos of Kos
Was covered with moss,”
remarked Billy.
“Thales and Zeno
Were duffers at keno,”
added Bertie.
In the hours of trial they would often express their education thus.
“Philosophers I have met,” murmured Billy, with scorn And they ate silently for some time.
“There’s one thing that’s valuable,” said Bertie next. “When they spring those tricks on you about the flying arrow not moving, and all the rest, and prove it all right by logic, you learn what pure logic amounts to when it cuts loose from common sense. And Oscar thinks it’s immense. We shocked him.”
“He’s found the Bird-in-Hand!” cried Billy, quite suddenly.
“Oscar?” said Bertie, with an equal shout.
“No, John. John has. Came home last night and waked me up and told me.”
“Good for John,” remarked Bertie, pensively.
Now, to the undergraduate mind of that day the Bird-in-Hand tavern was what the golden fleece used to be to the Greeks,—a sort of shining, remote, miraculous thing, difficult though not impossible to find, for which expeditions were fitted out. It was reported to be somewhere in the direction of Quincy, and in one respect it resembled a ghost: you never saw a man who had seen it himself; it was always his cousin, or his elder brother in ‘79. But for the successful explorer a dinner and wines were waiting at the Bird-in-Hand more delicious than anything outside of Paradise. You will realize, therefore, what a thing it was to have a room-mate who had attained. If Billy had not been so dog-tired last night, he would have sat up and made John tell him everything from beginning to end.
“Soft-shell crabs, broiled live lobster, salmon, grass-plover, dough-birds, and rum omelette,” he was now reciting to Bertie.
“They say the rum there is old Jamaica brought in slave-ships,” said Bertie, reverently.
“I’ve heard he has white port of 1820,” said Billy; “and claret and champagne.”
Bertie looked out of the window. “This is the finest day there’s been,” said he. Then he looked at his watch. It was twenty-five minutes before Oscar. Then he looked Billy hard in the eye. “Have you any sand?” he inquired.
It was a challenge to Billy’s manhood. “Sand!” he yelled, sitting up.
Both of them in an instant had left the table and bounded out of the house. “I’ll meet you at Pike’s,” said Billy to Bertie. “Make him give us the black gelding.”
“Might as well bring our notes along,” Bertie called after his rushing friend; “and get John to tell you the road.”
To see their haste, as the two fled in opposite directions upon their errands, you would have supposed them under some crying call of obligation, or else to be escaping from justice.
Twenty minutes later they were seated behind the black gelding and bound on their journey in search of the bird-in-Hand. Their notes in Philosophy 4 were stowed under the buggy-seat.
“Did Oscar see you?” Bertie inquired.
“Not he,” cried Billy, joyously.
“Oscar will wonder,” said Bertie; and he gave the black gelding a triumphant touch with the whip.
You see, it was Oscar that had made them run go; or, rather, it was Duty and Fate walking in Oscar’s displeasing likeness. Nothing easier, nothing more reasonable, than to see the tutor and tell him they should not need him to-day. But that would have spoiled everything. They did not know it, but deep in their childlike hearts was a delicious sense that in thus unaccountably disappearing they had won a great game, had got away ahead of Duty and Fate. After all it did bear some resemblance to an escape from justice. .
Could he have known this, Oscar would have felt more superior than ever. Punctually at the hour agreed, ten o’clock he rapped at Billy’s door and stood waiting, his leather wallet of notes nipped safe between elbow and ribs. Then he knocked again. Then he tried the door, and as it was open, he walked deferentially into the sitting room. Sonorous snores came from one of the bedrooms. Oscar peered in and saw John; but he saw no Billy in the other bed. Then, always deferential, he sat down in the sitting room and watched a couple of prettily striped coats hanging in a half-open closet.
At that moment the black gelding was flirtatiously crossing the drawbridge over the Charles on the Allston Road. The gelding knew the clank of those suspending chains and the slight unsteadiness of the meeting halves of the bridge as well as it knew oats. But it could not enjoy its own entirely premeditated surprise quite so much as Bertie and Billy were enjoying their entirely unpremeditated flight from Oscar. The wind rippled on the water; down at the boat-house Smith was helping some one embark in a single scull; they saw the green meadows toward Brighton; their foreheads felt cool and unvexed, and each new minute had the savor of fresh forbidden fruit.
“How do we go?” said Bertie.
“I forgot I had a bet with John until I had waked him,” said Billy. “He bet me five last night I couldn’t find it, and I took him. Of course, after that I had no right to ask him anything, and he thought I was funny. He said I couldn’t find out if the landlady’s hair was her own. I went him another five on that.”
“How do you say we ought to go?” said Bertie, presently.
“Quincy, I’m sure.”
They were now crossing the Albany tracks at Allston. “We’re going to get there,” said Bertie; and he turned the black gelding toward Brookline and Jamaica Plain.
The enchanting day surrounded them. The suburban houses, even the suburban street-cars, seemed part of one great universal plan of enjoyment. Pleasantness so radiated from the boys’ faces and from their general appearance of clean white flannel trousers and soft clean shirts of pink and blue that a driver on a passing car leaned to look after them with a smile and a butcher hailed them with loud brotherhood from his cart. They turned a corner, and from a long way off came the sight of the tower of Memorial Hall. Plain above all intervening tenements and foliage it rose. Over there beneath its shadow were examinations and Oscar. It caught Billy’s roving eye, and he nudged Bertie, pointing silently to it. “Ha, ha!” sang Bertie. And beneath his light whip the gelding sprang forward into its stride.
The clocks of Massachusetts struck eleven. Oscar rose doubtfully from his chair in Billy’s study. Again he looked into Billy’s bedroom and at the empty bed. Then he went for a moment and watched the still forcibly sleeping John. He turned his eyes this way and that, and after standing for a while moved quietly back to his chair and sat down with the leather wallet of notes on his lap, his knees together, and his unblocked shoes touching. In due time the clocks of Massachusetts struck noon.
In a meadow where a brown amber stream ran, lay Bertie and Billy on the grass. Their summer coats were off, their belts loosened. They watched with eyes half closed the long water-weeds moving gently as the current waved and twined them. The black gelding, brought along a farm road and through a gate, waited at its ease in the field beside a stone wall. Now and then it stretched and cropped a young leaf from a vine that grew over the wall, and now and then the want wind brought down the fruit blossoms all over the meadow. They fell from the tree where Bertie and Billy lay, and the boys brushed them from their faces. Not very far away was Blue Hill, softly shining; and crows high up in the air came from it occasionally across here.
By one o’clock a change had come in Billy’s room. Oscar during that hour had opened his satchel of philosophy upon his lap and read his notes attentively. Being almost word perfect in many parts of them, he now spent his unexpected leisure in acquiring accurately the language of still further paragraphs. “The sharp line of demarcation which Descartes drew between consciousness and the material world,” whispered Oscar with satisfaction, and knew that if Descartes were on the examination paper he could start with this and go on for nearly twenty lines before he would have to use any words of his own. As he memorized, the chambermaid, who had come to do the bedrooms three times already and had gone away again, now returned and no longer restrained her indignation. “Get up Mr. Blake!” she vociferated to the sleeping John; “you ought to be ashamed!” And she shook the bedstead. Thus John had come to rise and discover Oscar. The patient tutor explained himself as John listened in his pyjamas.
“Why, I’m sorry,” said he, “but I don’t believe they’ll get back very soon.”
“They have gone away?” asked Oscar, sharply.
“Ah—yes,” returned the reticent John. “An unexpected matter of importance.”
“But, my dear sir, those gentlemen know nothing! Philosophy 4 is tomorrow, and they know nothing.”
“They’ll have to stand it, then,” said John, with a grin.
“And my time. I am waiting here. I am engaged to teach them. I have been waiting here since ten. They engaged me all day and this evening.
“I don’t believe there’s the slightest use in your waiting now, you know. They’ll probably let you know when they come back.”
“Probably! But they have engaged my time. The girl knows I was here ready at ten. I call you to witness that you found me waiting, ready at any time.”
John in his pyjamas stared at Oscar. “Why, of course they’ll pay you the whole thing,” said he, coldly; “stay here if you prefer.” And he went into the bathroom and closed the door.
The tutor stood awhile, holding his notes and turning his little eyes this way and that. His young days had been dedicated to getting the better of his neighbor, because otherwise his neighbor would get the better of him. Oscar had never suspected the existence of boys like John and Bertie and Billy. He stood holding his notes, and then, buckling them up once more, he left the room with evidently reluctant steps. It was at this time that the clocks struck one.
In their field among the soft new grass sat Bertie and Billy some ten yards apart, each with his back against an apple tree. Each had his notes and took his turn at questioning the other. Thus the names of the Greek philosophers with their dates and doctrines were shouted gayly in the meadow. The foreheads of the boys were damp to-day, as they had been last night, and their shirts were opened to the air; but it was the sun that made them hot now, and no lamp or gas; and already they looked twice as alive as they had looked at breakfast. There they sat, while their memories gripped the summarized list of facts essential, facts to be known accurately; the simple, solid, raw facts, which, should they happen to come on the examination paper, no skill could evade nor any imagination supply. But this study was no longer dry and dreadful to them: they had turned it to a sporting event. “What about Heracleitos?” Billy as catechist would put at Bertie. “Eternal flux,” Bertie would correctly snap back at Billy. Or, if he got it mixed up, and replied, “Everything is water,” which was the doctrine of another Greek, then Billy would credit himself with twenty-five cents on a piece of paper. Each ran a memorandum of this kind; and you can readily see how spirited a character metaphysics would assume under such conditions.
“I’m going in,” said Bertie, suddenly, as Billy was crediting himself with a fifty-cent gain. “What’s your score?”
“Two seventy-five, counting your break on Parmenides. It’ll be cold.”
“No, it won’t. Well, I’m only a quarter behind you.” And Bertie puffed off his shoes. Soon he splashed into the stream where the bend made a hole of some depth.
“Cold?” inquired Billy on the bank. Bertie closed his eyes dreamily. “Delicious,” said he, and sank luxuriously beneath the surface with slow strokes.
Billy had his clothes off in a moment, and, taking the plunge, screamed loudly “You liar!” he yelled, as he came up. And he made for Bertie.
Delight rendered Bertie weak and helpless; he was caught and ducked; and after some vigorous wrestling both came out of the icy water.
“Now we’ve got no towels, you fool,” said Billy.
“Use your notes,” said Bertie, and he rolled in the grass. Then they chased each other round the apple trees, and the black gelding watched them by the wall, its ears well forward.
While they were dressing they discovered it was half-past one, and became instantly famished. “We should have brought lunch along,” they told each other. But they forgot that no such thing as lunch could have induced them to delay their escape from Cambridge for a moment this morning. “What do you suppose Oscar is doing now?” Billy inquired of Bertie, as they led the black gelding back to the road; and Bertie laughed like an infant. “Gentlemen,” said he, in Oscar’s manner, “we now approach the multiplicity of the ego.” The black gelding must have thought it had humorists to deal with this day.
Oscar, as a matter of fact, was eating his cheap lunch away over in Cambridge. There was cold mutton, and boiled potatoes with hard brown spots in them, and large picked cucumbers; and the salt was damp and would not shake out through the holes in the top of the bottle. But Oscar ate two helps of everything with a good appetite, and between whiles looked at his notes, which lay open beside him on the table. At the stroke of two he was again knocking at his pupils’ door. But no answer came. John had gone away somewhere for indefinite hours and the door was locked. So Oscar wrote: “Called, two p.m.,” on a scrap of envelope, signed his name, and put it through the letter-slit. It crossed his mind to hunt other pupils for his vacant time, but he decided against this at once, and returned to his own room. Three o’clock found him back at the door, knocking scrupulously, The idea of performing his side of the contract, of tendering his goods and standing ready at all times to deliver them, was in his commercially mature mind. This time he had brought a neat piece of paper with him, and wrote upon it, “Called, three P.M.,” and signed it as before, and departed to his room with a sense of fulfilled obligations.
Bertie and Billy had lunched at Mattapan quite happily on cold ham, cold pie, and doughnuts. Mattapan, not being accustomed to such lilies of the field, stared at their clothes and general glory, but observed that they could eat the native bill-of-fare as well as anybody. They found some good, cool beer, moreover, and spoke to several people of the Bird-in-Hand, and got several answers: for instance, that the Bird-in-Hand was at Hingham; that it was at Nantasket; that they had better inquire for it at South Braintree; that they had passed it a mile back; and that there was no such place. If you would gauge the intelligence of our population, inquire your way in a rural neighborhood. With these directions they took up their journey after an hour and a half,—a halt made chiefly for the benefit of the black gelding, whom they looked after as much as they did themselves. For a while they discussed club matters seriously, as both of them were officers of certain organizations, chosen so on account of their recognized executive gifts. These questions settled, they resumed the lighter theme of philosophy, and made it (as Billy observed) a near thing for the Causal law. But as they drove along, their minds left this topic on the abrupt discovery that the sun was getting down out of the sky, and they asked each other where they were and what they should do. They pulled up at some cross-roads and debated this with growing uneasiness. Behind them lay the way to Cambridge,—not very clear, to be sure; but you could always go where you had come from, Billy seemed to think. He asked, “How about Cambridge and a little Oscar to finish off with?” Bertie frowned. This would be failure. Was Billy willing to go back and face John the successful?
“It would only cost me five dollars,” said Billy.
“Ten,” Bertie corrected. He recalled to Billy the matter about the landlady’s hair.
“By Jove, that’s so!” cried Billy, brightening. It seemed conclusive. But he grew cloudy again the next moment. He was of opinion that one could go too far in a thing.
“Where’s your sand?” said Bertie.
Billy made an unseemly rejoinder, but even in the making was visited by inspiration. He saw the whole thing as it really was. “By Jove!” said he, “we couldn’t get back in time for dinner.”
“There’s my bonny boy!” said Bertie, with pride; and he touched up the black gelding. Uneasiness had left both of them. Cambridge was manifestly impossible; an error in judgment; food compelled them to seek the Bird-in-Hand. “We’ll try Quincy, anyhow,” Bertie said. Billy suggested that they inquire of people on the road. This provided a new sporting event: they could bet upon the answers. Now, the roads, not populous at noon, had grown solitary in the sweetness of the long twilight. Voices of birds there were; and little, black, quick brooks, full to the margin grass, shot under the roadway through low bridges. Through the web of young foliage the sky shone saffron, and frogs piped in the meadow swamps. No cart or carriage appeared, however, and the bets languished. Bertie, driving with one hand, was buttoning his coat with the other, when the black gelding leaped from the middle of the road to the turf and took to backing. The buggy reeled; but the driver was skilful, and fifteen seconds of whip and presence of mind brought it out smoothly. Then the cause of all this spoke to them from a gate.
“Come as near spillin’ as you boys wanted, I guess,” remarked the cause.
They looked, and saw him in huge white shirt-sleeves, shaking with joviality. “If you kep’ at it long enough you might a-most learn to drive a horse,” he continued, eying Bertie. This came as near direct praise as the true son of our soil—Northern or Southern—often thinks well of. Bertie was pleased, but made a modest observation, and “Are we near the tavern?” he asked. “Bird-in-Hand!” the son of the soil echoed; and he contemplated them from his gate. “That’s me,” he stated, with complacence. “Bill Diggs of the Bird-in-Hand has been me since April, ‘65.” His massy hair had been yellow, his broad body must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, his face was canny, red, and somewhat clerical, resembling Henry Ward Beecher’s.
“Trout,” he said, pointing to a basket by the gate. “For your dinner. “Then he climbed heavily but skilfully down and picked up the basket and a rod. “Folks round here say,” said he, “that there ain’t no more trout up them meadows. They’ve been a-sayin’ that since ‘74; and I’ve been a-sayin’ it myself, when judicious.” Here he shook slightly and opened the basket. “Twelve,” he said. “Sixteen yesterday. Now you go along and turn in the first right-hand turn, and I’ll be up with you soon. Maybe you might make room for the trout.” Room for him as well, they assured him; they were in luck to find him, they explained. “Well, I guess I’ll trust my neck with you,” he said to Bertie, the skillful driver; “‘tain’t five minutes’ risk.” The buggy leaned, and its springs bent as he climbed in, wedging his mature bulk between their slim shapes. The gelding looked round the shaft at them. “Protestin’, are you?” he said to it. “These light-weight stoodents spile you!” So the gelding went on, expressing, however, by every line of its body, a sense of outraged justice. The boys related their difficult search, and learned that any mention of the name of Diggs would have brought them straight. “Bill Higgs of the Bird-in-Hand was my father, and my grandf’ther, and his father; and has been me sence I come back from the war and took the business in ‘65. I’m not commonly to be met out this late. About fifteen minutes earlier is my time for gettin’ back, unless I’m plannin’ for a jamboree. But to-night I got to settin’ and watchin’ that sunset, and listenin’ to a darned red-winged blackbird, and I guess Mrs. Higgs has decided to expect me somewheres about noon to-morrow or Friday. Say, did Johnnie send you? “When he found that John had in a measure been responsible for their journey, he filled with gayety. “Oh, Johnnie’s a bird!” said he. “He’s that demure on first appearance. Walked in last evening and wanted dinner. Did he tell you what he ate? Guess he left out what he drank. Yes, he’s demure.”
You might suppose that upon their landlord’s safe and sober return fifteen minutes late, instead of on the expected noon of Thursday or Friday, their landlady would show signs of pleasure; but Mrs. Diggs from the porch threw an uncordial eye at the three arriving in the buggy. Here were two more like Johnnie of last night. She knew them by the clothes they wore and by the confidential tones of her husband’s voice as he chatted to them. He had been old enough to know better for twenty years. But for twenty years he had taken the same extreme joy in the company of Johnnies, and they were bad for his health. Her final proof that they belonged to this hated breed was when Mr. Diggs thumped the trout down on the porch, and after briefly remarking, “Half of ‘em boiled, and half broiled with bacon,” himself led away the gelding to the stable instead of intrusting it to his man Silas.
“You may set in the parlor,” said Mrs. Diggs, and departed stiffly with the basket of trout.
“It’s false,” said Billy, at once.
Bertie did not grasp his thought.
“Her hair,” said Billy. And certainly it was an unusual-looking arrangement.
Presently, as they sat near a parlor organ in the presence of earnest family portraits, Bertie made a new poem for Billy,—
“Said Aristotle unto Plato,
‘Have another sweet potato? ‘”
And Billy responded,—
“Said Plato unto Aristotle,
‘Thank you, I prefer the bottle.’”
“In here, are you?” said their beaming host at the door. “Now, I think you’d find my department of the premises cosier, so to speak.” He nudged Bertie. “Do you boys guess it’s too early in the season for a silver-fizz?”
We must not wholly forget Oscar in Cambridge. During the afternoon he had not failed in his punctuality; two more neat witnesses to this lay on the door-mat beneath the letter-slit of Billy’s room, And at the appointed hour after dinner a third joined them, making five. John found these cards when he came home to go to bed, and picked them up and stuck them ornamentally in Billy’s looking-glass, as a greeting when Billy should return, The eight o’clock visit was the last that Oscar paid to the locked door, He remained through the evening in his own room, studious, contented, unventilated, indulging in his thick notes, and also in the thought of Billy’s and Bertie’s eleventh-hour scholarship, “Even with another day,” he told himself, “those young men could not have got fifty per cent,” In those times this was the passing mark. To-day I believe you get an A, or a B, or some other letter denoting your rank. In due time Oscar turned out his gas and got into his bed; and the clocks of Massachusetts struck midnight.
Mrs. Diggs of the Bird-in-Hand had retired at eleven, furious with rage, but firm in dignity in spite of a sudden misadventure. Her hair, being the subject of a sporting event, had remained steadily fixed in Billy’s mind,—steadily fixed throughout an entertainment which began at an early hour to assume the features of a celebration. One silver-fizz before dinner is nothing; but dinner did not come at once, and the boys were thirsty. The hair of Mrs. Diggs had caught Billy’s eye again immediately upon her entrance to inform them that the meal was ready; and whenever she reentered with a new course from the kitchen, Billy’s eye wandered back to it, although Mr. Diggs had become full of anecdotes about the Civil War. It was partly Grecian: a knot stood out behind to a considerable distance. But this was not the whole plan. From front to back ran a parting, clear and severe, and curls fell from this to the temples in a manner called, I believe, by the enlightened, a l’Anne d’Autriche. The color was gray, to be sure; but this propriety did not save the structure from Billy’s increasing observation. As bottles came to stand on the table in greater numbers, the closer and the more solemnly did Billy continue to follow the movements of Mrs. Diggs. They would without doubt have noticed him and his foreboding gravity but for Mr. Diggs’s experiences in the Civil War.
The repast was finished—so far as eating went. Mrs. Diggs with changeless dudgeon was removing and washing the dishes. At the revellers’ elbows stood the 1820 port in its fine, fat, old, dingy bottle, going pretty fast. Mr. Diggs was nearing the end of Antietam. “That morning of the 18th, while McClellan was holdin’ us squattin’ and cussin’,” he was saying to Bertie, when some sort of shuffling sound in the corner caught their attention. We can never know how it happened. Billy ought to know, but does not, and Mrs. Diggs allowed no subsequent reference to the casualty. But there she stood with her entire hair at right angles. The Grecian knot extended above her left ear, and her nose stuck through one set of Anne d’Autriche. Beside her Billy stood, solemn as a stone, yet with a sort of relief glazed upon his face.
Mr. Diggs sat straight up at the vision of his spouse. “Flouncing Florence!” was his exclamation. “Gee-whittaker, Mary, if you ain’t the most unmitigated sight!” And wind then left him.
Mary’s reply arrived in tones like a hornet stinging slowly and often. “Mr. Diggs, I have put up with many things, and am expecting to put up with many more. But you’d behave better if you consorted with gentlemen.”
The door slammed and she was gone. Not a word to either of the boys, not even any notice of them. It was thorough, and silence consequently held them for a moment.
“He didn’t mean anything,” said Bertie, growing partially responsible.
“Didn’t mean anything,” repeated Billy, like a lesson.
“I’ll take him and he’ll apologize,” Bertie pursued, walking over to Billy.
“He’ll apologize,” went Billy, like a cheerful piece of mechanism. Responsibility was still quite distant from him.
Mr. Diggs got his wind back. “Better not,” he advised in something near a whisper. “Better not go after her. Her father was a fightin’ preacher, and she’s—well, begosh! she’s a chip of the old pulpit.” And he rolled his eye towards the door. Another door slammed somewhere above, and they gazed at each other, did Bertie and Mr. Diggs. Then Mr. Diggs, still gazing at Bertie, beckoned to him with a speaking eye and a crooked finger; and as he beckoned, Bertie approached like a conspirator and sat down close to him. “Begosh!” whispered Mr. Diggs. “Unmitigated.” And at this he and Bertie laid their heads down on the table and rolled about in spasms.
Billy from his corner seemed to become aware of them. With his eye fixed upon them like a statue, he came across the room, and, sitting down near them with formal politeness, observed, “Was you ever to the battle of Antietam?” This sent them beyond the limit; and they rocked their heads on the table and wept as if they would expire.
Thus the three remained, during what space of time is not known: the two upon the table, convalescent with relapses, and Billy like a seated idol, unrelaxed at his vigil. The party was seen through the windows by Silas, coming from the stable to inquire if the gelding should not be harnessed. Silas leaned his face to the pane, and envy spoke plainly in it. “O my! O my!” he mentioned aloud to himself. So we have the whole household: Mrs. Diggs reposing scornfully in an upper chamber; all parts of the tavern darkened, save the one lighted room; the three inside that among their bottles, with the one outside looking covetously in at them; and the gelding stamping in the stable.
But Silas, since he could not share, was presently of opinion that this was enough for one sitting, and he tramped heavily upon the porch. This brought Bertie back to the world of reality, and word was given to fetch the gelding. The host was in no mood to part with them, and spoke of comfortable beds and breakfast as early as they liked; but Bertie had become entirely responsible. Billy was helped in, Silas was liberally thanked, and they drove away beneath the stars, leaving behind them golden opinions, and a host who decided not to disturb his helpmate by retiring to rest in their conjugal bed.
Bertie had forgotten, but the playful gelding had not. When they came abreast of that gate where Diggs of the Bird-in-Hand had met them at sunset, Bertie was only aware that a number of things had happened at once, and that he had stopped the horse after about twenty yards of battle. Pride filled him, but emptied away in the same instant, for a voice on the road behind him spoke inquiringly through the darkness.
“Did any one fall out?” said the voice. “Who fell out?”
“Billy!” shrieked Bertie, cold all over. “Billy, are you hurt?”
“Did Billy fall out?” said the voice, with plaintive cadence. “Poor Billy!”
“He can’t be,” muttered Bertie. “Are you?” he loudly repeated.
There was no answer: but steps came along the road as Bertie checked and pacified the gelding. Then Billy appeared by the wheel. “Poor Billy fell out,” he said mildly. He held something up, which Bertie took. It had been Billy’s straw hat, now a brimless fabric of ruin. Except for smirches and one inexpressible rent which dawn revealed to Bertie a little later, there were no further injuries, and Billy got in and took his seat quite competently.
Bertie drove the gelding with a firm hand after this. They passed through the cool of the unseen meadow swamps, and heard the sound of the hollow bridges as they crossed them, and now and then the gulp of some pouring brook. They went by the few lights of Mattapan, seeing from some points on their way the beacons of the harbor, and again the curving line of lamps that drew the outline of some village built upon a hill. Dawn showed them Jamaica Pond, smooth and breezeless, and encircled with green skeins of foliage, delicate and new. Here multitudinous birds were chirping their tiny, overwhelming chorus. When at length, across the flat suburban spaces, they again sighted Memorial tower, small in the distance, the sun was lighting it.
Confronted by this, thoughts of hitherto banished care, and of the morrow that was now to-day, and of Philosophy 4 coming in a very few hours, might naturally have arisen and darkened the end of their pleasant excursion. Not so, however. Memorial tower suggested another line of argument. It was Billy who spoke, as his eyes first rested upon that eminent pinnacle of Academe.
“Well, John owes me five dollars.”
“Ten, you mean.”
“Ten? How?”
“Why, her hair. And it was easily worth twenty.”
Billy turned his head and looked suspiciously at Bertie. “What did I do?” he asked.
“Do! Don’t you know?”
Billy in all truth did not.
“Phew!” went Bertie. “Well, I don’t, either. Didn’t see it. Saw the consequences, though. Don’t you remember being ready to apologize? What do you remember, anyhow?”
Billy consulted his recollections with care: they seemed to break off at the champagne. That was early. Bertie was astonished. Did not Billy remember singing “Brace up and dress the Countess,” and “A noble lord the Earl of Leicester”? He had sung them quite in his usual manner, conversing freely between whiles. In fact, to see and hear him, no one would have suspected—“It must have been that extra silver-fizz you took before dinner,” said Bertie. “Yes,” said Billy; “that’s what it must have been.” Bertie supplied the gap in his memory,—a matter of several hours, it seemed. During most of this time Billy had met the demands of each moment quite like his usual agreeable self—a sleep-walking state. It was only when the hair incident was reached that his conduct had noticeably crossed the line. He listened to all this with interest intense.
“John does owe me ten, I think,” said he.
“I say so,” declared Bertie. “When do you begin to remember again?”
“After I got in again at the gate. Why did I get out?”
“You fell out, man.”
Billy was incredulous.
“You did. You tore your clothes wide open.”
Billy, looking at his trousers, did not see it.
“Rise, and I’ll show you,” said Bertie.
“Goodness gracious!” said Billy.
Thus discoursing, they reached Harvard Square. Not your Harvard Square, gentle reader, that place populous with careless youths and careful maidens and reticent persons with books, but one of sleeping windows and clear, cool air and few sounds; a Harvard Square of emptiness and conspicuous sparrows and milk wagons and early street-car conductors in long coats going to their breakfast; and over all this the sweetness of the arching elms.
As the gelding turned down toward Pike’s, the thin old church clock struck. “Always sounds,” said Billy, “like cambric tea.”
“Cambridge tea,” said Bertie.
“Walk close behind me,” said Billy, as they came away from the livery stable. “Then they won’t see the hole.”
Bertie did so; but the hole was seen by the street-car conductors and the milkmen, and these sympathetic hearts smiled at the sight of the marching boys, and loved them without knowing any more of them than this. They reached their building and separated.
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